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Miscegenation and gay rights
An evening at the GLAAD Awards with The “L” Word star Jennifer Beals leads one filmmaker to consider what it means for gay equality that all these years later some folks still just don’t feel right about interracial relationships
By Samuel Bernstein
An Advocate.com exclusive posted May 2, 2003

My partner, Ron, and I sat with Jennifer Beals at the GLAAD Media Awards dinner in Los Angeles on Saturday night, where Jennifer had presented an award and Ron and I had been nominated for one. Jennifer is smart and funny and was wearing fabulous shoes. We talked about our dogs—hers are big, intelligent mixed breeds while ours are dumb little dachshunds. It seemed to me that Jennifer is kind of feeling her way around what her role in Showtime’s upcoming lesbian-focused drama series The “L” Word might mean to the gay and lesbian community, and she asked us how it felt as a couple to be recognized with a GLAAD nomination for our Bobbie’s Girl. We said it was cool, exciting, and a lot of other things (we lost, by the way, to The Laramie Project; no hard feelings). But our conversation grew more serious as we started talking about hate and prejudice.

No surprise that we were all angry about Rick Santorum. I think Jennifer was surprised that anyone could say things like that and believe them, and I looked for something to compare it to. Maybe all of our talk about canine breeding made me think of it, or maybe it was the fact that Jennifer has a mixed racial heritage and so do I, but an icky word popped into my head: miscegenation.

My first movie had a subplot involving an African-American boy and a white girl. When we screened it for the first time, an 80-ish relative whom I love with all my heart and who has embraced a dizzying array of cultural shifts—including wholeheartedly accepting Ron and me as a married couple—wondered whether we were right to hire a black actor, since, as he put it, “People don’t like miscegenation.”

I think it’s something for us to really think about for two reasons:

First of all, the exact same sort of Bible-based pseudologic that is used today to justify attempts to dehumanize and marginalize GLBT family life and sexuality was used again and again to justify laws that barred people of different races from marrying or having sex. Supreme Court arguments, anyone?

But secondly, my elderly relative said something that a lot of people still feel, even if a U.S. senator would never be caught dead saying it: that mixing races feels wrong. You can’t argue the point with them. Laws changed. Acceptable discourse changed. But for them, deep down, the feeling stays on, however buried or denied.

A lightbulb went off in my head.

Maybe it will be the same for us. (OK, like, duh.) Maybe there will always be the Rick Santorums of the world who don’t want to think about the realities of our lives, and maybe that’s OK. But there are an awful lot of us in Best Little Boy (and Girl) in the World mode, GLBT people who really, really, really want to be loved and accepted by absolutely everyone. On some level we all want to believe that the righteousness of our community’s struggle will one day win over the whole world.

For my own sanity and in the hope of one day being an actual grown-up, I’m going to try to let go of that idea. Will you still like me if I do?

Anglican leaders won't recognize gay couples
Leaders of the world's Anglican churches said Tuesday that they cannot support ceremonies blessing gay and lesbian relationships, which one bishop in Canada has permitted. "The question of public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions is still a cause of potentially divisive controversy," primates of the 38 national churches and provinces said in a statement following their meeting in Gramado in southern Brazil. "The archbishop of Canterbury spoke for us all when he said that it is through liturgy that we express what we believe and that there is no theological consensus about same-sex unions. Therefore, we as a body cannot support the authorization of such rites," continued the statement, released by the Anglican Communion Office in London. "This is distinct from the duty of pastoral care that is laid upon all Christians to respond with love and understanding to people of all sexual orientations."

The bishop of Vancouver, Michael Ingham, divided his own diocese by approving blessing rituals for gays. The bishop of the Yukon, Terrence Buckle, inflamed the controversy this year by offering to become an alternate leader for conservatives in Ingham's diocese. Homosexuality has been a deeply divisive issue among Anglican churches. The Anglican Communion's leader, archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has drawn criticism for ordaining a gay man when he was primate of the church in Wales. Williams's personal views place him in the liberal wing of the church, but since being appointed to the Canterbury post, he has pledged to affirm the 1998 Lambeth Conference declaration that homosexual relations are "incompatible with Scripture." The declaration also opposed the blessing of same-sex unions.