I've been thinking a lot about gay rights, gay visibility and the "normalization" (forgive the term) of gay culture into mainstream culture since Prop 8 passed.  It's brought me to a bunch of different ideas about how the rights movement stands for GLBT Americans and what can be done to really help what's going on in the movement.

Now, I realize that the ways in which LGBT folks are visible has changed over time.  Twenty to thirty years ago, just the act of coming out was a momentous occasion no matter where it was you were situated in the country -- a liberal area or a conservative one.  Just the simple act of publicly declaring your sexuality is something which was so profound that it caused controversy in and of itself, to the point that "Silence or Death" was an activist slogan adopted when HIV/AIDS hit the gay community.

Presently, coming out in the places most people live is not as huge a deal.  There's still some backlash in some areas, and it's not the "oh, ok. cool!" that it probably will be in some time, but visibility to the cause has taken a new turn.  Gay people are everywhere and depicted not just as villains, but also as kind of folk heroes in a sense.  A gay person, no matter the gender, is being depicted more and more as a developed human being who happens to be sexually attracted to someone of the same gender.

As we've seen with the current marriage debate, this has ALWAYS been about what the genders are "supposed" to do and how that plays down into the way society "should" operate.  It doesn't matter if you're going to be miserable.  It doesn't matter if the idea of what people "should" be attracted to is totally incompatible with what they feel.  It certainly doesn't matter that social stigma may be a leading cause of the huge discrepancy between heterosexual teen and queer teen suicide rates where queers are much more likely to die by their own hands than their straight peers.  What matters is what man and woman are supposed to do, not really what makes someone happy and feel whole.

The weakness of "should" arguments aside, I think it raises a really interesting question about how it is we got to this point of an apparent generational divide.  When being polled, most people who voted for Prop 8 were older and most who voted against were younger.  It's why the numbers have shifted so much between the first ballot initiative in California some years (I don't remember the exact number) ago and this last current initiative on the ballot in November -- the people who oppose this "Gender Non-Conformity" (though would never call it as such) are actually starting to die.

So, it begs the question, what can we do, as the younger generations who are more accepting to gay rights, safety and issues?  What can we do to promote ourselves in solidarity without necessarily implicating ourselves or putting ourselves in situations which may be unsafe because being LGBT or an ally is far from safe in all places?

While mulling over the No on Prop 8 catastrophic failure to reach out to other communities, it got to thinking about how America thinks of LGBT people.  The image of an LGB person is upper class and white.  Someone who's already climbed out of the hole and made a name for themselves when, in some cases, the only thing in a general sense that's held them back is their queerness, which is often hidden until they reach the top (celebrities tend to come out AFTER they've reached success, not before).

This image has been propogated mostly by the activist groups that arose during the early movement -- mainly upper class, white gay men who had the capital to fund the movement and so, even if by accident, pushed their own image to the forefront of the zeitgeist for what it means to be gay.

Another angle of looking at it is like this: in a world where there are gay Latinos, Blacks, Asians, Indians, Arabs, Native Americans and any other minority, why would it make any sense to say that the African American community stood completely in the way of Prop 8 when there are out, proud and still culturally identified African Americans?  It suggests that gay people can't also be racial/ethnic minorities.

If you look back at the way the people who can the campaign to shut down Prop 8 ran it, they failed to reach out to LGBT groups who support LGBT of racial/ethnic minorities instead focusing on culling the already helpful (in majority) young, white vote.  It was a complete failure to recognize the diversity within the LGBT community and its allies as people from multiple backgrounds who have same sex attraction or are gender variant (or both).

This ideal was then propogated, although unintentionally, by Day without a Gay because only people who have relative income and job security would be able to call out of work in support of LGBT rights in a recession during the holiday buying season in which the vast majority of Americans are cutting back to begin with.  It's a great idea, but is short sighted and unintentionally discriminatory.

So, with these thoughts, I began to try to troubleshoot where these things fall flat.  Firstly, many Americans support LGBT rights, but assume that voicing these opinions will paint them as gay -- which is something which closeted LGBT folks worry about constantly.  A Day without a Gay, fund contributions and bodied-group (selected intentionally) do just this.  It adds great visibility and camaraderie, but can alienate the people who the LGBT community wants to convince in the first place.

I tried to come up with something which was passive enough that anyone could easily do it, visible enough that it could make a statement and also oblique enough to allow closeted, ally and non-committed supporters to participate in.

The idea I came up with is, albeit not perfect, something that fits all these categories.  All it requires is a piece of paper and a marker.

All the person does is writes a sign to be posted in a car, in the office cube, in their windows at home:

I know a gay person

That's all it needs to say.  This way, the visibility of queer people is accomplished by more than just queer people.  You can also modify it to how much you want to say, or if you want to do something more specific within the LGBT community -- "I am a gay person"  "I love a gay person"  "I know a trans person" or any other appropriate derivation.

By posting it somewhere visible and many, many people doing it, it causes people to realize that gay people are everywhere in all places in society without having to actually know, interact with or really do anything to get to know a gay person.  It has the visibility while also being non-threatening to the majority of people.  It continues on the idea of coming out of the closet will help with understanding, but twists it into a more contemporary context that can incorporate more people.

So, I encourage anyone who wishes to make the one page sign -- hand write it, make it in word.  Make it pretty or plain.  I know a gay person

It's simple, clean, easy and effective.  Any LGBT supportive person can do it.

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