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“I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.”
–WEB DuBois, whose 141st birthday was yesterday.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, a law-professors’ group blog, someone put up a link yesterday to a post by a guy who calls himself Gay Patriot West, saying that gay conservatives on campus get a warmer welcome from conservatives than they do from gays.
The comments thread on the Volokh post explored the issue from a few different angles, but it didn’t address one that I consider crucial — the historical context. Here’s the meat of my contribution to the discussion, posted just a little while ago:
Whatever ease gays have around conservatives exists only because of limitations on conservatives’ political power.
Fifty years ago, you could be imprisoned or institutionalized for being gay or lesbian. You could be jailed for hanging out with gays. You could lose your business if that business catered to gay people. Forget having any job security, or any recognition for your relationships, or any social deference to your life choices except in the most anomalous subcultures. To be gay or lesbian in the United States fifty years ago was to live in fear of disclosure and persecution.
Most of that has changed. But it has changed despite conservatives, not because of them. To a large degree it has changed over the vocal and forceful opposition of conservatives. It has changed because conservatives’ power has waned, because conservatives’ power has been constrained, and because conservatives have realized that most Americans don’t agree with their most anti-gay positions. And yes, it has changed because many conservatives have become less hostile to gays and lesbians, buoyed along by a broader cultural transformation that they did not initiate.
To the extent that it is easy to be a gay person among conservatives today, that is because of the weakness of traditional conservative values in American society today. The idea of conservatives as second-class citizens, deprived of basic civil rights, is a right-wing fever dream. That of gays and lesbians being deprived of basic civil rights is a matter of historical record.
The Gay Patriot has his ease because his side has been defeated in a thousand hard-fought struggles over the last half-century.
One other thing that I could have mentioned: The social and political climate for lesbians and gays in America has changed least in the last half-century in the parts of the country where conservatives remain strongest. It has changed the most in those places where conservatism is weakest. Gay Patriot West went to the University of Virginia law school. He lives in Los Angeles today. His experience of being a conservative gay man reflects those facts of his geography.
High school girls in an auto repair class in Central High School, Washington DC, 1927.
The Negro History Club of Albany State College in Georgia, 1940.
Nelson D. Schwartz, “Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide,” The New York Times, February 15:
High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.
Ian Traynor, “Governments Across Europe Tremble As Angry People Take to the Streets,” The Guardian, January 31:
Europe’s time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.
Hugo Rifkin, “Student Activism Is Back,” The Times of London, February 16:
For decades, student activism has been in the doldrums in this country. It is hard to think of any large-scale student protests since busloads descended on the capital in the late 1980s in a wave of anti-apartheid rage. But that may be about to change.
The administration of Georgia Southern University has blocked a student group from inviting sixties radical and education reformer William Ayers to campus.
Ayers, a leader of the Weather Underground, became notorious during last year’s presidential campaign because of his connections to Barack Obama. He was invited to GSU by that campus’s Multicultural Advisory Council, a student group.
Though Ayers had spoken at GSU before without incident, his invitation drew criticism and protest this time, and the university claimed the controversy would raise security costs for the speech to $13,000. They cited these costs in vetoing the event.
The administration of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln rescinded a speaking invitation to Ayers last fall in the face of criticism by donors and political leaders. Ayers was forced to cancel a speech at the University of Toronto last month when he was denied entry into Canada by border officials.
studentactivism.net 
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