So many, many of my Facebook friends, most not LGBT and many who were not even born when the Stonewall riots occurred, have replaced their regular Facebook profile pictures with
I wore a button with this symbol 30 years ago or more. In those days, I think, it was black with a white equal sign, or maybe a yellow one.
Back then few people knew what it meant, but if someone did, technically you could lose your job. I say "technically" because New York City did not pass a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation until 1986, as you can read here, but working in the publishing industry, it was unlikely that I would have been fired for being gay or, more to the point, for being out.
On the other hand, it may well have kept me in lower level jobs for longer than would otherwise have been the case.
When I wore the button I always had to decide how to answer people if they asked me what it meant. If I felt threatened, I would say "oh, it just means equal rights for everyone," and leave it at that. Sometimes I would say that it stood for gay rights, and usually this would embarrass people, even people with whom I had spoken freely about my female partner (they were called "lovers" in those days, which I much prefer). Many of the people who were embarrassed were embarrassed about being embarrassed. They wanted to be on the side of what was right.
Seeing all the brouhaha about gay rights coming from straight quarters these days makes me feel odd. And seeing all those equality symbols on Facebook makes me feel very very odd, as if I saw someone wearing clothing that had belonged to me, long ago, and that didn't really belong to them.
I know this is silly, uncharitable, and probably totally off base. For example the civil rights movement would never have swept through this country if hundreds of white people hadn't marched singing "We shall overcome".
I shouldn't look allies in the mouth.
And yet to me this so doesn't matter all that much. Job discrimination, yes that matters, and the ability to inherit the pension of a loved one. But so much of what is wrong in this country is really about other things, not about marriage, which in many ways seems to me a failed institution (and one that always was primarily an economic arrangement, based on the assumption that an older male would be the richer partner and would die first).
Even if my SO and I still had "that kind" of relationship, I would not want us to be married. She is older, and will probably die first, and I am the one with the assets (they don't amount to a lot, but they will see me through my 80s and 90s if they are untouched until then). If we were married, they would have to be spent down before she could get Medicaid, for example. Which is why the AARP advises seniors in new relationships to remain legally single.
What I am more concerned with is that there should be a single payer health insurance, and that a person can designate any significant other, not just a family member or lover, to inherit their estate tax free, or their pension. Many people of all persuasions have made a family of friends.
Of course, like all of my friends "wearing red", I hope the Supreme Court does the right thing. But I was a lot more concerned about Obamacare, for example.
And I am keeping the beautiful smiling choir picture on Facebook.
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