[BRIEF NOTE] Why day without a gay fell flat

[rfmcdonald]

The idea of a day without a gay sounds like a good idea, I'm sure.

Gay rights activists in the United States are urging people to skip work Wednesday in support of the "day without a gay" campaign.

The event was spearheaded by gay and lesbian groups in California, who are using the day to protest against Proposition 8, last month's vote that defined marriage in the state as between a male and female.

Organizers chose Dec. 10 because it is the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Supporters are urging people to "call in gay" and take the day off work to volunteer for a local gay rights group or at an organization such as Habitat for Humanity or a local church.

Campaign organizer Sean Hetherington said the campaign's message is twofold.

"We want to remind our gay community here in the U.S., but specifically in California, that Proposition 8 took away a right from us. We are down, we are not out and we still have a reason to be hopeful," he said.

"Secondly, we want to reach those moderate voters … and show them that we are a loving people."

The idea reminded me very much of a little scenario that Robin Hardy wrote about in the November 1980 issue of the GLBT publication Body Politic, in his "The day the homos disappeared: a cautionary tale."

The day the homos disappeared, Nora Lindquist had planned a dinner party. First, the bakery didn't have any spinach quiche. Nor could she get any of that delicious key lime pie she'd hoped to impress everyone with, and the cheese soufflé she attempted fell in like a punctured basketball the moment she took it from the oven. In desperation, she phoned out for Chinese food--at least it was from one of the best restaurants in town.

Her guests arrived late, and two didn't show at all. Nora wasn't surprised that her husband Bill Lindquist absented himself. In fact, she was quite happy; they didn't like each other very much, really. If it wasn't for the corporation's disapproval of divorce, he would have walked out long ago, taking Nora's lifestyle with him.

But no Wayne Simon! That made Nora furious. It was important to have one gay man at her dinner parties. It was important as the right arrangement of flowers in the centrepiece. It was, well, fashionable. She never asked lesbians though. They made her uncomfortable. And lovers made being gay seem to serious somehow--more than one gay person and they started flaunting it. Wayne Simon had been perfect. He was single, he was a famous fashion designer--but he wasn't here! The homos must have been planning this for weeks; why couldn't they have waited for some other day, or at least warned her in advance? It was quite rude, Nora bristled, putting every homo who had ever lived firmly in place once and for all (Flaunting It!, p 140).

The fatal flaw with yesterday's protest, and its difference from Hardy's scenario, is that every gay (and lesbian, and bisexual, and ...) did not disappear from the face of the Earth. GLBT people who are out and comfortable enough to leave their work to take part in this protest and let everyone know why they left and take the financial hit regardless form only a small minority of the United States' non-heterosexual populations, never mind the world's. I'd also be willing to bet that the communities and environments that saw the largest number of non-hets disappear are they least homophobic ones in any case. This protest may only have preached to the converted.

Better luck next time, I guess.