I vaguely remember in high school my history teacher mentioning that Vermont actually was a separate country for a short while. Soon after it somewhat reluctantly joined up with the other original states to create what is now the indivisible good ole USA. Sometimes I like to play the daydream game “what if?”, like “what if the Dutch never lost New Amsterdam and where I live now would be Dutch speaking (with a peculiar North American twang), or if the Republic of Vermont had decided never to join the United States? Well, I think I’d be better off under either scenario. While Amsterdam on the Hudson today is as similar to Amsterdam in Holland as much as the recreated Paris at Epcot Center is to the one in France...it’s refreshing to realize that Vermonters still have an independent streak true to their traditions. They did a truly wonderful thing. Their legislature passed and their governor signed into law the closest thing to gay marriage America has. Slightly less than 1/2 of 1 percent of Americans now live in a place that considers its gay and Lesbian fellow citizens (almost) as equals, at least as far as recognizing that gay people do have loving relationships and families, and that society should acknowledge and accept these partnerships as valid and acceptable.
You can be sure that will never happen in places like Mississippi or South Carolina, which still haven’t come to terms with the evils of slavery (much less their roles in perpetuating it), not to mention thinking the invention of the internal combustion engine was a good thing. And it will be a long time before something like this could happen in places like California or New York state. California is too busy punishing its immigrant population in referenda and New York has lots of diversity, and lots more people who hate diversity and vote, regularly. Gay marriage has already been ruled out at the federal level thanks to Bill Clinton and many Democrats rushing to join Republicans to “protect” an institution that’s “endangered”. It’s in danger far more from Americans’ dysfunctional family lives and 50% divorce rates than any threat a loving gay or Lesbian couple represents.
So much of contemporary American life is a jumble of contradictory trends and attitudes, which in the abstract makes for an interesting democracy, but which in reality is just a mess, and getting messier all the time. Vermont is a little part of a big country, a green and pleasant place by and large, which is livable, largely liberal, and generally fairminded and tolerant(even if on the issue of gay partnerships a rather too large minority vocally and vociferously opposed it). America is a big country which is definitely not Vermont made larger. It’s the world’s biggest polluter and is racing headlong into the future buying ever larger gas-guzzling cars, being liberal is a bad word in most of the 50 states, and it’s a country that can be quite mean-spirited and intolerant on just about any issue. Here and there places like Vermont buck the overall trends, to a degree: perhaps one could toss in parts of the Pacific Northwest and many college towns around the country. It’s no accident that many people gravitate toward such places from the much larger narrow-minded and stifling atmosphere of so many parts of the country; they’re internal refugees really.
Sadly, this larger, messier and fairly unattractive America reaches from sea to sea (not to mention overseas), and permeates all its subcultures with its dominant values. I read a little article somewhere in the last few months, a rant not unlike much of what I write called: “I tried the gay scene--it failed me”. That rang true. When I think about The Millennium March on Washington just last week , I think it could be considered both a success and a colossal indictment of gay America as it is now. It was so corporate-sponsored marketed that for me and many others it was irrelevant and not worth participating in. But it attracted 200,000 people, or at least consumers, and I suppose that’s where we are at the beginning of this new millennium: somewhere between a market and a movement.
I embrace the “gay agenda”, at least as much of what I’ve figured out it is politically. I happen to think state-sanctioned gay partnerships, even gay marriage is a good thing, I think hate-crimes need to be harshly punished to create a deterrent, and I think young children should be taught in school to be tolerant by adult role-models instead of learning to call other children faggots by their peers in the playground. But I’ve become less attracted to the insipid commercialization and commodification of American gay life, which is so often just like so much of the bad things of the larger society, except with a gay sensibility. Give your name and address and a check for $25.00 to any gay group nowadays , and for YEARS you will be bombarded with reams of mail from every gay kitsch hawker, huckster, and extremely well-organized gay organization churning out heart-felt computer generated letters pleading for more money. Is that really what it means to be gay now--the triumph of recyclable pleas for bucks over substance?
I’m not sure if it was direct-marketing, good-will, or luck that created a situation where in one very small part of America, gay people can actually consider themselves on the way to becoming equals to every other resident of their state. I hope it was due to the last two things and a lot of hard work. It’s probably more of my utopian thinking to wish that the niche-marketing (with 95% emphasis on the marketing) becomes a less important and desired method for advancing gay equality. I appreciate much more the progress that brave people in the early gay rights movement and the hard work of activists through the years have accomplished, but as gay America becomes slightly more acceptable, it also seems to be selling out. What does it profit a movement to gain the world (or at least nominal acceptance) but lose its soul?
Tilting at windmills is my specialty, although so far I haven’t found my Sancho Panza.. Utimately, the meaning of being gay (human?) is one person loving another person. That’s always been the ideal for me, elusive fantasy as it's turned out to be... Sex, the Chelsea scene (what’s that???), Millennium Marches can be part of the mix, but they’ve become too much the mix, and too much like the mess of American society in general. The love part is missing in the greater society too, it seems, and while I salute Vermont, I worry it will remain an exception to an ever more trivialized norm.
By the way, I strongly believe that any letter or commentary (except for this one) using the word “kudos” should go right into the circular file.
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