Writing a History of Progress During a Period of Retrenchment

Mark Twain is frequently credited with the aphorism: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” All of you reading this blog post know how right he was. The present does not follow the same sequence of events as the past—changes in politics, society, and culture make that impossible. Yet even though the specifics differ, there are invariably clear parallels between the past and the present.

I see echoes of Family Matters every day, especially in my home state of North Carolina. As I discussed in my last post, LGBTQ+ rights debates have primarily taken shape at the state and local level. That continues to be true. In recent years, jurisdictions across the United States have enacted laws that limit what students can learn in schools about sexual orientation and gender identity, prohibited trans students from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity, and restricted minors’ access to gender affirming care. These legislative battles have been waged over claims of child protection and calls for parents’ rights—much like the attacks on gay and lesbian rights that I detail in Family Matters. (If you’re interested in a short summary of how Christian conservatives have wielded child protection claims to oppose queer civil liberties, check out this piece I recently published in Time.)

Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash

Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash

 That there is such a direct link between the historical issues in Family Matters and present politics is to be expected – after all, the story I tell goes to 2015! But it was a challenge to write a story of recent progress during a period of political and legal retrenchment. Family Matters tells the story of a successful campaign to promote the rights of queer families. However, it is not a triumphalist narrative of gay and lesbian legal victories. The right to marry was simply one step in the fight for full legal equality, which gays, lesbians, and other members of the LGBTQ+ community are still working to attain. Queer rights continue to be contested, with advocates experiencing defeats as well as victories.

Writing this book thus required striking a balance between emphasizing progress and recognizing the movement’s limitations. I struggled to do this most with this in my chapters on advocates’ educational initiatives. During the 1980s, the queer community was under constant attack. Gays and lesbians had long been the targets of violence, but the AIDS crisis unleashed a new torrent of animosity against the queer community. As hatred rose, so too did physical assaults. Most of the perpetrators were teenagers, who knew little about the queer world other than the prejudice they had learned from the adults in their lives. Of course, straight youth did not just torment queer adults—they also directed their anger and hatred at their peers. Gay and lesbian teens, as well as youth suspected of being queer, endured rampant rejection, harassment, and violence from their classmates, which reinforced the hateful messages they received from teachers, parents, and community members. As a result, a substantial percentage of queer youth dropped out of school, abused alcohol and drugs, and considered ending their despair with their own hands. Indeed, by the end of the 1980s, suicide had become the leading cause of death among queer adolescents.

 

To stem the rising tide of violence, gay and lesbian rights advocates lobbied for changes to educational policies. They pressed schools to support queer students with in-school counseling programs, which would emphasize that same-sex sexual attraction was not shameful. They additionally demanded that schools combat bias against same-sex sexuality by teaching all students that gays and lesbians deserved the same dignity and respect as other members of society. In New York City, these advocates succeeded in securing three references to same-sex parents in a 1991 first-grade teacher’s guide. This limited mention of same-sex sexuality was enough for the city to erupt in anger and acrimony. Shoving broke out in school board meetings, thousands of parents took to the streets in protest, and the Schools Chancellor received two death threats.

 

Given how controversial the education reform efforts were, it is no surprise that queer rights advocates made little headway. And yet I firmly believe that these efforts were consequential. The educational reform initiatives may not have changed the curricular content of most schools, but they allowed gay and lesbian rights advocates to continue refuting the religious right’s child protection arguments. Doing so was essential, given how often Christian conservatives wielded child protection rhetoric to impede queer rights advocacy. Through curricular reform battles, gay and lesbian rights organizations communicated that the key problem was not protecting children from gays and lesbians. Homosexuality, after all, was common, unremarkable, immutable trait. Instead, schools had to focus on the needs of children with gay and lesbian parents, as well as the welfare of gay and lesbian youth, by combatting antiqueer bias. In other words, what children needed to be protected from was not the queer community, but rather homophobia.

 

The LGBTQ+ community and its allies are continuing to fight similar battles, waged over parallel claims about the origins of queer identity. Some days, I look at the news and it seems that the history is not just rhyming, but actually repeating itself. For supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, that fact is dispiriting. Queer rights advocates have spent so many decades combatting variations on the child protection theme that the trope seems like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. At the same time, the fact that advocates have succeeded in the past should inspire confidence in their ability to do so again.

 

One of the benefits of writing a history that comes so close to the present day is that it not only helps readers contextualize the past—it also offers hope for the future. The current legal landscape might seem grim, but the law can change for the better. After all, as Family Matters demonstrates, it already has.

 

In my next post, I’ll take up a more pragmatic set of opportunities and challenges that came from writing a history of the present: the ability to conduct oral history research.

 

Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash.