Subject: D'Emilio Op-Ed: families
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 14:42:00 -0500

***************************************
Guest Editorial
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
2320 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009
202-332-6483 voice, 202-332-0207 fax
http://www.ngltf.org
***************************************

TO:     Editors/Publishers
FROM:   Tracey Conaty
RE:     Family Matters Op-ed
DATE:   January 25, 1996

Attached is an opinion/commentary written by Dr. John D'Emilio, Director of
the 
Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  This month's 
commentary focuses on family issues and their importance in the struggle for 
lesbian and gay liberation.  

Dr. D'Emilio is a leading historian on sexuality and the gay and lesbian 
movement in the United States.  He is the author of Sexual Politics, Sexual 
Communities (1983); Intimate Matters:  A history of Sexuality in America
(1988), 
and Making Trouble:  Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University
(1992).

D'Emilio's monthly column is mailed the last week of each month.  I hope you 
will consider running this month's piece in your publication's op-ed or 
commentary section.  Photos are available upon request.

Thank you for your consideration.


Family Matters
by John D'Emilio, Director
The Policy Institute of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

    What is a family?  According to opinion polls, a majority of Americans 
understand family as a group of people who love one another and take care of 
each other in good times and bad.
    What is a family?  In the hands of the radical Christian right, it has 
become a symbol and a weapon.  A symbol of an imagined past when everything
was 
just fine.  A weapon that divides people into categories of good or bad,
moral 
or immoral, productive citizen or irresponsible parasite.  The allegedly
"pro-
family" rhetoric of the radical right is deeply homophobic and antifeminist,
and 
exploits historically powerful racist stereotypes.
    What is a family?  For lesbians and gay men, family has become the
frontier 
issue in our struggle for freedom, justice, and respect.  Everywhere we look,

family issues are surfacing--in the courts, in state legislatures, in 
workplaces, in the schools, in communities of faith, in the activities of our

community centers and other organizations.  Sometimes, picking up a copy of a

gay newspaper, nothing but family issues of one sort or another seem to fill
its 
pages.
    It wasn't always so.  When I was first coming out in the late sixties, as
a 
college student influenced by the hippie counterculture and the first wave of

radical feminist theory, "family" was something I could do without.  It
seemed 
that my only choices were to have a family, which meant my family of origin,
or 
to be gay, which meant exile and escape from the constrictions of a
heterosexist 
institution.
    So why does family seem so important to us in the 1990s?  Is the concern
for 
family simply a defensive, reactive move on our part, a knee-jerk response to

the "traditional family values" rhetoric of the Radical Christian Right?  Or 
does the rise of family issues tell us something about how we have changed
and 
what we want?
    I think it's the latter.  There are good reasons growing out of the
history 
of our movement and communities that have pushed family issues to the front 
burner.
    One has to do with the growing diversity of the public face of our
movement 
and our community organizations.   Lesbians, for instance, have often taken
the 
lead in campaigns involving custody, adoption, and our right to be parents.  
Lesbians and gays of color have spoken and written passionately of the 
importance of strong, extended family ties for the survival of their home 
communities in the face of racism, and of their unwillingness to have to
choose 
between family ties or their sexual identity.  As gays and lesbians in
smaller 
communities come out of the closet and organize for change, family is
something 
just around the corner, not something to escape from.
    Family issues challenge homophobia in new and important ways.  One of the

most destructive and persistent stereotypes used to perpetuate hatred against
us 
and keep us isolated and separate is the claim that we are a danger to
children.  
The gay man who molests children, or the lesbian teacher who corrupts her 
students, have been common cultural myths.  As more and more parents come out
of 
the closet and assert their right to keep their children, as more and more of
us 
choose to have children even after coming out, we force the issue of queers
and 
children in proactive ways.
    Parents are becoming front-line activists in institutions that reach into

the lives of most Americans.  Take the public schools, for instance.  As the 
children of openly gay or lesbian parents make their way through the public 
schools, these parents have to confront the insidious effects of homophobia
in 
compelling ways.  Will the schools, through their curriculum, be teaching
these 
children to hate their parents?  Will these children be the targets of
ridicule, 
ostracism, and harassment?  What must parents do to protect the integrity of 
their family relationships and to keep their children from harm?  The actions

they take--whether at parent-teacher conferences, at PTA meetings, or in
one-on-
one conversations with the parents of their children's friends, is the stuff
of 
permanent grassroots social change.
    Family issues matter.  Whether it be the public rituals we create to 
celebrate our committed relationships or our decisions to have children in
our 
lives, the articulation of a lesbian and gay "family politics" has the power
to 
move our freedom struggle forward.
###