Homophobia is homophobia, and it must be called out. Whether it's shouted from a stage or in a business' silent refusal to deal with a gay customer, homophobia is completely unacceptable.
You'll see two examples of calling out in this week's issue. In "Creep of the Week," you'll read about the much-publicized Tracy Morgan, the comedian who viciously attacked homosexuality in a stand up routine. He's been called out on it by fellow cast members, comedians and national organizations. He's issued several apologies, saying his bit about stabbing his son if he were gay was supposed to be funny, and wasn't supposed to hurt anyone.
You'll also read about a publishing company who refused to print an ad from the Kalamazoo Gay and Lesbian Resource Center. The publishing company was completely comfortable sounding off its homophobic beliefs with the customer. Then the company decided that silence was the best way to deal with inquisitive press. And then finally, the company relented, offered an apology and decided to run the ad.
Loud or quiet, big acts or small, homophobia is homophobia and it must be stopped.
The good news here is that homophobia is no longer an acceptable part of the status quo: when it goes public, it looks really bad. Tracy Morgan was just trying to make a bunch of people in a room laugh; he had no idea he would turn into a national disgrace. The aforementioned publishing company was just trying to ignore a customer with a pro-gay message; it had no idea it would receive negative attention for doing it.
If you need proof that things are changing for LGBTs, look no further than this very issue of the newspaper. It's not that homophobia doesn't exist anymore – obviously, it does – but it is no longer widely acceptable.
But it used to be widely acceptable. As our ever-clever writer, D'Anne Witkowski, points out in "Creep," comedians have joked about LGBTs for years. They've also poked fun at women, minorities and religion.
What's changing is this: Those comedians know that they have to make those jokes carefully, that reception depends on the audience and what the comedian looks like too. Now, with the gays, it's no different. Tracy Morgan would never, ever threaten to kill a Chinese person or a Catholic. And now he knows that threatening to kill gays is unacceptable too. (Side note: Since when is joking about stabbing someone ever funny, really? Seems like Morgan needs to do some more brainstorming.)
Homophobia used to be widely acceptable in business practices as well. The publishers of this very paper initially found it difficult to even find a printer who would physically print and assemble BTL.
It also is worth noting that the publishers in our feature story this week that refused to print the pro-gay ad did so covertly. When pressed by the press, it wasn't something they exactly wanted to own up to. You wouldn't believe the amount of rigamarole we had to hear when investigating the story. So on some level, the company knew what it was doing was not OK. It just thought it could get away with it. Probably just like Tracy Morgan.
But Morgan didn't get away with it, and neither did the publishing company. And that's because we officially live in an era when publicly, openly, loudly discriminating against our community is not OK. It's not socially acceptable anymore – except between members of the extreme right.
For us, this means that we should be glad that homophobia is something to hide. But it still happens, and we should still be vigilant. And when it happens to us, we are obligated – to ourselves, to our community and to our children – to call it out.
