Fighting for safety and liberation

KENT — Kevin Jennings spoke about alternative lifestyles and about the prejudices and abuse inflicted against members of the LGBTQ community. The talk was hosted by and held at the Kent Memorial Library on Saturday, Feb. 23.

 “LGBTQ people were not new to the North American continent,” he explained while discussing life in early Colonial America. “What was new to the North American continent was prejudice against gay people.”

Jennings described the “two-spirit” tradition of many Native American tribes, where a person’s body could be of one sex, but their societal role might not match gender norms for that sex.

“These people were esteemed and revered,” he said. “Warriors would dance before these two-spirit people in hopes that some of their special powers and protection would aid them in battle.” 

Homophobia came along with the Puritans. Of the 15 capital crimes in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for which death was the penalty, nine of those crimes dealt with sex. “They were sex-obsessed and worried about all sort of sex acts,” Jennings said.

 “Number eight on that capital crimes list dealt with homosexuality; it was unlawful for a man to lie with another man,” he said. “In an environment where the Puritans wanted to be a ‘city on a hill’ for the whole world, everyone had to behave.

“At this point in American history, there was no concept of ‘gay’ yet,” Jennings explained. “There were only ‘sinful acts’.”

What we think of today as the gay life style came into being with the industrial revolution. Survival no longer depended on a heterosexual marriage to produce children to help run a farm.

“People could now go out and, say, work in a mill. They would bring home a paycheck and were no longer dependent on a heterosexual marriage. At that point, it was possible for people to actually live in same-sex relationships,” Jennings said. 

For the first time in major cities, definable gay communities emerged. In Boston, independent lesbian women lived together in same-sex relationships known as “Boston Marriages.”

With this new visibility, a new term came into existence: homosexual. With that new term came a conception that being homosexual meant being a different kind of person. Homosexuality was considered abnormal, a mental illness, he said. 

“This is where the two laws of homosexuality come in: the more visible we are, the more we are labeled and attacked,” Jennings said. “And the more we are attacked, the more we fight back.”

Joining hands 

The first gay rights group, Society for Human Rights, was formed in Chicago in 1924 by a man named Henry Gerber. The group’s mission statement described prejudice and the denial of the right to pursue happiness as outlined in the Declaration of Independence as the problem, not being gay itself.

 “During a time when being gay was still considered a medical abnormality, defining the problem as that of prejudice and denial of rights, and not as actually being gay, was radical for the day,” Jennings said.

“World War II marked an explosion for the gay community,” Jennings said. “For the first time, men and women from mostly rural communities were together in a sex-segregated military. They discovered, ‘Hey, I’m not alone’.”

After the war, gay communities burgeoned in San Fransisco, Boston and other major American cities. For the first time, one could be disqualified for employment based on sexual orientation. Men feared losing their jobs, women feared that their children could be taken away.

“In 1969, we had the Stonewall Riots,” Jennings said. “This was not the beginning of the gay rights movement, but rather a turning point.” 

Police would routinely raid gay bars. One night in June of that year, patrons of the Stonewall bar in New York City had had enough and fought to expel the police from the bar. 

“We were becoming more visible, and we fought back,” Jennings said.

Attack of disease

The 1980s and early 1990s saw the AIDS epidemic. 

“Now, thanks to anti-viral drugs, a diagnosis of HIV is no longer a death sentence, but a manageable chronic disease,” Jennings said. “But thousands of LGBTQ people died from HIV/AIDS before we got to this current point.”

Changing laws, minds

“The gay rights movement has made tremendous progress over the years,” Jennings said. “But the fight for equality is far from over.”

In 1982, Wisconsin was the first state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. It wasn’t until 2004 that the last sodomy laws in 17 states were repealed. Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003. In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality was the law of the land, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Same-sex couples are now legally guaranteed the same benefits and rights as heterosexual couples. 

“However, it is still legal for employers to discriminate based on sexual orientation or identity in 28 states,” Jennings explained. “In some parts of this country, you can get married on Sunday and be fired on Monday.”

 Worldwide, homosexuality is still a crime punishable by imprisonment in 72 countries. “LGBTQ students in Connecticut are four times more likely to commit suicide than their cisgender counterparts,” Jennings added, using the word that has come to mean “straight” or “traditional.”

When asked by an audience member what his advice was for the current and future generations of LGBTQ people, Jennings responded. “While working for the U.S. Department of Education under the Obama administration, I once heard the president say, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ Don’t wait for someone else to come and liberate you, liberate yourself.”