I can't get a word in edgewise. When I try, I'm simply cut off.
The viewers and listeners calling into the conservative cable TV talk show on which I am a guest already have their minds made up about homosexuality. It's obvious from their diatribes, recited one after the other in angry, breathless voices, that they are not curious to hear another perspective. They are not even interested in a debate.
There is no debating. There is no discussion. There is simply ranting.
Even more frustrating is the fact that the host of the show, who invited me on to talk about gay issues, is no better than his callers. In fact, he's worse.
"I think all gay people should go back into the closet where they belong, don't you?" the host says, addressing a caller with whom he obviously shares a rabid view about gay people. "If that's repression, then I say we need more of it!"
I try to interject a statement about the psychological damage of repression. I'm thinking, too, that I should remind the host and his viewers that the overwhelming majority of psychologists and psychiatrists today hold that expressing homosexuality is healthy while trying to deny it is not.
I might as well try to flap my arms and take off into flight. The talk-show host interrupts me in favor of adding yet another anguished, anti-gay caller to the air to spew unabated homophobia.
This frustrating episode in my life transpired about six or seven years ago, while I was a gay columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. At the time, I was one of just a few openly gay and lesbian writers whose work appeared regularly in a mainstream daily newspaper. Accordingly, I received numerous invitations to speak on a variety of gay and lesbian topics. I accepted a lot of invitations and debates, but to this day, none has compared to that infuriating TV talk show.
I was reminded of that experience by the current controversy brewing over a panel of anti-gay activists who are scheduled to address a predominantly gay and lesbian audience at an upcoming gathering.
At the convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, to be held Sept. 6-9 in Dallas, three famously anti-gay activists will head up a panel discussion about how the media covers critics of gay rights. The panelists are Brian Camenker, president of the Massachusetts-based Parents Rights Coalition; Michael Johnston, a leader of the Keruso Ministries, part of the so-called "ex-gay" movement; and Peter LaBarbera, director of Americans for Truth Project about Homosexuality and longtime publisher of the anti-gay publication, The Lambda Report. The panel will be moderated by syndicated columnist Geneva Overholser of the Washington Post Writers Group.
In the interest of fairness, at this point I need to disclose that I am a national board member of NLGJA. However, I was not involved in putting together panels for this year's convention, and as much as I'd like to, I can take no credit for the existence of this challenging panel.
I should also add that the opinions expressed in my column are purely my own, and not those of NLGJA.
The fact that a leading national gay and lesbian organization has invited some of the most notoriously anti-gay crusaders around to come speak at their convention has raised more than a few eyebrows in the gay and lesbian community. Some members of our clan are so irate that they are even calling upon NLGJA to cancel the panel.
But I think it is not only bold of NLGJA to host the discussion, I would add that it is gutsy of the three panelists to show up. Furthermore, all of us...journalists, activists and otherwise...would do well to attend the panel and learn from what these men have to say. I hope we don't make the same mistakes as the viewers and host of that anti-gay talk show did so many years ago.
I say hooray for this controversial panel, and what I sincerely hope will come of it.
I doubt anyone's opinion will change because of this panel. And I'm not naively calling for any kind of "dialogue" to grow out of the event. Indeed, these men have a history of not only being anti-gay, but of actively distorting the truth about gay and lesbian people in an attempt to curtail our rights and freedoms.
Which is exactly why we need to listen to them.
Like it or not, the truth is that the religious right has been tremendously successful in turning much of America against the gay and lesbian civil-rights movement. One way they have done so is by continuing to spread misconceptions and fear about who we are to their followers.
What better way to learn how to combat untruths of the religious right than to learn, from the mouths of some of their top leaders, how and why they feel they are treated unfairly by the mainstream media?
Furthermore, I hope my gay and lesbian colleagues show a little more restraint than those TV talk show viewers from many years ago. I'd like to say we should show mutual respect to the panelists at the NLGJA convention, but I'd be lying if I said I could muster any respect for these men. Civility, however, is the bare minimum we should insist upon.
After all, they are going to be vastly outnumbered in the enemy camp. It'd be the easy road...indeed, the coward's road...to simply assault them with insults and interrogations without giving them the courtesy to air their views.
More to the point, we should learn what we can from them in order to strengthen our own arguments and advance our own cause.
To forfeit that chance would not only be a waste of time, but a lost opportunity.
Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com
