For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing a bi-weekly column and have intentionally steered clear of offering commentary on any local topics that the paper has covered.
The reason has been to avoid the appearance of bias in any news stories I happen to write. Instead, I’ve chosen to editorialize about current events that have taken place on a national level, my personal experiences, or lighter, more humorous fare.
But for this assignment, which was to explore the different “isms,” described by author Suzanne Pharr as “common elements of oppression,” I had to break that rule.
Pharr argues that racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism, ageism and heterosexism are linked and work to establish a “defined norm” or standard of rightness under which everyone is judged. In North America, for instance, the defined norm is white, male, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied, youthful and has access to wealth.
The defined norm makes the oppression possible because it establishes an accepted majority of people who maintain control or power over those who don’t fit that standard.
I chose to focus on “heterosexism,” or the belief that only heterosexual relationships are valid, which is sometimes used in place of the term “homophobia.” Last month, that belief was one of the primary factors that led me to end a months-long relationship with a very Christian man.
I might not have discovered so early into the relationship that he held that discriminatory belief had it not been for an article I wrote about how Lynn’s public school system was exploring the possibility of reentering into a partnership with a nearby Christian college.
That partnership, where the college’s students provided mentorship to Lynn kids, had been severed by the city’s school district five years ago after the college had expressed an “intent to discriminate” against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people when making hiring decisions.
The college’s stated policy, which it says is based on Scripture, is that “homosexual behavior will not be tolerated in the lives” of its community members on or off campus.
Since my weekdays are typically consumed with work, I’d often fill him in on stories I was working on each day. For that story, I was taken aback when he didn’t take offense to the college’s discrimination against LGBT people, but was instead offended by what he perceived as religious discrimination the city’s school system was showing by taking away the mentorship opportunity from the college’s Christian students.
It turns out he didn’t see anything wrong with a Christian college discriminating against LGBT people. When I pointed out that there was nothing about someone’s sexual orientation that affects how they do their job, he countered by saying that it does if the college is trying to teach Christian values at the school while having someone on staff who blatantly goes against those views.
The key word, which is being used to excuse the discrimination in this instance, is “values,” or in this case, religious values.
According to a definition of “heterosexism” I came across online, the belief can be difficult to detect. It may express itself in the form of expectations, assumptions, values, actions and/or verbally. For instance, an example of a heterosexist expectation is that children will grow up and marry someone of the opposite sex.
My ex-boyfriend and the college are both trying to excuse their heterosexism by arguing that the existence of relationships that aren’t between a man and a woman go against their Christian values, and are therefore, wrong.
But he didn’t just argue homosexuality was wrong. Armed with the Bible as “proof,” he started preaching and told me homosexual acts and murder are seen as equal sins in God’s eyes, which would both have to be renounced before death in order for that sinner to save themselves from eternal damnation.
In other words, he was saying that a gay person would have to ask for God’s forgiveness for simply being him or herself. Only by accepting their “sin” of homosexuality could that person be saved, he said.
It was just too much for me. It wasn’t just the heterosexism displayed, but the easy dismissal of all of my points about why the discrimination was wrong.
It’s 2020. At the time of the discussion, it was 2019.
Here he was basing his values on what I described as beliefs written in an outdated textbook from thousands of years ago.
I would have hoped we would have evolved past those heterosexist beliefs, but clearly, time has stood still for some people who fit into that “defined norm” category, at the detriment of those “isms” who don’t.
And we’re all worse off for the oppression that it continues to create.
