Looking Forward in Anger

Given his history, Rush Limbaugh's excoriation of Sandra Fluke can hardly have come as a surprise. He thrives on being incendiary, delights in upsetting rational people by using such absurd language as "feminazi," and shrugs off any revelation of his vast hypocrisy. He's rich and has a powerful voice – presumably any detractors are just jealous. And of course they are liberal, which in his mind means they don't count.

The excrement that shoots out of Limbaugh's mouth with such force and regularity boasts a particularly impressive vileness. He may not be a clever man, but being unencumbered by reticence, respect, or decency, he's managed to build a platform and audience that guarantees he receives press attention in a way his social predecessors – working short-wave radio or cranking out spew-filled pages on mimeograph – didn't know they could dream of.

Limbaugh, along with Bill O'Reilly, who echoed many of his comments with a modicum less repugnance, has enjoyed his position at the top of the food chain. This time, however, he may be looking at a fall. He and his cadre of grouchy rich white men are doubling down in their attacks on women and minorities because they are terrified. As they ought to be. Supposed historian Newt Gingrich might just know an historical aberrance when he is one.

There were liberal movements prior to the 1960s. The union movements that began in the 19th century were one of the most powerful – during which women agitating for more rights in the workplace were referred to in much the same language used by Limbaugh and O'Reilly. Impugning a woman's sexual morality is ever the first and best means by which a terrified plutocrat attempts to silence her – it's no accident that women accused of witchcraft were also said to be sexual consorts of the devil.

The shock of the Depression in the 1930s gave rise to another liberal movement, wherein government regulations were placed upon the banks and government stepped in to give people real assistance and lay safeguards against destitution.

But in the 1960s, the power structure changed. As did the rules. Black people, always meant to remain within their borders and do as they were told, insisted upon their equality and humanity and that they wouldn't settle for anything less, even if meant being beaten, abused, jailed, and killed. They weren't going to settle for being second-class anymore.

Gay people did much the same thing, shocking the establishment with the Stonewall Riots and insisting that they would no longer be complicit in their own invisibility. They were proud of who they were and after a few thousand years of society telling them they should be ashamed, they weren't going to hear it anymore. It was time for society to broaden its voice.

Then women stood up and demand that they be granted full citizenship within the social and power structure as well. One of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal was the legal access to contraceptives, made possible in part by the ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). Being able to control their fertility allowed women to storm battlements as never before. Even despite the prejudices against working mothers, marriage and the children that often follow are no longer automatic ejectors from the workplace.

This terrified the white, male, and powerful. It was one thing to have blacks, whom they probably only dealt with when they needed their shoes shined, or gays, whom they didn't think they dealt with at all, stand up and demand equal treatment. It was quite another thing to have their wives (or girlfriends, sisters, daughters, mothers), of whom they expected unquestioned loyalty and solicitude, start to say words like "no."

As for Limbaugh, he's made a career by being offensive, so it's interesting that only now is he hemorrhaging advertisers. Even despite his apology – worded with all the sincerity mustered by an indignant four-year-old – the flak is not dying down. He now bleats that he's merely an entertainer, that this was a joke. Quite the turnaround from someone who has effectively insisted that he be consulted in the makeup of the GOP platform. One imagines that if people take him at his word and think of him only as an entertainer, he will be displeased.

However, what was it about this bit of vitriol that has stirred up such a powerful counter-protest? Perhaps women and anyone else who thinks Griswold v. Connecticut was a proud moment in history has finally had enough. They laid into their supposed ally, the Komen Foundation, when that group turned on them - and won. If history is any indicator, more victories are ahead. You don't have to look back to the Civil Rights Movement or the Stonewall Riots to understand how anger is coalescing into action. Look more recently, to 1987 and ACT-UP.

ACT-UP – AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power was formed because a tipping point had been reached. AIDS patients and activists were tired of being at best ignored and at worst belittled, abused, attacked. They were done with being polite and playing by the rules to affect change. Instead, they engaged in civil disobedience. The forcefulness of their actions and messaging finally spurred real political action on AIDS, improving the lives of patients and channeling more funding and focus to developing a cure, so that today those living with HIV aren't living under a death sentence. As if this victory wasn't enough, it was arguably this re-politicizing of the gay civil rights movement that helped make marriage, employment, housing, benefits, and adoption rights such a regular part of the national and international conversation today. Anger begets action, which begets change.

And change is inevitable.

Pride in the Yankees

It was a good month to be proud – proud to be a New Yorker, proud to be on the right side of history. On June 24, New York became the largest state to legalize marriage equality. There were predictable howls, of course, but they were hard to hear amid the cries of joy. As though it had been staged, the vote came through on Friday night, still early enough to bring hordes of people to the Stonewall Inn, the bar where on June 28, 1969, riots began that presaged the modern gay civil rights movement. This night, things had come full circle. And with the annual Pride Parade on Sunday, it was icing – and a couple – on the cake.

With a majority vote and the governor's signature, citizens became that much more equal and the union that much more perfect.

But what took so long? Because for every person who insists it's too soon, that humanity isn't ready for single-sex marriage, there are hundreds of others who are sorry and ashamed that the path to equality in what's supposed to be one of the freest nations on earth has been so slow and rocky, to say nothing of unfinished.

Future citizens will cringe. Much as we cringe at photos of water fountains with the word "Colored" tacked over them, or at images of Phyllis Schlafly leading the battle against the Equal Rights Amendment, so will there be universal shuddering at photos of the 2008 California state ballot, with Proposition 8 inside – people's basic civil rights, being put to a vote, as though the rights of people to live and love as they want were no different than determining allocation of funds for state parks.

But as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." We rarely move with the haste we should, but we do move. We turn our anger into power, and we achieve change.

And it does take anger. Organizations like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis had worked tirelessly to achieve gay rights, but the rage unleashed by Stonewall pushed everything out into the open. It's a point made in Larry Kramer's 1985 play 'The Normal Heart,' fortuitously in revival on Broadway. The play is about the rise of the AIDS crisis. At the time, it was a call to action. Now, it is history.

Thirty years ago, on July 3, 1981, the New York Times published its first article about AIDS. It was written by Lawrence K. Altman and called "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." The slowness of state, government, and media to take action during the early days of the pandemic is another point that makes us cringe – San Francisco ran rings around New York in pouring money into health care. In 'The Normal Heart,' a character asks why those who rioted at Stonewall and formed the Gay Liberation Front didn't fight for right to get married, instead of the right to legitimize promiscuity. Later, it's pointed out that "Maybe if they'd let us get married to begin with, none of this would have happened at all."

With the "Defense of Marriage Act" still federal law, 'The Normal Heart' isn't yet as purely historical as we'd like it to be.

'The Normal Heart' won three Tony Awards on June 12, 2011. The ceremony was hosted by openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris and featured an opening number in which he sang that Broadway "is not just for gays anymore." It was hilarious and even audacious and highlighted the historical home theatre has always been for gay men and women. But the Tonys of the past few years are also remarkable for what hasn't been part of the ceremony. As the 1980s wore on, the "In Memoriam" segment featured dozens of young men. Year after year, the audience was shown an entire generation of theatre professionals being destroyed. Those faces, each a slap in the nation's face for not doing more, more quickly, have been mercifully absent in recent years. The men, and the theatre, are alive.

We're still too far away from full equality for all citizens. But New York took an important step towards making what was once deviant, normal. And for that, we can be truly proud.