Fairness West Virginia Program Director Bradley Milam published an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette today pinpointing anti-gay language in criticisms of public officials. Read the piece below:
Bradley K. Milam: Anti-gay language in print must stop
As head of a civil rights advocacy organization, it is not in my interest to engage in debate over the effectiveness of policies set forth in the Division of Culture and History or the quality of its commissioner, Randall Reid-Smith — which is, at present, irrelevant to my own work. I take no side over the commissioner’s effectiveness or accomplishment.
Rather, I want to target the deeply anti-gay undertones and insinuation used by journalists, op-ed contributors and others to mock and caricature Mr. Reid-Smith. The commissioner’s sexual orientation does not affect his professional performance; as criticism of his work will likely continue, derision of his identity must stop.
In an op-ed piece dated May 12, Gazette contributor Jane Claymore argued that Commissioner Reid-Smith was unqualified for his position by calling him a “walker for Gayle [Manchin]” and “a singer,” at least the latter of which he is. She accused him of “roll[ing] around the state firing people who offend [his] vanity.” After accusing the commissioner of abandoning certain duties of his job, the contributor writes, “he was mighty busy, prancing around the state firing folks when he wasn’t down on his knees installing marble bathtubs at the mansion.” “Reid-Smith should have been packing his bags, trilling his way back into oblivion, long ago.” One former member of the West Virginia Sesquicentennial Commission recently said that, upon discussing proposed projects, Reid-Smith “thought we shouldn’t be doing academic stuff; we should be having pageants, fairs and parades.” Phil Kabler wrote in a column dated April 23, 2011, that the Commissioner is “more of a sycophant than most.” Mr. Kabler has in the past mockingly referred to Mr. Reid-Smith as “the Hyphen.”
Such words as “prancing,” “trilling,” “vanity” and “sycophant” — while the former two are irrelevant to the commissioner’s job, and the latter two could be used to describe countless other public officials — appear here amid a storm of criticism to target and mock Reid-Smith’s personality and, most likely, to have him fulfill the stereotypical image of the gay man.
Caricature has been used to reinforce the premise of gays and lesbians’ inferiority and justify systematic prejudice and discrimination. As numerous historians have documented, for nearly the past century such stereotypes of the selfish, unconcerned, limp gay man — along with similar but more lethal portraits of gay men as dangerous, even criminal, psychotics — have been propagandized to justify denying homosexuals access to public accommodations, the right to free assembly, the right to free speech and the right to a free press. While such stereotypes hold no actual weight, as a product of sensationalism, they were used for decades to justify giving homosexual military soldiers and officers the dishonorable, “undesirable” discharge. They were used to justify institutionalizing homosexuals and ratting out and firing gay and lesbian government employees under 1950s McCarthyist policies. Today, in this state and others, they are used to help deny gay men and lesbians equal protection from employment discrimination.
Here again, the invective is injected amid a storm of criticism to further support the commissioner’s termination.
This kind of argument points to a much larger societal belief in the conventional supremacy of heterosexuality and its inherently linked conformist gender performance. We can turn to a hypothetical opposite to prove this point: Surely a masculinized and assumedly heterosexual Reid-Smith would likely not be called out for “prancing” or “trilling,” nor would he likely be called a “sycophant” accused of “vanity” advocating for “pageants, fairs and parades.” He also would likely not face a public attack on his alleged personality so conveniently and conventionally linked to his sexual orientation.
With the same insinuation in mind, we must then ask: If Reid-Smith were not gay, would this mockery have been printed and used to support his termination, or is Reid-Smith as an openly gay man under extra scrutiny because of his sexual orientation — and an easy target in a state that affords no formal protections on the basis of sexual orientation? I can suggest an answer.
Perhaps the above-mentioned writers will argue that their word choice does not reflect an implicitly anti-gay outlook. But their words make us wonder if criticism of the commissioner as a professional and degradation of Reid-Smith as an openly gay man are irrevocably linked. No matter how effective Reid-Smith may be as commissioner, we are forced to look at this caricature-filled reasoning, now made public, and the purported coincidence that the administration’s highest-ranking openly gay man has so far withstood such unique and extraordinary fire as signs of what may come for other openly gay officials. As disparagement of the Commissioner will likely continue, whether critics can definitively divorce comments relevant to the commissioner’s professional capacity from any reference to the professionally irrelevant historical, stereotypical, degrading image of gay men as impotent, vain, fickle, mockingly effeminate “prancing” and “trilling” artist-”sycophant[s]” unfit for high office remains to be seen.
Milam is program director of Fairness West Virginia.
