Tuesday, August 31, 2010

"Bible Believing Response" to OUT IN THE SILENCE Promotes Anti-Transgender Violence




Dispatch from Coudersport:

by Joe Wilson, August, 31, 2010:

Diane Gramley sat peacefully behind Robert Wagner in the Coudersport Public Library as the retired physician shared his views on transgender individuals with the assembled audience. “I'm gonna put a ball bat in my car,” he said, “and if I ever see a guy [Wagner refuses to use proper pronouns] coming out of a bathroom that my granddaughter's in, I'm gonna use the ball bat on him.” Moments later he added: “In the good old days, before 'she-males' existed, they just called such people perverts.”

Gramley is no stranger to such ideas. As President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association, a 'traditional family values' organization based in Mississippi, she spends much of her time planting similar seeds of suspicion about the dangers posed by “men who think they are women,” her disparaging term for transgender females. She also crusades relentlessly against what she and the AFA call the “homosexual agenda” and the type of legal protections that her and Dr. Wagner's threatening rhetoric suggests are needed for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Gramley was in Coudersport, a small town of 2,600 residents in the sparsely populated north-central part of the state known as the Pennsylvania Wilds, as a special guest of Dr. Wagner for what he titled “A Bible Believing Christian's Response to OUT IN THE SILENCE,” my documentary film about the quest for inclusion, fairness and equality for LGBT people in the small town where I was born and raised, Oil City, PA, just a two-hour drive from Coudersport.

Gramley, who also happens to call the Oil City area home, plays a central role in OUT IN THE SILENCE as a result of the firestorm of controversy she helped to ignite in opposition to the publication of my same-sex marriage announcement in the local paper. It was that controversy that compelled my partner, Dean Hamer, and I to go back to my hometown with our cameras to document what life is like there for LGBT people, and to show hopeful and inspiring stories about the growing movement for equality.

The film was produced in partnership with Penn State Public Broadcasting, received support from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, screened in Tribeca Cinemas Doc Series, and has been broadcast on PBS stations around the country. We're now using it as an educational tool in a grassroots campaign to help raise LGBT visibility and to bring people together in small towns like Oil City and Coudersport to begin building bridges across the gaps that have divided families, friends, and entire communities on these issues for far too long.

As part of this campaign, OUT IN THE SILENCE had screened just a month earlier for a standing-room-only crowd in the Coudersport Public Library despite vehement opposition from Dr. Wagner and the efforts of the local Tea Party and a small group of fundamentalist preachers to shut the event down and have the library 'de-funded' for making its space available for such a program.

Wagner's “Bible Believing Response,” he told the crowd of approximately 60 local church people, “was intended to expose the filmmakers’ real agenda and to question the directors’ assertion that the community should tolerate alternative lifestyles.”

During the two hour program, Wagner asked special guest Gramley a few questions about her experiences as a minor subject of the film, but he used her more as a prop, seated silently behind him, providing an odd sort of legitimacy as he put forth offensive theories and mischaracterizations about LGBT people, including that “AIDS is the gay plague” and “gays can't have families.”

Dean and I were in the library for the presentation. We made the six-hour drive to Coudersport from our home in Washington, DC because I wanted to bear witness to this event, to experience for myself, if only for a few hours, what it feels like to be so close to such willful ignorance and brazen cruelty.

As I sat there, listening to 'amens,' snickering laughter, and even a roar of approval from the people around me when asked if they agree with the AFA assertions that there “should be legal sanctions against homosexual behavior” and “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” I felt a sadness unlike any I have known before. A sadness for those who fall prey to such bigoted and hostile bombast, who carry the feelings these things stir into their homes and family relationships, and for the communities that suffer the sometimes-violent consequences of such mean-spirited divisiveness.

But as I looked at Gramley, unmoved next to Wagner, condoning the ugliness without a word of protest, I thought of all the courageous people who have attended OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign events over the past many months in far flung places, including there in Coudersport, who refuse to be silent anymore, who are working for change in their communities against great odds, and I was inspired all over again.

It is in their spirit that we will continue our campaign to speak out in the silence and to help build the movement for fairness and equality in small towns and rural communities across America.

I hope you'll join us! Learn more at OutintheSilence.com

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4 comments:

Jerry Kott said...

What isn't amazing is that this point of view in more common then not. My Partner and I live in the Lehigh Valley and have experience a twilight zone of inequality and indifference that has baffled us. We are Elders in the tribe. For the last 27 years we have been harassed, dealt with what we believe are collusive Police and Law Enforcement in general. Lawyers have kept their distance. We believe that our experience borders on insanity. Gun fire, fraudulent litigation and harassment have been used. One family who we share a road with , has harassed us for 27 years and has gotten no more then a slap on the risk.

I admire your tenacity. Thanks for telling the story.

Jerry

Hazumu Osaragi said...

What would happen if you had a gay couple, a lesbian couple a transman and a transwoman at such a meeting, and they did nothing but be scolded by Robert Wagner, Diane Gramley, and any other attendees who felt the deed (or desire) to scold them for being filthy, deviant perverts? The LGBT folk would say nor do anything to defend against any verbal attack, though they could answer non-judgmental questions (or the non-judgmental parts of judgmental statements disguised as questions.)

What might happen if the six LGBT folk were polite, never showed anger or defiance, and thanked the group for allowing them to attend?

What if the meeting were videotaped, like the video accompanying this blog entry?

Would it just reinforce the hardness of heart? Or would perhaps one or two of the 'normal' participants begin to feel a twinge (or two) of shame for the way the LGBT folks are being treated, for their being cast into roles of sick, evil perverted sub-humans.

Would it make a difference.

Is it even worth trying?

Darya Teesewell said...

Thanks for having the guts and integrity to be there. It might seem at first glance that your presence was a hopeless gesture, but your strength and eloquence will stay with those people whether they like it or not.

Patrice said...

Joe and Dean,
You captured a frightening and challenging moment. Thank you for speaking up.
Thank you for your persistent efforts to expose us to the hate that LGBT community members are facing, but also the messages of love and support that you are surfacing from rural towns and big cities across the country. Keep On.