Indiana Gay Rights Update

[eredien]

The Indianapolis Farmers' Market vendor "Just Cookies" just won't make cookies for gay IU students. Fun fact: the cookie order was eventually placed with the "Flying Cupcake" bakery on, get this, Massachusetts Ave.

I would have volunteered to make them cookies. In fact, here, here's two cookies. Pass them around, folks:









Quote from the article by the local Fox affilate: IUPUI's spokesperson said the school has no formal complaint against the bakery and added embracing diversity means allowing the business owners the right to their opinion and the right to choose how to serve its customers, as long as those customers are not discriminated against.

I think this is an interesting question. When you are running a food-related business and choose not to serve someone because, "We have our values, and you know, some things ... for instance, if someone wants a cookie with an obscenity, well, we're not going to do that," when does choosing not to serve someone because you disagree with who the person is once they have told you become discrimination, and when does that become a business owner simply turning away a customer? Can it, legally, be treated as discrimination? I mean, it seems to me like the customers are being discriminated against by the act of not being served, because they likely would have been served if they had not identified themselves as queer, or had lied and said they wanted the cookies for some other event. Any lawyers want to clear this up?

I wonder how many queer students Just Cookies unknowingly served because they didn't know they were gay; there's evidence they served at least one queer student previously (unknown to them). I bet they won't get many now.

Oh, and Indiana was one of the states to file an amicus brief against same-sex marriage in the prop 8 appeal in CA.

...I can't believe I still want to move back.

Comments

[eredien]

Okay. You know I love you, hon, but here's why comments like that bug me:

they play directly into the myth that non-normative people should not go to where they want to go, and should not do what they want to do, unless the normative people there already approve of their existence. If we wait for that universal approval, we'll be waiting forever. If we go and do what we need to do with our lives, despite our fears and despite normativity, we might be able to have a life to live. (Which presents the possibility of letting us change at least ourselves.)

Normative cultural myth contributes to normative cultural reality (now, and in the past and future). One of the ways in which that normative cultural myth is currently contributing to cultural reality in "non-coastal states" is the state of queer folks in those states: they aren't going to have a lot of really important rights. Those problems are very real, extant, and serious.

But I feel that when somebody says, "only normative people can be happy/respected in [place x]," that's outright repeating the pre-existing cultural normative myth--which reinforces the destructive *reality* of normativity that that myth creates. It's the same as saying "non-normative people can't be happy/respected there," which erases the actual experiences of non-normative people who already live happily there. It makes the already-difficult work of those working to change cultural perceptions and actuality of uniform normalcy even harder ("you only get to have a Gay-Straight Alliance if you call it Diversity Club, because we don't want trouble.")

Some non-normative people may choose to live in places where their personal rights are restricted explicitly so that they can help change the perceptions of what normalcy is in that place.

Don't you think that the first step in choosing to live in a place with such normative realities is coming to peace with the idea that those realities exist, that you personally will be fighting a battle against them, and that that's more than ok, but may be in fact part of what you want to do with your life in that place?

All I'm saying is: people who live in "non-coastal states" aren't unaware of the legal, moral, or ethical problems, either their extent or their seriousness. They have time to think about them and research the issues before moving to such places (and if they're from there, they understand the issues by being immersed in them). And it seems like some people choose to move to places like Indiana anyway.

The people who live in such places plan on being happy, but your words imply that there is no possible way that this choice that they have made could let them do that. When you say that, you are not only reinforcing the idea that no one who is non-normative could possibly be happy in a "non-coastal state" (an assertion that real people would disagree with), but reinforcing the idea that non-normative people shouldn't ever want to be happy in that space, and must be mad for thinking that they had a shot at being happy there--that it's a total write-off.

That, of course, is exactly what the normative people who are trying to kick folks like you and I out of these "non-coastal states" want us to think--that we have no ability, and certainly shouldn't have the desire, to be happy living our lives anywhere we please. I'm not going to let a bunch of close-minded bigots tell you, me and my friends that we shouldn't have the ability, right, or desire to make medical decisions, share property, have custody, get married, or even buy cookies ALSO tell us that we don't have the ability, right or desire to be happy anywhere we damn well please. If I'm not letting the bigots tell me that, I'm sure as hell not letting my friends tell me that.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with the notion that queer, trans, kinky, "weird" people should have the right to live and work wherever they want to. And that bigotry doesn't change by people accepting it.

My comment was actually mostly a comment made as an east-coast liberal elite: I can't understand wanting (even as a person who appears to be pretty freaking normal) to live in a "flyover" state. I understand that there are plenty of people who do, and that they are of all different races and genders and creeds and orientations, and that's fine, and I will support their right to live there and to be treated as free and equal citizens, to worship and marry as they see fit, etc etc.

But I'm a girl who's unhappy because she currently lives in the northern Virginia suburbs, rather than within walking distance of the Capitol building. And yes, some of that's because I prefer the politics of DC to the politics of VA (I can marry another woman in DC, but not in VA, if I were so inclined), but it's also just my desire for an urban lifestyle. I'm not sure I'd want to live in Indiana (or Iowa or Idaho or Illinois or anywhere) even if it were a model of diversity and acceptance. Utah could legalize polygamy and same-sex marriage and marijuana and a whole bunch of other things I'm in favor of legalizing tomorrow, and I probably still wouldn't want to move to Utah. I'd rather fight for those rights in the place I'd prefer to live.

And yes, my comment implied that it's only the discrimination that makes me prefer coastal states, but there are a lot of other things as well.

[eredien]

Ah...I think I would have understood your comment better if you'd originally said, "a higher incidence of legalized discrimination is only one reason among many why I wouldn't voluntarily move to a non-coastal state--though I understand that other people might want to be there, even if I can't understand why they'd want to be there, personally."

But it was totally unclear to me that when you said, "I don't understand why people would want to live there," that what you actually meant was "I wouldn't want to live there, because it doesn't have what I look for when I think about the kind of place I want to live, but I guess it must hold some appeal that I don't understand for other kinds of people who aren't me."

One of the things that I found pleasant about the midwest is that Bloomington, at least, was a lot more urban as a town, at least in the city center around the University, than I thought it would be. Same thing with the little that I saw of Indianapolis.

I think we all are probably best at fighting for our rights in the places we'd prefer to live ourselves, because we care about the places where we ourselves want to live. :)