A Service of Rainbow Law

These stigmas are designed to make the minority as a group feel like a second class, targeted being. Not quite a person in many respects. Since most of these are innate, they are not easily removed. Some barriers will always exist between people because of these ideas.

They are designed to block some action, to make a minority feel uncomfortable, singled out. It could be anything from blatant homophobia against a specific person to a law that targets said person, even indirectly.

A good example currently under debate would be Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Whether or not a gay person is interested in ever joining the military, the issue of repealing DADT is important because of the stigma it creates. It says gays are a class of pseudo people who are worthy of at least some type of discrimination. Psychologically, it affects ALL gays on some level. All structural stigma does that.

This is one reason that now that we have a Democratic president in office, gays are desperately trying to get some of these things changed. This is our chance. And this is why seemingly all of us are focused on esoteric issues like DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act and the Employee Non Discrimination Act even when there's no way all of us are going to personally use these laws.

The simple fact is any law that tears us down as a group affects us psychologically. It likely always will on some level, at least until future generations get far enough away historically that it doesn't affect them as much. Even then, we'll always be able to look back on this time and say, look at what they did against us just for existing. Just for breathing and maybe wanting to serve our country without lying. Just for wanting to fall in love and get married like everyone else.

These things tear at me on a daily basis. And it has been proven that laws, specifically, passed against a group help propagate negative thoughts and actions toward that group. It is easier to justify your hatred when your government is complicit in it.

When talk of a gay marriage ban is discussed in a state, antigay hate crimes tend to go up. When the Federal Marriage Amendment was proposed, those hate crimes went up dramatically.

They've declined in recent years, likely because since 2004 there's been no real national antigay outrage. There's been more PRO gay outrage.

With some hesitation because of the nature of the issue, I'll provide a relatable example even though people always go to Hitler. Paragraph 175 was an antigay law in Germany that was passed before Hitler's rise to power but was never enforced. Then he decided to start using it. Not only that but the Nazi regime broadended the scope of the law, adding "lewdness" as well as other subtleties. Essentially Paragraph 175 banned lewd acts between a man and another man, the punishment being imprisonment.

This law along with similar anti-Jewish laws, whether "tame" or horrifying, led to the slow destruction of the humanity of these people. This was a deliberate plot to dehumanize them slowly through laws so that when the Final Solution was carried out people would not be that outraged.

These groups were hated so much that obviously it fucking WORKED.

Now, we don't live in 1930s Germany and I don't foresee death camps or anything like that in our future, don't get me wrong, but the concept of structural stigma is the same in both instances.

This fear affects all of us.

This is why when Prop. 8 made it on the ballot, people like me donated money to fight it. I live in Alabama. The idea of another amendment sickened me, and still does, so much that I want to fight it everywhere. A lot of us are probably the same in this respect, as any minority probably is.

Structural stigma can be far reaching. As an example, the same witness testified that a lot of gay people haven't gotten into committed long term monogamous relationships specifically because there's no reason to. Meaning, society assigns intimate relationships to a man and a woman. Going against this is incredibly difficult and is a fight in itself.

The words as well as the policy of "domestic partnership" when applied to certain situations like barring gays from marriage but "allowing" them to have DPs is another example of structural stigma. It says, we straight people can have marriage but you gays only deserve one step down from marriage. The thing is, this often comes with a promise that "we don't hate you" and we support your right to be with your partner, but that becomes an almost meaningless phrase to a gay person. What we hear is "this person says they support me but they don't see me as their equal."

This is the cause of many psychological effects on gay people. Something interesting I've read was about examinations of the hearts of some people. When Martin Luther King, Jr.'s heart was examined, he had the heart of someone who was almost seventy years old, from the stress of being an activist, being black, dealing with these things every day. Political activists are found to have more hear problems. We have more anxiety problems. Blood pressure issues.

This is the same with gays as well. Gays' hearts grow "old" before the people are old. We are deeply and irreparably harmed by this.

The witness said that everyone expects to marry one day, and they should, therefore lack of access to marriage is a stressor for gays and a stigma that hurts us.

This is just the beginning. There's the stress of hiding your homosexuality from parents, family, friends and strangers for however long you decide to do that. That is a stigma. Straight people never have to hide their orientation. Never. They can make comments about an opposite sex person they find attractive anytime they want. They can say "my wife and I..." without any sort of awkward moment. No coming out to teachers of their kids, principals, people at PTA meetings. Friends of their kids. Straight people never have to be nervous about saying or doing anything.

And then society tells you and society tells your family that being gay is wrong. Evil. You grow up with internalization of homophobia whether you admit it or not. At some point we all hate ourselves. We all wish we were different. While I'm sure some heterosexual people feel the same, it is not because of these same sort of structural, institutionalized ideas. It's likely because of some outside stressor, which is not minimizing heterosexuals with depression issues, but it's just simply true.

We spend our whole lives waiting for some kind of rejection from someone on SOME level. Whether it's a job, school, potential friendship or relationship, close family member. In a gay person's life there will always be a chance that they'll be rejected because of their differences. This is another form of stigma that hurts gays, that others don't often have to deal with.

How many times have heterosexuals brought their dates home or talked to their family about their dates and were attacked verbally or rejected or asked never to discuss those things around their family? Not many I'd assume. And definitely not gender related. Nobody will be unhappy with a straight person for not being gay, so much that they'd kill them.

It goes as far as filling out forms. Tax forms as an example. You are reminded that your husband or wife is only a "partner" as far as your society is concerned. Insurance forms, doctor bills, all of that. Those can cause a gay person a tremendous amount of stress.

Then there are the things you avoid doing because of your being gay. You don't call out bigotry and expose yourself, maybe. You don't interject during a family dinner and politely ask them not to use words like fag. And not to wish death upon gays while you're eating. That is actually an event that happened to me at a dinner with my aunt and uncle once. I couldn't say anything. Maybe you don't wear your rainbow pins to certain places. Maybe when someone asks if you're in a relationship you don't tell them you are so you can avoid opening that can of worms.

You always, always have a cloud of some sort hanging over your head. You are always being dishonest to someone at any moment of your life. You are always, at every moment, fighting to conceal something. You always feel shitty because you respect people you know but you're not willing to be as honest with them as maybe you should be.

How all of this relates to racism is complicated but to break it down simply: it affects gay and black people in opposite ways.

The classification of "race" was created to subjugate people with dark skin. The classification of "homosexuality" was created to help gay people - while the former said that people with dark skin were less than human and therefore should be treated different from whites, before homosexuality was coined, homosexual "acts" were seen as perverted and deviant. It was only in the classification that determined that gays are in fact an orientation that gays were seen as MORE human.

In a kind of chicken or egg dilemma, the classification of race and racism led to the creation of structural stigma against blacks while structural stigma led to the creation of the classification of homosexuality. All groups face the stigma, but not for the same reasons.

This is not all of the best examples out there for structural stigma but it's a start, if you want to think about it.

Read the original article in The Daily Kos

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