Integrity News

Check out this story about our local LGBT LULAC council:

The Advocate: LGBT Latino Group Wins Texas Award

LULAC is probably the most left-wing organization I belong to. But in the case of this LULAC Council I believe we have a unique mission that is very important regardless of your political persuasions.

For a lot of gay people coming out is a scary thing to do. For Hispanics it can be more difficult because for the longest time there was hardly any positive information available in the Hispanic community about homosexuality. Most of the activists for gay rights have been white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants, and naturally the information they produced was grounded in their experiences. And the early information produced for Hispanics, African-Americans, Catholics and other groups was based on the perceptions of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. They told us that Hispanics were all about the family and “family” became a codeword meaning “not gay friendly.” They also told us about machismo and that the machismo attitude would get us beaten up.

Well, frankly, I get a little tired of people looking at the community from the outside and declaring their judgments final. It’s analogous to the judgments many liberal gay people make of conservatives. While they have never lived in the community, they tout themselves as expert on how the community will react to someone revealing their sexual orientation. They gave many LGBT Hispanics some preconceived notions that prevented them from coming out sooner and ultimately have prevented us from making more progress on gay issues.

The word “family” shouldn’t be abused the way it has been by both liberals and conservatives. Whether you approve of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or any other gay issue, you can’t deny that gay people make up part of someone’s family. Even when we don’t have children of our own, we do have parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and any of these relationships may be biological, step-, or adoptive - just like straight people. And even when some of the family disapprove of homosexuality, this is America where members of the same family may disagree on issues. And even when certain family members disapprove of homosexuality, I have only met a very few people under the age of forty who claim their family threw them out. And of those who were thrown out, more often than not, they came from a family that was already suffering from some social ill: drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual abuse, etc. In other words, they didn’t come from a “conservative” family.

If you want to see examples, just look to Capitol Hill. Vice President Dick Cheney and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich have both supported efforts to limit the freedoms of gay people, but they have gay people in their own families. And they didn’t throw those people out or disown them after coming out.

Getting back to where this article started, this LGBT council of LULAC is so important because it busts the myth that Hispanic-Americans are homophobes. The leaders in LULAC have recognized the value of their LGBT brothers, sisters and cousins and have extended open arms and welcomed us.