Little Milestones

The funny thing about working in a very conservative industry is that I am constantly prepared for homophobia and for people to say inappropriate things. Anybody who reads the paper here in Charlotte, or shock, reads about news on the internets knows that there has been a great deal of press here about the Mecklenburg County Commissioners approving domestic partner benefits for City and County employees.

As a resident of Mecklenburg County for the last 17 years, it was a proud day, especially given the recent losses we have seen in the last year regarding LGBT rights nationwide. Little Milestones is what I call moments like this. Little morsels of equality, baby steps in our fight to rightfully claim that our fight is about doing the right thing. That as taxpayers we are treated the same as everyone else. So yeah, it was a big deal.

Of course our resident homophobe and bigot Bill James had to pee on our moment and the blogs are all covering it, you can read about that here, here and here. I am not really going to get into my feelings about Bill James and his comments in this post. My revulsion to this man goes back years now. Back in 1996 we were focused on unseating Jessie Helms and even I was not paying attention to local commission races. That year allowed for the commission to be a Democrat majority, by one vote. The one major caveat and swing vote was an African American Pastor named Hoyle Martin who would align himself with Republicans when any LGBT issues came up.

The Gang of Five was born. Four republicans and one conservative democrat joined forces and brought Charlotte to National attention when they voted to strip funding of the Arts and Science council for daring to put on Angels in America. It was a story that made Charlotte look like a backwoods podunk redneck city, one of only seven cities in the country that was authorized to put on a production of the award winning play.

Back then I was a fairly new resident of this little village I now call home. Mr Lightyear and I were living together back then. I begged Mr. Lightyear to move to Atlanta, even then it was a gay metropolis. I hated Charlotte with a passion, In those days I often compared Charlotte to Cleveland, the armpit of the midwest. So yeah, me and Bill James go way back. Mr Lightyear and I donated money to the ASC, and the year after their funding was stripped our city raised contributions from the community that far exceeded their original budget. In the following election several republicans were tossed to the curb. Funding was restored to the ASC and Charlotte was back on its way to becoming the city that it is today. Of the republicans on the commission back then Bill James is the only one who has managed to hang onto his seat.

But I digress, I want to talk about little milestones. So my boss takes me and six of my male peers to lunch yesterday for Christmas. We are all sitting there at Longhorn, eating our salads and drinking our sweet tea when the conversation turns. Sitting across from me one of my coworkers looks at me and says "What the fuck was up with Bill James?" Immediately I grow tense, this is not work conversation, where is the nearest exit? How do I respond to this? My boss, who was sitting on my left, not skipping a beat looks at my coworker and says "Bill James is an asshole!" Coworker nods in agreement, and says "That guy needs to be voted out of office."

I think my mouth must have hit the table. Not one person stood up for Bill James, a table full of straight republican men who work in construction. So for five full minutes the conversation revolved around what an idiot James is and how revolting his behavior was. I never once opened my mouth, because I knew if I did it would not be pretty. So I sat there in tongue struck silence as I watched my boss and coworkers and I knew that this conversation was a little milestone. It is these little milestones that make me smile, even though we still have bigots and homophobes as elected officials it still gives me hope that we are moving forward.

The GOP at some point is going to have to divorce itself from the religious right or they will risk loosing the guys sitting at my table. These are the kind of men who once upon a time would not have thought twice about what Bill James said, but there they were yesterday and everyone of them had my back. Speechless, yeah that kinda sums it up for me.