First published in the Chicago Free Press on June 25, 2008.
"What we have is a culture in which we no longer define ourselves according to our similarities but according to our differences. We are proud of our unique qualities and want everyone else to appreciate these traits, too. ... We also devalue commonality in favor of radical uniqueness. We are more interested in freedom of expression than in commitment to unity."
I ran across this quotation in evangelical authors George Barna and Mark Hatch's interesting book Boiling Point (Regal Books, 2001). The quotation might seem to have been more appropriate to my companion piece last week on "Diversity" except that diversity seems to be about different groupings. Barna and Hatch aren't talking about diversity. They are talking about individuality. Barna and Hatch see individuality as a cultural threat; I see it as an essential component of our culture.
When I was growing up, some people worried about the threat of "conformity"—of people taking their cue for what to believe and how to live from their friends and neighbors. People were said to be "other directed" rather than "inner directed." But at the same time, the whole goal of our educational system was to produce compliant, obedient citizens, thoroughly "adjusted"—that was a key term—young social units.
I will give just one example. When I was in eighth grade, our English class made a field trip to the nearby branch library. Then at our next class we broke into working groups and were told to sketch out a floor plan of the library and show where various types of books were. I was a frequent visitor to the library and knew it well. My group got the floor plan badly wrong, a fact I pointed out. I must have done so quite vociferously because after class the teacher called me up to her desk.
"Paul," she began. "The purpose of this exercise is to learn to work with groups of other people." "But they got the floor plan all wrong," I protested. "Go to the library. You'll see." "Paul," she replied, "that doesn't matter. The purpose is to learn how to work with other people." "But they're wrong," I insisted. "It doesn't matter," she repeated. Shaken, I had the feeling that I had just gained a valuable insight into the contemporary culture.
With that background, you can see why my suspicions are raised any time I hear calls for unity or solidarity or any similar goal. Calls for national unity, religious unity, racial unity, community unity often amount to nothing more than the demand that other people agree with the speaker and do things his (or her) way. It sounds like it means "Get with the program," "Follow the Party Line," suppress your doubts, don't express disagreement.
Each Pride season just as we hear ritualistic praise for "diversity" (referring to groups not individuals), we hear equally ritualistic calls for "unity." But it is never specified what we are supposed to be united about. Early in the gay movement, I think most people took the term to urge gays to work together for the elimination of prejudice and discrimination. In other words, they didn't want unity so much as they wanted to promote involvement and cooperation on specific tasks.
Nowadays, as the gay movement has achieved more of its goals and our opponents (I trust, I hope) are on the defensive, I am not so sure what unity is about, or how it is supposed to be demonstrated. We don't seem to be in agreement on goals: Most of us support gay marriage, whether we personally want to marry or not. But there are people who oppose gay marriage as, oh, you know, the usual claptrap about patriarchal institutions, as if that could apply to two men or two women.
But we also disagree about tactics. Many people, especially gay leaders, opposed California gay couples' filing suit to obtain marriage rights. Opponents said it was the wrong time, the wrong route, guaranteed to get slapped down by the court. And it may yet—by California voters this November. Opinion was legitimately divided. That's not a bad thing; it's a good thing.
We are not of one mind about whether drag queens are entertaining expressions of gay creativity or self-promoting parasites who serve to confirm heterosexuals' views of gay men as feminine. We are not unified on whether transgenders and transsexuals are part of the gay community—particularly if they are not homosexual.
Does the fact that we are all gay produce any real "unity"? Maybe on Gay Pride Day. But otherwise, I often think the only thing that unites us is the desire to have a good time.