Why Gay Rights Matter to Us All

In Marietta, Ga., the Cobb County Board of Commissioners preliminarily approved new legislation that calls the “gay lifestyle” incompatible with community standards. Prompted by two complaints about a local production of the Terrence McNally play “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” (also playing at the Mark Taper Forum) the proposal would allow the board to cut off funding for programs depicting gays.

In a way, this is nothing new. The Reagan Administration brought this policy to the National Endowment for the Arts, and it is used by groups protesting lesbian and gay subjects and artists. But two things make the case striking.

First, to restrict depictions of the “gay lifestyle,” it will be necessary to restrict the public’s access to a range of artistic experience in theaters, art galleries, classrooms and libraries. The list is as endless as the calculations of the self-appointed censors who know what the rest of us should see, think and do.

The second striking thing about this ordinance is that the play is not about the “gay lifestyle” at all. It is about two heterosexual couples who spend a weekend at the house one character has inherited from her gay brother and find out about themselves and the state of their marriages. The playwright is gay, the section of Fire Island in New York where the action takes place is gay, but the characters and the lifestyle depicted in it are not.

Here is why gay rights matter to all Americans: The anti-gay activists must attack everyone’s freedom to restrict the freedom of homosexuals. The special rights they claim homosexuals want are exactly those rights that make the United States special.