The Help

Now I have to tell you, I'm not sure why I continue to watch movies on this subject.  In 1982, at the age of 12, I was forced to watch the movie Sophie's Choice in my World Histories class, at least I'm pretty sure it was Sophie's Choice.  Meryl Streep also did a TV mini-series called The Holocaust, and that could be the one I was forced to watch.  I only remember three things about the movie.  It was about the Holocaust. It had Meryl Streep in it.  Last, a scene where a grandmother and her granddaughter are filed into the showers, the grandmother holds the granddaughter as the gas is turned on, and the next scene I believe was men feeding fuel into the ovens.  Except for Shining Through, I never watched another movie about the Holocaust again.  I refused to watch Schindler's List no matter how many people tell me how fantastic it is.  Now I've heard Judeans say, "Never forget."  I wish I could.

What struck me the most was I was 12 years old, and I was just coming to realize why I always felt different.  I was delivering papers one cold morning before school.  My route was rows of Townhouses, with apartments (called tuckaways) below them.  For every 2 Townhouses, there was one tuckaway.  Each Townhouse had a set of stairs and a little porch, leading up to the front door.  The porch and the stairs were surrounded by cast iron railings painted black.  I would put the paper, in it's plastic bag, in the outside corner of the porch rail.  So the customer could see where it was and the paper wouldn't blow away.  I always did this from the ground and for some reason on the right side.  Between every set of stairs was a window that let to the tuckaway beneath.  One for the kitchen and one for the Master bedroom.  As I was putting a paper in one of the rails that morning, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head to see what it was. What I then saw was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my entire life.  A naked man, eating his breakfast at the kitchen counter.  I knew who he was, he was a customer of mine.  He lived with his roommate in the tuckaway below.

I have no idea how long I stood there or if he saw me but I couldn't move.  He was muscled beautifully from head to toe, slightly hair but only enough to accentuate his muscles.  His penis was limp and neither huge or small, but circumcised and completely beautiful to my eyes.  I don't know if he saw me, but until he washed, dried, put his cereal bowl away and left, I assume to get ready for his day, I couldn't force myself to move.  My eyes drank in every inch of him.  To this day, almost 30 years later, I still remember the sight, even his gorgeous backside as he walked away from the counter.  That blinds to that window were never open again, but the moment he moved and broke the spell, I lived in shame and fear, and would for years to come.  I was 14 before I could just accept it.  I was 16 before I could tell anyone.

It was shortly after I saw that man that I watched Sophie's Choice.  Unlike some who only remember that Hitler, his supporters, and those millions who just didn't have the courage to say "no" when they found out what he was doing, my teacher didn't just tell us he persecuted Judeans.  No, she told us although 60% of the Judeans in Europe were murdered, Hitler's Nazi's also went after all non-arians, the disabled, the mentally challenged, Romani, anyone who stood in his way and Homosexuals.  I was stupid enough to ask what that word meant.  My Teacher didn't have time to answer before one of my classmates said loudly, "Fags."

I knew what that word meant, I was just beginning to discover I was one.  I was just putting in that last piece of the puzzle, only to find out the picture was horrific.  I hadn't heard the word, "Gay" but I knew what "Fags" were.  They were dirty perverts who wanted to touch little boys and put their things up your bums.  My mom's boyfriend, who was like a father to me since my father had disappeared, talked about them with disgust.  The boys in the playground said that to people they didn't like.  I even remember one time in grade school, two boys were caught doing something in the woods behind the basketball court.  I was told "So and So was kicking their heads in, until Mrs. So and So stopped them."  I never saw those boys at school again.  A frank discussion began after all those involved were dragged off.  A discussion I would remember vividly a few years later when I started to realize how much like those boys I was.

So I could never watch another movie about the Holocaust again.  I couldn't force myself.  I knew all I needed to about the Holocaust.  Imagine how I felt when I stumbled upon this video recently.   
Dan Savage talking in opposition to people saying that Hitler was gay, and surrounded himself with gay soldier's who were his elite and even more gruesome and sadistic than your regular SS soldier.  I'm embarrassed for these people.  I'm embarrassed for the Muslims (not all Muslims just some) who say the Holocaust never happened, even with the hundreds of hours of video and pictorial proof.  While I'm sure we don't need to relive the Holocaust to prove it, I don't think we can forget the decision we as a planet made there.

Even though I was not yet born, I understood that we made a decision as a planet that that kind of hatred is wrong.  That it diminishes us.  Yet, our actions have still not caught up to that decision.  I shouldn't be surprised though.  More than 2,000 years ago a group of Judeans asked a man some of them considered their king, how to defeat their enemies.  He said, "Love them."  They didn't get it.  Most of us still don't get it today.

So why when the Holocaust had such a profound effect on me, am I still willing to watch a movie like The Help.   Understand I grew up in the 70s, after Stonewall, after Martin Luther King, after Medgar Evers, after JFK, after Malcolm X, after segregation ended and Black History Month started, after women burned their bras, when rape was still in some cases the victims fault, when things were changing but hadn't quite changed yet.  I know we've come a long way.  We all have, but there is still farther to go.

My mother, a staunch Republican from a Republican family, still holds contempt for my liberal education.  She barks like Pavlov's Dog when ever I say anything that she sees as criticizing our nation, "This is the Greatest Country in the World!"  I know that but I can still be embarrassed for it. I remind her often that the fathers of this Greatest Country in the World, were the radical liberals of their time.  How can we respect them and still allow that spirit to die in contempt?

I find it funny to know that England, whom we declared our freedom from, passed laws abolishing slavery more than 40 years before us.  It's weird when you consider that 20 years ago it was illegal just to BE gay in the UK, that they now have Civil Unions and we are still on the fence about them.  Germany, who was run by Nazis 80 years ago, and half behind the Iron Curtain 20 years ago, has Civil Unions as well, and they both have much tougher Hate Crime Laws than us as well.  Living in a state that 6 years ago tried to get rid of Hate Crime Laws protecting homosexuals, I find that ironic and slightly embarrassing.

I remember that it was only a few hundred years ago that Black People weren't allowed to marry at all, and in the past 70 years that laws preventing Blacks and Whites from marrying were repealed.  (Sorry but I agree with Wanda Sykes about the term "African American", no one has dual citizenship and what about the brown skinned people of the South Pacific.)  Yet still, it was only 2 years ago that a Louisiana Justice of the Peace, was sued and forced to resigned for not performing a Civil Union, for a straight bi-racial couple.  Why in this the Greatest Nation in the World, do some of us go kicking, screaming, lying and scheming?

So I sit down to watch The Help with my 73 year old, staunch Republican mother.  The Color Purple was my favorite film in my teens.  I used to watch it, then Whoopi Goldberg Live On Broadway, then Whoopi Goldberg Fountaine - Why Am I Straight?, back to back.  I knew Miss Celie's Blues by heart.  A Time to Kill, Ghosts of the Mississippi, are just a few of the movies with the same subject that I love.  Yet I still don't understand how I can watch them and can't watch Holocaust movies.  Hatred is Hatred, and when you see people use the same tactics they used to keep black people down, against gay people, it shouldn't be that hard to see.  I have heard the arguments, that it isn't the same because gay people can hide who they are and black people wear it for all to see.  Well true.  For some of us at least.  I swear you could tell I'm gay from space.  Still it's the hatred that's the same, and the tactics are the similar.  I'm not really trying to compare the two but bigotry still feels like bigotry to me.

I do feel different about that kind of hatred than I used to.  The last time someone drove by me and yelled out the window "FAGGOT" I was surprised I felt nothing.  I find myself surprised that the passionate hatred I help for people like that in my youth, the anger, the hurt, has settled into quieter emotions.  I feel embarrassed for them.

I feel embarrassed for Hilly Holbrook, as she tells Skeeter "There are a lot of Bigots in this town.  You should watch yourself," not realizing she is one of them.  She thinks she's a good person, she feels like a good person.

To be honest, as much as I love Dan Savage, I feel embarrassed for him when he spouts hateful names at those who criticize and try to keep gay people from equality.  He invalidates his facts and statistics when he does.  He makes himself just like them every time he does.  I love that unlike some of his opponents he's actually read the Bible, and that he is one of the smartest voices for equality for gay people.

My journey from that angry, hurt young man, to here has been an interesting one.  I went from thinking that God hated me to 30 years later, knowing without a doubt, that God loves me.  I also know without a doubt that God loves Hilly and Hitler, because God loves everybody, because he sees us as he created us, and the good we've become so far. He said "Love them," and they didn't get it.  I think I'm getting it now.  It isn't something I can describe or give away, other than God is Love and God made me, and when I'm not being loving I'm not being who I really am and it feels bad.

I thought after that movie, how Martin Luther King, modeling his movement after Gandhi's who used the teachings of Jesus as a political force, is still remembered today but I can't think of the name of one person who opposed him.