From
today's newspaper: "Canadians are hopeful today's
Live 8 concerts will help alleviate African poverty, but a majority say the government should put domestic priorities like health care ahead of a boost in foreign-aid spending, a new poll has found." And so everything that critics have warned against is true: The gigs are about cool music, not about changing the world. Canadians think that wishing something away will fix it.
A few pennies less profit per company share, some personal discomfort -- yes, even the death of 10 North Americans from some awful and obscure disease that would cost an insane fortune to cure -- all are apparently more important than combating mass starvation, misery and easily eradicated disease.
Yes, I am saying exactly what you think I'm saying.
So if simply caring about truly desperate sibling human beings isn't enough -- and it clearly isn't -- maybe an appeal to selfishness will work. I wrote this in 2003 (and for non-queer readers -- gosh, I don't know, just get your head out of your ass):
With the advent of same-sex marriage, homo tax-payers celebrate a delirious joy. After all, for many years, the rallying cry has been shouted out, strong and proud: I pay taxes, and so I deserve equal rights.
It's queasy making, this argument. As if rights are purchased, rather than granted to each by a social contract to which we adhere (sometimes grumpily, sometimes only at a police officer's gun point).
Sadly, it's also an argument that's quite true. In a very real way, our continuing payment of taxes may well ensure our continuing rights. The acceptance of gay people has come, in North America, at least, from the undeniable presence of gay dollars. Our money makes us visible, our economic impact makes advertisers want to woo us, which puts us front and centre in ads, both print and broadcast. Cities are madly jumping onto the gay tourism bandwagon, hoping to pull in DINKs (double income, no kids) with mondo cash to spare. Being economically desirable speaks.
Of course we're not all rich, but hush now. For once, a stereotype helps.
Then there's the money the heteros have. If they have moolah, they don't resent ours. In short, poverty makes for intolerance.
Canada, as a relatively affluent nation, allows its citizens the luxury of accepting "the other." It is the poor who cannot afford that luxury.
Economist and liberal guru John Kenneth Galbraith first began to look at these issues 50 years ago. "The first and foremost effect of poverty is to enforce attitudes and behavior that make it self-perpetuating," noted Galbraith in his 1965 Massey Lecture (commissioned and broadcast by our state-funded radio service, the CBC). "Similarly the first effect of wealth is to allow the freedom of action that permits the creation of more wealth."
Gay people now have that wealth. We've got to build it up and flaunt it for our own long-term health.
"It has often been observed that very poor communities are intensely conservative -- that, far more than the fortunate, these people resist the change that is in their own interest. Illiteracy, and the limited horizons it implies, is a partial cause of this; so is the inertia resulting from poor health and malnutrition. But poverty is an even more direct cause of conservatism."
Obviously, there are individuals within a class who don't fit into the mold. Some obscenely well-off folks are intransigent pigs; some gay people live on the streets, and many an earnest straight has an open mind but no pennies. But Galbraith is calculating a class average.
"If there is no margin to spare, there is no margin for risk. One cannot try a new variety of wheat or rice that promises an additional 20 percent yield if there is any chance that it is vulnerable to insect pests, disease or drought and thus in an occasional year might fail altogether. However welcome the extra 20 percent, it is not worth the risk of not eating for a whole season, the consequences of which tend to be both painful and irreversible. Since there is a measure of risk in anything that is untried, it is better to stick with the proven methods -- the methods that have justified themselves by the survival of the family to this time. The well-to-do farmer, by contrast, can accept some risk of loss if the prospect is for a greater gain. He is in no danger of starving whatever happens."
Galbraith meant his argument to refer to those living in under-developed countries. Galbraith was speaking of monstrous despair. Places where holding on to life is a daily struggle for millions. (Not that my poor neighbor cares; she doesn't compare her miserable poverty here with that of others elsewhere: she's poor in relation to the rest of us, knows it, rues it, and struggles for her own survival. Thank goodness Canada's poverty rate is relatively low.)
"Even within India," wrote Galbraith, "the comparatively well-to-do Punjabis in the north are far more inclined to try new crops and new methods than the villagers in the poorer regions who live closer to subsistence. Needless to say, in the firm tradition of the fortunate, they attribute their progressiveness not to higher income, but to higher intelligence."
"Fear of loss is not the only cause of conservatism among the very poor. Any change is regarded with uneasiness -- and also with reason. In our world change is identified with new and better ways of producing things or of organizing production; it is an article of faith that the whole community benefits from the advance. If someone loses his job, he is told with great unction and some truth that his sacrifice is for the greater good of the greater number. As a result, to be against change is like being against God and perhaps worse for, of late, we have been more tolerant of religious rather than of economic heresy."
(I'm not going to tackle religion in this column, which is of course also a factor in the gay rights equation.)
In short, Galbraith said the poor experience change differently. Change is a power play where a bad guy sets up something new in order to screw the poor in a snazzier and more devious way. So the opposition to change can be quite rational, once you take the time to understand its underpinnings.
Gay activists who simply make fun of poor and conservative opponents will suffer for it. You cannot change someone's mind by humiliating them through their identity or faith.
"The image of change is ego focused. This being the view of change, the instinct of the community is to resist it and to suspect even beneficial change."
So the poor hate change. And we, the gay and lesbian tribe, must demand social change in order to survive.
To ensure that our rights remain entrenched and are even accepted and adopted further out into the world, we queer people must actively fight poverty. Out of sheer desperate self-interest.
SUNDAY: "Bob Geldof took time out Saturday from preparations for the Live 8 concert in London's Hyde Park to urge
gay pride marchers in the capital to support initiatives to end poverty. 'Between what you people are doing and the people in the park are doing and the people around the world, we are going to stop one vast oppression of a vast minority - that's what we are going to do today,' Geldof told thousands of marchers gathered in London's Pall Mall. 'When you walk around London today, think of them, think of the people in Africa.'"