Working Paper #95-3(1)
By Glenda Russell, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder
This paper was written with a small grant from the Conflict Resolution Consortium, University of Colorado. Funding for the Consortium and its Small Grants Program was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The statements and ideas presented in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Conflict Resolution Consortium, the University of Colorado, or the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. For more information, contact the Conflict Resolution Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0327. Phone: (303) 492-1635, e-mail: crc@cubldr.colorado.edu.
Copyright (C) 1995. Glenda Russell. Do not reprint without permission.
On November 3, 1992 voters in Colorado endorsed Amendment Two by a popular vote of 53.4 percent. Amendment Two said that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have no recourse in the face of discrimination. Effectively, Amendment Two legalized discrimination based on sexual orientation. As negative as the effects of Amendment Two were in purely legal terms, the impact of Amendment Two is more far-reaching and subtle than those legal terms might convey.
I want to discuss the effects of Amendment Two, especially as those effects touched gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in Colorado. I'll be doing that by weaving together several themes. I'll be talking about my research--a survey project on the psychological effects of Amendment Two on lesbians, bisexuals, and gays throughout the state. I also want to tell you about some of my own experiences during the campaign and after the election. I'll try to use those experiences to illustrate some of the things that we are finding with the research. Finally, and really most importantly, I want to talk about recovering from Amendment Two, emphasizing that recovery is possible, and further, those of us who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual and those of you who are heterosexual allies, can use the experience of Amendment Two as a spring board for growth and recommitment.
Let me set the stage by asking you to think historically for a couple of moments. For those of you who are old enough, I'd like you to think back to what you were doing and where you were when you first heard the news that John Kennedy had been assassinated. This next question takes in even more of you. Think back to what you were doing and where you were when you heard about the explosion of the Challenger spacecraft with its human cargo, including a young teacher from New Hampshire, Christa McAluff. Now, if you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, think about what you were doing and where you were when you found out with certainty that Amendment Two had passed. Why is it that we all remember these things? Certain events touch us deeply, so deeply that they are seared into our consciousness. Occasionally these events are gloriously happy ones. All too often, the events that touch us that deeply are tragic and disturbing. Obviously, Amendment Two fits into that second category for many of us.
Not long before the anniversary of the passage of Amendment Two, I was at a meeting attended by about a hundred lesbians. Announcements were being made and people were chattering; it was a pretty informal situation. Then, one of the women who was making an announcement mentioned that the anniversary of the passage of Amendment Two was coming up. Suddenly, everyone was totally quiet. Tragic events touch us long after the event itself has passed. The passage of Amendment Two was a tragic event for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, not only in Colorado, but everywhere. It was tragic for the family and friends of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals everywhere, as well. My research was directed specifically at the psychological effects of the campaign on gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. But, I am sure that some of you who are not lesbian, gay, or bisexual were also touched by the campaign in some deep ways.
Let me talk briefly about the general framework for the survey that I did. It was an eight-page, pencil and paper survey that I distributed to people throughout Colorado. Now eight pages is a very long survey. Any social scientist will tell you, you probably better not send out any survey that is over three pages long because people don't want to take the time to fill it out. But, hope springs eternal. I distributed nearly 2,700 copies of this survey through any means that I could think of. I sent them to friends and friends of friends. I sent them to contacts that I had made through the course of the campaign. I took them to public events. I took them to political events. I got them out through any means that I could think of. About 660 gays and lesbians and bisexuals completed the survey. Now, that is a lot of people, but it is important to point out that those 660 people do not constitute what we would call a random sample. Can you imagine how many scared, closeted folks never even saw that survey and didn't know it was out there? You might also imagine that there were a lot of people who looked at an eight-page survey and said, ?You've got to be kidding." You can also imagine a whole bunch of people who said, ?I don't want to think about Amendment Two any more and I'm certainly not going to do a survey." You can also imagine some people who said, ?I don't think it affected me at all, so why should I fill out this survey?"
I'm still running analysis to try to figure out who filled out the survey and who didn't. But, the bottom line is, the results of my survey are what we call "a convenience sample," rather than a random sample, and therefore the results do not say how all the gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in Colorado responded to Amendment Two. What it does say is that over 600 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in Colorado perceived the effects of Amendment Two in particular ways.
Let me give you a little general information about those 660 people. There were more women than men. About two-thirds of the respondents were female. The age range was from 16 to 72 years old, with an average of 35.5 years. About 12 percent of the sample were gays, lesbians, and bisexuals of color. Respondents came from throughout the state. Just over 50 percent were from the Denver metropolitan area. That means that almost half of the survey respondents were from the rest of the state, including small towns and rural areas. In all, about 70 separate cities and towns were represented. As we expected with such a long, complicated survey, people who filled out the survey tended to overrepresent technical and professional occupations. We had relatively sparse participation by people who work at clerical or labor levels. Relatively few people in the study hadn't had at least some college.
Within the survey itself were diagnostic criteria that mental health professionals use for three clinical diagnoses for depression, for anxiety, and for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. To qualify for each of those diagnoses, a whole bunch of criteria have to be met. That is really the reason this survey was so long. We asked the people to what degree they met each of the criteria for each of those three diagnoses and we asked them to fill out how much they had of each of those symptoms for three different time periods: before the campaign ever began (that was to establish a base line); during the thick of the campaign; and finally, right after the election. In asking people to assess those symptoms at three different time periods, we were really asking them to give us a picture of how their functioning changed over the course of the campaign. Now, that is not an ideal method. The best thing would have been if we had gone to people right at the beginning and said, ?Tell me how you're functioning now," and then gone back during the campaign and said, ?How are you doing at this point?" and then finally, we should have taken a third measure after the election. That's fine. If we had been thinking about doing that instead of winning an election, we would have been doing research, not working on a campaign.
In terms of the results, we found that the baseline levels for depression, anxiety, and PTSD were all really low, actually a bit lower than what you would expect in the general population. Probably they were that low because this was a group that in general was high-functioning, well-educated, and economically advantaged from the very beginning. Every one of the levels for depression, anxiety, and PTSD was a bit elevated by the time the campaign was in full swing. We could really see the campaign taking its toll on people. But the place where we saw the biggest changes was at the end after the election. There we see huge jumps for depression, anxiety, and PTSD, but especially for the latter two.
Now, it's not clear to a social scientist just what those jumps mean until you do some statistical tests to see if the difference between the initial levels and the after-election levels are chance fluctuations, or if you really think they are coming about because of some major change that is happening in people. When I ran the analyses to see the difference between those two scores--at the beginning and at the end of the campaign--I got the biggest change scores I had ever seen. For depression, the probability that I could get such big differences from the baseline to after the election were less than .05. What that means is that only 5 percent of the time would you be likely to see that kind of change in depression purely by chance. The differences between the baseline levels for anxiety and PTSD versus the levels for anxiety and PTSD at the end of the campaign were even more significant. You would get those kinds of huge changes .000 percent of the time by chance. Scientifically put, that means ?there ain't no way" that those changes came about by chance. Some gays, lesbians, and bisexuals clearly were very negatively impacted by the campaign and especially by the passage of Amendment Two. I'll talk a bit later about some of the other effects of the Amendment but first I want to explore these negative effects in a little more detail.
In October of 1993, I was in what I hope will prove to be my last debate about Amendment Two. It was in Colorado Springs. Predictably, a lot of folks from Colorado for Family Values (CFV) were there. I mentioned at that debate that Amendment Two had hurt gays, lesbians, and bisexuals and that I was doing some research to study those effects. During the question and answer period, one of the questions that I got went something like: Was I doing any research to investigate the effects of being called "bigots" and "haters" on the people who were supporters of Amendment Two? Now, I don't doubt that it was, in fact, painful for pro- Amendment Two people to hear themselves called "bigots" or "homophobic" or whatever. Nonetheless, I think the questioner really missed some essential differences between what that experience was like for gays and lesbians versus what it was like for the supporters of Amendment Two. During the campaign, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals were the subject of debate all the time. Every aspect of our lives was talked about and scrutinized. Much of what was said about us was overblown stereotype. Some of what was said was ignorant distortion, and some of what was said were outright lies. Some of the lies were dressed up in finest statistical finery, but they were lies nonetheless.
We started the campaign as human beings in our own minds, but the media and especially CFV, turned us into objects. More than the usual objects, we became objects of repulsion and objects of disgust, objects that bore scant resemblance to who we knew ourselves to be before the campaign began. It is very hard not to internalize at least some of those messages. If you hear awful statements about yourself over and over, if you hear them spoken vehemently enough over and over, it becomes increasingly difficult not to take them in. Add to that the fear that many gays and lesbians and bisexuals were experiencing at a variety of levels. One, we were afraid that we would lose the campaign. Two, we were afraid because we didn't know how our friends, our family, our neighbors, our employers, our employees would vote on Amendment Two. Third, we feared that we would be discriminated against. And if you look at the change scores in the course of the campaign, people got increasingly afraid that they were going to be discriminated against. People also got increasingly fearful that they would be verbally assaulted because they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. And the place where the fear went up the most, was people's fear that they would be physically assaulted simply because they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Now that is a lot of fear to contend with. Is there is any wonder that we were all so anxious? But perhaps the biggest fear, at least for some of us, was the fear that Amendment Two was only the beginning—the fear that things might get much worse.
I think that every gay, lesbian, or bisexual who had those fears did all kinds of psychological maneuvers to manage the fears. After all, most of us still went to work, still pursued our relationships, still played, still studied—in short, we still had our lives. But there was plenty of fear to be managed. Fortunately, I think gays and lesbians are pretty good, better than average in fact, at managing fear. My own experience with fear fluctuated. I want to mention a few of the ups and downs, because I think they illustrate some of the things I did right and some of the things that I didn't do well.
One of the things that worked best for me was singing with a group called, ?Harmony." ?Harmony" is a choral group who has its membership rooted in the gay and lesbian community, although not all of its members are gay and lesbian. What was especially useful during the period of the campaign, was that we were practicing and preparing for a Coming-Out Day concert, so we were singing explicitly gay and lesbian affirming songs. That was a wonderful antidote to all the messages that were coming in saying that I was bad, that I'm not good. Here we were standing up singing, ?We Are Everywhere." Another thing that I did, I think, that worked very well, was creating gay, lesbian and bisexual culture. Some of us worked up new lyrics to old songs for fund raising and Get-Out-the-Vote events. My favorite was a version of Bob Dylan's song, ?With God on Our Side." It was very easy to make that into a song, ?With God on Their Side." What we were doing in that case, was taking our energy and using it creatively and to have fun and sharing that energy with other people. Those were things that were really working.
There were things that I did during the campaign, however, that did not work well. I was afraid from the beginning of the campaign that Amendment Two would pass. In fact, I was virtually certain that it would. That meant, for me, that I had to work as hard as I could on the campaign to know that I had done everything I could to prevent something that I figured I would end up living with for a long time anyway. Now that is a purely personal response, and I acknowledge that everybody had different responses to that. The fear that Amendment Two would pass stayed with me throughout the campaign. But, I also experienced some specific peaks of fear that I want to talk about. One happened during the last couple of weeks before the campaign when I was with my partner doing field organizing in Pueblo. I was especially afraid when we would find ourselves standing at big intersections, holding ?No on 2" signs. Invariably, we would get lots of comments from people; we would get shouts; we would get rude gestures; we would get all kinds of strange responses. At first, I started taking in the responses and gestures and just feeling bad, ?Oh, there goes another supporter of Amendment Two." After awhile though, I realized I had to do something active to keep those messages from coming into me and one of the things that occurred to me to do was to pretend that I didn't hear them, for my benefit, but especially for them. So, people would say something rude about gays and lesbians and so I would stand up and wave to them, smiling broadly, and pretend that we were on the same side. That worked very well until I got back to my room and realized how many people, in fact, were going to be voting for this amendment. It is amazing how you can keep fear at a distance. I only realized how scared I had been the whole time I was in Pueblo, when I went to a very warm church on the Sunday morning before the election. I was there to speak about Amendment Two. The minister had built her liturgy that morning around Christian acceptance and affirmation. I couldn't help but cry when I heard her congregation sing, ?They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love." I couldn't help but cry when I heard the congregation singing, ?We Are Not Afraid," because I knew that I was afraid.
The scariest moment of the campaign for me occurred when I was participating in a televised debate. Representing the Equal Protection Campaign (EPOC) were another woman, Denice Walker, and I. Representing Colorado for Family Values were two men. One was Paul Cameron, a man that the Advocate has described as the country's "most dangerous, anti-gay bigot." The other man from CFV was a man named Bob Enyard. He is a radio talk show host from Denver, who describes himself as the ?homophobes's homophobe." As it turned out, he was right. As usual, the other representative from EPOC and I were trying to be sane, cogent, polite. After all, we were in a political debate. Cameron and Enyard were not. They attacked us. They called us names. They said some ridiculous stuff. I guess my favorite comment that was made during that whole debate, was when Enyard pointed at Denice and me and said, ?All you homos want to do is stick your penis in somebody's rectum." I think at that moment, I realized how invisible we were—as women, as lesbians—and how acceptable it was to say anything about us, since we were homosexuals. What I also realized was that we were in the middle of an old-fashioned verbal lesbian bashing. And the talk show host, by the way, was having a great time. Somewhere in the middle of that whole thing, I got very afraid--as afraid as I have ever been--as I realized that the people I was in the room with hated me. I had never had really thought that before of any one. And I also realized that the people that I was in the room with seemed to want me dead. I certainly never had that experience before! All of this anger was coming at us; all of this aggression was coming at us, simply and wholly, because we were lesbians. I left that show as scared as I have ever been in my life. My partner, who had watched the debate, left shocked and dismayed and horrified--those were her words. She got home before I did because I had a Harmony rehearsal to go to. When I got home, she had every light on, inside and outside the house. A friend who called and had heard the distress in my partner's voice, was there with her. I walked in the door, threw down my music and burst into tears and said, ?I don't think I'm ever going to do that again!" The next day the thing that was uppermost in my mind was to call the other woman from EPOC, the woman with whom I had been in that debate, to see if she was all right. She explained how she had been feeling and I was telling her that I had been feeling awful, too. As she talked about her response to the debate, I started telling her, talking as the psychologist that I am, that she had been traumatized, and in fact, that being traumatized was a normal response to those circumstances that we had been in. It was only as I was talking to Denice about her response that I realized that I was already operating with a full-fledged, clinically diagnosable case of post-traumatic stress disorder myself. The acute symptoms remitted in just a few days, but some of the subtler symptoms stayed with me, literally, for months. I will return to those symptoms in just a moment.
Obviously, when I went looking for the negative effects of Amendment Two on gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, I wasn't looking to see how this campaign affected the "little people." I, in fact, had certainly experienced the negative effects and I wondered about them in me and I wondered about them in other people as well.
I want to talk now about some of the things that helped me to deal with those effects--some of the things that helped me to recover. Certainly, of central importance was the support of friends and family-- knowing that others cared as deeply as I did and were horrified at the response that was happening. It was very useful for me in the week after the election to be working in the EPOC offices and hear calls coming in, literally, from all over the United States, and hearing people's outrage about this amendment. At least I didn't have to feel alone. Those were the backdrop things that were helpful, but beyond that were two specific encounters that I had that were of crucial importance to me in recovering from Amendment Two.
The first of those was a four-day, anti-racism training workshop that I went to. Now, I might mention that during the time after the election, every time that I was in an airport or some other public place, I would notice that I would see out of the corner of my eye, the image of Paul Cameron's face in the crowd. Now Paul Cameron wasn't in all the airports that I was in during that time; it was a post-traumatic response. If you talk to women who have been raped, they will often tell you the same thing--they keep running into the face of their rapist somewhere. Paul Cameron had been an encounter that was so deeply disturbing that I kept running into his face. So as I went off to this to this four-day, anti- racism workshop, I, in fact, kept seeing Paul Cameron in the airports that I was in.
The focus of that training was on racism, primarily. But, it also included attention to sexism and homophobia, to anti-Jewish sentiment, and to age-ism and able-ism, as well. That whole experience was very useful, but particularly useful was my work with one of the particular trainers on my response to Amendment Two. That particular trainer was Wekesa Olatunji Madzimoyo. The first part of my reaction to Amendment Two came out somewhat by accident.
In the middle of the first day of the workshop, Wekesa made some statement that said: If you think anyone is evil, you better watch out, because you are giving that person an awful lot of power. After Wekesa made that statement, I went back to my room that night and wrote literally pages in my journal: ?What does Wekesa mean? Some people really are evil." After all I had been running around calling Paul Cameron evil ever since I had debated him. ?But there really were people," I would write in my journal, ?Hitler was evil. There really is evil." So the next day of the workshop, I decided that I had to talk to Wekesa about that statement.
I had barely begun to talk about my conception of evil in my adopted state of Colorado, when I started to cry. And I cried and I cried. Wekesa let me go on, saying first that it was OK to cry. But then he said that I should remember, when black people sing the blues, they don't sing the blues to stay sad. They sing the blues to get happy. Wekesa then told me when he had given up thinking of others as evil. Wekesa is African American. He told me a story of his son, who was then five-years old. His son came to him and said, ?Daddy, is the Ku Klux Klan going to come and get us?" Wekesa was shocked to hear this question from his son, and even more shocked to see the amount of fear that he knew was reflected in that question. He also knew that his son had learned that fear from him. Wekesa said that he was appalled to realize his son saw white people as so powerful that no one—not his mother, not his father, no one—could save this five-year old from them. Wekesa decided that day he needed to rethink his views of evil white people. One of his earliest realizations was that when we make someone evil, we make them bigger than life, we make them more powerful than we are. To make someone evil is to make yourself a victim. Wekesa added that he certainly thought it was important to know what people were up to, especially if they had bad intentions about you. Neither their intentions, nor their behavior should be ignored. But the hitch was, how much power you give them in your own mind and in your own life.
Wekesa told me that, and I didn't believe it at first. But I certainly absolutely believe it now, that when you make someone else evil, you can't live your own life. You'll live in reaction to their evilness. To live your life, the focus must be on who you are and what you want, not on anyone who opposes you. Wekesa kept saying to me, ?You got Paul Cameron in your mouff." And he said ?mouff," and he spelled it m-o-u-f-f. Meaning, I was letting my fear of Paul Cameron influence me more than my own belief in myself, more than my own belief in my personal power, and more than my own belief in the collective power with other gay people and our allies. Somewhere in the course of the four days, I decided, not just intellectually, but in my gut, that I would not give Paul Cameron or Will Perkins or Kevin Tebedo or Colorado for Family Values or all the religious right or anyone else, that kind of power over me again. My life, indeed my words, would have to come out of my ?mouff." I felt truly set free because of my willingness to let myself grieve and my effort to claim my power--a power that I had unknowingly let slip away during the campaign--all this with the help of a heterosexual, African-American man, who understands more about internalized oppression than anyone I have ever met. I knew I left that training set free when I went into several airports that I had to take from Alabama back to Colorado, and not once did I see Paul Cameron's face. In fact, I haven't seen Paul Cameron's face since.
I had one other experience the next week that also helped me recover from the election. That experience came about somewhat by chance. United Airlines had this incredible deal to Europe. My partner had been trying to convince me to go. I kept saying, ?I don't have any time. I don't have any money." Finally, I gave in. I surprised her when I said, ?OK. I'll go to Europe with you, but only if we go to Germany and only if we can visit a concentration camp." My partner agreed.
I think my trip to Dachau would have been very different if I hadn't been to the racism workshop the week before. Without that workshop I would have gone to Dachau as a victim. As it was, I went as a student. My partner and I walked around Dachau and saw the horror of human inhumanity. I kept trying to grasp the magnitude of the Holocaust and I asked myself, not as a victim, but as a person of power, ?What would you have done? Would you have intervened? Would you have been silent?" I reviewed my own reactions to actions and movements against other oppressed groups. What had I done, including what had I done when an earlier constitutional amendment had been passed in Colorado that made English the state's official language? As I walked around the concentration camp at Dachau, I committed myself to not being silent or complicit again.
I identified as the oppressed only one time during my stay at Dachau. That occurred when I saw two photos in the museum there. One of the photos was of a group of Jews surrounded by Nazis with guns. There was a look of terror on the faces of all of the Jews who were being surrounded and an especially striking and horrifying look of fear on the face of one young child who was in the middle of this group of people. The caption on that photo said, ?Residents of the Warsaw Ghetto are rounded up by Nazis." The other photo, just a couple of photos away in the museum, was similar in many respects. It included a group of Jews surrounded by Nazis with guns, but their faces were very different. They looked strong and powerful and defiant. They did not look afraid. They did not look like people who were cowering under anything. The caption on that photograph was something like, ?Defenders of the Warsaw Ghetto are arrested by Nazis." I went back and forth between those two photos and I knew as I studied them that for causes for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, but for causes for other oppressed groups as well, I needed to be in the second group—a defender, not just a resident, someone who would fight against unfairness and bigotry of any kind, of all kinds. And I thought as I watched those photographs of a comment that I had read by Alice Walker where she said, ?My activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet. If I weren't active politically, I would feel as if I were sitting back eating at the banquet, without washing the dishes, or preparing the food."
I am not unique in that response that I had to Amendment Two. I'm not unique in the trauma. That is clear from the results of the survey. But I'm not also not unique in how Amendment Two has empowered me. Going back to the survey, we asked people to assign ratings to a number of items that indicated changes that they had gone through in other areas. We found some things that were pretty amazing for us. One is that we found that over the course of the campaign, people felt that their heterosexual family members now had a better sense of what homophobia is. People also felt that their heterosexual friends and colleagues grew in their appreciation for what homophobia was. People reported increases in a feeling of a sense of community with other lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. People also reported that they were becoming more comfortable being gay, lesbian, or bisexual, that they were feeling increasingly comfortable working on causes related to civil rights, and that they felt a greater sense of empowerment by virtue of working on civil rights issues with other gays and lesbians. Now these findings seemed extraordinary and, in many ways, paradoxical. Many of us were traumatized by Amendment Two. Some were not. But many of us also felt emboldened and empowered. It was a heck of an ordeal, but we learned and we grew so much.
Many gays, lesbians, and bisexuals came out during the course of that campaign. During the time of the campaign I was teaching a class on gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth for school personnel. The day after the election, one of the teachers in the class asked if she could make an announcement. She told the class that she had been thinking since the election about what she wanted to do to work with this whole issue and fight against Amendment Two. And she decided that the first and best thing that she could do was to come out as a school teacher in a district that does not protect its gay and lesbian school teachers. The class gave her a standing ovation. This past fall I taught the same class again. The first day, a teacher came out as a lesbian.
In case Colorado for Family Values hasn't noticed, their effort to silence us is not working. Their tactics may be painful to us, but they won't stop us. In fact, in many quarters they are backfiring. The more we define our own lives, the less CFV can touch us, whatever they put on the ballot, and whatever the outcome of the vote. I keep remembering, as I watch what has happened out of this campaign, something I read when I was a first-year graduate student. It was an explanation for the Chinese symbol for ?crisis." The Chinese symbol for crisis is really a combination of the symbols for ?danger" and ?opportunity." The election was dangerous, but the election was every bit as much an opportunity to face the awful truth of homophobia, to come out when we can, and to break the bonds of silence. I want to close by looking at a paragraph of a paper that I presented this past August at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. The paper was on Amendment Two and it ended with these words, ?It is possible to find empowerment and renewal even in the midst of a virulently homophobic campaign. It is possible not to be a victim, even in the face of a social process that is victimizing. Toward that end it is helpful, to view elections as single islands in a long and enduring stream that is the gay, lesbian, and bisexual civil rights movement. One election does not a movement make or break. Similarly, the gay, lesbian, and bisexual civil rights movement is a long and enduring tributary of a far broader river that includes many civil rights movements. These movements will continue, will endure hardships, and will enjoy successes. They will challenge us and energize us until in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words, ?Justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Russell Interview
Interviewer (Int.): Glenda, from having the experience of having worked to defeat Amendment Two and going through the whole process of seeing it voted in here in Colorado, what can you say to help people in other states who are following in your footsteps, who are working against similar amendments or laws?
Russell: I think there are a couple of things that we can say. One is that I don't think it will ever be as bad any where else as it was here. There was a quality about this experience that was different, because we got blind-sided. And getting blind-sided is worse than knowing you have a trauma coming.
Int.: What do you mean ?blind-sided?" People didn't know what was happening?
Russell: Most people didn't think it would pass. The polls told us it wouldn't pass. Even if we thought it might pass, we didn't know how traumatizing it was until it was over. We have information now to give to people in other states that says this is hard, this is going to be hard on you, but there are some things that you can do about it. In particular you can: a) know that it is coming; b) you can do as much as you can in concert with other people. That doesn't have to be front-scene political stuff, but you really need to work in concert with other gays, lesbians, and heterosexual allies because that will help to insulate you against the negative effects of this thing. You also need to take breaks if you are working on the frontlines politically. Don't put every ounce of your energy out there, because you will be too vulnerable. You will be hurt too badly.
The other thing that is important for all of us, those of us in Colorado and people elsewhere, is to get a perspective of this as a movement. We are a young movement. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have been actively regarded as a movement for only a couple of decades. This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. That is a young movement! We are going to be at this for decades and decades. We are going to have lots ups and lots of downs and we can't put all, psychologically, on one election. We are going to lose some and we are going to win some.
Int.: What makes something a movement?
Russell: What makes something a movement, among other things, is a long-term perspective about it. We are not going to get gay and lesbian civil rights overnight. African-Americans have been working for civil rights for two centuries and there are still incredible strides to be made and incredible racism to be overcome. We ought to get some perspective from that. Our movement is certainly not identical to the African-American civil rights struggle, but we can learn something from that about movements in general terms. One of the things I found very helpful after the campaign was rereading a long book on the civil rights struggle that talks about the modern African-American civil rights struggle, because it reminded me what a movement is. These things don't happen quickly.
Int.: I know this is a difficult way to look at things, but knowing what you know now, if you were to have gone through the experience in Colorado over again, if we could turn the clock back, what would you do differently?
Russell: I would do a couple of things differently. I didn't know this then. This is really my hindsight. I would protect myself better. I would have certainly worked on the campaign, because I needed to do that to be active in the face of what felt like an assault, what felt like an aggression. But, I would be more careful about taking care of myself in that process. I would not work non-stop. I would have taken more breaks than I actually did. The other thing that I would have done is I would have worked more as a psychologist. I have a lot of expertise in trauma. Trauma was happening to me. It was happening all around me, but I didn't realize it. Knowing now what I know, I would, in fact, not have done so many fundraisers and debates. I would have used my expertise as somebody who knows about trauma to do some work around the state to insulate us against the effects of the trauma that was, in fact, happening.
Int.: I think one of the things that is interesting about trauma is that you may not realize it is happening. As you were speaking, I realized the trauma that I was experiencing that I was not aware of. Not until I heard you talking about it, did I realize some of the pain. I'm sure that is true for a lot of people--that they are not aware of it.
Russell: That was true for a lot of people. At the end of that eight- page survey, I had this little open-ended question, ?Tell me anything else you want to tell about the effects of Amendment Two on you." And a whole bunch of people wrote it in there. Some people even called me on the phone and said, ?I hadn't realized what was happening to me until I actually filled this thing out. And now I understand what it is." One person called me and said, ?Would you please send a copy of this to my therapist?" I said, ?Yeah. But, why do you want me to send a copy to your therapist?" And he said that, ?It was only in filling this out that I finally figured out what was going on. And she wants to use it to help figure out further what is going on with me." One of the aspects of trauma that is so subtle is, in fact, that people who are being traumatized, don't know that they are being traumatized.
Int.: I think there is something about the nature of trauma where you go into sort of an altered state. You don't understand exactly what you are feeling, or why you are feeling it. Why is Amendment Two so traumatizing for gay and lesbian people?
Russell: I think, in fact, trauma is an altered state. Amendment Two is traumatizing at a purely legal level. It says that somebody can fire us, somebody can say we can't eat in their restaurant, somebody can refuse to hire us, simply because we are lesbian or bisexual or gay. The practical effects of that are fairly significant for a lot of people, but the practical effects of those are not that significant for me. That is not likely to happen to me, just given how my life is set up. But it was still traumatizing to me. So the trauma has to go beyond the practical effects.
I think the trauma cuts to the quick because it is about people's identity. Gays and lesbians grow up with a sense of being, at best, ?different" in some ways and, at worst, at being ?bad." When a gay or lesbian or bisexual person comes out, they work with that difference and they try to get to a place where they can examine all the messages that they have taken in about themselves by virtue of their sexual orientation. If they are lucky, and if they have supportive help, they get to a place where they undo a lot of those messages. I don't know that anyone ever gets to a place where she or he undoes all of those messages. An amendment like this comes along and a campaign comes along and it says every one of those messages that you heard is true. If you look at the literature that came out in support of Amendment Two, all of those messages are in there. Those are the messages about pedophilia, the messages that we are not really fully human and there is something terribly wrong with us, and dredging up literature from 50 years ago to prove this or that. What this thing does is touch people at the level of identity. When you start giving people messages like that, even with a good sense of positive identity, it is going to be a problematic process. They are going to have to fight very carefully in order to not internalize those messages.
Int.: Do you think that Colorado for Family Values and other members of the religious right want to traumatize us? Is that part of their agenda?
Russell: I don't know. I don't know because some people who are members of Colorado for Family Values probably represent people who have that as an intentional purpose, and others who are also in CFV would probably find that to be an absolutely abhorrent thought, and everybody in between. I wonder about that. I don't know. I just don't have direct access to these people. They are not trustfully talking to me, and telling me what they are doing. But whether or not that is their intention, that is their result. I do think their intention is to make gays, lesbians, and bisexuals shut up and not come out. I think that is intentional and I think that comes out fairly explicitly in some of the campaign rhetoric. For instance, the rhetoric says it is the militant homosexuals whom they are against, meaning people who insist on saying that they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. That seems to be the criteria for being a militant homosexual. So, in some sense I think it must be pretty apparent that one of the ways you silence people is to make them feel bad about themselves. The other way to silence people is to let them know that if they speak up they will be fired.
Int.: Actually though, the effect of amendments like Amendment Two has not been to silence people. What is happening is that people are becoming more visible, they are coming out at their jobs--just the opposite.
Russell: Absolutely. What we are seeing in the data is a dual phenomenon. There is a small minority of people who, in fact, look like they are getting more closeted. That makes sense. Those are going to be the casualties of this campaign, who really do get more scared and aren't able to garner the resources to move through the fear and get more empowered. But, we see a much larger portion of the respondents to the survey who are coming out all over the place. That came up in the written comments in the survey, constantly. ?Thank you, CFV. I am now out." ?I came out to my family the next day." ?I came out at work the next day." It is backfiring.
Int.: Do you think that is something important to the gay and lesbian movement for people to come out and be visible?
Russell: I think it is terribly important. It is important on two levels. It is important for people on an individual level. As a psychologist, I know that secrets make people nervous and scared. Any time you have to keep a secret, it puts a lot pressure on you that could be going in more productive directions. So, at that level, I think it is important.
At a political level it is important, too. We saw that in just the way that people voted in this state. We have the Denver suburbs as a bit of an enigma and a contradiction to this. But, except for the Denver suburbs, the ?No" votes, the people who voted against Amendment Two, basically, positioned themselves around the I-70 corridor and at other points in the state that are heavily populated by tourists. People who know a lot of other people are more likely to have met gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who are out. Those people are more wiling to vote against an amendment like this. The same kind of results come up in all sorts of national polls that have been done. People who say, ?I know a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person" are more likely to vote for civil rights for gays and lesbians. It is not a surprise. Everyone has been taught negative stereotypes and myths. If they actually know gay people then they go, ?Oh. I guess those aren't true. If I am voting against civil rights, well I am voting against my friend's civil rights and I really don't want to do that." So, yes, it is important that we come out. At the same time, I think it is important for people to do that at their own pace. I also think it is important to acknowledge that some of us have a lot more privilege than other people do and the dangers for coming out are different for different people.
Int.: You talked about how, for awhile, Colorado for Family Values was ?in your mouff," they were in your face, you thought of them as evil. What do you think of those people, the religious right who are going around and getting those petitions signed? What do you think of them now? How do you understand these people?
Russell: I think I would make a distinction between a few people who are at the top of the religious right calling the shots and all the others. I think that, at the top, there are a lot of politically hungry people who are doing things with mostly political motives. I would distinguish between those people on the one hand, and your rank- and-file church-going fundamentalist Christian on the other. I think the average fundamentalist Christian, who maybe sends $20 to CFV and goes and gets some petitions signed are people who genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing. I disagree with them vehemently, but I don't think they are particularly evil. I don't think their intentions are particularly evil. I think they can get into some awfully aggressive stances when they are doing what they're doing. But I really believe they are doing what they think is right. They see this thing that has been called the ?homosexual agenda." They are worried about what it is going to mean. I think fear drives the rank-and-file movement more than any other single phenomenon. Probably power drives it at the top.
Int.: Have you seen any dialogue that has been healing between gays, lesbians, and bisexuals and members of the religious right? Have you seen any bridge building actually happening?
Russell: Personally, no I haven't. I think it is very difficult. It is a case of intractable conflict because people start out with such differing assumptions. I am very interested in what can be done productively with intractable conflicts of all kinds. I don't think it is impossible that there could be some kind of joining. Now, we have an interesting case of that in Colorado Springs with a man named Greg Walta, who, in fact, called himself a conservative Christian and who, in fact, looked at Colorado for Family Value's campaign and said: I don't think what you are doing is just what you say you are doing. I think there is another agenda here. I am very willing not to give gays and lesbians special rights because I also think homosexuality is an abomination. But I don't think this campaign of hate is acceptable and I don't think this amendment is acceptable and I don't think this amendment is doing all that you say it is doing. . . . It was funny; I was on a panel with him once, on the same side. It was funny to be on the same side as somebody who really thinks I am sinful. But nonetheless, there we were. I think he is an individual case of somebody who has found a middle ground in this whole argument. He said, I don't approve of homosexuality. He will say very clearly: At the same time, I don't approve of taking civil rights away from people, and I don't approve of fostering bigotry against a group of people. So, those cases exist.
Int.: Now let's say you are listening to this and you are from another state and the petitions are going around. You know that an amendment similar to Amendment Two--the wording may be slightly different--is going to be put on your state's ballot. What have you learned from a political vantage point? What should people be doing in their state?
Russell: I am probably not the person to ask that particular question, since I am a better psychologist than a politician. I think, though, that people have to come together for mutual support. People have to give one another permission to work on the campaign and to not work on the campaign. But, it is important not to be isolated doing whatever you are doing. It is also important to be active. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to be active by getting counterpetitions or doing fundraisers or doing debates or whatever. But it does mean that you need to be active and you need to be working with other gay and lesbian people. That will help you to not take in the negative messages.
Int.: What would you say to heterosexual allies? What can they do?
Russell: I think heterosexual allies can use a campaign like this as an incredible, if difficult, opportunity to really get a feel for homophobia. One of the things that my heterosexual friends said to me over and over is, ?I never really quite took it seriously. I never really understood it. I kind of minimized it. I thought you were over-emphasizing it." You can use it as an education. You can also use it as an opportunity to learn what it is like to come from a position where you have power and privilege, as a heterosexual, to actually do something for a group and with a group that is being oppressed at a given time. It was similar to the message that I was getting for myself in Dachau when I realized that I, as a white person and a gentile, really had to use that power and privilege to work on behalf of people who were being oppressed, who didn't have the particular kinds of privileges that I have.
Int.: Would you go further into this idea of the difference between being a victim and being a defender--the defender of human rights versus a victim of oppression? What's the difference?
Russell: If I am a victim, it's happening and I feel powerless to anything about it. I can take it in, I can be hurt by it. I can be oppressed by it and I will believe the messages about it. I am inactive; I am powerless. If I am a defender, the oppression might be just as bad, but I'm feeling differently about it, because I haven't given up. I haven't lost my power. I haven't lost my own hopefulness and I haven't lost my ability to know that something will make a difference. Even if I can't change the oppression, I can change how I feel about myself. That is really the message in that whole scene at the intersections in Pueblo when I was standing out there. I could take in negative messages. That was an oppressive thing that was happening to us, when people would scream insulting things to us. I could take those in and be a victim or I could yell at them and wave and say, ?I'm not going to take that message in. You will not define who I am standing on this street corner. I am powerful. I am a lesbian and I'm proud of it. I am political and I am proud of that. And, no, I won't let you define me. I won't feel the shame that you want me to feel when you have called me whatever name you want to call me on the street corner." That is the difference between being a victim and being a defender--being a resident of the planet and being somebody who is going to defend the planet against inequity of all kinds.
Int.: For you it has been important to connect the civil rights movements, struggles for human rights, for all different kinds of peoples. Is that correct?
Russell: Yes, it has.
Int.: Can you talk more about that? Why do think that is important? I am a lesbian, and I am going to fight for gay and lesbian and bisexual rights, but that's as far as it goes. How many agendas can you work on anyway?
Russell: I am going to answer this by going back to an earlier question that you had when you asked me what would I have done differently on the campaign. One other thing that I would have done differently is that I would have made sure that I was working on some other issue at the same time. Now, I was stretched out in terms of time and energy as it was, but what I would have worked on would have been some other issue, where I was more in touch with my power, some other issue where I was working from a place of privilege, rather than from the victimized place. I think that when we are just working on the issue where we are oppressed, it is easier to become victims and feel like victims. When we are working on multiple levels and on multiple fronts, and particularly when we are working at places where we aren't being oppressed, we are very much in touch with the power that we have. If I am working on a racist issue, if I am working on English Only, I know that I am coming from a place of privilege in the society. It is harder for me to just fall into thinking that I am a victim, because, in fact, I am not a victim on that issue. I think that those of us who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual found it so easy to think we had been the only people that this had ever happened to. I fell into that during the campaign, too. In point of fact, we were not at all the only people that this had happened to. We're joining an honored group of people whose history goes back, probably, to cave man days. We have always, as a human race, managed to find people to oppress. Gays and lesbians are being singled out at one level, but at another level we are not. We are just the ?new kids on the block" and it is a little more acceptable to say homophobia more crassly than to say racism. The more I know that, the less I feel like I am being singled out. The more I connect my struggles with everybody else's struggles, the less likely I am to think, ?Oh, my God. I am the only one this is happening to." Because I am not.
Int.: Do you think it is possible to look at the passage of Amendment Two and other such amendments as indicators that gays and lesbians as making positive strides towards their rights, because for the first time, these subjects are coming up for discussion. A topic like gays in the military is up for discussion. We are actually moving light years ahead here in this decade.
Russell: I think that is true for a couple of reasons. One, I don't think that we would have been targeted for an Amendment Two if we hadn't been making those strides. In some sense, the religious right says that pretty explicitly. The religious right says some version of the line, ?We're worried because gays and lesbians are getting too visible." Now that is a sign that we are doing something right. Once homosexuality became part of the agenda, we lost something that had always been a problem for us--a comfortable problem in some ways, but a problem nonetheless--and that was invisibility. We are no longer invisible. For days and weeks and months at a time, gays and lesbians were in every newspaper in this state. That has never happened before. People who never had to think about it are now having to wrestle with it. I have talked to people who never had to really question where they were on this issue. Now they have had to look at their homophobia and they have had to examine it and they had to try and get some education on it. That's a wonderful opportunity. That's what the religious right is giving us by thinking we are evil--is the opportunity, in fact, to be much more powerful.
Int.: Can you say more about that?
Russell: I said, and this was from Wekesa, Wekesa's wisdom is that if you call people evil, you will make them powerful. The religious right subtly or overtly has called us evil. In the process, they have given us the opportunity to find one another, to set up organizations, to become politically active and to get political expertise. Before Amendment Two happened, there was no network of gays and lesbians in this state. After Amendment Two we got that network. I found it when I used it to get out those surveys and I got as many surveys from rural parts of Colorado as I did from Boulder and Denver. What that means is that we have ways to get to one another, we have political networks that are in place. We have people who had been isolated, who are no longer isolated, who are feeling more empowered. In all the survey answers, everyone of the questions that went in the direction of how you are feeling about being gay and lesbian, all of them went in the more positive direction, even as people were terribly traumatized. Trauma is that funny thing. If you face that fear and really deal with it, you will get stronger. People have gotten stronger. We are getting a lot of power from people coming after us.
Int.: Now, in terms of what is happening now with Amendment Two, it is a little confusing. I know that it was declared unconstitutional by the District Court in Colorado. Yet, even though the wording has been declared unconstitutional, the amendment has been declared unconstitutional here, in a handful of states, people are attempting to put legislation similar to Amendment Two on the ballot. Is that correct?
Russell: Yes, that is correct. In fact, they often call them Colorado-style amendments.
Int.: Now what is the thinking behind this? This is an amendment that has been shown to be unconstitutional. Why would you put it on a ballot in your state? I don't get it.
Russell: Well at this point, it has been declared unconstitutional at District Court and in the scheme of legal hierarchy, a district court is small potatoes. In one district court, in Denver, Colorado Amendment Two has been declared unconstitutional. Now it is true that the Colorado Supreme Court in dealing with the injunction when it did, has also tipped its hand a little bit. It looks like they might well come to the same conclusion. But, the Colorado Supreme Court and the District Court in Denver are two very different entities, in contrast to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gale Norton, who is the Attorney General of Colorado, has said we are going to take this to the U.S. Supreme Court if we lose in Colorado. If it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is anybody's guess what is going to happen. I don't have any doubt that we are going to have to deal with Amendment Two again. We'll either have to deal with it if the U.S. Supreme Court hears it and says it is constitutional, in which case it would become part of the state constitution. If the U.S. Supreme Court either fails to hear and lets stand Colorado's position, or if the U.S. Supreme Court hears it and it is found to be unconstitutional, then Colorado for Family Values has already made clear its intentions to resume its efforts to do another kind of amendment that they hope will pass constitutional muster. So we are either going to get it, in effect, or we are going to get a new effort by Colorado for Family Values. In the other states, they are banking that their state court system would say things differently than ours. Plus, some of the states have used what has come out of the Colorado decision so far and have massaged the wording of their amendments to take those things into account. Ultimately, everybody knows we are going to have a bunch of these to be voted on and we are going to have one that eventually gets decided upon by the U.S. Supreme Court--one or a number of them that gets decided on. My guess is that throughout the decade of the '90s we are going to see a whole lot of action of just this sort. That's why a movement perspective is critical.
Int.: And the movement's success would be in the passage of a federal civil rights law.
Russell: Absolutely.
Int.: Now, do you think that is inevitable? Am I too optimistic here? It seems inevitable to me.
Russell: I think that unless we go into a period of incredible regression and entrenchment in this country, which I don't think is outside the realm of possibility, unless we go into that period, I think yes, civil rights for gays and lesbians, at a federal level is inevitable. Obviously, I think it should happen. It is the right thing to do and we will probably get around to doing it, unless we get real crazy and become incredibly repressive, in which case a whole bunch of people, not just gays and lesbians and bisexuals, are going to be in real trouble.
Int.: Now it sounds be me, Glenda, that what you are saying from the survey research that you have done, that the most important thing to help people from being traumatized is that first they need to be aware of what is going on. They need to bond and group with other gay, lesbians, bisexual, and heterosexual allies and they need to somehow do things that strengthen their sense of identity, their sense of a positive identity. Is that correct?
Russell: Yes.
Int.: Give me some specifics.
Russell: Some ideas would be go to fun gay, lesbian, and bisexual cultural events. Know what your culture is, know what your history is. Go to films that come out of that culture. Go sing in a gay or lesbian chorus or mixed chorus. I think, as I mentioned, that singing in Harmony was terribly important to me because I was having the opportunity to sing songs that were very affirmative. That ended up being a very nice antidote to the campaign messages that were being put out by Colorado for Family Values. One of the things a gay and lesbian chorus in another state could do is a once- a-month basis or something like that, invite people in--the folks who are really afraid of singing for performance, but just folks who want to sing--and get them to sing affirming songs, to be in concert with other people--not literally to be in a musical concert--but to be in community with other people and to be in community in a very relaxed, but positive kind of way. I think anything that people can do that makes them feel active rather than passive, that makes them feel powerful rather than powerless, and that makes them feel in community rather than alone, will be helpful.
Int.: I know that right after Amendment Two passed I went to a bunch of meetings and different events, and at a certain point, maybe about a month afterwards, I was feeling like, ?If I see another group of lesbians in a room, I just think I'm going to barff. I can't handle it anymore." I thought, why am I having this reaction to ?my own people?" Do you understand that?
Russell: Yes. I don't know specifically. We haven't talked about what that meant to you, but I can say in general that I think right after the election we in general--gays, lesbians and bisexuals in Colorado--were coming from such a victimized place, that the energy in a lot of those meetings was really a bizarre kind of energy. It was the energy of people who are victimized and we were scrambling and didn't know what to do. Everybody was traumatized and none of us knew we had been traumatized. It is sort of like, do you want to hang around with other people who have been in a plane crash? No, I want to leave the plane crash behind and go think about something else. In fact, some of those groups became groups that figured out a way to get empowered and figured out a way to get beyond the victimization. Those are the groups that would be more fun to be around. The groups that didn't get beyond that are groups which probably stopped meeting after some point because people couldn't tolerate that sense of powerlessness any longer.
Int.: I wonder also if there is some way that people internalize the messages that they hear from the media, so that you start looking at your lesbian, gay, and bisexual brothers and sisters as some how like the images that are being portrayed?
Russell: I think so.
Int.: It is a difficult thing to actually believe that I could be thinking that, but sometimes I think that that is true.
Russell: I think it is true for a lot of people. I think it is inevitable, again, that you will internalize some of those messages. Some people on the comments part of the survey actually mentioned stuff that they sort of started believing that they didn't really believe in their heads, but believed in their guts. That's really one of the differences between homophobia or racism or sexism and any rational line of thinking. Homophobia and racism and sexism get in, not because we necessarily cognitively endorse them, but they get in through our pores. So, we can't just get after the messages by being cognitive and saying, ?Well, the research says that is not true, so I know it's not true," because it seeps in at an emotional level. That's part of why it is important to do good, emotional things with other gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I think that another thing that is useful, and I have done this on some other research that I have done, is just looking at homophobic messages and making sure that when you are doing that you do it to deconstruct them, not only at a cognitive level, but at an emotional level, and make sure you know how it hits you, not just in your head, but in your heart.
Int.: How do you do that kind of deconstruction on an emotional level?
Russell: Well, one of the things that I think you do is that you make sure you don't do it alone. So, you don't read the newspapers everyday all by yourself day after day. The other is that you get it outside of yourself so lots of you can be commenting on it. The other is that you talk with others about how you learned things, why do you think you learned it in that particular way, not just intellectually, but how did it creep in? You know, the person who says I learned this because one time when I was in the movies and there was a lesbian kissing scene, my mother covered my eyes, that is not a cognitive construct. That message came in the gut. You need to deconstruct not just the messages in the newspaper . . . but how it fits in with the messages you got, at an emotional level, when you were growing up.
Int.: Let's say that someone is listening to this and it has stirred up a certain amount of trauma inside of them--they are hearing these messages from the media and they know that they kind of got one foot in a positive identity and one foot in fear and confusion. What should a person like that do?
Russell: A person like that, depending on where they are, if there is some gay and lesbian, bisexual community center or something like that, or a gay and lesbian campus group or some kind of gay and lesbian group, get yourself to it. I think it is far, far more difficult to do this work of undoing the messages when you are alone. Get into a group somewhere that seems like a healthy, productive group. That's a group where people don't feel like they are being victims all the time, but, in fact, they can talk about the victimization that is real. But, they can also talk about the empowerment. The other is that you can hit that cognitive level. Read and find out what the reality it about your culture and what the statistics really say. We come out, in the studies, looking real solid, if you know what the studies are.
Int.: Why do you think that is true?
Russell: When we have been compared with heterosexuals, we look indistinguishable on most indices except on a few things. We tend to be more independent, we tend to be less rigid about sex roles, things like that. The whole volume of psychological studies actually portrays us in a very good light.
Int.: You mentioned another thing. Gay and lesbian people are better at managing fear than other groups of people. Can you explain that?
Russell: Actually, somebody who can explain it much better than I is Suzanne Westenhoffer. She is a lesbian comedienne and she does this little routine where she says you are in the closet, you are out of the closet, now . . . If you think about how good we get at doing that kind of thing, it actually is amazing to me. The danger is that it takes so much energy. But, in fact, we learn to manage living in an oppressive environment. I don't think that is unique to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I think that all people who are members of oppressed groups, have to get better at managing anxiety or else they will get crazy, because oppression will make you crazy if you can't figure out a way to get on top of it.
Int.: If gay, lesbian, and bisexual people look at this as an era in an entire movement of freedom fighting, what can sustain us during this movement? It seems to me that one of the things that happens is that people have a lot of interest when it is in their state and an election is happening and then four or five months later they go back to lives and they forget about it. They are only part of the movement for one or two years there that it directly affects them.
Russell: That is a real problem and part of why it is easy to go backwards. We tend to put in so much when we are doing that political work, and we burn ourselves out. So, one of the answers to that is we need to look at it like a marathon instead of like a sprint. We need to take good care of ourselves and we need to lead full-fledged lives, even when we are being activists. We need to move in and out of being activists. There are times when it is not good to keep doing it. You need to settle down; you need to do something else. You need to re-energize. There are other times when you are ?raring" to go. But, even when you are raring to go, I think, you should never just do political work. I think you need to have your community. I think you need to have your quiet time. I think you need to have your culture. I think you need to have your life that doesn't have anything to do with sexual orientation, but is just your life. And I think you need to value all those parts of your life. The other is that I think when we need to take time out, we don't need to feel guilty about it. It is not particularly useful. It doesn't help at all; in fact, it makes us feel less powerful.
Int.: I think a lot of times people feel that they are not doing enough. No matter what they are doing, it's not enough.
Russell: I think that is an easy response to have or an easy attitude to have if you are putting all your expectations on the notion that ?it's got to happen now." In fact, if this is really going to be a movement that goes on, literally, until I die--and then it will certainly survive my death and will keep going on for many more decades--then there is, by definition, never enough. So, I'll accept that as a given. No, I can't do enough. What is it that I can do? What are the unique talents that I have? I need to work more on the movement as a psychologist, which I am trying to do now with this research, for example, and less as a politician. I don't have it in my heart to be a politician. That's just not who I am. So, I need to find the places that fit for my unique talents and skills and proclivities. Not everybody is going to be doing the frontlines. Not everybody is going to be doing debates. Not everybody can come up with clever campaign slogans. But, everybody can do something that fits with who they are. And if they really honor themselves in the process, they will not only be stronger in terms of the movement, they will be stronger people. That means strong gays, lesbians, and bisexuals and strong heterosexual allies.
(1) This paper is a transcript of a talk given by Dr. Glenda Russell who is a clinical psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Russell worked on the campaign to defeat Amendment Two and has conducted extensive research on the Amendment's effects on gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. This talk integrates the results of Dr. Russell's research with her own experiences as a lesbian dealing with the campaign and its aftermath. The ideas presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Consortium, the University, or Hewlett Foundation. For more information, contact the Conflict Resolution Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0327. Phone: (303) 492-1635, e-mail: crc@cubldr.colorado.edu.