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This is the reality of being a lesbian in Mississippi

Editor’s Note: This story was first featured in April 2016, but in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, it’s important to read again.

“More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.” – Harvey Milk

via Getty

My name is Jana, and welcome to Mississippi 2016. If you are at all pondering what it is like here, and what HB 1523 truly means, well allow me to take you on a journey for a moment. Close your eyes. You are standing before your employer, and he asks you to have a seat. Your palms are sweaty because you are anxious. However, you are optimistic. This must be good news! After all, you are the highest performing employee. I mean, sure it’s a small, private business, but Mr. Business Owner raves about your work ethic, your efficiency and what an asset you are to his business on practically a weekly basis. “Ms. /Mr. Employee….” He addresses you with reluctance. “We have decided to let you go…..”

In August of 2014, my family and I were featured in Showtime’s L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin, and on Tuesday, April 5, 2016, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant pulled back the mask on this state.

What a diabolical relationship we have, Mississippi and I, the home of all of my achievements and misfortunes. The keeper of each of my secrets, Mississippi. A state that has strengthened me yet kicked me while I was down. A state that has taught me the meaning of hospitality yet slammed doors in my face. A state that has loved me, yet sent me to “the back of the bus,” and now HB 1523 has sent us all to the back of the bus. Mississippi has plastered on its forehead for the world to see, “bigoted and intolerant,” and Mississippi doesn’t care. For those who may have been in hiding this week, HB 1523 is a “religious freedom” bill passed by a staggering margin in the Senate as well as the house and was signed on Tuesday by the governor.

Here’s an excerpt:

The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that:

(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; (b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and (c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.

Therefore, as of July 1st, I am officially a second class citizen, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a lesbian, or because I’m in an interracial relationship. Yay me, right? Double whammy! You see, I am not agitated that Joe at the hardware store does not want to serve me, or that Sally at the sno cone shop won’t give me extra cream (if you’ve never had cream on a sno cone/sno ball, my gosh, you have missed out on the meaning of life). They do not unsettle me. They are entitled to feel however they choose, no matter how unenlightened those feelings may be.

I, however, would much rather Joe tell me he doesn’t want to help me because I’m gay. I won’t patronize his business, and he doesn’t have to sustain a facade of homophobia, which is really curiosity of this deviant, hell bound “lifestyle” I have “chosen” to lead. Alternatively, Joe uses the Bible, Jesus’s teachings, a book that so many people – gay, trans, and others rely on for guidance or as a source of fortitude and love – to promote his agenda of discriminate and bigotry.

Joe, nevertheless, is clueless. He knows nothing, not the first thing about the LGBTQ community. His only culpability was being born in Mississippi. Joe grew up in a small town like many of the people he has grown to despise. He was raised with and still depends on his “deeply held religious beliefs,” and all Joe knows is someone told him one time that being gay is wrong. In all honesty, Joe has no clue why he doesn’t like gay people, other than the warm, tingly feeling he gets when a gay man walks into his hardware store.

So now, Joe uses the bible to condone his intolerance, ignorance and discrimination. I cannot for one moment fathom how Jesus can wash the feet of a prostitute, have dinner with his betrayer AND offer forgiveness to a thief while being crucified, but right here in Mississippi Joe won’t sell me a flat head and Sally won’t give me my damn cream!

The governor says he wants to protect business owners from discrimination so that-ready for this?-they can discriminate. Let that sink in for a moment.

Mississippi, a state whose sons and daughters consist of Robin Roberts, Fannie Lou Hammer, Lance Bass and Tennessee Williams. A state which celebrates the likes of Medgar Evers, B.B. King, James Meredith and Ida B. Wells. Where is the correlation, you ask. Well, this same state has passed laws at one point or another that infringed upon the rights of these natives all because they were “different.”

It’s funny: After L Word Mississippi aired, it was met with a host of comments, opinions, criticisms. The most notable of criticism being that our stories weren’t real; that they must have been exaggerated. I recall one person saying she was from Mississippi, and she never knew anywhere to be “like that.” One said, “That can’t be true. They must have paid them off.”

Funny how now, two years later, our country sits up and listens. We’ve been screaming and flailing our arms saying, “Hey, guys look what’s going on here…” And now that it may be too late, the world is finally taking notice.

I wonder what those critics would have to say today. And I can’t help but ponder why it took such a drastic, horrendous act from our state legislator for people to finally see behind the curtain. If you want my truth, I am hurt, I am angry, I am saddened and I am afraid. I am afraid that Kasen will go to school and the teachers will treat him poorly because he has two mommies. I am saddened that our governor does not see us as people but as problems. I am angry that I must pull away from my partner in a restaurant for fear of being kicked out, or worse, and I am hurt that when the governor looks at me, he only sees an African American lesbian, a threat to what this country was founded upon, when I am so much more.

 

A photo posted by Jana (@jpaige31) on Dec 7, 2014 at 5:44pm PST

 

I am the total of a mother and father who fought and lived through segregation and civil rights, of a grandmother who could not write her own name but cleaned the homes of wealthy white men and women so that her children and grandchildren would have an opportunity at a life of which she could only dream. I am the product of parents who believed that right here in Mississippi a little black girl, who happened to be gay could be the exception and not the rule if her parents worked hard enough and dreamed big enough for their daughter.

This bill is a slap in the face to my grandmother. This bill is a slap in the face to my parents, and it’s a slap in the face to me. It’s a slap to the countless lives that were lost in the name of civil rights. I am more than what you surmise when you look at me, Mr. Governor, and I deserve better from you.

The truth of the matter is that this bill is in fact discrimination of the highest order. It will open doors for more intolerance, hate crimes, and bigotry in the name of religion. It will cause far more problems than it will solve in the misrepresentation of Jesus, and if not reprieved, I am fearful that blood will be shed as a result of HB 1523, in the name of the bible. You cannot spew bigotry and Bible from the same mouth. Apples and oranges cannot grow from the same tree, love and hatred cannot come from the same heart. And this bill and God’s desire for his people do not occupy the same space.

I’m just a little girl from Amory, MS. I grew up drinking sweet tea and going to church every Sunday (yes… every…. single… Sunday!) I grew up saying “Yes ma’am,” and “Please and thank you.” I grew up believing if I worked hard enough, I could be a teacher or doctor or even the governor. I grew up believing that you treat every single person the same, no matter how different they seemed. I grew up believing Jesus loves all of us; white people, black people, gay people, homeless people, short people, left-handed people, and that His house (the church), was the one place every single one of those people could go and just be people. I grew up believing the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Well, HB 1523 is an injustice. And if you think because you are thousands of miles away, or because you’re not directly impacted or because you don’t know a gay person or a trans person, or because “it’s not your business,” you’re not called to action, then you are sadly mistaken. This injustice in Mississippi is a threat to justice in California, North Dakota & Florida. It’s a threat to justice in New York, and in Texas, Nevada, and Michigan. This injustice in Mississippi is a threat to justice in your back yard.

As a small child in church, we sang “Yes, Jesus loves me / For the Bible tells me so.” Well, I am no longer the little girl who believes that all people were created equal. I no longer believe that if I work hard enough, I can be anything. I no longer believe that Jesus’ house is a safe haven for all, and I no longer believe that all people, no matter how different they may seem, are treated the same. Those things are not true, because, on April 5th, MISSISSIPPI told me so.

Over 200 years ago these words were ratified in the preamble of the constitution and in 2016, it was modified.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”

“Unless you’re different.” (Governor Phil Bryant, Mississippi 2016)

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