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What two packs of weed gummies taught me about America
By Jennifer Finney Boylan
I stepped into a Manhattan dispensary not long ago and left with a sense of uncertainty about the morality of pinball, going to the circus on Sundays, the rise and fall of transgender rights and the legality of dancing to the national anthem.
Not to mention a couple packs of gummies.
This was, incredibly, on the very same street just off Amsterdam Avenue upon which I had lived in 1981, when my roommate, future-filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, and I lived one floor above a storefront marked “Health Food.” If you went in there, you’d find the place dark, lit by nothing more than a couple of ultraviolet lights. On the wall were black light posters of naked women and Jimi Hendrix.
There was a hole in the back wall, and if you put 10 bucks in the hole, and waited, a hand appeared and snatched the money, just like the action of an antique toy bank. A moment later, a little package appeared. Each one was marked with a black stamp that spelled “Heartbeat.”
Yes, it was illegal. And, a few years later, all the weed stores on that strip of Amsterdam would be shut down by the police.
But what was illegal then is legal now. It’s big business to boot: Pot sales in New York state have generated over $1 billion since 2022, including $22 million in taxes (of which $ 7.9 million went to New York City).
There’s no shortage of laws, not to mention moral prohibitions, that have changed with the passage of time. Some of these are humorous: In Michigan, until 2015, it was illegal to dance to the national anthem. In some major cities, pinball was banned until the late ’70s. And in many states, blue laws prohibited all sorts of commerce and activity on Sundays — including, poignantly, going to the circus. From 1989 to 1995, the Ethics Reform Act made a ban on government employees constructing crossword puzzles while at work.
Other overturned or amended laws are more serious. It took constitutional amendments and a Civil War to end slavery and give women the right to vote. More recently, the Supreme Court enshrined marriage equality as the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.
In one poll, 69 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage’s legality. But as recently as 1996, the same percentage of Americans were opposed to it. The change in our perception of right and wrong on this issue is profound; in the colonial era, gay and lesbian people could be put to death for what were then perceived as crimes against nature. Now, a gay Republican with a longtime partner — Richard Grenell — is a special presidential envoy for Donald Trump.
I came out as trans during an era when lives such as mine were not at the top of anyone’s list of things to worry about. Then, in 2012 (a dozen years after my transition), Vice President Joe Biden said he considered trans discrimination the “civil rights issue of our time.” Two years later, Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time magazine as it declared the arrival of the “Transgender Tipping Point.”
Now we have arrived at a very different moment, one in which gay, lesbian and bisexual rights are mostly affirmed by Trump (although some conservatives are now urging the court to reconsider Obergefell) while his administration attempts to erase trans people from the public sphere, in everything from military service to our passports.
The most jaw-dropping of these efforts might have been the removal of the words “transgender” and “queer” at the National Park Service’s Stonewall Uprising memorial website, which celebrates the very place where trans and queer people helped to jump-start a social revolution. You could make a very good argument that we’d never have arrived at Obergefell in 2015 were it not for the now-erased transgender people at Stonewall in 1969.
Acceptance of trans folks has risen and fallen over time. The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin was founded in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld to provide support for trans and nonbinary people; on May 6, 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s first acts as chancellor of Germany was to destroy it. The institute’s books — over 20,000 volumes — were burned in the street in a massive bonfire.
But support for trans people had another early supporter in Jesus Christ, at least judging by Matthew 19:12. “There are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs by men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
That’s from the New King James translation, but I especially like the way the Holman Christian Standard Bible concludes that verse: “Let anyone accept this who can.”
...What is it then, that we can accept? How do we find our truth when the definition of what is moral or immoral can change in a day?
Most of us choose to obey the law, even when we disagree with it, fearing the consequences. We’re also aware that if each person interpreted the law according to their own lights, the result would be anarchy. It’s this awareness, for instance, that keeps me from running a red light at 3 a.m., even when there are no other cars in sight.
On the other hand, in certain circumstances, it’s necessary to break the law to do the right thing — especially when the laws of the country are immoral. Huckleberry Finn chooses to free Jim from slavery, even though the laws of his country expressly forbid any such thing. “I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’”
Huck’s country would fight a war over the morality of decisions like that one. It would take another century before the passage of the Voting Rights Act ensured that the antislavery amendments to the Constitution were legally enforced. (An act that the Supreme Court then gutted in 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder.)
...These are days when, to do the right thing, it might sometimes be necessary not to just follow the law of the land, but to instead listen to the laws of our consciences.
Let anyone accept this who can.
Rob's comment:
I agree with almost everything Boylan says here, except she doesn't not run red lights only because she's afraid of getting a ticket. She surely also has a sense of self-prevervation and even concern for the safety of others. To program yourself to not run red lights in any circumstance seems like a good idea.
It is significant that Hitler and the Nazis made it a priority to burn books on sexuality.
Contemporary conservatives are still the main perps for banning books. Many of them think they only need one book, the one that features Jesus Christ. That some Christian fundamentalists make their ignorance a point of pride tells us something significant about an important part of the Republican Party's political base.
I've never been able to "accept" Jesus as my savior or, for that matter, any other religious interpretation of human life.
Trump himself doesn't seem to be particularly religious or homophobic, but he will go along with the mob---that is, the Republican base---if he finds it politically expedient. Even Republicans probably understand that explicit homophobia and racism are no longer acceptable.
If they can't accept that in 2025 America, too fucking bad.
Labels: Atheism and Religion, Cops, Democratic Party, Drugs, Gay Rights, History, Radical Right, Reading, Right and Left, The Repugnant Party
