The Failed Promises of America

~ On Your Mind with Sean Hanrahan ~

Ever since the 303 Creative LLC vs. Elenis Supreme Court decision in June, I have been thinking a lot (or have continued thinking a lot) about America, and specifically, what it means to me as a gay poet. The decision effectively gives Christians carte blanche to discriminate against LGBTQ people. And is part of a larger framework where I feel Democrats are playing checkers and Republicans are playing chess in this seeming desire to turn our country into some less Hollywoodized version of Gilead. My thoughts center around the notion that this nation does not deserve its queer citizens.  

In my opinion, I have often believed America to be too broad a concept to be worthy of as much veneration as it receives, and in some cases, demands, i.e. the debates over kneeling for the anthem or forcing students to recite the pledge of allegiance at school. I readily identify myself as a Philadelphian (I love this city despite its faults) or a Virginian (I love the state I was raised in despite its many faults.) As a Virginian, I grew up learning Robert E. Lee was an “honorable” man fighting for the South, (I just looked this up while writing), and it took until 2022 until all parts of Route 1 were renamed to Emancipation Highway from Jefferson Davis Highway, which is what we called it for decades. Both ideologies that stun and sadden me now. 

Why do I love Virginia so? It is perhaps the geography (Virginia’s beautiful), the people I met living there, the formative experiences who made me who I am. Virginians, like Philadelphians or anywhere really, love their home. Philadelphia and Virginia are discrete entities and places I feel I have a connection to—in a way, I have never felt towards America. Someone now reading this is probably saying the immortal phrase, “Why don’t you leave it then”? America is too thin-skinned to take on much criticism, or so I have been shown and told. 

Perhaps, I feel a lack of connection to America because it represents a failed promise to so many of its citizens. A promise that says America will strive toward justice, equality, and freedom for all its citizens, while, at the same time, it works overtime in denying justice, equality, and freedom to various others that do not fit into the vision of those who rule the roost think should comprise America’s elect. Can we expect more from a country built on excluding, exploiting, or even exterminating those who did not fit into such a narrow version of Manifest Destiny?  

Writing from a gay perspective, which I cannot help but doing in my poetry and this venture into essay writing, myself, and people like me, have been consciously denied equality. In one of my poems, “America Is the Lie We Tell Ourselves,” I wrote “I wasn’t even an American until 2003;/ even then my citizenry/ was granted provisionally.” In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence vs. Texas that homosexuality was legal. See how one government body (the Supreme Court) pretty much carves out legal space for queer people in this country? Joe Biden says some lovely things, but has not managed to do much for us. And now that the Supreme Court thinks we are worthy of discrimination, we will see those rights reduced or annihilated. Any time someone tells me it is not worth voting, or the Democrats blah…blah…blah, I feel it must be nice to have such low stakes in the outcome. I have my own issues with the Democratic Party, but, at the moment, they are the only stopgap against fascism.  

The Supreme Court granted LGBTQ people two (presumably last for a very long while) favors: legalizing same sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015) and forbidding LGBTQ discrimination in employment (Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020!) To put this in a personal perspective, for 42 years of my life I could have been fired for being gay. My husband and I were married in 2015 after 6 years of thinking this would never happen for us. Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage in 2014, but Obergefell meant we would have our marriage recognized anywhere in America. But the composition of the current Supreme Court, gives me a low-level, yet still existential fear, that these rights could be denied to us again. Since apparently the Supreme Court giveth, and the Supreme Court taketh away. (See Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 2022.) Even now, certain localities, states, rich conservatives, fundamentalist/bigoted Christians, and Republicans are working to sow hate against the LGBTQ community and erode our recently obtained rights.  

I understand cycles of history and how everything, sadly including human rights, ebbs and flows. But what does this say about Americans (and possibly humanity) that it should be ever thus? Why can’t we as a species truly evolve and realize we have more important things to talk about. I don’t know, perhaps, saving the planet, decreasing poverty, increasing health care access, etc. Instead, this country likes to wallow in a shallow mire of cultural wars and whataboutism. Are the DeSantises and Trumps and bigoted website designers the true face of America? Those dolls in the dollhouse in the Shining City on a Hill of which Reagan spoke. Are queer people just the underside of the American flag and meant to be patched over when necessary? 

I have often thought about leaving this country. Some circumstances deny that…employment, family, friends who detest the Shining City on a Hill ethos, but I realize discrimination, the rising tide of nationalism, climate change will come for us no matter where we are, so perhaps it’s best to speak out, fight, march, and vote.  

Every time, I see an American flag now, I shudder. It’s become a symbol of repression, or even regression, for me. In my chapbook Gay Cake, the same book where “America Is the Lie We Tell Ourselves” appears, I write in “Stonewall Transcendence” after an American flag was raised outside of where LGBTQ people rebelled against the oppressive New York/American police stage regulating our lives: “This moment this split second of transcendence/ gives me hope some small sense/ that one of the stars or the stripes/ on the American flag fluttering/ in this holy queer space/ may represent all of us.” My husband often chides me for being a pessimist, but I, in good conscience and with much reflection, truly do not believe America is capable of allowing that.  

American is not an adjective I used to describe myself. America cannot, does not, and will not see my value. I have learned to live outside its inability to love.  

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Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collections Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt) and Ghost Signs (2023 Alien Buddha) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, One Art, Poetica Review, Serotonin, and Voicemail Poems. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days and Ekphrastic Poetry and hosted poetry events throughout Philadelphia, including a monthly reading for Moonstone Arts Center.