Collegiate Times

While researching an end-of-term communication project last fall, I came upon the Implicit Association Test — an online game that has users correlate images and words at a rapid pace to measure “automatic preference.”
Essentially, an IAT reveals what we might never say or think aloud, but what we subconsciously prefer.
Using the IAT to measure black or white racial preference was integral to my research project, but my penchant for procrastination led me to take the IAT for gay or straight preference.
I found I have an automatic preference for “straight” rather than “gay,” which didn’t surprise me entirely — except for the fact that I am gay.
My exposure to gay culture has been mostly through knowing my uncle, who has always been open and honest with me about his sexuality.
We love to talk about everything — and usually end up agreeing— but at a fundamental level I am obnoxiously more optimistic in my outlook for gay equality. His tone is more measured and doubtful than the rhetoric I employ. I have tremendous unyielding faith in my generation, and that equality will happen.
But how do we measure equality? Marriage? End-of-life benefits? Adoption? The details are fuzzy.
This past Tuesday, I attended the panel “Sexuality and Human Rights in Virginia,” held by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at the Graduate Life Center.
The panel had only been organized a week prior, undoubtedly to address the controversy brought about by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s letter urging state universities to eliminate any policy that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The Tech professors, activists, students and a state senator in attendance were all in unanimous agreement that Cuccinelli overstepped his authority with his directive. However, the discussion on the state of gay rights in Virginia was extremely sobering.
For Virginia, right now, we’re discussing whether institutions should have policies on the books to merely protect gay people from discrimination in their schools and workplaces — a far cry from marriage and adoption rights, the allowance of happiness I expect for my own future.
May 2, 2008 marked the passing of civil rights heroine Mildred Loving, who along with her husband, Richard, were arrested from their home for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act in 1958, five weeks after their wedding. She was black, and he was white.
The Lovings had the option to leave the state or face one-year prison sentences for their unlawful union. They left Virginia, but Mildred wrote to President John F. Kennedy arguing her civil rights had been violated, and the ACLU built a case.
The Lovings case was finally decided by the Supreme Court, where a unanimous ruling on June 12, 1967 declared, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” a “basic civil right.”
The Lovings weren’t gay, but they were too queer for Virginia.
This week, my optimism in future gay equality seems a little silly given the low bar set by our state’s attorney general with regard to civil rights discourse.
But I know social justice movements grow in leaps and bounds. In America, what one day seems inconceivable becomes next week’s reality.
My IAT score, however disappointing, reveals a challenge. Appealing to higher moral ground is never convenient — it requires a commitment to living bravely.
Our collective relegation of equality as “tomorrow’s problem” is embarrassing. If Virginia is for lovers, let’s make it so.
In June 2007, on the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, Mildred Loving issued one of the few public statements she’d made since the ruling:
“I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life,” she wrote. “I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”
I have taken for granted my generation’s tolerance, and I’ve used it as a crutch for my inaction. Civil rights stories end with laws and made-for-textbook quotes, but they begin with subjugated people standing up for themselves — and their allies standing up for them as well.
My IAT needs some work done if I am to respect myself, or the community that I love. This does not happen by swatting away gay equality as a “no-brainer.”

A version of this article appeared in the Apr 15 issue of the Collegiate Times.