Since I’ll be moving to Texas in August for grad school, I’m constantly looking for something to disrupt the stereotypical notion that Texas is a cesspool of bigotry. Considering Republican legislators in the state are still, eight years after Lawrence v. Texas, trying to recriminalize sodomy, my initial thoughts after I realized Texas was my only real option amounted to: Oh God. I know people from Texas. I know Texas is a great place. But when you think “Texas,” you don’t exactly think “bastion of gay acceptance.”
But, like all stereotypes, this one is also very faulty. ABC’s What Would You Do? filmed a segment at a diner in Farmers Branch, Texas, in which gay parents were treated rudely and denied service by a bigoted waitress. If you haven’t seen What Would You Do? before, it’s a hidden-camera show that sets up outrageous situations and films reactions. I’m a huge fan (even though some of the segments get kind of ridiculous), but I missed this particular show on Friday. This segment is definitely worth watching (please, go get a box of Kleenex first).
Some highlights if, for some reason, you’re unable to watch.
As the waitress says, “It’s bad enough that you’re lesbians, but that they don’t have a father, I think that’s kind of bad. You don’t feel uncomfortable, people watching you?” a woman at a nearby table is already taking (visibly disturbed) interest. The waitress continues: “I mean, isn’t it bad for the kids?”
Finally, a man gets up and literally escorts the waitress away from the family’s table to talk to her about the inappropriateness of her behavior. Although, the talk seems to be less geared toward acceptance than it is toward the outlandishness of the waitress’ behavior in public.
But when the waitress tries to enlist the help of the woman who was looking disturbed at the beginning of the segment, she tells it like it is: “That [the gay family] doesn’t bother me at all. Actually, your behavior bothered me.” When the waitress asks if the woman thinks it’s bad for the kids to have two moms, she simply replies: “No.”
Then, when the waitress tries to actually eject the family from the restaurant, the man who schooled the waitress toward the beginning of the segment gets up again and tells the waitress she’s the one who needs to leave:
You are, by far, the worst waitress I have ever seen in this restaurant, ever. You are a horrible person, and you are a horrible waitress. You need to leave. You need to physically leave this restaurant right now.
The most touching part of the segment comes when the scenario is rerun later. When the waitress ramps up the bigotry and says, “I’m not the one in public, kissing all over another woman, in front of my kids. I actually have morals and standards,” a man at a nearby table decides he has had enough. He says to the waitress: “You believe in Jesus? Don’t judge. That’s it. I’ll never judge you, and I try not to judge other people.” When the waitress doesn’t let up, the man gets up and leaves the restaurant. He returns later and leaves this note at the gay family’s table:
Hello, friends. I know it doesn’t mean much, but I love you all. You have a beautiful family, and I pray that one person’s judgmental intolerance does not in any way put a damper on your hearts or minds. In the words of MLK, Jr., “In the end we remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
The actress reading the note aloud, who is a lesbian in real life, is touched to the point of tears. She breaks out of her role a bit, goes over to his table and hugs him.
But when the waitress doesn’t leave the family alone, the same man who wrote the letter takes a harsher tone:
Who are you? You are a human being. That’s all. That’s it. You are not king, you are not God. You have no choices, you have no place to put anybody in their place.
When it is finally revealed that the scenario was all acting, the man leaves us with some real words of wisdom:
I think silence is one of the failures of people today – that when they see an injustice or an intolerance, they stay silent. And that’s the worst thing.
The scenario is rerun using gay male parents instead, but the reactions are largely the same. There is some stony silence, and one asshole even high-fives the waitress (“That was for the food,” he later claims…really?), but the supportive reactions outweigh the intolerance of others.
As is pointed out later in the segment, the same scenario was run in New York, and only a dozen out of a hundred bystanders stepped in. In Texas, 24 out of 53 stepped up and said something.
So what does this tell us? Well, maybe Texas isn’t so bad after all. Sure, there are bigots and hatemongers there, as well as backward areas – just like anywhere else – but when you have about half the people in a Texas restaurant stepping in to defend a gay family, maybe it’s time to reconsider painting a whole state with a broad brush (I’ve been guilty of doing that many times). And the same is true when painting a liberal state with a broad brush – as we learned from the New York scenario. We truly have seen astonishing progress on issues like gay parenting, and nothing highlights that better than this What Would You Do? segment.
Well, my heart has been warmed for the evening. I hope yours has, too. And, for the record, I can’t wait to move to Texas.