Daniel Hernandez helped save the congresswoman's life -- and yes, his
sexuality and ethnicity matter
The Giffords shooting's gay, Hispanic hero
Daniel Hernandez helped save the congresswoman's life -- and yes, his
sexuality and ethnicity matter
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
AP
Daniel Hernandez, an intern with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,
D-Ariz., walks across the lawn outside University Hospital Sunday,
Jan. 9, 2011 in Tucson, Ariz.It didn't take long after 20-year-old
political intern Daniel Hernandez emerged as the hero of Saturday's
mass shooting in Arizona for the cynics to figure out the angle. As a
poster on Free Republic remarked, "Look shortly for the leftist media
to push the 'Gay, Hispanic-American Intern saving the Liberal
Congresswoman's life from the Tea Party' angle." Well, Freepers, here
it is!
It's not quite that simple, of course. However we try to understand
the causes of the tragedy in Arizona and the political rhetoric of
violence, it seems clear that there's considerably more to the
disturbing story of shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner than can be
explained by pointing to a few wry Sarah Palin quips. And if simply
being gay and Latino were grounds for heroism, Ricky Martin's face
would be on the $10 bill.
Daniel Hernandez is, by any measure, an extraordinary young man. He
had been interning in Gabrielle Giffords' office only five days when
an event at a local Safeway thrust him into the international
spotlight for his quick thinking, bravery and competence in the wake
of unimaginable violence. On the "Today" show Monday, Matt Lauer
explained how Hernandez drew upon his high school training as a
certified nursing assistant to check on the pulses of other shooting
victims before noticing the severity of Giffords' wounds and, as he
puts it, prioritizing her. He put her upright and held her in his lap
as he applied pressure to staunch the blood. "I could tell she had a
severe gunshot," he said. "I just tried to do my best until emergency
medical services could arrive. My focus was on making sure I was doing
everything I could to take care of her." Even when the ambulance
arrived, he stayed with her, because "I saw my job then as not taking
care of her medical needs but taking care of her emotional needs. I
tried to comfort her and make sure she knew she wasn't alone. I let
her know I was going to try to contact her parents and her husband."
In the two days since the shooting, Hernandez has emerged in
interviews as a graceful presence with a no doubt promising future,
with considerably much more going for him than his status as a
minority. So why should the sexual orientation of this eminently
competent, compassionate person keep coming up in this tale? Why is
his ethnicity, and the fact that he grew up speaking Spanish and
attending dual language schools, of any consequence? Hernandez never
asked to be the face of a movement. He doesn't represent any one group
any more than Jared Lee Loughner is your typical white guy. And that's
exactly why it matters.
It matters because guys like Arizona Sen. John McCain, who described
the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" as "a very sad day," still think
that orientation has an effect on whether or not a person can ably
serve in the military. It matters because the notion that two people
of the same sex can love each other and build a life together is still
considered in many parts of the country, including Arizona, a threat
to what is laughably referred to as "traditional marriage" -- as if
heterosexuals have really mopped up the floor with this whole
commitment thing. It matters because last week, when Arizona banned a
Tucson district's Mexican-American studies program, state's Attorney
General Tom Horne referred to it as "propagandizing and brainwashing."
It matters because just last year Arizona enacted a law that would not
merely allow but require immigration officials to determine the
immigration status of anyone "where reasonable suspicion exists" that
the person might be in the country illegally. And "reasonable
suspicion," as many civil libertarians pointed out, might just boil
down to having a darker shade of skin or speaking Spanish.
That's just Hernandez's home of Arizona. And though Pima County
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik scathingly referred to his state as "a mecca
for racism and bigotry," violence, racism and bigotry aren't confined
to any one ZIP code -- they exist all over this great land of ours.
They exist just as surely as Hernandez shows that kindness and bravery
are alive and well in Arizona.
It's still far too easy for a small-minded yahoo to champion
discrimination based on orientation and race, and it's just as easy
for another small-minded yahoo somewhere else to believe the red
states are indeed "meccas of racism and bigotry." If any good can come
out of something as unfathomably horrible as Saturday's mass shooting,
let it be that it shakes up a few preconceptions. That it shows the
world that a hero can be gay or straight, can speak English or Spanish
or both, and that stupid laws can exist in places full of good people.
And anyone who has any doubt of what kind of person deserves to serve
next to him in battle, or stand before their community and declare
their love, or go to school, or walk down the street without being
asked for paperwork needs to hear that and remember that, again and
again until it sinks in. Yes, the "gay Hispanic American" saved a life
on Saturday, and yes, it does matter.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of
"Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream."
Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/embeedub More: Mary
Elizabeth Williams
More:
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/01/10/daneil_hernandez_gay_latino_hero/index.html
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