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Constitutional Recognition Of Non-Discrimination On The Basis Of Sexual Orientation

2012-01-21T10:03:06.000Z

Introduction

Human rights treaties do not specifically mention sexual orientation. However, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has been determined to be incompatible with adherence to the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reflected in all other universal and regional human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[1] The African Charter, and the International Convention on Social Economical and Cultural Rights. In their preambles,the treaties ‘recall that human rights are universal and shall apply to all individuals, and stressing therefore its commitment to guarantee the equal dignity of all human beings and the enjoyment of rights and freedoms of all individuals without discrimination on any ground’ .However, despite being signatories to the treaties ,Many African states retain criminal sanctions for same-sex relationships that are derive from the colonial era; prominent among them, is the Republic of Zambia, were removing of such criminal sanctions from the statute book remains very much an up-hill struggle. The following paper shall seek to shade more light on the country’s current legal status concerning same sex relations, furthermore it shall elucidate the political, religious as well as Social adverse impact discrimination has LGBT person in Zambia.

Legal Issues:

The legal basis for non-discrimination amongst people in Zambia is firmly laid. Article 11 of the Constitution of Zambia of 1991, as amended by Act no. 17 of 1996, establishes that “every person in Zambia has been and shall continue to be entitled to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, whatever his race, place of origin, political opinions, color, creed, sex or marital status [2]

Further Article 23(1) [3]states that “no law shall make any provision that is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect”.

The constitutional anti-discrimination clause is set out in Article 23(2) [4]that reads “no person shall be treated in a discriminatory manner by any person acting by virtue of any written law or in the performance of the functions of any public office or any public authority”.

Article 23(3)[5] defines “discrimination” as any “different treatment to different persons attributable, wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, tribe, sex, place of origin, marital status, political opinions color or creed whereby persons of one such description are subjected to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of another such description are not made subject or are accorded privileges or advantages which are not accorded to persons of another such description”.

This right to non-discrimination is not limited to enumerated grounds. Every international and regional human rights instrument that protects against discrimination includes “other status” or language equivalent thereto. Zambia is a state party of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) following its accession on April 10, 1984. Article 2(1) of the ICCPR[6]: states “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, Property, birth or other status.” Despite this, and the Zambian Constitution’s strong anti-discrimination Articles, it is deplorable that hatred of the small but significant Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) community - and the violation of their rights - continues unabated in a country that claims to embrace fundamental human rights principles by ratifying them at both regional and international level.The African Charter for example calls on the individual to act in a spirit of “tolerance, dialogue and consultation”.

in addition Article 2[7] of the Charter promotes “Every individual shall be entitled to the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms recognized and guaranteed in the present Charter without Distinction of any kind such as race, ethnic group, color, sex, language, religion, political or any other opinion, national and social origin, fortune, birth or any status” If this was the case in practice and not just in words, then Zambia would not be a place where bigoted homophobia could thrive.

Equal Protection in International Law

Article 26 of the ICCPR: “All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”[8]
Article 3 of the African Charter: “Every individual shall be equal before the law. Every individual shall be entitled to equal protection of the law.” [9]Although the instruments listed above do not include “sexual orientation” among the enumerated categories, these categories are clearly intended to be illustrative and not exhaustive.

The use of the phrase “or other status” means that the list of categories is open-ended. That is why the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights offered a similar explanation of the term “other status:” when it stated ‘The nature of discrimination varies according to context and evolves over time. A flexible approach to the ground of “other status” is thus needed to capture other forms of differential treatment that cannot be reasonably and objectively justified and are of a comparable nature to the expressly recognized grounds in Article 2(2) of the (ICESCR) which reads “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” These additional grounds are commonly recognized when they reflect the experience of social groups that are vulnerable and have suffered and continue to suffer marginalization.[10]

These provisions should be interpreted as prohibiting all forms of discrimination including discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Human Rights Committee[11] followed such an equality-based approach in the case of Toonen v Australia.[12] In this case, the Human Rights Committee decided that the criminalization of sexual relations between persons of the same sex constitutes a violation of the right to non-discrimination in the ICCPR.[13] In its decision, the Human Rights Committee found that the criminalization of sexual acts between persons of the same sex constitutes a violation of Mr Toonen’s rights against discrimination as well as to equal protection before the law.

The most outrageous violation of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights in Zambia is constituted by the Zambian Penal Code, Act of 1995, Cap 87 of the laws of Zambia that criminalizes same-sex sexual conduct in private between consenting adults - so contravening Articles 2(1), 17 and 26 of the ICCPR, were the Human Rights Committee was of the view that,with ‘the reference to “sex” in articles 2, paragraph 1, and 26 was to be taken as including sexual orientation’.[14]

Section 155 [15]of the Zambian Penal Code, establishes that:

“Any person who-

(a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; or

(b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or

(c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature;

is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years”.

Similar to the Tasmanian statute outlawed by the Human Rights Committee in the Toonen case, section 155 punishes the crime of “unnatural offences”. Section 156[16] punishes with imprisonment for seven years the “attempt to commit unnatural offences”.

Section 157 [17]of the Penal Code explicitly targets same-sex sexual conducts with the provision that criminalizes “indecent practices between males”.

Section 157 reads: “Any male person who, whether in public or private, commits any act of gross indecency with another male person, or procures another male person to commit any act of gross indecency with him, or attempts to procure the commission of any such act by any male person with himself or with another male person, whether in public or private, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for five years”.

As far as sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex are concerned, Section 155a and 157 of the Zambian Penal Code bis occasions discrimination against a group of people (LGBT persons) on the basis of their sexual orientation as such. One may thus conclude that an infringement of the principle of non-discrimination based on sexual orientation, as derived from treaties that have constitutional force, constitute a violation of the Constitution of Zambia,which in the case of Christine Muludika and Seven others Vs The Attoney General,[18] the court held “ the Constitution of the Republic of Zambia is the most important law of the land and if any other law is in consistent to it, it shall be held to be repangunt” as was the matter in this case in which Section 5(4) of the Public Order Act Cap 104 contravened Arts. 20 and 21 of the Constitution and was held to be null and void. Thus Section 155a and 157 are inconsistent to Article 23 of the Constitution of the Zambia which must be held to be null and void.

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT OF LGBT PERSONS AND THE PRACTICAL IMAPCT OF THESE VIOLATIONS

The retention of the colonial penal provisions (long since repealed in the UK - the former colonial power) that criminalize sexual relationships between same-sex consenting adults has a devastating impact on same-sex practicing people in Zambia. it has been said that[t]he experience of homophobia and heterosexism is inextricably a part of being gay, lesbian or bisexual in this country. To be gay, lesbian or bisexual is to be discriminated against, both by other individuals and by institutions. To be gay or lesbian is to be defined as “other,” “sick,” “deviant,” “abnormal,” “criminal.”[19]

Hiding one, denying one's reality and lying to society have become, for many, common behaviors. In such conditions, hidden sexual practices often remains only passing moments of intimacy; the risks of inciting intolerance allowed for nothing more. Men who had or wished to have sex with other men live in a world constrained by omnipresent marginalization and denial. “It is impossible to assess what effects such attitudes might have on the psyche, on self-identity, and, to use terms commonly used today and popular in health promotion circles, on well-being and quality of life in general.”[20]The degree to which homosexual orientation is accepted depends on the perceptions that society has of homosexuality, on people's own objectivity with respect to such perceptions, and on their relations with the gay community and its social networks. This led “U.N chief Ban Ki-moon on December 16, 2011 to call on countries to abolish laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians. When he said 'cultural concerns cannot justify discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation’.

Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in Zambia live in constant fear of detention, discrimination in education, employment, housing, and access to services, and extortion - all buttressed by the existence of sections 155 - 157 of the Penal Code and the lack of specific legal protections for LGBT people under Zambian law.

Zambians who have fought against discrimination related to sexual orientation or gender identity have been systematically silenced. In the current social context, the process of coming out creates discontinuity between “ordinary” social life and homosexual socialization. Coming out makes it possible to free oneself from social constraints. Coming out also demonstrates the limits of this freedom, by confronting the person with the various manifestations of such discrimination. Coming out thus represents an individual and social process

of development of a gay identity[21]. Last year Festus Mugae and Kenneth Kaunda, former Presidents of Botswana and Zambia, are on their HIV Free Generation tour in some African countries. At a news conference in Lilongwe they condemned Malawi’s criminalization of homosexuality as harmful to LGBTI persons and the fight against HIV/AIDS. "We can preach about behavioral change, but as long as we confine gays and lesbians into dark corners because of our inflexibility to accommodate them, the battle on HIV and AIDS can never be won," On his part, Kaunda urged all African leaders to start recognizing same sex marriage. Said Kaunda: "We are not only condemning African leaders who are criminalizing same sex marriage, but we are urging them to start recognizing these people, for the sake of HIV and AIDS."[22]in addtion Mrs. Elizabeth Mataka, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy on Aids in Africa, has ‘ the solution is straightforward: when she said “do away with the law against homosexuality.By stopping condoms from getting into prison, for example, we are actually allowing transmission of HIV to go on unabated and losing control of the epidemic ,But the political will is lacking ." The fact that HIV/AIDS has primarily affected gay men and other marginalized populations, governments have been and continue to be less committed to fighting the disease.

Health And Social Impacts Of Criminalisation Of LGBT Persons In Zambia

All forms of homophobia are destructive, not just for people living openly as LGBT, but for society as a whole, the impact of discrimination of (LGBT)People has caused many of them to modifies their daily activities because of fear of prejudice and discrimination. It is no wonder that this has an impact on the health and wellbeing of gay and lesbian people resulting in there being a large increase in suicide mortality rates.
The stigmatization of lesbian and gay sexuality and relationships undermined the ability of gay communities to respond effectively during the early years of the HIV epidemic. Governments did not want to acknowledge that the problem existed, much less discuss activities such as anal intercourse, which they viewed as shameful. The stigma surrounding same-sex sexual practices and gay identity represented an enormous obstacle in any efforts to reach and inform gay men about HIV.
The lack of awareness on the dangers of involving into acts of unprotected sex amongst gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender has contributed to high transmission of the HIV/AIDS virus because many young gay men underestimate likely they are to be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases, and in some places where they are otherwise well informed about HIV and STI‘s, the young people often don’t think they are vulnerable to contracting them .

While prevention strategies have often not taken the needs of gay men into account, many still see HIV/AIDS as fundamentally a gay disease. This perception has hampered the efforts of non-gay communities to generate their own effective responses to the epidemic. A consequence of HIV/AIDS related stigma has been to link the disease in the public's mind “to the populations most affected by it, rather than to the specific risk behaviors that transmit it.”[23] HIV/AIDS-related stigma instills a false perception of one's being less at risk when one is not a member of one of the disease's “officially recognized risk groups or at-risk populations.”[24]

Extortion and Blackmail

Extortion of gay men and women remains a major problem, and is often conducted with police participation who remain actively involved in approximately half of these circumstances either in collaboration with the extortionist or on their own account .Friends of Rainka ,a Zambian organization that is concerned with the well fair of LGBTI rights can provide updated instances of the practical impact of the violation of LGBT rights .

What makes these attempts at extortion particularly difficult to challenge is the fact that they involve intimate sexual relationships that are against the law and their unacceptability is being constantly and publicly reiterated. Regardless of whether the allegations leveled against him are false or not, the victim accused of a homosexual act is therefore discredited from the beginning and invariably has to start from a position where his guilt is presumed.[25] But the burden of all the baggage that such an accusation carries goes beyond the lack of a presumption of innocence to undermine the victim’s credibility in general. Prosecutions for either extortion or for homosexual sex frequently rely on the conflicting testimony of the parties involved, and thus often come down to the question of which witness is the most credible in a scenario where the truth has no place; the truth will invariably be contrary to the needs of all those involved – blackmailer, victim, and profiteering police officer – ensuring that it is excluded from all accounts. In many cases, the extortionist claims to be a heterosexual who was propositioned or seduced by a homosexual.[26] Such a claim automatically invests the extortionist with the innocence of a victim whose “normal” life is interrupted by the predatory homosexual, who in turn is positioned as both interfering stranger and “offender”: “The sexual stranger is feared as the potential perpetrator of unimaginable crimes… but the hatred generated by this fear means that it is the same ‘stranger’ who ultimately becomes the victim of discrimination, abuse and violence… because he/she is unknown, unknowable, and, hence, dangerous.”[27]Homosexuality is thus construed as good justification for extortion, and while the courts might eventually dismiss the charges for lack of evidence the procedures leading up to trial present individual police officers, prosecutors, and the initial extortionists with plenty of opportunities to intimidate the target and relieve him or her of money or goods.

Zambia: A “Christian” Nation

In some contexts, Discrimination has been reinforced by religious leaders and organizations, which have used their power to maintain the status quo rather than to challenge negative attitudes toward marginalized groups. St Francis of Assisi is recorded as saying “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it more fully in your heart”. Zambia is a Christian nation, were majority of the Christian faith follow the teachings of Christ which are purely based on love. A common element of Zambian cultural life centres on belonging to a community of people and in our inherent ability to embrace and uphold diversity . However Representatives of religious institutions have been among the most outspoken opponents of LGBT rights both in Zambia and abroad, by condemning them as‘a people doomed or eternal damnation’ using Bibilical principals and passages, really. "The anointed" are wolves in sheep's clothing, isolating and condemning out-groups such as the LGBT persons who in the main, feel very strongly that the church is their enemy. It ACTS like the enemy and in fact has so alienated the majority of these people (including children born and raised in the church who are frequently thrown out of their own homes and churches).

The church should instead be taking an active role in bringing the LGBT community to an understanding that they are loved and valued by Christ. Unfortunately it fails to see that these are individual children, individual people, who struggle within themselves between impossible alternatives--deny who they are and the sexual make-up and attractions they were born with, pretending to be heterosexual when they are not--accept that they are homosexual and live in a way that is comfortable and normal for them, facing rejection daily--or try the middle path of knowing they are gay and attempting to be celibate for life, something that very few homo- or heterosexual people would be able to manage, and even then still experiencing rejection from many people unless they keep this part of themselves a secret.

The issue of homosexuality is one of the many controversial matters that arise in relation to Christianity. What the church needs to do is accept that this is a very sticky, difficult, highly emotional, no-clear-answers sort of question with which the body of Christ must wrestle. People are created this way--what then must be done? As of now the church is so in the wrong as far as being judgmental, hateful, uncaring, unempathetic and so forth, that they are disobeying far more biblical principles and commandments than there are statements about homosexuality. And those references to homosexuality need to be studied objectively so that they really know what they mean. For example in I Cor 6:9 the KJV[28] used the word "effeminate" until 1958 when the word "homosexual" was substituted.

Conclusion

Section 155(a) of the Zambian Penal Code which penalizes sexual relations between consenting adults in Zambia, constitutes a flagrant violation of numerous rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Zambia. In particular, it poses an infringement of the right to equality and non-discrimination, privacy, health, as well as the guarantee against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The abolition Section 155(a ) by Zambia would be in line with its international treaty obligations, the importance of which is highlighted by Zambia’s membership to ICCPR,ICESCR and ACHR treaties of which it is a signatory . Section 155(a) does not constitute a justifiable limitation of rights, as its aims or objectives (namely to give effect to the morality of the majority, to ‘African values’, and as a measure to combat the spread of HIV) are not reasonable and necessary limitations to the rights mentioned above.

The decriminalization of sexual relations between consenting adults in private is indispensible to the rule of law in our country. The overriding question that arises is not whether homosexuality, as such, is acceptable, but rather whether tolerance for diversity of all minorities, one of the values pronounced under Zambian law, actually exists in our society. The ideal of achieving this tolerance inspires some associations like ‘Friend of Reinka” to engage in a vigorous campaign to advocate for the decriminalization of homosexuality. The African Charter emphasizes this aspect when it declares that every individual has the duty to ‘consider his fellow beings without discrimination’ and to safeguard and reinforce ‘mutual respect and tolerance’.

To ensure a Zambia where everyone feels secure and without being marginalized ,Section 155(a) of the Penal Code should be abolished through our collective courage.

Written by

Chalwe Ranney Mwansa

Fourth year Law Student

Zambia Open University

Email: ropewings@gmail.com

[1]Tim Robinson and Jon Lunn. Issues facing LGBT people in sub-Saharan Africa: suggested reading. Standard Note: SN/IA/6043

29 July 2011

[2] Article 11 of the Constitution of Zambia of 1991, as amended by Act no. 17 of 1996

[3] Article 23(1) Constitution of Zambia of 1991, as amended by Act no. 17 of 1996

[4]Article 23(2) Constitution of Zambia of 1991, as amended by Act no. 17 of 1996

[5] Article 23(3) Constitution of Zambia of 1991, as amended by Act no. 17 of 1996

[6] Article 2(1) of the ICCPR

[7] Article 2 of the African Charter

[8] Article 26 of the ICCPR

[9] Article 3 of the African Charter

[10] General Comment No. 20, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 10 June

2009, at para. 27.

[11] The Human Rights Committee has been set up to interpret and monitor state compliance with the rights in the ICCPR through the examination of state reports and individual communications.

[12] Nicholas Toonen v Australia, Communication No. 488/1992, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/50/D/488/1992 (1994).

[13] Ibid

[14] Ibid

[15] Section 155 of the Zambian Penal Code, Act of 1995, Cap 87 of the laws of Zambia

[16] Section 156 of the Zambian Penal Code, Act of 1995, Cap 87 of the laws of Zambia

[17] Section 157 of the Zambian Penal Code, Act of 1995, Cap 87 of the laws of Zambia

[18] christine mulundika and 7 others v the people (1995)

[19] Homophobia, Heterosexism and AIDS, supra, note 2

[20] DF Morrow. Social work with gay and lesbian adolescents. Social Work 1993; 38(6): 655-660.

[21] For a detailed analysis of the various models of the coming-out process, see Y Jalbert. Perception du risque face au VIH/sida et son impact sur l'utilisation des services de santé chez les jeunes homes homosexuels âgés de 16 à 20 ans de Montréal. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Montréal.

[22] www.africanveil .com /festus mugae and kenneth kaunda speech in Malawi on criminsalition

[23] The Impact of Homophobia, supra, note 5 at 23 (emphasis in the original).

[24] ibid

[25] Ryan Thoreson and Sam Cook Nowhere to Turn: Blackmail and Extortion of LGBT People in Sub-Saharan Africa p.33

[26] Human Rights Watch, More than a Name, 92–102.

[27] Mason, “Being Hated,” 590.

[28] I Cor 6:9 the king James Version

Synthesizing Juxtaposition - Wholeness and Hatred: Critically Being with Occupy Wall Street and Its Unconscious

2011-12-18T03:06:43.000Z

To say that an oppressor class doesn’t exist is unnecessary bourgeois mysticism. However, it is definitely harder to define what is ‘oppression’ and an ‘oppressive class’ when the mechanisms of repression and control have been swung into every corner. The little priest and the little king and the little colonizer run rampant into the synapses and cells. New contusions, new painful reactions, physical, psychical, emotional and transcendental confront us. A barrage of ‘opportunities and choices’ beats us daily – so many that they have become hallow, in Image and Reality. Shall we all head off to the ashram? Into the television? Into the sunset? The sunset on the television? But, which channel? Or, Do we fight? What does it mean to fight? How much do we fight? Who do we fight? And wow, we may or may not even have the privilege to ask this question (which is important to remember!). It is perhaps here that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) offers some great clarifying Events and Discourses of articulated desiring possibilities. If we are to fight, to protest-as-our-fight, OWS says, then let us protest the Symbolic nexus of Capital: Wall Street. First a base to commit genocide against the Native Americans and to sell people from Africa as slave-commodities, Wall Street is the perfect place to start directing our Conscious and Unconscious articulated desiring possibilities against the great social situations of semi-conscious and unconscious synthesized mutually holding juxtaposition-as-oppression.

What is the Unconscious of OWS? For me OWS is lot like a mushroom, feeding off the organic material readily available to it. It has taken on a life of its own, its own, capitalist-revolutionary hybrid. Perhaps it was ‘started’ or is ‘co-opted’ by the U.S. government. Considering its fissures and ruptures, the genesis is surprisingly still important but less so. With OWS the message is inherently economics, and while this may be limited, the extreme functioning of U.S. economic stratification and its many material and psychical contradictions underpins contemporary imperialism, colonialism, racism, homophobia and it represents the ‘divine culmination’ of years of bourgeois ideology, and perhaps even bourgeois-society-at-its peak, complete with such laughable dichotomies as new therapies on how to control to ‘your anger’ to new ‘patriots’ ready to bunker-bomb entire villages into history. The madness of this sanity is all too apparent and juxtaposed, and this does not go unnoticed by a population reeling from contradictions about personal responsibility, distance and ‘freedom’ in a social organism that seems more like Hannibal and less like Mom. But then, given the semi-conscious and unconscious paradox, perhaps Mom and Hannibal were always the same person, a mirror of each other? Mom cooks the food – bacon and apple pie - for the ‘good boys’ before they go off to war, where Hannibal’s greatest dreams possess them as they slaughter entire villages from their comfy offices in Colorado. Looking into a little screen from Colorado Springs, a picture-esque town in the mountains where the U.S. military operates its ‘unmanned drones’, they decipher whether the ‘ants’ on the screen are ‘terrorists’ or children, or ‘children terrorists.’ Within seconds of a decision to ‘engage’ the ants they disintegrate – like when the boys were young and used magnifying glasses to get those damned insects or when they played a fun video game. Oh how childhood replicates itself endlessly! This is the great deception and paradox of Western bourgeois culture, which constantly couches its terrifying process in the sterility of ‘wholeness,’ ‘patriotic heroism’ and ‘family values.’

As I sit to write this article in a small, working-class U.S. town in the Pacific Northwest region of the country, I am reminded of the many narratives that compose the ideology of our day-to-day ‘existence.’ Like mores around gendered being and sexuality, a man is talking loudly in the line for coffee about ‘the freaks’ of the town, Grants Pass, OR. He states to another person, also in line, that ‘the freaks come out at night, at Wal-Mart, 2am,’ commenting ‘one time I saw a man with pink pajamas, with his hair in bun, in the women’s clothing section, with tampons.’ What a disturbing and exciting event for him! He even approaches me at one point to talk. Here homosexuality and homophobia coincide again. Juxtapositions fly around on neon carpets singing the national anthem and burning the flag! What are these moments of contradiction and how can we use them? Does OWS represent a moment of great contradiction? The kid with the U.S. flags, expounding anti-Capitalist rhetoric and complimenting the rebels in Libya for other-throwing Qaddafi. Yes, this is frustrating. White people talking about social justice, but blocking people of color from making proposals or talking at General Assemblies. Yes, this is oppressive. But is it anymore frustrating and oppressive than the everyday contradictions that we already participate in unconsciously and sometimes consciously? Isn’t it time we consciously inhabit the Unconscious of OWS? Begin to place a little fear of castration into the discourses of oppression? Isn’t it time we began to inhabit consciously the Unconscious of the first national movement in the U.S. since before the 1930s to address economics? When the Left splintered off into identity politics in the 1960s and before, the power of collective Marxist analysis and praxis was lost. The Specter of Communism became Casper, and was sold at Disney Land to gay couples at Disney PRIDE. Fracturing and commodifying the Left like other parts of U.S. culture, is a ‘normal’ part of the continued atomization, individualization of capitalism. Shall we offer something to the Collective Unconscious too, something that stamps out the silly displacing representational ‘feel good’ mantras of clouded and veiled brutality by making anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism messages to infuse all our work?

At the same time, diffused matrices of control and obfuscation at the level that is experienced in the U.S. – with all of its subsequent distractions, alienations, commodity fetishes and personality markets – doesn’t mean that we have all been totally subjected to the same, uniform treatment. Yes, we all live under the same biopolitical realities as outlined by Foucault, Fanon, Marx and others – government administration/regulation of the poor, massive benefits for the already wealthy, a secured but anxious reality for the upper middle class, and an unsecured anxious ‘treadmill’ life for the middle and lower middle classes. Police violence and brutality, especially against people of color, immigrants and queers. State intervention to ‘protect and serve’ the elite. Modes of life presented and enforced by ‘elders’ and parents – who are still protected by codes against ‘the youth’ that invariably support the effective passing of the status quo. Entrenched racism, homophobia and sexism as evident in ‘mega churches,’ the rise of the Tea Party, and even conservative memes in communities of color and white nationalist ideology amongst white gay and lesbian people. Inhabiting various ‘places’ within this dizzying mise en scene, some are more comforted, or disturbed, by the objects of commodity fetishism, while others are more moved toward horror or happiness. The ‘Unconscious’ or reified patterns that ‘appear’ at OWS are nothing more than an expression of a movement fighting the mechanism of economic oppression and passing through the ‘zero point’ of history, or the totality of now, and opening itself up to the Collective Unconscious – the reifications – of the larger society. We must revolt against all of these oppressive unconscious juxtapositions. Revolt means toppling these Unconscious and Conscious memes and structures of socio-psychobiological and political stratification. As Slavoj Zizek has pointed out in neurotic capitalism we have a lot of things-without: ‘Coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, cream without fat and so.’

Revolution means little without revolt.

Watch: OCCUPY HRC!

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000Z

Gay Marriage Ate My Baby

2011-12-06T12:30:00.000Z

I don't know what about all this gay marriage, committed monogamous love, serving in the military, being "born with it," or raising up normal non-gay babies that has gay people all excited.

And I'm not against two people of the same sex, whatever that means, getting married to each other. But I've never thought that to be "married," I needed to have an official of the church or state preside over that ceremony. So I have never felt limited or saddened by my legal inability, as a queer person, to marry whomever I want. I want to get as far away from the State as possible. But if legal marriage is helpful to some people, I'm okay with that.

But an emotional issue it is not. Under normal circumstances, no one can take away your ability to love and make a lifelong commitment to another person. That is marriage, if such a concept is useful, and I think it can be.

Despite my lukewarm and not necessarily radical position on gay marriage, I have become more radical over time with regards to this issue. I generally say I oppose campaigns for gay marriage. The reason is simple. When I hear the arguments for gay marriage, it makes me feel uneasy. It makes me feel a little ill. It gives me the creeping sensation that something is wrong.

I disagree with most of the arguments used in support of gay marriage, for example.

I don't believe that being gay is necessarily inborn. It's almost a crime these days to say that, because saying it is a choice has been used against gay people for a long time. I think the argument that being gay is inborn is a reactionary argument; it's come about because of the religious argument for behavioral homosexuality, homosexuality as a sinful choice. Actually, the concept of life-long static sexual identity is very, very new. And that's not because this is the first time in human history that queers have been accepted. We've been accepted in various ways in many cultures, and to a higher degree in some cultures than we presently are. And yet homosexuality as a static identity, or orientation, is almost a new thing under the sun. It has occurred in pockets, but not as a cultural institution. However, heterosexuality as an institution is not necessarily the default, either. Whereas sexuality is about identity today, in the past it was often viewed differently. I also know that people's sexuality can and does change over time. There is little room for that in the "born with it" camp.

I don't believe that gay marriage does not change straight marriage. I don't agree with arguments that try to convince straight people that gay marriage does not affect them. They evidently feel that it does affect them, and I don't think arguments like these are changing people's minds very often. Gay marriage changes the definition of marriage. Marriage has been the building block of society; the heterosexual union is the basis for the nuclear family as an economic unit. The transfer of women as a form of property has been part of marriage in many cultures for a long time. Straight marriage is considered Biblically appropriate, smiled on by God as the ideal formation. This is a big deal. It's not important to me personally, and I think it's boring and harmful, but it is very important to many. Gay marriage is scary to homophobic and fundamentalist Christian straight folks because it actually says something about straight marriage. It means that straight people have been getting married for love, and not because of anything else I said in this paragraph. Gay marriage is the final realization of what marriage was already becoming. Gay marriage is the next stage in taking apart marriage as it was known for thousands of years in our cultural history. Gay marriage is intricately connected to straight marriage. Accepting gay marriage will not be simple for the people who oppose it. Simplistic arguments insult their intelligence and treat them like imbeciles.

I don't think that gay people should need to point out that gay couples usually raise straight kids or that their kids do just as well as kids of straight couples. This is literally painful for me to hear. Imagine how you would feel if you saw a modern video about anti-racism that pointed out that people of color's IQs were just as high as white people's IQs on average. We now know better than to trot out crap like that. Here's the thing: Homophobes actually think that queer couples are the agents of Satan, playing out a perverted family arrangement into which they have brought an "innocent child" who they will corrupt with their sexual perversion. This is an erotic, subliminalized rape script. This is the kind of image that moves armies. Messages of tolerance are pathetic in that context. The homophobic and fundie opponents of gay marriage aren't just confused about the truth. They don't need a gentle dose of facts and figures. They believe this story because they want to. It's important to them. We might want to think about why.

But there's one thing I hate more than anything about the argument for gay marriage, and it's the presumption that committed monogamous relationships are better. This argument can appear in various forms, but the most common is the simplest: Just showing long-term couples getting married. Emphasize their committedness and the length of relationship. This is a cultural status symbol amongst straights already, and that is why it is used to provoke an emotional response. But there are more insidious forms of this same idea: Many gay marriage supporters feel that gay people are promiscuous, or have been promiscuous in times past, because of a lack of official acceptance of their desire to form families.

This is an appalling and counterrevolutionary way to look at the beautiful cultural practices, institutions, and ways of loving that queer people have formed in the absence of official sanction (and often, not mourning that absence.) Here are just a few awesome things that some queers do:

- Cruise. Go looking for hot sex in public or in specific cruising areas. Use symbols to communicate sexual preferences at a glance.

-Define a huge, organically shifting range of gender identities and sub-identities, as well as sexual identities and names for body types

-Find ways to glorify tons of kinds of beauty, name them, and explore them in affirming communities

-Respond effectively and courageously to an epidemic without scare tactics, without buying into lies and fear from the state

-Help to build the culture of polyamory and teach how to communicate with multiple partners honestly

-Make open relationships normal

-Teach and learn consent practices

-Create free love spaces such as bathhouses

-Create amazing, subversive art, poetry, music and literature that is part of our cultural lexicon forever

-Make it safer for people of every kind to express a wider range of emotions, desires and sexualities

I am so excited and happy to be part of this community.

I'd like queer people to be able to teach straight people about their options. It's not that one thing is better than another, I'm not perpetrating another useless hierarchy. But people deserve more options for living their lives. So many people suffer in monogamous relationships, cheating on their partners, full of jealousy, because they don't know how to be poly. They've been force-fed an idea of how life must be and they have swallowed without chewing. Straight homophobic men live in fear of queerness, perpetrate physical and emotional violence on queers and on each other, and can't have the platonic intimacy that would make them happier. Men and women suffer under heterosexist beauty standards. I want to share this stuff. I don't want to absorb straight heterosexist values so that I can be "equal." It's not an equality I want. It feels like working my ass off to join the preppy kids' clique in high school where I'd be bored to fucking tears.

The last and perhaps the most interesting "myth-busting" argument for gay marriage that I'd like to look at is the idea that "no one would choose to be gay, because no one would choose to be oppressed." When I see this one, I just want to say, "Oh, honey." No one would choose an identity, lifestyle, or personal practice that might result in significant oppression? Certainly someone should pass that message on to millions of religious minorities, political and social activists, and revolutionaries. They have seriously missed the memo. If there is anything we humans are that is truly worthy of awe, it is our courage. We are almost pathologically courageous. It is an amazing, breathtaking thing. So, yes, if being gay was a choice, people would choose it even if it meant being oppressed, just as religiously oppressed people have chosen to continue believing even under penalty of death.

The gay marriage campaign misses the mark in so many important ways that I find it personally difficult to express my support for the legal right of any two people to marry. Because, yes, that is my position; I'm okay with gay couples being legally married. I can't abide by a campaign that draws on bizarre, inaccurate and counter-revolutionary ideas about humanity to make an emotional point about something I consider a fairly low priority on my personal radar. I object to the enormous resources that are brought to bear on the campaign; I object to the condescending campaign techniques that ignore significant cultural and psychological differences under the banner of "tolerance." But mostly, the gay marriage campaign makes me wonder if this is what we're going to settle for.

AIDS: Still Kills, Maims and Destroys

2011-11-30T21:43:21.000Z

My coming out days were lived out in Chicago, Illinois (1965-1982). I also came out prior to HIV/AIDS being part of our everyday lives.

During my time in Chicago, the gay community was party central but also a close-knit community. Over the years I developed close friendships with a group of people that at its peak
numbered fifteen.

We all hung out together, spent time at the clubs together and I guess by today’s standards could have had a reality TV show made about us.

We compared notes on our boyfriends, went to parties, gossiped about straight people, got jobs, participated in the community and marched for our rights. We were always there for one another no matter what the
circumstance.

I didn’t think about it at the time but now I know we had something special-we had a group of people who had become VERY close friends and became a support system to one another that I don’t suppose will ever be
repeated.

Starting in 1981 through 1982 the group started to drift apart. Some got jobs that took them out of Chicago and into other parts of the state, some got involved in long term relationships and moved to the suburbs, others
found themselves struggling to find the love of their life or way through life
as a gay man and; lacking direction or support turned to heavy amounts of
alcohol and drugs.

In June of 1982, needing a fresh start I moved to Cincinnati where, within a month of arriving I would meet the man I am still with today. The choice to move probably saved my life.

For you see, the crushing and deadly wave that we would come to know as AIDS arrived in Chicago in the latter part of 1982. By the time my partner and I had been together for twelve
years, my best friend and I were the only ones still alive from that group of fifteen.
None of them had reached the age of forty.

Today, as I write this at the age of fifty-six and in the thirtieth year of marriage (Yes, despite what the world says I am married), I am the only one left who is alive and HIV negative. My best friend died at the age of forty-seven
after getting the disease because of cheating and an abusive boyfriend.

I was no angel in those days and I guess every year at this time when I think of my friends who died much too soon I get a case of survivor’s guilt.

I have also been ordained since 1986, so I have twenty-five plus years of pastoral ministry. In those years I have probably done funerals for more people under the age of fifty than most pastors do in an entire
career.

What is really heart breaking is that HIV/AIDS is not done yet, despite media spin “that this is now a manageable disease”. That is a lie and severe distortion of the truth. AIDS still kills at an alarming rate and
the rate of infection is on the rise.

According to UNAIDS (2010) 'UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic' “Since the beginning of the epidemic, nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS-related causes.”

Every month I still counsel people who are newly infected. Every month I am there with someone who has died or in support of a partner, family and friends who have lost someone. Our congregation has a number of
people who have tested positive and are at various stages of health challenges.

A friend in Atlanta is HIV positive and while he is healthy and living a productive life…the meds that he has to take are anything but pleasant. The side effects require he not
get too much sun, eat the correct foods and not get too stressed, as the
reaction is more then a pain in the ass, it is debilitating.

So, I guess I am writing this today to remind folks that the AIDS pandemic is not over. Not by a long shot. We cannot afford to get comfortable. We cannot afford to not continue to educate, stress prevention,
and harm reduction (translation, safe sex and needle exchanging).

We must remember God’s people are dying…

I am asking the readers of this blog to get involved in harm reduction, to recognize this pandemic knows no boundaries.

Mark Harrington From Treatment Action Group offered 17 radical steps to end the “AIDS Epidemic” http://www.thebody.com/content/art49274.html

I offer some of the more important steps to the readers as a point of education, meditation and action:

We must strive to continue to lower the numbers newly infected. There are several ways we could dramatically reduce infections rapidly if we are willing to take some radical
steps around the world.

1) Universal treatment for women equals universal prevention for infants

We must ensure that every pregnant HIV-positive woman has access to full antiretroviral therapy (ART) from the time her pregnancy is known to when she completes breastfeeding, and then for life if indicated by
her CD4 and health status. And we must ensure that every HIV infected baby is
diagnosed at birth and treated for life.

2) End gender-based violence and strengthen the legal and health rights of women and sexual minorities

We must demand and achieve equal status for women, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people and end the violence against them everywhere.

3) End the war against sex workers

We must insist on decoupling efforts to stop human trafficking from the current stigmatization and exclusion of sex workers from their full human, health, and economic rights to live and work in dignity,
legally and safely.

4) End the war against drug users

We must end the punitive, expensive, and wasteful global war on drug users. We must work in countries around the world to decriminalize possession of drugs; provide universal access to drug substitution therapy, clean syringe
exchange, and safe injecting rooms and equipment; and provide services for
people reentering society after being unjustly incarcerated for nonviolent drug
use.

5) End health disparities everywhere

HIV rates among black Americans are eight times higher than those of white Americans; 600,000 black Americans are living with HIV and 30,000 new infections occur among them each year. The epidemic among black
Americans is the same size as that in Côte d'Ivoire, and bigger than that
of seven priority PEPFAR countries put together.

The U.S. government and its people are obliged to address this epidemic with the same urgency with which they are now addressing the global pandemic.

The United States must develop and implement a national AIDS strategy with specific targets, timelines, and the goal of reversing the
epidemic, with special attention and resources targeted toward black Americans,
Latino/Latina Americans, women, and men who have sex with men.

6) Scale up HIV testing and improve HIV epidemiology

We must massively scale up HIV testing globally. New York City has belatedly introduced a policy to test -- voluntarily and with opt-out -- any resident of the Bronx who presents to the health system. If HIV testing can be massively scaled up in
Lesotho, it certainly can
and should be massively scaled up in New York City,
still the epicenter of the U.S.
epidemic.

We must have access to much better, more accurate, and timelier information about where the epidemic is and where it is moving to. Recent revisions downward by UNAIDS on the global pandemic and upward by the
CDC on the U.S. epidemic have left the impression that we are still far from
having a clear enough picture of the size, scope, distribution, and movement of
the epidemic in its 28th year.

7) Prevent, diagnose, treat, and cure TB

Everyone has a responsibility to do a much better job of reducing the impact of TB among people with HIV. HIV clinics around the world must implement infection control procedures, intensified TB case finding, and
earlier TB diagnosis and treatment so that no one contracts TB while accessing
HIV care.

Routine screening for TB at every clinic visit should also allow healthy HIV-positive persons in pre-ART care to receive cotrimoxazole and isoniazid preventive therapies, which despite overwhelming evidence of efficacy
are not routinely used in most sites due to overblown fears about resistance,
toxicity, and adherence.

8) Diagnose, prevent, and treat viral hepatitis and common opportunistic infections

We should strive to obtain serology and, when possible, treatment for hepatitis B and hepatitis C infections among HIV coinfected persons. Because of the overlapping activity of certain ARV drugs,
we are already treating many people who are coinfected with HBV and HIV without
knowing their HBV status. As HBV and HCV treatments mature and oral combination
therapy becomes possible, we must be ready to scale up hepatitis treatment
globally.

Better opportunistic infection prophylaxis and treatment are also needed. Key drugs must be added to the essential medicines formulary and their prices brought down: amphotericin-B for cryptococcosis, azithromycin for
MAC and a host of other infections, rifabutin for tuberculosis, and
valganciclovir for CMV retinitis.

9) Develop better first-, second-, and third-line antiretroviral (ARV) regimens

We still need cheaper, safer, and more durable first- and second-line ART regimens to guarantee the longest possible duration of viral suppression free of side effects. Though the ART treatment space is maturing,
there is still room for better combinations with greater durability, less
toxicity, higher barriers to resistance, and cheaper manufacturing costs.

10) Intensify investment in biomedical research, including AIDS research

The last five years have seen stagnation in U.S. investment in research at the National Institutes of Health. The AIDS research budget, nominally $2.9 billion, has lost about 20% of its purchasing power due to
inflation during this time. We must demand that the next U.S. president
and Congress increase support for all NIH research -- including AIDS research
-- by 15% in each of the next five years.

Other rich countries in the European Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development must double or triple the amount they invest in biomedical research, including research for AIDS, TB,
viral hepatitis, and other diseases. Emerging and developing countries need to
increase investment in biomedical research five- to tenfold to help address
persistent gaps in health research.

11) Show solidarity with activists, health workers, policy makers, and scientists working on global health issues

We cannot afford a divisive debate that pits advocates for different diseases against each other.

12) We need greater unity

We must become more united if we are to become an even more powerful force for global public health, human rights, and social justice, with our goal of universal access evolving into comprehensive and universal primary
care for all. To those who say it cannot be done we must reply, "¡Si se
puede! Yes, we can!"

So today I remember, honor and place in memorial all those who have died.

Today, I pray and proclaim the hope and healing for all those who live and are affected by this virus. For you, I will not be silent. I will speak out persistently, loudly and with a clear voice for justice.

Today, I once again say to my friends who have been received in the loving arms of God:

Timothy, Gerald, Brandon, Billy the nerd, William, Paddy, Tyrone, Tom, Chuck, Thomas, Sammy, Joey, Philip and John…I love you. You did not die in vain and I will never forget you.

221

2011-11-21T04:00:00.000Z

by Mary Griggs

This year, two hundred and twenty one people paid the ultimate price for being themselves. That isn’t just a number--those were 221 human beings who were targeted and murdered in 2011 because of their gender identity or gender expression. Two hundred and twenty one lights have gone out and their passing has left the world a darker place.

Most people have a gender identity of man or woman that is consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some people, however, feel their assigned sex at birth is not consistent with their own gender identity. Still others express their gender in a way that does not conform to traditional gender stereotypes of what men or women should look like or how they should act.

Sex and gender are social constructions that have evolved over the course of human history and vary culturally. Despite the radical changes to sex/gender roles in the last century, the concept of a gender binary (that there are two sexes which correspond with two genders which were immutably set in stone prior to birth) unfortunately endures.

It is beyond tragic that there are people so invested in a gender binary that the mere thought of anyone not conforming is so abhorrent they feel justified in eradicating the transgressors. Losing anyone to hate and prejudice diminishes us all and the failure to solve so many of these crimes and convict the perpetrators is a reprehensible failure of our society as a whole.

It is heartbreaking that suicide is still a leading cause of death for many transgender and gender variant people. Discrimination on the job, at school or when attempting to use public restrooms are burdens that no one should be forced to endure. Compounded with harassment, insults and threats when someone is just trying to be themselves and it can become too much to bear.

To achieve equality we must do more than commemorate the dead. We must honor the living and their right to live their lives without the fear of prejudice.

Being an ally means more than remembering to include transgender with the rest of the alphabet soup that is the LGBTQ community. It is respecting other people’s self-identification without comment about their ability to pass or inquiry into the state of their genitalia. It is remembering their name and using the proper pronoun. It is recognizing the privilege inherent to having a legally recognized, socially approved, medically assigned gender and the oppression faced by those who do not.

This week, I helped organize a series of events at the LGBT Community Center of New Orleans for Trans Awareness Week. I worked with the fabulous members of several local organizations including Forum For Equality, PFLAG-New Orleans, Louisiana ACLU, the Jim Collins Foundation, Health Law Advocates of Louisiana, HRC New Orleans, and the Louisiana Trans Advocates. We were privileged to be joined by allies from the medical community at Tulane, Ochsner, and the Veterans Administration.

Over the course of the week, we had a film screening, discussions about raising trans kids and civil rights as well as sharing information on advocacy, medical care and health insurance. This weekend, we gathered together to paint our stories of survival and to remember those who lost their lives to gender related violence.

I hope these events play some small part in raising public awareness of issues facing transgender people in addition to providing timely information to the transgender community. Above all, I hope we made clear that transgender individuals deserve equal protection under the law.

Here We are Again

2011-11-18T21:44:12.000Z

Sunday is a day of mourning. It is not a day that is on the national calendar. In fact, with the exception of a small percentage of people in this country, this day of
mourning will pass completely unnoticed.

If these words I write look familiar, they are because nothing has changed since I last wrote them, except some people are more aware.

Again this year those who take a moment and remember on this day will find themselves swinging between tears of grief and deep waves of anger not to mention a
certain amount of fear of further attacks.

The devastating images of those viciously killed in 2011 for simply trying to be themselves is something we should remember, something that should burn in our
souls.

The people we mourn for this day are a part of the community most would just as soon not deal with. Oh we go to watch the drag shows and tell our jokes and we
have added a “T” to the GLB_Q but still don’t take seriously enough that folks
in the transgender community live in a very dangerous and un-supportive world. This year’s danger and lethal transphobia is
no different from any of the last twenty years.

In fact, in almost (not all) but damn near every community meeting, the plight of the Trans community is brought up as an afterthought, kind of “oh yeah, let’s
not forget the T’s”.

While progress has been made, while things have gotten better, there is still a long way to go and this community is still too often just an afterthought.

We still do not take it seriously enough that these children of God find it extremely difficult to get jobs, get health care or any kind of support and
dignity. In fact, many in our community,
never mind the straight community, think if they would just dress correctly and
be happy with how they were born there would be less trouble.

In our fair city of Atlanta, the shelters are still not required
to accept those who are in transition unless they are willing to accept being
forcible moved backwards in that transition.
Again, we arrive at this time of the year and nothing has changed.

People in transition walking down the street at the wrong time or in the wrong neighborhood stand a good chance of being stopped by the police and questioned about
drugs, prostitution or both.

I am well aware there are some in the neighborhoods who think the Trans folks working the streets are responsible for the crime in the neighborhood and with
vicious language have launched a crusade to rid the streets of this so called
epidemic.

Let us get real here; if these sisters and brothers could get a job or be protected in the job they have maybe, just maybe they would not have to turn to the
streets.

The fact is, most political leaders of the community still see the trans community as nothing more then a “political calculation”. In fact, far too often these people are
something to be added or subtracted from the political equation. The political leadership has not and does not
have the courage to stand up and say, “Enough!”

Instead, it’s “let’s study the issue, let’s explore what we can do”. News flash: One’s gender identity has zero to do with the administration of equal rights, just do the right thing!

I still see far too often in community meetings the eyes roll or heads shake when the needs of the Trans community are brought up.

I am so sick of hearing that bringing justice, being fair and honorable and less phobic is so complicated when it come to the Trans community. News flash:
Gender, just like sexuality, is a very fluid thing and to attempt to fit
everyone into the same narrowly defined box is the height of ignorance.

So here we are this year and it is still open season on those who would dare to transition from one gender to another.

Let us not forget that it was these folks who started the whole “gay rights” movement we know today when they stood toe to high heel with the New York City police
department at Stonewall.

Let us today acknowledge they have been with us every step of this bloody fight for our rights, our self worth and our very souls.

Let us recognize and have more than a passing thought that each day when they get out of bed and step into the world it may in fact be their last day.

So on this day I implore you to remember the transgender community…to pay attention to the day that has become known as “Transgender Day of Remembrance”

May we who mourn and remember today, take some comfort in these words:

"God is King, despite the chaos that may be roaring around us." (Ps 93)

“If one member suffers, the whole body suffers…” (I Cor 12)

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … Nothing in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(Rom 8)

"Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10

"The Lord takes care of me as his sheep; I will not be without any good thing. He makes a resting-place for me in the green fields: he is my guide by the quiet
waters. He gives new life to my soul: he is my guide in the ways of
righteousness because of his name. Yes, though I go through the valley of deep
shade, I will have no fear of evil; for you are with me, your rod and your
support are my comfort. You make ready a table for me in front of my haters:
you put oil on my head; my cup is overflowing. Truly, blessing and mercy will
be with me all the days of my life; and I will have a place in the house of the
Lord all my days." Psalm 23

Sunday evening, here and all around the country, may we find ourselves moved to pray.

May these prayers be for all of the victims, their family and friends.

May we pray for our government to have the wisdom, the courage and a compassionate response to this insanity. Let us pray for God's protection and a calming of
theirs and our fears.

And may our prayers be accompanied by expressions of our faith – in which we are not conformed to the ways of the world and how they will respond to children of
God, but to the way the Christ would respond. May we be in our speech and
actions, the love of God.

Once again let us ponder the words of Gwendolyn Ann Smith,

We have lost so many people in our community to the hand of hatred and prejudice, yet we still are not seemingly willing to fight back. Meanwhile, we die at the hands of a lover, of
police, of medical practitioners, and even parents, while the news media calls
us “freaks” — and worse.

In fact, the media’s reluctance to cover our deaths lies near the heart of this project. It can be all-but-impossible to find honest, reliable media on the death of a transgender
person: It either does not exist (which is how one can cover thirty years of
cases and still only have as many as I have to present), or it uses names that
the deceased did not own, and pronouns that did not fit their reality.”

In the world we live in today there is no “safe way” to be transgender: Some are living very out lives, and some are living fully “stealth” lives. Some are
identifying as male, some as female and some as both and neither. Some live in
small towns, and some in major metropolitan areas.

There are things we can do and must do, if the killing is to stop. I would encourage our community and friends to:

• Let us educate ourselves about transgender issues.

• Let us be aware of our attitudes concerning people with gender-atypical appearance or behavior.

• Let us make more than a good faith effort to use names and pronouns that are appropriate to the person’s gender presentation and identity.

• Let us not make assumptions about transgender people’s sexual orientation, desire for surgical or hormonal treatment, or other aspects of their identity
or transition plans.

• Let us keep the lines of communication open with the transgender person (s) in our lives.

• Let us become more aware of the things which would make life easier and the transition smoother, i.e. markers on drivers licenses, applications and forms.

• Let us not just sit on our lack of knowledge and understanding. Let us seek out support in dealing with our feelings. This is the 21st century and there are
plenty of resources for us to get help.

Finally, but not least, let us turn out en masse this Sunday evening at the State Capital to show the “T” really is apart of LGBTQ and it does not stand-alone. I
know it is Sunday night and I know you want to quit reading this every year. So here is the deal:

I will stop repeating this blog when we as a whole community are as enraged as when they raided our bar, as enraged as when Matthew Shepherd was beaten to death or
when the fight to pass protective legislation for our community includes the
“T” as something other then an afterthought or a political piece to be thrown
under the bus.

Addressing Bullying in Louisiana

2011-11-02T18:00:00.000Z

Tragic news came out of the Lake Charles area with the report that bullying may be a contributing factor to teenager Hannah Pauley's recent suicide. Her father, Len Pauley, stated: "Honestly I don't believe I would want any child to be charged with anything...If those kids can just step up to the plate and admit that they were wrong, make a positive out of this--then absolutely not--because they have to live with this for the rest of their lives now."

Stopping bullying from happening and appropriately responding to it when it happens is critical to the academic success and overall safety of our students. It is up to all of us -- the students, the teachers, the administrators, concerned citizens, the school board and our state legislators -- to do all we can to promote the health, safety and overall well being of our young people. We must create school climates that welcomes, accepts and supports all people for who they are, no matter what.

Many who are bullied are targeted because of their perceived sexual orientation or because they do not conform to someone’s expectations about gender. Too often, when such children are bullied in school, officials fail to protect them. While not every person who has been bullied thinks about or attempts suicide, persistent bullying can lead to or worsen feelings of isolation, rejection, exclusion and despair, as well as to depression and anxiety, which can contribute to suicidal behavior.

Help is available. There are national suicide prevention lines like the Trevor Project (866-488-7386). Families can get support in becoming more accepting through local PFLAG chapters. Currently, there are Louisiana chapters in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Lafayette. There are also locally made videos on It Gets Better where young people can see that they are not alone and that supportive adults are out there.

Would you like a good way to teach someone about the devastating impact of bullying? A teacher in the New York area has come up with a good way to teach about the harmful effects of bullying to her class. She had the children take a clean piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it, mess it up just don't rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how marred and dirty it now was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry.

Even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, there were many marks that were left behind. She told them that is what happens when a child bullies another child. They may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever.

Bullying prevention is our responsibility! We can change people's hearts and minds by sharing our stories of how bullying hurts. More than that, we need to address institutions and laws. While Louisiana’s existing statutes require school districts to enact and implement policies to protect students from bullying, it does not comprehensively address the issue. In study after study, it has been found that students at schools with a comprehensive anti-bullying policies report bullying and harassment at a significantly reduced rate.

Together, we can ensure that no other family or community has to suffer a loss like this. The Forum For Equality and a coalition of educators, disability rights and LGBT equality organizations will be proposing Safe Schools legislation in the upcoming 2012 session. Please contact us for further resources or to partner with us in making Louisiana a safe place to learn.

Forum For Equality
336 Lafayette Street, Suite 200
New Orleans, LA 70130
Phone: 504.569.9156
Fax: 504.523.8522
http://www.forumforequality.org

no "golden years" for queer seniors

2011-11-04T19:36:40.000Z

The last thing in the world many LGBT people want to be is a queer senior. And with good reason: entering the “golden years” in the queer community can be like entering a living hell.

It means being dismissed by younger people as sexually and socially undesirable or being patronized because you’re a piece of living history. It’s being invisible in queer publications (except when you die and the gushing obits come out, saying what a great hero you once were, emphasis on “once”). It’s having the issues that are life and death to you (such as cuts to Social Security and other benefits you so desperately need to survive) ignored by LGBT organizations too busy promoting marriage or political candidates who will end up backing more cuts.

According to many studies and reports, queer seniors are poorer than their straight counterparts. With threatened cuts to every program that might benefit seniors, they stand to get poorer and less able to fend for themselves. Already, queer seniors are half as likely to have health insurance, and two-thirds as likely to live alone. Not to mention that they routinely face discrimination in medical and social services, retirement homes, and nursing care facilities.

By 2030, queer seniors will number about three million. That’s a lot of people for the LGBT community to ignore. But unless things change, it’ll do just that -- ignore them, as it does now.

We live in a youth-obsessed culture. A quick at TV and the movies will demonstrate that. Old age is perceived as a disease that has to be kept in check by any means necessary. There’s no reward for wrinkles or thinning hair. No reverence for the wisdom of having lived many decades on this Earth.

For me, the worst part about getting old is losing the ability to take care of myself. I’ve always been on my own. Ever since I was forced to leave home when I was 19 or 20 (Papa couldn’t deal with having an activist son), I’ve managed to work, put food on the table and pay rent.

I chose to work for nonprofits and small businesses that reflected my political views, so I never earned tremendous amounts of money. There were no fancy vacations or extravagant purchases nor a house with a lavender picket fence. Thankfully, I can look back at my working life and say that I contributed something to society.

Which doesn’t mean a hill of beans when I can’t pay the rent or go grocery shopping because the meager amount I may be forced to live on in my old age on will barely cover the essentials. Add on some sickness that needs constant medication and I could be seriously screwed.

When I look at the agenda of queer organizations, I see nothing that reflects my needs as a queer senior. No lobbying for universal healthcare, no mobilizing against the cuts that are devastating services for elders, no advocacy for affordable housing or renter protections. Few cities have affordable LGBT senior housing, and even those that do, don’t provide enough units to meet the need.

I came out at a time when gay sex was illegal, gaybashing was an honorable sport, discrimination was seen as reasonable and right, and being queer was the absolute worst thing you could possibly admit to.

Yet getting old is the scariest thing I’ve faced in my life.

A Pastoral Thought

2011-10-21T16:24:28.000Z

The Occupy Wall Street protest seems to have taken on a life of its own, spreading from Wall Street to many major cities and across the world.

I find it amusing in an ironic way that those who supported the Tea Party folks find the Occupy Wall Street folks as repulsive. One would think both of these movements would literally shout that there is something VERY wrong with our society.

With all the mess going on...and the awful things each side are saying to each other, with the news media behaving like vultures and people jockeying for positions to be called heroes, we now see this embarrassing
fighting standing in the way of making sure the folks of our country are
protected, secure and safe...

I was doing some meditation time and this particular passage struck a deep nerve.

"If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything
to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each
other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the
front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help
others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget
yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand." (Philippians 2:1-13
(The Message))

Regardless if one is a Christian or not...it seems to me this is a formula for working through this mess...a way of peace, a way of strength, and a way of walking the talk. A way in which everyone could walk
away saying they had a hand in working through the challenge.

I guess I want to ask the question of all; what are you personally doing to help this come to reality? See, I get that both sides are deeply entrenched on their side of the
argument; however what is each side doing to make the words of the quoted
passage a reality?

I am sitting at my desk wondering if this country and it's leadership have become so jaded and drunk with power, they have forgotten the basic tenet of our country which says, "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all... are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."

Maybe it is indeed time for a change. I think this crisis proves what we have known for a long time...the politicians do not really care if you or I can pay the mortgage or rent.

They do not really care if you or I have enough money to pay our bills or put gasoline in our vehicles.

HIV and it's spread only matters if a large block of voters suddenly die or there is oil in the country.

They do not really care if you live or die unless it gives them some sort of leverage in the power and control game.

No, the only thing at stake is their position of power, money and comfort, and they would sell their own mother if they thought it would keep them in power.

The recent behavior of the political and religious right and big business proves that all those "so-called Christians" have forgotten a key to their faith..."Don't be obsessed with getting your own
advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand."

Yes, maybe now is the time to call for a change...and in the meantime all I can say to our government is:

Shame on you Mr. President.

Shame on you Mr. or Mrs. Congressperson.

Shame on you Mr. or Mrs. Senator.

Shame on those of you in big business that have lost sight of the people upon whose backs you made your money!!

Finally, but not least by any stretch of the imagination, shame on all those big CEO's and big business people who forgot why they were in business to begin with,"...that
all... are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness."

We are faced with the conservative political right and the religious right constantly beating us over the head with their brand of morals and practice of faith, telling everyone how to think and what the bible says.

We are faced with the political left not listening to the real concerns of folks and the progressive people of faith forgetting it is not a contest of "their way or my way".

Damn it, folks, read this passage one more time:

So the real questions of the day perhaps are these:

What are you doing to find agreement with those around you?

What have you done to become deep-spirited friends?

Are you pushing to the top or are you waiting your turn?

Are you a person who says what you mean and means what you say or are you a B.S. artist?

Have you stepped outside of yourself to help another get ahead?

Are you obsessed with getting your way?

Can you forget yourself long enough to offer a helping hand, without judgment?

Just a passing pastoral thought…

Vote or Die!

2011-10-22T18:36:19.000Z

This morning I walked a mile from my home to my polling place. I figured that I would exercise my body’s muscles while I exercised my electoral ones. That pretty much sums up how I feel about elections—I might not necessarily like doing it but I know it is good for me.

And voting isn’t just good for me. It is good for all of us. These days, we are voting for our lives.

For example, the same group that pushed the personhood ballot measure in Mississippi has vowed to do the same in all the other states (see here). The same coalitions that pushed for constitutional amendments on marriage are toying with the idea of statutes to criminalize homosexuality (Uganda’s draconian anti-homosexuality bill was written with help from The Family, a conservative Christian fellowship based in Washington, DC that has proposed modified legislation to its constituents. See here, here and here).

Further, every single state legislature in the country introduced bills, propositions, and amendments that had been drafted by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) to disenfranchise voters, to restrict choice, privatize vital public services and dismantle health, safety and environmental regulations. (See here, here and here)

The Citizens United decision removed corporate and special interest spending limits from campaigns and has allowed more money to flow into politics than ever before. We have to resist temptation every time we walk by the candy aisle on our way to the cash register and we must also resist the false promises found in 30 second television commercials funded by shadowy organizations with innocuous names and hidden agendas.

As we push ourselves in our physical workouts for better overall health and fitness, so must we push ourselves to learn all we can about ballot measures and politicians to strengthen our democracy. There are groups like Project Vote Smart and local League of Women Voters who are determinably non-partisan in the collecting of data to help voters make up their minds. Equality organizations like the Forum For Equality PAC endorse candidates after an interview process and a vote from the membership. Their voter guides can help you find candidates who are more likely to support fairness and equality.

We, as a nation, have gotten obese from not thinking about what we put into our bodies. In the same way, our politicians become bloated from relying on easy money from corporate lobbyists. Our elected officials should be held accountable for the money that funds their campaigns. For a list of almost 2,000 politicians whose political integrity has been compromised by their association with ALEC, go to SourceWatch.

As much as the Koch brothers funded Supreme Court might wish to bestow full personhood on corporations, there is still something they can’t do.

They can’t vote.

You and I are the ones with that power. While religious extremists and right wing corporations may direct millions of dollars toward feeding our fears, we have the power to vote our values.

If you listen to Faux News, you might think that the only pro-family votes are anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-health care and anti-tax. The rest of us know that progressives have families, morals and values, too. Our families promote diversity and challenge discrimination. Our morals show a commitment to ending violence and poverty and respect science over magical thinking. We value a social contract that includes fair taxation and paying forward for the next generation.

Voting, like exercise, can improve the quality of life for us and everyone else on the planet. It might mean we have to gird our loins (or hold our noses) but we are better off for having done so.

So get out there. Vote!

Amazing Video Recap: Occupy Oakland

2011-10-28T07:30:00.000Z

Movement Building: Extraordinary Times and the Rest of the Time

2011-10-18T06:07:00.000Z

A friend who has been very involved in Occupy SF put on his Facebook status the other day that this movement has changed everything he thought about movement building. I suspect a lot of activists, especially younger ones, are feeling that way.

I’m not.

This 99% movement is amazing. It’s glorious. It’s so time for it. But it’s not The Movement. I hate to say it, but it’s not going to last.

I keep hearing people say it’s been 30 years since there was a movement this big. I don’t know where they’re getting that thirty year figure from, or if it’s just that the people who are saying it really mean 1968-72 and don’t want to admit that that was forty years ago. But in fact, there was a movement that was this huge and this amazing that started just about thirty years ago the antinuclear movement. In the summer of 1980, hundreds were arrested at dozens of actions that temporarily shut down nuclear power plants all over the country. Thirty years ago next year, a million people took to the streets of New York to demand a freeze on nuclear weapons. Between March of 1982 and June of 1983, we had over 3,000 arrests at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs, where nuclear weapons are – sadly still -- developed. Many of the people arrested in those nonviolent protests spent two weeks or even thirty days in Santa Rita jail. We were The Movement then. Almost no one even remembers it.

Courtesy CISPES

In the mid-eighties we had another huge movement. It was called The Pledge of Resistance; I mentioned it in my last blog. Over 100,000 people signed pledges to do civil disobedience in opposition to U.S. aggression in Latin America, and thousands actually did it. In one week in 1985 there were 1,000 arrests across the country in hundreds of local actions.

Remember 2003? Millions of people around this country marched, as part of an international movement, to stop the Iraq war before it started. When that failed, tens of thousands took part in nonviolent direct action. Over 1,600 were arrested in San Francisco alone in the first three days. That was just eight years ago.

1999-2000 was the year of the “anti-globalization” (what I prefer to call global anticapitalist) convergences. It was the year of the Letter-Number-Code-Name actions: N30, A16, D2K (November 30, 1999 was the day 15,000 people, more or less, shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle; April 16 was the day 5,000 or so protested the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings in DC; Democratic Convention 2000 brought thousands to Los Angeles for heavily policed marches, concerts and the occasional sit-in.

Where are the people who created those movements? Some were students or youth organizers who have gone on to be the community organizers of today, working for nonprofits or unions on small-scale grassroots campaigns. Some burned out and went to graduate school, or became depoliticized. Some were among those who became inspired by Obama’s promise of hope and change, and some of those have since become disillusioned and depoliticized, while others have become radicalized and maybe are among those sitting in in parks across the nation. Some of us were long-time radicals then, and we’re still doing what we were doing before that – helping to fan the flames of whatever spark seems most promising. Today, it’s the 99% movement.

This movement has many things in common with all of those. It’s mobilized thousands of new activists and brought some people who haven’t been active in a while back into the streets. It’s organized on the principles of nonhierarchical direct democracy, which the media find infuriating and incomprehensible and people with jobs and busy lives find frustrating because it takes so long to make decisions. Like most, if not all, leaderless movements in this country, it does in fact have self-appointed and unacknowledged leaders and they tend to be white men. It’s plagued with racism and sexism which mostly stay bubbling under the surface, denied even by women, people of color and queer folks. It’s starting to have some divisions around issues like how confrontational to be with the police, whether it’s claiming to speak for people it doesn’t represent, and whether it’s hogging media coverage that rightly belong to other movements who can’t get any.

These are the tensions that tend to fragment and ultimately destroy movements. I certainly hope that this one will prove the exception, but it’s hard to imagine. For one thing, it’s about to be winter. There’s a reason that it was Arab Spring.

It would have been great if it had begun in June; that would have given it four months before it started to snow in New York and Chicago and pour endlessly in San Francisco. In fact, that was meant to happen, according to a very informative article on the organizing history of this spontaneous movement.

“Throughout April and May, members of A99 were organizing and debating possible future actions. They decided that Flag Day, June 14th, would be an appropriate time to launch actions. …
“On June 1st, this Anonymous call to action was published to AmpedStatus:

Acts of Resistance: What Are You Going To Do To Rebel Against Economic Tyranny?

…

On June 13th, it was announced that as part this day of action a group of people will occupy Liberty Park, a strategic public space closest to Wall Street and the New York Federal Reserve building. This Anonymous statement was released:

Activists to Occupy Financial District’s Liberty Park Until Demands Are Met – Operation Empire State Rebellion Begins…

With only 16 people showing up at Liberty Park, and only four prepared to occupy it, this part of the day’s actions were considered by some to be a disappointing failure. Though this intense form of civil disobedience didn’t gain enough support at that time, the many other actions happening throughout the day were very successful.”

The occupations have not yet met with severe repression. Yes, people have been pepper sprayed, yes, 700+ were arrested, but that’s not the type of repression that kills movements.

I mentioned the antinuclear movement. In June of 1982, 1200 people were arrested for blocking the entrances to Lawrence Livermore Labs in Livermore, California. They refused to give names and held jail solidarity until a deal was reached, which took a couple of days. Everyone was released in 2-3 days, after pleading guilty to jaywalking and being sentenced to time served. One year later, about the same number of people were arrested doing the same type of action. There had been numerous smaller actions during the year, and many of those activists had been sentenced to 30 days if they would not accept lengthy probation periods. But we believed that the large number at the June action, like the previous year’s, would make it impossible for the system to handle us for such a long time.

The men's tent, Santa Rita 1983 from my friend Luke Hauser's website

The two judges in that district took a hard line toward us. They wanted to quash the movement, which had not only organized actions at Livermore but had also disrupted tests of the MX missile at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and was aligned with other huge mobilizations in other parts of the country, like the nuclear weapons production site at Rocky Flats, Colorado. They insisted that we all accept two years’ probation or 45 days in jail. We sat in a makeshift prison camp composed of circus tents for nearly two weeks, and when a deal was finally struck, we all had to serve another four days in jail or pay a fine of $250. People lost jobs, missed kids’ birthdays, got kicked out of apartments because they couldn’t pay the rent. But we had had a great time together and gotten huge press. Daniel Ellsberg, who was among the arrestees, had debated the issue with District Attorney on ABC’s Nightline. When we got out, we said triumphantly that we would not be deterred, we were just getting started.

That was the last really big action at the Labs, which continue to develop weapons systems to this day. People had all kinds of reasons for not wanting to do civil disobedience again. Some felt that we had exhausted the utility of the tactic and needed to move into community organizing. Some felt we needed a legal strategy or to pressure policymakers. Some felt the whole nuclear issue was too liberal, and wanted to focus on opposing U.S. intervention in Central America or apartheid in South Africa. Some thought we should be working on the economic war in Oakland.

But people were also afraid. Most couldn’t risk being in jail another two weeks, or even longer. And for all the great reasons and ideas people had about what they were going to do instead, that would be more effective than symbolic actions, most of them didn’t follow through. Some did. Western States Legal Foundation was formed by a group who wanted to pursue a legal and policy strategy, and they are one of the leading antinuclear policy groups in the world today. TriValley Cares, which formed to do outreach and organizing in the Livermore area http://www.trivalleycares.org/, won the right to place an antinuclear exhibit in the visitor’s center at the Lab. They continue to organize, activate and educate to this day. Many of us took the skills we had learned in the Livermore Action Group into the Pledge of Resistance and later movements. But the fact is that the huge antinuclear direct action movement in California was crushed and the weapons continue to be developed and tested at Livermore.

I don’t say that’s going to happen to the 99% movement, but logic says it’s more likely than not. The media are going to lose interest, unless the tactics of the protests or the repression they face escalate. And if the tactics escalate, the repression is sure to follow. Capital and the government it controls are not going to just sit by and say, “Oh, well if people really want us to pay more, we will.” They will ignore the movement for a while, but if it seems like it’s picking up steam and not petering out, they’re going to move to crush it, and they’re probably going to succeed. Some of the activists will move to another level, and the rest will melt into the woodwork again, hopefully to come out another day.

And when that happens, the things people have learned about movement building during the times of less activity, when we’re sitting in rooms of a dozen people, calling 20,000 people to come out and getting 16, are going to be important. Those are what keep the tiny sparks alive so one of them can catch and ignite the flame.

Police Brutality in San Francisco

2011-10-18T05:30:00.000Z

This Day in History - This Day In History: Martial Law in the Castro

2011-10-06T23:30:00.000Z

Originally published on Democracy Sometimes

I had my phone on silent last night so I missed the text telling me about the midnight raid (actually, it was about 10:50 pm) on the Occupy SF camp. Otherwise, I would have been very tempted to rush over there, as the occupiers were requesting that supporters do, but I’m actually not sorry I got a little more sleep. I dropped by on my way to work with a donation to help replace the tents, food and equipment the cops stole (they call it “confiscated”). Even the usually less-than-enthusiastic-about-protest San Francisco Chronicle seemed chagrined by the level of force deployed by the San Francisco Police to get rid of some theoretically illegal camping equipment that had been coexisting with downtown business for nearly a week.

These great photos are from Patrick Clifton's album.

It put me in mind of another infamous SFPD action, 22 years ago today. On October 6, 1989, ACT UP/San Francisco, the San Francisco chapter of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, held a demonstration that started at the San Francisco Federal Building on Golden Gate.

ACT UP, in case anyone does not remember or never knew, was another hell-raising movement that started in New York and spread around the country. But contrary to the myth told in the infinitely missable new movie “We Were Here” – which is supposed to be about AIDS in San Francisco but as far as every AIDS activist I know goes should be called “We Weren’t Here” – AIDS activism did not begin with ACT UP, “a group of creative young people from New York.” With all love and respect for our comrades in New York, I believe militant AIDS activism began right here in San Francisco, growing up in tandem with the “San Francisco service model,” affectionately known in some circles as the AIDS service industry. The first AIDS action group was called Citizens for Medical Justice (CMJ); it was an affinity group of about 20 or so people, including my friend Lisa, who did sit-ins at state and federal offices protesting mandatory testing of prisoners, closure of bathhouses, and FDA foot-dragging on approving treatments.

In late 1986, Lyndon LaRouche put an initiative on the California ballot calling for mandatory testing and various repressive measures against people with HIV/AIDS, possibly including quarantine. At the same time the racist group US English put the “English as the Official Language” initiative, known unofficially as “English-Only” on the ballot. While the mainstream Bay Area gay organizations, under chairmanship of Chris Bowman of the Log Cabin Republicans, were focusing myopically on the LaRouche initiative, a bunch of more left-leaning queer folks started a coalition called Stand Together, which worked to defeat both initiatives. As part of that effort, the AIDS Action Pledge was born. Taking its approach from the Pledge of Resistance, which organized thousands around the country to do civil disobedience in response to U.S. aggression against Latin America, AAP collected signatures on a pledge that began, “I pledge to join others in fighting for all our lives and liberties during the AIDS crisis.” Soon after the LaRouche initiative was defeated (English-only, sadly and not surprisingly, was passed), AIDS Action Pledge staged the first protest at the South Bay headquarters of Burroughs Wellcome (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), the manufacturer of the sole AIDS treatment, AZT, demanding that they lower the price of the drug. A few months later, after meeting with members of ACT UP (then only in New York) and other AIDS activists from around the country at the 1987 March on Washington, the AAP changed its name to ACT UP/SF.

Flash forward two years, and ACT UP/SF had probably 70-100 active members in three working groups: Treatment Issues, Local Issues and State and Federal Issues. There were also a women’s caucus, the Bayard Rustin Anti-Racism Collective and the People With Immune System Disorders (PISD) Caucus. Each group had organized a number of very successful actions, educational events, fundraisers and outreach efforts. Friday night, October 6, was to be our biggest street protest – each working group planned an action for somewhere along the route of the march, which was to go from the Federal Building to City Hall to the State Building, calling out the ways that part of the government was failing to stop the dying. It would end at Market and Castro, where Local Issues had planned a grand finale – spraypainting silhouettes on the sidewalk of the Castro to create what they called the “Permanent Quilt,” a subtle dig at the Names Project which many of us felt had gone from a powerful protest to a kind of a feel-good way of beautifying the epidemic.

I can’t remember what my group, State and Fed, had planned at the Federal and State Buildings. I do remember that I was worried the demonstration was not going to be interesting enough to keep people engaged. I was also worried no one would come. When I got near the Federal Building, I was excited because I could see there were a lot of people there already. As I got closer, I saw that half of them were cops. Cops in riot gear. My friend Ken Jones, who was director of the Stop AIDS Project, was sitting on a low wall at the edge of the building, smoking. When I greeted him, he said, “I think every one of us will have our own personal pig.” (I’ve never liked that word, but Ken was from the Vietnam generation – about ten years older than me.)

We did whatever we did at the Federal Building. I have this feeling it might have involved hanging a banner on the doors and a die-in on the plaza. Someone made a speech. We headed out to Van Ness. The energy was high. We chanted and banged on drums. I was happy because my responsibilities were done and I could relax and have fun. As we stepped into the street on Van Ness, the police captain started droning, “Obey all traffic laws.” The light turned red. People were still in the street, crossing slowly toward the State Building. The cops lowered their shields and started swinging at people. One of the organizers, Bill Haskell, turned to argue with them, saying that we were just trying to get across the street. They grabbed him and threw him to the street, kicked him, cuffed him and threw him in a van.

The rest of the march was like that. Any time anyone stepped into the parking lane or took too long crossing the street, they got hit. All the way to the Castro we were hemmed in on the sidewalk, with motorcycles on one side and lines of foot cops on the other. When we got there, some of us decided to sit down in the street, making an old-fashioned blockade. It seemed like the only way to de-escalate without just giving up and going home, which we were not going to do. A few dozen of us sat down and linked arms and chanted. Local Issues started painting the Permanent Quilt.

We were sitting there, waiting to be arrested, and suddenly we saw cops running and swinging batons at people. We, the blockaders, were already surrounded and couldn’t go to help or see what was happening. We heard people screaming, and I saw someone fall. He ended up being taken to the hospital and needing stitches. He, along with a few others who were injured, ended up winning $250,000 in a lawsuit against the City. One blockader, Frank, went limp and accidentally kicked one of the cops. They beat him up and charged him with battery; it eventually turned out he had an outstanding warrant and he would be in jail for several months. I didn’t see the rest because I was arrested, but I heard about it from some of the people who were arrested later, and from incredulous friends when I got out.

The cops declared martial law (seriously, they called it that). According to an article in the Bay Area Reporter written two years ago on the 20th anniversary, “As the police began to arrest those blocking the street, someone knocked over a police motorcycle and the situation quickly escalated.” That was the first I heard of the motorcycle theory, but something had to explain it. The police captain told people to get inside and announced that anyone on the street would be arrested. The Castro Theater and some businesses like Orphan Andy’s diner on 17th opened their doors so refugees could get in. Others locked their doors to keep out the riffraff. People were hurled into the street, beaten and arrested. A woman’s arm was broken when she tried to write down a cop’s badge number. A few people who never had anything to do with the protest, who were just going to dinner or to get a video were busted. It was hardly the first time that had happened – it happened all the time in the eighties, but it was the first time in a long time it had happened in the Castro, and usually it was when we were protesting a high powered event, like the Democratic Convention in 1984, Henry Kissinger’s speech at the Hilton Hotel or a visit from president bush. This was just your basic night in the Castro.

ACT UP finally regrouped and took back the street. In this video, you can hear the cops announcing martial law and then you can hear my friend Deeg giving a speech and leading a march out of the Castro.

We never knew why they did it. We speculated that it was retaliation for an action a few weeks before, when another AIDS action group briefly (and gloriously) disrupted the opening night at the Opera. That action was organized by Stop AIDS Now Or Else, which had some overlapping membership with ACT UP, but most people thought it was ACT UP. Some people thought the motivation for the crackdown was that ACT UP had taken a stand against building a new stadium in downtown San Francisco with taxpayer money, which was favored by Mayor Art Agnos. We did hear later that the local gay beat cop, nicknamed “Pig in a Wig” because of his hairstyle, had gone around to all the businesses that day and told them that “ACT UP was coming into the neighborhood to make trouble,” and that the cops were going to protect them. We never found out, and probably never will, if any of the businesses gave their approval to the crack-down.

The next day, a few of us from ACT UP were invited to meet with the police chief, Frank Jordan, who became mayor two years later, and his new LGBT liaison, Lt. Lea Militello. They hemmed and hawed and said the attack was a mistake. That night, we held a triumphant march through the Castro. This time, it was the media that nearly outnumbered the marchers, who numbered in the thousands.

A lot of things have happened on October 6 over the years. “The Jazz Singer” (first talkie) opened, Bette Davis died, Milosevic resigned as president of Yugoslavia, Babe Ruth set a record for home runs in a World Series, Louis XVI returned to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women, the 13 Martyrs of Arad were executed after the Hungarian war of independence (who knew?). Maybe in future years October 6 will be known all over the world as the day the U.S. Tahrir Square began in Liberty Park in Washington, D.C. But for me, like many Bay Area activist queers, October 6 will always mean martial law in the Castro.

We Were Also Here!

Occupy New Orleans

2011-10-10T20:30:00.000Z

Last week, I gathered with several hundred other activists for an Occupy New Orleans protest and march. Modeled after the Occupy Wall Street actions, the group spread information about the day’s activities primarily through social media:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyNOLA
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OccupyNOLA
Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/occupynola
and their website: http://occupynola.org/

There were a lot of different reasons why people were out protesting. The fact there is not one single issue or one single organizer is causing a lot frustration with the major media. There was a lot of local media and alternative media out in New Orleans on October 6th, though.
(Mary Griggs with a couple of equality minded friends) photo by Sid Aroyo

My primary reason for participating is my belief that Congress must pass legislation to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. Allowing corporations to buy elections is undermining our democratic institutions. Negating the Citizens United decision is something that needs to happen as soon as possible. Campaign finance is one of the biggest issues we face as a country right now (and much of our economic issues stem from the power of corporations in lobbying for the writing laws which favor them over ‘people’ and fighting regulations and other consumer protections).

I was also walking because I’m a lesbian that lives in a state and country that offers no protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment. Employment decisions should be based on a person’s qualifications and job performance. Without an Employment Non-discrimination Act at the Federal and State level, LGBT citizens will continue to face bias and discrimination and even be fired for their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. In this tough economy, LGBT workers should also have equal rights in job opportunities.

As we walked, we generally got a lot of support from motorists and people on the sidewalks and hanging out the windows. The police presence was non-obtrusive and was very helpful for the long walk from Tulane Avenue/Broad Street to Lafayette Square (down Poydras to St. Charles).

I loved being part of the protest and especially walking down our city's public streets shouting “This is what democracy looks like!”

Latest Revelandriot.com interview with Tammy and Ronan Salzl

2011-09-30T20:30:00.000Z

Hey everyone,

Please read my interview about Tammy and Ronan Salzl. They are both artists, queer, and mother and daughter. It is important that we not only recognize the sadness that happens in our community, but also the joy of being out open and free to create.

Every month I hope/will write interviews for revelandriot.com featuring a queer artist working within a creative industry. It is exciting to see what our community is up to and how we are changing the discussion.

At the moment I don't have a personal website about my work/art but in the future it will be linked as well.

Thank you!

I hope to hear any feedback!

Jenna

ps. If you are interested in being interviewed, please private message me.

http://revelandriot.com/news/artist-profile-tammy-and-ronan-salzl-51751

Bradley Manning and the G Word

2011-08-30T02:41:06.000Z

originally posted at http://democracy-sometime.blogspot.com/

I first heard about military whistleblower Bradley Manning on Democracy Now! – where else? shortly after his arrest. Since then, DN! has done at least ten segments on Manning, including an hour-long interview with his friend and prison visitor, David House. As far as I know and can tell (by searching the transcripts, though I heard most of the interviews as well), no one – including the gay legal writer Glenn Greenwald, who has been interviewed about Manning a few times - ever mentioned that Manning considers himself gay and may also be transgendered.*

Whenever they had a music break during one of their segments, however, the accompanying video would always be the same two pictures. One of them shows Bradley, a small, delicate blond youth, holding a sign calling for EQUALITY: @ The House @ The Classroom, @ the Battlefield, Everywhere, decorated with rainbow flags. I knew what that meant, even if Democracy Now! didn’t. The other picture shows Brad – as his friends call him – arm-in-arm and cheek-to-cheek with another guy. This guy, I now know, is Tyler Watkins, Manning’s boyfriend, who identifies as a drag queen.

A few months ago, I asked a friend who works with Courage to Resist, the organization formed to support GI Resisters, which since his arrest has been focusing mainly on Manning, whether Bradley was gay. He said he didn’t know. He looked a little surprised that I was asking, and I explained that I had seen the pictures on Democracy Now! and that if he is gay and out, we might be able to mobilize support for him – and by extension do anti-war organizing – in the queer community. He nodded and said it seemed like a good idea, but he didn’t have any idea how to get more info.

Not long after that encounter, I heard an announcement for a Free Bradley Manning contingent in the SF LGBT Freedom Day Parade. I joined it, and it was pretty good – most of the marchers seemed quite straight, but there were a few other queer leftists and a sign that said something about Bradley being a “gay hero.” The response from the crowd was excellent. We happened – or maybe it was less coincidental than that – to be lined up on the block with the ACLU, Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, and nearly everyone in those contingents wore a Free Bradley Manning sticker too, so along with the huge banners courtesy of Courage to Resist and World Can’t Wait, we looked much bigger than we were. There were also contingents in a number of other cities, including New York, London, and Chicago.

I asked another friend who has been involved with the case if she knew why this apparently well-known information was only being spoken now, a year after Manning’s highly publicized arrest. She didn’t, but speculated that his supporters hadn’t wanted to “distract” from the whistleblowing. She mentioned that the right-wing had recently been using Manning’s sexuality to discredit him, and guessed that that was why the left had decided it was no longer unspeakable.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to Google “Bradley Manning gay” before that. If I had I would have learned that the hacktivist blog Gawker had published an article on June 23, 2010, less than a month after Manning’s arrest, stating that, “It's been speculated that alleged Army leaker, PFC Bradley Manning, is transgendered. We've found evidence that strongly suggests Manning has some sort of LGBT identity, and that the man who snitched on him exploited this to win his trust.”

Two months after that, the New York Times published a piece that began: “He spent part of his childhood with his father in the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small, remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for being gay.

In an article published on August 1, 2010, Manning’s mother told the UK Guardian, “‘He was different from other kids. He was interested in girls but he could never really get them to be interested in him. When he was 13, he told me he was gay.’

Around the same time, the British Daily Telegraph on July 30, 2010 ran a story containing the line, “Mr Manning, who is openly homosexual, …”

These stories revealed that Manning was active in trying to overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – a very popular activity among straight servicepeople, I’m sure. The Facebook pages he linked on his profile were “LGBT America, Gay Marriage, Equality Maryland, Dan Savage, Human Rights Campaign.” The photo Democracy Now! keeps using, from the anti-DADT rally, came from his Facebook too.

Turns out the only people who DIDN’T know Bradley identified as gay were those of us who were getting our news from supposedly progressive media and the antiwar movement.

The question of Manning’s gender identity is more ambiguous. From the logs that have been published of his fateful chat with Adrian Lamo, the bisexual agent who turned him in to the government and then handed over the record of their chats to Wired magazine, it sounds like he was still figuring some of that out. According to the Gawker piece, “Lamo—who was once appointed to San Francisco's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force … told the Times that ‘“It's [his queer identity] a personal matter for him, and I do not think it was one his family would want aired in the national media.”’

Did it occur to Lamo that Bradley’s family might not want their son held incommunicado at Quantico or Ft. Leavenworth?

Was shame over Lamo’s betrayal the reason queer organizations didn’t quickly rally behind Bradley, or was it, as LGBT historian Larry Goldsmith recently argued, because “Bradley Manning is not that butch patriotic homosexual, so central to the gays-in-the-military campaign, who Defends Democracy and Fights Terrorism with a virility indistinguishable from that of his straight buddies. He is not that pillar of social and economic stability, only incidentally homosexual, who returns home from the front to a respectable profession and a faithful spouse and children.”?

Or could it be that no one has asked them to get involved, because his sexuality and gender identity is a “distraction” that “shouldn’t be an issue”? I am not asserting that – I don’t know, but if my experience is at all typical, explicitly queer activism on Bradley’s behalf has not, until recently at least, been encouraged by the people mobilizing support for him.

So why should it be an issue? Should Ehren Watada’s Japanese ancestry have been an issue? Should Camilo Mejia’s Latino heritage, or the fact that Stephen Funk is a gay Filipino have been issues? No, except insofar as they helped to rally support for resisters, and to connect GI resistance to other liberation struggles. In our society, identity matters. And it’s clear that being gay and/or transgender is at least as important to Bradley Manning’s identity as the fact that his mother is Welsh.

Find out how you can Support Bradley Manning.

* Greenwald did finally mention Manning's "issues of sexual orientation and gender identity" in an article for Salon.com on July 4 of this year.

Women's Equality Day 2011

2011-08-26T17:52:56.000Z

Women’s Equality Day is commemorated on August 26 to celebrate the right to vote by women in the United States. It was granted on this day in 1920. The lessons of the fight for suffrage have even greater resonance today among progressives fighting for equality.

Our feminist foremothers succeeded in getting the vote by working locally. They started in the states and territories and expanded from their work there to lobbying on the national level. We need to continue to work locally while we work on putting greater numbers of women into Congress and, someday, the White House.

In the first place, you must vote. Then, consider serving on city, parish and state Boards and commissions; heck, go ahead and attend meetings of your city council and state legislature to give numbers in support of or to testify on issues that interest and affect you. Your vote and your voice are your strongest weapons against oppression.

We must not be seduced by promises of quick fixes or discouraged by early setbacks. While our elected representatives and corporate bosses might not be interested in making long term investments in equality, we must continue to press our progressive agenda. Getting the vote for women took 70 years—that’s three generations of women (and enlightened men) working toward a goal that many wouldn’t see during their lifetimes.

My father used to ask us kids, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is one bite at a time. Each mouthful is another bite closer to full and equal rights for all people.

Ninety-one years ago, our foremothers’ accomplished great things. The work isn’t over yet. There's a fork waiting for you.

My Fellow American

2011-08-16T15:00:00.000Z

America has always been a melting pot, but in the post-9/11 world the environment can be downright hostile. Recent mosque protests and congressional hearings on American Muslims are all unfortunate examples of a rising tide of fear towards our fellow Americans. To address this issue, Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) has developed a new campaign aimed towards creating peace-- My Fellow Americans.

My Fellow American is an online film and social media project that calls upon concerned Americans to pledge and spread a message that Muslims are our fellow Americans. It asks people of other backgrounds to pledge, and share a real life story about a Muslim friend, neighbor, or colleague that they admire. Using the power of social media, My Fellow American seeks to change the narrative – from Muslims as the other, to Muslims as our fellow Americans.

Most Americans have never met an American Muslim. Many only know Muslims through the way they are portrayed in the media. American Muslims are so often categorized as “the other” that it is possible not to recognize that most were born in the U.S. Or that those who immigrated here came seeking the same freedoms and opportunities that have always attracted people to America.

To learn more about My Fellow Americans and UPF please visit http://myfellowamerican.us/about. If you would like to take the pledge, go to http://myfellowamerican.us/pledge

http://youtu.be/cjm0uk2JO58

Καλώς ήλθατε στην Ελλάδα!

2011-08-04T23:56:53.000Z

The sellouts in the White House and Congress voted for and signed a deal that will lead inevitably to a deeper depression, no additional tax cuts for the rich, more, not less military spending and more, not less, austerity.

The next round of sellouts will begin when the ‘Trigger’ committee meets and will duplicate the sellout by Obama’s deficit reduction commission (National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform), by his compromising twice on Bush tax cuts for the rich and this latest manufactured deficit crisis.

There is no deficit crisis that can’t be quickly and permanently solved by taxing the rich at the 90% rate they were taxed during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.

48 of 50 states and many large cities are on the verge of bankruptcy. Unemployment is up steeply and economic growth is virtually nil. Europe is on the verge of total economic collapse and thanks to Congress and Obama the US is at a tipping point, ready to fall deeper into economic depression.

As conditions worsen the pressure for revolutionary change will come to the US without much notice and develop very quickly when it does. That’s partly because most venues for dissent have been closed. Leftwing parties are kept off the ballot. Unions are being busted by Obama and a coalition of Democrat and Republican governors and legislatures. Whistle blowers like Brad Manning are being publically tortured while Obama and Hillary Clinton smirk and call it ‘necessary’. Bipartisan support for FISA means that wiretapping of phone and internet messages of opponents of the WH continues unabated. And etc.

Their attempts to dampen the tectonic levels of rage against these repeated sellouts just won’t work. The growing pressure for change will find new ways to express itself just as it did in 1775 and again in 1860.

Right now working people are in shock and demoralized because of the Clinton depression; Obama’s deliberately maintained high under/unemployment and other government policies that drove our standard of living down. They’re also in deep shock over this latest betrayal at the hands of Obama and his Democrat/Republican/Teabagger partnership. The last time we saw this level of utter disbelief was after Bush and Obama twisted arms and got most Democrats and some Republicans to vote for TARP.

That shock won’t last forever. We’re already seeing templors, preshocks. For the second time in as many months the AFL-CIO has issued a clear warning to Obama and the Democrats - support unions, workers and the poor or get dumped. Wisconsin was another preshock. And theres’s this from today’s NY Times: “Breaking News Alert – Thursday, August 4, 2011 -Disapproval Rating of Congress at a Record 82 Percent, Poll Finds …” The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.  A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977...”

The fallout begins. Obama and his Democrat, Republican and Teabagger allies in Congress just committed political suicide. It may take a while for that to sink in.

For homeless youth, it never gets better

2011-08-02T12:37:37.000Z

The latest study coming out of Boston Children’s Hospital should shame politicians throughout this country who are cutting vital services to those in need, but I guarantee it won’t. It should also serve as yet another wake-up call to the queer community, which has not poured any substantial amount of money or effort into solving one of our most pressing problems. I don’t mean the lack of “marriage equality.”

I’m talking about the epidemic of homelessness in our midst.

In a recent survey of 6,000 high school students in Massachusetts, researchers at Children’s Hospital found that 25% of those who are homeless are LGBT and 15% bisexual. Only three percent of heterosexual teens are without homes, according to the research.

“It may be that their living situation is so difficult that they decide to leave home, and it may be that they are coming out and their parents are telling them, not under my roof,” commented Heather Corliss, an instructor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the study, which was just published in The American Journal of Public Health.

“The high risk of homelessness among sexual minority teens is a serious problem requiring immediate attention,” Corliss explained. “These teens face enormous risks and all types of obstacles to succeeding in school, and are in need of a great deal of assistance.”

“I hope these findings will lead to changes in communities to reduce the disparities,” Corliss added. “There has to be changes in communities, in churches, in schools, and in families so that they become more supportive.”

Those changes are unlikely, especvially in the queer community.

In 2006, a national study conducted by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 20 to 40% of LGBT youth were homeless. It was a serious wake-up call. It went unheeded at a time when the gay marriage movement was picking up steam, not to mention untold millions of dollars in contributions.

Here in San Francisco, research has shown that 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBT. Another wake-up call that has received only a token response. With over a thousand homeless queer youth on the street every day, the city only funds a few shelter beds and two dozen hotel rooms for homeless queer youth.

Meanwhile, merchants and neighbors in the Castro never cease complaining about those they perceive as “homeless” (including youth) sitting or sleeping on benches in Harvey Milk Plaza. They’ve managed to get the attention of the Castro Benefits District, which is proposing to remove the benches (something that was done before) and even post a security guard at the plaza.

How soon they forget that in the 60s and 70s straight neighbors used the same tactics to discourage gay men from hanging out and cruising in public spaces.

When the bullying issue made headlines after several gay teens committed suicide, the response was overwhelming. Overnight, it became a national issue, invoking the outrage of millions of Americans. Queer celebrities such as Dan Savage and Ellen DeGeneres jumped on board a campaign to assure youth that “it gets better.”

Don’t expect that type of response from the Boston study. For homeless queer youth, it never gets better.

Watch: Pink Balls in Montreal's Gay Village - Summer 2011

2011-08-02T16:36:24.000Z

This is a fantastic video highlighting landscape architect Claude Cormier's "Les Boules Roses" (The Pink Balls), 170,000 pink resin balls fastened to wires strung out at different levels and through the trees forming a long pink canopy suspended for summer 2011 over the Sainte-Catherine Street pedestrian zone (aka The Gay Village) in Montreal, my home.

Les Boules Roses from UbiqueMedia on Vimeo.

Montreal's 2011 Pride Celebrations run from August 9-14, with the Pride Parade taking place at 1 p.m. on Sunday, August 14.

What you say on Facebook can hurt...

2011-07-31T19:32:57.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet from my husband that disturbed me. He was getting upset about a post a coworker had posted about same sex couples raising children. His (the coworker) opinion was that gay people are not fit to raise children because it would confuse the child too much and they would have questions. He also stated that there are a lot of facts that he could bust up with but wouldn't. His wife states later in his post that "it is not fair that the child will be the one who struggles growing up because of the comments and the negativity put on them due to the situation." The persons profile is private so a person who was a friend of his on facebook showed me the post. (NOTE: the friend was printing out the post at the same time that the owner of the facebook page was deleting them from their friends list because they disagreed with what was being said and was commenting to that effect) I was going to quote my husbands tweet and comment on it in this blog and talk about gay adoption etc but last night he wrote something concerning these tweets and this facebook post that put into words his feelings about the situation to the point that I could not even begin to express it. I am sharing it here today:

Just some food for thought
So a recent situation arose on facebook about a month ago or so and it caused me to stop and think and ponder about life and it caused me to get upset. I was frustrated, saddened, and depressed by the statements that were posted to the facebook account of someone that I looked up to but find it hard to even look in their eyes now.
The posts on facebook raised some questions in my head and caused me to think long and hard about the words that were said. I do know that it was posted on his facebook page and thusly is his own opinions and right to do so…but…it intermixed with work which is not OK. I will be keeping his name out of this, keeping the company we work for out of this, and I will not be listing any other person involved. Below is a blurb that I posted to my facebook and twitter following the events:
“That saddens, sickens, and revolts me…I can never look at u the same way…I’m so upset by ur words and comments…I want a child and I feel like u and people like u are trying to rob me of that simple joy…I don’t care if the children may have questions…I have questions growing up…I was bullied while growing up…my parents were married for a majority of my childhood and I always wondered y my friends had divorced parents and step parents…I always wondered y I wasn’t circumcised like the other boys in gym…or why I was taller than them…I always wondered y I was gay and they weren’t and y I was somehow less of a person…I always was told that gays were pedophiles and child molesters and that gays were immoral and wrong and less of a person…I wanted to kill myself so many times bc I was never told it was ok…that it was normal…I was put on mood altering drugs and forced to see a therapists who put me down for having these feelings…I felt like I would be better of dead than alive and gay…u sadden me and ur family may seem perfect and all complete bc of a man, a woman, and a kid but u just wait…ur time will come…I will still try to adopt and rescue a poor soul who was abandoned by a straight person like u at the orphanage left to feel all alone and forgotten…just u remember that…”
I am not going to lie, but after he made the comment that gays should not be allowed to adopt children because a child needs both a mom and a dad in their life as well as that by having same sex parents would raise some questions for children, I felt like dying all over again. I felt like I was in high school and feeling less than a person because of the way I was born. I have wanted nothing more than to raise a child in my life and it saddens me that bigots like this gentleman may end up removing my chances of doing so.
What straight people do not understand is that, by being gay, it does not mean that I have aids or HIV…It does not mean that I want to be a woman…It does not mean that I am automatically a child molester or incapable of keeping a commitment with one partner…I did not just one day wake up and say I wanted to be hated by millions of people because I am “choosing” to be gay. One question that I want to ask you all…If this was a choice and us gays did not have to be with the same sex, then why is it that many gays have attempted suicide and many of them succeeded. I can not count on one hand how many times I thought about and or attempted to kill myself because I wanted nothing more than to not be gay because I was never told it was ok…That it was not a choice I had made but rather the fact that I was born this way.
As I wrote the above statement after finding out what that gentleman had posted to facebook, I contemplated what a legacy I would leave behind if I just came home and ended it. I thought what would my work talk about, how they would remember me, and what my family would do. I thought about my husband and how this would affect him and what thoughts would protrude his mind. I came home and sat on my deck and cried. Tears filled my eyes and I kept thinking about that little boy or girl who was feeling the same way I was. Who felt that they were less than human because they are gay or lesbian and how strong many of them would be to stand up in the face of adversity and continue on. I thought about how much of a let down it would be for me to be cowardly and end it and instead I need to stand up for what is right and fight for all the rights us gays should have just for being human.
My last statements for this post is to please seek help if you are in need. Do not let your voice go unheard. Help is here. There are many suicide prevention hot lines and they are there to talk to you and talk about what you are feeling. The world is not better off with out you no matter who you are. I don’t care if you are gay, straight, bi, transgender, a geek, a jock, or any other type of person. You are all human and are all beautiful in your own way. I am here if you need a friend and trust me, you are worthy of friendship!! Sorry about the heavy posting today. Peace, Love, and Boxer Briefs!!
**********

After reading this from my husband it made me dislike his coworker even more. People need to learn that what they say on facebook or any other social network is there forever and even if it is your opinion (and I do believe in freedom of speech),your opinion could affect others in both a positive and negative way and reflect on how people perceive you as a person. The funny thing is, this person who upset my husband is a christian (or thinks he is). Hope he realizes that Jesus preached love and not the bigoted hate that he is spewing before he meets his maker...

Keep your gay marriage, give me my Social Security

2011-07-22T21:20:53.000Z

I don’t have a partner. Maybe that’s why I’m not excited about President Obama’s endorsement of the Respect for Marriage Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Or maybe it’s because I know that close to half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people, and about a quarter of the adult population has never been married. In some communities, and notably the African American community, those numbers are much higher.

So increasingly, the campaign for same-sex marriage is not about extending the rights of the majority to a minority, but about further enshrining the privileges of a shrinking minority.

But in fact, the benefits marriage activists seek are waning by the day. By the time gay elders can claim each other’s Social Security and Medicare benefits, those benefits will have been eviscerated. Social Security, as we all know, is probably at this moment being sacrificed on the altar of deficit reduction (which, of course, it has nothing to do with). While same-sex-marriage advocates insist that marriage rights will guarantee the right of immigrant couples to live together, immigrant families all over the U.S. are fighting to stay together and out of jail. The Obama administration has deported and detained far more immigrants – including legal immigrants - than the Bush administration did.

I expected Wednesday's headline to be, “Obama caves in on budget deal.” Instead, the headline was “Obama backs same-sex marriage.” Coincidence? I don’t think so. Gay marriage is being used as a distraction to appease liberals.

Gavin Newsom, who was elected mayor of San Francisco on a pro-corporate, anti-homeless platform, used same-sex marriage to liberalize his image. In 2003, Newsom fairly narrowly defeated Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez, winning 53% of the vote after polls a day earlier showed a virtual tie. In 2007, fresh out of alcohol treatment and having being caught having an affair with a (female) employee who was married to one of his top aides, Newsom was reelected with 73% of the vote. The difference? Gay marriage.

Here’s how his own website (he’s currently Lt. Governor, after precipitously pulling out of the governor’s race without explanation), describes his mayoral career:

“In 2003, after a fiercely-contested race, Newsom was elected the youngest Mayor in San Francisco in more than a century. “After only 36 days as mayor, Newsom gained worldwide attention when he granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This bold move set the tone for Newsom’s first term.…
In 2007, Newsom was re-elected with more than 73% of the vote.”

Same-sex marriage is an easy fix. It doesn’t cost anything, and a majority of the public, including a slim majority of Republicans, supports it.

I do too. Of course, I do. I’m a lesbian and I’m in favor of equal rights for everyone in all spheres. But it’s basically worthless to most people, including most gay people. I won’t even go into the ways in which it reinforces inequality. (I and plenty of others have gone into that at length over the years. My point here is that the LGBQ community must not allow our fight for civil equality to be used to distract from the fight to the death, or really against death, that everyone in this country is in right now – a fight for our very survival.
Consider the moment. The latest poll shows Obama in a dead heat with GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. 19 different polls show that a vast majority of Americans, somewhere between 62% and 80%, favor raising taxes on the wealthy to fund services and balance the budget. Obama refuses to do that. His one big legislative victory since taking office has been the health care reform bill. Who created the program that was based on? Hint: Romney’s Republican opponents have taken to referring to the Massachusetts health care plan as “Obamney Care.” So Obama needs something to separate himself from the Mormon Romney, and even just not being against gay marriage wouldn’t do it, because Romney has refused to take the “anti-gay marriage pledge” and offends "family values" voters by defending the separation of church and state.

Queer communities have been hit as hard in the recession as other communities - necessarily so, because we are part of every community. San Francisco’s cutting edge network of services for LGBT people and HIV-affected people, built through decades of community activism, agitation and organizing, has been largely decimated in the last two years. New Leaf, a 35-year-old San Francisco center serving the LGBT community with mental health, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS services closed in October of last year. Lyon-Martin Clinic, the first lesbian- and trans-focused clinic in the country, nearly closed last year and is still on shaky ground. Just hours before the New York legislature passed the marriage equality bill, activists gathered in front of the Stonewall Inn, where the modern LGBT movement was born, to demand funding for programs for homeless LGBT youth. Roughly 1,000 queer youth go without shelter every night in New York City, and Governor Cuomo recently cut the funding for youth shelters in half.

This is far from the first instance of minority groups winning rights as those rights, only to find their victories virtually hollow.

The standard of living for most Black South Africans has worsened considerably since apartheid was toppled. In the U.S., nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act was enacted, Black families with children have median incomes roughly half those of white families. Black children are three times as likely as white children to live in extreme poverty; 40% of Black children under 5 are living in poverty.

I’m not suggesting that the fight for same-sex marriage is the same as the fight for African American civil rights or the liberation of South Africa. But we should be aware of those histories, as well as many more. The unemployed youth of Egypt and Tunisia are now realizing that it’s easier to bring down a dictator than it is to break the stranglehold of neoliberal economic policies.

LGBTQ people need to keep our eyes on the real prize and not be fooled by the shiny decoy. If we don’t, the couples making their way to New York to take those marriage vows will soon be selling their wedding rings to keep each other in cat food.

Bteivik, the Norwegian mass murderer is worse than just a christofundie and more than just a rightwing mad dog killer.

2011-07-24T20:49:04.000Z

Breivik is a fascist and there's a more than a whiff of fascism in the air on both sides of the Atlantic. .

Racism and the elimination of unions and the left are the core of fascist politics.

Breivik embraces racist Islamophobic fear mongering, a modern day equivalent of anti-Semitism. That and his cowardly attack, murdering almost a hundred Labor Party children and youth are all the proof anyone needs.

He may also be a rightist and a christer fundamentalist - those politics and fascist politics often run on parallel tracks in the EU and elsewhere. In the US their convergence is accelerating with ever more severe attacks on labor unions and a ramping up of terrorist threats and attacks on GLBT folks and people of color, particularly immigrant workers.

Incidents of murder and other acts of violence against LGBT folks are on the rise again, egged on the fight over same sex marriage and the comments of bigots like Obama, Palin, The Clintons and Bachmann denying our humanity by denying that we have the same rights as others.

The deep seated racism against immigrants is based on attempts by Democrats and Republicans alike to exploit their labor while denying them basic human rights. For instance Obama and the Democrats, with applause and smirks from Republicans, decided to deny health care to imported workers in Obama's fake health care program.

In Palestine, zionists, who are extremely right wing, long ago settled on a course of racist Islamophobia to justify their campaign of ethnic cleansing. In doing so they emulated the Germans ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe, although they have not yet begun an organized genocide. Perhaps shame holds them back from taking the next step. They also copy much of the strategy of eurochrister colonists in the Americas who literally invented racism (as opposed to national chauvinism, which is as old as dirt) to justify their repeated mass murders of native peoples here and in what's now Latin America and to justify their genocidal importation of enslaved Africans.

Here is the home truth about fascists - there can be no compromise with them. They mean to murder us.

That's the awful lesson of the last century in Italy, Spain and Germany and elsewhere. They are our deadly enemies and we have to take all necessary steps to defend ourselves from them. Any step to accommodate to them or pander to them is a step towards the ovens.

Intimate Circumstances: On "Gay" Cinema

2011-07-24T21:30:00.000Z

When I was 15 or 16, I started combing every queer-ish movie I could find for fag sex. I watched whole films just for gestures, innuendo and perhaps a few kisses. Eventually, I found slightly better films online, with a Netflix subscription that took me through what seemed like their entire library of "Gay/Lesbian" films.

Still, it was always a tease: waiting, watching, for validation which was so sweet and strange that it made the whole world pale around it. These were cinematic rituals, performed alone, wrapped in a blanket in the dark in front of the television, late at night, the sound painfully low so as not to draw jokes or derision from parents.

Even now, though, there is this sense that everything in a straight world is just a tease. Queers are pretty accepting, on the whole: we watch TV series because they're queer-friendly or have a queer aesthetic, enduring through the frequent, graphic hetero romances for a couple of caresses between gay characters, or even just the depiction of a non-straight relationship. We're good at subsisting on the scraps thrown to us. Filmmakers and TV producers know that their primary audiences are almost always overwhelmingly heterosexual, and they cater to them first-- even when the show is primarily about gay people. We are expected to psychically survive on very little validation and titillation from our media.

Of course, certain films break the mold, perhaps in increasing numbers. Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell) is an excellent example of a film that treats queer and straight characters and relationships with an equal dose of nudity, graphic sex and frank understanding. And an array of indie films, not intended to be highly marketable, focus exclusively on queer lives and perspectives without the need to compulsively translate these experiences for straight viewers.

I was delighted when I came across this sketch from Kids in the Hall, itself a radically inclusive TV series. The sketch is not only funny, but nails the whole issue: three Kids, playing young gay men, go to see a new "groundbreaking" gay film about characters who never get out of their snowsuits, much less have sex.

Kids in the Hall: "Intimate Circumstances" | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UElgVYBi6mo

The Kids in the audience react differently: the "liberal" insists that "this is an important film for the Gay and Lesbian community!" and reminds his bored friends that "the Advocate loved it"! The cute dark-haired fag-- who would totally be me if I were in this theatre-- is excited, but then falls asleep.

And Butch, too bored to continue watching the film, wanders off and finds a hot, tattooed audience member to make out with. As his two friends shake their heads at him, he exclaims, "Great movie, huh?!" The media may throw scraps--both in the early 90s and today--to queer audiences, but the real world is full of good stuff-- the mistake is to miss it while looking for tidbits among the garbage.

What Racist Queers Say

2011-07-27T23:57:15.000Z

Thanks to my friend Richard over at Three Dollar Bill for bringing my attention to an amazing article, "Racist Queers" by comedian Solomon Georgio, who outlines some of the most common reactions white queers have when they are accused of saying or doing something racist. Gems like, "I'm gay, how could I be racist?" or "I have a good friend that is (insert ethnicity)." For Americans, there is the popular, "But I voted for Obama," and perhaps the most overused statement of all, in spirit at least, globally, "Get over it."

Obviously, a lot of anger and pain can come from being victimized, first as a gay person in a homophobic world, and then, as a visible minority in a racist world. This double whammy, so to speak, has the great potential to create moments that stir the mind with thoughts and debates about oneself and others. For me, reading "Racist Queers" is one such example. Click here for the full article.

Muslim writer speaks in favor of equal protection for all

2011-07-16T23:24:29.000Z

In an article published in Al Arabiya, Melody Moezzi, an Iranian-American Muslim writer and attorney from Chicago has come out in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, stating:

The LGBT community represents the most vulnerable and marginalized sector of nearly every society worldwide, and as such, it’s vital that international bodies like the UN speak up in support of LGBT rights. Likewise, because it is so often religion that is abused and misused to justify the assault, murder and harassment of gays, lesbians and transgender people, it is equally important for religious individuals, groups and organizations to stand up in defense of the LGBT community.

To be honest, I don't know how much credibility or clout Ms. Moezzi holds in fundamentalist Muslim societies, but the fact that her words and thoughts appear in such a prominent news source is, at the very least, encouraging. Many more religious people, especially Muslims and Christians, need to preach the same message to their spiritual kin if they truly want the world to become a safer place for sexual minorities, and, consequently, a more harmonious planet on which to live. However, I can say that after nearly five years of researching hundreds, if not thousands, of stories for this blog, I am not sure that the majority of religious people across the globe really want peace.

We're governed by a) incompetents, b) a new class of political gangsters, c) aristocrats, d) lap dogs of the rich, or e) all of the above and worse.

2011-07-14T08:28:17.000Z

The two major political parties have forfeited their capacity to govern. Panicked by the economic disaster that Democrats and Republicans jointly created, they're unable to solve even the most minor questions, much less questions like war and the depression. They seem only to agree on raises for themselves and for protecting and enhancing their ability to get graft. Polls show that Americans understand that this is political crisis of the worst kind. They show abysmal rates of approval for Congress and every president in recent memory has left office a failure.

In a panic, Democrats and Republicans increasingly resort to eyeball to eyeball, highly polarized partisan confrontations. Both compete for one thing - access to corrupt practices and graft. What distinguishes their increasingly explosive battles is that they're not issue related, they resemble turf war between rival street gangs more than anything else. We're the 'shrooms', the innocents who pop up in the middle of the battle and get shot by both sides.

Democrats and Republicans have basically the same politics.

·        The two parties agree on the need for more wars of aggression against weaker nations and peoples to plunder their resources and establish de facto US colonies. The US Embassy in Baghdad is vast, more like a colonial administrative center than an embassy. It's the size of Vatican City, has 21 buildings on 104 acres, and is staffed by well over 5,000 colonial administrators. They're thoughtlessly unconcerned about the tens of thousands of GIs and millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and shattered in their growing list of invasions and occupations.

·        They agree on a broad program of artificially maintaining high levels of unemployment/underemployment, union busting, job export and a variety of measures to drive down workers standard of living.

·        They agree on the need to import workers and the policies to bash them.

·        They agree on the assault on the Bill of Rights and the passage of repressive laws.

·        Both stridently oppose socialized medicine and the restoration of social programs to cushion the appalling effects of the economic catastrophe they created with job exports, union busting and deregulation.

What are we to make of the fact that their bickering could lead to a government default, a shutdown and a much deeper, global depression? Just this. Their incredibly cavalier approach is beyond reckless and marks them as unfit to govern. Their irresponsibility is beyond negligent, it's criminal.

And this is not the end of it. These are the scum, Democrats and Republicans, who brought you the criminal policies that created the current depression, six (and counting) wars, the Paytriot Act, FISA, deregulation, a health care nightmare, union busting, massive and permanent unemployment and mounting poverty. Their actions endanger the health and livelihoods of all workers.

They are not going to change and they are not going to permit 'reforms'. 'Sharing' power with these criminals and asking them to 'reform' themselves are pipe dreams. In our own defense, and to prevent further depredations we have to reject both parties - Democrats and Republicans alike - and to build coalitions of mass movements with open ended campaigns of mass action, workers political parties, as opposed to futile reformist parties and an agenda aimed the creation of a workers government.