LGBT History
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Hillary Clinton and Homophobia in Russia
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Harvey Milk Finally Gets His Day
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Five Reasons Why Schwarzenegger Should Sign Harvey Milk Day Into Law
What FDR's Words Can Teach LGBT Rights Activists
Published October 05, 2009 @ 02:01PM PT
Recently I attended a screening of Michael Moore’s new movie Capitalism: A Love Story, with Moore taking some questions from the audience after the movie. Asked about Obama, Moore said, he inherited a horrible mess, and Obama deserves a long grace period to sort it out. But, Moore added, he hoped that the President realized that the biggest damage he could do is not deliver on his promise of change. It would take a nation of young activists and idealists and turn them into hardened cynics.
Which is why this piece in the L.A. Times by Johanna Neuman and Kate Linthicum caught my eye, noting how some gay activists are criticizing Obama for being “all talk.”
Neuman and Linthicum write that Obama seems to be paying the community lip service, fueling “an ongoing debate among gay-rights activists about whether the president is living up to his promise that he would be a ‘fierce advocate’ for LGBT equality.” He has not moved to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and his Administration has at times defended DOMA. The article points to activists’ claims that the President's support for gay rights “has not been reflected in policy decisions, but has been purely rhetorical.”
Interestingly, at the movie screening for Capitalism, another questioner asked Moore about footage in the film featuring FDR addressing the nation. Interestingly enough, what was FDR’s reply to activists who wanted to see Social Security enacted? Peter Dreier in this article from Common Dreams documents it: “He listened to their arguments for some time and then said, ‘You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.’"
And therein lies the lesson from FDR. We've convinced Obama about most of our issues -- hate crimes, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," repealing DOMA. Now we just have to make Obama do it.
Bobby Jindal, Conservative Fail
Published September 04, 2009 @ 07:18PM PT
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal certainly likes to pretend that he's an economic conservative. Earlier this year, Gov. Jindal gave the official response from the GOP to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, and criticized wasteful government spending. Huh...for someone who criticizes wasting taxpayer money, why has he spent upwards of $45,000 in taxpayer money for helicopter rides to attend various churches in Louisiana?
That's a story that the Advocate paper in Louisiana broke this week. According to the paper, "In May, June and July, there was rarely a Sunday when the governor didn’t board a taxpayer-funded helicopter to attend church services in far-flung parts of the state." Going back the last five months, Jindal has taken roughly 36 helicopter rides at the expense of taxpayers. Fourteen of these trips were to visit conservative religious churches. Should the state of Louisiana be in the business of providing helicopter rides for their governor, so that he can attend Church?
A progressive religious organization known as the Interfaith Alliance called Gov. Jindal out on his massive hypocrisy. The Interfaith Alliance's Preisdent. Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, said that Gov. Jindal ought to pay the state of Louisiana back the $45,000 in taxpayer funds that these helicpoter rides have rung up for Louisiana voters. Bobby Jindal's response to the Interfaith Alliance? "Don't listen to them! They're a bunch of gay-friendly heathens!" Well, not quite. But pretty damn close. Here's the official response from Gov. Jindal:
This political group opposes putting crosses up in honor of fallen policemen, has attacked the National Day of Prayer and advocates for same-sex marriage, so it's not surprising that they are attacking the governor for accepting invitations to speak at Louisiana churches.
The fact that the Interfaith Alliance advocates for same-sex marriage has nothing to do with why the organization called Gov. Jindal out on his evil spending ways. The reason Gov. Jindal got called out is because (1) he's a big huge hypocrit who rails on liberal Democrats for wasting taxpayer money, only to throw more than $45,000 down the drain traveling to church, and (2) because voters shouldn't be funding their political leaders' rides to Mass every Sunday.
Looks like there might be another Gov. Mark Sanford on our hands. Although instead of it being a conservative who blabs on and on about family values while cheating on his wife, it's a conservative who blabs on and on about wasteful spending, only to go and waste tens of thousands of dollars. That's a fail, Gov. Bobby Jindal, and you deserve to be called out on it.
Judy Shepard, on the Night She Learned Her Son Matthew Was Killed
Published September 03, 2009 @ 09:17AM PT
Judy Shepard, the mother of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard who was murdered more than ten years ago in a hate crime, has a new memoir coming out. In it, she talks about the tragedy of losing a son simply because he was gay, and the tireless work she's done over the past decade to get the U.S. Congress and the White House to pass hate crimes legislation that includes protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The book is called The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed. Judy has an excerpt of it in Newsweek's current issue, and when we say it's powerful, we mean it's powerful. Check out these few sentences:
As Dennis and I rushed around in a daze—packing our bags and preparing paperwork rather than staring at the slow-moving clock—I did everything I could to stay hopeful. Dennis and I had only limited information about the extent of Matt's injuries, and absolutely no information about the circumstances surrounding his attack. We knew he was critically injured and that his hold on life was tenuous, at best. Still, our highest hope at that point was for Matt's complete recovery. Our most basic, and perhaps most realistic, hope was that he would hold on to life until we could be with him, by his side.
Shepard died on October 12, 1998. But Judy's memoir is done in part to share with readers the life that Matthew lived before he was killed. As she told Newsweek, "There are still some things that as a family that we’ve chosen to keep to ourselves. We’ve loosened up a little bit, but there just doesn’t seem to be a need for the world to know everything about us or Matt. The reason I wrote the book was because I wanted to reconcile the public Matthew with our Matt. As I said in the book, he had a life before he was killed."
Schwarzenegger Wants to Know Your Twitter Thoughts on Harvey Milk Day
Published August 25, 2009 @ 09:46AM PT
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed an effort last year to create a state day in remembrance of Harvey Milk. At the time, Gov. Schwarzenegger said Milk's legacy didn't transcend the local level, and that he was too low profile to be honored with a state day. One year later, and a plethora of attention given Harvey Milk by everyone from Hollywood to the White House, efforts are underway to push legislation that would create a Harvey Milk Day in California again. And this time, Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to hear from people via Twitter what they think about it.
Here's the post that we just put up. Wanna retweet?
@Schwarzenegger: Sign the Harvey Milk Day bill! He gave his life, the least you can do is give him a day. #p2 #LGBT
There are a million reasons for Harvey Milk to be remembered officially by the state of California, the least of which is that he was one of the first LGBT politicians ever to be elected to public office, and he gave his life championing equal rights for all.
Conservatives are hitting the Governor's office up hard on this, trying to get Schwarzenegger to veto legislation that would create a Harvey Milk Day. Let's make sure Gov. Schwarzenegger hears from some allies on this one.
There's also a voicemail you can call set up to get input on Harvey Milk Day. Here's the digits: 916-445-2841. Oh, and for those of us addicted to action, here's a short petition you can sign urging the Governor to sign the bill to make Harvey Milk Day a reality in California.
Wise Latina is the New Queer
Published August 20, 2009 @ 10:11PM PT
During the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, many conservative and right-wing pundits tried to make a big to-do over the fact that Sotomayor said the following statement: "[A] wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life." Conservatives wanted to paint this statement as racist and offensive. Pop culture instead has embraced the phrase "wise Latina," pushing the term into the lexicon of words, like queer, that have been reclaimed by minority groups as a means of empowerment.
Queer is a term that, for many, was an offensive slur that harkened back to the days of "Mad Men," when it was regularly used as a derogatory term to refer to LGBT folks. Now? For many, it's a cultural concept that means a rejection of labels for one's sexual orientation. Or, as some folks have put it, queer was a term that was reclaimed by the LGBT community as a source of power.
Exit queer, enter Wise Latina. The latter phrase was used by many a conservative politico as a means of trying to discredit Sonia Sotomayor. Sen. John Cornyn, for instance, said that Sotomayor's reference to being a Wise Latina was "antithetical to the whole idea of the rule of law." Rush Limbaugh called Sotomayor a "racist" for using the term Wise Latina. Glenn Beck said that Sotomayor's comment was "one of the most outrageous racist remarks" he's heard.
So how are people reacting to conservatives trying to criminalize the phrase "Wise Latina"? They're embracing the term as a badge of honor, and a proud descriptor. Booyeah.
AP notes that "Wise Latina" has become a pop culture phenomenon. And now it's being marketed on books, cups, T-shirts, and onesies, to name a few items. Charles McIlwain, a media prof at NYU, told AP that people are seeing this phrase as an opportunity to take pride in their roots, and reclaim it as something worth aspiring toward.
"I think one thing many people are doing, Latinas and the Latino community in general, is reframing the phrase and saying: 'Hey, when we talk about the wise Latina, we're not trying to show that somehow we're better than others, but we want to associate being Latino with something that's wise and good," McIlwain told AP.
What a great example of owning a phrase that haters tried to tarnish. Talk radio might want to demonize Wise Latina, along the same lines as words like queer were once demonized. But these are words and terms that can be reclaimed, and can be used to educate and inspire, rather than label or disparage.
Activism, Art, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis
Published August 20, 2009 @ 05:23PM PT
How do you commemorate the fear, anger, hope, challenges, activism, and organizing that occurred at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. more than twenty years ago? If you're the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, you host a whole semester's worth of programming and exhibits looking at the impact that groups like ACT UP had, and the vivid images that captured the country's attention and changed the way that HIV/AIDS was viewed.
Before there was social networking, there was guerilla marketing. And as the Carpenter Center points out, that tactic was deployed quite effectively by ACT UP, as well as artist collectives like Gran Fury, the Silence = Death Project, and Fierce Pussy (to name a few). These groups used the power of art to fight against HIV/AIDS, and specifically to fight against government inaction and stereotypes that made up the early history of the disease in this country. Whether it was explaining that kissing doesn't cause HIV/AIDS, or whether it was telling the Catholic Church that condoms protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, these orgs put their artwork where their politics were, so to speak.
"ACT UP’s demonstrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s reflected the group’s outrage against a governing establishment that ignored HIV/AIDS as a national health crisis; that failed to secure funding for medical research, treatment, and education; that profited from inflated costs for therapeutic drugs; and that perpetuated homophobic misrepresentations of HIV and AIDS," writes the Carpenter Center.
The exhibit itself? Well, it'll feature classic ACT UP advertising campaign posters, as well as a suite of over 100 video interviews with surviving members of ACT UP New York. Those interviews form the crux of an oral history project that captures a diverse movement birthed during the darkest days of HIV/AIDS. These are the organizers and activists who "transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients," and made the world a little - scratch that, a lot - better for everyone fighting against the disease.
In other words, the exhibit at the Carpenter Center will pull together some of the best social artwork of the last thirty years: the artwork and ad campaigns that helped end misinformation about HIV/AIDS, that brought about new strategies of political organizing, and that helped give voice to those living with HIV/AIDS. Better yet, it should help draw the connections between the organizing and activism at the height of the 1980s, and how lessons learned during that movement can be applicable now.
Honoring Lesbian Writer Natalie Barney
Published August 20, 2009 @ 01:57PM PT
Natalie Barney was an American writer and poet who spent most of her life writing in Paris, France. But she was born in Dayton, Ohio, and if plans continue to move forward, a marker honoring Barney's legacy will become Ohio's first public memorial noting the sexual orientation of the person being honored.
Activists in Dayton say that Barney's legacy, as well as her openness about her sexuality, is something to celebrate. "Barney’s sexual orientation was part of her life’s work. What she did when it comes to women’s rights was significant," said John Zimmerman of the Greater Dayton LGBT Center.
And true to form, Barney was a path-breaker. She's the author behind "The Well of Loneliness," which many argue was one of the best (if not at least the best-selling) lesbian books of the 20th century. The book was banned by the British and allegedly "burned in the King's furnace," due to its lesbian themes.
Barney also ran a salon series in Paris, which influenced authors like Truman Capote, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Sinclair Lewis, Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Gertrudge Stein, and Marcel Proust to name a few. And wow, if there's a creative writing class in heaven, these sure sound like the teachers.
The Dayton City Commission will vote on August 26 whether or not to follow through and honor Barney with her own memorial. Strikes us that this would be yet another opportunity to honor the influence that LGBT Americans (albeit ex-patriates, in the case of Barney!) have had on both a national and global level.
