Monday, June 29, 2009

For Gays and Lesbians, True Equality Starts with Marriage -- A BuzzFlash News Analysis

For Gays and Lesbians, True Equality Starts with Marriage

Submitted by Chad on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 2:06pm.

Analysis

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Chad Rubel

One of the overlooked elements to the death of Farrah Fawcett was that she and long-time love Ryan O'Neal wanted to get married at the very end, but unfortunately, they ran out of time. Even though they had been mostly together for almost three decades, they decide that getting married was something they wanted to do.

But a marriage that would have lasted hours or even days -- even that kind of marriage isn't an option for gay couples in over 40 states.

We have seen strongly committed gay couples wanting desperately to get married. It is the public face to put on for those who are unsure about gays and lesbians getting married. Show the strong couples, the committed couples, the ones that have been waiting a long time and desperately want to get hitched.

But behind this face are gay and lesbian couples who will want to get married for the reasons that some straight couples tie the knot: for money, professional advancement, on a whim, drunken and in Las Vegas, and even as a sweet gesture as one of them lays dying.

The recent release of "The Proposal" has Sandra Bullock's character wanting to marry Ryan Reynolds' character so she doesn't get deported to Canada. As silly a premise as this is, gay couples can't even do this in the vast majority of the United States. Of course, if this happened to a gay couple, they could just both move to Canada, get married, and not look back.

It is understood that you can't come out and say this is what you are fighting for, but deep down, true equality is having gay and lesbian couples make bizarre or unconventional choices in getting married.

The religious right, which literally preaches the sanctimony of marriage, does two things rather poorly: they don't chastise straight couples for their offbeat reasons for getting married, and they paint gays and lesbians as hedonists, which ironically, marriage would actually disprove this argument.

President Obama is meeting with LGBT supporters, one day after the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and, of course, Pride parades in many cities in the U.S. And the nice round number of a 40-year block -- two generations worth -- demonstrates how bad what the world was like for gays and lesbians in 1969, and the changes since.

But gays and lesbians have every right to be concerned about the defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the non-starter that is getting rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or at least not enforcing its major statute.

We have freedoms as Americans to behave as odd, unusual, offbeat, unconventional as we want. But true freedom means freedom for all, for gays and lesbians to be every part of society, including those who want to get married. And not just married, but to be just as married for the same silly or sweet reasons that straight people do. This is when there will be true equality.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

As President Obama prepares to host a cocktail reception at the White House for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender leaders, prominent activists and fundraisers return to the Stonewall Inn on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots to announce a new comprehensive LGBT civil rights agenda. At that time they will also present U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler with signed petitions from all 50 states and 36 countries supporting expansion of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT people, marking the official launch of The Power’s nationwide petition drive and campaign demanding full equality now.

The Power (www.thepoweronline.org) is an online organizing network that empowers grassroots and netroots activists from every state in the country and from all over the world to fight for equal rights for LGBT people, not on some arbitrary and convenient schedule created by politicians and lobbyists, but right now.

Speakers will include Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, civil rights attorney Liz Abzug (daughter of feminist, anti-war, and LGBT activist and Congresswoman Bella Abzug), former Jerry Falwell ghostwriter and Soulforce founder Rev. Mel White, and others.

WHAT: A press conference convened by The Power (www.ThePowerOnline.org) launching a national movement to pass comprehensive LGBT civil rights legislation.

WHO: Jeffrey H. Campagna, founder of The Power, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a representative of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and civil rights attorney and daughter of Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Liz Abzug.

WHEN: 10 a.m., Monday, June 29, 2009, 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

WHERE: Outside The Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher St. @ Sheridan Square, New York, NY

WHY: With a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate" of LGBT rights in the White House, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, the federal agenda for gay rights does not include full equality. It is time for LGBT people and their allies to seize this historic moment to pass comprehensive civil rights legislation now.

SPEAKER BIOS:

• Jeffrey H. Campagna is the founder of The Power. Campagna is also an attorney who has worked in the civil rights bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office, and a fundraiser for Democratic causes who was on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's LGBT steering committees. He is also a co-author of The Dallas Principles (www.thedallasprinciples.org), a call to action demanding full equality now. Campagna and The Power's organizing efforts have been cited by The New York Daily News, The New York Blade, The Washington Blade, The San Francisco Examiner, Edge (the largest web portal of LGBT news and entertainment), Huffington Post, TimeOut New York, Towleroad.com, and others.

• Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil Rights, and lead sponsor of the Uniting American Families Act.

• Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is the leader of the largest LGBT congregation in the world, New York's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah.

• Liz Abzug is a civil rights attorney, a public affairs consultant, and adjunct professor of urban studies at Columbia University; she is the daughter of the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug who introduced sweeping gay rights legislation three times in the 1970's.

• Rev. Dr. Mel White, former ghost writer for clients including Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberston, founder of Soulforce, a national organization of religious leaders fighting religious based bigotry, and author of "Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America"

QUOTES AND INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Contact:
Melissa Miller
P.R. Director
917-640-6965
press@thepoweronline.org

'Gayby boom': Children of gay couples speak out

CNN -- Jesse Levey is a Republican activist who says he believes in family values, small government and his lesbian mothers' right to marry.

Jeff DeGroot on hiking trip with his mothers, Elisabeth, on his left, and Meg Grear, on his right.

Levey is part of the "gayby boom" generation. The 29-year-old management consultant is the son of a lesbian couple who chose to have a child through artificial insemination. He's their only child.

Critics of same-sex marriage say people such as Levey will grow up shunned and sexually confused. Yet he says he's a "well-adjusted heterosexual" whose upbringing proves that love, not gender, makes a family.

"You can imagine what my parents thought when I was 13 and listening to Rush Limbaugh everyday," Levey says. "But my family had strong family values. I was raised in a loving, caring household that let me be a free thinker."

For the rest of the story at CNN go to: Gay Boom

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Empire State Building Goes Gay

Thanks JMG!

Before we get to the best posts from this week on the Bilerico sites, don't forget to e-mail 50 ENDA-shy Democrats!

The Power marks Pride with a Press Conference at Stonewal

If you are in New York, please join us for a press conference with Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil Rights. If you are in New York on Monday, join us at Stonewall to make history again. Bring signs that say "LGBT Rights=Civil Rights." We'll announce some exciting endorsements of our petition and send a message to Washington that the time for equality is now, no delays, no excuses.

See the cover story in this week's New York Blade for more information. http://theblade.net/.

Please circulate this to all your friends in the media. Blog it, retweet.

MEDIA ALERT: Press Conference at Historic Stonewall Inn to Announce New LGBT Civil Rights Agenda and Present U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler With Signed Petition from all 50 States.

As President Obama prepares to host a cocktail reception at the White House for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender leaders, prominent activists and fundraisers return to the Stonewall Inn on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots to announce a new comprehensive LGBT civil rights agenda. At that time they will also present U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler with signed petitions from all 50 states and 36 countries supporting expansion of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT people, marking the official launch of The Power’s nationwide petition drive and campaign demanding full equality now.

The Power (http://www.thepoweronline.org) is an online organizing network that empowers grassroots and netroots activists from every state in the country and from all over the world to fight for equal rights for LGBT people, not on some arbitrary and convenient schedule created by politicians and lobbyists, but right now.

Speakers will include Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, civil rights attorney Liz Abzug (daughter of feminist, anti-war, and LGBT activist and Congresswoman Bella Abzug), former Jerry Falwell ghostwriter and Soulforce founder Rev. Mel White, and others.

WHAT: A press conference convened by The Power (http://www.thepoweronline.org/) launching a national movement to pass comprehensive LGBT civil rights legislation.

WHO: Jeffrey H. Campagna, founder of The Power, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a representative of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and civil rights attorney and daughter of Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Liz Abzug.

WHEN: 10 a.m., Monday, June 29, 2009, 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

WHERE: Outside The Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher St. @ Sheridan Square, New York, NY

WHY: With a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate" of LGBT rights in the White House, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, the federal agenda for gay rights does not include full equality. It is time for LGBT people and their allies to seize this historic moment to pass comprehensive civil rights legislation now.

SPEAKER BIOS:

• Jeffrey H. Campagna is the founder The Power. Campagna is also an attorney who has worked in the civil rights bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office, and a fundraiser for Democratic causes who was on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's LGBT steering committees. He is also a co-author of The Dallas Principles (www.thedallasprinciples.org), a call to action demanding full equality now. Campagna and The Power's organizing efforts have been cited by The New York Daily News, The New York Blade, The Washington Blade, The San Francisco Examiner, Edge (the largest web portal of LGBT news and entertainment), Huffington Post, TimeOut New York, http://www.towleroad.com/, and others.

• Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil Rights, and lead sponsor of the Uniting American Families Act.

• Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is the leader of the largest LGBT congregation in the world, New York's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah.

• Liz Abzug is a civil rights attorney, a public affairs consultant, and adjunct professor of urban studies at Columbia University; she is the daughter of the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug who introduced sweeping gay rights legislation three times in the 1970's.

• Rev. Dr. Mel White, former ghost writer for clients including Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberston, founder of Soulforce, a national organization of religious leaders fighting religious based bigotry, and author of "Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America"

QUOTES AND INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Contact:
Melissa Miller
P.R. Director
917-640-6965
press@thepoweronline.org
--------------------

Ruben Navarrette Jr.: Gays, lesbians have found post-election Obama's no ally

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

Published in the Sacramento Bee: Sunday, Jun. 28, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 5E

Many supporters of President Barack Obama have gone "all in" on this administration. Considering it too historic to fail, either they can't see this White House's shortcomings and mistakes or they simply refuse to acknowledge them.

With one notable exception: gay and lesbian activists who are, as they say, so over that.

The relationship got off to a rocky start. Many gays and lesbians were so eager to help put an end to Republican control of the presidency that they enthusiastically became part of the coalition that helped elect Obama – even though he opposed gay marriage.

But before being sworn in, Obama irked gay rights advocates by choosing pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Warren is an outspoken critic of gay marriage and supporter of California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex unions.

Since taking office, Obama has been criticized by gay and lesbian activists for not addressing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows for a service member to be dismissed if discovered to be gay or lesbian. Obama has said that he opposes the policy but he has yet to do anything about it.

It gets worse.

Obama is also on record saying that he opposes and would like to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act – which essentially denies same-sex married couples the protection of the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution by preventing the federal government from recognizing such unions. Obama has said that the law is discriminatory and that it infringes on states' rights.

So imagine the surprise, and even disgust, on the part of gay activists when the Obama Justice Department recently filed a motion in support of the Defense of Marriage Act. The administration opposed a lawsuit brought by a married gay couple in California seeking to have their union recognized in all 50 states.

And in making their argument that not all marriages ought be recognized as lawful, Obama's lawyers cited as precedent cases involving, of all things, pedophilia and incest – the same sort of obscene comparisons that some religious conservatives have, in the past, drawn to argue against gay marriage.

All of this has incensed gay and lesbian pundits and activists.

They include prominent blogger Andrew Sullivan and the Joshua Blog.

The rift has prompted editorials in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, both of which were critical of Obama. In response, many of Obama's gay and lesbian supporters have recently pulled out of Democratic fundraisers and some have already threatened to withhold political contributions to Obama's re-election campaign in 2012.

What's more, the activists aren't in any hurry to mend fences with the White House.

When Obama recently signed an executive order granting benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, some activists dismissed the gesture as a feeble attempt at pacifying critics in the gay and lesbian communities – and not an original one at that since, according to a federal employee quoted by CNN.com, such benefits are already available to gay couples who work for the federal government.

Things are so touchy that when Obama recently made a gay-themed joke, some gays and lesbians were not amused.

At the 2009 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Obama noted that he and senior adviser David Axelrod "have been together for a long time." In fact, Obama said, years ago, he called Axelrod and said, "You and I can do wonderful things together." Then, Obama joked, Axelrod "said to me the same thing that partners all across America are saying to one another right now. Let's go to Iowa and make it official."

The president's critics noted that when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in April, Obama didn't really acknowledge it.

And now he makes a joke out of it? The deteriorating relationship between Obama and the gay and lesbian community is no laughing matter. It never is when a group of voters feels written off by one party and taken for granted by another. And it never is when a group of voters feels completely let down by a political leader in whom they put their trust.

Gays and lesbians put their trust in Barack Obama assuming that he would join in their fight for dignity and equal rights. The shame of it is that they're still waiting.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Foot Wore A Spiked Heel

It was June 28th, 1969.

The day that the fags, dykes, and queens of New York City finally said "Enough!" For some historical perspective, I'm posting the story that the New York Daily News ran that week about the Stonewall Riots. Note how the story drips with condescension and ridicule. We've come a long, long way in 40 years and we've still got some distance to cover, but today we should all offer up a shout, a snap, and a silent prayer of thanks to the people who started us down this road.

For the article and rest of the story see: JMG

MEDIA ALERT: Press Conference at Historic Stonewall Inn to Announce New LGBT Civil Rights Agenda

MEDIA ALERT: Press Conference at Historic Stonewall Inn to Announce New LGBT Civil Rights Agenda and Present U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler With Signed Petition from all 50 States.

As President Obama prepares to host a cocktail reception at the White House for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender leaders, prominent activists and fundraisers return to the Stonewall Inn on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots to announce a new comprehensive LGBT civil rights agenda. At that time they will also present U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler with signed petitions from all 50 states and 36 countries supporting expansion of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT people, marking the official launch of The Power’s nationwide petition drive and campaign demanding full equality now.

The Power (www.thepoweronline.org), is an online organizing network that empowers grassroots and netroots activists from every state in the country and from all over the world to fight for equal rights for LGBT people, not on some arbitrary and convenient schedule created by politicians and lobbyists, but right now.

Speakers will include Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, civil rights attorney Liz Abzug (daughter of feminist, anti-war, and LGBT activist and Congresswoman Bella Abzug), former Jerry Falwell ghostwriter and Soulforce founder Rev. Mel White, and others.

WHAT: A press conference convened by The Power (www.ThePowerOnline.org) launching a national movement to pass comprehensive LGBT civil rights legislation.

WHO: Jeffrey H. Campagna, founder of The Power, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a representative of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and civil rights attorney and daughter of Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Liz Abzug.

WHEN: 10 a.m., Monday, June 29, 2009, 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

WHERE: Outside The Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher St. @ Sheridan Square, New York, NY

WHY: With a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate" of LGBT rights in the White House, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, the federal agenda for gay rights does not include full equality. It is time for LGBT people and their allies to seize this historic moment to pass comprehensive civil rights legislation now.

SPEAKER BIOS:

· Jeffrey H. Campagna is the founder of The Power. Campagna is also an attorney who worked in the civil rights bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office, and a fundraiser for Democratic causes who was on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's LGBT steering committees. He is co-author of The Dallas Principles (www.thedallasprinciples.org), a call to action demanding full equality now. Campagna and The Power's organizing efforts have been cited by The New York Daily News, The New York Blade, The Washington Blade, The San Francisco Examiner, Edge (the largest web portal of LGBT news and entertainment), Huffington Post, TimeOut New York, Towleroad.com, and others.

· Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil Rights, and lead sponsor of the Uniting American Families Act.

· Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is the leader of the largest LGBT congregation in the world, New York's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah.

· Liz Abzug is a public affairs consultant and adjunct professor of urban studies at Columbia University, she is the daughter of the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug who introduced sweeping gay rights legislation three times in the 1970's.

· Rev. Dr. Mel White is former ghost writer for clients including Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberston, founder of Soulforce, a national organization of religious leaders fighting religious based bigotry, and author of "Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America"

QUOTES AND INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

Contact:
Melissa Miller
P.R. Director
917-640-6965
press@thepoweronline.org

Stonewall of the Nones: The Revolution Won't be Homogenized

What would “a tranny hustler,” peeking through a rip in the stocking of space-time, think of our world 40 years later? What will the next Consciousness Revolution look like?

A Stonewall-era crew runs through the streets.

Imagine this: a tranny hustler, mascara streaking her cheeks, peers into a wee rift in the time-space continuum as the angry crowd in front of the Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square flings beer bottles and fistfuls of spare change at a retreating phalanx of NYPD officers. Nearby, candles flicker at makeshift shrines to Judy Garland, whose farewell performance at an uptown funeral home ended mere hours ago.

Through that snag in the cosmological stocking, our draft-dodging tranny spies an America exactly 40 years on from the Stonewall riots—and two generations removed from the young queerfolk pushing back against the agents of heterosexist conformity and the blackfolk who are setting ablaze the last pillars of Jim Crow.

What does our heroine behold?

A Harvard-educated black man in the White House who defends a vast surveillance apparatus controlled by an Orwellian-sounding entity called Homeland Security and a restive coterie of gays and lesbians who disdain nonconformity and clamor for the right to get married and enlist in the Marines.

“Oh Mary,” our wide-eyed tranny rasps, “I’m gonna need a cocktail to get my head around this one.”

The Stonewall riots of late June 1969—as well as the Summer of Love two years earlier, the Woodstock music festival two months later and the debut of the Cockettes at the Palace Theater in San Francisco the following New Year’s Eve—are examples of what Hakim Bey, a queer anarchist social critic, calls the Temporary Autonomous Zone.

“The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State,” Bey writes, “a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.”

Bey’s idea trades on the observation that orthodoxy of any kind—legal, social or religious—is essentially a living fiction, a collective hallucination. Groups that participate in this illusion take its abstractions for reality, and within that margin of error the TAZ springs into being.

And before it can be captured or commodified, the TAZ vanishes, leaving behind an empty husk. Think of Burning Man (or perhaps the Jesus Movement).

The anarchic spirit of the TAZ inevitably calls forth a violent response from those who tend the shadow-fires of orthodoxy. Crucifixions, witch-hunts, and inquisitions embodied this impulse in our historical past, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the Consciousness Revolution of the late 1960s also bore its mark.

As did the 50,000 deaths that Ronald Reagan abided before he uttered the word “AIDS” in public.

Today, queer culture is not so much a vector of this spiritual enlivenment as it is a passive beneficiary of it. Rather than dismantling the master’s house, many of us prefer to beseech the master to loan us his tools so that we can construct a tasteful adjoining cottage and two-car garage.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I should hasten to add. Stability has its virtues.

But we have lost sight of something that the most keen-eyed queerfolk of the Stonewall era clearly had in view: the circumstances under which human beings can flourish are innumerable, and cultivating an orthodox view of human flourishing inevitably leads to the oppression of nonconformists and the spiritual degeneration of the culture that oppresses them.

I suspect the next Consciousness Revolution will be sparked not by an uprising of the kind of readily identifiable groups that energized the social changes of the 1960s—women, African-Americans, and queerfolk—but by some as yet unfathomable configuration within the rapidly growing, spiritual-but-not-religious cohort that we’re now haphazardly calling the “Nones.”

Sexual tricksters like our tranny hustler will definitely figure into the mix, as will humanists and other proponents of ethical and moral heterodoxy. The catalyst for the Stonewall of the Nones will likely be some form of revolt against the aforementioned surveillance culture, the perniciousness of which mainstream progressives just don’t seem to grok, even as more radical social critics like Bob Ostertag have already started to sound the alarm.

“The TAZ is…a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful” observes Bey, “and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies.”

So agitate for same-sex marriage if you feel you must—like I said: there’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t imagine that ipso facto you’re carrying the torch of Stonewall forward.

Just please don’t take up a pitchfork when the real revolutionaries appear.

thanks to Religion Dispatches