GLAA Forum

When fanaticism is its own cure

Minnesota is one of those purple states — a Republican governor, five Democratic and three Republican U.S. representatives, one Democratic and one Republican U.S. Senator. Oh, wait — make that two Democratic senators! With Al Franken having defeated Norm Coleman by 312 votes — or, putting it another way, by a 5-0 decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court — things look mighty contentious up there where all the children are above average.

Compare, for instance, the Fifth and Sixth congressional districts. The Fifth District is represented by pro-gay Democrat Keith Ellison, who has authored bills to protect renters from sudden evictions in foreclosure cases and to reform the Medicare payment system to realign incentives for improved care. By contrast, the Sixth District is represented by conspiracy-mongering far-right Republican Michele Bachmann, whose latest tinfoil hat transmissions connect the Census Bureau with the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

But now the happy news! The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune warns in an editorial that Bachmann may be talking herself out of a seat:

The two-term congresswoman from Minnesota's Sixth District bluntly said she will not fully fill out the census form, a misdemeanor punishable by up to $5,000. Her census fear-mongering clearly could push others to do the same. What Bachmann is doing — on national television, no less — is encouraging people to break the law....

At the very least, the census statements call Bachmann's strategic judgment into question. She may be setting in motion events that could substantially hurt her home state and potentially cost her the office she occupies.

The 2010 census will likely determine whether Minnesota loses one of its eight U.S. House seats; population determines seat allocation. Political experts agree that a few thousand people not filling out census forms may be all it takes for the state to lose a congressional advocate in the nation's capital. If Minnesota were to lose a congressional seat, Bachmann's district appears to be candidate for absorption.

I would be just as happy if Minnesotans lost Bachmann and kept all eight of their congressional seats, but, you know, whatever works.

Obama LGBT Pride speech includes Kameny tribute

This more complete video from MSNBC includes the President's tribute to Frank Kameny, which begins at about 3:24.

What a moment to savor, and what a privilege to have been there to witness it.

Minnesota Supremes rule for Franken

Politico reports that the Minnesota Supreme Court today unanimous declared Al Franken the winner of last November's election. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has not yet stated whether he will now sign an election certificate, but the Court has declared that Franken is entitled to it. This puts Franken closer to being seated as the 60th Democratic U.S. senator. If the defeated Norm Coleman wants to deepen his notoriety, he can appeal to federal courts; no word on that yet. Even in that eventuality, however, Franken should be seated while the case goes through the federal courts.

Judge Retchin rules against proposed referendum

Washington City Paper reports that D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin today ruled that the proposed referendum on the Jury and Marriage Amendment Act of 2009 may not proceed, handing a defeat to Bishop Harry Jackson and a group of other anti-gay ministers. As City Paper says:

In particular, Retchin found that the landmark 1995 Dean v. District decision does not apply to the issue of recognizing out-of-state marriages: ‘Dean does not support Petitioners’ position because Dean involved a different factual scenario and presented a different legal question than is before the Court.... Since 1995, when Dean was decided, there have been many significant changes in the District’s marriage law. As the District points out, seven of the eight gender-specific provisions in the marriage statute cited by Dean have been amended to make them gender-neutral.... Moreover, since Dean, the DCHRA has been strengthened to afford more protection against discrimination. The DCHRA now proscribes discrimination based upon a person’s “perceived or actual” membership in a protected category.’

Retchin also points out that now there are legal same-sex marriages in a number of jurisdictions, as there were not in 1995.

There are some choice passages in Retchin's opinion:

At bottom, the harm about which Petitioners complain is not based on a denial of the right to referendum. Rather, they simply disagree with legislation enacted by our duly-elected Council. A citizen's disagreement with constitutionally sound legislation, whether based on political, religious or moral views, does not rise to the level of an actionable harm.... Petitioners' remedy is to pursue an initiative or to seek redress through the political process by lobbying the Council and by exercising their right to vote....

The Court questions whether it has the authority to stay the effective date of the JMA. To do so may encroach on the well-defined role of the Council and Congress.... Although Congress has provided explicitly that any law enacted by the District shall become effective within 30 days absent Congressional disapproval, Petitioners ask this Court to interfere with the Congressionally mandated legislative framework here. It is not in the public interest for courts to determine, on a case-by-case basis, the time permitted for the referendum process particularly where, as here, the legislature already has prescribed a strict and explicit time period fo all referenda.

Retchin also denied a motion by attorney Aaron Flynn and his partner Christopher Boutlier to intervene in the case, just as she previously denied a motion by Mark Levine to intervene on behalf of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. But her ruling is a strong and broad one, agreeing with the arguments made by Kenneth McGhie, General Counsel for the Board of Elections and Ethics, and by Peter Nickles, Attorney General for the District of Columbia.

GLAA thanks Judge Retchin and all who assisted in this fight. We will now have to prepare to deal with any efforts in Congress to add an anti-gay provision to the D.C. Appropriations bill later this summer, and with an expected initiative effort down the road. But the law is on our side, the facts are on our side, our city's elected officials are overwhelmingly on our side, and the wind is at our backs.

Update: The Washington Blade reports.

Video from the White House Pride Month reception

Here is a video from tonight's Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC concerning the President's relationship with the LGBT community, and it includes clips of Obama's remarks from the Pride Month reception. I am near the middle of the frame at 0:55, and I am directly behind the President at 7:11. This is to prove to my boss that I was really there.

Getting the President's ear

Toward the end of the Stonewall 40 celebration in the White House this afternoon, I spied Frank Kameny (whose guest I was at the event) sitting on an upholstered bench at the foot of the main staircase, and sat down next to him. I told him of a conversation I had just had: "So I said, 'Will you support the Uniting American Families Act — Jerry Nadler's bill?' He said, 'I haven't read it yet.' I said, 'Please take a look at it,' to which he said, 'I will.'"

Frank asked, "Who said this to you?" I replied, "The President of the United States."

Now I realize that getting the President to tell you that he'll look at a bill is not the most earth-shaking development, but if John Aravosis thinks I am going to pass up a chance to get a few moments of input to the most powerful man in the world, he can kiss my you-know-what.

After I chatted with Frank, I walked over to gay White House staffer Brian Bond, to whom I described my conversation with the President. Now there were a couple of hundred people at the reception, and dozens of them spoke with the President. Talking with our President is not enough, to be sure, but it is better than not talking.

Earlier, as we were waiting for Barack and Michelle to arrive, I found myself standing across the aisle from former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force director Urvashi Vaid, so I said, "Urv, you're not going to get dragged out this time, are you?" referring back to 1990 when she interrupted a speech on AIDS by President George H.W. Bush by holding up a sign saying, "Talk Is Cheap, AIDS Funding Is Not," for which she was removed by police. Urvashi laughed and said, "No, but talk is still cheap!"

Urvashi is right. The President himself today said he expects to be judged on how he keeps his promises. We ourselves have much work to do to help see that he keeps them. But as Frank Kameny said to Deb Price in an interview after the event, "We have a friend in the White House."

The complete text of the President's remarks from the White House website is here. Washington Blade story here. I'll post more pictures when I get them.

By the way: Yes, I stood in the Blue Room and did my best Jackie Kennedy impression, telling people, "We decided to leave it just the way it was when President Blue lived here."

(Photos courtesy Bob Connelly)

Update: Being totally homosexual, I wanted to greet Reggie Love, the President's so-called body man, whose face is partially obscured in the upper right of the photo immediately above. Alas, every time I had a chance, there seemed to be a uniformed guard between him and me. So it was easier reaching POTUS than Mister Love.

Obama to Host LGBTs Amid Skepticism Over His Agenda

That's the title of a report by NBC Washington on a reception for LGBT activists being hosted by President Obama this afternoon to mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. A few of us will be attending, and we'll report back. My take on Obama's relationship with the gay community is here. My C-SPAN interview on the subject, held June 20, is here.

Update: Jarrett Barrios, incoming president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, comments in The Washington Post. Also in WaPo is Michael Hamill Remaley's "Stonewall Baby, All Grown Up" and an interview with openly gay former soldier Anthony Woods, who is now running for U.S. Congress from the 10th District of California.

Fort Worth police mark Stonewall 40 with a bar raid

Dallas Voice reports on a police raid Saturday night against a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge that left one patron hospitalized with a brain injury:

About 18 hours after officers with the Fort Worth Police Department and agents with the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission raided a Fort Worth gay bar, about 150 to 200 people gathered on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth Sunday night, June 28, to protest the raid.

Sources have said that seven people were arrested in the raid although witnesses at the scene said many more people were handcuffed with zip ties and taken out of the bar. One man, identified by his sister as Chad Gibson, was in the intensive care unit at Fort Worth’s JPS Hospital with bleeding in his brain after officers threw him to the ground and used zip-ties to handcuff him....

Joel Burns, Fort Worth’s first and only openly gay City Council member, was in Houston for the weekend, but came back to Fort Worth in time for the rally at the courthouse....

Noting that the rainbow Lounge raid came on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, Burns said at the rally, “Unlike 40 years ago, though, the people of this community have elective representation that will make sure our government is accountable and that the rights of all its citizens are protected.”

Update: Lou Chibbaro reports on the Fort Worth story in the Blade. And GLAA Secretary Miguel Tuason recommends having another look at David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right, which discusses how Newt Gingrich and others in the early 1990s chose the gay rights movement as a specific target for demonization to help the Republicans return to power. There is no evidence that the GOP, which appears to be shrinking to its fanatical core, has learned the right lessons from its losses in the past two election cycles; so it is likely to continue demonizing gay people. That cynical tactic, however, has passed the point of diminishing returns. With every passing year, the poll numbers move more in our direction. That does not mean that we can go to sleep, of course. It does mean that soon we will start to defeat anti-gay ballot initiatives. That, along with the generational shift that fuels our victory, will show that the tide has definitively turned in our favor.

In the meantime, we need to "work with grim and bold determination to gain justice," as Dr. King put it in 1955. Our circumstances, to be sure, are considerably different from those for African Americans when he said it; but his lesson is true, and his inspiration shines too brightly to be extinguished by the bigotry (yes, bigotry) that prompts some people to be outraged at our taking it. The exploitation of that bigotry by the religious right is another facet of the GOP's electoral wedge politics, the most recent exemplar of which in D.C. is Bishop Harry Jackson and his campaign of lies against the recognition of same-sex marriages. But his efforts are failing, and that gives us reason for hope. We have truly come a long way since 1969.

"Very quick to malign, and very slow to correct"

Dana Milbank of The Washington Post smears Nico Pitney of HuffPo by suggesting facts not in evidence regarding a presidential press conference (that is, that the White House had not just told Pitney the night before that he might be called on, but told him to ask a question "in a certain way"):



Here Milbank assumes collusion without evidence. This is the same Dana MIlbank whose relationship with Keith Olbermann's Countdown program on MSNBC ended last August after Milbank distorted the meaning of an Obama quote by taking it out of context and refused to issue a correction.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Once more in Farsi: "We are not afraid...."

It is fascinating how a single event can be galvanizing and inspiring far beyond the situation and expectations of its participants. The Stonewall uprising, whose 40th anniversary we mark today, has inspired LGBT people across the world to invoke "Stonewall" and "Christopher Street."

Today the color of solidarity is green, for the people of Iran who have been facing brutal government thugs to demand reform. The video below by Joan Baez, sung partly in Farsi, is one of many expressions of support. A simple way to participate: Go to your roof tonight and call out, "Allahu Akbar!". More practically, you can support asylum for Iranian gays and others fleeing persecution.

SBC: homophobic, misogynistic, and shrinking

Sorry I didn't catch this earlier, but David Waters of the On Faith blog at WaPo reports that delegates at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to expel the Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, which had been a member for 125 years, because of the church's inclusion of photos of gay couples in its church directory. SBC is also likely to expel the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, for naming a woman as its lead pastor. Happily, he also points out that, for the fourth year in a row, SBC-affiliated churches baptized fewer people than in the previous year:

Since doctrinal conservatives took control of the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1980s, the association has been getting smaller and more exclusive, at various times rejecting Baptist liberals and moderates, women clergy, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Cater, Mormons and Muslims and Jews, public schools and Walt Disney, and, in 1993, churches that are welcoming and affirming of gays....

Two years ago, then-SBC president Frank Page said the declining numbers can be blamed, in part, on a perception that Baptists are "mean-spirited, hurtful and angry people" and that the denomination has been known too much in recent years for "what we're against" than "what we're for," Page said.

On the website of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, Pastor Julie Pennington-Russell has this to say:

"The call to minister is given by God to the whole church. Some are called to be leaders in this ministry, yes, but all are called by God to be ministers. All Christians are called to share their faith, to care, to proclaim, to practice justice, to bring healing ..."

Well, you go, Pastor Julie. No, seriously — you have to go. That kind of talk isn't tolerated at the Southern Baptist Convention. After all, you're a girl, and they don't allow girls in their clubhouse. Don't you remember Paul's letter to Timothy where he said, "I suffer not a woman to teach"? And don't be insolent and point out that Paul also wrote to the Ephesians and Galatians, "Slaves, obey your masters." When they say that every word in the Bible is the word of God, they mean every word that they find it convenient to notice.

SBC calls its delegates "messengers." Lovely message, folks. Oh, and by the way, the theme for this year's annual meeting is "Love Loud: Actions Speak Louder Than Words."

What is the problem for which Perez Hilton is the solution?

The Black Eyed Peas have actually produced something worthwhile. What in the world does the sniping ass Perez Hilton have to be proud of? This evening I was in a cheap restaurant up the street, and as three drunken gay boys at the next table began competing with each other to see who could be the loudest and crudest, I thought, great: this is what two generations of activists have won for us — the right to be jerks. Well, that's life. At least they weren't making a career of it. I have no idea about will.i.am's sexuality, but he has one thing going for him: he is not utterly repulsive. Not that I have an opinion on the matter.

"The Hairpin Drop Heard Around the World" *

"You know, the guys there were so beautiful — they've lost that wounded look that fags all had ten years ago."

— Allen Ginsberg to Lucian Truscott after visiting the Stonewall Inn during the Stonewall uprising, 1969, from David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, page 199.

* Title of an account by Dick Leitsch of the Stonewall uprising.

To the moon

It is hard to believe what a very big deal this was 26 years ago — until you go back and watch Michael Jackson's mesmerizing solo turn from the live Motown 25 concert in 1983. If his career had a single high point, this performance was probably it. When he topped the athleticism of his dancing with the seemingly impossible moonwalk, the perfect camera work was at his direction. An awed Fred Astaire, Jackson's childhood idol, called the next day with congratulations, as moonwalkers sprang up on playgrounds and streetcorners across the country.

With his death bringing rough justice for whatever crimes his celebrity excused, Michael's extraordinary talent can begin to return to the fore. In this timeless moment from a generation ago, still many surgeries away from the alien-looking figure he would become, he spinned and kicked and slid into the rarest of company with "Billie Jean."

WaPo: Do Tell

The Washington Post has published an editorial saying that gay men and Lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military.  Currently 75 percent of the population agrees with this position, including a majority of people who identify as conservatives.

They note that the President has the option of achieving this immediatly, by issuing a "stop-loss" order, just as Presidnt Bush did in extending the tour of duties of soldiers serving in Iraq.  The Post opposes this option.

So gay rights advocates shouldn't be looking for ways to get around existing policy; they should be looking to change it without evasion. And if Mr. Obama is going to expend political capital to allow gay men and lesbians to serve their country openly and with honor, he should follow through on his promise to work with Congress to get rid of "don't ask, don't tell" for good.

BTW - it was 1975 that Leonard Matlovich came out.

The Post also has an interview with Anthony Woods, an Army Captain discharge under Don't Ask, Don't Tell who is running for Congress.

Self-inflicted wounds from the sexual-morality weapon

Charles M. Blow has a fine commentary in The New York Times about how conservatives have harmed themselves with their cynical wedge politics based on sexual morality:

Conservatives touted abstinence-only education, which was a flop, when real sex education was needed, most desperately in red states. According to 2006 data from the Guttmacher Institute, those red states accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest teenage birthrates.

And, a study titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” that was conducted by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor of business at Harvard Business School and published earlier this year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that subscriptions to online pornography sites were “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality” and in states where “more people agree that ‘I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.’ ”

They could avoid this hypocrisy by focusing more on what happens in their own bedrooms and avoiding the trap of judging what goes on in everyone else’s.

Meanwhile, who has a loving marriage and a family so happy and healthy that it would embarrass a Madison Avenue copywriter? Why, it's none other than our Democratic President. And who are embracing the values of marriage and commitment that so many others are fleeing? Why, it's lesbian and gay people. Imagine that. When a party depends as heavily on hypocrisy and slander as the Republican Party has in the past couple of decades, there is bound to be a reckoning sooner or later. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

The power of black gay leadership

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect describes how powerfully the dynamic of the fight for marriage equality in Washington, D.C. has been affected by the leading role played by African Americans in this majority-black city:

In Washington, D.C., the anti-gay-rights movement attempted to put recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states to a citywide referendum (it was rejected by the Board of Elections and Ethics) hoping that the city's mostly black population would come out against it. This dynamic may explain why Bishop Harry Jackson, an African American religious leader, has been put forth as the face of the anti-gay-marriage movement.

There's only one problem: The face of LGBT leadership in D.C. is often black. Nationally, anti-gay-rights activists have had a great deal of success in encouraging black voters to oppose gay rights, partially because LGBT rights are seen -- incorrectly -- as a "white issue." But in Washington, D.C., the diverse composition of the marriage-equality movement means that marriage-equality activists don't have to "reach out" to the black community, because they're already part of it. That doesn't mean marriage-equality activists don't face serious obstacles in garnering support among African Americans, but it makes racial divisions harder to exploit. The lesson is clear -- when the marriage-equality movement is integrated, outreach becomes less of an issue.

"The District being a majority African American city, gays and lesbians have always played a major part [in] the community," says Jeffrey Richardson, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, an LGBT-rights group. As a result, Richardson says, a racially divisive strategy "isn't going to work here."

It is hard to overstate how important it is in this city that the face of the marriage-equality movement has been diverse, including many key leaders who are African American. When the anti-gay ministers who have led the fight against us have gone on camera and talked as if the gay community were monolithically white, it has often been a black person who has gone on camera to refute them. Nor is that a mere facade: Jeffrey Richardson is the president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club; Michael Crawford is the leader of the grassroots organizing group D.C. for Marriage; Carlene Cheatam is a longtime respected volunteer and leader in Washington's large black LGBT community; and Nick McCoy has been one of the most energetic canvassers in the marriage-equality cause. None of these people had to be recruited. They were right there, leading the effort.

Another factor that has prevented the opponents of marriage equality from succeeding with their false portrayals of the marriage equality movement is the remarkable degree of unity that has prevailed across the spectrum of Washington's diverse LGBT community. A growing sense emerged this past spring that this is our year to make this happen. That, plus indignation at the false statements by Marion Barry, Bishop Harry Jackson and others suggesting a monolithic opposition to same-sex marriage in the black community, has energized us and inspired an unprecedented degree of cooperation.

But while there has been an uptick in the community-wide cooperation this year, the seeds of it were planted over many years of coalition building. We are reaping the fruits of trust that many of us worked for a long time to build, just as the Board of Election's decision blocking a proposed referendum on marriage recognition was based on a law pushed by GLAA 30 years ago banning referenda and initiatives that authorize or have the effect of authorizing discrimination prohibited by the D.C. Human Rights Act.

Real unity requires depth and strength and trust, and takes years to grow. That we have cultivated it to the point where it is bearing fruit for all of our families makes me burst with pride as a native of this city. We are going to win together. As Carlene so often says, Namaste' — "I salute that in you which is divine."

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

A Labor Secretary who leads

Today, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis sent the following email to all employees:

Dear Colleagues:

On June 1st, I initiated an elevator poster campaign in the Frances Perkins Building, with the goal of recognizing department initiatives and accomplishments, and to share my thoughts and priorities with the entire DOL team. We are currently exploring ways to provide the same information to BLS and to our regional offices.

Something else far more important also happened on June 1st. The President issued a proclamation recognizing June as national Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. I was excited to have an opportunity, through our poster campaign, to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of the LGBT community and affirm our commitment to all workers across the country. The posters went up in the elevators on Monday.

As a founding member of the LGBT Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, I was particularly pleased to have the opportunity to be the first Secretary in the department’s history to publicly recognize Pride Month. I am very proud of that.

It appears, however, that some members of the Labor Department team have a different view, as it has come to my attention that most of the posters have been continually defaced or removed. On several occasions, even the poster frames have been torn completely off the elevator walls.

My reaction to this news has ranged from disappointment to outrage.

House subcommittee votes to lift restrictions on D.C.

The D.C. Wire at The Washington Post reports on a welcome development in Congress:

A House appropriations subcommittee approved a bill today that would lift prohibitions that prevent the District from using funds for domestic partnership registration and needle exchange programs. It also eliminates bans on using local funds for abortion and holding a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Ending the restrictions could prove controversial as the bill moves through Congress. Rep. José E. Serrano (D-NY), chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, said in a statement that the bill takes "steps toward reducing undue congressional interference in local affairs."

As a matter of fact, the District already won the right to spend its own funds on domestic partnerships and needle exchange in previous years. But we don't mean to quibble over good news. We look forward to getting a clean D.C. Appropriations bill through Congress this year; and if it isn't clean, the President should veto it. The District has been a congressional whipping boy on members' pet issues long enough.

Mendelson defends civil liberties. Bob Kabel is appalled.

The Washington Post reports on the local GOP's efforts to discredit At-Large D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson, a strong ally of the gay community, for his opposition to Mayor Fenty's controversial gang initiative:

A few hours after the shooting at the Holocaust museum on June 10, Mendelson sent out a statement highlighting Congress's efforts to tie voting rights to a removal of the District's gun control laws.

Robert J. Kabel, chairman of the D.C. Republican Committee, issued a statement the following day calling Mendelson a "disgrace."

"As Chair of the Council's Judiciary Committee, Chairman Mendelson has neglected his duty to protect DC citizens in ways that are meaningful," said Kabel, noting Mendelson's resistance to sections of Fenty's crime bill. "Chairman Mendelson has spent the last several years advocating for the perpetrator over the victim and DC voters need to know that."

Mendelson led the effort to derail Fenty's proposal to allow authorities to target alleged gang members in civil proceedings. Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, Mendelson and other council members who voted last week against the proposal said they worried about civil liberties.

Moments after that vote, Kabel blasted Mendelson, accusing him of "going soft on crime."

I'd say there is approximately zero chance that Bob Kabel, whom I know from occasional friendly visits over the years to meetings of Log Cabin Republicans, doesn't know better. By this I do not mean that Kabel secretly sympathizes with the concerns that I share with Phil Mendelson and the ACLU. I mean that he surely knows that just because someone else balances civil liberties and public safety concerns differently does not make them "soft on crime." That is a standard Republican talking point which the experience of the past eight years should have taught Kabel to resist.

In the movie A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More responds to a zealous young associate who says he would cut down all the laws in England to get the devil: "This is a great country forested end to end with laws. If you cut down all those trees, and you are just the man to do it, what will protect you from the winds that will blow? And when the devil has you cornered, what will you hide behind, with all the laws being flat? Yes, I would give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own soul's sake."

Here is another quote from the Post article:

"Crime is always a tempting issue on which to grandstand," said Jason Shedlock, Mendelson's chief of staff. "The D.C. GOP is out of touch and desperate to seize on any issue to attempt to prove their relevance."

Here I am speaking for myself and not for GLAA, but thank you, Jason.

Our lost gay radicalism (thank God)

Across the pond in today's issue of The Guardian, the stalwart British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell takes the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Stonewall to lament the loss of Gay Liberation Front-style radicalism:

GLF never called for equality. The demand was liberation. We wanted to change society, not conform to it. Equal rights within a flawed, unjust system struck us as idiotic. It would mean parity on straight terms, within a pre-­existing framework of institutions and laws devised by and for the heterosexual majority. Equality within their system would involve conformity to their ­values and rules – a formula for gay submission and incorporation, not liberation.

We argued then, and I still argue now, that accepting mere equality involves the abandonment of any critical perspective on straight culture. In place of a healthy scepticism, it substitutes naive acquiescence with the hetero mainstream. Discernment is surrendered in favour of compliance. While heterosexuality has its good points, it also has its downsides, like the machismo of many hetero men, which is linked to gang culture and violence against women.

In the 40 years since Stonewall and GLF, there has been a massive retreat from that radical vision. Most LGBT ­people no longer question the values, laws and institutions of society. They are content to settle for equal rights within the status quo. On the age of consent, the LGBT movement accepted equality at 16, ignoring the criminalisation of younger gay and straight people. Don't the under-16s have sexual human rights too? Equality has not helped them. All they got was equal injustice.

Lost boy

His first appearance on network television was 40 years ago when he was 11, performing with his brothers. His star power was immediately evident, his talent and energy and expressive voice irresistible. His performance below is from an appearance on Sonny and Cher when he was 13. A decade later he would create the best-selling album of all time. Most of us never have to learn what that level of fame from such an early age can do to a person.

Looking back to this performance of "Ben," setting aside the outlandish 70s-era hair and clothing, it's hard to fathom how such a handsome kid could have looked in the mirror and thought he needed cosmetic surgery. Hearing his sweet voice singing such an affirming lyric, it seems to contrast with the bizarre spectacle of the later years, until you remember that the song was about a friendship with a rat. I suppose it's weird enough just having that much talent. Now that he's gone, it's the child prodigy who wells up in my memory.

Notoriously, Stonewall coincided with the demise of an emotionally damaged star with a substance abuse problem, and now Stonewall 40 has a similar accompaniment. Michael was like the middle-aged man in E.M. Forster's "The Celestial Omnibus" who seeks to reclaim the enchantment of childhood and falls to earth when he cannot sustain it. Rest in peace.

Correction: Jackson was 14 when he recorded "Ben."

Atom Feed

If you have a reader, use the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page to access the atom feed. If you don't know what this means, watch the video on the second page.

Family Values

Project Pushback held a contest for videos that highlighted the need for the freedom to marry. The winner was titled Family Values. Other entries can be seen here.

Dear Reverend, exorcise yourself

The Raw Story reports on a Connecticut church that posted a YouTube video of its attempt to exorcise the “homosexual demons” out of a teenager.

It's too bad you can't pray the stupid out of people.

At least they didn't send him to the White Swallow*

I admit I have a soft spot for Boston, since my mother's family is from there and my column also runs in Bay Windows, but I am a native Washingtonian and the Nats are my team. I am therefore duly appalled at the poor manners of the Nats fan who misled a visiting Red Sox fan who posted a question on the Nats' message board seeking recommendations for a sports bar. As NBC Washington reports, the hapless visitor was sent to Remington's at 639 Pennsylvania Ave SE on Capitol Hill, with the explanation that it was a New England Patriots bar. As soon as this latter-day Paul Revere figured out the signals, the poor rube didn't last a minute.

I guess we need to educate our fellow Nats fans who play for "the other team." The proper sports bar to recommend to visiting sports lovers is, of course, Nellie's at 900 U Street NW, fifteen minutes from the stadium on the Green Line Metro. We'll take good care of our out-of-town visitors, though the beans at Nellie's are likely to be black.

* That's a South Park reference. I'm not explaining.

Hate? Yes. Hate crime? No.

I generally avoid meetings of my local Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Dupont Circle, partly because I am quite busy already with other commitments, and partly because in my experience ANC meetings tend to have a lot more drama than reason and are attended by every crank and busybody in the neighborhood. Which makes me cranky.

I am therefore not terribly surprised by the tempest in a teapot reported by Washington City Paper, concerning a Ward 5 ANC commissioner whose comments hostile toward white people and gays drew a censure from five of her fellow commissioners, who accused her not only of bigotry but of a potential hate crime.

Um, no. The woman certainly sounds like a piece of work, but being hateful is not, in and of itself, a crime. City Paper quotes our dear friend Brett Parson, a sensible and openly gay member of the Metropolitan Police Department:

Acting Lt. Brett Parson, who heads up the D.C. Police Department’s Special Liaison Unit, discounts the possibility that Ransom’s note constituted any “threat” in violation of D.C. Code. “There’s no hate crime here,” he says. “It could—and I underline could—be construed as a hate-bias related incident, but it does not rise to the level of a criminal threat. This falls under freedom of speech. You’re allowed to hate whomever you want.”

Could expressions of hate escalate to the level of a criminal threat? Yes. Brett has handled plenty of those. People who cross the line from mere expressions of hatred to statements like, "You deserve to be shot," may find Brett knocking on their door, accompanied by an FBI agent, for the purpose of conducting a threat assessment. But what the ANC-5C commissioners appear to need in this case is a visit from a conflict resolution counselor.

Employing Anger

My latest column appears in today's issue of Metro Weekly. It deals with the LGBT community's relationship with President Obama, and how to channel our anger and frustration productively:

In my experience, politicians are more receptive when you give them credit, however small, in addition to criticism. As Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart noted, we cannot afford to be blinded by rage. To the question, ''What has Obama done for me lately?'' the answer is: In addition to the Presidential Memorandum, Obama last week called on Congress to repeal DOMA; endorsed the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act; and ordered the U.S. Census Bureau to release data on same-sex married couples in the 2010 census.

Obama should also issue a stop-loss order blocking further forcible discharges of gay servicemembers until ''Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' is repealed, and should order the Department of Health and Human Services to speed up regulatory changes to end the HIV-immigration ban. But our friends in Congress need to grow a spine. As a friend suggested, the Democratic congressional leadership's ''primary goal is preserving their majority, not figuring out the best way to get DOMA repealed.''

That is where grassroots pressure comes in. The boycott of a June 25 gay DNC fundraiser in Washington should be followed by a nationwide effort to contact every U.S. senator and representative, urging repeal of DOMA.

The message closely tracks what I said in my C-SPAN interview last Saturday.

Update: NYT has an article on the gay disenchantment with Obama here. It quotes Richard Socarides, who was one of former President Clinton's openly gay political appointees, serving as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Labor in the 1990s. Referring to a White House reception the President is holding on Monday for LGBT activists to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, Socarides says, "Unless the president on Monday articulates a strong action plan, and is willing to do it with cameras rolling, it is going to go from bad to worse." I must confess that I get a tad annoyed by Clinton hacks issuing ultimatums to President Obama. However, I am sure the President knows what's going on, and I expect he'll have a bit more to offer his guests on Monday than cocktails.

June 27 is National HIV Testing Day

National HIV Testing Day, which is coordinated by the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA), will be held this Saturday, June 27. It is a day not only for renewed commitment to getting tested, but for practicing safer sex; talking about HIV prevention with family, friends, and colleagues; and providing support to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Information and resources are available online at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Know your status. CDC states:

Early HIV diagnosis is critical, so people who are infected can fully benefit from available life-saving treatments. Currently, almost 40 percent of people with HIV are not diagnosed until they already have developed AIDS. That can be up to 10 years after they first became infected with HIV. Finding out whether you are infected with HIV is the first step to improving your health and the health of your partners and your family.

www.AIDS.gov is the gateway to all Federal domestic information on HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, treatment, research, policies and resources.

Update: On a related front, Color of Change is pushing for national health care reform legislation that includes a public option, and says:

Overall, 21% of Blacks are uninsured, compared to 12% of Whites.

We need a public insurance option, but that's not the only thing we should be fighting for. We need to push for equity in all aspects of our approach to health care. Every community deserves quality medical treatment, research and resources. That's not what we're getting now, and the numbers prove it:

• 22% of Black women say cost keeps them away from the doctor's office, compared to 15% of White women
• Black women have the highest rates of new AIDS cases, cancer mortality, obesity and low-weight infants of any ethnic or racial group
• There are 13.6 Black infant deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 5.7 White infant deaths per 1,000 live births
• There are 47 Black deaths from diabetes-related illness per 100,000 people, compared to 22.5 White deaths per 100,000 people
• There are 60.1 new AIDS cases per 100,000 people among Blacks, compared to 6.7 new cases per 100,000 people among Whites

Our opportunity to address the disparities that keep too many of us from enjoying long, healthy lives is now.

Color of Change has an online form that you can use to contact your members of Congress.

52 years later, OPM apologizes to Frank Kameny

The photo above shows John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, honoring gay rights pioneer and GLAA co-founder Frank Kameny at a Gay Pride event on Wednesday hosted by the OPM chapter of Federal GLOBE. (Frank is saying, "Apology accepted!") At far left is Federal GLOBE President Len Hirsch.

The openly gay Berry presented Frank with a bronze Theodore Roosevelt Award in honor of Frank's successful decades-long fight to end anti-gay discrimination in federal employment. Berry also gave Frank a letter of apology for his unjust treatment by OPM's predecessor agency, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which fired Frank in 1957 for being gay. Many in those days were similarly mistreated, and had their careers and lives ruined. Frank fought back, and changed history.

The Washington Blade reports on the event here.

Congratulations to Frank on an honor well deserved, and on achieving such a satisfying closure after so many decades in faithful service of justice. (Photo courtesy Bob Witeck. Facsimile of letter courtesy Vic Basile.)

Update: Metro Weekly reports here.

D.C. Public Schools promises no censorship

DCist reports on the story concerning alleged censorship by D.C. Public Schools of its summer reading list, about which we blogged this morning.

Chris Dyer, director of the D.C. Office of GLBT Affairs, called this evening and said that DCPS officials have assured him that there will be no censorship and that the final list will be balanced and will contain LGBT titles. We are glad to hear it.

Board of Elections, AG oppose Jackson's stay request

Briefs were due today in D.C. Superior Court from city attorneys opposed to a request by Bishop Harry Jackson and his allies for the court to stop the bill recognizing same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions from becoming law on July 6. The briefs are in, and they are withering in their dismantling of the arguments from Jackson's attorneys.

Kenneth McGhie, general counsel of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, responds to the Jackson brief's reliance on the Dean case from 1995, in which the court ruled against a gay couple seeking a D.C. marriage license:

Firstly, the "legislative definition" of marriage is not now what it was in 1995. Since then, there have been extensive efforts "by the Council to remove ... gender-specific references as part of a systemic effort to employ gender-neutral language throughout the D.C. Official Code statutes pertaining to marriage and the rights, benefits, and obligations incident to marriage." Indeed, the Act is the most recent example of this legislative effort; section 3(a), which was not subjected to a request for a referendum, repeals certain statutory provisions concerning consanguinity that contain gender-based expressions, and replaces them with a provision that contains gender-neutral terminology. A significant result of the Act, therefore, is that provisions which, because of their gender-based terms, had been cited by Dean as evidence of "a legislative understanding that marriage, as understood by Congress at the time of original enactment and thereafter, is inherently a male-female relationship," are no more.

Secondly, unlike in 1995 when Dean was decided, there is now "such a thing" as a valid same-sex marriage. Presently, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire currently permit, or are set to permit, same-sex marriages. From June 2008 until November 2008, California also authorized same-sex marriages. In November of 2008, California voters voted in favor of Proposition 8, an initiative constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. However, same-sex marriages performed prior to the enactment of the proposition are still recognized as valid in California. Additionally, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden allow same-sex marriages. Accordingly, contrary to times past, valid same-sex marriages do exist.

Appalachia, Argentina — who teaches geography in South Carolina schools?

We learned today that Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who intended to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail, accidentally went on a sex vacation in Argentina instead. Now come on, folks, it could happen to anyone.

What is it with conservative politicians, anyway? I mean, hypocrisy is one thing, but must they be so stupid about it? I was kind of hoping that Gov. Sanford would claim to have been abducted by aliens intent upon conducting sex experiments on him. (This appears to be a staple of alien-abduction stories. It's really just a cry for sex therapy.) Tomorrow, no doubt, we'll be discussing Letterman's Top Ten Explanations by Governor Sanford.

Chris Cillizza, blogger of The Fix at The Washington Post, writes:

Sanford was clearly unprepared for the media swarm he faced. He began shakily with a riff about his time spent hiking the Appalachian Trail before rolling off a long litany of people to whom he needed to apologize. Sanford, usually an extremely confident public orator, stumbled over his words time and time again and continued to take questions well after he had promised a "last question." (In Sanford's defense, it's hard to imagine anyone would be prepared to make such an announcement.)

Bishop Jackson's D.C. voter registration challenged

Two Washington residents, including former Ward 2 D.C. Council candidate Cary Silverman, have filed a challenge to the D.C. voter registration of Bishop Harry Jackson, the pastor of a Beltsville, Maryland church who has led efforts to put same-sex marriage recognition in D.C. to a referendum. Here is their press release:

PROPOSER OF ANTI-SAME SEX MARRIAGE
REFERENDUM'S DC RESIDENCY CHALLENGED

- PRESS RELEASE -

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2009

Contact: Cary Silverman: (202) 247-5113
carysilverman@comcast.net

Washington, D.C. Today, two neighborhood leaders in the Washington Convention Center area will file a challenge to the voter registration of Reverend Harry R. Jackson, Jr. (attached). Reverend Jackson, who lives, works, and votes in Maryland, proposed a referendum on May 27 on the District's enactment of a law recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

"If I hopped in my car, drove out to Annapolis, and tried to rewrite the laws of Maryland, I'd expect them to come down on me like a ton of bricks," said Cary Silverman, who prepared the challenge after learning in The Washington Blade that Reverend Jackson claimed he is a resident of The Whitman condominium at 910 M Street NW in order to propose the referendum. "This is a matter of principle — we don't want residents of other states interfering with our laws."

Inclusive ENDA introduced in Congress

A transgender-inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has been introduced in the U.S. Congress, led by openly gay members Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Jared Polis (D-CO). ENDA would create a federal prohibition against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Equality Federation issued an action alert:

In DC, make their phone ring!
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them:

"I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I would like him/her to become a cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace. Can you tell me whether or not Representative _______ has cosponsored the bill?"

Send an email!
Once you've made your call, you can reiterate your support with an email to your Representative with a couple of clicks of a mouse. Go to: http://eqfed.org/ct/9pSO1iY194zT/

At home, set up a visit!
The most effective action is a visit. Because Representatives will be home over the August recess, now is a great time to start setting up a meeting with you and other community members to visit with the Representative (or their staffs) in their home district offices during this time. For help setting up visits, check out:

-The Task Force ENDA Grassroots Toolkit
(http://eqfed.org/ct/odSO1iY194zG/)
-National Center for Transgender Equality's Making Your Voice Heard (http://eqfed.org/ct/o1SO1iY194zH/)
-PFLAG's Bringing the Message Home
(http://eqfed.org/ct/97SO1iY194zY/)

Let us know!
Let us know how what your Representative said about their support for ENDA. Email Laura.Hart@unitedenda.org or, if you have a visit, go to http://eqfed.org/ct/opSO1iY194z-/ and fill out the Lobby Report Form to tell us what they said.

You can take action on this alert via the web at:
http://eqfed.org/campaign/endaintroduction_members/wniw7674pjn8wnik?

Congress members urge Obama to act against gay discharges

77 members of Congress have sent a joint letter to President Obama urging swift action to end forcible discharges of gay and lesbian servicemembers under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell":

Although we are confident that you will remain true to your campaign promise to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, our LGBT service members and our country’s national security will continue to suffer if initial action is delayed until 2010 or 2011. We urge you to exercise the maximum discretion legally possible in administering Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until Congress repeals the law. To this end, we ask that you direct the Armed Services not to initiate any investigation of service personnel to determine their sexual orientation, and that you instruct them to disregard third party accusations that do not allege violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That is, we request that you impose that no one is asked and that you ignore, as the law requires, third parties who tell. Under your leadership, Congress must then repeal and replace Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell with a policy of inclusion and non-discrimination.

Obama to bar anti-transgender discrimination in federal workplace

The New York Times reports some welcome news:

Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.

The guidelines will be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors to be distributed and posted online in the next couple of months, and they could also be included in other materials for managers. They will list transgender people — those who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — as among several groups protected by antidiscrimination laws....

“The president is making a very clear statement that transgender people won’t be discriminated against,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a group that has been talking with the White House about the new provisions.

Anti-gay purge of DCPS summer reading list?

School Library Journal reports on a growing controversy over the apparent purging of all GLBT-themed books from the D.C. Public Schools summer reading list, which is to be finalized on Friday, June 26:

Officials are taking a second look at the list after a post appeared on the American Library Association’s GLBT listserve that said, “The DC (District of Columbia) Public Schools decided to scrub their summer reading list of all GLTB related books. This seems outrageous. We're thinking that if a parent writes a strong letter, it'll be the most effective. I'm thinking it should go to the mainstream press, and perhaps someone in the school system too.”

The post was originally made by Jeanne Lauber, a librarian at the DC Public Library on the Yahoo! discussion group “Lezbrian”. She goes on the say, “Apparently the public library system told the schools which books were GLTB (not knowing why they were being asked) and the schools removed them.”

...Sources say that a meeting between the school district and public library took place late last week in the hope that GLBT titles will be included on the lists before printed copies are released to students.

The generation gap, with a dash of cruising

Mark Harris has an interesting piece called The Gay Generation Gap in the summer issue of New York magazine:

Here’s the awful stuff, the deeply unfair (but maybe a little true) things that many middle-aged gay men say about their younger counterparts: They’re shallow. They’re silly. They reek of entitlement. They haven’t had to work for anything and therefore aren’t interested in anything that takes work. They’re profoundly ungrateful for the political and social gains we spent our own youth striving to obtain for them. They’re so sexually careless that you’d think a deadly worldwide epidemic was just an abstraction. They think old-fashioned What do we want! When do we want it! activism is icky and noisy. They toss around terms like “post-gay” without caring how hard we fought just to get all the way to “gay.”

And here’s the awful stuff they throw back at us—at 45, I write the word “us” from the graying side of the divide—a completely vicious slander (except that some of us are a little like this): We’re terminally depressed. We’re horrible scolds. We gas on about AIDS the way our parents or grandparents couldn’t stop talking about World War II. We act like we invented political action, and think the only way to accomplish something is by expressions of fury. We say we want change, but really what we want is to get off on our own victimhood. We’re made uncomfortable, or even jealous, by their easygoing confidence. We’re grim, prim, strident, self-ghettoizing, doctrinaire bores who think that if you’re not gloomy, you’re not worth taking seriously. Also, we’re probably cruising them.

I don't think the generational attributes break as neatly as Harris suggests, but it's an amusing read. BTW, the "25-year-old right-of-center gay journalist" referred to in the fourth paragraph is my fellow Independent Gay Forum contributor Jamie Kirchick.

Referendum supporters try to stop the clock

Lou Chibbaro of The Washington Blade reports on efforts by lawyers for Bishop Harry Jackson to stop the congressional review clock on the Jury and Marriage Amendment Act of 2009 (JAMA). That's the bill recognizing same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions as legal marriages in D.C., and the D.C. Council projects that it will become law on July 6 unless Congress acts to disapprove it before then, which there is no sign Congress intends to do.

Jackson's attorneys asked D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin to issue a preliminary injunction staying the effective date of the bill becoming law because Jackson and his allies lack sufficient time to meet all the procedural requirements for a referendum even if they are able to persuade the court to overturn the decision by the Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE) that the measure is not a legitimate subject for referendum:

"Given that July 6, 2009, is only two weeks away, it simply is not feasible for the proponents to complete this judicial review process and all other required steps for a referendum before the act becomes law," Jackson's attorney stated in a brief filed Monday.

"Accordingly, unless this court enters an injunction staying the effective date of the act, the people of D.C. will be deprived of their right to vote on the critical public policy issue of whether D.C. should defer to the laws of states and foreign countries regarding what constitutes a marriage," says the brief.

Kenneth McGhie, General Counsel for BOEE, strongly objected to a stay of the referendum deadline. Mark Levine, a gay rights attorney seeking to intervene in the case for the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, hopes to file a brief objecting to the stay.

Levine called the request for a stay of the referendum deadline an unprecedented development that, if approved by the court, would overturn a key provision the city's referendum law, which was approved by the D.C. City Council in the late 1970s and cleared by Congress.

"They want the court to upend the entire referendum law," Levine said. "The effect would be to change the [D.C.] Home Rule Act."

At the June 18 hearing, Judge Retchin expressed doubt that she had the power to stop the congressional clock.

Contrary to Bishop Jackson and his friends, the legal right to a referendum does not absolve them of complying with the rules. Those rules, which include the need to gather nearly 21,000 signatures including five percent of the voters in five of the city's eight wards, are designed to make referenda difficult. Jackson refuses to grasp America's republican form of government, by which the voters elect representatives who make the laws on their behalf. Jackson talks as if anything other than a direct plebiscite is undemocratic, which amounts to an attack on our entire governmental structure.

Jackson's attorneys claim that if the court fails to grant the stay, the proponents of the referendum and the people of the city "will suffer irreparable injury." The failure to show any such injury does not bode well for Jackson.

Update: On pages 19 and 20 of Jackson's "Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction," filed yesterday, there is a list of rights and benefits of D.C. domestic partners. The list is clearly drawn from Bob Summersgill's listing of rights and responsibilities of domestic partners in the District of Columbia, which is available on GLAA's website. Bob last updated the document on December 5, 2007, and none of the rights or responsibilities of domestic partners enacted subsequent to that date (such as in the Omnibus Domestic Partnership Equality Amendment Act of 2008) are listed in Jackson's brief. We appreciate the Bishop's confidence in the quality of our work.