Tag Archives: marriage equality

Everything Old is New Again: Resurgence of anti-LGBT

I’ve been having an ongoing chat with a gay man one generation younger than myself. That means he’s in his early 40s. I met him when he was in his early 20s. We’ve been bemoaning the insanity of our current times. I’m not sure if he meant Russia’s barbaric, unprovoked war against Ukraine, or Covid-19, or the resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation in several of the “united” states. But I took it as the latter.

This is an old script. It reminded me of the song “Everything Old is New Again,” written by Peter Allen (a gay performer/songwriter, once married to Liza, don’t you know). Not sure there’s much in this world that’s more gay than Peter Allen onstage with the Rockettes (sorry for the video quality):

Yet once again, a bully from Florida has given us a gift. Back when I was in my early 20s, that bully was Anita Bryant. Today, that bully is Ron DeSantis.

Anita’s gift to the LGBT cause in the late 1970s was called “Save Our Children.” Ron’s gift to LGBT today is nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay.”

Common to the resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation is this fetish to bully gay/trans kids and spread lies about gay people. Anita, bless her heart, wanted to roll back LGBT civil rights protections. She succeeded for awhile. Ron wants to “shore up parental rights” by eliminating references to gender and sexuality in certain grades (actually, this law makes it a crime to talk about any gender or sexuality, not just LGBT ones – expect those lawsuits to start flying soon).

Why This Is A Gift

This is a gift (and a warning) because there’s always a drift away from vigilance to complacency. I see it; I’m guilty of it too. The desire to rest on laurels is strong. After all, we’ve worked hard. We’ve been working on this for what seems like forever.

Finally, those wars for marriage equality, adoption equality, military equality, many (if not all, everywhere) civil rights have been won and enshrined in law.

Until they aren’t anymore.

It’s important to realize that, however we might dread it and want it not to be, the truth is they’re coming for us yet again.

Our enemies. The ones who hate us and lie about us. The institutional, the beyond-cynical Trumpian right wing.

They’re coming for our marriages. They’re coming for our kids. They’re coming for our rights in the dishonest guise of protecting “religious freedom.”

Disbelieve me at your peril.

Cleve Called It

Back in 2002, I made a short documentary called “Our Brothers, Our Sons.” It’s somewhat dated now, but it was comparing/contrasting safer sex messages around AIDS/HIV between Baby Boomer gay men and Gen X gay men.

One thing I’ll never forget from that film, however, is the quote from veteran gay activist Cleve Jones, who said of the younger generation then, referring to rights, that “they don’t realize it all could be taken away, just like that.”

(you can see that quote in the “Our Brother, Our Sons” trailer here on the Amazon page.)

Cleve was right. Gird up, folks. It’s not over, there’s likely dark days ahead of us and we’ll keep on fighting. We always do. We always live the Act Up slogan, Silence = Death.

We won’t be silent. We’ve been here before and we won. We will prevail again this time, I have no doubt.

One of the main reasons for that is the younger generation — of all stripes, is on our side. They’re on our side! Things really can change.

So thanks, bullies. For the warning. And one more thing: We’re not “united” with you, motherfuckers. Looking forward to seeing this resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation dying. Everything old may be new again, but that doesn’t mean that everything old is correct — or indeed ever was.

And Now, the Astonishing Actual History Of The Gay Rights Movement, or Look Ma, I’m Equal

photo: AARP

Look Ma, I’m equal today! Today, I have the same marriage rights as my 7 straight siblings. For my first 60 years, I have been denied those rights. This is a marvelous day, which will only increase in profundity as time wears on.

I certainly don’t always agree with the writer Andrew Sullivan but I did like his great perspective on our shared gay history, and this seems like an appropriate occasion to link to it and bring it back out.

It is interesting, what he says in the piece about the average 22 year old gay male today just assuming that his right to get married to another man is a given.

Case in point: Facebook! On Facebook, whatever we might think of it, it allows the generations to mix in a way that was previously largely impossible. I have an acquaintance, a musician/writer type, who is of that age group, 20s, Millennials, whatever you want to call them. I call it young and cute, in his case.

Anyway, this guy got engaged (!!) to another young man, equally as adorable, about his age. Since that announcement, I’ve been following their various travels and insanely cute and wonderful pictures as they go about planning their wedding and reception and all that.

To a gay man of my age and generation, (OK, I was 60 earlier in 2015) this is quite astonishing. I never thought we’d see same sex marriage in my lifetime; this wasn’t even something I thought about much at all. But I’m really happy that others did think of it, and thought big. Look where we are, look where we’ve come. There is so much more to do; just because there’s now a judicial decision making marriage equality the law of all 50 states doesn’t mean that people will change how they feel inside. The work goes on. And on. Like it always has.

And — even better, I got an engagement announcement from a gay couple who are friends of mine yesterday. Yes, this was via Facebook. They’re not quite Millennials; they’re older, but still I have to say I loved seeing the relative pomp and circumstance of a social media announcement like this. How wonderful it is for them to be able to share their love with the world this way.

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Finding their Son in the Subway

To me, this story is magical.

I see this story of the formation of a family in black and white, on film, in a 1930s or 1940s black and white film, and perhaps Anthony Russo, the New York Times artist who illustrated this Opinionator piece, got his inspiration from that same culture fount.

I’m thinking of “Heidi,” which starred Shirley Temple, and was a Saturday afternoon staple when I was a kid. For some reason (the Christmas connection, maybe? the NYC locale?) this also reminds me of “Miracle on 34th Street,” which also has a family-melding as part of the story.
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Lift me up. The judge in “Heidi” asked Shirley who she wanted to live with. Perhaps the intuitive judge in this case had seen the movie as well, and since the child in question was a mere infant, made the parental decision on a whim and a prayer?

But what I love most is that these two men, especially the writer (Peter Mercurio) were able to say yes to the unknown. Sometimes, when seemingly wild opportunities and totally unpractical ideas present themselves, what is it inside that makes us say yes? It’s opening the door to adventure, and this is really living. This is a definition of life.

Where being gay really is a death sentence

Winnipeg Free Press story on where being gay is a death sentence

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

In Iran, there are no homosexuals.

Or so said the president of Iran. When I posted the story about the thoughts/rants of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, little did I realize that I’d find the “180” in the next couple of days.

You see, that post was all about a minority that had won major gay acceptance and gay rights over the years, and about modifying its platform, so to speak. About what it should really be interested in doing/focusing on to ensure the “right kind” of liberation for gay people, perhaps not focused so much on marriage equality or anti-gay violence.

But in order to do that, in order to have the freedom to say what you want or wear a dress or call yourself Mattilda or Jimbo or re-appropriate the word “faggot” — you have to be free enough to not be looking over your shoulder every minute for the assassin.
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And this is what is going on in Iran, Iraq, other countries in Africa. This is what would be going on in the United States if some fundamentalist Christian pastors had their way. Yes, here, yes, in Kansas and Maryland and probably some small town very near you.

So I wanted to publicize this program in Canada, the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees, which assists those trying to escape Iran for more hospitable countries like Canada, though the article also says they help place people in Finland and the USA.

If you read the story about Hamed, the young Iranian man in the picture above, you find out that the people he was most afraid of in Iran were his own family. I find that so sad and depressing. Yet, he triumphs: the two men in the photo behind him, his new family, were part of a “Group of Five” in Canada which was able to sponsor Hamed’s emigration.

I’d have to say, he looks pretty happy. The article also says that today, June 3, he’ll go to his first Pride parade, in Winnipeg. Appropriate for what I expect will be a number of GLBT-pride related posts this month of June Pride.

Also, I’ll be thinking of Hamed and people like him the next time I’m forced to watch a child spew hatred as the result of some pathetic misguided adult.

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore Weighs in on Marriage Equality, the Occupy Movement, and Freedom

SF Weekly photo of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore by Kevin Coleman

I was quite interested in Chris Hall’s SF Weekly piece from several months ago on gay writer/editor/activist/Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, so I clipped it.

Mattilda has a refreshing point of view, to say the least. I mean, have you wondered, as I have wondered from time to time, just why the gay movement wants inclusion into a couple of the more broken institutions of our time (marriage and the military)?

As she says in the article, and I paraphrase, maybe we should be working to get rid of the constriction of marriage, maybe we should be working to abolish the American military, hell-bent as it seems to be on endless, bankrupting wars of aggression.

I would argue (and agree with Mattilda) that the confines of the monogamous, traditional marriage are anything but queer as we know it. It seems to often be a dreadful institution, well in need of some redefinition, and by that I don’t mean defining it to include gay couples but defining a marriage relationship by itself to be very broad.

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I was at a discussion group not too long ago where one of our senior radicals was present (a member of the original radical faerie group) and when the topic of gay marriage came up, he really couldn’t stop laughing, he found the whole thing so absurd. This is not to rain on the parade of anyone who wants to get married — I think everyone should who wants to — but the gay movement was all about redefining our lives in such a way as to be much bigger than that which had come before – by doing such things as realizing the unique purpose and viewpoints of gay people. They would say we are here for a reason on this planet. They would say we are not just like everyone else (take away all the sex, there are still huge differences between gay and straight). This is the anti-assimilation point of view.

I applaud Mattilda for being able to articulate that contrarian point of view, not easy these days when everyone wants you to just jump on the safe, “well-behaved faggot” bandwagon. She also has a few choice words for the “It Gets Better” phenomenon – truly, how does telling a kid that things will get better in 4 or 5 years help him or her TODAY when life is a living hell? I’m not sure I have an answer for that. Maybe that the campaign is a step on the way for safety for these bullied kids? I think that’s likely.

What do you think about the gay movement? Do you think assimilation is the key, or do you think celebrating the difference is the way to go? Or, should it something entirely different?

About those Republican Candidates and “bordering on disgust”

What, indeed, is wrong with these people?

Since it’s the day before the Wisconsin/Maryland Primary, it’s as good a time as any to re-shine a light on what the Republican candidates may have said about gays and gay rights issues, including marriage equality, over the course of their campaigns.

Fred Karger Calls for Romney, Santorum, Gingrich to Disavow NOM Pledge.

Above is a link to Karen Ocamb’s LGBT/POV blog post on gay Republican candidate Fred Karger’s demand that the other candidates he’s running against – Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich – repudiate the pledges they made to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) earlier in the campaign, basically promising to uphold traditional marriage by way of constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, to defend DOMA, to follow the “original intent of the Constitution” even to officially investigate the “harassment of traditional marriage supporters” – whatever that means.

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It’s come out that NOM, the organization that viciously fights marriage equality, is being investigated for money laundering in Maine, so he’s using these possible illegal activities as the basis the candidates should repudiate their pledges – along with the fact that the pledges are just genuinely hateful. Continue reading →

We Shall Overcome

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130J-FdZDtY]

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