QUEER VISIBILITY AND VICTORIES

In Vermont Pride Week officially kicked off on Sunday evening. There are all sorts of events going on this week. I'll be joining Integrity/Vermont (and St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral) for a pre-parade breakfast on Saturday and then we'll all head out to march at Noon.

I'm thrilled to see one of our queer activist leaders in Vermont, Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak (former director of Outright) write in Seven Days, "There's more to our movement than matrimony." It's been a long time coming that the elites of the Vermont LBGTQ community should recognise this. [My emphasis in bold.]

Legalizing same-sex marriage was a long-overdue, critical victory in the fight for gay rights. But I fear that many members of the queer community — the ones with financial, political and social means — see marriage as the end of the fight for a safe, fair and equal Vermont. To them, I would say: You, the adult queer with your chosen family, a job and home, may be better off, but I don’t think we are.

Marriage doesn’t address the unresolved needs of the queer youth, trans people, single queers, gender-variant individuals, alternative family and relationship seekers, perceived-to-be-queer people, queer service members and their families, food, and housing-insecure queers, and many other subsectors of Vermont’s queer community.

For example, the CDC’s 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey reports that queer students are still twice as likely as their heterosexual peers to be bullied in our public schools. A gay Vermonter in the military, if outed, can still be dishonorably discharged, stripped of medical coverage and denied the education he or she deserves through the GI Bill. My male friend who wears a pink bike helmet around Burlington regularly hears screams of “faggot!” from passing cars. [...]

Right now, our history is being commercialized and packaged into a corporate fad. Remember how Gap made it cool to care about people dying of AIDS in Africa? Well, gay marriage looks like the next hip social cause. With celebrities taping their mouths over with “NO H8” in protest of California’s Proposition 8 gay- marriage ban and Pride, go-go boys sporting undies with “legalize gay” across their tight butts, I fear that the marriage movement is quickly becoming a fad. And what happens to fads? Maybe I will write about that on my LiveJournal or, better yet, write a song to post on MySpace.

Marriage alone can’t bring us a vibrant queer community. Think about gay neighborhoods in bigger cities, or smaller destinations such as Provincetown. What is it that makes those places feel welcoming? It isn’t marriage — Massachusetts only just legalized that. It’s visibility. It’s queer people proudly displaying rainbow flags on their businesses and homes. It’s queer people walking hand in hand everywhere (not just down the main drag). It’s queer people gathering at gay bars, events and community centers to see each other and, more importantly, be seen.

Constance McMillen gets a win...

BOSTON GLOBE (ASSOCIATED PRESS):

JACKSON, Miss. — A rural school district that canceled its prom rather than allow a lesbian student to attend with her girlfriend has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit the ACLU filed on her behalf.

The district also agreed to follow a nondiscrimination policy as part of the settlement, though it argues that such a policy was already in place.

Constance McMillen, 18, said the victory came at the price of her being shunned in her small hometown of Fulton.

“I knew it was a good cause, but sometimes it really got to me. I knew it would change things for others in the future, and I kept going and I kept pushing,’’ McMillen said yesterday.

But it's a bittersweet victory... From QUEERTY:

Technically, this falls into the "win" column: Constance succeeded in having her school confess its sins and pay her for failing one of its students (though really, it failed all of its students). And while Constance did manage to graduate from another high school a tad more accepting, and did get to dance at a number of proms, and did get to serve as grand marshal in gay pride parades, and did become a beacon of hope for all queer teens, she was also a high school senior victimized by her own school, and that's never something to be happy about.

International Day Against Homophobia '09

It's tomorrow!

From the House of Le May

Yeah. This is the sixth annual event with this year's theme being "Homosexuality knows no borders." (Maybe that's why I have often been told I've overstepped my bounds?)

So, what are we supposed to do?

The proposed goal for the 2009 Campaign is to make the general population and, more specifically, ethno-cultural communities of all backgrounds more aware of gay and lesbian issues, and sexual diversity. Ethno-cultural communities occupy an increasingly significant place in our societies. What’s more, contributions by these communities are invaluable to our country.

Got it? Do it!

AND NOT A PEEP IS HEARD FROM THE GAY OR STRAIGHT MEDIA.....

Toujoursdan of Culture choc and Counterlight have posts up about a proposed UN Declaration of Human Rights for LBGTs. They direct us to read UK gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell's Guardian CiF article

It will be the first time in its history that the UN General Assembly has considered the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights.

Although it will not be binding on the member states, the declaration will have immense symbolic value, given the six decades in which homophobic persecution has been ignored by the UN.

If you want to understand why this decriminalisation declaration is so important and necessary, ponder this: even today, not a single international human rights convention explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT people. The right to physically love the person of one's choice is nowhere enshrined in any global humanitarian law. No convention recognises sexual rights as human rights. None offers explicit protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

The USA, naturally, is against. The main sponsor - Canada - and most of the EU countries have come on board. Counterlight writes

It has some surprising support from countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Guinea-Bissau, and Israel.

The Vatican, in league with the Islamic countries, is leading the opposition, to no one's surprise.
The USA is not endorsing the resolution, and neither is Australia.
Curiously (or not), our leftist comrades in Cuba and Venezuela are silent on this resolution.

It is strange that this is stirring not a peep of notice in the press, not even in the gay press.

A DAY WITHOUT A GAY

"How much are your rights worth?"

IT IS LONG PAST THE TIME

LOUIE CREW, founder of Integrity writes

It is long past the time that the church should abandon superstition about homosexuality and about lgbt persons.

SUPERSTITION
1. credulity regarding the supernatural.
2. an irrational fear of the unknown or mysterious.
3. misdirected reverence.
4. a practice, opinion, or religion based on these tendencies.
5. a widely held but unjustified idea of the effects or nature of a thing.

Concise Oxford Dictionary, 8th Ed., Copyright 1991 Oxford Univ. Press

1) God is not sitting in heaven waiting to see whether Ernest and I kiss or hold hands, nor should reasonable persons shudder in fear of divine retribution if they allow the Church to respect us.

2) It is irrational to believe that Ernest and I have mysterious powers that can destroy heterosexual marriage. Evidence shows that heterosexuals are imaginative enough to do that quite well on their own.

3) The church misdirects its reverence when it treats heterosexuality or even marriage, as an icon. Jesus never married, but spiked the wedding punch as his first recorded miracle. Only one of his 12 disciples had a named spouse. St. Paul counseled against marriage except as lust control. For over 1,000 years the church allowed only the lowly laity to marry, but not the clergy. It is a stupid abuse of power to deny lgbts access to the sacrament of marriage and then condemn those who do not maintain lasting relationships.

4) In the last two decades forces within the Anglican Communion have required condemnation of homosexuality as a communion-breaking, gospel-defining issue. Even if one considers homosexual behavior a sin, Jesus was always compassionate about sins of the flesh, but not about sins of the spirit -- pride, hypocrisy, legalism, judgmentalism.....

5) Some believe that tolerance of homosexuality has been the cause of the fall of many civilizations. When a tornado hit a tiny Georgia town where we lived, an Anglican bishop snorted in the Birchite paper, "Would one expect God to keep silent when homosexuals are tolerated?" What utter nonsense! If, like Lot, you throw your daughters to marauders, don't blame lgbt persons.

Superstition, especially when Scripture seems to endorse it, is sometimes practiced by otherwise reasonable and skilled people. On the HoBD list several well credentialed and otherwise competent Christians routinely insult lgbt colleagues and condemn us believing that God makes them do it.

There is a fool-proof cure for anti-lgbt superstition: Love your lgbt neighbor as you love yourself.

Advert

In California, Proposition 8 is on the ballot to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. This very cool advertisement is making the rounds now.



(HT to What's in Kelvin's Head)

PANDERING TO BIGOTS

Savitri Hensman has written an op-ed in the Guardian [11 August 2008]

As the Lambeth conference in Canterbury was drawing to a close, Michael Causer died. He was not an Anglican bishop, but an 18-year-old hairdresser, a popular lad described by his family as "definitely a 'people's person'. Our world will never be the same without him." He was the victim of a homophobic attack.
.....
Every decade or so, the Lambeth conference has urged bishops to champion human rights for all and enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian community. But this has been widely ignored: blessing same-sex couples is apparently a far greater offence than allying with repressive governments to hunt them down.
....
On the Sunday when the conference ended, speakers at the International Aids Conference in Mexico highlighted the deadly impact of homophobia. Discrimination against men who have sex with men must end, the secretary general of the United Nations urged. "We need to engage them, we need to take care of them, we should not forget about them," said the director general of the World Health Organisation.

Meanwhile, at the Lambeth conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury appealed for a "covenant of faith" that would "promise to our fellow human beings the generosity God has shown us", and suggested "a Pastoral Forum to support minorities". But to him, those needing greater generosity and pastoral care were mainly Christians with strong objections to same-sex partnerships. While he is a humane man, his priorities seem strange. If Anglicans are to remain relevant, and a force for good, bishops need to listen more carefully to people like Michael Causer's family.

(Thanks to Episcopal Café for the heads-up.)

'IT'S FUNDAMENTALLY ABOUT ONE PERSON LOVING ANOTHER'

Giles Fraser: Thought For The Day

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning

A few weeks ago, two Anglican clergymen celebrated their civil partnership at a service in a famous London church. Newspapers last weekend called it a gay wedding. A number of friends of mine were at the service and told of a happy and wonderful occasion. But there are those who have been deeply upset; people who would quote scripture to argue that it threatens the very fabric of marriage itself. So what, then, is the Church of England's theology of marriage? Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Book of Common Prayer was being put together, marriage was said to be for three purposes:

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children
Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication
Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

How do these three concerns relate to the prospect of gay marriage? The third priority insists that marriage is designed to bring human beings into loving and supportive relationships. Surely no one can deny that homosexual men and women are in as much need of loving and supportive relationships as anybody else. And equally deserving of them too. This one seems pretty clear. The second priority relates to the encouragement of monogamy. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself has rightly recognised that celibacy is a vocation to which many gay people are simply not called. Which is why, it strikes me, the church ought to be offering gay people a basis for monogamous relationships that are permanent, faithful and stable. So that leaves the whole question of procreation. And clearly a gay couple cannot make babies biologically. But then neither can those who marry much later in life. Many couples, for a whole range of reasons, find they cannot conceive children - or, simply, don't choose to. Is marriage to be denied them? Of course not. For these reasons - and also after contraception became fully accepted in the Church of England - the modern marriage service shifted the emphasis away from procreation. The weight in today's wedding liturgy is on the creation of loving and stable relationships. For me, this is something in which gay Christians have a perfect right to participate. I know many people of good will are bound to disagree with me on this. But gay marriage isn't about culture wars or church politics; it's fundamentally about one person loving another. The fact that two gay men have proclaimed this love in the presence of God, before friends and family and in the context of prayerful reflection is something I believe the church should welcome. It's not as if there's so much real love in the world that we can afford to be dismissive of what little we do find. Which is why my view is we ought to celebrate real love however and wherever we find it.

THE BISHOP OF NEW HAMPSHIRE GETS CUPPED

The Rt. Rev'd V. Gene Robinson and Mark Andrew, his lover of 20 years, entered into a civil union partnership on Saturday, 7 June, which was also the fifth anniversary of his election as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire.

GAY IRANIAN STUDENT CAN REMAIN IN BRITAIN

With pressure, even the most unenthusiatic and slow-moving bureaucrats can change their tune.

THE INDEPENDENT

A gay man who faces the death penalty in Iran has won asylum in the UK after protests prompted the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, to reconsider his case.

Family and supporters of Mehdi Kazemi, now 20, welcomed the decision yesterday not to send him back to Iran where his boyfriend was arrested by the state police and executed for sodomy.
---
Mr Kazemi came to London to study in 2005, but in April 2006 discovered his gay partner had been arrested and named him as his boyfriend before his execution. Fearing he might suffer the same fate if he returned, Mr Kazemi decided to seek asylum in Britain. His claim was refused and he fled to the Netherlands where he also failed to win asylum before returning to Britain last month.
---
In an open letter to the British Government, Mr Kazemi told the Home Secretary: "I wish to inform the Secretary of State that I did not come to the UK to claim asylum. I came here to study and return to my country. But in the past few months my situation back home has changed. The Iranian authorities have found out that I am a homosexual and they are looking for me."

Yesterday, the UK Border Agency said it had decided to allow him asylum, granting him leave to remain for five years.

More background here.

GAY BLOOD DONORS WANTED!

It's about time. -

San Jose, Calif. - The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted to formally oppose a lifetime ban on gay male blood donors. The board did not go as far as San Jose State University's policy banning blood drives, because they say they ultimately want to increase the local supply of blood and blood donations.

Last year, the Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banks called on the FDA to reverse the lifetime ban, citing the fact that in most parts of the country, blood supplies are running critically low. Most of the donated blood we use here in the bay area comes from the midwest – it is, therefore, very expensive. All the donated blood, regardless of its source, undergoes thorough testing for everything from anemia to HIV but the FDA’s rules are still being applied to blood bank operations across the country.

Link

Read AABB's joint statement on "behavior-based blood donor deferrals." [I love these euphemisms.]

AABB, ABC and ARC believe that the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted and recommend that deferral criteria be modified and made comparable with criteria for other groups at increased risk for sexual transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections. Presenting blood donors judged to be at risk of exposure via heterosexual routes are deferred for one year while men who have had sex with another man even once since 1977 are permanently deferred.

I was deferred permanently due to Hepatitis B core antibody blood screening back in the late 1980's - one pint short of becoming a two gallon blood donor. If that were not the case, I'd still be permanently deferred because of my "behaviour." What do you all think of our local board of health introducing a (albeit symbolic) recommendation to the Burlington City Council in solidarity with the Santa Clara board? I know there have been concerns expressed on the UVM campus regarding these donor deferrals. I try to keep up on blood donor news and issues; I was not aware of the AABB/ARC recommendations a few years ago.

Sanders does a switcheroo on same-sex marriage

No, not our independent junior Senator, but Jerry Sanders, the Republican Mayor of San Diego, who has reversed his stand on same-sex unions; he wanted his adult daughter, Lisa, and other gay people he knows to have their relationships protected equally under state laws.

"In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships — their very lives — were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife Rana," Sanders said.

COMMENT: I still believe it's the stories we share and the one-on-one relationships with those we know and love that will transform hearts and minds.

LBGT Debate

GayWired.com - Gay rights took the spotlight in Los Angeles Thursday when the Democratic Party's leading presidential candidates gathered for a televised forum sponsored by a gay-themed cable channel Logo.

The unprecedented two-hour event featured Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, former senator John Edwards and others, who are all anxious to win political support in the gay community.

COMMENT: Who woulda thunk it? I had no idea there was to be a debate only for LBGT folk. Delightful [sarcasm]. Thanks to Talk Left for the heads up. The debate was sponsored by Logo TV & Human Rights Watch, a predominately white middle class gay "activist" group with close ties to the Democratic Party. It's definitely not a queer group. It's focus is to push for programs that would just mainstream LBGT folk into the American middle class culture of a hetero-type marriage, of mommoms and daddads - the consumerist apple pie culture. Note "...and others" in the story. Those other candidates were Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Bill Richardson. Kucinich and Gravel were the only candidates that came out for same-sex marriage. It should be noted that the Democratic Party does not endorse same-sex marriage in its platform. The Green Party supports universal marriage rights.

You can view parts of the debate on Logo TV here.

It's All Because (The Gays Are Getting Married)

This one's for the folks over at Vermont Renewal.



(H/T to MadPriest & episcopalooza)

The Issue is Gay Marriage

That's what Vermont Dem lege leaders Shumlin and Symington say. They've called for a commission to study how Vermonters feel about it.

Of course, I'm queer, and I'm for gay marriage, but why now? And why, after a mediocre 2007 legislative session? I think it's a political stunt. Why to the hets always use queer folk as a way to get votes?

Note to Gaye and Peter: Check out the Vermont Freedom to Marry Taskforce site poll results.

Though I'm pleased to see that my own state rep Johanna Donavan, and Episcopalians (former Gov) Phil Hoff and the Revd Nancy Vogele are on the commission.

25th Anniversary of Vermont Pride

Yesterday - 07/07/07 - might have been a lucky day for hetero couples who tied the knot, but in Vermont - despite the progress made with civil unions legislation - queers are still treated as separate and unequal.

Homophobia in Burlington

Vandals have smashed windows at RU12? Queer Community Center on Elmwood. The police are calling it a hate crime. The story was inside the Vermont section in the Free Press. The story merited front page coverage. Systemic homophobia is alive and well in Burlington. It will be interesting to see if there is a follow-up story on the BPD investigations and how much priority they will give to it.

COMMENT: The paper labels RU12? as a 'gay advocacy' group. From the comments on this story, some people think advocacy is deplorable. But all too often the queer community has been shunned by the hetero's. Who's going to stand up for injustice and systemic homophobia? RU12? is actually an education and community center for all of Burlington. I would encourage str8 Burlington to check out the activities there, drop in, listen to the stories of the members, become an ally, and connect on a human level.

and this...

The Vermont Attorney General's Office has decided not to pursue an appeal of a judicial ruling that dismissed hazing charges against a University of Vermont fraternity [...] stemm[ing] from a so-called "Brokeback Mountain" party in March 2006 in which pledges were allegedly taunted with homophobic language.

You will recall the hoopla about Judge Edward Cashman in January, 2006, but I see no one callng for the resignation of Judge Charon True or Attorney General William Sorrel.

COMMENT: By True's action and Sorrel's inaction, they're allowing systemic homophobia to continue in Vermont.

A lavish welcome indeed

As my dear, departed former rector down in Houston - Clax Monro, former rector of St Stephen's - used to say, God's grace falls lavishly, like the rain, on the just and unjust alike. That includes society's most outcast & marginalised.

Liz Kaeton over at MadPriest, wrote - And, wasn't it Gracie Allen who said, "Never put a period where God has placed a comma"?

Scapegoats can be prophetic

Via MadPriest, The Times by Luis Rodriguez: Church will find a special place for its scapegoats — again -

The fracturing of the Anglican Communion seems imminent and it appears the American Church and gay people will carry the can. Well, every crisis needs a scapegoat. It is the way of the world . . . and of the Church. Jews, women, minorities and other outsiders have all in their time borne (and sometimes still bear) the brunt of the blame in moments of social or ecclesiastical crisis.

I am filled with hope! Rodriguez ends on a positive note:

I have little doubt that history will view the actions of the Episcopal Church as simply one more step in an ongoing movement that started long before them and continued long after them. I have no doubt that Anglicans in the future will consider those actions prophetic, and that the consecration of Gene Robinson will be commemorated alongside that of Samuel Seabury, the ministry of Absalom Jones and the ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi.

I have many spiritual heroes and count Absalom Jones, former slave, abolitionist, first African-American Episcopal priest; Li Tim-Oi, the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion; and Gene Robinson, the first openly queer person elected a bishop of the Episcopal Churth - right at the top of the list. I was blessed to meet Li Tim-Oi in Houston just before she died in 1992.

Continue reading "Church will find a special place for its scapegoats — again..."

Gene Robinson calls for civil unions in New Hampshire

Episcopal News Service -

Bishop V. Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire told a state Senate hearing on civil unions April 10 that legalizing same-gender unions doesn't threaten religion or families.

Robinson was one of more than 300 people who attended the nearly five-hour-long Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a state bill that passed the state House April 4.

Full story.

The state to the west of New Hampshire has had civil unions since 2000, but the struggle for a full marriage equality bill continues.