Queers on the Run: Interview with Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas [Summer 2010]

An interview with Eric Stanley and Christ Vargas, the creators of the film Criminal Queers, can be found here:

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/queers-on-the-run

Chicago makes a rainbow connection: Interview with Jessica Max Stein [6 January, 2010]

The Muppets have entranced and educated generations of children and generated nostalgic memories for millions of adults. Fans can even take a Facebook quiz to determine which Muppet they most resemble. Yet, comparatively little is known about those who turned the simplest hand puppets into expressive, unique and sometimes cantankerous but always beloved characters. On Jan. 10, the New York City-based writer and zinester Jessica Max Stein will be at Quimby’s Bookshop to discuss the life and work of Richard Hunt, a gay man who was the voice behind Scooter, Janice, Beaker, Statler, Wayne and Sweetums, among many others. He also shared the role of Miss Piggy with Frank Oz until the end of the first season of The Muppet Show.

Hunt is the subject of Stein’s new 84-page zine, The Rainbow Connection: Richard Hunt, Gay Muppeteer, which showcases Stein’s interest and absorption in the life of a man who was among the most long-standing behind-the-scenes performers on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and whose off-screen humor and colorful personality imbued his puppets with the kind of vivacity that has made them popular for so long. Hunt was born in New York City in 1951 and, according to his mother, got the job on the Muppet Show when, a few months after graduating from high school, he decided to cold call Henson Associates (the late Jim Henson’s company) and ask if they were hiring puppeteers. It so happened that they were auditioning, and Hunt was soon hired.

For Stein, it’s that kind of impetuosity and bravado that proved most intriguing and enchanting as she began to hear more about Hunt’s life and career. Hunt, an out gay man, would go on to become a main performer on The Muppet Show, and one of five performers to be a regular performer on all five seasons. He was also on Fraggle Rock, playing both Junior Gorg and Gunge.

Both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show have gained enormous success and international renown, and those who worked on them have continued to do well professionally in large part, according to Stein, because Henson was intelligent about maintaining creative and financial integrity. Hunt, according to Stein and other historians of the show like Christopher Finch, who wrote Of Muppets and Men, was well-liked, energetic and every bit as playful as the puppets he gave voice to. He died in 1992 of AIDS-related complications, with Frank Oz among those at his bedside. According to the Wikipedia entry under his name, “many panels were created in his honor for the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt, including one created by his friends in The Muppet Workshop.” Jon Stone, a former director of Sesame Street, said about Hunt’s death and influence: “A generation has grown up absorbing Richard’s art, and I have to believe that every one of them is a smarter, funnier, stronger, sillier, more generous person because of him.”

Stein said that her fascination with the man has a lot to do with the ways in which his life and personality imbue the show with a queerness that might otherwise be overlooked if we only think of the Muppets and their characters as aimed at children: “I love that this project speaks to these contradictions,” she told Windy City Times. “People think of muppets as exclusively for kids, but I also see them as very adult and queer. Richard and Oz created Miss Piggy and when you think of it, hers is a total performance of femininity.” What also intrigued her was the character of a man who had clearly engendered fondness, even as some admitted he could be acerbic: “He was totally effervescent; his mom described him as “expansive,” and I see that as a great synonym for ‘big queer.’” Stein was also intrigued by Hunt’s life and work as emblematic of the era he lived and died in: “We can’t separate his life from the times.”

Hunt was in one sense a casualty of the AIDS epidemic, which decimated the U.S. gay male population in particular in the 1980s. But in his death, Stein saw an opportunity to celebrate a decade that the gay community now looks at mostly through the lens of loss and sometimes in very simplified terms, without much attention to the vitality of those who died. Stein is clear that she has no inclination to romanticize the era, and she has friends who speak of feeling like survivors as most of their friends died: “It was a plague.” For her, however, the lingering questions are about how we choose to remember the decade and grieve the dead. The project has also prompted questions about the state of the current gay movement. Speaking of the current emphasis on gay marriage, she said that “We made all these trade-offs and we've forgotten that there used to be different options for gay people. People are forgetting that very fast. What I loved about Richard Hunt is that he lived with abundance.” She bases her understanding of him not only through histories like Finch’s book, but also through the interviews she has conducted with the people who knew him, like his mother and co-workers.

The Rainbow Connection was conceived as a zine, but Stein’s research on Hunt has continued even after its publication. She is contemplating the possibility that the greater amounts of material she has since been uncovering might result in a book-length project. For now, she is busy with a zine tour that began in Albany, N.Y. Jan. 2 and will culminate in Chicago. This tour is a follow-up to the first one she undertook in the summer of 2009, traversing New York City; Madison, Wis.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; and San Francisco. Stein is especially looking forward to connecting with the motley crew of people that comprise her audiences: “the readings bring together a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be in the same room: the fanboy nerdy straight guys, the people who just love the Muppets, queers.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 6 January, 2010.

Patrick Johnson: Southern exposure [3 December, 2009]

E.  Patrick Johnson is the author of Sweet Tea: An Oral History of Black Gay Men of the South, which consists largely of transcribed oral narratives.  Johnson, the department chair of performance studies and a professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University, began researching the book in 2004.  In October 2006, he began enacting solo performances and recreations of the narratives.  The performances (called “Pouring Tea”) are now part of his current book tour.  Windy City Times spoke to Johnson about his book; the accompanying performances and the lure of the South.

Windy City Times: In your introduction, you emphasize the fact that you didn”t approach this as a historian.  How would you characterize the difference between your work and that of historians like John Howard [author of Men Like That: A Southern Queer History, about Mississippi gay history]?

E.Patrick Johnson: My book was meant to be a living archive of narratives of African-American gay men born and raised in the South.  For me, it was important that it be an oral history, that it be about people essentially theorizing their own lives in the telling.  In that way my approach was a little different from a historian’s approach.  I wasn’t necessarily interested in it from a scholarly perspective, in analyzing what they said or imposing a certain theoretical frame onto what they said as much as I was interested in documenting narratives and letting the theories speak through what was said.  The other difference between my book and other such histories of the South is that I do the entire South.

WCT: What were those theories?

EPJ: For instance, in the narrative of Chaz/Chastity (a transgender person in Hickory, N.C.) : the ways in which Chaz narrates her life is a theorizing about the performativity of gender in a way that’s understandable and based on life experience, and in a way that Judith Butler [the feminist theorist who’s written on the performativity of gender] can’t explain it [Laughs].  We don’t have to go to post-structuralist theory; we can go to Chaz.  That’s not to belittle Judith Butler’s work, but just to say that it’s a different way of accessing the performativity of gender—in a way that my mother could understand, for instance.

WCT: In your discussions about the cultural norms of the South, you write about how the South has a way of holding on to secrets.  As you put it, that’s a part of “Southern gentility.”  But is it also about maintaining power structures?

EPJ: Absolutely, it’s about hostility as much as gentility.  [Laughs] The phrase “governing with a steel fist in a velvet glove” [comes to mind].  The dominant discourse in much of the South is a religious discourse; it pervades every aspect of Southern life.  So if one’s intention is to have it both ways—to maintain the veneer of religious piety yet be able to partake of the flesh—then one must not speak of those things that might go against the grain of the predominant religious discourse.  So that’s why you have, particularly in the church—and not just the Black church of the South—all kinds of transgressions, all kinds of hypocrisy that transcend sexual orientation.  There are just as many heterosexuals participating in that [kind of hypocrisy] .

[Southern gentility] is absolutely about maintaining and sustaining certain power structures.  But that same power structure provides opportunities for sexual dissidents to use it to their own advantage....Some people might ask, why stay? Why not go to a club?  That’s what’s specific to the South.  Those of us who are Black and gay and Southern started going to the church in the womb [laughs].  It’s a part of our blood.  And so when we come into our sexual consciousness, we can’t just chop [the church] off.  Because at the same time that it’s oppressive, it’s also liberating.  Because especially when you are a kid, the culture of many Black churches is such that you can be the worst singer, the worst whatever, but they’ll encourage you.  That kind of encouragement, in the context of all the other religious stuff, is a part of who you are.  That sustains you in ways that other sexual venues can’t sustain you.

Now, that’s not the experience of everyone in the book.  But many, especially those who’ve decided to stay in the church, find ways to reconcile the homophobic rhetoric of the church with their spirituality and sexuality.

WCT: That brings me to a popular trope through which many people understand Black gay male men who are not “out”—as living with the “down low syndrome.”  How do you prevent people reading Black gay men staying in the church and not being as out [from seeing] another manifestation of the down-low culture?

EPJ: First of all, the down-low terminology and discourse [are] old.  People think it came about a couple of years ago with J. L. King [author of On the Down Low].  But it actually emerged around heterosexuality: “Keeping it down low” referred to various indiscretions.  Secondly, for as many men in Sweet Teawho are discreet about their sexuality, there are just as many who are open.  Many of the men in the church are also flamboyant.  They use the rituals and performance aesthetics of the Black church to express their sexuality.  So a flamboyant queen can still be that flamboyant queen while directing the choir because it’s expected of him to be over the top.  That has nothing to do with the down-low and more to do with people knowing that this person is gay but still not saying anything about it.  It’s not like a secret in the same way as men who do identify as being on the down-low.

WCT: The performances that are now a part of your book tour started in October 2006.  Did you think about performing these narratives when you conceived the book?

EPJ: No.  When I got deep into the research and started conducting the interviews, I realized: This has to be a play.  [Laughs] Sitting down with these folks and hearing them tell their stories in their unique ways suggested to me that the immediacy of the telling had to be recaptured in a way that reading it on a page would not.  So I decided, after I’d done more than half of these interviews, that I would put together a performance based on these narratives.

What I didn’t know [at the time] was whether I would cast the show or if I would do it [as a solo performance] .  It became a [set of] intellectual questions for me: What would it be like for the researcher to stage his ethnographic material?  What are the politics around that?  So, I began to think about how to frame this performance in a way that also staged this encounter.  I’m still thinking through the politics of all this, but one of the things I decided that I didn’t want the show to be was a kind of Anna Deavere Smith show, to “become” these people.  But I also didn”t want it to be a bland reading.

So I decided that it would just be me on a stool, with a music stand and the text.  But I also wanted the men to be present.  I decided I would play excerpts of the men’s interviews so that the audience actually heard them speak in their own voices.  And then go into the performance, but also keep within the performance the questions that I asked them, so that the audience is always aware that this is a dialogue between Patrick and whomever he’s interviewing.  I’m a performer and I’m interested in the relationship between theory and practice.

WCT: In that context, what does it mean to perform [Pouring Tea] , especially to mixed or primarily white audiences that might expect the usual stereotypical narratives of pathos and sadness ascribed to Black gay men?

EPJ: [You can never] overdetermine how an audience is going to react, and so I try not to do that.  [Laughs] But what I do try to do is be very deliberate in the choices that I make in a performance that at least [convey] to the audience that I have thought of [how I construct the performance].  For instance, it’s not a coincidence that you hear the voices of the men speak [before the performance starts].  It’s not a coincidence that I’m just sitting on a stool with a music stand.  All those things are deliberate.  But still, there’s no way I can anticipate how that performance reinforces certain stereotypical notions about blackness, about sexuality, about the South.  Inevitably, there are going to be people who come to the show [thinking] that all these men are down on their luck.

And those men are represented in the performance, but there are also men who defy those stereotypes.  I don’t think people who come to the show thinking that everybody in the South is religious is prepared to hear Freddie talk about leaving the church and about how he couldn”t stay in the church and listen to homophobia.  They are not prepared to hear from people like Duncan Teague who critiques heterosexuality and [talks] about comforting a straight man whose wife has left him, and about how he [Duncan] can go home to his lover of eleven years.

It’s tricky when you are performing this kind of material, but I think the risks involved in performing it are worth the cultural and social engagement that the performance produces.

WCT: How have the book and the performance shifted for you since the publication of the book?

EPJ: The book is what it is.  But the performance is its own thing; it continues to morph; [it] gives the audience a three-dimensional perspective on the men in a way that the book doesn’t.  The book is heavily edited…There are certain freedoms that I can have with the performances that I can”t have with the book.  The performance keeps morphing and narrators are coming in and out; I don’t do all the same ones every time.  Both the book and the performance have a life of their own.

WCT: Sweet Tea is mostly about men who don’t want to leave the South, but there are some who do leave.  What pushes them to leave?

EPJ: I write about my own journey out of the South in the introduction: That even though I may leave it, it will never leave me.  [Laughs] and I think thats true for even those who reject the ‘south and leave it behind.  The South doesn”t leave them.

[And] then you have people who left because they felt too confined, wanted to experience queer culture with a capital “Q.”...There are some who feel, “I will never go back there because I don’t feel free.”  They don’t want to participate in that passive aggression.  They want to be in a place that allows them to be explicitly gay and not have to get shrouded in codes.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 3 December, 2009

Image of E. Patrick Johnson by Stephen J. Lewis

Interview with Human Rights Campaign's Joe Solmonese [26 August, 2009]

Joe Solmonese, executive director of Human Rights Campaign (HRC) , frequently finds himself in the eye of the LGBT political storm.  In recent years, criticism of the nation’s largest gay organization has increased, whether for what many described as the betrayal over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or its rumored agnosticism over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).  The organization recently unveiled a nationwide campaign, No Excuses, which aims to empower LGBTs everywhere to talk to their members of Congress about the issues facing them.  Solmonese talked to Windy City Timesover the phone about the campaign, and about a range of legislative and political issues.

Windy City Times: How would you explain the No Excuses campaign?

Joe Solmonese: We have a president who is poised to sign into law everything that we have been fighting for.  We have many more allies in Congress that we’ve had before, we need more help from the grassroots, we need people out across the country doing work to bring [our] legislative items to the finish line.  We reached out to our membership and to LGBT people across the country.  We asked them to go into the office of their member of Congress’ offices, in their district—reminding them that they are, in fact, their constituents—and tell their story.

WCT: Is this HRC changing tactics in the face of the anger felt by people around [the anti-same-sex marriage measure] Prop 8 and, more recently, in response to widespread LGBT frustration with Obama?

JS: What has changed is not HRC’s tactic.  What has changed is the dynamic of Congress in that the potential is there, but we’re finding far too many excuses for them not to do things.

WCT: How would someone who goes to the HRC Web site find resources above and beyond HRC’s FAQs? How is this different from similar campaigns by other organizations?

JS: You might be someone who lives in Boise, Idaho and live in a very challenging place, with many challenging members of Congress, without many HRC members around you.  We’ve had training conference calls; we’re having all sorts of interactive things going on with our membership so that you can be as armed as you can possibly be.  You might live in a Congressional district where the member of Congress is scoring 65 or 75 on HRC’s scorecard.  And there’s real work to be done to move that member from a 75 to a 100.  In that case, it’s very likely that the volunteer infrastructure or staff member would organize an in-district meeting, something almost akin to a town-hall meeting where we would bring all people in for a meeting with that member of Congress.

WCT: ENDA is looming once again.  As you know, HRC still comes under a lot of criticism for the last time, with many in the community using strong language like “betrayal,” What guarantee can HRC give that the same thing will not happen this time around?

JS: Well, it’s the same guarantee that we gave when it happened.  We understood, the last time around, that Congress was going to build support for this legislation and they used a time under a president who wouldn’t sign that legislation to build that support.  So when Congress brought a bill to the floor that they felt was not all that we wanted it to be but it was something that they felt they could build on, we supported that idea.  Every other piece of civil-rights legislation, things like the Family and Medical Leave Act [and] the American Disabilities Act; those were pieces of legislation that were built over years.

WCT: Are you saying that if the same thing were to happen, HRC would do the same thing?

JS: No, because now what has changed is that we have a president who will sign that law.  So the consequences are different.  Our commitment is now that no legislation will be signed into law that is not inclusive.  And that is because we laid down that legislation, a painful process that we went through to build on it, but we have done that work.  We believe that we have done a significant amount of work to close that gap and stand poised to pass fully inclusive legislation.  But if we are not there, if we are not where we need to be, then that bill will not move.

WCT: And you’re not saying that HRC is entirely responsible for ENDA?

JS: I can only say what HRC’s position is.

WCT: Which brings me to the perception that HRC does not set an agenda as much as it moves along pieces of legislation that it thinks it can win.  For instance, with DADT, as you know very well, both Jason Bellini and Nathaniel Frank have asserted that HRC had no interest, at least in the beginning, in DADT.

JS: First of all, Jason Bellini lied about almost everything he wrote and he is trying to make a name for himself as a journalist.  And Nathaniel Frank was completely wrong about what he said.  And there is nobody, which I find fascinating, in the administration or in Congress who has backed up the assertion that they have made that we have in any way said that Congress or the White House should wait or hold off on DADT.

But the notion that the largest LGBT organization in the country would, in any way, not be doing everything possible to try to overturn DADT is absurd.  There is no DADT bill in the Senate right now, so common sense would dictate that it’s very likely that hate crimes would pass before DADT.  I’ve got a news flash for people like Nathaniel Frank: There are many other issues like the overturning of DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] , and there has not been a bill overturning DOMA in the Senate, either.  I think it would be a much more productive undertaking if people all got about the business of lobbying members of Congress and getting them to support legislation, rather than looking for someone to blame someone for the fact that it’s not far along as it should be.

WCT: Can you tell me about a specific instance where HRC spoke to a member of Congress about DADT?

JS: You could speak to our legislative staff and they could point you to a meeting almost on a weekly basis.  You have to remember that up until 2006, when you were talking to members of Congress, oftentimes you were talking in the abstract.

WCT: Regarding politics in general: Steve Ault’s recent Washington Blade article questioned why we should fight for things like DADT and marriage which, he suggests, are conservative issues.  As you know, though you talked about the last eight years, HRC has also been criticized for its own conservatism.

JS: It’s sort of laughable that we are called right-wing or conservative.  You know, we advocate for real LGBT people who are living their lives across America.  For instance, there is a tax that same-sex couples pay in order to access same-sex domestic partnership benefits that straight people do not have to pay.  So we are advocating to have that tax removed.

WCT: But about health care: Being married isn’t going to help if you don’t have health care.  There’s also a criticism of hate-crimes legislation, which HRC advocates, that it’s similarly conservative and heightens the criminalization of mostly poor people of color.

JS: The hate-crimes legislation was borne out of a real-life need that has been and continues to be expressed by local law enforcement as a need for them to—or for them to call on federal authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes.

WCT: Do we focus on criminal penalties or community education?

JS: I would say both.  I think if you were to ask Judy Shepard or me for that matter, [we would say that] community education and the work of bringing down the instances of hate crimes do not end.

WCT: So I’ll assume you are in favor of penalty enhancement?

JS: Yeah.

WCT: And that you’re not in favor of prison abolition, the position of groups like the Audre Lorde Project.

JS: No.

WCT: What’s the next step for HRC, your next projects?

JS: We are continuing to do the work we’ve done in expanding on our foundation, whether it’s our religion and faith program, and using our religion and faith counsel to push back on religion-based bigotry, or expanding on programs like our corporate equality index.  We’re also launching our health care index, where we’re going to be weighing in on hospital settings and the job they’re doing for LGBT people.

WCT: Can you talk a little more about health care and hospitals?

JS: It’s the same model as the corporate equality index, but for hospitals.  We basically have gone to hospitals and said: “We’re going to be rating you and the job that you’re doing in providing health care and a welcoming and equitable environment for your LGBT patients.  And so we started similarly by talking to hospitals, by coming up with a set of criteria by which we would measure them and we have begun that process and you might imagine that like corporate America, it’s really changing the way America’s health care settings are responding.  You can look at the first report; it’s actually on our Web site.

WCT: Can you point out one kind of legislative agenda that HRC has initiated entirely on its own?

JS: I would say we have really led the legislative agenda and have taken the leadership role in most legislative efforts.  Going back to the very beginning, of crafting the hate-crimes bill or the more specific things like the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act or eliminating the tax on [domestic-partnership] benefits.  I wouldn’t say we singularly did all this, but certainly led the drive on them.

WCT: You have also been criticized for endorsing Republicans.  Do you define yourself ideologically? That seems to be a question for many organizations these days.

JS: I think that we have a responsibility to ensure that we are bringing as many members of Congress to a place of being supportive of LGBT issues as possible, regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on.  To say that we are a Democratic organization and to dismiss the idea that there is any hope of bringing Republicans around LGBT issues would be short-sighted.  It may seem that today with Democrats having such big margins in both chambers, that it might be safe to do that.  But our job is to ensure that we have the greatest number of LGBT-supportive members of Congress as possible.

WCT: Regardless of their political orientation?

JS: Regardless of their political orientation.

See www.hrc.org .

RESPONSE FROM JASON BELLINI:

I find it disgusting and desperate that Joe Solmonese would attack my reputation as a journalist, and use the word “lies” to describe my reporting on the actions of his organization.  Everything that I reported is 100 percent true, and backed up by Senate sources with direct knowledge on this matter.  Since my report came out, others have come forward with corroborating details.  I’ve never had an axe to grind with Joe Solmonese or the HRC, and I would never risk my reputation as a journalist to “make a name for myself” on a single story, as Solmonese suggested in your article.  What would be my motivation to make up “lies”? The people who know my work know just how careful, and devoted to accuracy I am.

We should expect more from our leaders than ad hominem attacks.  I’m sorry if HRC’s fund raising is suffering as a result of the reporting by myself and others.  One of the jobs of the media is to let people know how their donations are being spent, and one of those ways, earlier this year, was in lobbying to discourage members of Congress from pursuing DADT.

Any questions about the quality of my sources should have been cleared up by the news I’ve broken exclusively in The Daily Beast since that HRC report.  I was the first to break the news that Senator Gillibrand was pushing, behind the scenes, an amendment to suspend DADT for 18 months, and then that the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee agreed to hold hearings on DADT in the fall.

I never intended for this to be about me, but I won’t let words like those used by Joe Solomonese (with whom I had a friendly relationship with before all this) go unanswered.  Joe, please knock off this hateful nonsense.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 August, 2009.

Nathaniel Frank in the line of “Fire” [1 April, 2009]

Nathaniel Frank’s new book, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America (Thomas Dunne, $25.95) , considers the effects of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  In the wake of an Obama administration, the LGBT community has been buzzing with the possibility of repealing the ban.  Frank, who is optimistic about the end of the legislation, spoke by phone to Windy City Times about his project.

Windy City Times: You write that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) activism began around 1992-1993.  Given that the AIDS crisis was still a concern for the gay community at that time, how did DADT become an issue?

Nathaniel Frank: That’s a great question.  As you say, there was a much greater emphasis on the AIDS crisis in the early ’90s.  The queer population had not been as sympathetic to this particular issue because of the tradition of queer activism that’s left-wing or pacifistic or anti-militaristic.  I think it became a movement first, because it seemed easy.  I think [President Bill] Clinton thought it could be easy and the gay movement thought, “Well, let’s start with this, and get that out of the way, because that’s a no-brainer.”

Female gay activists who were either in or had friends in the military recognized that even while some of the queer left was not warm to this issue, this was a matter of careers and lives being wrecked because of those for whom the military was always important.  And then there were some of the newer people who came to the movement, who didn’t have the experience or orientation of the queer left, who thought, “this is winnable, this is easy.”  All the stars seemed to align to make this a logical, easy step.

WCT: You mention the queer left.  Given the widespread queer and straight opposition to these current wars, why should those who are opposed to war care about the lifting of the ban ?

NF: I’ve always had trouble understanding the position of what you might call strict pacifists.  I’ve always thought our country needs a military.  I think that needs to be separated from anger with and opposition to the particular militaristic history of the U.S.  t certain points.  You can oppose [all the prior and ongoing wars] and not necessarily think the country doesn’t need a military.  As long as there is a military, the military should treat everyone who’s in an equivalent position equitably.  You have to remember that this is not about whether gays can serve in the military but whether we admit that there already are gays in the military.  How do you treat the 65,000 gay and lesbian members who are in uniform? What I try to do is show the hidden costs to those lives.

WCT: You write, “the gay ban is no less than the stalling of the march toward Enlightenment.  The last three centuries of Western civilization have celebrated the ideals of freedom, truth, reason, and self-understanding.  In the United States we often consider ourselves to be a world beacon for these efforts.”  What’s the relationship between the agenda of DADT and this ideal of American global governance?

NF: That’s a great question.  There is certainly a relationship between the ideal of gay rights [that] rests, among other things, on a notion very consistent with the best and earliest ideals of America, which was that bloodlines and heritage and race and tribe don”t need to separate us but can unite us.  And gay Americans and gay families do that in sometimes very unique ways that buck the trend of world history, if you don’t mind me putting it that grandly.  And so the ideal of the Enlightenment, that freedom comes through knowledge, self-understanding, self-governance, power—these are concepts that are very dear to what the gay-rights movement has sought to do over the past half-century in particular.  Now, when I talk of Enlightenment ideals: there is also a connection between Enlightenment and Imperialism, and I’m not trying to endorse imperialism.  It may be a slippery slope, but it’s always been one of the very self-conscious challenges of America, to do good in the world without going the way of other republics that have become damaging empires.

WCT: You seem to posit the gay soldier as separate from race and class issues.  In a chapter that looks at how the army is discharging gays and filling its ranks with ex-convicts, you give the example of Private Steven Green, who shot and raped Abeer Qasim Hamza, a young Iraqi woman.  You point out that Green was a “high school dropout with three misdemeanor convictions and history of drug abuse.”  But ex-convicts could just as easily be gay, and we do hear stories about man-on-man brutality in Iraq.

NF: Sure.  That’s exactly the issue.  We certainly don’t know who’s gay on an empirical level.  I’ve no way of knowing if people in that category are gay or not; I would argue that it doesn’t matter.  What I am suggesting in those cases is that to take as a classification people who have a trait [gayness] that has been proven to have nothing to do with capacity for military performance and then ban those people because of the prejudice or discomfort of some other group in the military, is unwise policy.  And next to that is a policy that, partly in order to fill those very slots, takes a group of people who statistically are at higher risk of causing disruptions or leaving the military early.  I feel that those who have served their time deserve a second chance.  Nowhere do I suggest that those who are ex-convicts in the military are straight or are not gay.  It’s a question of risk assessment and an unwise application of risk assessment.

WCT: You write about the Tailhook scandal and the harassment of lesbians at West Point.  We are always reading about instances of brutality and harassment in the military.  So why would anyone want to join the army?

NF: That goes back to what I said earlier about the queer left.  At times the queer left has tried to hold hostage issues like this one … in order to forward a particular agenda that shouldn’t be tethered to queerness.  There are a huge number of Americans, often between the coasts, who have different politics than the queer left, who join the military because it’s a tradition, because their parents and grandparents were in it, because of benefits and education.  A strict pacifist will say, “I don’t support that because I don”t want to endorse or perpetuate a scenario where in order for people to follow tradition or gain education, they need to carry a gun and kill people.”  That sounds nice initially, but that’s not realistic.

WCT: But this [criticism] is not only from strict pacifists.  And when you point to the two coasts—that’s a stark contrast that allows for certain arguments to be made, but it also relies on an idealized notion, does it not, of what Middle America wants? And that idealization of the Middle American is exactly what you very rightly critique in the book, when you point out how that figure is manipulatively evoked as an example of someone who might dislike having gays at close quarters.

NF: I wouldn’t agree that I am referring to the military in an idealized way.  This is an age-old debate about whether change is best brought about from the inside or the outside.  The idea that we can simply not join something and hope that what that institution is doing will stop—I don’t think that’s the way to do it.  This is an important institution in American life.

WCT: You mention that NGLTF [the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force] was part of the consortium of groups that first wanted the ban lifted.  Most people assume that HRC [the Human Rights Campaign] was the driving force.

NF: They haven’t [been that] , actually.  They will say that they favor a repeal but they have not devoted as much time to this as ENDA [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act] and hate crimes.  I have found their silence somewhat surprising.  Congressional staff members have told me that it’s very important to them to have HRC on board.

WCT: Why do you think HRC has been silent?

NF: I don’t pretend to know the way the big groups operate.  All I can guess is that they prioritize those laws and policies they think are most likely to move first or easiest and/or reflect their constituents.

WCT: You position the religious right against gay Americans.  There’s always a presumption that the queer agenda is inherently oppositional to the norm, but in fact DADT is about the war, and about preserving America’s role.  Is it time to acknowledge that the queer agenda is not necessarily always a left agenda?

NF: Right.  Historically, the queer agenda has been at odds with the Religious Right, not with religion itself.  The Religious Right has been a socially conservative movement that has been intolerant of queers.  It’s important to acknowledge that queerness is not the same as leftness.  We tend to be leftish.  That suits me, but it doesn’t suit everyone.  It’s a reminder that [DADT] is not just about the war.  It drew a lot of people to it because it’s about what American citizenship means.  And part of that is refracted through the question of what it means to be a warrior, to defend America.  And even for those who are not warriors, it asks, “What does it mean to be an American and what does it mean that so many people have tried to define gay people as somehow not first-class American citizens?” So it’s larger than war.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 April, 2009

Kage Alan: School daze [27 May, 2009]

Kage Alan’s latest book, Andy Stevenson vs. The Lord of the Loins (Zumaya Boundless; $14.99) —a sequel to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation—is an adroitly written and funny tale about the perennially bemused Andy Stevenson, a gay college student who struggles with the semester’s assignments as he looks for love.  His sexual encounter with fellow student Tristan leads to heartbreak.  And then, with his best friends, Kim and Ryan, he plots Tristan’s downfall.  Windy City Times spoke to Alan.

Windy City Times: Is Andy based on you? And why did you write a sequel about him?

Kage Alan:I’m not Andy and Andy’s not me, and yet he came out of my experiences.  In the first book, he’s almost an idealized version of how people think somebody gay might be at certain times when they don’t know who they are.  There, the character came to terms with his sexuality, so, as an author, what do you after that?  You try to find a relationship with someone compatible.  I had a lot more to say about the character in the second book, which was about relationships, about finding something you don’t want, thinking you do and then finding what you do want and realizing the difference between the two.  The first one comes back to bite him in the ass.

WCT: Your book is filled with banter but it doesn’t seem gratingly artificial.  How do you write dialogue so that it’s fresh and funny?

KA: The dialogue is usually the first thing that gets done.  I hate going in and adding description because I think I’m terrible at it.  I base the dialogue on the importance of the scene, what I’m trying to convey with it, and on the dialogue I have with my own friends.  A lot of the way my friends and I talk is exactly the way we will talk to each other.  And we do have a lot of banter back and forth.  So it’s taking the best of the banter.

WCT: I’d like to talk about one scene in particular without giving it away—the pivotal one between Tristan and Andy.  It’s very funny, but it’s also about something possibly traumatic.

KA: That was the one scene in the book that I rewrote the most.  It felt too harsh too often.  And I wanted to leave it as open-ended as possible.  I see it as: Andy was there in the moment, he was questioning it, but he wasn’t really allowed to fully explore the questions before the event happened.  In my mind, if he had really, really wanted to go, he would have gone.  He knew something wasn’t right.  But he went through it anyway because he thought it was what he wanted.  But that was the one scene I struggled with the most.  [I wanted] to make it seem like he didn’t want to be there but he went through it anyway and was ultimately overpowered by the whole sensation—which is why I injected a bit more humor into it.

WCT: Another pivotal scene takes place in a bathhouse, and it’s Andy’s first time in one.  He’s monogamous and his sexual life seems quite different from that of earlier generations, when gay men’s first experiences might have been in bathhouses.  And then he has a conversation with one of the regulars who explains what some might like about bathhouse culture.  Was that a deliberate attempt to talk about different sexual politics?

KA: It was deliberate.  When I put the bathhouse scene in, I thought, there’s got to be a point to this.  He’s got to balance his ideas.  What does it mean to him? How can he express that? So he has a conversation with someone else who says, “We can argue the morality but this is what it used for, this is what it means to people.”  And then he throws it back to Andy by asking, in essence, what does this mean to you? If it doesn’t mean any of these things, why are you here?

I was trying to show two sides of the story there.  Tristan exemplifies the stereotype: fun, free, do whatever you want.  Andy sees that and he knows from his first love Jordan that it doesn’t have to be like that.  And he doesn’t like it when Tristan uses him, and doesn’t want to make that mistake again.  I think he goes against the stereotype because people do think that all gays go and have sex the first time.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 27 May, 2009

Mike Quigley, (then) Cook County Commissioner, while running for Rahm Emanuel's Congressional seat [25 February, 2009]

Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley is one of the many candidates running for Rahm Emmanuel’s seat in Congress.  He recently spoke to Windy City Times about his views on gay marriage, hate crimes legislation, the environment (one of his pet issues) and his thoughts about a school for LGBTQ youth.

Windy City Times: What’s your opinion on same-sex marriage?

Mike Quigley: I’m in favor of it because I don’t think a government should be able to tell people who they can love and how to express it.  From a purely equality point of view, there are thousands of rights that derive from marriage and I think it’s abhorrent to deny people their rights.  I was the author and sponsor of the domestic partnership registry, which is as close as a state law as we could get in Cook County.

WCT: What is your stand on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

MQ: I don’t understand why we’re so fascinated with this.  I don’t understand why someone’s orientation affects their ability to serve their country.  Obviously, there are thousands of [LGBT] members who are serving in the military and I think it’s abusive that we somehow discriminate against someone who is willing to serve their country.  I think Barry Goldwater’s the one who said, “Just because you aren’t straight doesn’t mean you can’t shoot straight.”  The Israeli army doesn’t seem to have a problem with this, and they’re a pretty crack outfit.

WCT: What is your stand on adding sexual orientation to hate crimes legislation?

MQ: I helped draft various forms of hate crimes legislation in the past and I think, overall, it needs to be strengthened at the federal level.  I just think there are just too many homophobes out there in Congress that probably think it’s okay for someone to be beaten or hurt and have that exacerbated because it’s a hate crime.

WCT: Progressive organizations like the Audre Lorde Project and the American Friends Service Committee are critical of hate crimes legislation, especially with regard to penalty enhancement.  They feel that these laws only increase the rates of incarceration, especially among the poor and minorities.  What’s your view about that?

MQ: I guess I don’t understand it.  A hate crime is a hate crime.  I think prisons are too filled with people who are drug users.  If you want to reduce the prison population, you should start with people who have addictions and they should be diverted to treatment rather than incarceration.  We criminalize the mentally ill.  But I think that if someone commits a hate crime, they’re dangerous and I have no problems increasing their penalties.

WCT: What do you think of the idea that hate-crimes legislation punishes thought and not actions?

MQ: I guess I still don’t get it.  If your statement about what they say is their point, that we’re overcrowding prisons, I think we’re overcrowding prisons through different actions, through drugs and mental illness.  I don’t have a problem increasing penalties for hate crimes.

WCT: What do you think about the idea of an LGBTQ school?

MQ: I understand that there’s some difference of opinion within the GBLT community.  My attitude is: I’m in favor of this high school if the community thinks it’s a helpful, good idea.  I understand the incidents and issues as it relates to the teenage kids who are discriminated against.  In the end, however they want to sort this out—in favor of or against—I’d support it.  My inclination is to be in favor of the school if it helps.

WCT: What about increasing anti-bullying measures?

MQ: I favor that as it relates to all issues, [LGBT] students.  Bullying is a real serious problem across the board.  I favor doing what we need to do in order to reduce and eliminate that problem in our schools.  I know very few people who weren’t bullied at one point or another; it has a long-lasting impact on many people.

WCT: What would you do about the perception of Illinois as mired in corruption?

MQ: First you act like a responsible elected official.  You act as an example.  Second, and a lot of this is what I’ve done: Increase transparency and accountability.  We put all the property tax appeals and their results, and the attorneys of record online.  We moved to make the TIF (tax-increment funding) process more open and accountable.  We also passed the Cook County Inspector General Ordinance, giving the Inspector General more power, more autonomy, and more resources.  That sort of thing has to happen at the local, state, and federal levels.  The interesint thing is: The President is talking about the very same thing.  He talked about the first bailout package, that it lacked transparency.  A wise man once said, “Illumination is the best disinfectant of government.”  So my short answer is: Illumination, open, transparent government.”

WCT: Could you talk about your issues with Sara Feigenholtz?

MQ: In the end, I think it’s pretty obvious Sara did a negative poll accusing people of real negative stuff.  And I’m not sure if Fritchey did it or didn’t do it.  I think in the end what the public wants is for someone to acknowledge it.  If you did it, and you think it was okay—say so.  If you did something that, upon reflection, you thought was a mistake, you say so.  I think we all move on.  Comparisons are one thing.  You can say, “Look, I voted against taxes, he voted for taxes”: That’s fair game.  But the sort of hidden, behind-the-scenes last-minute negative attacks—I hope we refrain from doing that and let this be a clean campaign at a time when the public is desperate for a cleaner game of politics.

WCT: What differentiates you from Rahm Emanuel?

MQ: I’d be more focused on transit, on local politics.  I think Rahm is really partisan.  He’s very involved in national politics to elect core Democrats; he can destroy Republicans.  I would seek more bipartisan efforts to get us to the problems we face.

WCT: Is there a particular issue that you’re keen to work on?

MQ: I got into this business because of the environment.  The environment does touch all the other issues as well.  For example, energy.  If we’re able to reduce our energy consumption and become more sustainable, look at everything else it touches.  It reduces health care costs by reducing air pollution and global warming.  It reduces dependence on foreign oil, it helps with national security issues and it drives down the cost of our energy which saves money and helps the economy.  I’ve probably passed a dozen major ordinances dealing with the environment, from smoke-free Chicago to green buildings to green fleets of cars, to mandatory recycling, green practices.  The issue affects not just us but our kids and our grandkids and every other aspect of our lives.

WCT: Anything you want to add for our readers?

MQ: Being close to the [LGBT] community has been a way of life for me, and not just a campaign I just started.  I helped start the Halsted street festival.  My first job was working with the Broadway merchants.  I passed four major ordinances [for] the community.  I did the first annual AIDS ride, from the Twin Cities to Chicago, before I ever ran as a candidate for anything.  I played hockey in the Gay Games.  I haven’t missed a parade since 1982, when I was just a citizen.  For me it’s a way of life, not a campaign practice.  I think that’s someone you could trust to be with you no matter what.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 25 February, 2009

Interview with John Fritchey [18 February, 2009]

Democrat John Fritchey is currently the 11th District State Representative.  He’s also among the many candidates seeking to fill Rahm Emanuel’s recently vacated seat in Illinois’s Fifth Congressional District.  Fritchey has a reputation as a progressive and is backed by a number of labor unions.  He spoke to Windy City Times about his views on gay marriage, DADT, hate crimes legislation and his stand on labor-related issues.  The primary will take place on March 3 and the general election on April 7.

Windy City Times: What are your views on gay marriage?

John Fritchey: Since long before I was in the legislature, and the 12 years I have been a state representative, I have been supportive of equal rights across the board regardless of consideration of sexual orientation, race, gender [and] age.

WCT: But would you support a state or federal law that legalized gay marriage?

JF: I’m more concerned with the rights that come with the institution than with the institution itself. Accordingly, I support the idea that each and every right that’s extended to every couple by virtue of the institution of marriage be extended to same-sex couples as well.  I don’t care what government or anybody else wants to call it.  I think at the end of the day what I want to do is make sure is that we recognize the institution for everybody.

WCT: What about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”

JF: It was a terrible idea whose time not only has come but whose time never existed.

WCT: What are your views on hate-crimes legislation?

JF: I have been a co-sponsor of, I believe, every piece of legislation strengthening penalties and extending coverage of hate crimes since I’ve been in office and I will continue to do so.

WCT: Progressive organizations like the Audre Lorde Project and the American Friends Service Committee are critical of hate-crimes legislation, especially with regard to penalty enhancement.  They feel that these laws only increase the rates of incarceration, especially among the poor and minorities.

JF: I’m aware of their position on the issue.  In a perfect world, there would be no hate crimes so there would be no legislation punishing hate crimes.  But we, of course, don’t live in a perfect world and, until such time as we do, I believe we need to take significant action against repugnant behavior.

WCT: What ideas do you have for prevention of hate violence?

JF: I think that the best defense is a good offense, and the best offense will come through education.

Obviously, we need to work on educating our adult community but a long-term solution rests on educating children.  The beautiful thing about children is they are inherently free of biases, be it based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation.  Prejudice is taught and learned.  Tolerance should be as well.

WCT: Can you speak more specifically about what that education looks like?

JF: When I talk about education, I don’t mean only within a child’s school, but also within their homes, their family and their community.  These prejudices have been passed down from generation to generation.  There’s some very direct parallel between hate crimes aimed towards the LGBT community and those that we saw aimed at African Americans and other minorities in the past.  What we need is structural social change.

WCT: In relation to that, what are your views on the plan for an LGBTQ high school?

JF: I have certain reservations only because it strikes me as having the potential to segregate communities rather than integrate them.  I would rather see LGBTQ curricula incorporated as part of traditional learning.  By that I mean options to study issues on particular importance to the community, and discussions on tolerance for all children.  My concern is that having a school of that nature, as well-intended as it may be, may serve to be a refuge rather than an institution for enlightenment.  The idea is to tear down walls, not to build new ones.

WCT: What are your views on passing anti-bullying measures?

JF: I’ve sponsored legislation in the past regarding bullying issues in the classroom.  Bullying tends to be the building block for hate crimes down the road.  I don’t just blame the child that engages in the bullying activity; I blame the society that taught him to do that.

WCT: There has been some controversy regarding Sara Feigenholtz’s polling strategies.

JF: I did not get in this race to run against anybody.  I got in this race to run for an office.  Yet, days after I was in the race, Sara had put out a poll alleging, among other things, that I was running my campaign out of a taxpayer-funded district office.  That was wholly untrue, which her campaign either knew or should have known.  It set a very unfortunate tone.  I think the responsible thing would have been for Sara to acknowledge that they had done it, and that it was a mistake and move on.  Yet to this day, she won’t do something as fundamental as accept responsibility for a poll that everybody knows was hers.  That sets a troubling tone not just for the campaign but for a lack of transparency in how she operates.  It was an avoidable situation.

WCT: The issue of transparency brings me to the question of Illinois having become known as a bastion of corruption.  How would you remedy that perception and even the reality?

JF: I have sponsored more ethics reform legislation than any legislator in Illinois; over two dozen pieces of legislation in the last decade.  I was the author of legislation that was at the core of the condition of George Ryan.  Most recently, I sponsored the law banning pay to play politics in Illinois.  I’ve been a steadfast believer that all government, including state government, belongs to the people and should be treated as such.

WCT: How do you differentiate yourself from Rahm Emanuel?

JF: Rahm has a very contentious style, which works very well for him.  Because of my background, I’m inclined to work with individuals and groups across the spectrum.  Everybody finds a style that works best for them: That’s the style that works best for me.

WCT: You’ve been endorsed by a number of labor unions.  Can you speak about the connection between labor issues and social and cultural issues, especially in the context of this economy?

JF: I have a 97 percent lifetime labor record and I’m proud to have the endorsement of the AFL-CIO.  Standing up for working men and women means more than just supporting more jobs in a better economy.  It means supporting a healthy and viable workplace for those men and women.  So whether it’s a living wage, access to health care or a workplace tolerant of workers’ natural languages—the issue of standing up for workers’ rights is a broad one.  Advocating for more jobs is simply one part of that.

WCT: What are your views on the stimulus package?

JF: There’s no question that a stimulus package was needed and it will have lasting benefits not only in terms of the physical changes it will bring to our city and state but in the lives of the men and women that will bring those changes about.  We are about to invest dramatically in everything from physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges to human infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.  This will change life not just for us but for generations to come.

WCT: Any parting thoughts?

JF: Ordinarily candidates run on campaign promises about what they are going to do.  I’m running my campaign showing people what I’ve done.  I’m confident that when people look at my record, they’re going to like what they see.  Past performance is the best indicator of future behavior.

Originally published in Windy City Times, February 18, 2009

Nikki Patin’s body language [18 February, 2009]

Nikki Patin is a Chicago-born performance artist and activist, who has appeared on HBO’s Def Jam.  Her work combines burlesque, spoken word and music to address the themes of body image, race and class.  Patin will be touring New Zealand and Australia from the end of February through April, and is hosting a series of fundraisers in town to pay for the upcoming trip.  She will be signing copies of her book “The Phat Grrrl Diaries” at these events.  Windy City Times spoke to Patin.

Windy City Times: Could you talk about your work and its combination of elements like burlesque and spoken word?

Nikki Patin: Body image has been the major focus of my work.  I’m a bigger girl, and to do burlesque in a bigger body is really political for a lot of people.  My show is about a broader range of body image, not just in terms of size but in terms of skin color, class, religion, ancestry, ethnicity, nationality.  It’s about how body image can impact action and how action can impact image.  You don’t have to exist within a narrow range of expectations.  I’m a big girl and I’m a big fan of Prince, pop culture and erotic literature so it’s a combination of my love for the poppy, dance-y side of life, but also my acknowledgment of reality and how I see the world.

WCT: What do you mean by the political aspect of the work?

NP: I reveal a lot of flesh, for someone with a body type that most people would cover up.  For me, as a bigger girl, one of my biggest fears was being naked in front of people.  To conquer that is really powerful, for me personally.  For other people who see that, it’s something brave and bold.  That wasn’t a reaction I anticipated.  It’s been overwhelmingly positive.  I think they like the honesty of it.

WCT: There’s been a lot of cultural discourse around the concept of phat/fat bodies, over the last decade or so.  That has emerged both from performance artists like Nomy Lamm but also in the more conventionally “popular” culture works of people like Monique.  Has the moment when fat/phat bodies were a subject of cultural production and discourse largely disappeared or become something else?

NP: Maybe it has.  For me, I think of balance.  I just don’t see many bigger women out there.  Typically, I’m the biggest person in the room in whatever show I perform in.  What’s problematic is that we’re perceiving fatness as a specific genre of performance.  In actuality, if the oppression around it didn’t exist, it would just be woven in.  Just like anything else.  We have a balance of men and women, blacks and whites, Christian and Muslim performers—they’re woven into the texture of performance because we’re looking at the story of humanity.  I don’t think issues around fatness/phatness and body are past their time because I don’t see many fat people who feel like they have agency or access to the stage.  For me, performatively, that means there’s something missing.

WCT: In terms of your New Zealand/Australia tour, do you think that the concept of body image and related issues will translate in the same way? Those would seem to operate in a culturally specific way in the United States.

NP: I’ve been thinking about that this past month, especially because there are a lot of cultural references to being Black, and to being queer and a lot of Chicago references.  I’ve settled on not really having any expectations about it, and thinking about it just in terms of presenting my story.  It just so happens that these issues have framed my existence.  I speak to that.  I’m really blessed to have sixty minute shows on the tour.  That’s a nice amount of time to get to know an audience and for them to know me.  I’m pretty excited about it.

WCT: What are you most excited about, in terms of this tour?

NP: I’m looking forward to growing more comfortable on stage and growing up as a person.  And the experience of traveling alone, and seeing what life is really like in another part of the world. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 February, 2009

Susan Hahn takes “Note” [17 September, 2008]

Susan Hahn is a Chicago-based poet and playwright, and the editor of TriQuarterly Magazine.  Her latest collection of poems is titled The Note She Left, and it follows The Scarlet Ibis, published in 2007.  Windy City Times spoke with Hahn over the phone.

Windy City Times: Could you talk about The Scarlet Ibis and The Note She Left—what they might have in common and how they differ?

Susan Hahn: I had never intended to write The Scaret Ibis.  I was on a fellowship for an entire year, and when I applied, I put in my application that I wanted to write a book entitled Self/Pity.  I finished [that] book at the end of November; I had these months ahead of me and I always knew the next book would be entitled The Note She Left.  I finished that in February of 2004 and I had till the following September to write.

I had these two beautiful photography books, The Earth from Aboveand The Earth from Above for Children.  In the children’s version is a picture of all these scarlet ibises in flight, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful.  I didn’t know anything about scarlet ibises or birds.  And I was so captivated by the picture.  … It brought me real peace of mind.  The more I researched it, the more I fell in love with the bird.  The Scarlet Ibisis a really personal book about disease, beauty and messages that we should pay attention to.

Then I thought of illness and disappearance.  The Note She Leftis more of a traditional book.  Because of the title, I decided that it should be published after The Scarlet Ibisbecause it’s completely different.  I mean, both are about departure [and] both are about extinction and disappearance, but they’re very different pieces of work.  The Note She Left got ignored in the shuffle, and that was one of the reasons I decided to give a reading at Women and Children First when I was invited, because I need to pay attention to this book.

I decided if you have a title like The Note She Left, it can’t be: whine, whine.  whine.  You have to step out of yourself and get a perspective of not only private history but public history.  It just seemed, for me, that I had to step out of myself and look at the world.  There is some personal detail in the book— [but] it was important for me to look at the world in a historical way.  I used “The Bells” and “The Crosses” [the first two sections of the book] to do that.  I do that in “Widdershins” [the third section] too.

I had never heard the word “widdershins” before.  I came across it in an essay, and immediately looked it up.  I fell in love with the word because it means going against the nature of things.  And once you start going against the nature of things, well, what’s the end of that? It’s witchcraft.  So [laughs] , I was able to read a lot about witchcraft.

The Note She Leftis about this woman who, in her mind has tried everything to get some peace.  But nothing seems to work.  So [in] “Widdershins,” she [decides to try Orrisroot].  It’s about somebody trying to get some answers as to why things are why they are.  But nothing seems to quite work.

WCT: You write about a near-death experience in “The Bells: IX,” about an aneurysm.  Is that related to a personal experience?

SH:That poem isn’t the voice of me, but it worked within the poem.  … I do have trouble with my hearing—that led to the writing of “The Bells,” because I was always hearing this ringing in my head.  I'm just used to this constant sound … [But] it’s more of a metaphor.  It’s a very powerful image.  … It’s not to be taken autobiographically.

WCT: Gender and femininity come up a lot in your work.  You write about cross-stitching as therapy, and the last poem, “Clean” ends with the lines “The kitchen is so clean, / everything’s in its nook.” The lines seem ironic, almost sarcastic at points.

SH: [“Clean” is] a metaphor for mind-peace.  I do use what is a clichéd female task for mind-peace.  After all the turmoil in this book, everything’s in place.  That’s very positive for me.

In the cross-stitch poems, I’m a little bit sarcastic … almost unbridled sarcasm [laughs] because she’s doing what she’s been told to do [by these doctors] , these little cross-stitches, on an “even-weave pattern” I like that because it’s like a pun.  And she’s “allowed … the autumn colors -- / so overheated.” I do envision the therapists, who are giving her these items to bring her peace of mind, as masculine.

Susan Hahn will be reading from The Note She Left at Women and Children First, 5233 N.  Clark, Friday, September.19 [2008], at 7:30 p.m.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 September, 2008

Interview with Bashar Barazi: A Dream of Arabia [4 June, 2008]

Bashar Barazi is the president of 3B Media, Inc., the parent company of MAQAM, a sponsor of the 2006 Gay Games VII in Chicago.  MAQAM brought artists to perform at the Opening/Closing Ceremonies and is now producing A Dream of Arabia.  Barazi spoke to Windy City Timeson the phone about the upcoming show.

Windy City Times: Tell us about your show.

Bashar Barazi: The show is called A Dream of Arabia, and it is the first theatrical presentation of Middle Eastern music and dance.  It’s a full Broadway-style production, on a very large scale, that attempts to bring together the dances and the music of a very wide region that today is known as the Middle East—North Africa and Arabia—and makes it accessible to a Western audience.

WCT: How is this different from other performances of Middle Eastern dance and music?

BB: The only instances we know of tend to be at the international festivals where a traveling troupe, typically representing a government or a Ministry of Arts and Culture, does some type of a small performance.  This is the first time that something on this scale has been done.

WCT: What’s the scale?

BB: It’s a cast of 21 dancers, [and] a crew ranging [in size] from 50 to 76.  We do about a 146 costume changes during the show, which averages to 2 costume changes per minute.  The music has been produced, for the most part, specifically for the show.  There’s a story line, in two acts, that’s been written specifically for the show.  We did international auditions to find the right cast and the stage sets have been built specifically to reflect the environment and replicate hat tof the Middle East.  It tries to incorporate the four elements: water, earth, fire, air.

WCT: “Arabia” is not a term you hear very much these days.  You write about Orientalism [on the Web site].  So why do you use the term Arabia?

BB: It’s a dream of Arabia.  We had a dream of why we wanted to do this: a cultural revival, of bringing the world together, of building a bridge through art, performance, and music through which we can find we’re more alike than not.  Historically speaking, much of the term the Middle East is, I believe, a geopolitical term because: what’s the middle of the East?  We wanted to resurrect the idea of a region that has no borders.  Many cultures have arisen in that region.  Everyone’s impression is that it’s conflict and strife, when [in fact] people there have created the universal language [of dance and music].

WCT: You write about belly dancing as a Western construct.

BB: Belly dancing is purely a Western invention.  It’s not an ancient Middle Eastern dance.  It was created here at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 by Saul Bloom.  He hired a burlesque dancer, created a tune that has no basis in Arabic music and introduced it.  The scandalous nature of the dance captured the Victorian imagination.  Afterwards, Hollywood took the concept.  Even the costumes became these bejeweled creations.

WCT: But readers might be curious to know why the Web site features a woman who does look a lot like a belly dancer.

BB: Those costumes are not what you’d consider belly-dance costumes.  That costume was handmade with Swarovski crystals and doesn’t show legs.  The show is a theatrical presentation of the dance so it’s fused with elements, and takes it to a different level.

WCT: What do you want to accomplish with this show?

BB: That people who come to see the show clearly be very entertained; it’s a spectacular theatrical experience.  But also that they leave more educated and more hopeful.  It’s a tremendous privilege to have a voice that reaches out to thousands of people.  I’d hope that they can see the culture in a different way.  Learning alleviates fear, and people see that we”re all human beings.

A Dream of Arabia will take place June 12-15 [2008] at the Dominican University Performing Arts Center’s Lund Auditorium, 7900 W. Division, River Forest.  See www.ADreamOfArabia.com or call 708-488-5000.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 4 June, 2008

Arsham Parsi talks about gay Iran [1 June, 2008]

Arsham Parsi is the head of the IRQO (Iranian Queer Organization).  Parsi was born in 1980.  As he tells it, he grew up in Shiraz with no contact with other gay people until he found queer communities on the Internet.  Following that, he worked on HIV issues, until rumors of his sexual orientation began to spread and he feared persecution.  According to Human Rights Watch, “Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty.”  Reports indicate that women and lesbians also endure lack of access to equal rights and persecution.  Parsi fled to Turkey and then to Canada, where he applied for asylum.  Today, according to Parsi, IRQO works for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Iran, and to increase awareness about queer issues among Iranians.

Parsi spoke with Windy City Times in a phone interview.

Windy City Times: You’re here for the International Day against Homophobia, which began in 2005 and which was also connected for a while to the hangings of two men, Ayaz and Mahmoud, in Iran that same year.  I’m curious about your thoughts on that incident.  In a 2006 interview, you disputed the characterization of them as gay.  Have you changed your mind?

Arsham Parsi: This case is very complicated.  As a human-rights organization, we have to be responsible about our mission.  We didn’t know those people and we don”t have access to their case files through the Iranian Ministry of Justice.  So how do we know under which circumstances they were arrested by the government, and what happened to them in prison?  Maybe they said they are gay.  You know, we have no idea.  I know many guys in Iran who have same-sex relationships but are not homosexual.  You can’t say they’re homosexual or gay.  So the truth is we don”t know if they were gay or not.  It’s not Black or white.

We had a hard time with the international journalists [and activists who insisted they were gay].  The Western media sometimes doesn’t know what’s going on.  In May 2007, 80 men were arrested in Ishafan—and most media insisted they were gay men.  And we had a hard time, because that gave the courts evidence about their sexuality.  So the western media helped the judge prove their homosexuality.  The Western media doesn’t know what’s going on.

The most important thing is: in Iran, people are executed on account of their sexuality and sexual behavior and sexual acts.  In Iran, having sex between men and [women] is illegal before marriage.

We have many cases we can stand by, where people were executed on the basis of their sexuality, regardless of their sexual orientation.  If you read the Islamic Code, it’s difficult to know whether they’re punished for rape, pedophilia or homosexuality.  You can’t find out what they’re talking about.

WCT: What do you think about the threat of war on Iran?

AP: I believe that war is not about democracy and human rights.  If the United States attacks Iran, it won’t be about democracy.  I’m anti-war.

WCT: A lot of your work rests on the idea that there’s a universal gay identity.  Your own story about coming out via the Internet seems very Western-influenced and about class access.  As you know, many feminist and queer scholars have been critical of the idea of a universal gay identity, Joseph Massad’s book Desiring Arabs being the most recent among them.  How do you respond to that?

AP: About sexual identity: many Iranians say we don’t have to have a label.  But sometimes that story is just on paper—it’s not real in society.  Many say we don’t need the Western lifestyle of gay men.  But we use “gay” and “lesbian,” the English words.  There’s a professor of sexuality who recently said that homosexuals in Iran are okay as long as they identify as gay in the Western context.  But we don’t accept that.  In Iran, people are arrested because of their sexual orientation.

WCT: I don’t think most people would argue that there’s no persecution of gay people, but they do have questions about what it means for an Iranian queer to have to declare a particular kind of identity in order to get help.  On Iranian.com, Choob Doshar-Gohi writes about her interview with an American asylum officer: “He engages me in a patronizing conversation about veiling and the oppression of women in Iran.  I cannot argue, or I will lose the asylum case.”  How do you feel about what people have to go through to gain asylum and what that might say about adopting Western ideas about gay identity?

AP: I didn’t have a problem.  But in the U.S., they have more problems than in Turkey.  In Turkey, all the questions were around the facts of my case, not whether or not I was gay; I didn’t have to prove I was gay.  When I told them I’m gay, they said fine.  But I know from friends in the U.S.  and Canada that they’ve been told by officials, “You don’t look like gay people.”  In Western societies they [asylees] have more challenges than in other countries.

WCT: In a 2006 speech to Egale Canada (Canada’s national gay-rights group) you said, “These lonely shivering hands are the representatives of all of the Iranian LGBTs’ hands.  Take my hands as their representatives and support us.  Do not norget Iranian LGBTs, do not leave us alone.” Some might argue that such language reduces Iranian queers to pathetic creatures pleading for help, rather than political agents.

AP: We don’t use that literature any more.  That was part of the early activism when we first started in Canada, but we no longer use such language.

WCT: We don’t hear much about lesbians in IRQO.

AP: Lesbians, unfortunately, are more invisible than gays; they have more problems.  They prefer to hide their sexual orientation because, in Iranian society, they have two negative points against them: being women and being lesbian.  I know many feminist activists who are fighting for women’s rights, but who don’t accept lesbians.  I know a couple of lesbians who are active in the feminist movement; they decided to work for the women’s movement first, and after that the lesbian-rights movement.  They’re not out because, as they told me, “Right now, our priority is women’s rights, and when we have equality, we can come out as lesbians.” We do have some lesbians working and blogging in Iran, and others outside of Iran who are active with our organization.

WCT: What about feminist support for your group? You’ve spoken about Shirin Ebadi [a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist] .

AP: We talked to Shirin Ebadi through one of our members in London and she told us, “I accept your rights, but I couldn’t support you in public.” At first, I thought she was being homophobic.  But now I believe that because Shirin Ebadi [and others] are fighting for women’s rights, their support of gays or lesbians [will mean that] those people will be in danger.  Because the Ministry of Justice and the Iranian government will deny them all rights: “No” for women, “No” for lesbians.

WCT: One of your main issues is to increase Iranian awareness about homosexuality.  But you’re associated with people like Peter Tatchell, with whom you’ve appeared on an interview, [and who has] been accused of making Islamaphobic comments.  How might that affect your work with Muslim Iranians?

AP: I’ve done many interviews, and sitting at the same table doesn’t mean we accept each other’s agendas.  One of our issues is with the level of information about homosexuality in Iran, and the other is Islamaphobia.  Islamaphobia and homophobia are both hate-based.  We have many problems with some activists who campaign or speak about LGBTQ Iranians —they sometimes make problems for us because they don’t know exactly what’s happening in Iran.  They have their agenda, they have their political issues, and sometimes they create problems for us, as happened in May 2007.

WCT: How do you feel about being the representative of all Iranian queers as the head of IRQO?

AP: I should clarify: I’m not an elected official.  It’s my personal responsibility, and I became an activist because of the situation [for queers in Iran] .  Some people refer to me as “Arsham Parsi, leader of Iranian LGBTs” but I don’t like that title.  I don’t identify myself as a leader, but as an activist.  Right now, we’re talking about and for those who identify as LGBT, because we’re dealing with this community [that doesn’t get spoken about].  I try to address all their concerns.

WCT: We know about your history as a queer Iranian, but not much else of your political history.  What would you like to see in Iran?

AP: I don’t identify myself as a political activist.  I hope that we have a democratic government, that the people can decide about their rights and their laws.  We don’t have safe elections.  When we have a democratic party, I believe everything will be okay.

WCT: But does that mean that you don’t see queer activism as political activism?

AP: Human-rights activism is part of political activism.  So I prefer to identify myself as a human-rights activist, not as a political activist.  I know some parties are active, but their work is not about human rights—it’s about power.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 June, 2008

Having a "Fall": Interview with Christopher Rice [26 March, 2008]

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 March, 2008

An Interview with PETA's Dan Mathews [July 18, 2007]

Windy City Times’ Yasmin Nair recently talked with Dan Mathews, the openly gay vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) about his new book, Committed: A Rabble-Rouser’s Memoir, punk rock, and celebrities.

Windy City Times: In your book, you draw connections between gay-bashing and cruelty to animals, writing that those who engage in one usually inflict the other as well.  Let’s turn that around a bit: do you think there’s a possible connection between being gay and marginalized and the need to pursue social justice?

Dan Mathews: I’ve always looked at life as a big dark comedy.  Even [with] horrible things, I find amusing elements in them—maybe because of the absurdity.  I think because of that, even though I’ve been at the front lines of the animal rights movement for the past 20-some years, I never feel dispirited or down.  I’ve maintained a light-hearted outlook about that.  But I think what compelled me to get involved at an early age is that I grew up in a trashy neighborhood and I was beaten up for being gay, for being a punk rocker, whatever.

The same individuals who were pummeling me were hurling new-born kittens against the wall.  These horrible things happened every day and so, for me, at a very young age, I saw cruelty as cruelty—not as cruelty to me or to somebody else.

When people go fishing, that’s sadism.  It’s people getting their rocks off in having caught some innocent creature, yanking them out of their world.  Even if you throw them, it’s horrible and it’s violent.  I was just talking to someone at a radio show and they were just shocked—they couldn’t understand why there was anything wrong with fishing.

WCT: Well, we are in Chicago, heart of the meat-eating Midwest.

DM: Yes, exactly.  When I learned more and more about what was happening to animals...  Even though I was very sympathetic to the plight of women, to civil rights issues, gay rights issues— when I saw how animals were being mutilated in laboratories; how they were being dismembered alive in slaughterhouses and electrocuted; skinned alive in the fur trade—I realized at a young age that I was some sort of do-gooder and that I only felt that I had a productive day when I did something to push the world.

The animal cause seemed to be the biggest emergency because of what’s going down—the sheer number of animals and the intensity of the cruelty that’s being inflicted upon them.  And I think that PETA has always had a lot of gay supporters because gays, to a different degree maybe, have had similar experiences... I think gays have a higher sensitivity.

WCT: PETA uses a lot of celebrities.  That’s obviously very useful in terms of getting attention, but have there ever been drawbacks to this strategy?

DM: If we were able to get across intellectual messages in our really tight cruelty cases, and in a lot of our campaigns in which there is no celebrity or no shebang, then I would say that there are drawbacks to using celebrity.  But what we’ve found [is that] for every 10 solid, serious stories we want to promote, cases we want to highlight or campaigns we want to launch, the total lack of interest in them vs. what we get when we get a celebrity—there’s no question, we get the world’s attention.  It would seem like there would be drawbacks, but it’s better to be taken less seriously than not be taken at all, not be seen at all.

WCT: And you’ve never had an experience with a celebrity whose presence has been counterproductive?

DM: Naomi Campbell.  Naomi Campbell came to one of our anti-fur photo shoots and was all excited about being in the “Rather go naked than wear fur” campaign.  Then she went back on her word when her career stalled and started doing fur ads again.  We had to officially fire her as a spokesperson and tell her not to mention that she was involved with PETA.  We told her that there’s actually a heart and soul to this; it’s not just something you can frivolously get behind.  But I was young at the time—it was 15 years ago—and I was still learning my way around.  I didn’t realize that what they say about models is often true: “Lights out, no one’s home.”  I found that’s true of Naomi Campbell [and] Cindy Crawford.  But there’ve been a lot of other models who’ve been terrific.  Although it’s generally true.

WCT: Let’s talk about recent issues around ALF (Animal Liberation Front).  The group is known for its intense animal activism and its work has led to recent legislative efforts to classify its work as “domestic terrorism,” which causes a lot of concern for those concerned about the infringement of civil liberties—especially in the wake of post-9/11 surveillance tactics and the infiltration of anti-war groups by undercover agents in New York.  What’s your sense of these new trends of classifying certain forms of activism as domestic terrorism?

DM: Right.  We are an above-ground non-profit organization that doesn”t participate in any illegal activity.  But we don’t condemn [ALF] either because we understand what drives people to those extremes.  What’s happening in the last few years is because everyone’s so excited about anything with the word terrorism in it.  There’ve been some congressmen in states with a lot of animal industry, like Colorado, Wisconsin or Texas, who’ve tried to use this mindset to make it illegal to take pictures of anybody’s animals, to stifle our investigations.  They’ve tried to classify animal activism as domestic terrorism.  They have not had a lot of success, [but] they’ve gotten some attention.  So we try to hire lobbyists on both sides of the political spectrum to look behind these things; we keep an eye on it.

WCT: Can you talk about your interest in and the influence of punk rock on your politics?  It seems that you’ve clearly been influenced by punk, in terms of your activist methods, in adopting a mode of confrontation and rebellion.

DM: Punk sort of deviated in the ’80s, but when it first started in the ’70s, it was a complete U-turn for culture.  It’s hard for people to imagine now, because we live in a time where you see a lot of irreverence in the press and you see people being opinionated and not apologetic.  [However,] back in the late ’70s, this was brand new—not like peaceful hippies putting a flower in your rifle barrel.  It was people who were going to take that rifle out of your hand.  That was the sort of attitude that I loved about the punk scene.  Also the calling attention to the hypocrisy and the frivolity in society, but with a sense of humor as well—I’ve always been attracted to that.

WCT: About the “Rather be naked than wear fur” campaign: what do you say to those who argue that it’s sexist?

DM: I think what happens in America is that some people confuse sexy with sexist.  And we, in America are a very puritanical society and that carries over into some of the feminists as well—it’s almost as if they want everyone to wear a burkha, which I think is really damaging.  For some people, their sexuality is their best card to play.  For other people, perhaps it’s their sense of humor, or they are really smart.  We are all born with a different set of gifts.

I think that to tell people that they shouldn’t use their gifts because it’s offensive—that attitude is old-fashioned and offensive.  We have always involved men in the naked-fur campaign.  It doesn’t get as much attention because people want to look more at naked women.  Even women prefer to look at naked women than naked men a lot of times.  … Gloria Steinem agreed…that as long as we use men as well as women, we can’t be accused of being sexist about it.  At the same time, I understand people’s concerns—we are puritanical in America.

WCT: Do you see PETA changing in five years, in terms of acceptability?

DM:Certainly.  We’ve had major victories in getting McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s to upgrade their humane standards—which is a huge step in alleviating a lot of suffering.  We’ve finding that we have a foot in the door now.  We spent many years kicking the door open and now we’ve got a foot in it.  I wouldn’t say we are inside it but we have a lot more clout in the industries we are fighting, especially the fashion trade.  And the meat trade, even.  So that’s exciting.

Everything we do, we do for the younger generation.  Those obnoxious stunts we do that piss people off who are in their ’40s and ’50s inspire kids in their teens who haven’t had their sense of justice corrupted yet.  And we are doing everything to create a generation that’s more sympathetic when they are in positions of power.  And that’s what we are starting to see now—now that we’ve been around for a while.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 July, 2007

Isle of Manji: Interview with Irshad Manji [28 March, 2007]

Irshad Manji is a Canadian Muslim lesbian whose book, The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith was published in 2003 and re-published with the title The Trouble with Islam Today in 2005.  She was in Chicago on Feb. 13 for two events: a meet-and-greet and interview at Roosevelt University, and an evening lecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

What follows is the interview conducted at Roosevelt.

Windy City Times: Let’s talk about Project Ijtihad, and its progress so far.  You write about social entrepreneurship and projects for women.  Can you name some specific projects and things that have happened?

Irshad Manji: Project Ijtihad is only a year old.  We’re in the process of designing an interactive Web site that will, unlike any other out there, actually host taboo-busting debates about Islam.  … There are plenty of sites that offer alternate views of Islam … but there’s none we’ve come across that actually hosts debates with scholars, with journalists in which people are challenging one another in real time.  There are chapters of Project Ijtihad cropping up—there’s one in Amman, another in Dubai [and] one that is in the works in London.  And each of these, while very much under the rubric of the project, will obviously respond to local needs as well…

One very concrete success—and this will actually be covered by 60 Minutes in a story that’s going to be aired in April or May— [is that] the work that Project Ijtihad is doing has managed to turn a seasoned young jihadi in the UK away from the terror network.  One of the things that I can tell you … is that he has already left the network and his former brothers in the network now know that he’s a defector.  One could argue that he’s a dead man walking.  He can’t afford, and Project Ijtihad can’t afford, to provide professional security services.  So what has he done?  He’s actually managed to convince three other former members of the jihadi network to come to his side.  And now they are serving as his bodyguards.

It’s a little bit surreal, and it certainly is embryonic.  But how does anything start without those initial steps?

WCT: I’d like to talk about queer organizing and your work, which isn’t the focus of The Trouble with Islam.  What do you see as issues in terms of LGBTQ youth and Islam?

IM: It’s actually going to become more of a focus of my Web site.  I am increasingly faced by a deluge from queer-identified Muslims who don’t know where else to turn.  My first instinct, always, is to tell them there are groups like Al-Fatiha (Al-fatiha.org) , Salaam (Salaamcanada.org) and so forth.  But often, what they’re looking for is not support but rather the philosophical argument from within the faith about why they are not complete apostates for being this way.  And I’m actually in the process, so if you come back to my site next month, you’ll see that there’s going to be a section for all kinds of people where you can just click and get copies of speeches that I’ve given about this [and] some of the interviews I’ve done about this.

I am allergic to the notion of reducing any of us to one identity.  I think, honestly, that’s what so many young Muslims are struggling with, particularly in Europe but also in North America.  The other thing is that it is so easy for this to become … a weapon of mass distraction.  The fact of the matter is, it’s an emotional distraction from the points I make about the need to think for yourself.

But here’s the great frustration of it all.  … To this day, I’m told I shove it in people’s faces.  You’re either too gay or you’re not gay enough.  And, at a certain point, I have to just remember what the goal of this mission is—and it has to do with the mind, not with sexual orientation or gender or skin color.

WCT: Let’s talk about the connections made between you and [Dutch politician] Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  As you know, she’s been criticized for right-wing views on Islam.  There’s also the continuing issue of how U.S.  and European gays might respond to reports of violence against gays in say, Iran.  [This] leads to a debate about how progressives might take on such issues without, for instance, siding with the administration’s actions against Iran.  How do you reconcile those things?

IM: There’s no easy answer to that.  I’ve been routinely accused of being right-wing, of being a neoconservative.  [ That ] hurts me and appalls me, considering I come from a perspective of universal human rights.  This used to be the terrain of the classical left—of classical liberals—who believe that every individual is entitled to a certain set of basic dignities.  There’s an us-vs.-them mentality going on and the really sad part about that is … I identify as a liberal through and through.  But I’m not a conventional liberal anymore.  It floors me that we will sully George W. Bush for using “You’re with us or without us” language…We’re exactly the same.

I’m arguing that there are two occupations, not just one.  One occupation is of the military occupation now of the West Bank, but formerly of the West Bank and Gaza.  That has to end.

The other occupation, no less significant, is of the Palestinian mind-set by their own corrupt leaders.  But do you ever hear staunch liberals acknowledge that Palestinians are facing two forms of oppression, not one?  It is always an us-vs.-them mentality—and how does that lend credence to the notion that we’re any different than George W. Bush?  We’re not.  And if we had the kind of power that he does, I dare say we would be as malignant in our use of that power as long as we tout the same lies that we do now.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 28 March, 2007

Image of Manji from The Vancouver Sun 

Images of Manji and Ali from Jezebel.com

Interview with John D'Emilio about Allan Bérubé's "My Desire for History" [June 8, 2011]

The late gay community historian Allan Bérubé is best known for his revelatory book, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II. His unexpected death in 2007 left unfinished a major research project on the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union ( MCSU ) . The MCSU eventually disbanded after a ferocious anti-Communist and anti-union campaign was historic for a number of reasons, the most prominent among them being that it was a fiercely interracial union committed to both a left politics and solidarity across race lines.

Less well-known is the fact that that racial and class solidarity also spanned across sexual lines: prominent MCSU organizers and members were openly gay and lesbian and fondly referred to as "queens." Bérubé came across this rich and complicated history while researching Coming Out Under Fire, and conducted numerous interviews with former members while also collecting whatever he could find of correspondence between and about them.

After his death, two of his closest friends, John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, set about collecting an anthology of Bérubé's work that would showcase the variety of research he had undertaken over the course of his life. D'Emilio, professor of history and of gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes this new book, My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History, as "one of the richest collections of GLBT history available" in which "you see both a person and his evolution as a writer and thinker and interpreter of the past."

My interview with John D'Emilio is easily one of my favourites, and we talked about labour and queerness, amongst other things.  You can read the entire interview here:

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=32139

Photo credit: John D'Emilio

Interview with Walter Benn Michaels: Is celebrating all the stripes in the rainbow enough? [March 2007]

I knew the man as well as any of the other commuters. He stood outside the Chicago “el” station, selling copies of StreetWise, the weekly city paper written by homeless people who sell copies on the streets for a dollar each. They get to keep a percentage of the price, and the idea is that you give a homeless person a chance at learning skills that they might use to get jobs.

My finances changed when I became a freelancer, and I struggled to pay my bills. I was now hard-pressed to spare that dollar. Yet, I persisted in guiltily handing him one every time, paying for something I could not afford. I never saw myself like the man outside the el. My education and sundry other factors-- like the roof over my head-- meant I could never see myself as poor like him.

And then one day he made what seemed like a nasty personal comment – not salacious or creepy-- just mean. That comment now became my reason to stop buying the paper. Even then, for the longest time, I couldn’t just walk by and simply not buy a paper. Instead, I skulked up another, and much longer, ramp out of the station. Finally, I decided to walk by without buying. He’s long since stopped trying to attract my attention.

My real reason for not engaging in our usual transaction was that I couldn’t afford it. But acknowledging that would have meant acknowledging that I shared a class identity, of sorts, with him. Instead, I chose to take the path of offense-- I wasn’t paying him for a paper because he wasn’t nice to me. The truth is that I just didn’t want to admit to my poverty.

This is how inequality and poverty are lived in the US. Nobody claims “poor” as an identity, despite the fact that there are larger numbers of us every year and that the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. Forty-seven million in the US, the world’s largest industrial and military power, live – and often die too early – without health care. As Walter Benn Michaels puts it in his new and important book, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality (Metropolitan Books, $23), the gap between the rich and the poor has never been greater. Americans today work more for less than ever before, leaving many of us perennially exhausted in multiple dead-end, often part-time jobs, with no benefits.

Suck on this

But comfort beckons in the form of identity. You can claim any number of racial, gendered, sexual, and ethnic identities when job hunting, but you can never simply state that you’re either a) poor, b) really poor, c) in deep financial hell, or d) desperately hoping you’ll win the lottery or American Idol and quickly leap out of your penury. All of which might actually be better reasons for wanting a job in the first place.

Sure, we might proudly celebrate the culture of the “working class,” as is the wont in some political and academic circles. We might emphasize the dignity, hard work, values, the saltiness and saintliness of the working class. (We’re less likely to refer to them as “lower class”-- horrors, there are no hierarchies here!) Reading Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina might be sufficient proof that you know what it’s like to be poor and queer.

In the US, diversity mandates have proliferated to the extent that there is an entire industry around “diversity training” – you can hire people to come to your expensive law firm or school and teach you and your employees how to be nicer and more sensitive to people of color, the disabled, women, queers, and so on. Create a world without prejudice, we are told, and we can approach something like “full” equality for all.

Rumblings in identity paradise

Walter Benn Michaels isn’t buying that argument. Instead, he demonstrates that the rise in economic inequality in the US parallels a rise in the discourse of diversity. The Trouble with Diversity lays out the ways in which economic disenfranchisement has not only been obscured by the commitment to diversity, but actively enabled by it.

Even talk about class has become another way to turn the stark economic differences between people into factors of identity, avoiding any analysis of the systemic inequality that divides them. The sheer genius of the US-based mandate to diversify is that it turns even class inequality into an identity category.

Michaels writes about the New York Times series “Class Matters,” which “started treating class not as an issue to be addressed in addition to... race but as itself a version of race, as if the rich and the poor really were... different races, and so as if the occasional marriage between them were a kind of interracial marriage.”

Katrina was supposed to have opened our eyes to inequality, and it did show us the immense racialization of poverty in the US. But besides the occasional story about the victims not getting their money or their houses back, it’s a story whose real implications have vanished. In fact, it’s far more likely that the eyes of people in Toronto, Calcutta, or Jakarta were opened to the depth of inequality in the US, while ours have remained shut to it. Meanwhile, we’ve persisted in thinking that race was the primary problem in Katrina, not poverty.

Kanye West said to the cameras at a telethon following the disaster, “George Bush hates black people.” Actually, there’s little evidence for that; his is in fact the most diverse cabinet in history. Some of Bush’s best friends seem to be people of color; but they are certainly not poor people. As Michaels writes, “We like blaming racism [for Katrina], but the truth is there weren’t too many rich black people left behind when everybody who could get out of New Orleans did so.... This doesn’t mean, of course, that racism didn’t play a role in New Orleans. It just means that in a society without any racial discrimination, there would still have been poor people who couldn’t find their way out.” Whereas, he argues, in a society without poor people (even a racist one), there wouldn’t have been.

Marrying up

In contemporary American gay politics, nothing signifies inequality more than the inability to get married. The problem with gay marriage as a monomaniacal focus of organizing in the US is that it so blatantly affirms that those who choose not to marry-- or are in civil unions, or domestic partnerships-- simply don’t deserve the right to health care or benefits. Or, as one snippy young dyke once said to me at a party, “Why shouldn’t I be rewarded for my commitment to my life partner?” Her arrogance took my breath away.

So, when the gay marriage movement people go on endlessly about how Canadians and assorted Scandinavians and, oh yes, Spain, have gay-marriage rights, and that this is proof of their advancement, they miss the point. If you’re a Canadian queer who gets divorced, you don’t lose your health care. If you’re a queer in the US whose loving life-partner suddenly takes a shine to the prettier, younger thing she met at the bar while you were taking care of your baby, you’re up shit creek without health care, benefits, money, or possibly even a roof over your head. Take heed, snippy young dyke.

Consider a country where the gay marriage problem is solved. In South Africa, gays now have the right to marry and queers everywhere rejoiced. But 40 percent of South Africans live in dire poverty (and the rest are not exactly well off). Thirty percent of pregnant women in South Africa have HIV/AIDS. Nearly 30 percent of its citizens, male and female, have HIV/AIDS. “In 2006, 900 people died every day of AIDS-related illnesses because they did not have access to antiretroviral medicines,” writes Zackie Achmat, South Africa’s most prominent AIDS activist, who has refused to take antiretrovirals to treat his own AIDS until they were made available to the general public.

The South African constitution does not guarantee health care and access to free or affordable medications. In this context, giving queers the right to marriage means, well, nothing, given the scale of economic and medical inequality.

In fact, the disconnect between the symbolic generosity of the state toward inevitably middle – and upper-class queers and its material stinginess to the poor has fuelled resentment against gays among ordinary South Africans.

And that’s the trouble with diversity –it’s often a social, cultural, and emotional response to economic problems which allows us to live in blissful ignorance of the inequality that surrounds us. It allows us to believe that expunging bigotry or prejudice, or granting extra access to a few, encompasses the entire field of social justice.

Homeless begone

Walter Benn Michaels may well meet the StreetWise vendor more often than I do. From 2000 – 2003, I was a lecturer in the English department of the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC); Michaels joined the faculty in 2001 and is currently department head. In the last chapter of The Trouble with Diversity, he writes about spending a summer writing this book about inequality, in his study with a window that gave him a daily view of a homeless man living under a railroad underpass. Michaels makes $175,000 a year. Despite his relative wealth – and the weight of the book’s topic—Michaels felt no liberal guilt at the sight of the homeless man, and no desire to feed or clothe him but, “Mainly... wished the man would go away.”

So what’s Walter Benn Michaels, with his kind of income, doing writing a book about inequality? And why isn’t he nicer to the homeless?

Critics have asked these questions about The Trouble with Diversity. And they haven’t known where to place the author politically: he is simultaneously, it seems, a leftist, a right-wing conservative, some kind of radical. He’s well known for his academic work in literary theory but this book is his first foray into public discourse. It argues that neoliberal policies on race and culture provide social panaceas that abet the growth of inequality and the attrition of any real and lasting vision of social justice.

Unclassy

The book grew out of an article he wrote for the New York Times in April 2004, “Diversity’s False Solace.” Michaels, who had previously taught at elite institutions like Berkeley and Johns Hopkins, found himself at UIC with a student body very different from any he had previously encountered. The university has historically been home to what some euphemistically refer to as “first-generation students”— either the children of recent immigrants or from the economically depressed neighborhoods of the city, or students with the kinds of test scores that keep them out of more elite Chicago schools like Northwestern or the University of Chicago. UIC’s biggest selling point to prospective students has been its ethnic and racial diversity, and this frequently obscured the lack of resources in an institution that was, like many others, facing budget shortfalls.

Or as Michaels put it, “The bad news about our current condition is that you may be jammed into a classroom so full that you can’t find a place to sit. But the good news is that 46 percent of the people jammed in there with you will be Caucasian, 21 percent will be Asian, 13 percent will be Hispanic and 9 percent will be African-American.”

What impelled Michaels to think and write about diversity was not the fact his students spoke proudly of their diverse cultural and racial/ethnic origins, but that they could not or would not talk about their class identifications; despite their economic origins, none of them would identify as poor or working class.

Similarly, students he taught at Harvard were willing to admit that their UIC peers might be more culturally diverse, but did not see that they were also less wealthy. The Trouble with Diversity is girded by a deep sense that much of the potential for guaranteeing a rich and productive life for everyone in this country has been woefully lost by an overcommitment to diversity.

Michaels’s career has been in academia and he places much of the blame for this woeful state of affairs at its feet; during an interview, he characterized it as the “Human Resources Department of neoliberalism.”

But while academia and the waning support for publicly-funded schooling are certainly part of the problem with inequality, Michaels does not stop there. The Trouble with Diversity considers the emphasis on diversity and identity made explicit by institutions like the Holocaust Museum-- which, he notes, marks an event that never happened in American history but which was erected long before any such memorial to slavery, which was a truly American phenomenon that speaks enduringly to economic inequality between blacks and whites.

Michaels considers pop-culture as well as institutions. In a section on the reality show “Wife Swap,” he writes about Lynn, a working-class woman, exchanging households with the rich and pampered Jodi. He wryly observes that at the end of the episode, what participants and viewers seemed to take away was not that poverty could make you miserable, or that it might be better to be rich than poor-- but that it’s important to respect those who have less than you. It’s a lesson hammered home when Jodi’s husband, Stephen, is berated by everyone for being a “snob” towards Lynn. It’s this ability to locate the trouble with diversity in a range of texts and impulses that makes the book a funny and absorbing read.

I talked with Michaels in his office.

Yasmin Nair: After several academic works, this is your first book aimed at general readers. Why this platform?

Walter Benn Michaels: The point in writing the book was simply to start an argument, to provoke people into seeing the degree to which the rhetoric of diversity was completely compatible with the class stratification of neoliberalism. And then to see that real political change in the US was never going to follow from the success of diversity. The point was to emphasize the ways in which the discourses of race and culture were in fact hindrances to producing actual social justice in the US.

YN: Several critics have insisted that your analysis is nothing new, and that there’s already been a consciousness about class issues. But it seems your book distinguishes between class and inequality-- the two are not the same.

WBM: That’s an important distinction. Because that says a lot about class consciousness and what it means to turn class into an identity. The goal of a discussion of class should be to eliminate the conditions which produce class. And it’s perfectly true that there’s a long, Left discourse on class; I don’t claim originality here. But in the contemporary context, class is placed on the back burner in relation to diversity. And class itself turned into a diversity category. The point of the book is that it’s not just that you have to add class on to the racial, cultural, ethnic groups-- the point is that class fundamentally works by a different logic. And that liberalism has forgotten that.

YN: You’ve been defined in terms of every ideology under the sun: a leftist, a right-wing conservative, a socialist, a communist. I’m not so much asking you to define yourself but interested in what this apparent inability to classify you ideologically suggests.

WBM: On left-wing, liberal talk shows, I’m seen as a racist and on right-wing talk shows, I’m a communist. The right-wing shows are closer to the truth. American politics has become so deeply defined around a politics of identity that it means that if you’re skeptical of identity, people think you’re right-wing. Even right-wing people think that. I have lots of reviews from right-wingers who start by saying, “Oh, this is great, he’s making fun of diversity.” And then, they get to the economic equality part, and that’s where they draw the line, “Oh, my God, this is insane communist egalitarianism.”

So the Right thinks you’re on their side because you’re skeptical of identity, and the Left thinks you’re completely against them because you’re skeptical of identity.

What that actually means is that both the Left and the Right in this country have succeeded in defining the center of politics as how you feel about identity. And as long as that’s true, that means the Right always wins. Because even when they’re losing the identity war, they’re winning the thing that makes them really the Right, which is economic inequality.

What I’d love is a world where being on the Right in America didn’t just mean being skeptical of affirmative action and being skeptical of diversity, but meant defending the legitimacy of economic inequality. And being on the Left didn’t mean saying, “Wait a minute, there aren’t enough gays and blacks in these institutions.” Instead being on the Left meant saying, “No, it’s economic inequality itself that’s wrong, and we have to be addressing that.”

First of all, it would be a lot harder then to be on the Right. You couldn’t just make fun of the extremes of multiculturalism. You’d have to be there saying, “Yeah, the fact that some people are rich and some people are poor, or are more likely in the US to remain poor-- that’s okay!” It’s not that now people don’t talk about economic inequality, but they completely subordinate it to these identity issues.

YN: There’s been a great deal of public discussion recently about inequality. But there seem to be a number of different and sometimes contradictory approaches about what to do about it. In both the straight and the queer communities, one strategy seems to be of “socially conscious philanthropy,” the kind espoused by Bill Gates.

WBM: It’s a good thing in that people do clever things with their money to help the poor. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with a vision of a just society, which requires the best we can do towards equality of opportunity right from the start. That’s not a radical demand; most Americans already believe that we should have equality of opportunity. But that’s possible only through state intervention.

Here’s the opposite of philanthropy: John Edwards actually proposed a raise in taxes two days ago. It’s designed to make universal health care possible. Raising the taxes of the rich is very different from hoping that they will give to progressive causes. It’s nice that they sometimes do, but I’m arguing for the intervention of the state here. And that has nothing to do with philanthropy, the voluntary transfer of wealth by some rich people in whatever amounts they choose to whatever things they choose. It is the involuntary transfer of wealth from rich people to poor people for purposes that are judged appropriate by the body politic as a whole, and not by the rich people in question. And that’s a very different process. It’s one which is public and political in a way that philanthropy is not.

What I’m arguing for is something a lot closer to socialism. It involves the state to begin to minimize the gap between rich and poor.

YN: The mainstream gay community is increasingly invested in working through foundations. Instead of organizing street protests, they’re likelier to give to charities that, for instance, get queer kids off the streets. Doesn’t this create a structure whereby the gay community can now define itself as a privileged class identity?

WBM: It’s precisely a way of defining itself as not a class, of defining identity in a way that makes class irrelevant. Because you have a moment in which gay philanthropy can replicate the structure of straight philanthropy, with the difference that it’s specifically attached to people who are gay. So, if you’re queer, you want to get queer youth off the streets. It’s good to get people off the streets, whether they’re gay or straight; it’s good to get anybody off the streets. There’s nothing intrinsically Left about getting gay kids off the street, as opposed to getting straight kids off the street. And there’s nothing intrinsically Left about any philanthropy at all insofar as it involves just people using the money they’ve got to do some good things as opposed to doing bad things.

What I’m arguing for is the acceptance of the responsibility of society as a whole to keep all kids off the street. And that has nothing to do with individuals’ desire to do what they want with their money. It has to do with the responsibility to transcend the individual and make it the state’s responsibility.

YN: Hate crimes...

WBM: Complete bullshit.

YN: You write in your book, “The preferred crimes of neoliberalism are always hate crimes; when our favorite victims are the victims of prejudice, we are all neoliberals.” What do you mean?

WBM: You and others have analyzed the various practical ways in which hate crimes laws perpetrate or extend inequalities that already exist. I think that analysis is totally convincing. But my own opposition is somewhat more primitive: that hate crimes are precisely defined as crimes of identity.

The biggest of all hate crimes in our culture is the Holocaust. The point of course is not to defend the Holocaust but to suggest that the murder of six million people is sufficient unto itself as a crime.

The first point is that it’s not as if we want to legitimate these crimes. The second point is that insofar as we make hate crimes foundational for us, we end up imagining the just society as a society without hatred, without prejudice. My argument is not for prejudice; only that the elimination of prejudice has nothing to do with the elimination of exploitation. And that insofar as we focus on the idea of social justice as the elimination of prejudice, with hate crimes being a kind of ne plus ultra of that form, what we are doing is focusing on something which, even if we should succeed, would make no difference whatsoever in the principal inequalities that currently confront us.

Now you and others have argued that not only does it make no difference, but it can extenuate the inequality. And it’s interesting-- I only have anecdotal evidence for this-- that when you read about hate crimes, it’s extraordinary how often the perpetrators of hate crimes are people for whom the categories of victimhood were invented in the first place.

YN: It’s also true that poor white people are often held as the most phobic and hate-prone.

WBM: Let’s say for the sake of argument that poor white people are more characteristically racist and homophobic than middle-class white people. Let’s say for the sake of argument it’s true. The argument here is not to defend their homophobia, or their racism; it’s not defensible. But my deeper argument is that they are not the enemy. That is to say, if you turned the world into a world where the elimination of prejudice is the sole desideratum then you’ve got a face-off. Between the upper-middle class, committed to its own sense of virtue, which is completely tolerant of the inequalities which make poor white people poor and completely intolerant of the racism and sexism that poor whites exemplify. The liberal elite that conservatives criticize really does exist. It’s an elite whose liberalism consists in its opposition to discrimination, in its cultivation of identity, and in complete indifference to economic inequality. So, for the liberal elites, the poor whites are the people they love to hate. And the liberal elites are the people the poor whites love to hate. If the liberal elite began to think of its liberalism as a challenge to its elitism, we would have a different world. A world where the goal was not to diversify the elite but to eliminate elites. Whereas now we’re just diversifying the elite.

YN: Let’s talk about the notion of sexual culture or heritage. Some might perceive a split in the gay community, between a “gay left” and a “gay right.” And it might seem the struggle between the two sides is over whether or not we should define ourselves by our complete access to, say, public sex and sexual freedom, or if we should define ourselves by more normative standards of behavior-- the “good gay” syndrome.

WBM: First of all, the question of whether you should sleep with lots of people or just one or two people is a completely uninteresting political question. My book takes no position on how many people you should sleep with. But I will say this: people who think it’s somehow radical to sleep with lots of people are deeply mistaken about what political radicalism consists of. So, from my standpoint, the very idea of defining “Left gayness” or “Right gayness” in these terms is just a complete mistake. There’s nothing intrinsically conservative about being for gay marriage or against gay marriage. So if you’re for gay marriage but you’re primarily committed to socialism, then you count for me as someone on the Left. If you are against gay marriage but you’re really just trying to open a store and make a lot of money on Christopher Street, you count for me as somebody who’s on the Right.

YN: On the question of sentiment and affect -- or really, the lack thereof in your book. You seem committed to a high level of abstraction.

WBM: Somebody wrote about my book, “He writes as if he believes that people had no psyches.” I get that people do have psyches, that they have certain complicated emotions about this.

But, first of all, I’m very skeptical about the kind of argument that’s been made for identity. Which is the argument that, well, even if there aren’t such things as races, isn’t it useful to organize people around the idea that there are such things as races because it helps get them emotionally committed and all that? But I say no, I think it’s our job to say there aren’t such things as races because there aren’t such things as races, and let their emotions take care of themselves.

Originally published in The Guide, March 2007

Why India’s S. 377 ruling is not Stonewall [8 July, 2009]

India’s Delhi High Court recently issued a ruling about Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code July 2, marking a historic day for the country’s LGBTQ population.  For over a century, S. 377 codified the prohibition of “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.”  It should be noted that S. 377 has not been overturned; it has been “read down” so that consensual homosexual sex is no longer criminalized.  The law still applies to “non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors.”

This is a triumphant day for India’s myriad queer activists who have been working on this case for nearly a decade, not an uncommon length of time in a country whose judicial system still bears an eerie resemblance to that found in the pages of Dickens’s Bleak House.  Yet, there is already evidence of the ruling being appropriated into a rapidly growing and problematic discourse about a “global gay” identity.  Specifically, the landmark case is being hailed as “India’s Stonewall.”

It may be natural to transmit the verdict’s importance in terms that are legible across borders.  But calling the 377 ruling “India’s Stonewall” assumes an unchanging and ahistorical gay reality across time and place, where all gay struggles are the same and achieve the same logical goals.  And, in the process, we erase the realities of both Stonewall and 377.

This ruling is not India’s Stonewall because Stonewall isn’t quite the Stonewall we would like it to be.  That’s not to take away from its importance but to emphasize that Stonewall was a symptom, not the culmination or the spark, of a long history of explosive moments that includes the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco.  Both events involved mostly trans people, poorer queers, and people of color who were fed up of continual police harassment.  Today, as we mark the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the history of the state’s continuing brutality over the disenfranchised is being erased.  Most of this June’s celebrations of Stonewall made it seem like the originary moment that sparked a “revolution” moving towards the eventuality of gay marriage.

The 377 ruling is the culmination of a long legal battle, and it comes from a vastly different political terrain.  I spoke to Svati Shah, Assistant Professor of gender and sexuality at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who is also a queer South Asian and an activist with the South Asian Solidarity Initiative and Youth Solidarity Summer, both left/progressive activist spaces.  Shah, who identifies as a “feminist queer secularist,” pointed out that the reading down of 377 came about in a country that boasts of two Communist Parties, both of which have women’s wings.  Many of the members of India’s queer movement have strong ties to the Left in India.  In addition, she said, India is home to a women’s movement that is not as fully entrenched in the non-profit industrial complex as the women’s movement in the U.S.  “not funded, and have the political latitude to say and do things on the edge.  They are, for example, more free to complicate the notion of a liberal model of sexuality, [the kind that rests upon the strict distinction between private and public], and have built strong alliances with queer and trans movements.”

In contrast, LGBTQ struggles in the U.S have been deradicalized in favor of a liberal human rights discourse that prioritises individualized desires over coalitional movement building.  Gone are the collective struggles of the 1960s and ’70s, when gay and lesbian activists emerged from and with labour and feminist struggles.  Gone are the days of early AIDS activism when queers fought for health care alongside the uninsured.  In its place is a notion of “gay rights” focused on individuals seeking to affirm their private relationships in the eyes of the law.

Lastly, the question of class is crucial to 377.  The ruling comes about in a country where the struggles of queers cannot be separated from the realities of class and poverty in a country of over a billion.

You cannot avoid class in India the way we avoid it in the U.S.  In India, it’s impossible to make poverty disappear by coining euphemisms like “the working poor,” or by building shelters to make the homeless invisible at night.  India’s poverty is brutal, grinding, and hits you in the face every time you step out of your door.  Indian queer activists are not all fully engaged with class issues.  The anthology Because I have a Voice, edited by Gautam Bhan and Arvind Narrain, features accounts by Indian queers who write about the difficulties of working across class boundaries.  The stigmas attached to poverty and “lower” class identities mean that English-speaking and upper class queers might refuse to work with or live in buildings where poorer queers can be wilfully excluded.

Despite these issues, India’s queer activists have built strong coalitions across class and caste boundaries to reach this moment, and queers everywhere should rejoice at the dismantling of yet another absurd law that criminalizes us.  In terms of struggle and solidarity, the 377 ruling is ours.  But it also has its own contexts and pathways, and we would be remiss if we made too much of it being “our” history. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 8 July, 2009.

I Support Gay Marriage [1 April, 2009]

Note added June 24, 2009, on The Bilerico Project: Readers of this post are strongly advised to look closely at the date of publication.

As regular readers of Bilerico know, I’ve written a lot of posts critical of gay marriage.  I’ve received a great deal of criticism for my views and my knee-jerk, pseudo-lefty, wanna-be-feminist knee-jerk response has always been to sneer at them in disdain.

But, recently, I’ve been rethinking my views on gay marriage.  A lot of commenters have made excellent points.  For instance, one reminded me that “there are also LGBT community members fighting for economic justice within their communities of color,” and that single fact blew me away.  Even as a person of color, I had never thought about those connections.  And yet another put it succinctly: “We are just as good as anyone else and deserve the same rights as all citizens.” Of course, I thought, we are as good as anyone else.  Surely we too deserve marriage.

And thinking along those lines, I began to wonder: what was really keeping me from fighting for gay marriage?  What was my resistance really about?  I’ve spent the last few weeks mulling over those questions and the result has been a drastic shift in my perspective.  I have decided to come out for gay marriage.  But first, I wanted to share the reason for my prior resistance to marriage.

I’m single.  And I hate it.  I’ve never been able to admit that to anyone, but there it is.  The fact is that everything about the single life is repulsive to me.  All those meaningless one-night stands, all those days of networking and, no pun intended, single-minded focus on my career -- all of that was eating me up from the inside.  But over the years, because I’ve found it so hard to find anyone to even date me, I’ve cast myself as someone who doesn’t care and who criticises what I insisted was society’s undue emphasis on coupledom.  All the while, I have secretly longed to find and be with my one true love and leave this ugly life of singledom behind in the dark where it belongs.

But, of course, what would be the point of finding that love if society won’t recognise my newly exalted status?  It’s not enough to have my love valued in the eyes of God (I’ve also found Christianity) and my friends.  That relationship is nothing if it’s not valued by the State and if I can’t have the 1000+ benefits I deserve.  Only marriage will provide that for me.

Marriage would also give me health care.  I’ve been falsely trumpeting the benefits of universal health care but, let’s face it, that’s not coming any time soon.  More importantly, universal health care is simply UN-AMERICAN.  This is the land of free enterprise and we are rewarded for our hard work, for pulling ourselves up by our own shoelaces.  Or putting on our own shoes.  Whatever.  You get my point.  Only two kinds of people deserve health care: People who can demonstrate their commitment to each other, and hard-working people with jobs that give them health care.

I support gay marriage because marriage is the only way for a civilised society to recognise and reward those citizens who do the right thing: work hard, love with commitment, contribute to their communities, and make this country better and stronger with every passing day.

I support gay marriage because I cannot wait for the day when my love will be recognised by the power of the State.  I have turned my back on the hideous, meaningless hedonism of single life and can only pray to my new-found God that all my single and so-called radical queer friends will also find their way to this blessed state.  And on that note, I should also add that I no longer use the q-word: I am now simply and solely a lesbian.

I support gay marriage because I know marriage will make me a better person, a better citizen, more loving, more kind, more just, and a better and more productive member of my community.  I haven’t yet found anyone to marry, but I know that my efforts to find the One Of My Dreams have been blocked by the negative energy I’ve carried around with me all these years.  My quest to be whole is now unimpeded by my false anti-gay marriage politics.  Eventually, I know, I will find Her: a sweet, loving lesbian who works for HRC, with excellent benefits, perfect teeth, and a shining, happy outlook on life.  Together, we will adopt children from a third world country and give thanks each day for the joys of our union.

Originally published on The Bilerico Project, 1 April, 2009.  Read comments here.

2008 Elections: Class in drag: In American politics, the poor are dressed up as “working class”: [October 2008]

“Lunch-bucket Joe.”  The term's being used to describe Joe Biden, and it emerges breathlessly from the lips of Democrats thrilled at having found someone who can, supposedly, represent the working-class stiff whose vote once seemed locked in favor of Hillary Clinton.  That would be Clinton of the “Sisterhood of the traveling (raw silk) pantsuits,” the millionaire who downed shots to demonstrate her connection to the boys in the working class.

On the Republican side, we have the spectacle of John McCain, who can’t remember how many houses he owns, at Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in a checked shirt and a baseball cap declaring that he prefers the sound of 150 Harleys to the applause of Berliners (after Obama’s overseas tour).  John McCain, biker dude.

Obama, who has the temerity to speak well in English, is being criticized for not being folksy enough in his speeches.  In a recent New York Timesop-ed, Roger Cohen reports standing next to a man at a January rally who kept correcting the candidate's use of “isn’t”: “Ain’t right, Barack, ain’t right.”

So here we are.  Forty-six million Americans are uninsured, and 37.3 million live in poverty.  And our biggest concern about the Presidential candidates is whether or not they can speak authentically like, and to, the “average Joe.”

This is class in drag.  Our sentimentality about the “working class” allows us to forget the depth of the inequality we face.  To speak of the “working class” allows us to forget that many of are just plain poor.  Class categories have always been fictitious signposts on the highway to a vaunted class mobility, the kind that allows us to imagine ourselves as different from snooty Europeans or caste-bound Asians.  Ironically, most of those dubbed “lunch-bucket Joes,” would probably rather see themselves as “middle-class.”  But nobody identifies themselves as poor, despite ample evidence that poverty is on the rise.

When we argue about which candidate speaks for the working man, we're conveniently forgetting that only the elites can afford to run for office these days.  Sadly, it’s the conservative George Will who put it precisely when he said, and I paraphrase, that Americans ought to stop being sentimental about being ruled by elites and simply ask themselves which elites might rule.

To speak of the “lunch-bucket crowd” is just one more way to distance ourselves from the realities of inequality.  The figure of the working-class man can be taken up with impunity by men like Biden who’ve spent most of their lives in the privileged halls of power.  It haunts a candidate like Obama, who must prove that he’s not black like Jesse Jackson but can talk like a working-class white man.

Will we ever get beyond our sentimental attachment to a caricature of the lunch-bucket Joes and actually address the issue of inequality?  It ain’t gonna happen -- unless we realize that allowing Washington elites to dress up as the “rest of us” under the guise of effecting change is as bad as the “rest of us” forgetting that we're often actually poor.

This and other Op-eds on the subject of the 2008 election can be found here.

James Dobson and the National Radio Hall of Fame [20 August, 2008]

Gay groups are up in arms about the induction of James Dobson into the National Radio Hall of Fame (NRHOF) at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.  Dobson heads the anti-gay and archconservative ministry known as Focus on the Family.  Groups like Truth Wins Out (TWO) are calling for the induction to be rescinded.

I don’t care for James Dobson.  I grew up, in a fashion, in Indiana, where his type abounds, and I learned the useful trick of tuning out fundamentalists.  So the recent fracas over Dobson’s induction is a good reminder of the anti-gay poison he spreads.  But I’m baffled about this call to rescind his induction.

Dobson isn’t being honored for his anti-gay message.  He’s being honored for having “distinguished himself at the national level,” according to Bruce DuMont’s letter to Windy City Times.  The vague wording indicates the nature of the institution.  There’s a reason why it’s not called the Hall of Noteworthy Work and Clear and Discernible Influence.  A Hall of fame, by its very nature, can do no more than reflect the politics and temperament of its nominating and voting body at a given period of time.  A lot of amazing people get nominated to Halls of Fame, and just as many are questionable.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame began in 1986, but only got around to inducting the seminal Velvet Underground in 1996.  The Velvet Underground, people.  Don’t even get me started on that one.

Even institutions that are ostensibly about judging quality come up with odd results.  Take, for instance, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, where nearly 6000 voting members decide on categories like Best Picture.  The results are still inconsistent: crap like Titanic, a gem like No Country for Old Men.  If you think that my opinions are subjective, you’re right.  Why pretend that judgments about the value of someone’s work are strictly apolitical and impartial?

Such institutions usually have complex sets of rules that we may or may not agree with, and which may still not give us the desired results.  But consider the opposite scenario.  An anti-war lefty broadcaster gets inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.  Right-wingers cry foul and that person’s induction is rescinded.

Why should we stoop to that level, especially when we have more significant work to do? Why not simply continue to focus our valuable time and resources on exposing Dobson’s politics? If people have issues with the nomination and election process of NRHOF, make those points clearly but be prepared: there will always be nominees we don’t like.  Let’s not go down the dangerously slippery slope of telling people that a collective vote should be cancelled.  Or have we already forgotten what it’s like to have the results of an election overturned?

Originally published in Windy City Times, 20 August, 2008

Gay marriage and queer immigration: Laboring over love [28 May, 2008]

The recent California decision on gay marriage fills me with dread—dread at the schlock I know is awaiting me during this Pride month and afterwards; dread about hearing all the triumphant rhetoric about “equality;” and dread that queers are going to speak about marriage as some kind of dream fulfilled.  Again.

Because, of course, marriage will solve all our problems.  No health care? Get married!  Laid off?  Get married!  Struggling to pay bills and survive another month?  Get married!  Don”t believe in marriage or that marriage should be the only way to gain health care and other benefits?  Suck it up and start believing!

We queers have a unique ability to forget about the after—as in: what happens after “marriage equality”?  Will our workplaces be better?  Will we be less vulnerable to layoffs?  Will our unmarried friends and neighbors have health insurance?  Will the lives of our married but uninsured friends and neighbors be any better with the legalization of gay marriage?

These questions preoccupied me as I watched the “gay movement” take up a cause in a cynical bid to further the idea that gay marriage/gay coupledom matters above all: immigration.  In this year’s Chicago May Day march, gay groups joined together to form an official queer contingent.

Watching and talking to several of the key organizers of the contingent, I was struck by the great differences between queers who claimed to fight for immigration and queers who are themselves queer immigrants.  For queer immigrants, immigration had to do with the rights of the undocumented.  Many of them have friends and families who couldn’t attend the march without consequences in their workplaces, and who faced deportation after recent raids.  This year’s march focused on the legalization of the undocumented and workers” rights.

To be fair, many non-immigrants, especially younger queers, understood the key issues.  But others were fixated on an issue that has nothing to do with the undocumented and even less with workers’ rights: binational couples.  According to them, gay couples should be able to sponsor their partners for immigration like married heterosexuals.  In fact, this does nothing for the undocumented—citizenship via marriage is only available to the documented.

Somehow, the rights of the undocumented have become conflated with the “marriage rights/gay couples matter more than others” movement.  Queer organizers insisted that their situation—as queers whose relationships aren’t recognized by the state (because, apparently, only marriage can legitimize a relationship) —was equal to that of the undocumented.  Never mind the fact that none of them faced the harrowing issues of the undocumented.

That willingness to usurp any cause in order to further a narrow agenda is typical of those who’ve militantly organized over gay marriage over the last decade or so.  We’ve allowed the loudest among us to pretend that queerness is somehow separable from the issues that affect us.  We have labored over the delusion that queer love and attachment matter more than the central issue of labor—which literally organizes our daily lives.

This blindness is apparent in the way that some of us use the issue of asylum on the grounds of sexual orientation.  This is a necessary cause—we know too much about the very real violence faced by queers in parts of the world to ignore their need to leave their home countries.

But there’s a lot that’s skewed in the discourse about anti-gay violence in “other” parts of the world.  For one thing, we’re not exactly a shining beacon of perfection.  Even more troublingly, we ignore the economic and political circumstances surrounding anti-gay violence and persecution.  For the most part, the most horrendous (reported) situations occur in countries in the global south whose economies have been wrecked by the neoliberal machinations of the developed world.

So while it’s compassionate to insist that that queers need refuge in the West on account of the persecution they face, it’s short-sighted to assume that asylum is the perfect solution.  What concerns me is that we rush to paint all those other countries as universally hostile to queers without understanding the larger contexts in which that violence is bred.  That’s not to excuse hostility and violence; it’s to ask that we consider how our ignoring of those contexts keeps alive the conditions of global inequality and horrendous labor conditions that oppress large numbers of non-queers as well.

Do we understand the lives of persecuted queers alongside the lives of non-queers who are brutalized, physically and economically, but have no recourse to asylum?  Do we understand that queers leave their non-queer families and friends behind when they apply for asylum, often unwillingly?  And that those left behind must often resort to entering the U.S as cheap and exploited labor?

Whether it’s gay marriage or queer immigration, we have to understand that queers are more than the sum of their romantic relationships.  We have no right to take on the cause of immigration without understanding the issues faced by immigrants themselves.  And we can’t delude ourselves into believing that love will conquer the problems with labor.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 28 May, 2008

Rape: The T-Shirt [23 April, 2008]

Jennifer Baumgardner, otherwise known as the woman who came up with the “I had an abortion” T-shirt, recently unveiled her latest creation.  This time, her T-shirt’s image is of an open safe, with the words “I was raped” delicately scrawled across a note.  (April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.)  The message is obvious: Rape is a secret for too many people and they need to open up about it.  According to Baumgardner, the shirt allows victims “to own that experience and divest themselves of some of the shame and secrecy of it—and realize that they’re not the ones that should be ashamed.”

We could argue about whether or not rape is still a deeply shameful experience.  That’s not an unimportant question, but focusing on whether or not our cultural and legal attitudes towards rape have changed only blinds us to the fact that the T-shirt renders rape in terms of affect and understanding.  It does nothing more than ask for pity for the wearer who has carried the burden of a secret.

By focusing on rape as an intensely privatized experience, we miss the fact that rape is a tool of political and economic coercion, mostly suffered by bodies with neither the resources nor the inclination to wear their experiences on T-shirts.  In a time of war, rape is the first weapon of dominance visited upon the conquered.  But this use of rape is hardly restricted to war zones.

Take, for instance, the issue of prisoner rape.  According to the Bureau of Justice, as noted by the group Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR), “more than 6, 500 inmates in adult prisons filed reports of sexual violence in 2006 alone.”  A significant portion of these are youth and/or LGBTQ youth.

There is, of course, a danger that drawing such distinctions creates hierarchies of opprerssion.  Even if the people raped in prison are criminals who had themselves raped others, we shouldn’t classify them as deserving victims of rape.  And yet, we’ve grown indifferent to and naturalized the fact that prison rape has become a de facto method of maintaining control over inmates who will probably spend their entire lives in prison because of draconian sentencing laws that inflict longer sentences for even minor crimes.  They will always live within the informal and brutal sexual economy of prison time.

In short, rape has become the unacknowledged weapon of choice within mechanisms of war and systems of incarceration.  The text and imagery of the rape T-shirt separates the act from the political and economic realities in which it occurs.

And what are we to do with those among us who wear these T-shirts to announce their experiences?  If someone has to wear a T-shirt to “own” an experience, that’s a sign he or she lacks access to professionalized care.  Let’s not kid ourselves that all we need to do hold hands with each other in order to help victims of rape.  People respond differently to different forms of sexual assault and need different kinds of help.  Are we to collectively take rape-counseling classes to help the wearers cope?

The T-shirt proves that the personal is not political.  Instead, the personal now stands in for the political.  People who are raped don’t need another T-shirt.  They need medical care—free and easily accessible—that helps them to deal with the physical harm they’ve endured.  They need a system of justice that doesn’t criminalize them, and lawyers to help them through the system.

Instead, the T-shirt puts the onus upon the wearer to create a system of ‘ownership’ and recovery.  It also creates an emotional climate around rape, the sort that furthers the notion that we not only know how to help the victims, but how to punish the criminals.  It’s no surprise that there’s also a T-shirt that declares, “Dead men don’t rape.”  We have privatized victimhood and are now privatizing criminalization.

Ultimately, the T-shirt creates a shamanistic aura around the raped, assuming that they have privileged access to experience.  It operates on the assumption that nothing that the non-raped might say to grapple with the complexities of rape can equal the wearer’s rape.

Let me put it this way: If I told you that I was raped, would you read this column differently?  Would you be more or less willing to validate my critique and analysis?  Why? 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 23 April, 2008

Thomas Beatie’s pregnancy: What does it change? [9 April, 2008]

Thomas Beatie, a transgender man who has retained his female reproductive organs and is six months pregnant, recently appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Let me be clear at the outset: I support Beatie’s decision.  I also think it’s remarkably brave of him to be public about his decision.  It takes a lot to be out as a transgender person, even in famously liberal Oregon, but to be a pregnant man in public goes beyond the pale.  Sure, I could have done without all the gendered rhetoric, as when his wife said, “He’s going to be the father; I’m going to be the mother.  It doesn’t change how I feel about him as the husband.”  This will be a family with a father who gives birth to his child.  But this will not, apparently, be a feminist family.

Everything has changed with Beatie’s pregnancy in terms of our ideas about what gendered bodies can do.  However, nothing has changed in terms of the context in which reproduction and child-rearing are carried out today.

In Beatie’s own words on the Oprah show: “Different is normal.” In a piece for The Advocate, he wrote, “ … our situation ultimately will ask everyone to embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal.”

He’s right.  And that’s the problem.

Beatie’s words, and the coverage so far, imply that reconfiguring our sense of what is normal, in favor of its former opposite—the supposedly abnormal or deviant—is all that’s required to make fundamental changes in society.

Reproduction is part of the language in which we discuss changes in society, whether in terms of the freedom granted by birth control or in terms of the restriction of abortion rights.  Lately, we’ve been obsessed with the seemingly endless expansion of child-bearing capabilities, marveling at grandmothers who give birth to more offspring.  The Beaties used purchased sperm, and that sort of intensive and expensive reproduction technology is hailed as miraculous even though it’s strictly a matter of science.  But the language of miracle-creation also obfuscates the embodied realities that face transgender people and/or people who raise children.

The Beaties clearly enjoy middle-class privilege: they’ve run a successful business; have accrued enough in savings to go into seclusion for a while; and his recent book deal is probably quite lucrative.  But hormone therapies and surgeries remain expensive for most transgender people, who often also have to battle employment and housing discrimination—which, in turn, can lead them to commit survival crimes and end up in incarceration.

Just as importantly, while birthing seems easier for some, rearing children is an entirely different matter.  According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, “[ a ] bout 39 percent of the nation’s children—nearly 29 million in 2006—live in families with low-incomes, that is, incomes below twice the official poverty level ( for 2008, about $42,000 for a family of four ).”  Add to that our failing public schools and a lack of health care, and the situation for the children of the underprivileged is even more dire.  A 2006 UNICEF report on child well-being in 21 wealthy nations ranked the United States as the second worst (after the United Kingdom) in children’s quality of life.

So, yes, Beatie’s pregnancy does expand “the gamut of human possibility.”  But it does so while reinscribing the transgender body within terms of bourgeois respectability.  And yes, potentially, from now on, a larger number of people can bear children.  But we ought not to lose sight of the fact that fewer people today can afford to raise the children they bear or adopt with everything they need. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 9 April, 2008

Queers and Immigration Reform: Where Do We Stand? [10 January, 2008]

On January 8, The Washington Times reported that Mike Huckabee supported amending the constitution so that children born in the US to “illegal aliens” could not automatically become American citizens.  On January 9, the same paper reported Huckabee’s denial that he supported any such measure. 

Those of us who identify as Liberal, Progressive, or Left might be tempted to dismiss this as the usual blather from the Right.  We consider ourselves infinitely superior on the topic of humane immigration laws.  But what do we really understand as substantive and significant immigration reform?  On January 21, 2009, immigration will once again become a divisive issue.  Where will queers stand in relation to the immigration reform movement?  Where will the immigration reform movement stand in relation to the queer community?

Why are the interests of the two groups seen as incommensurable with each other?

When it comes to immigration, a lot of queer energy is being spent on the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which benefits bi-national couples (where one partner is a citizen/permanent resident and the other a foreign national).  The UAFA would make it possible for U.S.  citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their same-sex “permanent partners” for immigration, something that straights can already do.  Groups like HRC and Immigration Equality have decided that UAFA is the single most important piece of immigration legislation that matters to queers.  But what’re the real issues in immigration?  And why is that the queer community and queer organisers aren’t motivated to act on immigration reform except when it comes to the narrow self-interest of queers?  Who benefits from the UAFA?  More importantly: Who suffers?

As I’ve written in a piece on changing the paradigms of queer immigration and in previous articles on marriage and immigration and the UAFA, the immigration crisis is about labour.  We want cheap and easily exploited labour to bring us our cheap and plentiful orange juice and we also want the “right kind” of immigrants -- those who’re “qualified” and able to become “contributing citizens.” As if immigrant day labourers, for instance, are nothing but cankers on society, waiting in the wings to “take American jobs” from hard-working citizens.  The UAFA isolates queers from the workforce – defining queers as simply “permanent partners” in “committed relationships,” as if queers aren’t ever workers in any capacity and can only be reduced to their roles as mates for life.  But if we’re being asked, as a community, to mobilise around this “cause,” we ought to ask how it connects to larger immigration reform.

The UAFA is mired in the concept of “family reunification,” the idea that people should be able to sponsor their spouses/partners and children for immigration.  But, as Eithne Luibhéid shows in her revealing book, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, family reunification has always been about exclusion, not inclusion.  It has always privileged particular types of families (heteropatriarchal, with the father determined as the bread-winner); has kept out specific ethnic groups (“Asiatics” as opposed to Europeans); and controlled women’s sexuality (female spouses were closely examined for any signs of moral deviation and fixed in their roles as wives).  Family reunification law requires that the sponsoring partner can support dependents at 125% above the mandated poverty line.  That cuts a lot of people out of the picture.  And families considered undesirable are treated as less than human.  Consider, for instance, this Counterpunch report about the euphemistically named T.  Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, where nearly 200 children of immigrants awaiting deportation hearings are forced to live in subhuman conditions with the threat of separation from their parents. 

Many binational couples live in anxiety and spend a lot of their scarce resources devising ways to stay with their partners; not all of them have the money and resource to fly back and forth between countries.  But stories like the one about the Pfizer executive living with his Brazilian partner in London reinforce the idea of class privilege and mobility.  These people, we’re implicitly reassured, are good and stable, the kind we’d want living next door to us.  The UAFA would not help undocumented couples, or even the undocumented partners of citizens.

And then there’s the dramatic language used by so many proponents of UAFA, about “going into exile” or, even more contradictorily, “self-exile.” Yeah.  Right.  Pablo Neruda.  Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  And some guy who’s able to relocate to Toronto to be with his partner.  You’re forced into exile, a political condition, when your life is in danger.  Relocating and/or moving between two countries can be difficult and taxing but that, my friends, is not exile.  That’s mobility.

And what does the privilege of sponsorship really mean for straight people, especially women whose dependence on their husbands’ sponsorship leaves them vulnerable to spousal abuse?  What about people like Aalimah, a lesbian trapped in a heterosexual marriage who’s trying to get out of a desperate situation?  H-4 status, which is what you get as a dependent spouse, means that you don’t get a social security number and can’t apply for jobs.  The Hindu has reported on the widespread abuse of women on H-4 visas, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think that queers are incapable of such abuse.  And then, of course, there’s the fact that H1-B visa holders are themselves prone to exploitation by their employers, who can force them to endure terrible working conditions under threat of cancelling their visas.  All of which is to say that family reunification/partner sponsorship does nothing to get at the underlying problems with immigration legislation.

Given its troubling history, it’s time for the Left to rethink our support for family reunification.  And for queers to question the UAFA.  The Right has dubbed family reunification “chain migration” in order to play on our worst fears about hordes of invading “aliens.”  But the fact that the Right is against something does not mean that the Left needs to automatically support it (the Left, has, in recent years, mostly defined itself in response to the Right.  As opposed to devising a truly Left agenda.  But I digress; that’s a post for another day).

Queer organising used to be dismantling economic structures of privilege and redefining structures of kinship in ways that straights have since embraced.  Somewhere along the way, we – or rather, the increasingly powerful gay organisations that speak for us and articulate “our” agenda – have decided that we want to expand, not destroy, privilege.  Instead of fighting for basic rights for everyone.

So what do we support, as queers and as people who’d like to see real immigration reform?  Being critical of the UAFA isn’t about hostility towards binational couples but about questioning the value of organising around a concept and legislation that does nothing to change or even shift the problematic paradigms around which immigration legislation is built.  In my article, I ask readers to question their gay groups about their long-term support for immigration reform.  But do I really believe that we should depend on them, or that they’ll actually adhere to any promises they might make about a long-term commitment to the issue, once the UAFA is passed?  No.  The solution lies not with gay groups but with queers figuring out and asking hard questions of ourselves.  The ENDA fracas showed us that it’s dangerous to let a major gay organisation like HRC establish itself as the voice of the community.  When it comes to immigration reform and to politics in general, we queers have so far tended to substitute affect for any substantive call for economic and political change.  We have depoliticised politics.

If we remove affect from immigration reform, it becomes clear that concepts like “family” and “permanent partnership” only distract us from the real issue of exploited labour and the privileging of certain classes of people (doctors and lawyers over day workers).  But consider what would happen if we demanded something as simple as dropping the dependency requirements and enabling spouses/partners to come here as people with economic rights – such as applying for jobs and getting social security numbers.  That alone would mean looking at everyone, not just “workers,” as self-sustaining individuals with rights, not as dependents.  Now consider allowing undocumented people without families, who don’t want to get married in order to stay, to petition for themselves as self-sustaining workers.  That, along with reform of the labour laws so that workers, whether day workers or H1-Bs, aren’t exploited, is no more complicated or onerous than the current system of sponsorship.  Defining immigrants as people with economic rights instead of as dependents would make for fairness.  And that, not marriage and not “permanent partnerships,” is what truly gives immigrants, straight and queer, the same rights as citizens.  In contrast, the UAFA threatens to take us back fifty years, to a time of social relationships defined by dependency.

Orginally published on The Bilerico Project, 10 January, 2008.  Read the many comments here.

The Gay Movement is Over [4 October, 2006]

PART I: THE TROUBLE WITH OPPRESSION

In 2005, the gay press reported that two men were hanged for consensual sexual relations on July 19 in the town of Mashad, Iran.  The story that they had been punished for being lovers was especially propagated by writer Doug Ireland on his blog.

But such notions were quickly debunked by activists like Scott Long of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and critically analyzed by writers and journalists like Bill Andriette and Richard Kim.

This year, an assortment of groups backed by leaders of the “global gay community” like Peter Tatchell declared that July 19 would be “The International Day of Action against Homophobic Persecution in Iran.”

Commemorations were to include worldwide protests, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) was among the sponsors.  Significantly, Al Fateha, the biggest queer Muslim organization in the U.S., did not endorse the protest.  But there was widespread dissent among queers about the politics of the event, and IGLHRC eventually withdrew its support.  Instead, with HRW, it organized a community forum that conflicted with the protest outside the Iranian embassy in New York.

The flurry of acronyms hides the fact that the criticism came from individuals like me as well as organizations.  What follows is an account of how radical and progressive queers expressed and mobilized dissent against this event.  It details the extent to which so-called Leftist gay leaders are willing to use the strategies of the Right.  The story reveals that the trouble with the putative fight against homophobic oppression is that it draws upon conflicting impulses of solidarity and imperialism.  In the rush towards establishing a transcendent global gay identity, there may not be much difference between the two.

Despite the claims of organizers that they wanted to work in solidarity with Iranian and other oppressed gays everywhere, I initiated a critique of the protest on the queerfist listserv ( www.queerfist.org ) that was taken up by others, and eventually suggested that dissenters contact sponsoring organizations to withdraw their support.  We were wary of perpetuating a U.S.-led hostility towards a country that Bush once declared part of an “axis of evil.”  The idea that the two men were gay lovers, not rapists or murderers, seemed the only basis of mobilizing the gay community’s outrage against the hangings.

But, I asked, why base a critique of the wanton use of the death penalty solely on the notion of innocence and the claim that the two were lovers?  If they had been rapists and murderers, would that make the punishment more acceptable? In that case, this Day of Action was extremely limited in its understanding of social justice.

Critics also took issue with Doug Ireland’s claim that gay Muslims seek a “self-affirming gay identity.”  They countered that not all gays subscribed to mainstream American notions of an exact match between sexual identity and practice.  From Beirut, Daniel Drennan wrote a nuanced and incisive critique of Ireland’s positions.  He was especially critical of the posture of rescue that the “West” tends to adopt in relation to the “East” and wrote, “Please give it a rest.  We are very tired of the ongoing ‘interventions’ on our behalf.”

PART 2: SHE’S NO HOMO!

Ireland’s responses to criticism became increasingly more febrile, and he suggested that I was among the “sectarian apologists for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”  I am not, and was shocked that someone who claimed leftist politics would use McCarthyesque tactics to smear his opponents.  Finally, Ireland lost journalistic credibility with a single e-mail.  He forwarded, without comment, a message from Jeff Edwards, a former member of the now-defunct Queer to the Left; we had been members.  The message was a series of ad hominems and included a claim about my sex life ( I’m happy to forward a copy to anyone ) .  But one comment stuck out “… she has never had to face what it means to be a homo.”

Ah, I thought.  Yes, perhaps.  After all, this whole out-queer-woman-of-color-with-a-noticeably-Muslim-name-in-a-post-9/11-world thing will only take a lifetime to negotiate.  The next time I’m pulled aside for a “random search,” I’ll remember my relatively privileged position vis-à-vis white gay men like Ireland, click my heels Dorothy-style and chant “I’m no homo” three times in the hopes of being whisked away to Kansas.  Where I will be stared at and denied service because of the color of my skin.  Which will never compare to being a homo.

I don’t, of course, believe in a hierarchy of oppressions.  My point from the start had been that we could not argue against a horrible action against gay men without and outside of relevant contexts—such as global politics and gender oppression—in Iran and the U.S.  Yet, here was Ireland attempting to silence me on the grounds that my supposed non-homo-ness and my gender made my critique irrelevant.  Posting an e-mail about my sex life was a weak attempt to discredit and, presumably, shame me.  It made him no different from right-wing ideologues who ferret out salacious details about opponents in order to shut them up.  Ann Coulter, meet Doug Ireland.

Unable to counter my political critique, he proved that there were no sustainable politics of social justice behind the protest.  The event’s success depended on manipulating the emotions of people who will only support a ‘gay’ action if the principals involved led unimpeachable and beautiful gay lives of love and romance.  As Long pointed out, organizers of the protest never offered a plan for action that could utilize the energy of the event.  Ireland revealed himself as a megalomaniac whose feverish blogging indicates a talent gone awry in the pursuit of narratives of persecution, real or imagined.  His constant proximity to the computer screen bears an inverse relationship to his distance from reality.

PART 3: IT’S OVER

What does this tell us about queer politics and the contemporary gay movement? We’re so used to thinking that anything LGBTQ is automatically a progressive cause that we have yet to develop a language of dissent among ourselves.  A truly progressive movement could absorb and integrate points of critique without deflating into meaningless ad hominems.  There can be no doubt that people are repressed, brutalized and killed in many parts of the world, including the U.S., on account of their gender and/or sexuality.  But rushing blindly into projects of rescue benefits no one and, as Long and others indicate, the Iran fracas may eventually do more harm than good to the situation of Iranian queers whose accounts are clouded by suspicions of their authenticity.

We are bound to hear more stories like the one in Mashad.  It’s difficult for individuals not to sympathize, but it’s worth asking hard questions about not just the stories but our motivations for rescue.  Who tells the story?  Who else can corroborate it?   What do we really want to gain from endorsing actions on behalf of those oppressed?  Is it likely that our need to save others might be motivated by a hope of being glorified by them as their saviors?

Yet, it’s difficult for most of us as individuals to stand by and watch atrocities and not respond in some way.  I don’t endorse the idea that only organizations should do the work of research and negotiation on our behalf, given their uneven politics on most issues.  IGLHRC’s flip-flopping on the Iran protest is hardly commendable.  And most gay organizations endorse gay marriage and hate-crimes legislation; neither cause is part of progressive politics.  In a perfect world, the work of individual activists and thinkers and rational and even-handed journalists could serve as a counterbalance to the work of organizations.  The problem is not that we lack the resources but that radical queer organizing tends to become invisible and unintelligible amidst the cacophony raised by the Gay Right and by organizations that have too much clout and dictate what the “community” should stand for.  An even bigger problem is that we haven’t yet come to grips with what we define as a radical or progressive vision in relation to the “gay/homo” agenda.

Queers stood by uneasily as the Gay Movement moved rightwards in its quest for the status quo, most notably around the issue of gay marriage.  Proponents of Gay Marriage (PGMs) and most gay organizations can not move beyond asking for acceptance into the mainstream.  They are too wedded to the principle of asking for equality.  Such rhetoric should not blind us to the fact that the claim for equality rests on the idea that all queers equally want the same thing.  As the gay marriage movement demonstrates, the principle of equality is only another way of asking for the status quo.  So, for instance, gay marriage supporters argue that gays should be able to marry in order to gain healthcare benefits.  Their insistence that this is somehow part of a liberal/progressive gay agenda has taken real healthcare reform off the radar of progressive organizing.  PGMs have yet to articulate a larger vision for social justice that includes healthcare and benefits for all, not just couples.

It’s time to be blunt about the pitfalls of gay marriage.  The fight for gay marriage directly contributes to inequality in America.  It takes away resources from pressing social concerns and it assumes that only people in coupled relationships are of any consequence.  PGMs have even hijacked the immigration rights movement by arguing that the queer partners of citizens should gain a quicker path to citizenship on the grounds of ‘life-long commitment’ and ‘financial interdependence.’ [INSERT CFS] This is unfair to single immigrants; considers them unworthy of any recognition; and reinforces antiquated and heteronormative patterns of relationships.

All of these struggles over the status quo reinforce simplistic ideas about who gets to be “gay” or “homo” enough to warrant attention.  A gay movement without an expansive notion of queer social justice is doomed to failure.  The Iran fracas demonstrates that conservatives among us will always attempt to define our politics by a singular notion of gay and that only gay lives defined by sexual practice and identity are worth noting.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If a lesbian goes through life without a partner, is she never a lesbian?

The dissent over the Iran protests signals the end of the Gay Movement as we know it.  In its place lies the potential for a more critically self-aware and nuanced queer movement that goes beyond affirming the status quo.  It’s time for supporters of gay marriage to end our specious call for equality and seek an end to inequality. 

Most of the e-mail exchanges referred to here can be accessed here, here, and here.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 4 April, 2006

Gay Immigration (and) Inequality [6 June, 2006]

What does immigration mean for queers?  A heterosexual U.S.  citizen/permanent resident (c/pr) can sponsor a spouse for immigration; a queer U.S. c/pr can’t sponsor a partner.  The Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) seeks to reverse this by substituting the phrase ‘permanent partner’ wherever the word ‘spouse’ appears in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

UAFA’s heavily supported by groups like Immigration Equality (IE) and Out 4 Immigration (O4I) , even though it’s not part of a comprehensive immigration reform agenda and is meaningless for undocumented partners.

In February, Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ) released Queers and Immigration: A Vision Statement.  I worked on it with Debanuj DasGupta, QEJ’s immigration policy analyst and others, including an IE staff member, Adam Francoeur.  Among other things, the statement connects the issues of LGBTQ immigrants, documented and undocumented, to the exploitation of labor that led to the immigration crisis.  After a series of intense discussions, language about families and UAFA was included in order to reflect the different groups working on the document.  It was sent to a wider group of organizations; over 50 groups signed on but O4I did not sign it (interestingly, the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force did not, either).  To our surprise, IE first signed then took its name off at a very late stage.

Why did two major gay immigration groups not sign on to this document?  Why do they support UAFA but not a statement that situates queer immigrant issues in a larger framework of, well, immigration?  In trying to answer these questions I interviewed some key people, including Michael Lim at O4I.  Francoeur did not respond to a request for an interview.

UAFA’s supporters emphasize “family reunification,” long a cornerstone of U.S.  immigration law.  But recent Republican immigration reform proposals favor a merit-based system and would greatly diminish the extent to which immigrants can sponsor family members.  Democrats now accuse their opposition of lacking family values.

But is “family” necessarily part of a progressive reform agenda?  DasGupta, explaining why QEJ never originally focused on family or the UAFA, points out that the emphasis on families benefits a neoliberal free-market based economy, where the responsibility for essentials like healthcare is shifted from the state to individuals.  Indeed, immigration rights advocates often separate the family from the dynamics of labor.

Media coverage of “the immigrant family” portrays nurturing environments filled with the scent of home-cooked food and the love of extended family.  This ignores patterns of domestic violence and incest within families (immigrant or not) and ignores the violence from deportation units.

Ignoring such realities, UAFA’s supporters position the interests of bi-national couples in opposition to immigrants, prioritizing the needs of U.S. citizens.  O4I quotes an American veteran, Jim Carrozo, who asks emphatically, “Why should I, a gay U.S.  citizen with a foreign partner be forced to leave my country … while immigration reform would allow NON-U.S.  citizens to come here?” [emphasis on the O4I Web site]

Perhaps UAFA’s supporters are just focused on a single issue.  According to Lim, O4I’s board felt that there was too much in the vision statement that did not speak to the interest of queers.  But surely it’s possible to have a more expansive sense of justice.  Marta Donayre, co-founder of Love Sees No Borders and a co-writer on the QEJ statement, criticizes the narrow focus of gay immigrant groups and the fact that “[a]n immigrant is considered … only when an appendage of [an] American citizen.” Donayre is herself in a bi-national relationship, but her kind of critique is rarely heard from groups like IE or O4I.

The gay rights movement ignores the real meaning of inequality.  Lim echoed a prevalent statement, “What differentiates LGBT people from non-LGBTs is … our sexual or gender identity.  … There’s plenty of injustice to go around, but that does not go part and parcel with the inequality of LGBT people.”  Economic inequality is ignored while the “inequality of LGBT people” becomes a way to gain privilege for U.S.  citizens.  But why should spouses/partners should be given immigration priority in the first place?

Positioning UAFA as the penultimate issue for gay immigrants depoliticizes the most political issue of the day.  It’s clear that groups like IE and O4I actually see the bill as a vision statement, an affirmation of cozy gay family life.  Conversely, they acted as if the QEJ vision statement was a binding piece of legislation.

Ultimately, the issue isn’t about which groups have signed on, but about what the dissent over signing on indicates about gay immigration politics.  In all the brouhaha over UAFA, one salient fact has been ignored: the two prominent groups advocating for it are not predominantly immigrant groups.  Their constituents are American citizens whose interest in immigration lies solely in the fact that their partners happen to be immigrants.

Gay groups shouldn’t call themselves pro-immigration groups if they’re primarily interested in furthering the interests of American citizens.  As one fed-up immigration organizer said to me, “They’ve got to realize that this is about the needs and issues of all immigrants, not just the immigrants they fuck.”

Yasmin Nair is a member of QEJ’s Project Advisory Committee on immigration and CLIA ( Chicago LGBTQ Immigrant Alliance) , which will hold its second town hall on June 12, 2006 at Acme Art Works, 1741 N. Western, at 6-8 p.m.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 6 June, 2006

Queer Space [1 June, 2006]

“How long will it take?”  I was talking directly to a hard hat perched on top of the head of a Chicago city worker.  He looked up, shrugged, and replied with a mildly amused glint in his eyes, “Don’t know, ask them.”  But I had in fact already asked each of “them,” a group of five men outside my Uptown apartment building.  City insignia on their clothes lent them an air of authority as they milled around a giant hole in the pavement.  The “it” in question was the entire process of turning off the neighborhood water supply, digging the hole, fixing some kind of “water problem,” turning on the water supply and then repaving the pavement.

In typical Chicago fashion, no one in our building had received a prior warning about the water being turned off.  I had been unpleasantly surprised to find my taps dry when I returned from getting my paper early that morning.  I was cat-sitting for friends and suffered an initial short panic about my feline guest dying of thirst.  Realizing that she could do with a single bowl of water for the day, and that I lived in a city with ample resources (except, apparently, running water), I bought a bottle of water, poured it into her bowl and then contemplated what to do until “it” was done.  Which, as far as I could tell, could be a day or weeks.  Every one of the city workers had responded to my question in the same way, with a shrug and amusement that I would even think about asking how long a city job might take.  The men gathered around the hole seemed to have nothing to do with the actual job (the hard hat did all the digging) but they stood and talked, confident about nothing more than the fact that “it” would take time.  Who knew how long?  Who really cared?

Facing deadlines, I made my way towards Andersonville with my ancient and heavy laptop in hand, loathing the idea of becoming the typical café denizen, the sort that sits at a table looking alternately industrious and contemplative.  For me, writing is a solitary activity best done at home, close to the comfort of free food and tea.  I don’t, while writing, seek the companionship of friends or strangers.  So it was with some annoyance that I found myself in Café Boost looking for a plug point and a quiet spot.

Readers familiar with Chicago’s North Side cafés will remember the great “Kids and cafés” saga from 2005.  Andersonville leapt to national attention because of a sign posted by Dan McCauley on the door of his restaurant Taste of Heaven: “Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven [TOH] .” McCauley claimed that this was to make sure parents controlled children who tended to run wild and disturb adult customers.  The story made it to The New York Times, surprisingly igniting a national conversation about how parents should raise their children—or if they were even doing so in an age of “child-centered” policies and places.  And occasionally, as the story wound its way through national and local news outlets and the blogosphere, it became one about the differences between parents and non-parents.  McCauley is an out gay man so, to be specific, the story became one about straight people—“normal” child-rearing types—versus queers—who supposedly don’t have children to take care of.

It’s tempting to write something about the laughable fallacy of assuming that queers don’t have kids—especially given the hysteria with which pro-gay marriage people, straight or queer, go on endlessly about the sanctity of gay families.  But readers are aware that I don’t think the family is a particularly precious unit to preserve and cherish.  It’s also tempting to write something about yuppies taking over neighborhoods like Andersonville, which have seen gays migrating northwards from places like Boystown after having been gentrified out.

The popular myth about queers and gentrification is that we move into broken-down houses in equally broken-down neighborhoods and fix them up, making it possible for wealthier yuppies to eventually relocate into “our” neighborhoods, pushing us out in the process.  This narrative erases the reality that marginal and “undesirable” neighborhoods are usually first inhabited by a city’s migrant workers and its poorest (who may or may not be queer—but nobody cares to run surveys among them) before being “discovered” by queers.  And it ignores the fact that yuppies and suburbanites, the ones so many of us love to loathe, are in fact often wealthy gay men and women.

To some extent, the “Kids and cafés” story exemplifies traditional conflicts over ownership of a changing neighborhood.  But at the end of the day, it’s really only about who in the neighborhood gets to pay for the privilege of paying about or over $10 for soup and a sandwich at a café—and nearly $20 if you include dessert and a drink.  Despite all the talk about styles of parenting, of battles between yuppie gentrifiers and “original” residents, capitalists vs. bohemian artists—it all comes down to people fighting over the right to pay the kind of money that most of us living in the city can’t shell out too often.

I entered Boost for respite from dry taps sometime in 2000, when Taste of Heaven was still located further south, on Foster.  Where Taste now stands once stood the old BC Tap Bar.  Its eventual closing was mourned by the neighborhood and “Save BC Tap!” signs appeared on windows everywhere.  It’s now hard to find an Andersonville resident who even remembers the old bar. Boost has also closed.  In case I start to seem like Garrison Keillor in the city, let me be clear that this is not a call for nostalgia.  My point is that gentrification is cast in the light of ownership (cultural and material) and sentimental memories of the “old days.”  But, in the end, it’s about who can pay to live in a neighborhood and whose tax dollars count the most.

I returned that afternoon to find the water turned back on.  The cat, showing no signs of dehydration, was curious about her next meal.  The hole in the pavement was filled but never repaved.  For years afterwards, people waiting for the bus there had to walk around or over a large mound of dirt until our collective weight slowly wore it down to a bare and rough patch level with the ground.  My building was once firmly in Uptown.  Two years ago, Andersonville crept southwards to where I live and staked out its territory with a black, faux cast iron lamp-post and a flag with that neighborhood’s name planted to the right of the nearest crossing, making me feel utterly colonized.  But on the other side of the crossing stands an old green Chicago city lamppost, its light long missing.  I’ve called 311, but no one has bothered to replace it.  Who knows how long that will take? Until my area is completely gentrified, who really cares?

Originally published in Identity, 1 June, 2006

Can We Talk?: Censorship, Pedophilia, and Panic [16 November, 2005]

Recently, Haworth Press cancelled its anthology Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, edited by Beert C. Verstraete and Vernon Provencal.  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the decision came after the press received 20 letters of complaint from readers of worldnetdaily.com (WND).  This extreme right-wing Web site routinely condemns homosexuality and supports reparative therapy.  Focusing on Dr.  Bruce Rind’s “Pederasty: An Integration of Cross-Cultural, Cross-Species, and Empirical Data,” WND, on the strength of a 187-word abstract, implied that Rind was endorsing “rampant child molestation.”  The press succumbed to the sensationalistic and willful misrepresentation of the book, instead of standing by the research of scholars who have cumulatively written about sexuality for decades.

Haworth will now publish the volume without Rind’s essay, which is to appear in The Journal of Homosexuality, along with responses to the controversy.  On the face of it, this seems like a scholarly tempest in a teacup, and it’s easy to laugh off WND as the misbegotten intellectual progeny of Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger.  But this issue has serious ramifications for our ability to have an honest discussion about children and sexuality and about sex, period.  Haworth’s initial and craven capitulation and the firestorm it set off gives us the opportunity to revisit the history of terms like “sexual abuse” and “pedophilia” that have been thrown around.

Pederasty and pedophilia have been topics of debate in works about gay and straight history, given long-standing traditions of intergenerational sex between and among men and women.  The right uses that fact to condemn all queers, particularly gay men, as predators of children.  Haworth vice president Kathryn Rutz furthered the incendiary conflation of terms: “For the record, we do not in any way support or endorse the practice of pedophilia, pederasty, or any form of child abuse.”  To study the historical import of pedophilia or pederasty is not the same as practicing child abuse.

Some of that history involves Rind”s earlier work.  In a 1998 article, he and co-authors argued for a re-evaluation of the term “child sexual abuse” (CSA) .  They acknowledged the circumstances in which sexual encounters between children and adults might indeed be harmful and abusive.  But they also reported that many of their subjects experienced sex with adults as positive experiences.  In part, Rind et. al. sought to initiate a discussion about the concept of the “child,” a term that suffers from extreme malleability.  Depending on the state and the circumstances, the legal age of a “child” varies enormously and that can have serious consequences for anyone suspected of sexual relations with or desire for “underage” people.

Images of children’s bodies are fraught with contradictions.  It’s apparently all right for us to watch toddlers wiggle and twirl as mini-adults at pageants and talent shows.  But anyone who takes a picture of their children naked in the tub (imagine, naked, while bathing!) and tries to develop it at a photo store stands a good chance of being jailed and separated from them forever.  That kind of hypocrisy and hysteria led to Rind’s essay becoming the focus of a campaign led by conservative groups like NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) and the Family Research Council.  The uproar led to Congress’s censure of the essay despite an independent academic panel’s support of the methodology used.  Haworth showed a similar willingness to dismiss scholarly work at the instigation of those who are least qualified to judge it.  And they legitimized the ravings of those who have a vested interest in literally eradicating homosexuality.

There remains, of course, the emotional resonance of terms and concepts like CSA, especially for those who have actually experienced physical and sexual abuse as children.  Combine that with the fact that the appearance of standing up for children is the easiest way for politicians to get votes and you have the heady sensationalistic brew that is the extreme paranoia around children’s sexuality.

Feminism helped to end the silence around topics like incest and sexual abuse, making it easier for people to speak out.  Today, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to the extent that we care less about protecting children and more about increasing the scope of the prison industrial system so that it effectively forms a virtual jail around those convicted as “sex offenders.”  Bill Andriette points out that those convicted become “guinea pigs for technologies of biometric and electronic surveillance-and-tracking that increasingly, under the guise of fighting terror, are rolled out for everyone.” 

Anyone labeled a sex offender, pedophile, or pederast is sentenced to a lifetime of surveillance, barred from many occupations, and from living where they choose.  This does not reduce the sexual coercion of children behind closed doors by relatives and family, and it prevents us from any meaningful discussion about consent.  The stigmatization of groups like NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) which have asked for conversations about the age of consent means that we drive forms of desire inwards and underground.

We fail to remember that someone who knows beforehand that their desire, legitimate or not, will cause them to lose everything is more likely to act upon it with a desperate sense that they have, in a sense, nothing to lose.  Eventually, those who do suffer from sexual damage have a lot to lose as well.  A system that sees “predators” as beyond repair and thrusts them to the outermost regions of society also deeply pathologizes the “victims.” We assume that those who experience abuse are forever damaged individuals and that we must exact the greatest revenge on their behalf.

Years ago, a woman matter-of-factly told me and others about the sexual coercion she endured in nearly every one of her foster homes.  But whenever someone asked what she would have changed about her life, her response was “Nothing.” Because, as she put it, she wouldn’t be who she was without what happened — and she rather liked herself.  That’s not to claim that children/adults should experience sexual abuse as a rite of passage or as a life-affirming experience.  But it does illustrate that we need to move beyond the monolithic idea that people respond in exactly the same way to abuse, however we define it.  The conflation of pedophilia and pederasty with child molestation prevents us from considering a range of ways of responses and effects of sex between adults.

Why should queers worry about either the Haworth issue or those punished for sex with “minors” (the term is as malleable as “child”)?  The contemporary “gay movement” insists that gays are second-class citizens because they cannot marry.  But it has nothing to say about the gay and straight men who are routinely and unfairly apprehended for public sex.  It ignores the fact that such surveillance and that of “sex offenders” is also a policing of gay desire.  As Andriette points out, a “sex offender” on parole can be put back in jail just for reading Best Gay Short Stories.  We are determined to prove that we are not only as good as straight parents and spouses but infinitely better.  To that end, we’ve repudiated our sexuality and anything that hints of “deviant” sexual practices.

But how long can we carry the burden of exceptionalism?  If there is ever a story about gay incest, or gay child abuse, the backlash will guarantee that we lose every one of our supposed gains and we will have hung everything on the tenuous concept of the “equality” of marriage rights.  Gay marriage proponents argue that marriage will guarantee our rights to adopt and keep children.  Really? Straight parents have their children taken away all the time, for the simplest acts like photographing their children in the nude.  We may lose a lot more if we don’t speak up for the rights of those most vulnerable amongst us.

The gay community’s silence around the Haworth press issue repudiates or at least rewrites sexual history.  It’s not just that gay history has recorded intergenerational sex as a formative social influence.  Queers know that our understanding of sexual and gender identity comes about through a complicated nexus of secrecy and knowledge, and in affiliations with people who are sometimes simultaneously our intellectual and sexual mentors.

But the problem with the current discussion around “adult-child” relationships is that we are conditioned to think that sex with an older person is traumatic.  We talk more about sex these days and mistakenly believe that talking about the sex lives of desperate housewives or queer fashionistas means that we think about sex in more interesting ways, but the truth is the opposite.  The more we discuss sex, the less we think and talk out loud about complicated questions about power and consent, secrecy and knowledge.

We’re dealing with questions about children’s sexuality by making them paradoxically invisible in our representations of them.  We image them as sexless creatures of fantasy, with pixelated blue patches where their genitals should be.  Conversations about children’s sexual bodies and lives may be more difficult than censoring thought and speech and throwing people in jail for the rest of their lives, but they’re absolutely necessary if we want to do more than reiterate narratives about “trauma” and “abuse.”

Haworth’s decision to separate Rind’s essay is unsatisfactory because it implies that his work is outside the pale of “normal” research.  Even now, Haworth distances itself from its own authors by not keeping the abstracts on its Web site.  Instead, these can be found on the website of International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (IPCE), an organization.  Once in print, it’s likely Rind’s essay will be relegated to the “Special Collection” areas of libraries and that anyone asking for it might be suspected of being a potential molester.  I want to read Rind’s essay as part of legitimate sexual research, not divorced from it.

Ask yourself if you would like the simple privilege of talking and thinking out loud about matters which affect us so deeply.  Write now to Haworth Press, objecting to its capitulation on this matter.  And maybe next time, the right will hesitate to assume such victories.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 16 November 2005

Who Needs Hate? [1 June, 2005]

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) recently released its annual report on violence against gays, bisexuals, and transgender people.  The group reports a 4% increase in anti-GLBT incidents, totaling 1,792.  A press statement about the report issued by the Michigan-based Triangle Foundation declared that there has been a “toxic climate” against gays in the last year.  The report itself addresses the Right’s “open warfare against all that they hold in contempt, including and especially the LGBT community.”

With language like this, it’s easy to believe that queers are in a state of siege, surrounded by hatred, that utterly unquantifiable emotion.  But we ought to stop and think carefully about this concept of hate and where it takes us.  Reports like this one seem to only detail the facts about incidents of violence.  But the truth is that the apparently simple concept of hate violence/crimes (the idea that some crimes are motivated by hatred towards specific groups) in fact leads directly to hate crime legislation which in turn has insidious effects on the justice system.

To designate a crime as one motivated by hate means to implicitly ask that the penalty be substantially higher.  Penalty enhancement leads to absurdly greater levels of punishment and even the death penalty.  My own report on the Daniel Fetty case shows how even the possibility that a crime was “hateful” can be used to bring the death penalty to the table even when the legislation is not in place.  And surely state-sponsored murder is among the most violent acts in society.

Moreover, “hate” is as unstable and illogical a legal concept as it is an emotion.  Determining what counts as an act of violence against GLBTQs or a “hate crime” produces results that are often bizarre and at times even laughable.

One example of the former is this “case narrative” from the NCAVP report, which I quote in its entirety: “A 19 year-old man was bludgeoned to death with a pipe while standing on a corner in Queens(New York).”  I see the horrific crime, but not why it’s included in a report about anti-gay violence.  And there are laws on the books to punish murder.  In another instance, a bar owner was found asphyxiated inside his establishment in Binghamton, New York.  What are we to note here, besides the possibility that the victim was gay? And why are we not content to find the murderer and simply prosecute him or her for murder?

A Chicago incident from April 2004 sheds a different light on “hate crimes.”  Mike Banko and Jeffrey Durbin reported being attacked by a group that included a woman who threatened them with a baseball bat and allegedly screamed that she would “take care of the faggots.”  The investigation of the incident as a possible hate crime was dropped when the woman, Myrna Vazquez, turned out to be a lesbian; police then decided that the altercation resulted from “road rage.”  The quick shift in this case, from hate to no hate, only shows how ludicrous and unreliable hate can be as a legal concept.  Even if we took “hate” seriously: was it determined that a lesbian could simply not hate gay men because of her own identity?  What if either man had called Vazquez a dyke? Would that be no less hateful? Would the two men have been punished for “hateful speech,” but only if they had been straight, just as Vazquez was to be punished for calling them faggots? Does threatening someone with a bat not constitute enough of a crime? Are we now to police thought and speech as well?

How do we measure hate?  How do we decide what counts as a homophobic crime? And who ever committed a crime of violence out of love?  None of these questions are answered by the incessant call on the part of anti-violence groups and “victim advocates” to record and register hate.  The resulting rise in hate crimes legislation means a further curtailment of civil liberties.  Post 9/11, we are faced with increased surveillance of our actions and speech.  Tabulating and recording supposedly homophobic “hate” means that we LGBTQs are actually asking for an increase in the patrolling of thought and speech.  Far from providing justice to all, laws based on “hate” confer special status to a few whose suffering is deemed worse than that of others.  The concept of hate crimes and hate crime legislation can never be part of a progressive agenda for social justice.  We need to get rid of both.

Originally published in Identity, 1 June, 2005

What if Buster Bunny Became a Reggae Star? [1 April, 2005]

Recently, the Jamaican LGBT group J-Flag toured the U.S.  and gave audiences an inkling of the intense homophobia facing queers on their island.  J-Flag’s work is important, but its struggle is being linked to calls for more censorship.  Working with J-Flag, the British gay-rights group OutRage claims a direct link between the deaths of Jamaican LGBTQs and the homophobic lyrics of reggae and dancehall singers like Beanie Man.  Amnesty International, whose Sarah Green commented, “We are very concerned that hateful lyrics have helped to create a culture and atmosphere of violence,” takes a similar position.

But reggae and dancehall artists are convenient scapegoats.  Jamaican laws criminalize gay sex and there are no legal protections for workplace discrimination on the grounds of sexuality.  Silencing music does not address these social problems.  And it’s one thing for Amnesty to ask the Jamaican government to bring attention to homophobia.  It’s quite another for Amnesty and OutRage to censor what they deem to be offensive.  Their actions affirm the economic and political power that Britain and the U.S.  have over Jamaica and backfire by making officials resent outside interference.

In February, OutRage announced that it had reached an agreement with Jamaican reggae groups and their recording companies to ban future homophobic lyrics and public statements.  The group’s Peter Tatchell said: “We hope this is the beginning of a new era in reggae music, where the artists rekindle the spirit of one love, peace, unity, brotherhood and social justice promoted by reggae pioneers like the legendary Bob Marley.”  Would this be the same Bob Marley who sang “I shot the Sheriff?”

For over two decades, the International Monetary Fund has kept Jamaica in the grip of trade agreements that ensure high rates of poverty.  Jamaica’s economic devastation is invisible to the tourists who spend weeks basking in its sunshine and sipping tropical drinks.  For them, “Jamaica” is a paradise and its natives are happy island people without a care in the world.

There is a parallel between the fantasy of Jamaica and the fantasy of reggae being perpetuated by OutRage.  Marley’s lyrics are isolated from their socially and politically charged contexts and he is frozen in time as the eternal colonialist fantasy of the Rasta Man.

Censorship cannot end homophobia.  If censoring reggae seems like a good way to end homophobia, let’s remember Buster the bunny from the PBS show Postcards from Buster.”  Education Secretary Margaret Spellings declared that the cartoon character’s visit to the children of two lesbians would “undermine” the quality of programming and offend “many parents.”  PBS capitulated to the pressure and another moment of queer visibility was lost.

These two episodes might seem unrelated but the pressure to censor reggae is the same as that exerted upon television programming by those who find queers or queer subjects offensive.  Censorship might stop the expression of unpopular ideas but it short-circuits real political change.

Vibrant art and music draw their strength from the willingness to be unpopular, unacceptable, and unpalatable.  And then there are the moments of rage brought on by insipid work, proving that the urge to censor is not uncommon.

I regret never having taken an axe to the cows masquerading as public art throughout downtown Chicago in 1999.  But who was I to dictate what others should not see? Take away anger, confusion, ambivalence, and calls for revolution and this is what we’re left with: banality, economic tyranny, and a lot of cows.

Originally published in Identity, 1 April, 2005

Queer Sucides: Complicate the Issue

The last few weeks have seen a flurry of stories about the supposed rise in queer suicides, particularly by youth and young adults. But while the deaths are undoubtedly tragic, they are by no means unusual and have not increased in number; they are simply being reported on more often. The exact reasons why the press would, at this time, take such an interest in queer suicides are the subjects of a future piece. For now, I want to complicate the narratives and stories about queer youth that are being spun in the media and in our cultural discourse.

It is necessary to pay attention, as we have been doing, to why queer youth in particular are more than four times as likely to commit suicide than their straight peers. It is even more important to pay attention to how we deploy and even, on occasion, distort their reasons for doing so. Attempts to provide both reasons and solutions for the problem are often shamelessly manipulative and display a rank ignorance of the many multiple contexts in which queer youth live and die.

Take, for instance, the short but hyperbolic video by Sarah Silverman, where she says: "Dear America, When you tell gay Americans that they can't serve their country openly or marry the person that they love, you're telling that to kids, too. So don't be fucking shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves … because they learned it from watching you."

Kathy Griffin takes this even further on a PSA for the Trevor Project where she says, "That's why it's so important that Prop 8 gets thrown out by the Supreme Court and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' gets repealed. Because right now the message the government is sending our young people is that it's unacceptable and inferior to be gay."

No. Those are not the reasons why queer children and youth kill themselves. In 2009, 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover killed himself in Massachusetts after being taunted, on a daily basis, for being gay. Walker-Hoover did not identify as gay. He lived in a state where gay marriage has been legal since 2004.

There are, of course, several instances of queer-identified youth killing themselves after being bullied on account of their sexuality. And, certainly, the extreme right's hostility to gay marriage or gays in the military does create a climate where there is at least a segment of society used to engaging in hateful rhetoric about queers.

But none of this justifies a logistical leap to the point of arguing that allowing gays to get married or join the army will somehow make people hate queers, or people they think of as queers, less. When a queer gets bashed, the basher isn't thinking, "I hope this person isn't the married kind because THEY would be all right." The issue facing us is not how to make the bigots love us, but the bigotry they express. Which is to say: twisting and turning gay marriage into a solution for queer suicides is an abhorrent tactic to bolster the cause of gay marriage, on which there is no consensus in the LGBTQ community. The simple truth is that people hate us and will cause us harm. They may hate us because they secretly see themselves in us and are terrified of what that means, or they may hate us simply because they see us as the evil to be wiped out. But they hate us and they will cause us harm. The fact that we might be able to marry will not make a bit of difference to such deep-seated hatred.

To say otherwise is to make a political point—and make no mistake, gay marriage is a political matter—and the Trevor Project, for which Griffin was acting as a spokesperson, has no business mixing politics into its messages about queer youth. When someone commits suicide because life as a queer or being perceived as a queer is so unbearable, it's not because they simply dream of being married someday. It's because their lives are living nightmares.

My 22-year-old friend Hans Anggraito probably put it best: "Just as anti-depression pills are being handed out like candy to people in my generation, gay marriage is offered as the magic bullet to solve all of our gay woes."

I have no doubt that, despite the problems with the Griffin PSA, the Trevor Project is doing vital and important work. But what of preventive measures before that happens? What are the conditions in which students live? For that we need to turn to local organizations staffed by local activists who understand the issues. More importantly, we need to understand that queerness is not all that defines these youth.

Chicago has the most militarised school district in the country and there is tremendous pressure on the schools' minority populations to join the army. The DREAM Act, which would give a chance at citizenship to undocumented youth brought here by their parents before the age of six, has a military option: students can enlist for two years in order to gain a path to citizenship. The districts' military schools already heavily recruit African-American and Latino/a students, building on a prevalent idea that students of color are more likely to need discipline that they supposedly lack in their families. In addition, military service is offered as an economic ladder, promising upward mobility to these students. Students also face tremendous violence in their school neighborhoods: In 2008, more than 500 schoolchildren were shot in Chicago.

When I raise these issues in relation to queer youth, I am often told that these are not queer-specific. But queer youth are also undocumented, at risk of being shot and live in a district where they are preyed upon by the aggressive recruiting tactics of the military. All of these circumstances are a result of the violence of the state, which promises liberation through the possibility of being killed but will not guarantee that students might go to school without the same possibility. Being harassed for being queer only compounds matters for these students.

There have been cases of undocumented youth committing suicide for fear of being deported. And surely it is also possible that some of the suicides we hear of come about because a combination of poverty and lack of support in schools. Yet, sociologists and cultural critics rarely acknowledge poverty as a cause of death while "sexual orientation/gender identity" is a cause that they find easy to grasp. When the undocumented are discovered to also be queer, the media focuses on the idea that they face the possibility of violence in their countries of origin, bolstering the myth that a state so violent as to refuse legitimacy to these youth can actually now provide protection from the presumed repression of another state. But students, like anyone else, do not live in vacuums where only their sexual identities define their existence. They are acted upon by multiple issues. More importantly, they are also capable of political will and agency. Would queer students want to join a military that will not allow them to serve openly? For that matter, would they even want to serve at all?

Students, queer or otherwise, participate in immigration rallies, sometimes under threat of being expelled. Youth of color enter Boystown only to be told by merchants and residents that they have no right to be there and that they make the neighborhood look too dangerous. They participate in anti-war marches. At a meeting organized by queer youth to address the ongoing problem of racism towards youth of color in Boystown, business owners spoke condescendingly about the lack of resources on the south side. One youth stood up and shot back words to this effect: "We do have places on the South Side, you just don't choose to fund them." Youth are not stupid, and they know when they're being lied to.

The point is that queer bullying cannot operate in a vacuum. A school that is hostile to queer youth is not likely to be safe for many of its other students. The logic that queer suicides have to do entirely with sexual identity erases the complicated realities of what it means to be an LGBT or queer youth, and it turns queer youth into apolitical people who just need to be rescued.

The current rise in the reports of queer youth suicides does not signify either an epidemic or a crisis. What we are witnessing is the ongoing reality of what it means to be queer in a world where we forego complicated, systemic analyses of our issues in favor of simplistic and sentimental rhetoric about love and bravery conquering all. The Trevor Project is a hotline, not a program. While it performs an important service, the long-term work of preventing these suicides in a systemic way can only happen if we consider queer youth as more than just queer. If we are to address the issue of queer suicides, we need to think long and hard about actually addressing the depth and complexity of the problem without resorting to magic pill arguments.

Originally published in Windy City Times, October 13, 2010

Anti-gay adoption bill narrowly defeated in committee by seven votes to six [April 13, 2011]

Breaking News

Originally appeared in Windy City Times on April 13, 2011

In a narrow victory for gay rights activists SB 1123, which would have effectively allowed religious child welfare and adoption agencies to bar adoptions and foster care by gay parents was just struck down.

The vote was seven to six. Yes votes: Christine Radogno (R-41), Dale A. Righter (R-55), Matt Murphy (R-27), David S. Luechtefeld (R-58), Bill Brady (R-44), Antonio Muñoz (D-1).

No votes: Don Harmon (D-39), Ira L. Silverstein (D-8), M. Maggie Crotty (D-19), Jeffrey M. Schoenberg (D-9), Kimberly A. Lightford (D-4), John J. Cullerton (D-6), Donne E. Trotter (D-17).

As per procedure, one opponent and one proponent was allowed to testify. Mary Dixon of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) spoke against the bill and Robert Gilligan of the Illinois Catholic Conference spoke in favor of it. The ACLU, The Civil Rights Agenda (TCRA) Equality Illinnois (EI), Protestants for the Common Good, the Chicago Bar Association, the Illinois Bar Assoication and Lutheran Social Services of Illinois were among those monitoring the situation as opponents, as was the activist Rick Garcia.

Speaking to Windy City Times immediately after the vote, Ed Yohnka, communications director of ACLU said, “This means that the senate executive committee has rejected an effort to write discrimination into the law. On the back of the historic civil unions law, that really would have been a tragedy. The hard work that folks did in the last forty-eight hours in terms of really spreading the word about this and making the damage that this would has really paid off. I think people were well-educated in terms of what this would mean.”

Antonio Muñoz was the only Democrat who voted for the bill, and Rick Garcia offered the paper a behind the scenes look at how that came to be, saying that, “Senaor Muñoz only voted yes because [as he indicated] that yesterday when he had talked to Senator Koehler, he was “unaware” of the great opposition to this bill. And he said, 'Because I gave you my word, I will vote yes, but I don't think that, if it gets out of committee, I don't think I can vote on the floor for it.' Here again, this is very interesting because what that was about is that we were down here and we were visible and we did a really excellent job in articulating that this is not acceptable.” Garcia was among those who were initially nervous about the bill going to the floor for a vote: “I thought for sure there was better than even chance that he bill would get out of committee.”

Garcia also spoke about the role of the Catholic Conference's stand on the matter, saying that, at one point, “[They were] asked by one of the dissenters, what would happen to the children in the charity's care if this bill does not pass. And the spokesman suggested that the Catholic charities would have to get out of the child welfare business. I think that's a bluff...other dioceses have threatened it. But fine. Let them get out of the child welfare business, if they're basing everything on anti-gay messages, let them get out. Some people have said we have to stop antagonizing faith-based organizations and to that I say a resonding, “Bullshit.” Because if we weren't here antagonizing the Catholic Conference...we would have lost. Garcia praised Mary Dixon who, he said, did an excellent job in giving the testimony for the opponent: “She outlined exactly what the problems were, and explained that this was not just unpopular but bad for the children, and about codifying discrimination intot he law.”

Anthony Martinez of TCRA, talking to Windy City Times, expanded on the Catholic Conference's arguments, and said that they “spoke about why they opposed the bill, which goes back to their covenant of marriage and not placing children in homes without parents that are married.” Like Garcia, he was pleasantly surprised that the bill was held in committee, adding that, “This is such an amazing victory and shows what an organized community can achieve in a short amount of time.”

Bernard Cherkasov of EI spoke with us about the significance of the vote and what lies ahead: “If this amendment had become law, tens of thousands of children across the state of Illinois who are in a welfare or adoption process right now would have been denied their best interests because agencies would have been allowed to reject otherwise perfectly qualified couples only because they were same sex couples in a civil unions relationship.” He added that “We have to continue educating our lawmakers on just how serious these issues are. It is clear that they may not have understood clearly some of the key issues around the bill in adoption and foster care especially when it comes to prospective LGBT parents. We have to continue having that conversation with them; there are no permanent enemies in the political world, no door is ever closed and no conversation is ever finished. So we just have to go back to our supporters and those who didn't support us this time and continue educating them.” He also pointed out that the bill's defeat would not have been possible if “thousands” of people had not called in immediately after hearing the news to express their opposition with their state senators.

National Immigrant Justice Center files mass civil rights complaint on behalf of LGBT immigrant detainees [15 April, 2011]

Breaking News

Originally published in Windy City Times, April 15, 2011

The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), a project of the Heartland Alliance, recently released a mass civil rights complaint about the “abuse and mistreatment” of thirteen immigrant detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The complaint was filed with the DHS's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Office of Inspector General on April 13.

The complainants are all gay and/or transgender individuals, and their complaints list and detail systemic forms of abuse related to their sexuality and/or gender identity. In the cases described, HIV-positive detainees were denied their HIV medication, people identified as gay or “homosexual” suffered sexual epithets hurled at them and those identified as gender non-conforming were held in long-term solitary confinement, ostensibly for their protection, or subjected to various forms of sexual harassment and assault.

Juan (only first names are used in the complaint, and some are changed to ensure the privacy of the complainants) was sexually assaulted by two other detainees but only transferred to another facility after three months of his reporting the incident, despite his repeatedly asking for a transfer. Steve, an HIV-positive individual, was taken to the doctor's office for a regular checkup and endured having blood drawn from the veins on the back of his hands because a facility officer refused to unshackle them, even after repeated requests from the doctor and nurse. Monica, an MTF transgender inmate, has been denied her hormone treatments for over five months and has received no treatment for her trauma-related depression.

These are the issues facing LGBTQ asylum seekers in the United States. Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of NIJC, spoke to Windy City Times about the legal and political conundrums that asylees face and the organization's research into the systemic abuse inflicted upon so many which prompted the complaint. She says it is the first of its kind and has been in process for about a year.

It is not illegal to seek asylum in the United States and, in fact, McCarthy emphaisized, it is actually a right to do so: “Under immigration laws, [in the cases of] individuals who do not have legal status upon entering the country, the government may detain those individuals [in administrative or civil custody]. These individuals face, oftentimes, indefinite detention unless their immigration case is resolved. That's a concern to us and contrary to international law. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has issued guidelines regarding detention of asylum seekers and [recommended that] those individuals are to have what they call individualized assessments as to whether or not they are a danger to the community or a flight risk. And if the answer is no, they should be released.”

NIJC hopes for specific outcomes from this complaint. McCarthy said one goal was that individuals such as these thirteen and the many others whose cases may not even be heard of, are not detained. She added, “We are also hoping for the Obama administration to immediately investigate these allegations and take steps to remedy them and implement the recommendations we set forth.” NIJC is also hoping that the administration “will apply the protections of the Prison Rape Elimination Act,” which is currently under consideration by the Department of Justice. Another component, according to her, is that some individuals are being mandatorily detained if they have committed some type of offense in the United States, “so we would advocate that the government does have discretion to review their detention and that their detention should not be arbitrary and prolonged without any kind of review.”

The fact that asylees can be detained on arbitrary grounds has meant an explosion in the number of detainees. According to McCarthy, immigration officers detain 33,400 individuals (immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers) a day in 250-300 jails across the country. Many times, this happens in remote areas where they have no access to attorneys (they do not have a right to court-appointed counsel) or pro bono counsel, all of which is compounded by the fact that an asylee or refugee is more likely to be very poor and/or not fluent in English. In addition, they are often fleeing abuse and torture in the jails of their native countries, suffer from trauma and may not even be aware of their rights to medical treatment.

Owen Daniel-McCarter is a lead attorney and founder of Transformative Justice Law Project, which seeks to bring more attention and legal aid to people in the prison system. The group defines itself as “deeply committed to prison abolition, transformative justice, and gender self-determination.” He praised the NIJC complaint, saying that “this effort to raise awareness in a public forum of what is happening to LGBT folks in detention is really important, and I'm grateful that NIJC has filed this complaint. Most people have no awareness that such instances of abuse are even happening.”

Saying that the kinds of accounts presented in the complaint were just “the tip of the iceberg” and calling the detention system a “fortress of violence,” Daniel-McCarter said that, “immigration detention as a whole has so little accountability.” He spoke of TJLP clients' experiences in detention, “where folks are placed in facilities according to the sex assigned at birth - which results in women being placed in men's facilities - verbal harassment, physical assault, and denial of medical care.” He pointed out that the last was not just restricted to transgender inmates but reflected, on the whole, the way the medical system “is used as another way to harass people in jails.”

Describing living conditions, he said that detainees were often living with 50-80 people in bunk beds, cots, or on the floor, and that part of the goal, for activists, ought to be to make sure that “we see the root causes of harassment as coming from the institution,” and that detainees are often “mirroring” the behavior of keepers and enforcers when they abuse each other.” Because of what he calls a culture of acceptance of such behavior, Daniel-McCarter “tend[s] not to blame other detainees for homophobic and transphobic behavior.”

However, Daniel-McCarter also wants a shift in how such matters are addressed, saying that, “There needs to be a conversation simultaneous with legal efforts like this and we need to think of the structural problems with the immigration and the detention system as a whole.” He would like people, in thinking about the issues facing immigrants in detention, “to also be addressing all of the huge problems happening inside of prisons and just a lack of accountability as a whole, when we have systems of incarceration and detention of any kind. I worry that [the complaint] has the potential to glorify the prison system. What does this do as far as further institutionalizing or accepting the use of immigration detention at all? Why are LGBT folks being disproportionately deported? [How do we address the] inherent heterosexism within immigration law as a whole?”

Daniel-McCarter acknowledged that none of these were easily resolvable: “It's this problem that all of us struggle with as attorneys – what are the limitations to a litigation strategy? And those are just conversations that the legal system as a whole doesn't allow us to have. It would be amazing if there were some sort of progressive, grassroots activism, happening in Chicago separate from NIJC, that supports this and also asks questions that force us to move beyond, 'What's happening in detention?' to 'Why do we have detention?'” He emphasized the importance of the NIJC complaint, saying that, “What they're doing within the legal framework is absolutely progressive and trying to push the boundaries of what ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement], DHS and DOJ and have been doing so far.”

NIJC has begun an online letter writing campaign,which can be found at http://www.immigrantjustice.org/press/detention/ocrclcomplaint.html. McCarthy, in speaking to the need for the LGBTQ community to respond to this matter, said, “We hope this will encourage the community to become aware of these issues happening to its brothers and sisters who are oftentimes invisible in our communities, and to talk about this and raise it with government officials.”

Changes abound at Howard Brown [21 July, 2010]

Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) recently went through a major upheaval when it was revealed that the executive director and chief financial officer had allegedly mishandled funds involving the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) grant, which administers the grant.  This supposed discovery resulted in the departure of its two senior staff, CFO Mark Joslyn and CEO Michael Cook, and the transference of the grant to Northwestern University.  On June 1, Jamal Edwards, formerly a partner in the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, took over as executive director.  At the time, the matter of the MACS grant was under review.

In an interview with Windy City Times, Edwards provided some updates.  Additional updates were provided via an e-mail from Leslie Schreiber of Winger Associates, the communications firm that is currently handling press inquiries.  So far, Howard Brown has instituted a compliance committee that reports to both Edwards and the board of directors on “financial and [human resources] issues and the like.” A new board has been voted on; former chair Stephen Phelps is now a member-at-large and the new board chairman is Mark D.  Andrews, who is senior litigation counsel at Career Education Corporation, a Hoffman Estates-based entity that describes itself as part of the “private, for-profit postsecondary education industry.”  The board vice-chair is Laura Angelucci, vice president of administration at UCAN (Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network), a social-service organization that works primarily with wards of the state system.  According to Schreiber, while the board traditionally conducts elections in March, these were delayed this year “in order to maintain consistency during the review.”

Editha Paras has joined Howard Brown as the new chief financial officer.  Her bio was not up on the website before Windy City Times went to press.  According to Schreiber, she holds “an MBA in finance and marketing from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.”  Her LinkedIn profile lists her as the owner of Dos Amigas restaurant; Schreiber wrote that her retail experience would especially facilitate HBHC’s management of The Brown Elephant, the organization’s thrift store that is a significant source of revenue.

There is the pending matter of the review.  According to Schreiber, “the NIH [ National Institutes of Health ] agreed to allow Howard Brown to conduct its own internal investigation, using outside counsel and forensic auditors.  As part of this review, Howard Brown also offered to look into its other federal grants, in order to ensure a complete and exhaustive review.”  She informed WCT that “we … expect to be in a position to publicly discuss the matter further” after HBHC shares its findings with the NIH “in the coming weeks.”  No exact date is available at this point.  The NIH was contacted for more details, and only sent a brief response: “It is NIH policy to neither confirm nor deny that a review has been initiated or is underway.”

In May, Edwards had told WCT that he was “not part of the culture of the past” of HBHC but part of its “culture of integrity.”  Asked this time what he was doing to change the culture at Howard Brown, he responded that there was no need to change the “remarkable” culture of the organization; the issue had been that “individuals had departed” from that “culture of integrity” and the task now was to return to that culture and to “re-develop” the mission of the organization.  He said that part of his work in that regard was underway as he went about “getting information from staff and community and various advisory boards,” such as that of the Lesbian Community Care Project.

In May, both Paul Fairchild, then-interim chief operating officer, and Edwards had spoken of having had meetings with “major donors,” and there was no indication of them having met with members of the larger community that the organization served.  Asked if he would now consider a community meeting, Edwards responded that “we hope to do that” but that HBHC is not yet in a position to do so until they have all the facts and the review is complete.

In an unusual move that was criticized by community members, HBHC has been communicating with the public on this matter only through an outside public-relations firm, Winger Marketing, even though it has a director of communications, Donald Rolfe, on staff.  (When WCT contacted Edwards for an interview, it was Schreiber who responded. ) Schreiber is listed as the contact person on HBHC’s website.  Asked why this was the case, both Edwards and Schreiber responded that Winger Marketing had been working with HBHC for the past two years (with Schreiber noting that it did so at a “substantially reduced rate”) and that Rolfe, according to Schreiber, is also “responsible for the business development of the Brown Elephant operations as his primary responsibility.”

Judging from the continuing responses and conversations taking place around town (and the letters received at this paper), the Chicago LGBT community is still waiting for a full account of exactly what transpired at HBHC.  Clearly, it wants an assurance that such an incident will not happen again before it rests its faith in a “culture of integrity” at the organization.  Edwards said that the organization’s service to the community had not faltered.  He pointed to the services that HBHC continues to provide to 500 primary care patients; the testing of 650 people; and the 500 homeless and at-risk youth with whom it has worked.  Windy City Timeswill continue to follow this story.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 21 July, 2010

Confab looks at queers and sex offenders [2 June, 2010]

“What’s queer about sex offenders?  Are sex offenders the new queers?”  That was the provocative title of an all-day conference on sex-offender laws, hosted by the University of Chicago and the Center on Halsted and held at the Center May 27.   Speakers included literary theorists, activists, artists, legal scholars and political scientists.

Richard Wright, assistant professor of criminal justice at Bridgewater State College and the editor of the recent book Sex Offender Laws: Failed Policies, New Direction, provided a broad overview of the shifts in sex-offender laws and their effects on the rights of registered sex offenders (RSOs), and argued that the laws had gone too far and needed reform.  Over the last many decades, laws punishing and registering sex offenders have so increased in severity that several legal critics now consider them draconian.  In early May, federal judge Jack B.  Weinstein of the United States District Court in Brooklyn ruled that the electronic monitoring of Peter Polouizzi, a man awaiting retrial on child pornography, was unconstitutional, saying that it violated his procedural due process rights.  Currently, depending on the city and state, an RSO may be barred from living in federal housing and may find it impossible to get a job.  Many RSOs slide into lives of poverty and despair as basics like housing are put out of their reach.

One major problem with the punishment of RSOs is that the laws are made so that “one size fits all,” instead of being calibrated to reflect the severity of the crime.  For that reason, someone who looks at child pornography may be punished exactly like someone who rapes a child.  According to Wright, these laws are not only burdensome on RSOs but also extremely expensive because state and local agencies have to funnel valuable time and energy into constant monitoring of sex offenders.  In addition, he said, “there is no definite empirical evidence that exclusionary zones reduce sex offender recidivism” and, in fact, by banishing RSOs to a few areas, the laws aid “the development of high-risk sex offender enclaves.”

But what does any of this have to do with queers?  Don Kulick, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and a conference organizer, said that until recently, “homosexuality was a sex offense, homosexuals were sex offenders.” Joe Fischel, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago and an organizer of the event, pointed out a historical concurrence: the relatively high level of acceptance and even protection of LGBTs in the past 15 years has coincided with a rise in the punishment and monitoring of RSOs.  As he put it, “the sex offender takes up the space now vacated by the homosexual.”

Speakers also pointed out that children’s sexuality has been erased from culture.  Yet, the figure of the queer child and his/her relationship to older cultural and/or sexual mentors has long been a mainstay of queer culture and literature.  Kathleen Stockton, professor of English at the University of Utah and author of The Queer Child: Growing Sideways in the 20th Century looked at key moments in fiction like Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, where children possessed a degree of agency and response to their sexuality.

Laurie Jo Reynolds, artist, activist and adjunct professor at the Film and Video Department at Columbia College, holds a 2010 Soros Justice Project Fellowship; her current work considers the impact of sex-offender statutes in Illinois.  She presented a series of staged photographs that provided a visual counterpoint to the traditional banishment of RSOs.  In one, an RSO is shown returning from prison to the welcoming arms of family and friends.  Reynolds said that the point was to ask what would it mean for an RSO to be meaningfully reintegrated back into their community.  She noted that activists had to work with the “dead silence” around laws from both RSOs and their families and what we might presume to be their “natural allies” on the left.

A session with Fischel and Rose Corrigan, assistant professor of law and politics at Drexel University, indicated some tension as the two differed on the ways in which sex-offender laws have been unsuccessful.  While Fischel felt that punishment and registries were overly punitive, Corrigan, who has worked with survivors of sexual and domestic violence, stated that not enough was done to provide support for victims of rape and abuse.  She also posed a question: “Why do prosecutors who hate rape cases [in that they don’t prosecute them enough] love sex offender cases?”  Her answer was that “getting people on the sex-offender registries was an easy way to show they are ‘tough on crime’ without doing a lot of work.”

During question-and-answer sessions, RSOs and their families spoke up and addressed their frustrations at the laws.  Craig A., who did not give his last name for reasons of privacy, stated that he had been found guilty of possession of child pornography in Downers Grove in 2006.  He was a journalist and a competing newspaper publicized his arrest.  According to him, “all the aldermen were suddenly confronted with the fact that a newspaper reporter, who looks “just like me” is also a sex offender.” Craig’s point was that there could be no stereotypes of the “typical” sex offender.  He added, “we need to be out and loud.”

Craig A. told Windy City Times that he liked the conference, saying that “it was freeing to be able to get up in a group of strangers and admit what I’ve done, and not be condemned for it.  This was the first time [I found] acceptance and support [among strangers] .” Stuart Michaels, undergraduate program chair at the University of Chicago’s Center for Gender Studies and an organizer, spoke added, “This tells me that we have to look at some intersectional and difficult questions.  It’s quite historic to have in the same room sex offenders, academics, activists and artists talking about these issues.” The conference ended with a session about the 2007 film Zoo, about zoophiles, which included a conversation with the director Robinson Devor.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 2 June, 2010

E. Patrick Johnson talks about Sweet Tea [1 June, 2010]

When E.  Patrick Johnson conceived his book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History, he did not think the project would ever extend beyond the printed word.  Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008, the book was a collection of oral narratives.  But halfway through the research and interviewing process, Johnson realized he would need to do more.  As he explained to Windy City Times in a 2008 interview: “[H] earing them tell their stories in their unique ways suggested to me that the immediacy of the telling had to be recaptured in a way that reading it on a page would not.”

Johnson, professor and chair in the department of performance studies and professor in the department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University, is no stranger to the stage and he began working on a one-man rendition of nine of the narratives in the book.  The result was Pouring Tea, which became part of his book tour over the next year.  Then, in the spring of 2008, he was approached by Jane Saks, executive director of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College to become a fellow at the Institute in order to develop Pouring Tea into a play.  After months of work shopping and script rewrites, Sweet Tea begins its life as a theatrical adaptation directed by Daniel Alexander Jones and co-produced by Saks, the Institute and About Face Theatre.

Speaking via phone to Windy City Times May 3, Johnson spoke of his excitement about the new project.  Pouring Tea featured Johnson retelling the narratives in the classic one-man performance style, reading while sitting on a stool with no accessories but the most basic lighting.  The new production still features Johnson as the only performer but his appearance is now part of a rather different theatrical experience, complete with sound, set and light design.  Johnson says he wasn”t sure, going into the workshops, whether he would even be a part of the project.  But once that decision was made, another one was made for him: “In the workshops, all the professionals said the same thing to me: “We know one thing for sure: you’ve got to get off that stool!”

Director Jones uses a jazz aesthetic in his retelling, according to Johnson, and that meant rendering some of the now thirteen featured men in unconventional ways.  For instance, Jones conceived of “Freddie” as a beautiful bird that preened and sat atop a tree but would fly away if you came too close to it.  So, “for Freddie, I am literally in a tree,” said Johnson.  Another change is that Countess Vivian, the oldest narrator in the book, accompanies Johnson throughout the show as an elder.  That accompaniment is also part of a significant change from both the book and the play: Johnson now includes his own experiences growing up Black and gay in the South.

The process of writing about himself was not always a comfortable one.  “It was a interesting for me, having to turn the mike back onto myself, and it was also pretty frightening,” he said.  He felt vulnerable and exposed, especially around the parts where he revealed his guilt and fears around the HIV/AIDS deaths of close friends, many of whom died in the 1980s.  Writing about his own reactions meant revealing the uncomfortable truth that he had not gone to their funerals: “It was terrifying for me.  It didn’t help that all my memories and experiences of funerals have been traumatic.  I had all this guilt, and I’d been in denial; I really hadn’t dealt with the guilt about not going.”

But, in the end, Johnson realized that the insertion of his own experiences into those of the men whose words he had recorded would only enrich the play and take Sweet Tea to another level: “The whole experience really stretched me as an actor and as a writer.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 June, 2010

Group stages sit-in at Durbin’s office; 13 arrested [26 May, 2010]

Thirteen LGBTQ protesters staged a sit-in at U.S.  Sen.  Richard Durbin’s Chicago office May 20.  They went to insist that the senator sign a pledge affirming his support for a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) .  The senator was not in his office, but the activists refused to leave unless the pledge was signed; Durbin did not oblige.  The pledge required Durbin to “agree to stand before [his  colleagues in the U.S.  Senate and the media to forcefully declare the urgent need for a transgender-inclusive ENDA in 2010.”

After an hour and a half, they were arrested.  They included Lindsey Dietzler, Roger Fraser, Brent Holman-Gomez, Nik Maciejewski, Rachael McIntosh and Corrine Mina.  The arrestees came from the Harvey Milk Week of Action Coalition, and they represented groups such as GenderQueer Chicago, Join the Impact and the Gay Liberation Network.  (The organization LGBT Change was not a participant in the sit-in, but helped to organize the week. ) They were later released.

The senator has co-sponsored the bill, but the group feels that his support has not been forceful enough.  In addition, LGBT Change wants to ensure that the bill is inclusive of transgender people by including gender identity as a protected category.  ENDA was poised for passage in 2006 but disintegrated in controversy when some of its sponsors, including openly gay U.S.  Rep. Barney Frank, decided that the clause for transgender inclusion would kill its chances.  Under severe criticism, the Human Rights Campaign supported a non-inclusive ENDA, and the move resulted in a still-prevalent widespread suspicion about the organization within the transgender community.

This year the bill has been moving along in fits and starts, but many LGBTQ activists believe that it is essential to push for its passage before it is deferred yet again.  Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for LGBT Change, told Windy City Timesthat the group was concerned that even if ENDA came up for a vote, another amendment could effectively erase the transgender-inclusive language.  He said that trans inclusivity was especially important because “the transgender community is the most discriminated against in terms of workplace protection and it needs more protection than gays.”  Martinez added that a fourteenth person (a trans protester) who went to Durbin’s office left before the sit-in because he has been unemployed for a few years and feared jeopardizing his ongoing job search if he were also arrested.

Transgender protections in the workplace have been widely reviled by right-wing groups who have sought to spread fears about the consequences of the same, especially in classrooms, and often in language that does not reflect the pronouns and identities chosen by transgender people.  The Traditional Values Coalition recently stated, “every school district in America will be forbidden by law to reassign any she-male teacher because this would be considered ‘discrimination.’  Thus, children will be trapped in classes taught by men who dress as women and students will be indoctrinated to affirm that this is normal behavior.” Writing in response to such claims, Jillian Weiss, a trans activist who has been advocating for ENDA, wrote on The Bilerico Project blog that, in fact, “[c] ontrary to the claims of the Traditional Values Coalition, parents have appropriately been permitted to opt-out if they find that their child is having a particular problem.” She has also pointed out that “[o]ver two dozen states and over 100 cities in the U.S. are covered by laws prohibiting gender identity discrimination in the workplace since 1979.  There are also many other countries that have similar laws.  The fears of hysterical ideologues about harm to children have not come to pass.” (Disclosure: this reporter also writes for Bilerico.)

Discrimination towards transgender employees extends even to those workplaces where they are not in contact with children.  According to a 2009 National Transgender Discrimination Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “97% of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment or mistreatment on the job” and “47% had experienced an adverse job outcome, such as being fired, not hired or denied a promotion.” It also found that 15% of transgender people lived on $10,000 per year.

Lindsey Dietzler, a member of Join the Impact and Genderqueer Chicago and among those arrested in Durbin’s office, identifies as genderqueer and said that she participated in the action because, as she said to Windy City Times, “first and foremost, I don”t agree with exclusionary politics— [ ENDA ] is for all of us or for none of us.” But Dietzler also has had practical experience in what it means to be trans-identified or perceived as gender non-conforming in the workplace.  In previous jobs, she said, “I’ve had to hide who I am.” Although her current workplace feels safe to her, she will be laid off in two months, and she is concerned about her gender identity being an issue in her job search or in a new workplace.

Windy City Times contacted Christina Angarola, a Durbin spokeswoman; she e-mailed that he “opposes discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.  He’s not only been a supporter of ENDA for the past several Congresses, he has taken a leadership role by signing on as an original co-sponsor of the legislation.  In addition, he personally has a workplace nondiscrimination policy with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity.”  But if that were the case, why would Durbin not sign the pledge?  Angarola responded that “[Durbin] has a policy not to sign pledges, hasn’t signed one for many, many years.  Had they made an appointment to meet with our staff we could have shared his policy positions.”

Martinez, asked for a response to that statement, said that LGBT Change had “asked the staff for an appointment with the senator, but he would not meet with us.  We wanted to meet with the senator, not the staff.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 May, 2010

Sweet Tea comes to life [12 May, 2010]

Sweet Tea, a new production of E.  Patrick Johnson’s one-man performance of the stories and lives of Black gay men in the South, began its theatrical run May 7 at the Viaduct Theatre.  The piece is based on Johnson’s book of the same name, a compendium of interviews with 63 subjects.  The May 8 performance was preceded by a panel discussion involving several of the men.  Windy City Times spoke with three of them separately by phone the day before the initial performance.

Each of them emphasized how honored they felt about being included first in the book and then in the new production.  Their accounts of how they came to be where they are as Black gay men who either still live in the South or lived there for significant parts of their lives differed somewhat, as did their sense of the importance of both the book and the performances.

Duncan Teague, who speaks in a soft-spoken but very measured and authoritative way, was “born sometime in the early ’60s,” is a member of the Black gay spoken-word group, ADODI Muse, and an AIDS activist based in Atlanta, Ga.  A performer like Johnson, he was excited about the book project because, as he put it, “We don’t have enough of our histories recorded.”  Teague had not expected that the project would go beyond the printed word, so when he got a call from Johnson outlining his plans to take it to the stage, he was intrigued.  He has since seen Sweet Tea as both a reading and as a performance, was “awestruck to hear [my] voice coming out of someone else’s body.  Patrick didn’t just get my voice, he got me.”  Laughing, he continued, “There was a little professional jealousy there.  But really, it was so honoring, to know that what I said was worth putting on stage, that he gave it that much energy and time.”  Speaking of the transition from Johnson’s original reading to a theatrical production, Teague said, “I’m overjoyed that what was a man on a stool becomes the full production.”

“C.C.” (who did not use his full name for the interview) was born in Greenville, Miss., in 1961 and now teaches dance at a university in Alabama.  “C.C.” praised Johnson’s work as “quite brilliant—it shows why people like Patrick should continue to push the envelope.” He went on to explain that at the time of the interviews, in 2004, the county was “not pleasant” and that “people were very vocal about what they thought about homosexuality, even in liberal places.”  He saw Sweet Tea as indicative of the ways the conversation around identity in the US, which he regards as an old and unproductive one, could be re-imagined: “[Sweet Tea] allows someone to see us as whole people.  I discovered at 13 that the least of my problems was about being Black and gay.  [Life is] about being health and whole, finding how you get to these places where you get your wholeness and power not through race.”

The South is also perceived in stereotypes about repression, especially in terms of homosexuality but “C.C.” said that it is “quite the opposite.  It’s about owning who you are no matter who you are.  Homosexuality is always there, and people will say, “that’s just who they are.”  In a strange way, it allows you to be more so yourself than in Northern places where people get to act out their characters in some sort of dive.  Eccentricity always a part of the make-up of the South.”

But if the South is about “owning who you are,” why would he only use his initials?  The question provoked a loud peal of laughter and then the words, “That’s part of the drama as a Southerner; that’s part of the drama, the tea, honey! [As Johnson explains in his book, “tea” is also another word for gossip.] You don’t want to spill the tea, you want to keep the tea!”

At 74, Harold Mays, Jr., born in St.  Louis, Mo., speaks with the energy and zest for life stereotypically ascribed only to people decades younger.  He was excited to be included in the book, and was even more honored to have his story be picked as part of the theatrical piece.  “I felt like Sidney Poitier,” he chuckled, adding that, “Of course, it had nothing to do with me, it’s all [Patrick’s] interpretation.”  Mays felt that while Sweet Tea was important in all its forms, the play would take it to new places: “With the book, no matter how widespread and well-publicized it might be, it may not be read by many people.  This opens it to more people.”

Mays also spoke of the importance of letting people know how much had changed through the narratives in Sweet Tea, speaking of a time when “The life of gay males usually existed in circles and [you] had to be closeted.”  But he also made it clear that if changes in societal perception had come about for him, it had come about in large part because he had always held to his mother’s advice: “No matter what you do, you respect yourself and your family name and honor.”

For this reason, he felt, he had been with a partner, also named Harold and a retired university professor, for 45 years, and the two were loved and respected by family, friends and community: “I have a small family, and when they call, they ask about him before they ask about me.”  The two men live in Washington, D.C., and were recently, according to Mays, part of a D.C. Metro ad campaign that featured a range of different users, including a mother with a child, a person in a wheelchair—and the two Harolds carrying their plants home on the train.  Mays added, “I don’t feel old; I feel a part of life today.  We have national leaders who see people for who they are and not for their sexual orientation.  I feel very, very whole.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 12 May, 2010

Gender JUST protests CPS again [19 May, 2010]

Facebook photo

Gender JUST carried out its third direct action against CPS May 13.  The local grassroots organization has been waging a campaign for a grievance process that would allow LGBTQ students in Chicago public schools (CPS) to record the harassment they suffer and for greater awareness facing these students overall.  According to the group, it has been unsuccessfully attempting for nearly a year to get Ron Huberman, chief executive officer of CPS, to agree to the institution of this process.  Finally, feeling that it was being stalled and that talks had broken down, the group has, in recent weeks, been engaging in direct action protests against CPS and Huberman.

In last week’s action, the group targeted Huberman’s appearance at a fundraiser hosted by the Peace and Education Coalition at the U.S. Cellular Field Stadium Club.  Windy City Times spoke to members Sam Finkelstein and Emily Manes after the fact, and also contacted Monique Bond, CPS communications officer.  [Disclosure: this reporter is a member of Gender JUST]

According to Finkelstein, the group went up to Huberman as he attempted to enter the club, and kept chanting slogans as they delivered a set of grievances recorded by LGBTQ students.  Asked why they chose this particular event, Finkelstein said, “the school-going youth in Gender JUST felt that the award was undeserved; they were experiencing the opposite of peace and the person who has the power to do something about it is doing nothing.  [Huberman] is really part of the problem.”  According to him, Arne Duncan, the previous CEO, had also been offered a similar award but had turned it down, saying that he could not accept it in good conscience when CPS students were facing high rates of violence.  Finkelstein said that recent research by GLSEN showed that 80 percent of LGBTQ students experienced some form of violence, whether physical or verbal.

Asked about the protest, Bond said, “What I do know about our attempts to dialogue with the students and the group is that they have been a bit unreasonable.  Their approach has been one of protest.  We hear their concerns and have every desire to talk to the students; we are not ignoring them.” Asked about what CPS might do to institute a grievance process, she said, “I don’t mean to minimize the issues; however, we have a number of pressing issues [like] the budget and the state deficit.  [Huberman’s] attention has been somewhat distracted.”  She referred to the ongoing matter of teacher layoffs and school closures.  Bond insisted that the issue of violence was not being ignored but that she could not commit to a timeline regarding the institution of the grievance process.

Asked to respond to Bond’s description of the protests and the issue, Finkelstein said “ [CPS continues] to use the budget as an excuse for not dealing with the issue of school violence.”  He said he was “not surprised that they think it’s unreasonable to protest and tell the truth” and that the group was drawing on a long tradition of direct action that went back to the AIDS protests of the 1980s and further back to the civil rights era when ' “significant gains were only secured through direct action when people were pushed against the wall.  The only power at our disposal is that of direct action.  We are going to continue to put pressure on them through any means possible until they follow through.”  He also said, “After nine meetings, they failed to live up to any of the commitments that they made.  The youth decided the only way to move bureaucracy is by building momentum, getting allies and forcing them to respond through direct action.”

Emily Manes, a Gender JUST member and student teacher in CPS, said that she felt that the action was successful in showing Huberman that they were serious.  According to her, success was indicated by the fact that “the very next day, Drew Berris [special assistant to the CEO] e-mailed us, saying that he wants a formal request for the grievance process in writing.”  Asked about the issue of dialogue, Manes said that “the protests might not be conducive to dialogue, but they are conducive to getting things done.”

Manes gave an example of her own experience in CPS to illustrate the need to address heterosexism and homophobia in schools.  She spoke of how one male student in the second grade had come up to her and complained that another male student “likes me in a nasty kind of way.”  Afterwards, the boy referred to by the first student came crying to her saying that he had been treating him badly.  Manes said, “Kids are learning that kind of homophobia even at that young age.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 19 May, 2010

Alexandra Billings speaks at UIC’s Lavender Graduation [12 May, 2010]

Alexandra Billings spoke at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s recent Lavender Graduation.  Photo by M.  Alejos

For the third year in a row, the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC’s) Gender and Sexuality Center (GSC) hosted a Lavender Graduation.  When it first started in 2007, the event was designed to give LGBTQA students a way to celebrate their graduation and academic achievements while recognizing that their sexual and gender identities were integral to their educational experiences and deserving of celebration and recognition.  Since then, Lavender Graduation has expanded from 10 students to 30; this year’s keynote speaker was trans actor/entertainer Alexandra Billings.

Liz Thomson, interim director of GSC, spoke to Windy City Times as she was putting the final touches on the preparations.  She said that the event is meant for undergraduates, graduates and professional students across the campus and is also open to those from UIC who might be visiting or commuting from Chicago.  The event began when GSC officers looked at the 2007 Advocate guide to colleges and realized that they were lacking a lavender graduation ceremony, something that is common at other schools and universities.  “Otherwise,” said Thomson, “The only formal ways for LGBTQA students to get together are in October, national coming-out month.”  The event also gives students a school year-end celebration and helps them keep in touch with young alumni.

Lavender Graduation is not as formal as the school’s larger graduation ceremony—students do not wear their robes for this occasion—but it is nonetheless packed with meaningful gestures.  Students are each given a rainbow tassel and a rainbow diploma.  Thomson said that many of them wear the tassels to the formal ceremony.  Every student can bring a special guest who might be a mentor/advisor to him or her, and the diploma is first handed to that person, who then hands it to the student.  As Thomson put it, “This is more of a cultural ceremony.  We are recognizing their academic achievements and that they survived the university system along with the attendant homophobia and heterosexism.  As good as UIC is, we still have challenges.”

Thomson also pointed out the advantages of this smaller and more intimate event over the larger one: “This is different for them because [at the bigger ceremony] they don’t feel they know anybody, and they may not be able to pay for a cap and gown.  Here they go to a ceremony with a few people whom they know well.  There are students I’ve known on a day-to-day basis.”

One such student is Jorge Mena, who is working on a double major in anthropology and Latin American studies.  A senior next year, Mena is being honored this year with a $500 scholarship from the UIC Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues.  Mena is out as queer and as an undocumented student, and his research and activism reflect his multiple identities.  He is a member of Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), a local group that began as part of the movement to successfully halt the deportation of Rigo Padilla, also an undocumented UIC student.  His current work, under the mentorship of anthropology adjunct assistant professor Ruth Gomberg-Munoz, looks at post-9/11 immigration labor issues and the rise of youth activist groups like IYJL.  Mena, who spoke to the paper on the day of Lavender Graduation, was also involved with the organizing of the first Dream Gala, a fundraiser for undocumented UIC students who cannot access federal financial aid.  He plans to use most of his scholarship money to pay for tuition.

Mena said that the GSC had given him a sense of community and amenities like the Rainbow Resource Room, which provides a space for students to meet as well as computers for them to use.  Being out as both undocumented and as queer has “taught me to be more open-minded, to deal with all these secrets of being gay and undocumented.  That’s why it makes sense to talk about “coming out of the shadows” [a slogan that IYJL has popularized among undocumented students] —it’s all so personal for me.  It’s taught me to be more accepting of people.”

John D’Emilio, a scholar of gay history and politics as well as gender and women’s studies, spoke of the event’s historical significance.  He said that, “Just half a century ago, students would get expelled from college for being gay.  The idea that a university has a ceremony that recognizes the sexual and gender identity of a student and celebrates it is just wonderful.”  He went on to add, “UIC is a very queer-friendly place.  Between the GSC and the Chancellor’s Committee and the many courses available, students have many different spaces where they can come together.  But it’s very special that this important ceremony exists to recognize their queerness.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 12 May, 2010

Howard Brown: New leaders talk [5 May, 2010]

After weeks of speculation and rumors floating in the Chicago LGBTQ community, Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) finally confirmed that the reasons for the departure of CEO Michael Cook and CFO Mark Joslyn had to do with allegations of mishandling funds involving the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) grant.  As announced last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , which administers the grant, discovered the discrepancies.  HBHC also announced that Jamal Edwards, currently a partner in the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, will take over as CEO June 1.  Windy City Times spoke separately to Edwards and to Paul Fairchild, the interim chief operating officer.

Towards a timeline

Both Edwards and Fairchild indicated that they were still not able to give full details of what transpired at HBHC.  When asked for details about “management changes” that the agency claims to have instituted, Edwards said that, for instance, they were “following recommendations on internal controls that they were in the process of implementing, such as the appointment and creation of a compliance committee that would take any issues directly to the board.”  He also said that he would not be able to make too many changes until he officially became CEO in June.

What was the timeline of events?  When did things begin to unravel and when did Howard Brown begin to act upon the information?  Who knew what was going on and when did they speak up?  Edwards responded that such information was “confidential and privileged.”  He did say that the board received a letter from NIH in October 2009, stating that it had found discrepancies.  While NIH is conducting a review of MACS” proper protocol, the board has hired an outside auditor to conduct a review.  That confidential review will be given to NIH and will be discussed publicly, assuming NIH approves.

According to Edwards, the board decided that the lead status on the MACS grant would be transferred to Northwestern University April 1: “It was in the best interest of Howard Brown and the grant to ensure that there was no mishandling of funds.  Northwestern had requested to be the lead agency in the past; we have a very strong partnership with them.” Fairchild said that, “the only difference is now Northwestern will manage the payment of subcontractors, versus us paying the subcontractors.  Northwestern will invoice for the work.”  That, according to him, “was necessary because the grant had come due; it’s renewed every five years.  We were not comfortable that we were in compliance with NIH regulations.”

If the board had not decided to transfer the lead status to Northwestern, would NIH still have insisted on the transfer taking place?  Both men said they could not speculate on what NIH would or would not have done.  Edwards said that NIH “understood that the transfer is in the best interest of MACS, to protect the ongoing research.  The scientific integrity of Howard is still excellent.  None of that is compromised.”  Both men insisted that the transfer did not involve a huge loss of money.  Edwards also said that the MACS grant represents over $3 million a year, of which “a substantial amount of that goes to Northwestern, a substantial amount goes to Howard Brown.”  As for potential loss of status, Edwards said that Howard Brown is still doing the exact same work and the agency is “as important to NIH and Northwestern as before.  I”ve spoken to researchers at NIH—they still respect Howard Brown as a community-based organization doing great work.”

Edwards as outsider/insider

The appointment of Edwards as CEO is bound to raise some questions because he comes to the position after having served as Howard Brown’s primary outside counsel.  Does this represent a conflict of interest?  Edwards said that he and his partners at Kirkland and Ellis “did not have any access or information [ about the mishandling of funds ] to put us on notice.” He went on, “My firm brought the issue to the board’s attention.  We have always been candid with Howard Brown.” From his official biography, all indications are that Edwards has some experience with being on the boards of non-profits but has little actual work experience in the industry.  He has been immediate past president/chairman of the board on the board of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago and is currently the vice chair of Vital Bridges.  But what direct experience does he feel he brings to the position of CEO of Howard Brown?

Edwards’ response was, “I bring integrity.  I have counseled the board.  The number one thing I bring is the integrity of being an accomplished lawyer.  I’ve been a vice president and president in non-profits and worked in several for-profits.  I know how to ask and to seek counseling guidance for a non-profit.  Ultimately, I work in the best interest of Howard Brown.”  About whether he was simply part of the same culture that may have resulted in the current scandal, he responded, “I’m not part of the culture of the past.  I’m a part of the culture of integrity at Howard Brown.”  He also said that it was not unusual for boards to hire their outside counsel, naming Coca-Cola, Home Depot and WellPoint as having done so: “When something goes wrong, it’s not unusual for a board to hire the lawyer who helped fix things.”

What to tell, when and to whom

Edwards and Fairchild spoke of the concerns that might emerge with donors.  Fairchild confirmed that he had organized a meeting with Howard Brown’s “major donors.”  He would not name them but said the purpose of the meeting was to bring them up to date and answer questions.  According to Fairchild, “People were relieved to talk with us.  Everyone was graceful.”  Edwards said that “they should know that the board has done everything it can—all the steps were taken voluntarily, we are facing challenges which are under control.  The staff has worked very hard and Howard Brown will continue to survive.”

But what would they want people in the community to know?  Edwards responded, “We plan to continue to reach out—we hope people understand that we have been doing everything in the best interest of Howard Brown.  We cannot speak as openly as we would like; we want to protect the organization by following the proper protocol.”  He added that “Howard Brown is still strong, its research and programs are strong.  The community should continue to support Howard Brown.”  Fairchild also said the community should know about the Howard Brown staff, saying, “they have worked hard in providing the vital services of Howard Brown.” He added, “Without Howard Brown, people will die.”  Fairchild went on to say that, “We don’t intend to go anywhere.  The work continues.”  Addressing rumors that the agency was cutting services, he denied that was the case, “there is a waiting list for people who are uninsured, but that has nothing to do with any of this.”

As for the rumors that a previous relationship between board chair Steven Phelps and Cook may have compromised matters, Fairchild said he was “not going to comment on any of that.”  Edwards responded, “I don”t have any personal knowledge about that.  That question should be addressed to those with personal knowledge.  I have no reason to think that personal knowledge compromised the board.”

While these responses address some of the questions that have emerged in recent weeks, there are still many remaining and the speculation that surrounds the agency is likely to continue for some time.  On the one hand, the board of Howard Brown, like that of so many non-profits, is largely answerable to its “major donors,” who appear to have received as close an account as possible before the community at large received one.  On the other hand, board members and the agency are also part of a community that consists of people and patients who may not be donors but who still seek transparency from an organization that depends on the good will of those it was formed to serve.

In the coming weeks, Windy City Times will continue to follow this story.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 5 May, 2010

Gender JUST takes over CPS building [5 May, 2010]

In a surprise action, approximately 50 members of the local grassroots organization Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) and allies took over the downtown headquarters of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) April 29.  This was part of an ongoing series of actions by the group’s Safe and Affirming Education Campaign, which focuses on the issues facing LGBTQ and other youth in CPS.  Members of Gender JUST, including several youth and students, have been trying to work with CEO Ron Huberman in an effort to institute a grievance procedure with the school system.

Sam Finkelstein spoke to Windy City Times after the event, as did Eric Kitty and Lucky Mosqueda; all three are members of the leadership circle of the group.  (Disclosure: this reporter is also a member.) Finkelstein gave the context for the groups’ takeover: “This action was the second in a series of escalating actions that Gender JUST has been planning.  We met with Ron Huberman a number of times until we realized they weren”t following through with their stated commitments.  We thought it was now time to focus on the demand until they implemented it.”  The group also led a protest outside CPS headquarters April 13.  Members of Blocks Together, a direct-action community organization, and Southwest Youth Collaborative, a network of youth and community development organizations, also participated in this recent protest.

Finkelstein said that Gender JUST youth members have been asking for the institution of a grievance procedure, “a way to raise a flag when issues of violence, whether institutional or systemic, occurred.”  Under current policies, interpersonal violence between students is usually dealt with by punishment of the perpetrator but a student has no recourse if a security guard or a teacher inflicts violence upon them, and the incident will often go unaddressed.  Mosqueda, a graduate of Theodore Roosevelt High School, said that the group’s solution instituted something much like the conduct report that is filled out after an incident of violence between students; the difference is that this report would be filled out on an adult perpetrator.

After what the group saw as Huberman’s ongoing refusal to commit to change and his constant stalling, including the cancellation of a meeting scheduled for that morning, the youth decided to take over the building by way of stepping up their protest.  This time they decided, according to Finkelstein, “to paint a picture: that this is a serious issue for us and we are willing to put our safety at stake.  We shut the building down so that people couldn’t come in or out.”

Eric Kitty, a junior at Kelly High School, described the event to Windy City Times as “very successful,” and gave details: “At 4:30, we went into the lobby and demanded that Ron Huberman come downstairs.  Four students, including Lucky and Ahkia Daniels, gave testimonies about their harassment in CPS.”  All the while, demonstrators held up signs, including one with an image of Ron Huberman with a halo atop his head and the words: “My house is worth more than your education.”  This was a direct response to the recent news that Huberman and his partner have bought an 11-room house for $898,000, a move widely noted by many because CPS has been making cutbacks in teacher pay and programs.  Chanting “We want Ron” and other slogans, the group called for Huberman to come down and talk to them directly.  Instead, Drew Beres, Huberman’s assistant, came down and attempted to talk to the group.  However, they shouted him down with, “You ain’t got no power.  Go back upstairs!” The protesters eventually dispersed at 5:30.

Asked about the responses to their action, Gender JUST said that most people were largely positive and that even those emerging from CPS at the end of the day seemed overwhelmingly positive.  According to Finkelstein, nearly half of them gave the group thumbs-up signs or put their fists in the air in support, others were supportive and wanted to know more while some “didn’t want anything to do with us.”  All three said it was a successful action.  Kitty felt that “it stepped up the level of power on our side.  Doing the protest felt really powerful, as did listening to all these testimonies on why the students think the process should be implemented.  There were also a lot of people who came to share their experience.”

As for next steps, Finkelstein said the group would keep building pressure as long as they felt that Huberman was not engaging with them.  Mosqueda emphasized, “We are sick and tired of playing their games.” She repeated words from her testimony: “Our lips have been sewn shut by discrimination, but we will not be silent any more.  Students are supposed to go to school to learn.  What’s the use of going if we only face harassment and discrimination?”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 5 May, 2010

E. Patrick Johnson talks about Sweet Tea [May 5, 2010]

E.  Patrick Johnson.  Photo by Stephen J.  Lewis

When E.  Patrick Johnson conceived his book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History, he did not think the project would ever extend beyond the printed word.  Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008, the book was a collection of oral narratives.  But halfway through the research and interviewing process, Johnson realized he would need to do more.  As he explained to Windy City Timesin a 2008 interview: “ [H]earing them tell their stories in their unique ways suggested to me that the immediacy of the telling had to be recaptured in a way that reading it on a page would not.”

Johnson, professor and chair in the department of performance studies and professor in the department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University, is no stranger to the stage and he began working on a one-man rendition of nine of the narratives in the book.  The result was Pouring Tea, which became part of his book tour over the next year.  Then, in the spring of 2008, he was approached by Jane Saks, executive director of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College to become a fellow at the Institute in order to develop Pouring Tea into a play.  After months of work shopping and script rewrites, Sweet Tea begins its life as a theatrical adaptation directed by Daniel Alexander Jones and co-produced by Saks, the Institute and About Face Theatre.

Speaking via phone to Windy City Times May 3, Johnson spoke of his excitement about the new project.  Pouring Tea featured Johnson retelling the narratives in the classic one-man performance style, reading while sitting on a stool with no accessories but the most basic lighting.  The new production still features Johnson as the only performer but his appearance is now part of a rather different theatrical experience, complete with sound, set and light design.  Johnson says he wasn’t sure, going into the workshops, whether he would even be a part of the project.  But once that decision was made, another one was made for him: “In the workshops, all the professionals said the same thing to me: ‘We know one thing for sure: you’ve got to get off that stool!’”

Director Jones uses a jazz aesthetic in his retelling, according to Johnson, and that meant rendering some of the now thirteen featured men in unconventional ways.  For instance, Jones conceived of “Freddie” as a beautiful bird that preened and sat atop a tree but would fly away if you came too close to it.  So, “for Freddie, I am literally in a tree,” said Johnson.  Another change is that Countess Vivian, the oldest narrator in the book, accompanies Johnson throughout the show as an elder.  That accompaniment is also part of a significant change from both the book and the play: Johnson now includes his own experiences growing up Black and gay in the South.

The process of writing about himself was not always a comfortable one.  “It was a interesting for me, having to turn the mike back onto myself, and it was also pretty frightening,” he said.  He felt vulnerable and exposed, especially around the parts where he revealed his guilt and fears around the HIV/AIDS deaths of close friends, many of whom died in the 1980s.  Writing about his own reactions meant revealing the uncomfortable truth that he had not gone to their funerals: “It was terrifying for me.  It didn’t help that all my memories and experiences of funerals have been traumatic.  I had all this guilt, and I”d been in denial; I really hadn’t dealt with the guilt about not going.”  But, in the end, Johnson realized that the insertion of his own experiences into those of the men whose words he had recorded would only enrich the play and take Sweet Tea to another level: “The whole experience really stretched me as an actor and as a writer.”

Sweet Tea runs through May 29 at the Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N.  Western.  On Saturday, May 8, 3:30-5 p.m., there will be a talk-back discussion with some of the men from Sweet Tea, the play and Sweet Tea, the book.  That panel event is free and open to the public.  See AboutFaceTheatre.com

Originally published in Windy City Times, May 5, 2010

Angela Davis at Columbia College [May 5, 2010]

Angela Davis’ appearance at Columbia College’s Getz Theater April 30 was book ended by standing ovations.  As she strode out onto the stage, the intergenerational audience that had been buzzing in anticipation rose as one and clapped wildly.  In a mark of her status as a living cultural icon, some in the audience were sporting T-shirts with the famous image of her from the 1970s, when Davis was wanted and eventually jailed by the FBI, sparking an international “Free Angela” campaign that led to her eventual release.

Since then, Davis, who is currently professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, has done academic and activist work on feminist issues and the spread of the prison industrial complex (PIC).  The latter term has its origins in 1961 when Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about “… the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex,” but it is now mostly associated with Davis who is a leading voice in the prison abolition movement.

But Davis was not here to speak about the PIC, except tangentially.  Instead, in a talk entitled “Blues Legacies: Female Artists,” she addressed the rise of the Blues as a predominantly working class form that allowed Black women in the early part of the twentieth century and onwards to defy the personal and political expectations thrust upon them.  Davis is also the author of a 1998 book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, which she drew upon for her talk.

Davis sketched a brief history of the Blues as a genre of music explicitly defined as working class: “I did not experience the Blues as popular music.  Growing up, Blues were the ‘low-down Blues.’  I became interested in the Blues because I see the Blues as a music that is all about freedom.  And I’ve been interested in freedom practically all my life.”  She went on to talk about how the Blues represented a “dialectic between freedom and unfreedom,” given how “  [Black] history is sedimented with the Blues.”

Davis explored this dialectic through the relatively lesser-known history of women in the Blues, like “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith whose work pioneered the emergence of Black performers in the entertainment industry.  She pointed out that in the 1960s and 1970s, which saw a surge in the women’s and the Black Power movements, feminism was largely defined as the freedom of white middle-class women while Black freedom was defined in terms of masculinity.  But looking at the history of the Blues reveals that working class Black women were in fact the pioneers in creating the genre and that they “had different discourses on sexuality and gender.”  In effect, she said, the Blues constituted a “different kind of literacy.” Further proof of the influence of these women lay in their presence in the works of twentieth-century African-American female writers like Alice Walker.  However, “the visibility of the Blues woman in fiction is in stark contrast to the critical literature of the Blues” which tends to focus on the contributions of male artists like Chicago’s Muddy Waters.

In fact, at the peak of the classical Harlem Renaissance era, thousands of women were recorded on vinyl records and this was the beginning of the Black entertainment industry.  Among them was Marnie Smith, whose recording of “Crazy Blues” became the first “race” record to sell over 250,000 copies in 1920.  Singers like Edith Wilson, Alberta Hunter and Coco Taylor were also immensely popular.

Davis pointed out that the women who sang the blues also sang about the issues that faced them, like love and discrimination, thus making the genre a precursor to the consciousness-raising of the ’60s and ’70s, when the personal was the political.  As a genre, said Davis, “the blues were the first time that Black people began to perform as individuals—they were not just singing work songs or spirituals.  In the blues, for the first time, Black people sang about personal issues.”  But, she emphasized, “this was not the same individualism in the dominant culture, but about individuals in relation to community.”

The women of the blues openly explored sexuality in ways that challenged the heteronormativity of the period.  In her “Prove It to Me Blues,” “Ma” Rainey sang that she “Went out last night, had a great big fight / Everything seemed to go on wrong I looked up, to my surprise / The gal I was with was gone.”  An advertisement for the record portrayed her in masculine attire looking at a woman on a corner as a policeman looks a her.  For Davis, such women of the Blues spoke of things that “middle-class women were not allowed to speak about, and this [highlights] the importance of working-class culture.”

Davis ended her talk with a statement that “one can develop alternative ways to engage with music as not just as entertainment but as a community-building force” and that it was important to “approach popular music in a way that recognizes it as a powerful social force and also as a site of resistance.”

The question-and-answer session that followed included a query about Davis’ thoughts about homophobia and conservatism in the Black community.  About the latter, she said that it was a serious issue and that “conservatism emanates from an identification with capitalism,” but that she was “reluctant to characterize the community in this sweeping way” pointing out the “amazing work being done in Black communities” around issues of sexuality and social justice.  For instance, she pointed out, the University of Louisville created the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2007, and that came about as a direct result of activism by the Black community that has also worked on a fairness campaign to address racism and homophobia in Louisville.  About homophobia, she pointed out that it is an erroneous assumption that the Black community is more homophobic than others, as when it was blamed for Proposition 8 in California “even though [Blacks] constitute such a tiny minority of the population.”  She said, in conclusion, that all these complexities were proof that “exploring the terrain of freedom is an infinite process.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, May 5, 2010

Howard Brown: More questions than answers [28 April, 2010]

It has now been almost a month since Windy City Times first broke the news that Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) had placed its CEO and CFO, Michael Cook and Mark Joslyn, respectively, on paid administrative leave.  Since then, HBHC has revealed no details about the reasons for its actions, only issuing a series of increasingly cryptic press releases promising further details.

Subsequently, Cook stepped down and Joslyn was let go.  After weeks of silence and much speculation in the community, the agency made two critical announcements in a press release dated April 26 in which it revealed the nature of the issues surrounding the departure of the two men and the name of its new CEO.  In the press release, HBHC announced that it is “cooperating with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on an investigation into allegations of mishandling funds involving the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), one of the center’s research grants.”  It added that, “ [t]o protect the integrity of the investigation the Board and its counsel must limit the amount of information released to the public.  Once the organization releases its findings to the NIH it hopes to be able to share additional information with the public.”

The press release went on to say that HBHC’s board of directors is working with the NIH to make “management changes, [implement] internal controls and an independent audit of all federal grants.”  It stated that there was “no reason to believe that any funds were misappropriated for personal gain or used for purposes other than the center’s mission and services.  Findings show that the funds were used to support services and programs at Howard Brown.”

This release confirmed news reported by Windy City Times two weeks ago that Howard Brown “transferred its lead agency status of the MACS to long-time research partner, Northwestern University.”  The transfer is supposed to ensure that the MACS study continues without interruption.  According to HBHC, “This transfer will not have a significant financial impact on the organization.   In its capacity as a subcontractor, Howard Brown will continue to receive nearly the same amount of money for the work it performs under the grant.”

Howard Brown has also named Jamal Edwards as the organization’s new CEO and president, effective June 1.  According to the official bio, Edwards was, prior to joining HBHC, a partner in the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, “where he represented foreign and domestic corporations in litigation, intellectual property, and corporate transactional matters” and the firm’s first openly gay partner in Chicago.  The press release indicates that Edwards is no stranger to Howard Brown, having served as the agency’s primary outside counsel while at Kirkland & Ellis.  It also states that he “lead numerous Kirkland teams representing Howard Brown in countless matters ranging from mergers and acquisitions to litigation to real estate.”  The release also states that Edwards was a co-chair of HBHC’s 2009 gala. 

Meanwhile, community leaders are beginning to voice their frustration and concerns about what many describe as a lack of transparency on the part of an important organization.  The controversy has raised the specter of old scandals at HBHC, and it is causing some to seriously worry about the impact this issue will have on the most vulnerable population: the clients who need and require the health care services provided by the Center.

Rick Garcia, public policy director of Equality Illinois, summed up Howard Brown’s silence, which has spread through all levels of the organization, telling Windy City Times that “ [t] he board itself has battened down the hatches and is engaging in a code of silence; there is no transparency.”  Referring to a previous scandal at HBHC, he said he was bewildered as to how bad the current issue could be that the board felt compelled to be so silent: “I can’t imagine the situation being worse than when the development officer was selling crystal meth.  And even then they were more transparent, and cleaned up under the great leadership of Michael Cook.  Now, instead of letting us know, they’ve just been silent.  I’ve been criticized for saying this, but I’ll repeat myself: they’re acting like our own little Vatican; they are trying to sweep it under the rug.  That’s exactly how the Vatican operates.  If we can criticize the Vatican, we can criticize Howard Brown.”

Currently, Winger Associations handles Howard Brown’s public relations even though the agency employs a director of communications, Donald Rolfe.  Garcia did not think that either the public-relations firm or HBHC’s attorneys were doing a good job: “Whoever is advising them should be fired on the spot.  You have to get ahead of the story but they’ve just allowed the rumor mill to have a field day.”

Garcia pointed out that the silence could have a detrimental effect on morale and on funders, given that people in these economic times are likely to be even more stringent about where their money goes because, in his words, “Who is going to support an organization that has a cloud over it?”  Asked what the agency could do to recover its public image, he responded, “The recovery point was three weeks ago—now we’re way past it.”  He was also concerned about the effect of the scandal and silence on client services, which, he emphasized, provided much-needed health care to those who need an affirming environment: “I know people who drive in from Bolingbrook and Rockford because they don’t feel like they can get health care in their communities.”

State Rep. Greg Harris expressed similar concerns about the clients of Howard Brown and said he preferred to exercise caution before rushing to judgment, citing the need to “be very protective of the clients who are going to Howard Brown for health care; we need to ensure their needs are taken care of.”

Lori Cannon, a community AIDS activist who works for Vital Bridges’ GrocreryLand, also expressed concern about the clients when she spoke with Windy City Times.  Like Garcia, she questioned the “wall of silence” that has come down on the issue.  She was also critical of the hiring of an outside firm to handle public relations, saying that the move “shows arrogance and a sense of entitlement.  Donors don’t appreciate that kind of attitude.”  However, she also noted that “Howard Brown has been at the forefront of the AIDS epidemic from day one and has provided case management, medical services and lab work to clients.”  Cannon worried that this situation might create “undue stress on a population that’s already facing stress on a day-to-day basis.”  While rumors are flying, Cannon said she took no pleasure in the talk of “skullduggery and machinations.”

Questions also continue to revolve around the fact that Cook and board chair Steve Phelps are reportedly ex-partners personally, and some wonder how that conflict of interest was and is being handled.

On a more recent note, this past weekend, reportedly a high-level meeting was held with HBHC donors, but no one is speaking yet about the impact of the scandal on the agency’s future.

Windy City Times will continue to pursue this story.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 28 April, 2010

D’Emilio talks Nixon and gay liberation [21 April, 2010]

The Chicago History Museum’s (CHM’s) ongoing series, Out at CHM, featured local gay historian John D’Emilio on April 15.  D’Emilio, a professor of history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, presented a piece entitled “Richard Nixon, Gay Liberationist?” Speaking to a packed auditorium, D’Emilio discussed the implications of his research for scholars of queer history.  He argued that while it was tempting to read the virtual end of the harassment of gay bars in the 1970s as a sign of the success of queer resistance to the Daley machine, the truth might be more prosaic and linked to wider national political changes of the time.

For much of its relatively short life as a field of study, gay history has been seen as the uncovering of the hitherto invisible lives and events surrounding gays and lesbians.  In the 1970s in particular, a “few women and men … decided that their contribution to this liberation project was that they’d help break the silence, shatter the invisibility, and end the isolation by uncovering a “hidden history” of same-gender-loving and gender-crossing people,” D’Emilio said.  As examples of the research emerging from this period, D”Emilio discussed his own work as well as that of pioneers like Alan Berube, who wrote Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women During World War II,which focuses on how “the war years proved decisive in helping to forge a collective lesbian and gay identity, and in helping to build urban communities.”  The ’70s also saw the publication of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, by Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis, about the world of working-class lesbians in Buffalo, New York between the 1930 and the 1960s.  This was a departure from the standard gay history of urban areas.

While such works were different in their subjects and scope, they were similar in that they are stories of resistance in which “The key actors and movers are gay men, lesbians, and gender-crossers.”  His research on Chicago at first seemed to affirm previous gay histories.  Queer Chicago during the 1960s was witness to a tremendous amount of repression.  For instance, “ [c]ity law prohibited wearing clothing for the purpose of concealing one’s sex,” which meant that women who wore short hair and trousers with zippers down the front could be arrested.  Gay and lesbian bars were targets of harassment by the police.

But, according to D’Emilio, “by the second half of the 1960s, signs of organized political resistance by lesbians and gay men were growing” and Chicago became one of the earliest homes of the gay liberation movement.  In the early 1970s, gays and lesbians were refusing to remain silent, he said: “They publicly identified and named Chicago police officers who made it a practice to go after queers.”  By the mid-1970s, police harassment of gay bars had virtually ceased and the resulting increase in gay ownership of bars and businesses led to the creation of the Lakeview neighborhood.

Seen in the light of typical gay-history narratives, it would appear that the police harassment ended as a direct result of queer resistance.  In fact, “The harassment of gay bars was just one piece in a larger story of bribery and corruption, of police and organized crime, and of the political machine of Mayor Richard Daley,” D’Emilio said.  He went on to explain that the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 was the most significant factor in ending the systematic raids on the gay bars.

Richard Daley was “described in the 1960s as the second most powerful Democratic party politician after the President” and was credited with having delivered the 1960 election to Kennedy.  The election of a Republican President enabled what had seemed impossible: an investigation of corruption in Daley’s Chicago.  In 1970, the U.S.  Attorney investigated the killings of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and the resulting report led to 14 indictments.  As D’Emilio pointed out, “If the idea of Richard Nixon and his attorney general supporting justice for black power militants seems to stretch credibility, then you can appreciate how intent this new administration was on discrediting Daley and undermining his political power.”

In a tightly knit system of extortion and bribery, where police officers loyal to the Daley machine could extract payoffs from bar owners without fear of punishment, it was unlikely that protests by “a few dozen gay liberationists and lesbian feminists” had any effect on police corruption.  But in 1969, the FBI and the Justice Department began investigating a tavern shakedown by the police.

Between 1972 and 1974, D’Emilio said, “56 police officers—including the Captain of the district that had the largest concentration of gay bars in the city—were indicted on corruption charges … 34 police officers were found guilty, and the scandal forced the resignation of Chicago’s police superintendent” and “ [i] n the wake of almost two years of relentless publicity exposing police extortion of tavern owners, it was no longer possible for the police to harass and intimidate gay bars—their owners, their workers, their patrons—at will.”  The result was the end of “systematic and pervasive police harassment of bars,” which did not mean that there were not sporadic instances of the same by individual homophobic cops.  Yet, he added, “queer resistance is barely a piece of this story, and anything ‘queer’ is quite marginal to the narrative.”

D’Emilio pointed out that this particular history did not mean that the earlier historical work by him and other scholars, which centralized queer resistance, was no longer true.  Rather, his hope was that “by embedding queer stories in a larger political economy, a larger national political history, they become less separated and less self-contained, less ghettoized, less inside a ‘lavender bubble,’ and instead be seen as more integral to, more connected to broader narratives of U.S. history.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 21 April, 2010

UIC showcases new sexuality studies [21 April, 2010]

Michal Kwiecien.  Photo by M.  Alejos, UIC

The University of Illinois at Chicago hosted its third annual Lavender Forum April 15, an event co-sponsored by the Gender and Sexuality Center and the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues.  The forum began in 2008 as a daylong series of presentations by faculty and students.  This year, it focused on student work that included the winners of a paper competition and the recipients of the Gender and Sexuality Center’s Kellogg Rainbow Merit Scholarship.

The afternoon faculty presentation was by Jennifer Brier, assistant professor of history and gender and women’s studies.  Brier recently gained tenure and published her first book, Infectious Ideas: U.S.  Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis.  She spoke of how her book changed significantly from its roots in her earlier dissertation project.  Brier’s focus and targeted audience were the students and scholars about to start their research or mired in the difficulty of getting beyond writing bottlenecks.  In a larger context, she also spoke of how scholars in sexuality studies have an especially difficult time in academia because their work is too often not considered legitimate enough and of what it means, “to write about topics outside the mainstream.”

As an example of the issues sexuality scholars might run into, Brier gave an example from her own book.  She said that the original version included images from an activist organization that featured male frontal nudity.  At the last minute, the publisher decided these could not be published.  As a compromise, Brier reached an agreement that the book would include the url to a website where the images could be found (after contacting the organization and arranging for them to be put up in perpetuity).  Brier used this instance of an example of the still-rigid norms and discomfort around sexuality that exists even in the supposedly liberal world of academic publishing.  She went on to discuss the kinds of discipline and structure required to get a large project finished, and that aspect of her talk appeared to resonate with students and faculty alike.

The afternoon session featured graduate students presenting their future research projects.  Milka Ramirez, a 2009 Kellogg Rainbow Merit scholar, gave a talk titled “An examination of homophobia and social work practice among a sample of school social workers.”  Ramirez said she began the project after hearing the news about Lawrence King, the eighth-grade California student who was killed by a classmate.  She pointed out that the “reports never mentioned the social worker” even though he or she would have been the school official most in touch with the students.

Ramirez’s study will examine social workers’ attitudes with such leading questions as: what is the degree of homophobia among school social workers, and how might this be affected by race, age and other variables?  Citing the statistic that their peers harass 80 percent of LGBT students and that 30 percent are likely to skip school regularly, Ramirez stressed the importance of such research that might help reduce incidents such as the killing of King.

Michal Kwiecien, a graduate student in the department of history, presented on “Homosexuality and the construction of sexual deviance in communist Poland.”  According to him, post-1945 Communist Poland rarely discussed issues of sexuality and the communist regime generally “viewed alternative sexuality as deviant” and as a “legacy of the bourgeois past.”  From 1940-1989, Poland was engaged in configuring a national identity that was simultaneously communist and Polish even as the conservative Church continued to exert tremendous influence in daily life.

Modernization, according to Kwiecien, has brought about “competing understandings of gender and sexuality.”  In 1985, around the time of the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and the peak of the Solidarity movement, the regime instituted a program named Operation Hyacinth, which criminalized gays by linking “homosexual environments to transmission sites of AIDS” and maintained “pink files” to keep track of those known or understood to be gay.  The long-term implication of this was that it created a homosexual resistance to the regime and created what could be termed a modern gay-rights movement in Poland.

Additional presentations included research on married bisexual women, violence against LGBTs and men who have sex with men in India, and a presentation by Affinity Community Services.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 21 April, 2010

Howard Brown Health Center: Speculation rises [14 April, 2010]

Howard Brown Health Center (HBHC) recently placed two of its key personnel, CEO/President Michael Cook and CFO Mark Joslyn, on paid administrative leave.  Since then, some hints about the reasons for their ouster have emerged.  The Windy City Times report prompted an open letter from David Ostrow, soon followed by a press release from Michael Cook announcing his resignation; both documents have brought more questions and speculations into the open.  Meanwhile, HBHC’s press releases have also prompted more unanswered questions.

Ostrow is a co-founder of HBHC, a founding physician investigator (PI) of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and the chair of the Behavioral Working Group of the MACS.  His open letter, sent to WCTfollowing an article run in its April 7 issue, was published online that same day.  In it he wrote, “As the founding PI of the MACS, I first became aware of major problems at Howard Brown when I was told approximately 10 days ago that the MACS grant to Howard Brown was being transferred on an emergency basis to Northwestern University.”  He went on, “Only days after Mr.  Cook supposedly requested the transfer of the MACS grant to Northwestern, the Board placed both him and their Chief Financial Officer on Administrative Leave, and have since stonewalled anyone asking for more information about what is going on.”

On April 8, Cook sent out a press release announcing that he had “terminated his Employment Agreement and his employment with Howard Brown, pursuant to his contractual right to do so under the terms of his Agreement [citing] internal disagreements about ongoing responsibilities and duties as the basis for his decision to exercise his right to sever his employment relationship with the agency…”

WCT has repeatedly asked Cook for an interview, but he had not responded as of the press deadline.  WCT also continued to ask HBHC for interviews with its personnel but only received, on April 9, a press release stating, “Howard Brown Health Center confirmed today that Michael Cook resigned on Thursday as CEO of the organization, and that the former CFO, Mark Joslyn, is no longer employed.  … At this time, Howard Brown is working closely with its lawyers to address the situation.”  It also said, “As soon as more information can be shared without disrupting the work of the organization, a statement will be made and questions will be answered.”  The release also acknowledged “there are questions in the community and rumors surfacing about what happened at Howard Brown.  Our team is working closely with our Board to ensure that the successful work of Howard Brown continues despite the distraction of these personnel changes.” It added that an interim CEO announcement would be made this week.

The center’s silence, combined with Ostrow’s letter and the proliferation of questions and rumors, will probably fuel more speculation in the community, given that the ouster included the chief financial officer and that the MACS involves a significant sum of federal money.  According to Ostrow, who spoke to WCT, the budget for the total MACS grant (which includes other institutions in addition to HBHC) is 10 percent of the total National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget for AIDS research; the Web site for the NIH Office of AIDS Research states that its budget for AIDS research for the fiscal year 2010 is $3,055,494,000.  In light of this, any hint of mismanagement of funds or could prove highly detrimental to the prestige and standing of Howard Brown.  WCT contacted Northwestern University for confirmation and clarification about Ostrow’s points regarding the MACS, but has not yet been able to speak to anyone as the paper went to press.

The sheer magnitude and importance of the MACS in the history of Howard Brown and the history of AIDS cannot be overemphasized.  MACS marked its 25-year anniversary last year.  It is the longest-running longitudinal study on HIV and has generated more than 1,000 publications.  The study takes place in four sites in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Los Angeles.  It derives “behavioral and biological data and specimens from men who have sex with men, before and after they became infected with HIV, before and after they were diagnosed with AIDS, and before and after they began highly active antiretroviral therapy—along with data from a control group of same-aged, HIV-free men who have sex with men.  Comparing these before-and-after specimens and data from HIV-infected and uninfected individuals has yielded numerous seminal discoveries,” according to the NIH Web site.

The scientific results of such research have proven to be immense and include studies that have shown how to diagnose HIV infection and how to best care for those with HIV/AIDS. In Chicago, MACS is located at HBHC, and its research partner is Northwestern University.

Ostrow said he only received his first hint that something was awry when he began to file papers for the fiscal year and was sent an e-mail from Northwestern University informing him that the grant was to be transferred to that institution. Until that point, he said, HBHC carried the entire grant.  “Several million and overhead went to [HBHC], which was then distributed to other sites like [Northwestern], the CORE Center and Cook County,” Ostrow said.  He added, “They get overhead on all of it. Because of that overhead, [HBHC] has been able to grow. Now, with the transfer, all the money goes to [Northwestern] and they will be distributing it.”

In an effort to find out more, Ostrow sent e-mails to the project officers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which administers the grant. They responded that the change in the grant had come as a result of a request from HBHC. He said it was unclear what had happened, "whether Howard Brown and Northwestern tried to save the grant by transferring it rapidly or someone moved it without discussing with the board. From an administrative or a or a research perspective, it’s not a big deal not a big deal whether Howard Brown or Northwestern has the grant, but financially it's a big deal. The MACS has been a source of pride since Howard Brown is a community-based organization; it put it on the map as an independent research institution.”

Frustrated at the lack of details from HBHC, Ostrow pointed out that the WCT report was the first he heard of Cook's departure and that there needed to be more transparency in the matter: “The facts need to get out before the speculation runs wild and before Howard Brown loses financial support. It’s a community organization; it owes to the community a full and fair account of what goes on. The loss of millions of dollars must not be kept behind closed doors.”

The MACS is not only well-funded and prestigious but a source of tremendous pride for its participants who have, over the years, formed tight-knit communities in the four cities. According to the HBHC Web site, there are currently 285 participants in the study in Chicago; their sense of engagement and participation might be affected by any hint of financial misappropriation.  Also at stake is the working relationship between HBHC and its community partners like Children's Memorial Hospital, Teen Living and the Night Ministry with which it opened Broadway Youth Center in 2004.  Funders and donors are also likely to keep their distance until HBHC comes forward with all the facts.

What remains clear is that the story is potentially large enough that HBHC feels the urgent need to clamp down on communications beyond press releases. Regardless of what the facts turn out to be, there may be a lack of confidence in HBHC from which it will be hard to recover.  The Web site chronicles its rise from a small volunteer-run collective in 1974 to an organization with a budget of over $15 million.  Howard Brown still uses volunteers and goodwill in a community long beleaguered by health crises like hepatitis and AIDS made worse by a ravaged health care system.  It remains to be seen how much longer it can test that goodwill without more transparency in the coming weeks.

Windy City Times will continue to follow this story.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 14 April, 2010

Leaders ousted at Howard Brown [7 April, 2010]

In a move that will send ripples throughout Chicago’s LGBTQ community, Howard Brown Health Center announced that two of its key staff members have been placed on paid administrative leave: President/Chief Executive Officer Michael Cook and Chief Financial Officer Mark Joslyn.  The news came through a brief March 30 press release, issued via Leslie Schreiber, director of media relations at Winger Marketing.

The release gave no specifics on the decision, saying only that it was “based on an internal decision made by the organization’s Executive Board of Directors.”  The bulk of the release was about the appointment of Paul Fairchild as Howard Brown’s interim chief operating officer.

Windy City Times contacted Cook, Joslyn and Donald Rolfe, Howard Brown’s director of communications and business development, for verification.  Neither Cook nor Joslyn have responded to our queries.  Rolfe referred the paper to the press release (which had not yet been released) and said they would be happy to answer additional questions afterwards.  WCTalso contacted Leslie Schreiber, who appears to be the main media liaison.  Schreiber said that Fairchild would not be immediately available for questions and that further details would be forthcoming in an additional press release, the date of which is yet undetermined.

Fairchild has been with Howard Brown since 2007 and was, before that, vice president of donor and community relations at Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights.  Prior to joining Howard Brown, Cook was executive director of Interfaith House, and has a J.D from the University of Michigan Law School.  Joslyn joined Howard Brown in October 2008 and prior to that was senior vice president and CFO for Towers Productions.  He is also listed on the center’s Web site as having helped launch Chicago Bride magazine.  He has a BFA from Missouri State University, “with additional studies in business strategy and finance as a University of Chicago graduate student-at-large.”

The press release quotes Howard Brown Board Chair Steven Phelps saying, “These administrative changes pertain to an internal personnel matter which do not impact the mission of Howard Brown Health Center.”  However, given the seriousness of the news and that it is relatively unusual for both a CEO and a CFO to be put on administrative leave, there are bound to be questions in the community and the larger health care world about the Center’s ongoing mission.

In a related story, LCCP (Lesbian Community Care Project), a project of Howard Brown, announced that Lisa Katona is now the director of the organization and Kristin Keglovitz Baker, who is the physician’s assistant, is adding the title of clinical director.  Baker will be working with Katona on programming ideas for women in the community.  Both women have previously been with Howard Brown.

Windy City Times is continuing to follow the story about the administrative change at Howard Brown, and will have more updates in the upcoming weeks.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 7 April, 2010

Queer writer Kenny Fries on disability [24 March, 2010]

Kenny Fries.  Photo courtesy of Riva Lehrer

Kenny Fries is a well-known gay writer and poet whose works have addressed the intersection of disability rights and queer identity.  The author of the memoirs The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theoryand Body, Remember: A Memoir was in Chicago as part of a visit that included workshops at UIC followed by a presentation at Access Living March 19.

Fries (pronounced Frees) read from The History of My Shoes and then addressed questions from the audience.  Born with a congenital condition of his feet that requires him to walk with specially constructed orthopedic shoes, Fries has written extensively about the relationship between disabled bodies and the environment they must often struggle in and against.

He is an intrepid traveler, determined that his physical condition will not prove to be a disability in his experience of the world.  In general, built environments present challenges to the disabled.  However, as the excerpts that Fries read from clearly showed, sometimes the literally rough terrain of the natural environment can prove to be more adaptable.  In his first excerpt, Fries recounted a hiking trip he took in Maine’s Acadia National Park with his then-partner, the able-bodied Ian (who also provided the illustrations to the book).

The two trekked upwards using only metal rungs inserted into a cliff and, to their surprise, Fries’ smaller feet and top-heavy body proved to be perfect for executing the difficult climb while Ian found the going much rougher, and had to be coaxed and helped back down.  Fries used the passage to illustrate a key point in his and the work of contemporary disability theorists: disability is not an inherent quality of a body being “wrong” but is instead entirely defined by the environment in which a body finds itself suited or unsuited to its surroundings.  In this case, Ian found his body to be too big and unwieldy.

Fries went on to read other sections from the book that addressed the theory of evolution, focusing on Alfred Russell Wallace, the British naturalist whose work on natural selection came about at the same as Darwin’s and may even have pre-empted it.  Musing over Wallace’s discovery of a rare king bird-of-paradise, Fries pointed out the inherent contradiction that the scientist was keenly aware of: the bird would become extinct the more its stunning beauty was seen by other species.  In other excerpts, he pointed out instances of species that would shift their colors to adapt and survive in environments but then die away when the adaptations were no longer necessary.  Refuting the more simplistic and popular appropriations of evolutionary theory and of Darwin in particular, Fries said that “survival of the fittest is only part of the story.”

During the discussion session, audience members asked about the author’s experience traveling the world as a disabled man.  Fries said that his travels grew largely out of a determination to see as much as he could, and that such trips could be handled with a little bit of forethought and planning; he especially recommended the organization Mobility International, a disability-rights group that also helps people with disabilities coordinate travel plans across the world.

Fries has most recently been in Japan on a Creative Capital Foundation grant and is working on a creative non-fiction work entitled Genkan: Entries into Japan.  Several members of the audience wondered what it was like to be a person with a disability in a culture that traditionally has not made disabled people visible.  Fries said that attitudes in Japan were changing.  Chuckling, he also said he often wondered how it was that he was never bumped into even on the most crowded streets of Japan but that someone inevitably walked into him on the most deserted streets of Toronto (where he lives with his husband, Mike).  He also added, “In Japan, I was thrilled that I was treated as a foreigner before I was treated as a disabled person.  When I come back to the U.S., I’m instantly treated as a disabled person.”

Asked when he first became aware of his identity as a disabled person, Fries said that it was not until his early 20s: “Growing up in Brooklyn, I was among the first generation to be mainstreamed in public school.  I didn’t come into contact with disabled people until later.”  He became aware of the difference in Japan, where people with disabilities are still segregated from the mainstream population.  According to him, while that has definite disadvantages, it also means that disabled people in Japan have an “odd sense of a life in disability” which can be empowering in a sense.

Fries concluded with the observation that, ultimately, disability is not a desirable category or a particularly meaningful one since it is really defined by the circumstances of a society that makes it easier for the able-bodied to get around: “We have to have [the category] because we have certain needs.  But who decides who is disabled?  It’s best to do away with it eventually.  But that’s not possible in this society.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 24 March 2010

Dykewomon, Brier: It’s all relative in WC&F talk [24 March, 2010]

The historic Women and Children First Bookstore witnessed an equally historic and unique family literary event when Jennifer Brier and Elana Dykewomon co-presented their separate and recent works March 20.

Dykewomon has written several books and appeared in numerous anthologies, but she is best known for her 1997 historical novel Beyond the Pale, a lesbian story set in Russia and New York City in the late 19th century.  It won the Lambda Literary Association Award for Best Lesbian Novel.  She was in Chicago to read from her latest novel, Risk, which has already garnered her the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize.  The protagonist is from Chicago, where Dykewomon spent a short time as a teenager.

As it turns out, that is not Dykewomon's only connection to Chicago.  She and Brier, an associate professor of history and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are first cousins once removed, although they did not know each other too well when Brier was growing up in New York City and Dykewomon was settling into life in California and becoming an influential lesbian writer. Brier, presenting on her recent book, Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis, said that she first encountered her cousin's work at college, “in my Lesbian Cultures class one summer; it was like lesbian summer camp. When I came out, I called her and her response was, “I knew there would be one more of us.”

Brier went on to read excerpts from her book, which details community and political responses to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.  She emphasized the role of lesbians in the period.  Writers like Larry Kramer and Randy Shilts have described lesbians as the natural caretakers of dying gay men and also approvingly portrayed them as examples of non-promiscuous and essentially sexless lives.  Kramer and Shilts represented a part of the gay community that advocated for a reversal of a lifestyle of promiscuous sex which they felt was the leading cause of deaths from AIDS, whereas several critics and historians have pointed out that government apathy was the reason for the decimation, not sex.

Lesbians had a profound and political role to play in the midst of such redefinitions of sex and sexuality, according to Brier, who said that they advocated for a return to gay liberationist and feminist principles.  In an article for Boston's Gay City News, the only such paper to have an explicitly feminist editorial viewpoint, the activist Cindy Patton wrote, as quoted by Brier: “What we are experiencing in the gay community right now is ‘It's not political until it's personal…We have to … say: this society is not going to kill us any more.’”  Patton’s explicit reference to the popular feminist slogan was a signal to gay men that they needed to think of women as political agents, while pointing out that straight people have systematically oppressed queers.

Brier said that gay liberation was extended by AIDS, not ended by it, and the thrust of that extension was taken up by lesbians “who insisted they had a particular way of intervening about sex and love. They made the case that love could be fleeting, as in a one-night stand, but you would still want to make that person safe.”  In this way, contrary to Kramer et al’s insistence that they taught gay men how to be monogamous, “lesbians were providing new models of sex.”

In the later years of the epidemic, lesbians developed healthcare models through publications like Our Bodies, Ourselves and communities of care. This combination of writing about sex and health while also creating resources rewrites a history where lesbians have been relegated to being a support system when, in fact, “they were making historically grounded arguments for what change should look like.”

Dykewomon read from a poem in an earlier anthology, Nothing Will Be As Sweet As The Taste.  She also read from Risk, whose protagonist, Carol, is an idealistic, Berkeley-educated, Jewish lesbian; her life is overshadowed by the trauma of losing her father, a fighter pilot missing in action in the Vietnam War.  She described Riskas a “novel about lesbian relationships and an anti-war novel, about a fat, Jewish femme from Chicago.”

A discussion session followed the readings.  Asked why she chose to write a contemporary novel this time, Dykewomon said that part of the reason was the greater and more detailed amount of research required for historical fiction.  Some amount of historical research was still required during the writing of Risk, such as finding out details about the songs playing on the radio during periods of the character's life.  But it was not to the extent required for Beyond the Pale, where Dykewomon had to research minute details like whether or not pencils had erasers at the ends in the late 19th century (they did, but such pencils were of poor quality and only used in public schools).

Dykewomon and Brier also discussed an essential difference between writing historical fiction and historical research.  Dykewomon said she could start at the end of her narrative, and find the research to support the narrative trajectory she wanted to follow.  Brier said that in contrast historical research requires the author to follow the facts and “read as much as you can [because] in history, you don’t let sources determine your research.”  Both women emphasized that lesbian history needed to be rewritten.  Brier pointed out that lesbians needed to written back into the history of AIDS as agents of change instead of only being seen as caretakers.  Dykewomon said that her work was about forming lesbian communities “even while we have been living under war for so long.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 24 March, 2010

Panel focuses on queer APIs and immigration [17 March, 2010]

The National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) is currently hosting a series of LGBT immigration public forums in cities across the country.  These events are designed to bring about public discussion of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) and to educate LGBT Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and allied organizations on immigrant rights.  The group hosted one such exhaustive and detailed presentation March 8 at the Merlo Public Library in partnership with its local members and ally organizations Invisible to Invincible (I2I): Asian and Pacific Islander Pride of Chicago; Trikone-Chicago, an LGBT South Asian Group; and Akabaka Productions, a Queer Muslim Group.  The panelists were Ben de Guzman of NQAPIA, Chicago queer Muslim activist Ifti Nasim and local immigration attorney Mimi Wilson.

It is estimated that there are currently 12 million to 15 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.  Immigration activists, emboldened by the Obama victory, are pressing for another reform package after one failed to make headway during the Bush years.  For LGBTQs, immigration reform is an issue for a number of reasons, including employment status; asylum on the grounds of sexual orientation and romantic partnerships with citizens/permanent residents.  The speakers emphasized that the interests of LGBTQs and immigrants are not mutually exclusive.

No one can be denied entry into the United States because of his or her sexual orientation or a same-sex relationship.  However, lesbians and gays cannot sponsor their partners for citizenship or permanent residency while married straight people can.  Some gay and lesbian groups and immigration groups are attempting to rectify that via the Uniting American Families Act which would exactly replicate the current system of spousal sponsorship.  The most famous case currently under review is that of the Philipino-American lesbians Shirley Tan and Jay Mercado, who face separation if Tan is deported because of having been undocumented.

Wilson talked about three ways in which queers might gain entry/citizenship: employment-based, family-based and asylum.  Ifti Nasim, a Pakistani Muslim man, spoke of his work and that of SALGA (the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association, now largely inactive) Chicago in aiding appeals for political asylum.  Nasim said it has become much harder for Muslims to gain admission after 9/11, let alone gain asylum.  For instance, all Muslim immigrants over the age of 16 from 18 countries, including Nasim’s native Pakistan, are now subject to greater scrutiny of their visa applications and must register and be fingerprinted.

de Guzman spoke of NQAPIA, which has more than 30 chapters and makes a point of distributing multilingual flyers and information brochures.  He said, “We do two things: Work with LGBTs on race and economic issues and with others to address homophobia and transphobia in a way that reflects different experiences and languages.”  He added that they were “thinking intentionally about whom we are including in CIR.  The attempt is to create a transparent process that depends on coalition building.”

de Guzman said that the issues of immigration reform were fourfold: a path to citizenship that could bring the undocumented out of the shadows; family reunification petitions; concerns about heightened enforcement and militarized borders and detention centers; and future flow or how to continue making immigration measures more humane.  Regarding the Asian American immigrant and queer community, he said that queers faced the fact that “our stories are not part of the mainstream dialogue.”  In addition, “the LGBT focus in the queer community has been very narrowly focused on binational couples.”  He was in favor of reform that would help couples like Tan and Mercado, referring to them fondly and proudly as his “sisters” (they are not biologically related to him).  But he also said that mainstream gay groups need to stop using UAFA as a “litmus test” by which to judge their support for CIR, noting that such an attitude indicated a “profound disrespect…[w]e need a dialogue that covers all four issues.”

As an example of heightened enforcement, he spoke of Cambodian refugees who were caught shoplifting and deported on charges of aggravated felonies (the heightened charge is a result of a 1996 Act which expanded the definition of “aggravated felony” in immigration law to include minor offenses.)  Queer and transgender immigrants “have very limited access to health care in detention centers that often don’t even process women, much less trans people.”  He added that, “[W] hat is required is not the addressing of LGBTs in CIR but LGBT aspects of CIR,” and that the current need for reform also indicated a pressing need for “intersectional analysis” and that “it’s at the margins, [amongst queers and transgender people,  that the boundaries between categories break down.”  de Guzman also pointed out one of the triumphs of recent LGBT immigration reform issues: the lifting of the HIV ban.

The discussion afterwards focused on local efforts to bring about greater dialogue between communities and their queer members.  Members of I2I reported being welcomed when handing out flyers at the recent Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations.  There is a mass mobilization for immigration reform in Washington, D.C., March 21.  A group calling itself Rainbow Riders will be leading two buses of queer immigrants and allies from Chicago.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 March, 2010

Clash at the Center [17 December, 2009]

Things became quite intense at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N.  Halsted, when five members of God Hates Fags (GHF) “also known as Kansas’ anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (headed by the Rev. Fred Phelps) “showed up December 13 near the facility before a forum was scheduled to take place.

According to Leslie DeMonte, director of the center’s special events and volunteer services, the staff only heard about the proposed appearance of God Hates Fags at 3:30 p.m.  the day before.  The center was due to host a discussion, “LGBT Change Is Coming,” and GHF was supposed to be making an appearance in order to protest the event.

The church group was met with more than 100 counter-demonstrators who rallied to the center’s support.  GHF was scheduled to show up outside the building at 1:45 p.m., and a crowd of supporters began marching outside the building at 1:30.  Chants ranged from “Hey, hey, ho, ho, homophobia’s got to go,” to “Gay, straight, black, white, same struggle, same fight.”  At 2 p.m, five GHF members were seen standing at the corner of Halsted and Addison, outside the Lakeview police station.  They held up signs that said, “Fags doom nations” and “Mourn your sins,” among others.  Instantly, Center supporters marched up to the group and surrounded it, shouting, “Bigots!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, right-wing bigots go away.”  A few held up a giant purple banner to shield the signs from pedestrians and traffic.

The GHF contingent included two very young children, a boy and a girl.  As the counterdemonstrators chanted, the boy and his accompanying adult left, leaving only the girl with two women.  One of the supporters began screaming, “Child abuse!” and others relentlessly shouted at GHF to go away.  After about 15 minutes, the three went into the police station, escorted by police.

Many of the counterdemonstrators clearly considered the event a success.  However, there were mixed feelings about the presence of the children.  Counterprotestor T.  J Houlihan said that “It’s incredibly sad [to see children being used in this way] .  We keep seeing [religious fundamentalists] preach family values, but hate is not a family value.  They’re here under a pretense of religion and God.”

This was GHF’s second appearance in less than a week.  On December 8, five church members stood opposite the Democratic National Committee (also President-elect Barack Obama’s transition headquarters) at 233 N.  Michigan, with signs that depicted Obama as “The Beast” (antichrist).

Jon Trott, of Jesus People, the lone counterprotestor, stood on the opposite side of the street with a sign that said, “Gays Are Our Neighbors.”  He was concerned about the group’s use of religion: ‘they’re cartoon theologians.  I don’t want to return hate with hate, but I certainly hate their message.”

“Change is coming” forum

The specific object of the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest was an afternoon discussion, “LGBT Change Is Coming,” that immediately followed the demonstration.  The event was billed as an opportunity for the community to  areview the current LGBT policies of President-elect Obama and provide constructive community feedback via the format suggested by the transition team,” according to the agenda.  This meant two hours of approximately 20 community organizers, leaders of nonprofits and LGBT elected officials speaking for two minutes each on the issues of concern to them.

Nearly 70 attendees listened as James Madigan, incoming executive director of Equality Illinois (in place of Amy Bloom), spoke about adding sexual orientation and gender identity to current hate-crimes legislation.  Jean Albright of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network talked about the effects of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell while Lynn Johnson of the Chicago Foundation for Women addressed the need to improve clinical research on microbiocides and eliminate “abstinence only until marriage” programs.  Jack Pevenstein and Earl Battles of SAGE (Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders) spoke of the urgency of services and training focused on LGBT elderly, while Shannon Sullivan of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance called for policies inclusive of gender identity in Chicago public schools.

A concluding session featured LGBT elected officials like State Rep. Greg Harris and Cook County Judge Mary Colleen Roberts giving advice on enabling concrete legislative change.  Harris pointed out that the vast majority of LGBT issues were local, needing action on either the state or county level and being outside the purview of the president’s office.  Like others on the panel, he pointed out the importance of making elected officials accountable for their promises.  Deb Mell, the recently elected 40th District state representative and sister-in-law of embattled Governor Rod Blagojevich, was scheduled to appear but was instead represented by her spokesperson, Leah Pouw.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 December, 2009

LGBTQs take education to the streets [2 September, 2009]

Several families of Chicago Public School (CPS) students, teachers and education activists turned out August 26 for a protest at CPS headquarters at 125 S. Clark, where the Chicago Board of Education was due for a budget meeting.

Their focus was a notification that the UNO (United Neighborhood Organization) Charter Network had sought Chicago Board of Education’s President Michael Scott’s permission to open a school on the site of Juana Ines De la Cruz Middle.  The latter has been shut down since June, citing a lack of funds for capital improvement.

The CPS system has been the focus of attention of the city’s educators, parents and students for many years.  Continual debates about the state of the system have raised various and often conflicting ideas about whether change is needed and, if so, how to bring it about.  The Renaissance 2010 program has been among the most controversial among the proposed changes to CPS, especially because it has resulted in a number of school closings.  While some attest that closings are the only way to revamp what they consider a broken system, others insist that school closings are only another way to privatize CPS and that functioning schools are being shut down to make way for charter schools.

Several signs had messages like, “No neighborhood schools left behind.”  Alejandra Ibanez, executive director of Pilsen Alliance, one of the main organizers of the protest, said to Windy City Timesthat the closing of De la Cruz “revealed a double standard.”  According to her, schools like Whittier (a “World Language Magnet Cluster School,” according to its Web site, that is currently facing deteriorating conditions, and whose parents and students were also present) were still waiting to be declared Americans with Disablities Act-compliant “but a UNO Charter school got its notice of compliance in approximately three weeks.”

The protest featured significant LGBTQ presence, as members of the group Gender JUST (GJ) joined in with signs like, “Queer youth say no to Rennaissance 2010” as they marched and chanted outside the building [Full disclosure: This reporter is a member].  Sam Finkelstein of GJ said that the group was there to “raise the voices of queer youth in the larger debate around privatization and militarization.”  GJ has recently been in talks with CPS CEO Ron Huberman about implementing policies that would positively affect LGBTQ youth.  In that context, Finkelstein said, “A lot of the policies we fight for would be moot under Renaissance 2010 because charter schools and contract schools don’t have the same processes of accountability; they don’t have to follow district-wide guidelines and there would be no centralized enforcement of anti-discrimination and other policies.”

Protestors were also pointing to what they saw as the politics of gentrification affecting the displaced students.  As their signs and chants indicated, teachers, students and families were especially troubled by the fact that their school was shut down even after the Illinois State Board of Education designated it a “spotlight school.”  One woman’s sign was addressed to Michael Scott: “You closed our award-winning middle school because “It wasn’t viable” or “worth fixing” but now you’re going to let an UNO Charter in? Exactly who is worthy in your eyes?” Finkelstein said that “the larger process of gentrification affects LGBTQ people.  We are present within the communities on whom it has an impact.”

Erica Meiners, an out lesbian and associate professor of education and women’s studies at Northeastern Illinois University, was also there to support the protestors.  She said, “I’m here to demonstrate my commitment for equitable public education for all, and for a transparent process.”  She said that the situation of De la Cruz and Whittier were examples of the “lack of democratic decision-making based on the facts.  We know that when democratic processes are not followed, our most vulnerable communities who don’t have powerful communities advocating for them are the ones to suffer, and these include queer students, students with disabilities, and the poor.”

Inside, the board meeting was packed to capacity with students, families and educators who were there to ask questions.  WCT spoke with Malon Edwards, CPS spokesman, who would only say that the matter of De la Cruz was not going to be discussed at the day’s meeting.  The budget was passed unanimously by the board. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 2 September, 2009.

When everything changed for Kairol Rosenthal [2 September, 2009]

Bookstores abound with stories by and about cancer survivors.  But cancer is still largely seen as a middle-aged or older person’s issue, even though there are, increasingly, more reports of younger people (from children to young adults) getting some form of cancer.

Kairol Rosenthals’s new book, Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s, is the first book to focus on what the author says is a much-neglected population of cancer patients and survivors.  The Chicago-based author read to a crowded room of nearly 50 people from her work at a book launch at Women and Children First on August  12.

Rosenthal was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 26, nine years ago.  Her diagnosis came after a chiropractor showed her a lump on her throat and insisted that she see a doctor about it.  Rosenthal then struggled for months to get biopsies and an eventual and accurate diagnosis.  She wrote the book in large part because she saw a lack of support systems and resources for people in her age category.  As she explained to the multi-generational audience, one of the biggest hurdles facing young adult cancer patients is that their symptoms are often dismissed by doctors who still adhere to a generational stereotype about the disease.  Rosenthal said that doctors are apt to tell young adults with potential cancer that their aches are simply due to having experimented with sexual positions, or too taxing yoga classes.  There is nothing in medical schools that provides them with the knowledge to foresee cancer in young people.  In addition, many young adults lack healthcare or the kind of healthcare that would grant them access to the right tests.

Everything Changes is structured as a series of first-person accounts, culled from hundreds of interviews, and linked to different sets of issues particular to young adult cancer patients.  For instance, few young adults will have thought about advanced directives, wills, and life insurance but those can be crucial matters to consider in the event of a grave illness.  Similarly, issues around body image affect this population differently and perhaps with more intensity than other age groups.

The issue of young cancer patients and sexual orientation was the focus of Rosenthal’s presentation.  She read an account about Seth, a gay man living in San Francisco who was faced with, first, a cancer diagnosis and second, having to negotiate revealing his gay identity to his parents.  According to Rosenthal, he asked his parents to not come to San Francisco because he could not both “navigate cancer” and deal with his life issues with his parents.  Nevertheless, as Seth puts it, “I think being queer affords me a different perspective on cancer Through the AIDS epidemic, not only have gay men come together as a community and shown our humanity, but … we know how to take care of our own.”

Rosenthal said that there needs to be far more awareness about young adult cancer patients and their issues: “Cancer survivor rates for young adults have not improved in 30 years.  A quarter of us will not make it.”  But she was equally adamant about the need for health care reform in the U.S., a topic that came up during the question and answer session; she has been meeting with elected officials to talk about the problems facing her population in particular and encouraged everyone to be as vocal as possible about the need for reform.  When asked whose stories are not represented in the media, the author pointed out that most representations are of people in urban areas and that she was particular about including a geographical and regional range in her book.  She spoke about a young man in his 20s living with stage four cancer in rural Texas, where the combination of a lack of adequate patient care and peer support group could be profoundly isolating.  Rosenthal also spoke about the issues that might get overlooked, such as those facing the many incarcerated and mostly African-American youth facing the disease in jail.

Kairol Rosenthal blogs regularly at Everythingchangesbook.com, where she updates and adds resources and observations on the issues facing young adults with cancer.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 2 September, 2009

Gender JUST meets with Huberman [26 August, 2009]

In June, Gender JUST, a local LGBTQA grassroots organization, organized a safe and affirming education community forum spotlighting Chicago Public Schools and the specific needs of LGBTQ students.  At that meeting, the group secured a promise from CPS CEO Ron Huberman that he would meet with the group within 60 days.  [Full disclosure: This reporter is also a member of Gender JUST.]

On August 18, the two parties met at a meeting that GJ Leadership Councils member Sam Finkelstein and Eric Amaya described as a success.  According to Finkelstein, the group went into the meeting with a focus on three areas related to LGBTQ issues: resources for students, training for teachers and ways to hold CPS accountable when either or both were found unresponsive to student complaints about harassment or concerns about safety.  Describing the meeting as “a huge victory,” he said that the group was “able to come to a [set of resolutions] that incorporated Gender JUST’s plans and solutions.”

GJ has been able to get Huberman’s agreement to create, with CPS funding, an “intervention team.”  Said team would consist of students, parents and community organizers that overlooked issues related to student life for LGBTQ and other minority students or students harassed for any reason, on a district-wide level.  This idea of an intervention team stemmed from an original GJ demand at the forum that CPS create an “accountability officer.”  Asked about the timeline, Finkelstein said, “We are going to start pulling that committee together within the next month.  He wouldn’t agree to making safe and affirming training mandatory for teachers, but we are not going to stop pushing for that.”

Finkelstein said that the differences between GJ and Huberman stemmed from the different priorities at work: “His priority is academic, but we believe that affirmation and safety cannot be separated from academics.”  Finkelstein added said that the group wanted the CEO to issue a “Pride directive” to all students, staff and faculty reminding them that CPS was a safe and affirming place, but that Huberman made it clear that he didn’t like “proclamations.”  Instead, the compromise is that Huberman will draft a letter that will go to all in CPS reminding them of the policies of safe and affirming education.

Gender JUST and Huberman are to meet again in six months, according to Finkelstein, to “make sure that the ball doesn’t get dropped.”  In the meantime, he said, the group will continue to push for reform by asking for meetings with others in CPS, like CPS Board President Michael Scott.  Finkelstein said that Gender JUST was “incredibly enthusiastic and cautiously optimistic” about this meeting and praised Huberman for his preparedness before entering the meeting.  “He had obviously looked at the materials [Gender JUST’s proposals] beforehand and already gone through them with his legal team, so there was no delay in his saying he would have to consult with lawyers first.”

Eric Amaya, a senior at Kelly High School and also a member of GJ’s leadership council, also thought that ‘the meeting went very well,” but that it only went half an hour instead of the expected hour.  Amaya was especially excited about the fact that Huberman was receptive to Gender JUST’s ‘student Justice Handbook,” meant to provide resources for all students “who feel lost, whether about pregnancy or about their sexual orientation.”  Amaya said that Huberman “seemed really supportive” and that the meeting was “a small step towards a big victory.”

Windy City Times contacted CPS for this story, but did not get a response before the newspaper went to press.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 August, 2009.

LGBTI Health Summit looks at Obama’s LGBT health record [26 August, 2009]

The LGBTI Health Summit came in the thick of very intense national conversations around health care, especially at various Town Halls across the country.  Despite the national spotlight on an issue that clearly has the attention of more than the approximately 50 million uninsured, the gay community’s response to the health crisis has been relatively muted.

On August 17, Sean Cahill, managing director of public policy for the New York-based GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and Chicago’s David Munar, vice president of AIDS Foundation of Chicago, presented “the Obama administration’s efforts to develop a national AIDS strategy” to discuss LGBTI health issues.  In the process, they shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Cahill pointed out that while he agreed with some of the criticism of the Obama administration, such as that around the Department of Justice memo stating that it does not support the Defense of Marriage Act, he was also struck by the fact that few people noted the advances made: “I’ve asked people: Do you realize that Obama fully de-funded abstinence-only education until marriage?” He said that most people were completely unaware of this, even though it has a significant effect on the sexual and reproductive health of both straight and LGBTQ students.

“Forty-seven percent of high school students are sexually active, and 4 million young people contract STDs each year,” said Cahill.  In addition, such programs carry  aregressive gender stereotypes,” presenting boys as “sex-crazed” and girls needing to “manage the [supposed] sexual predation of boys.”  They are also anti-gay, presenting AIDS as the inevitable result of homosexuality.

Cahill discussed HIV/AIDS, including the HIV travel ban that prohibits travelers with the virus from entering the country.  He said that this has a detrimental effect on the health of immigrants because it “discourages people from coming forward to get tested or access treatment.”  In New York city, 24 percent of new HIV diagnoses were among immigrants and, of those, 50 percent were more likely than native borns to be dual diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, which means that they are likely definitely testing later because of a fear of being deported.

As for HIV/AIDS in the general population, Cahill said that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) now estimates that 56,300 were newly diagnosed in 2006—40 percent more people than was previously counted.  In the U.S. today, 1.1 million are living with HIV, and the racial and ethnic disparities are clear: While Blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S population, they account for 43 percent new HIV diagnoses; while Latinos are 13 percent of the population, they account for 18 percent of new diagnoses.

Originally published in Windy City Times on 26 August, 2008.

APA report warns against conversion therapy [12 August, 2009]

In recent years, the ex-gay movement has been making claims that it is possible to convert gays and lesbians to heterosexuality.  Those claims may be somewhat dulled now that the American Psychological Association (APA) has published a resolution explicitly stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

Released on August 5, the “Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts” should provide an essential tool in the dismantling of homophobia and heterosexism, according to Dr. Judith Glassgold, head of the task force that presented the report.  Glassgold spoke with Windy City Times from Toronto, site of the APA conference.

The idea that conversion therapies should be discouraged by the medical community might seem an obvious one to LGBTs and allies, so why did the APA feel the need to release this report? Glassgold said that the APA had done a similar study in 1997, but it only “addressed ethical issues in a very neutral way.”  However, in the last 10-12 years, “several new studies emerged in the press, that claim to show evidence that sexual orientation could be changed.”  The APA, concerned about the prevalence of such reports, determined that it was time to revisit the issue.

The task force consisted of six members including Glassgold.  The others were Drs. Lee Beckstead, Jack Dreshcher, Beverly Greene, Robin Lin Miller, and Roger L.  Worthington.  The task force did not engage in any new clinical studies but reviewed the available scientific literature to determine whether any evidence existed to support claims about the efficacy of conversion therapy or or sexual-orientation change efforts (SOCE).

According to Glassgold, the “very few people” who seek SOCE usually come from religiously conservative backgrounds.  The report is aimed at those religious organizations and therapists who might advocate SOCE.  She said that the hope was also that the “few secular therapists who conduct this kind of therapy will stop and rethink their assumptions about homosexuality.  We did a very good job of reviewing the literature and providing other options for religious organizations and therapists.  We hope that religious psychologists will rethink the type of treatment and not mislead their clients.  I would hope that therapists that promise change would stop.”  Glassgold went on to emphasize that for some religious LGBTs, the question might be “How do you bring your religious beliefs and sexual orientations into sync? How are they to reconcile different identities?”

The APA’s hope in releasing this report is that it might lead to “greater tolerance, greater support for LGBT teens, and a greater compassion on the part of religious groups.”  Speaking about the research process itself, Glassgold said that one of the surprising elements was finding British studies that indicated many people worked to integrate religious and gay identities.

For Glassgold, one drawback of the report was that there was not enough research done on non-Christian LGBTs: ‘the majority of research seems focused on Christian men who are white.  We could only summarize existing research.  We don’t know the suffering and the resilience of a broader category of people.  I hope that [future researchers] reach out to other faiths.”

Glassgold also emphasized the role of children and adolescents in the research: “If a child brings up an attraction to the same sex, we recommend against the impulse to reject the child; it’s most important to accept the child.  We urge parents to avoid therapists that tell them their children need curing.”

The report can be found at www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/therapeutic-response.pdf.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 12 August, 2009.

Queer zines take it on the road [12 August, 2009]

The history of queer life is captured on the margins of mainstream media, by gay newspapers like this one.  Free weeklies like the Windy City Times have a tangible presence in the communities they serve, distributed through curbside boxes and wire racks.  But another kind of more ephemeral queer record, the queerzine, has a history and impact of its own, and this was in evidence during the Chicago leg of the Queer Zinester Roadshow.

On July 31, an enthusiastic audience gathered at Uncle Fun Gallery, 1337 W.  Belmont, to hear seven zinemakers read from their works.  The event kicked off a three-city tour that would go on to Milwaukee and Madison It was organized by QZAP, the Queer Zine Archive Project (www.qzap.org).  Co-founders Milo Miller and Christopher Wilde were among the presenters, who came from places as varied as Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver and New York City.

Wilde spoke about the introduced the project and the event, and said that QZAP began as a project in 2001 as “a Web archive of the collectivist nature of queeruption.”  Reading from a piece titled, ‘the origin of love,” about the beginnings of the project, he said he also began QZAP in an effort to record “lives like mine as marginal blurs.”  The themes of (often deliberately sought-after) marginality and resistance to the lesbian and gay and straight mainstream echoed throughout the evening.  For these writers, zines offered a way to record and affirm their existences and provided ways to cope with and critique the norms of gender and sexuality they grew up with.

Writer Jessica Max Stein from NYC read about having spent hours in her youth clipping articles about queer life.  As she put it, queer zines were a way of “inventing your own representation.”  Stein read from her current zine, The Rainbow Connection, about gay Muppeteer Richard Hunt.  She made a connection between Hunt’s work on the muppets from 1972-1992 and the changes in the gay movement, particularly the emphasis on marriage.  She said that she understood the desire of some people to marry, but “I resent being told how my story is going to end.”  Denver-based Kelly Shortandqueer, a co-founder of both the Denver Zine Library and Tranny Roadshow(a performance art tour with an all transgender cast) read material on transitioning from female to male and wanting to keep his feminist integrity even while seeking “access to dude-centered spaces.”

An avid sports fan, Shortandqueer described his lifelong fondness for the Phillies and of wanting to create a radical queer sports space free of the gender norms and sexism of mainstream male-dominated sports culture.  Chicago’s John Thompson, a writer and activist who recently co-founded the Write to Win Collective, a new penpal program for queer prisoners in Illinois, read from his piece titled “The only time I’ve ever been happy to see an HRC logo.”  In it, he described a trip to Laramie, Wyoming and a moving encounter with an older gay man who spoke about the isolation of gay life in Laramie.

Clearly, there is an ongoing interest in maintaining and archiving queer zines, evidenced by the fact that Wilde will be an artist in residence at The Anchor Zine Library and Archive in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he’ll curate SPEW Fo(u)rth: A Canadian Queer Zine Art Show.  The show will also be at The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives in Toronto.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 12 August, 2009.

Health Summit topic: Good Bi (research) [8 August, 2009]

The annual LGBTI Health Summit was held at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, 720 S.  Michigan, August 14-18, and the five-day international event kicked off with an entire day devoted to the issues and needs of bisexuals.  According to the organizers, this is only the second event with a focus on bisexuality and health, the first being the Bi Health Summit at the 2003 North American Conference on Bisexuality in San Diego.

On August 14, a keynote session included a welcome and introduction to bisexual health issues by Julie Ebin, a member of the Bi Health Summit Coordinating Committee.  Ebin said that issues around bisexual health revolved the questions of “whether bi individuals take care of their own individual health, whether and how an individual’s sexuality impacts their own individual health, and whether and how an individual’s sexuality affects their access to resources.”

Ebin was followed by two speakers, Cheryl Dobinson and Stewart Landers.  Dobinson wrote Ten Things Bisexual People Should Discuss with Their Health Care Providerswith Dr.  Leah Steele for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association in 2008.  Landers presented information about health disparities experienced by bisexuals in Massachusetts.  His report used data from the 2001-2007 Massachusetts Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys.

As Ebin explained, bisexuals face very particular issues even in terms of how their sexual orientation is marginalized in society, and that kind of stigmatization has an impact on their health.  She said that culture, at large, sees bisexuals in terms of enduring stereotypes: exploitative (willing to switch between lesbian/gay and straight identities as convenient; duplicitous; and unwilling to commit to any one identity.  Bisexuals and their allies constantly work to dismantle these stereotypes by providing counter-narratives.  But, in the meantime, bisexuals face unique challenges, compounded by other factors.  As Ebin put it, “Bi health does not exist in a vacuum.  Issues like race, disability, financial resources and history of imprisonment can all relate to health disparities.”

A bisexual person, faced with a health concern like herpes might wonder, “Will my lesbian group of friends shut me out? Am I putting my boyfriend at risk because I have unprotected sex with my girlfriend?” Ebin said that such quandaries complicated bi health concerns.  Health providers need to consider such matters and ask, “Do Bis have more mental health concerns? How do these relate to biphobia, internal and external?” She said that bisexuals were less likely to seek health care because of experiences with previous treatment.  The goal of the summit, according to Ebin, was to increase the pool of Bi competent providers and to ensure that they could “detect potential causes [for poor bisexual health] ; tailor messaging; become health advocates and case providers and study what bi communities are doing well.”

Following Ebin, Dobinson provided research material that indicated that bisexuals are a significant part of the population and that ten health issues in particular were to be considered in relation to bi health.  In each case, bisexuals reported higher rates of prevalence than their lesbian/gay/heterosexual peers.  The issues included tobacco abuse, alcohol abuse, depression (25% of bisexual women reported depression) , anxiety (18% of bisexual women reported anxiety, as opposed to 6% of heterosexual women).  Dobinson also said that research indicated that “many bisexual men engage in relatively high rates of unprotected sex with male partners,” leading to a 2007 report that concluded that “Bi behaviour and identity were risk factors for HIV infection in men.”  Dobinson also said that bisexuals reported higher rates of experiencing violence physical and sexual abuse than heterosexuals and higher than or similar rates to gay men and lesbians.

Landers’ presentation confirmed Dobinson’s research findings.  Both agreed that there needs to be more research on bisexuals and that, as Dobinson put it, “more research is needed that collects and analyzes information on bisexuals separately from gay men and lesbians.”  Landers also said that, “Information on disparities can inform how public health resources are allocated to improve health, including identifying areas for intervention and the development of future research.”

Overall, the panellists and audience members agreed that increasing cultural competency on the part of health care providers is crucial.  Equally important is the funding of projects specifically targeted towards the needs of bisexuals. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 8 August, 2009.

Dallas does principles: Dallas Principles frame next steps [22 July, 2009]

Over the weekend of May 15-17, 24 people gathered in a hotel room at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport to discuss the next steps for the LGBT movement.  They emerged with a set of eight points that they called the Dallas Principles.  These include statements like, “separate is never equal” and “the establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.”  In addition, the group emerged with a list of “Full Civil Rights Goals,” which includes “Dignity and Equality,” and a “Call to Action.”  Windy City Times spoke separately to two of the authors, Juan Ahonen-Jover and Jon Winkleman, about how the document came about and where they see it going.

Ahonen-Jover and his partner Ken Ahonen-Jover are co-founders of eQualityGiving.org, an “online donor community.”  According to him, a preliminary discussion about LGBT issues came about on the group’s listserv a little while after the Obama election, and many of the discussants expressed disappointment at the pace at which LGBT issues were being addressed: “We saw that despite the tremendous success [of Democrats] , [LGBT concerns] were not translating into issues fast enough.  So we wondered, how do we accelerate?”  From there on, the discussion brewed for some time before Ahonen-Jover sent out a call to “People I knew personally on our listserv.”  He also “asked them to invite other people” to come to a meeting to discuss concrete future actions.

According to Winkleman, the 24 who eventually showed up at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport hotel were among many who had been invited.  Both men said that the meeting began without any preconceptions of what it would lead to, and that the principles were the end product of a weekend of long conversations.  According to Ahonen-Jover, the goal was to establish a broad set of directives which could guide the LGBT movement towards “full equality,” which he defined as “legal equality, to have the same protections that other groups would have.”  Winkleman said that the language was purposely kept broad in order not to confine the principles to specific issues.

Since May, the principles have gathered many signatures on the Web site and some criticism.  In the gay paper Dallas Voice, John Wright commented that “no one from the media—and certainly not Dallas Voice—was notified about this meeting in advance,” and that the authors were mostly from the coasts.  The writer and activist Jewelle Gomez, appearing on Laura Flanders’s GritTV, liked the principles but pointed out that they were crafted by people who are “predominantly male, predominantly white.”  Asked why there had not been a public callout for people to attend, Winkleman said that this was partly logistical (no one could predict the numbers that might then show up) , and partly because the organizers themselves did not go into the meeting with a clear sense of what would come about.

Judging from the biographies of the authors made available on the Web, most appear to have fundraising and political backgrounds within traditional electoral politics, and the group appears relatively homogenous in terms of race and ethnicity.  They include Charles Merrill, whose bio states that he is of the Merrill Lynch family, and John Bare, who “worked as a research molecular biologist and geneticist, but evolved into a donor and activist.”  Also included are Mandy Carter, an African-American activist and co-founder of Southerners On New Ground and the African-American blogger Pam Spaulding.  Winkleman said that he worked in as a waiter in a restaurant.  Asked about the economic diversity of the group, Ahonen-Jover was adamant that there was “significant diversity.”

Where do the authors see this project going? Ahonen-Jover sees the principles giving “a perspective that empowers people.”  The name of the project echoes that of the Denver Principles of 1983, a defining document for establishing the dignity of people with AIDS.  The historian John D’Emilio, talking to Windy City Times, said, ‘the Denver Principles grew out of early AIDS activism and became important in developing the politics of AIDS.  Will the Dallas Principles develop the same traction, and what will that traction mean?”

The Dallas Principles can be found at www.thedallasprinciples.org/The_Dallas_Principles/Home.html.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 22 July, 2009.

Milk letters up for auction [22 July, 2009]

With the release of a movie based on his life, Harvey Milk’s life and work have gained a new significance in the public eye.  Milk was the first openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and served for 11 months before being assassinated by Dan White in 1978.  While there is considerable material about his life in San Francisco, relatively little is known about his early years.  On July 28, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, 1338 W. Lake, will offer two signed letters from Milk that provide a glimpse into his thoughts and life in that time period.

Mary Williams of Leslie Hindman told Windy City Times that the letters were addressed to Patrick Mormon, a Las Vegas-based antique dealer and a close friend of Milk.  They were bequeathed to the present owner by Mormon.  According to Williams, the missives are important because they reveal a different side to Milk, and they speak to two predominant issues in the gay community today: the ban on gays in the military and same-sex marriage.

One of the letters is postmarked December 15, 1954, sent from Norfolk, Va.  Milk wrote: “Pat—Don’t say or do anything.  I’ve been turned in by Johnny Teynel and Marty ‘Kid’ (illegible) and a third party.”  Scholars have generally agreed that Milk’s discharge from the army in 1955 was unrelated to his homosexuality.  This letter suggests Milk’s preoccupation with the impending discharge.

The second letter is postmarked USS Kittiwake, New York, although the specific date is unknown.  In it, Milk reveals that he is about to go to Dallas, Texas, to embark on a possible relationship with an unnamed person: “I’m just starting 10 days leave (in 5 min) and I’m on my way to Dallas, Texas to see someone.  If things work out as I want I may be a happily married man by the end of this year.  ‘Gay marriage,’ that is.  I think I wrote you about him—well we wrote each other and before long he wanted me to come to Texas—here I come.  Will let you know how things work out...”

Milk and Joe Campbell met in Queens, N.Y., and they moved to Dallas in 1957, where they lived together for six years.

The letters will be offered at auction during the Fine Books and Manuscripts auction on Tuesday, July 28, and will be on public exhibition Sunday-Monday, July 26-27.  Williams estimates that they could sell for as much as $4,000-$6,000 combined, given the rarity of items from Milk’s early life.

Originally published in Windy City Times on 22 July, 2009.

Citywide Pride: Talk focuses on diversity and inclusion [9 July, 2009]

There exists today a panoply of services and staff training resources to aid companies in ensuring that their workplaces achieve mandated diversity requirements.  But do these help or hinder a corporation, and how does the notion of diversity relate to the bottom line of profits?

As part of the Citywide Pride series, CNA Insurance and High Potential Inc.  \hosted a lunch discussion, “Taking Diversity and Inclusion to the Next Level” where moderators Larry Kuhn and James Foster spoke about diversity issues in the workplace.  Kuhn and Foster focused on a recent survey they conducted among corporations like Prudential and Ernst and Young and from which they extrapolated ways of incorporating diversity and inclusion.

In surveying corporations, Kuhn and Foster found that many respondents felt that diversity had become a human resources issue, expressed by comments that it was “largely driven by compliance.” They addressed the need to consider inclusion in conjunction with diversity.  According to them, this is necessary in order to ensure that corporations benefit from a culture of diversity, as opposed to one where employers feel that it’s no more than a fulfilling a mandate.  With regard to the issue of LGBT inclusion, they noted that most CEOs don’t go beyond the use of inclusive language.  Or, as one respondent put it, “I just want the CEO to say the words gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender.  But Human Resources asked, ‘Isn’t GLBT enough?’”

Three speakers spoke about how they had reframed diversity by making it integral to their workplaces.  Robbin Burr (formerly of the Center on Halsted, and now a diversity relationship manager at Prudential), spoke about increasing diversity through programs which ask employees to create financial literacy by going into neighborhoods.  LaShana Jackson, a senior manager of diversity inclusion at AON corporation spoke about using the word “talent” rather than “diversity,” as a way to combat what she called the “diversity fatigue” that has set in on corporations.  According to Jackson, a key strategy is to retain a diverse pool of candidates by mentoring them and helping them develop their career skills.

With regard to the bottom line of profits, Kuhn and Foster said that that diversity could be profitable as well, with a recent study indicating that women and minorities brought in 300 million dollars in 2001.  But, according to them, this kind of recognition of the importance of diversity and inclusion can only come about with support from company leaders and a “fully engaged” employee base.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 9 July, 2009

Citywide Pride: Forum focuses on LGBTs’ legal, financial hurdles [June 25, 2008]

The law firm of Hinshaw and Culbertson, 222 N. LaSalle, hosted a presentation by Kyle D.  Young, a financial advisor at Wachovia Securities, titled “Financial and Legal Challenges for the GLBT Community.” This was part of the Citywide Pride events, which are designed to promote “advocacy and equality for LGBT employees” in the corporate workplace.  The same-sex marriage movement often raises the issue of what happens to the assets of a couple upon the demise of one partner, arguing that estate law and benefit packages favor married, opposite-sex couples; Young discussed financial strategies in this context.

Young used the term “non-spouse” throughout to indicate those who might be affected by the death of a partner/close friend and who stood to lose substantially because federal laws do not recognize non-spousal partnerships, regardless of their sexual orientation.  According to Young, who spoke on June 18, while things have improved for LGBTs in the corporate sector, there’s still progress to be made.  Only nine states give out same-sex benefits (New York, California, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, and California).  Only 198 of the Fortune 500 companies offer LGBT benefits.

According to Young, these state and corporate benefits are ineffective when federal law doesn”t recognize non-spousal partnerships, and this can have far-reaching effects.  In the case of pension plans, if a partner in a same-sex couple [or an unmarried couple] dies before the benefits start, those benefits are lost.  In the case of a federally recognized spousal relationship, the husband or wife inherits.

In terms of Social Security benefits, same-sex partners are not eligible to receive their partners” benefits [this also effects those who are opposite-sex and/or single – their social security benefits cannot be passed on to a non-spouse].

The Illinois state Estate Tax can be as high as 16%, if the estate is over 2 million and “this leaves your designated beneficiaries with a fraction of the assets left to them.”

How might non-spousal couples ensure that survivors receive the maximum benefits and assets?  Young said the first strategy was to “be pro-active” and to create a “wealth management roadmap” which included planning every financial aspect, including long term health care.  He emphasized the importance making sure that one’s benefits were clearly earmarked, and “making sure that financial advisors and attorneys have copies of all beneficiary forms.”

But in an economy where the median household income is less than $50,000, how many people, LGBT or straight, are affected by estate taxes, which only affects a small minority of the wealthy? Young responded that he didn’t “want to generalize, but very often those within the LGBT community do have incomes higher than the general population – they’re more educated and have higher degrees.”

He also suggested the LGBT people file Federal income tax forms as “single,” with an asterisk next to the word, and a reference to DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) ; this, according to Young, creates visibility around the effect of DOMA on LGBTs and non-spousal relationships.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 25 June, 2008

Groups address police brutality [25 June, 2008]

Chicago recently became a finalist in its bid to host the 2016 Olympics.  An umbrella group of local activist organizations and Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) is using this media attention to highlight Chicago police brutality.  At a June 19 press conference outside Mayor Daley”s office and an evening community forum at the Broadway United Methodist Church in Boystown, the group argued that Chicago did not have a right to host the Olympics given its record on police brutality, especially towards members of the LGBTQ community.  Sponsors of the events included queer groups Amigas Latinas, Equality Illinois, and Gay Liberation Network.

A central case is that of Alexander Ruppert, a gay man who alleges that he was severely beaten by police officers in June 2006.  Ruppert received 16 stitches to his left eye, and his injuries, photos of which were displayed prominently at the press conference, include a fractured nose.  Ruppert could not be present because of his medical condition, and was represented by his attorney Jon Erickson.

According to Robert Schultz, a field organizer for AIUSA, the Ruppert case is only one of many that create a “pattern of abuse” against LGBTQ people.  Wendy Park, of the American Civil Liberties Union, called for “meaningful reform.”  This includes changing a police union contract provision which prevents the Independent Police Review Authority from investigating anonymous complaints about “anything short of criminal conduct” on the part of police officers, even though anonymous citizen complaints against citizens are routinely addressed.  Schultz said, “Chicago is a global city and we take pride in that— but that brings responsibilities and obligations.  One is the rule of law, which should apply to both police and civilians.”

Is using the Olympics to highlight police brutality a symbolic gesture, and will the group go so far as to ask the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to reject Chicago”s bid on grounds of its history of police brutality?  What about human rights abuses in other finalist cities, such as Rio de Janeiro?  Schultz”s responses to these questions were non-committal; about the IOC, he said: “We”ll take whatever steps are necessary.”  The evening forum featured panelists who made it clear that they could and would take those steps.

Jon Erickson spoke again about his client, while Frankie Brown described being dragged from his home in Markham, Illinois, by police officers who entered his home insisting that he had drugs on the premises.  According to Brown, the police repeatedly called him a “fag.”  The panel also discussed the tensions between youth of color and police in and around the Center on Halsted in Boystown.  Ambrose said that he and his friends have been constantly harassed and picked up.  Recently, 4 youth were put in jail for 24 hours, according to Ambrose and “This happens on a daily basis.”  Youth advocate Father Tommy Avant-Garde, also known as Tommy Sampson, said that adults and youth “were trying to be pro-active so that we don”t have incidents of harassment.”

Joey Mogul, an attorney, and Pat Hill, from the group Black People against Police Torture (BPT), addressed the local and international frameworks around Chicago (and U.S) police brutality and the Olympics.  According to Mogul, those most abused tend to be transgender or non-gender conforming people of color because police officers see themselves as enforcers of normativity.  For instance, a black butch lesbian arrested in Boston for disruptive behavior was handcuffed more tightly than required.  When she asked an officer to loosen the handcuffs, she received the response, “If you want to act like a man, I”ll treat you like a man.”

Such cases of intimidation are, according to Mogul, the reason why “the experiences and stories of survival of LGBT people do not come to light.” Mogul also said that, “[w]hile we struggle as advocates, organizers, and activists, we lose sight of the fact that LGBT people of color are also victims of police violence.  In the queer community, mainstream LGBT organizations are not dealing with the racist, transphobic violence that queers are facing.”

Mogul advocated using international human rights treaties to publicize the ways in which local law enforcement failed to follow the same.  In 2006, she was part of a contingent that testified on Chicago police torture cases before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, which monitors compliance with the U.N.  Convention Against Torture.  Mogul said that this testimony was part of the reason why the U.S.  Attorney’s office “has subpoenaed 10 officers to the Grand Jury.”

Hill said that “Chicago does not deserve to host the Olympics.”  Citing the Jon Burge case, she said that BPT has issued a statement opposing the Olympics in Chicago because the city has “failed to prosecute the police officers and officials who committed acts of torture, and the United States has engaged in numerous human rights violations [as documented by the United Nations].”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 25 June, 2008

Giannoulias’ LGBT fundraiser [18 June, 2008]

Citizens for Giannoulias hosted a fundraiser for Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias at Roscoe’s, 3356 N. Halsted, June 12.  The host committee included Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney and Illinois State Representative Greg Harris, who introduced Giannoulias.  Tunney spoke about the treasurer’s commitment to the LGBT community, including his support for the Center on Halsted.  The alderman went on to stress that “as a community, we are concerned with public policy, fiscal responsibility and social justice,” and that the treasurer had demonstrated his commitment to all three issues.

According to Harris, Giannoulias is the main reason why “Illinois has been able to keep services for seniors, for people with HIV.” He said that Giannoulias is a “friend of the community” who’s responsible for “the most LGBT-sensitive policies” and who believes in “equality for all people.” The treasurer reiterated his commitment to the LGBT community and outlined the policies his office intended to benefit Illinois residents.  These policies included the Bright Start College Savings Program and a green energy program, as well as financial incentives for small businesses.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 June, 2008

Dyke march forum takes on concerns [18 June, 2008]

Soon to enter its 13th year, Dyke March Chicago is, for many lesbians and transgender people, an alternative to Pride Parade.  Historically, the March has remained on the city’s North side.  This year, it’ll be in Pilsen, home to a predominantly Latina/o community.  In the last few weeks, organizers began hearing complaints about the change in venue, and decided to hold a town-hall meeting.  According to Nicole Perez, a member of the Dyke March organizing committee, the event was held to dispel misinformation and stereotypes about the logistics of the March and the neighborhood.

Seventy people, ranging widely in age and ethnicity, attended the June 16 event at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted.  Perez, along with Jacky Luna and Rosa Yadira Ortiz, spoke about the reasons for the shift; Kate Eubank and Sabrina Hampton moderated a discussion.

Perez spoke about the early vision of Dyke March Chicago, originally organized as “a direct action demonstration.” But, according to her, “over the last few years, Dyke March had become more of a parade and less of a demonstration.” Perez noted that Dyke March Chicago had organized several forums across the city, and that the decision to move to Pilsen came from the community.  She said that concerns about the change were voiced in terms of queer safety in Pilsen, which ignored the fact that many people of color had not felt safe during North Side marches.  Luna said the change would show that “we are everywhere.”

Ortiz pointed out that the Annual Queer Prom is held in Pilsen and that Pilsen would be one of many future different locations for the March in upcoming years.  Audience members were asked why Dyke March Chicago mattered to them and what they felt about the change.  One woman responded that it was “the only space that I actually respect in the context of the whole Pride melodrama.”

Another participant said she was excited about the march “going back to its original purpose,” and yet another said “I don’t identify with the rainbow flag or Pride… My fear about Dyke March is that it would only be a lesbian version of Pride.  Moving to Pilsen has the intention and politics we all care about.” The issue of safety in Pilsen was raised again when a woman said that she was moving to the West Side: “I might get killed in Humboldt Park, so it would be good to see queer activity there.”

Ann Russo addressed this comment by talking about the difficulties of maintaining community “when we are who we are” and that she was “disturbed by the conversation about Humboldt Park because that”s what’s been lodged against Pilsen, especially as white folks are talking about different neighborhoods as more dangerous than others...How can we create a conversation among us?”

Russo was among several people at the town-hall meeting who identified themselves as white allies supporting the change in venue.  They distributed a flyer in support of the move, and addressed the discomfort apparently articulated by those in opposition: “Experiencing discomfort is an integral part of building alliances and coalitions across divided and segregated communities.”

Many participants said that the move would increase queer visibility across the city.  Others felt there was a misperception about Andersonville as the gay capital of the city and that keeping the march on the North Side “insulates the neighborhood from confronting the community’s exclusions.”

Cindy Ibarra, also an organizer, spoke to Windy City Timesabout the racial and ethnic issues around the march: “We have to remember our history and people like Silvia Rivera, a Puerto Rican transgender person.” Ibarra addressed gentrification and development and the supposed potential for violence against queers in Pilsen, while “ignoring the root causes of violence and poverty.  Dyke March is committed to expanding [a conversation on] those issues.”  Ibarra echoed comments in the room when she said that the current debate was “a reality check about racism in the LGBTQ community, as well as class privilege and the way in which Chicago views its many communities of color.”

There were questions about police presence at the march.  In response to a concern about trans demonstrators who are often jailed in cells meant for the opposite sex, Bill Greaves said that city law demanded that “you are treated as you present yourself” and according to identification papers, which could include a library card.

There have been rumors about a counter-march in Andersonville by those opposing the move.  Perez said that they had not heard any details.  Organizers will be present in Andersonville June 28 to engage with any splinter groups.  Arlene Welty, also a white ally, will be among those leading a bike contingent from Andersonville to Pilsen: “It’ll help ease the transition.”

Dyke March Chicago begins Sat., June 28 [2008], 1 p.m.  at 1800 S. Halsted, with the step-off at 2:30 p.m.  Attendees will march down 18th Street to rally at Harrison Park, 1824 S.  Wood.  E-mail dykemarchchicago@gmail.com or visit www.myspace.com/dykemarchchicago.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 June, 2008

Movie screening examines violence and LGBTQs [28 May, 2008]

The Center on Halsted’s Anti-Violence Project and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs recently hosted a roundtable and regional training sessions.  These included a public screening of the documentary, Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World, May 22.  It was one of three events at the Center that week that examined violence and the LGBTQ community.

The film centers around the Cairo 52 case of 2001, where a number of men were arrested after a trip on an Egyptian floating houseboat.  Dangerous Livingargues that the case created a global gay consciousness about “a planetary minority.” It includes interviews with queer activists in countries as disparate as Pakistan, Malaysia, and the Honduras.

Dulcia Molina is one of those activists; in 2002, she fled Honduras after her work as an out lesbian and an advocate for child prostitutes put her in danger.  She was present to lead a discussion afterwards.

In response to a question about the film’s erasure of different political and economic situations, Molina said that the film did not provide those contexts.  She added that “coming to America is not [necessarily] a solution” because asylum does not address the economic issues of asylees, and most people would prefer to stay in their countries.  Molina also addressed gender: lesbians face greater harm than gay men because of their economic and cultural vulnerability.

Sean Casey of the Heartland Alliance said that there are LGBTQ communities and groups in the global south which lack basic resources.  He gave an example of the murdered body of an El Salvadorean transgender person found in Guatemala: a local LGBTQ group struggled for funds to fly the body back.  Wilson Montaya, of the Long Island GLBT Community Center, spoke about understanding the violence faced “by our brothers and sisters.” Sam Aguilera, of the group Get the Word Out, spoke about working with transgender sex workers on the Mexican-American border, who’re often beaten by Juarez police, and asked, “How can we support them further?”  In response, Molina spoke about “organizing sex workers to defend their labor rights.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 28 May, 2008

Partner violence among forum topics [28 May, 2008]

Violence is usually discussed within the context of heterosexual families and social groups.  It’s widely assumed that people in same-sex households, communities, and relationships are either incapable of causing harm to each other, or that their needs can’t be met by mainstream anti-violence groups.  As a result, significant issues like intimate partner violence or the particular needs of transgender youth seeking shelter from abusive homes are not addressed.  This leaves portions of the LGBTQ community without the conventional resources available to heterosexuals who seek relief from abuse. 

These and other points were raised at a day-long panel and community discussion, “Violence Within and Against Queer Communities,” organized by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects at the Center on Halsted.  The May 24 event’s panel featured Alicia Vega, co-chair of Amigas Latinas, and Ann Russo and Michelle VanNatta.  The latter two women represented Women and Girls Community Action Network (WGCAN) and the Queer Transformative Justice Project. 

Vega talked about the findings of Proyecto Latina, a survey initiated by Amigas Latinas (AL) to gather data about the experiences and lives of queer latina women.  Until this survey, which was carried out from January to July 2007, there had been no statistical information about the community.  Amigas wanted to “speak from a more informed place” about the women it represented.  The questions asked about everything from health care to marital status. 

According to Vega, the survey drew over 300 participants and revealed both new and surprising information.  The responses indicate that discrimination, for queer Latina women, does not occur only on grounds of sexual orientation but is also based on race and gender identity.  The survey also asked about female to female violence because “we wanted to learn about people’s experiences with violence.” To the surprise of many members of Amigas Latinas, and the audience, some women reported being forced into sexual activity by female strangers. 

Nearly 100 women were born outside the US; “and many are currently undocumented,” according to Vega.  She said this indicated that “immigration status could be a controlling mechanism in a violent relationship.”  Such raw data gave members of Amigas Latinas “an opportunity to have conversations” about issues facing the community, and showed that people could not be simply divided into categories of survivor and perpetrator.  Rather, same-sex issues indicated that “there’s an equivalence of violence back and forth” and that the resolution of such issues “requires a very different approach,” one that might include conflict resolution. 

Vega said that one immediate plan for the study was to take “the three most compelling bits of information and put together action groups.”  Amigas has recently received funding to hire a researcher to perform full data analysis of the survey. 

Ann Russo and Michelle VanNatta are members of Women and Girls Collective Action Network (WGCAN).  They each spoke about their experiences with the issues of domestic and community violence.  VanNatta is a criminologist whose research indicated that lesbians were being excluded from domestic violence shelters, “sometimes because of explicit policies.” Both Russo and VanNatta emphasized that they were not only interested in reforming such institutions but looking for “alternatives to the criminal legal system.”

According to VanNatta, the domestic violence/shelter world is too professionalized, with harmful results.  For instance, professionalization results in skewed power relations between survivors and shelter officials who wield a great deal of control over the women seeking help, and who require them to live by onerous rules.  As a result, survivors are turned into disenfranchised “victims.”  VanNatta also addressed the violence experienced by women within organizations that are supposed to help them, even though “we don’t think of the state as a rapist.”

Both Russo and VanNatta felt that the anti-violence movement had moved away from community-based solutions, and that the system depended too much on the state which, in turn, asked for immediate solutions like jail time without providing a long-term plan for the cessation of violence.

For alternatives, they pointed to a recent report by WGCAN, titled “Communities Engaged in Resisting Violence,” which documents alternative strategies to anti-violence work used by 16 Chicago groups.  These include Young Women’s Empowerment Project, which works with young women in the sex trade.  Russo pointed out that the group doesn’t paint the women as victims or criminals but simply provides a safe and non-judgmental space for them, regardless of whether their work is a choice or not.  According to Russo, this is the sort of necessary non-judgmental community-based work that works with members’ needs, instead of imposing the “one size fits all model” used by the state.

Both Russo and VanNatta stressed the “need to do something in addition to social services.” For both, such work is especially important because it provides an alternative for LGBTQ people and answers the question: “What does [the anti-violence movement] mean for queer issues of violence?”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 28 May, 2008

Activists mark day against homophobia [21 May, 2008]

Approximately 15 people gathered outside Women and Children First, 5233 N.  Clark, for International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO, first marked in 2005) May 17.  Following comments by Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) and Arsham Parsi of IRQO (Iranian Queer Organization), they marched down Clark Street to Gerber/Hart library, 1127 W. Granville, and a reception for the latter speaker.

Thayer said that IDAHO’s focus this year was “the repression of LGBT people in Moscow.” According to him, the government has ordered a “preemptive suppression of the impending Russian Pride in Moscow on May 31.” He spoke about the need for “solidarity among LGBTs in all countries.” Parsi said: “I’m honored to be here in solidarity with queer people in Russia...All governments and citizens of the globe should respect human rights with actions, not just words.”

Despite the presence of Parsi and flyers about Moscow Pride, the march also included statements about same-sex marriage, as marchers chanted “Obama, Obama, let Mama marry Mama!” and “Moscow Pride: Da! Fascism: Nyet!”

Although the specific political issues in Iran, a country with a vastly different geopolitical history than Russia, did not seem clear to all marchers, they seemed to be focused on a larger issue.  When asked how he saw the issues facing gay Iranians in the larger context of Iranian politics, a GLN member said, “I don’t know.  I can’t really address that.  The people there are not given equal rights.”

At Gerber/Hart, Parsi offered specifics about Iran.  According to him, “[i]n Iran, homosexuality is punishable by law,” and it’s difficult to prove that Iranian queers are persecuted for their sexuality because “court materials make no mention of their sexual orientation at all.” The same, according to him, is true for feminists who are arrested for “supposedly breaking the peace, not for being women.” He said that Western activists have to act “very carefully and cautiously” in supporting Iranian victims of homophobia.

Parsi responded to questions, including one from an audience member who said that an Iranian acquaintance had told him in 1973 about the pervasive corruption in Iran, and asked if it was the same now.  Parsi remarked that he was born in 1980, and that “98 percent of the money goes to 2 percent of the people in Iran.” In response to a question about whether a possible change in government might mean more human rights in Iran, Parsi asked, “Are gay and human rights perfect in the United States?” He also addressed the issue of war against Iran: “People don’t become democratic with military attacks.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 21 May, 2008

Julia Serano forum focuses on trans community and sexism [21 May, 2008]

Julia Serano, the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (Seal Press, 2007) was recently in Chicago to present her thoughts on “Transsexual and Trans Feminine Perspectives on Sexism.”

The May 15 talk combined Serano’s critique of current discourse on transgender people with personal anecdotes illustrating what she considered a widespread misogyny and sexism—against transwomen in particular.  Serano drew parallels between the heterosexism experienced by people in same-sex relationships and the misogyny experienced by female transsexual women who identified as feminine women.  She identified heterosexism as the idea that same-sex relationships or attraction are unnatural, and misogyny as the idea that femininity is inferior to masculinity.  In addition, Serano identified the concepts of “cissexuals”—those who are born into and maintain a particular gender identity—and defined “cissexism” as “the assumption that transsexual gender identities and sex embodiments are less natural and legitimate than cissexual ones.”

Serano was very specific in her use of these terms in order to delineate the ways in which terminology about the transgender experience fails to reflect the different kinds of oppression experienced by specific bodies.  For instance, according to her, the term “transphobia” is useful in discussing hostility towards transgender people, but it can’t describe the invisible forms of misogyny experienced by transwomen who identify on the feminine spectrum.  For Serano, such terms don’t adequately address the prevalence of gender norms that also intersect with society’s misogyny towards women, not just transgender women.

According to Serano, transwomen in particular experience misogyny even from cissexual feminists.  She gave the example of a female psychiatrist who, at a conference where she declared her “feminist consciousness,” went on to deride her transwomen clients for their feminine hairstyles and clothing.  Serano related another instance of a man who turned to his female partner and loudly proclaimed about the transwoman in front of him on the street, “Did you see all the shit she’s wearing?”

According to Serano, such moments are quite common and reveal that “transmisogyny is beyond the pale of misogyny.”  She called for a more critical appraisal of contemporary queer theory because, according to her, its principles of gender and queer fluidity sometimes make these embodied moments of misogyny invisible.  Serano also called for thinking about the ways in which transgender people exist at the intersections between class, race, and gender identity. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 21 May, 2008

D’Emilio Marks Anniversary [19 March, 2008]

John D’Emilio’s book Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 was published by the University of Chicago in March 1983. To mark the 25th anniversary of the book, Gerber/Hart Library hosted a tribute to D’Emilio’s work and career on Sunday, March 16. The event included a panel discussion with presentations by local scholars Cathy Cohen and Ramon Gutierrez, both of the University of Chicago, and Michael Sherry of Northwestern University.

Event co-chairs Timothy Stewart-Winter and Thomas Adams read from tributes sent by queer scholars across the country, including Alisa Solomon and George Chauncey. John D’Emilio concluded the evening’s presentations by reflecting upon the early days of collecting material for his project and of often relying upon the private collections of individuals. He pointed out that while much has changed in terms of the acceptance of marginalized communities’ histories as fit objects of study by large institutions, local queer organizations like Gerber/Hart need to be sustained to ensure that LGBT history archives are preserved.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 19 March, 2008.

Huberman attends forum on LGBTQ students [17/24 June, 2009]

Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) held its first Safe and Affirming Education Community Forum at Lozano Library, 1805 S.  Loomis, June 15.  The event highlighted the issues facing LGBTQ/GNC (lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and queer/gender non-conforming) students in CPS.  The group invited Ron Huberman, the openly gay chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), to attend.

Huberman addressed the packed room of students, educators, parents and activists at the beginning, saying how “excited” he was to be there because “many of these issues are ones I certainly care a great deal about.  I’m gay.  I came out in high school when I was 15 years old, and that was 20 years ago.  We have a long way to go, but there’s progress.”  He said that he was “looking forward to the proposals to improve the level of respect.”  Huberman also added that he could not “say yes or no to every proposal.  This is an opening dialogue and the start of many meetings to see how we can make CPS work better for every student at CPS.”

The forum proceeded as a set of demands proposed by a panel of 14 students, parents and educators of Gender JUST and allied organizations.  Huberman was accompanied by Renae Ogletree, director of student development at CPS.

Esmeralda Roman of Gender JUST explained that the group was motivated by a “need for safe and affirming education” within the context of the different forms of injustice faced by students, including economic and racial issues.  [Full disclosure: this reporter is a member of the group] .  Over the course of the evening, panelists presented statistics about LGBTQ student issues into their presentations: 85% of LGBTQ students report that teachers never or rarely interfere when they see students being harassed, and 44% are physically assaulted.

Each panelist submitted a demand for reform addressed to Huberman; the demands had been collectively formulated at Gender JUST meetings prior to the forum.  Roman described herself as a “lesbian mom to a teenage son [who was] bullied for years” and her frustration when the usual solutions, like speaking to the principal, proved fruitless.  She asked for a district-wide accountability officer to whom students and educators could report their grievances, and who would enforce non-discrimination policies and provide training resources.  Lucky Mosqueda spoke about being marginalized at Roosevelt High School as a student with a disability and an androgynous lesbian.  She said she struggled to find intellectual and social support but was marginalized both at home and school.  She asked for the creation of a curriculum that was not heterosexist or ablist.

Jose Delgado spoke being in Senn High school and a sex education teacher who spoke only of “abstinence [as] the key to a healthy relationship.”  Delgado said that when he asked, “How do you protect yourself during anal sex with another man?” the response he got was that “sex is between a man and a woman” and that anything else was “immoral and wrong.”  Delgado said that the lack of sexual information for LGBTQ students could prove dangerous, a point driven home to him when an 18-year-old friend was diagnosed as HIV-positive.  Delgado stressed the need for comprehensive sexual information taught by professional sex educators who will discuss oral, anal and vaginal sex as well as related issues like masturbation, sexual violence, self-esteem, contraception and condoms.

Chantelle, a student at Julien High school and member of the group Chicago Youth Initiating Change spoke about Renaissance 2010, controversial among education activists because of the number of school closings it has initiated.  Chantelle described the program as “catastrophic because it took away vital resources which could empower students.”  She said that closing high schools, high teacher-student ratios, and cutting teachers put students at higher risk of violence.  Describing the harassment of a fellow openly transgender school student, she asked: “Who is at higher risk for violence when their community is taken away through the unjust practice of closing or phasing out our schools?” She asked for a reevaluation of Renaissance 2010, an end to cutting teachers in October and the creation of peer-to-peer mentoring programs that would respect gender identity.

Students not feeling safe in schools was a recurring theme, as was the need to add gender identity and gender expression to CPS’s non-discrimination policy.  Ahkia Daniels described a police officer tell a fellow female student that “ [i] f you want to dress like a man, I will treat you like a man.”  Richard Moore emphasized the need to go beyond “disciplining strategies that only deal with violence and harassment after the fact.”  He asked for “restorative justice strategies” to be put in place instead.  Daniels and Moore asked Huberman to sign a directive encapsulating the principles of the forum.  The room broke out into chants as attendees pressed him to sign.

Huberman responded that “any directive consists of lots of different pieces.  I embrace the underlying nature of this directive [but] we have to use the protocol of CPS.  The problems presented here are real and real solutions are needed.”  Emphasizing that he appreciated the work of the forum, he added, “the issues I care about are the issues you care about” and that he was concerned with “how you change policy on a global level.”  Chantelle reminded him that “a promise without a deadline is a promise broken.”  Huberman committed to meeting panelists within a 60-day period for follow-up discussions.  He also said that some of the issues, such as training of security guards, were already under consideration and suggested that the testimonies of students be used in a video as a resource for students and teachers.

Speaking to Windy City Times, Ogletree said she was impressed by the “compelling arguments.”  She said, “You have a gay CEO, and a gay director of student development, speaking to the gay community about changes that need to be made.  It just shows that being gay doesn’t mean that you know everything or that we are doing the right things.”  She added, “I hope that by the fall we will have addressed these issues.”  Sam Finkelstein, of Gender JUST, said that, “While it’s a shame that Huberman was unwilling to make it as productive [by agreeing to the solutions that the youth had developed], it’s a great start in initiating a dialogue between youth and CPS.  We are going to continue to push him until we can get these issues addressed in our schools.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, June 24, 2009.

Panelists discuss “Stonewall and Beyond” [17 June, 2009]

The 40th anniversary of Stonewall falls on June 28 this year, the same date of the original riot in 1969.  Since Stonewall, the LGBTQ community has seen the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s, the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and the rise of the same-sex-marriage movement in the late 1990s and beyond.  To commemorate the event, the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, hosted an intergenerational roundtable discussion entitled “Stonewall and Beyond” June 11.

Participants were Lott Hill, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Columbia College Chicago; Patrick Sinozich, artistic director of Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus; Monte Staton, a doctoral candidate at Loyola and a Gerber/Hart volunteer; Vernita Gray, a local LGBT activist who serves on Center on Halsted’s SAGE Advisory Council; and June LaTrobe, the Center on Halsted’s transgender community liaison.  LaTrobe was also the moderator.  The discussion was punctuated with performances by Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus.

Each participant provided a different set of details about Stonewall, and the activism that came after.  Gray said that she came out the same year, and that she and her then-girlfriend had gone to New York to attend Woodstock where they found a little tent with information about Stonewall.  According to Gray, the two determined that they would be involved in gay politics upon their return to Chicago.  Gray went on to describe what it was like to be out and gay in the period: “You couldn’t touch in the bar, they’d shine a light on you and ask you to leave.  It was a different world.”

Sinozich discussed the physical geography surrounding the Inn as well as the political powers that dominated it.  According to him, Stonewall was “owned and run by the mafia for several reasons” having to do with liquor laws and bootlegging.  The police would occasionally raid and harass clientele, but mostly in order to demonstrate that they were doing their job when, in reality they were being paid by the mafia to only raid on occasion, when a lot of people were not around.

LaTrobe discussed the spectrum of sexual and gender identity of the patrons at Stonewall.  She said that while most people think of drag queens at the forefront, many identified as such because the word ‘transgender” was not in common usage at the time.  She also explained that, at the time, everyone had to be wearing at least three items of clothing “that corresponded to your birth sex.”  Terms like “fluffy sweater boys” and “flame queens” were ways to demarcate different forms of gender identity and expression.

Staton, addressing the issue of why Stonewall became a historic point of reference, said that “the night of the arrests was different because people stayed around to watch and, as people were put into the paddy wagon, people began picking fights.”  He also said that there were other similar events in Chicago, but the difference was that Stonewall gained a national reputation for its significance.  Lott Hill added that “Stonewall was not the first protest but the one that generated a lot of press, a point where media started to pay attention” to LGBTQ issues.  Hill also spoke about AIDS activism in the 1980s, and the kind of organizing against pharmaceutical companies that cohered after Stonewall.

Referring to the media spin, LaTrobe sought to correct a widespread myth about the event, that it came about as a memorial for Judy Garland who had just died.  Sinozich affirmed that his historical understanding of the event proved otherwise.  For one thing, according to him, clientele at Stonewall that night would have been younger than those who would have remembered Garland singing at Carnegie Hall.  LaTrobe also referred to other events, like the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco three years before Stonewall, that went unnoticed by the media at the time.

In concluding remarks, participants spoke about the state of the current gay movement.  Sinozich said that while Stonewall created a sense “that there be a response, I don’t sense any urgency in the community as a whole.”  Gray, however, said she saw the opposite: “an incredible urgency” in relation to marriage “as a very important issue.”  Hill said that he was ‘very hopeful” and that, in his work with students, he felt that “Proposition 8 is one of those galvanizing moments.”  Staton added that he was “hopeful and optimistic.”  In the question-and-answer session, some of the nearly 30 attendees (plus the members of the chorus) indicated that the discussion had been thought-provoking.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 June, 2009

Arrests on Halsted: Radicals Clash with Police [3 June, 2009]

Reports of an event on the night of May 30 have surfaced amidst rumors that a group of straight people marched through Lakeview’s North Halsted Street, and then set upon and attacked a group of gay individuals.  What is known is that a gathering involving a large group of people resulted in several arrests.

Windy City Times has spoken to several sources who were at or around the supposed events.  The main participants involved in the event were participants in a three-day convergence organized by a local radical queer group Bash Back! Chicago.  The event took place from May 29-31.  This reporter was a participant in the convergence (but not in the nighttime events of May 30) and spoke to fellow attendees as well as members of Bash Back! and eyewitnesses.

Preliminary reports indicate that there was no straight onslaught or march upon gays/queers.  Instead, the people we spoke to indicate that the trouble arose between police and Bash Back! convergence attendees.  The only reports of straight people marching down Halsted came from those who admitted to only having heard that on hearsay.

The Bash Back! convergence was organized around several workshops and caucuses.  Workshop topics included the growth of the AIDS pharmaceutical industry and the effects of intellectual property rights laws; the politics of passing; the ex-gay movement; gentrification and squatting and confronting sexual assault in queer communities.  There were also several caucuses designed for the transgender community, genderqueers and cisgender people.  (“Cisgender” refers to ‘someone who is comfortable in the gender he or she was assigned at birth.)

Following a full day of such meetings, a group of convergence attendees numbering from 100-200 got on the Red Line el.  There were approximately two to three cars filled with this group and, according to several accounts, members engaged in a peaceful but celebratory party on the train.  According to one Bash Back! member, who self-identified as “Leo,” there were dancing and chanting of slogans like ‘this train is for faggots only” and “One in Ten is not enough, recruit, recruit, recruit!” Leo said that while some people who got on the trains did get off upon seeing the large group, several also joined in on the dancing.  Bill Dobbs, an activist based in New York City, was on one of the cars and was with the group as it rode the train all the way down to the 95th/Dan Ryan stop and then back to the North Side.  The group disembarked at Belmont.

Dobbs emphasized that he was in the middle of the crowd and, therefore, not able to see everything.  He said that the group was “excited, with high energy, but pretty orderly.”  He also noted that “people came out of bars and restaurants to see what the excitement was about.”  According to him and Leo, the group moved up Halsted, and traffic was “accommodating” in letting the group move by.  At one point, four or five police cars appeared.  Police officers emerged from the cars and began to corral the group down Cornelia into a dead-end street.  According to Leo, “there were two police cars who sectioned the block off and pushed us into a dark street corner.  I ran out of the block so as not to be trapped.”  He said that he saw altercations between police officers and group members.

There have been consistent reports of at least one injury, sustained by someone when a police car apparently ran over their foot.  Dobbs said that he saw two police cars, one behind the other, and the gap between them widened at one point.  According to him, one of the cars sped up to make up the distance and then slammed on the brakes.  He also said that he saw somebody being arrested on the ground, and two people being taken to a police van and that he believed the police had truncheons out.  Dobbs added that “from what I could see, the police were very aggressive and even dangerous and quite possibly unprofessional.”

According to Dobbs, Leo and several reports from the convergence, there were four arrests.  Leo said that, to the best of his knowledge, the charges ranged from resisting arrest to assaulting police officers.  All four were released the next morning.

Both felt that the response of the police was, as Dobbs put it, “over the top, from what I saw.”  He said that “the police did not at all give a calm response and were too aggressive,” and that he did not hear them say, “clear the street.”  Another witness who was not part of the group was Gary Airedale, a member of the musical group Flesh Hungry Dogs, who was loading a truck with fellow members for a show at Hydrate, 3458 N.  Halsted.  He said, “I saw a bunch of guys marching on Halsted; I assumed it was a gay march but it wasn’t really organized.  I saw lots of cop cars herd them down Cornelia eastbound from Halsted.  There may have been a skirmish, but it was too dark to see.”  Taylor Ross was also present as the events unfolded and spoke to members of the group afterwards.  His second-hand reports corroborate the accounts of Dobbs and Leo: that “the police headed them off onto Cornelia.”  Ross said that he heard people “were good about videotaping and taking down police officers’ information.”  He also felt that “the police overreacted; the situation could have been diffused in an easier way.”

The Chicago Police Department did not return a call requesting details and its version of events. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 3 June, 2009

Pilsen in step with 2009 Dyke March [June 2009]

The Chicago Dyke March moved to Pilsen last year in an historic attempt to take the event to neighborhoods outside the mostly white gay enclaves of the north side.  The Dyke March Planning Committee envisioned that the march would rotate between the city’s various ethnic neighborhoods, to show that queers are, indeed, everywhere.

This year, approximately 600 people gathered at 18th and Halsted on a sunny June 27 afternoon to step off on the march, which made its way toward a rally at Harrison Park.  Participants held up homemade signs, chanted “Power to the People” and were cheered on by residents and passing cars.  The march began as a critique of the traditional Pride Parade, which many felt had become overly commercial and distanced from the radical tradition of Stonewall.  Dyke marchers tend to be a more politicized group of people than is found at Pride Parade, and many of them do not even attend that event.  Lani Montreal of Insight Arts, a group dedicated to cultural work rooted in social justice, explained why: “Pride has become commercialized.  We don’t want to march alongside AT&T.”

Sam Finkelstein of Gender JUST (of which this reporter is a member) said that the event was “a good opportunity to connect with other members of the more radical members of the community who are more focused on fighting oppression.”  GJ members gathered signatures for their ongoing campaign to ask the Chicago Department of Public Health to examine how HIV-funding resources get distributed in the city.  Other groups gathered signatures for marriage equality, while Gay Liberation Network (GLN) held up a giant yellow banner with the words: “A Chicago ‘welcome’ for Obama—Keep your @#% promises! Repeal DOMA, DADT.”

During the march, some people dropped a giant banner from the top floor windows of a building on the route, with the words “Stop Oppression and Gentrification! LGBTQs, We’re In Unity with You.”  The Pilsen neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, and it was clear that the theme of gentrification resonated with both the community and the marchers, many of whom work directly or indirectly on the issue.  Immigration rights are also a predominant theme in the area, given its preponderance of Latino immigrants, and one of the signs—“I love my undocumented girlfriend”—referenced the issue.

Among the groups marching were Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Bash Back!; Gay Liberation Network, I2I: Asian & Pacific Islander Pride of Chicago and Amigas Latinas.  Andy Thayer of GLN said that it was becoming “clear to people that Obama is moving in the wrong direction in terms of gay rights.  There’s no excuse for moving backwards.”  He said that, in the context of Stonewall, it was important to remember that “protests produced results.”

Once at Harrison Park, marchers gathered to listen to and watch speeches and performances.  They were also invited to fill out index cards with suggestions for next year’s event.  The march remained in Pilsen this year, despite last year’s announcement by the committee that it would move to a different neighborhood.  Organizer Tania Unzueta said that this was because the committee felt it was necessary for the march to make connections with a neighborhood before moving on: “We don’t just want to be a march and reinforce the stereotype of a gays moving into communities and not collaborating with the people in the area.  We can’t organize in a community without organizing with the community.”  According to her, the march will now rotate every two years in a different neighborhood.  She said that the committee realized that “a year is barely enough before we start moving on,” and that organizers would use this past year’s experience to build on developing connections to whichever community the March moved.

It was clear that the march had made an impact on the local residents.  Elpidia Torres, a resident and spectator who lives across the street from the convergence area, came by to watch and support people.  Speaking through Unzueta, who translated for her, she said that she was there because “people have a right to defend their rights, and no one should be discriminated against.”  Another woman, Yalut S.  (she would not give her full last name) , said that she was there to support a family member “who is not here today because she is not ready to come out.  I came instead of her so that next year she can be here with me; I will go home and tell her that I was here and she should be, too.”

Longtime marchers were also pleased with the event being in Pilsen.  Kathy Lawhon said that she had been initially skeptical of the move last year, but now supported it wholeheartedly: “It’s awesome that it’s in Pilsen, even if it does take me a while to get here.  And I love that we’re reclaiming the word ‘dyke,’ with its power.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, which came up in one of the presenter’s speeches.  Mika Munoz spoke about the radical roots of Stonewall, and of how the mainstream gay movement had “co-opted the story” of how “working class queers and queers of color led the charge” against police brutality.  She added that while the slogan then was, “We are fighting for our lives,” things had not changed much today, given, for instance, the police harassment of poor youth of color, and that “ [w] e are still fighting for our lives.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, June 2009.

Thayer talks about his arrest in Moscow [27 May, 2009]

Chicago gay activist Andy Thayer, of Gay Liberation Network, was in Moscow recently, for a May 16 event that Russian gay-rights activists planned as Moscow Pride.  In Russia, gay-related events have been stalled by repressive state policies that do not permit citizens to rally in public, and by what many consider to be a climate of widespread social and political homophobia.

Nikolai Alexeyev, a Russian gay activist had appeared in Chicago’s October 2007 Mathew Shepard rally.  This year, he invited Thayer and the British gay activist Peter Tatchell to support Moscow Pride efforts.  Windy City Timesspoke to Thayer for his version of the events that transpired that day, and his thoughts on the road ahead for Russian gay activists.

Asked why he chose to go to Moscow, Thayer said that he felt the need to express “solidarity with our Russian friends.”  According to him, Nikolai Alexeyev, the primary organizer of the event and a gay-rights activist, extended an invitation to “international folks he knew would help raise the profile of the event for the international press.”  According to Thayer, the organizers also felt that having activists from abroad would provide a measure of protection, since the Russian government might potentially be embarrassed about the news of any repression of foreign nationals from the U.K. and U.S.

Thayer said that he was impressed with the Russians’ methods of demanding rights because “they engage in the kind of direct action we don’t engage in here.  In the West, we LGBTs are complacent about what we’ve achieved.  Our activists tend to be self-satisfied, and busy collecting salaries in NGOs, instead of doing what we need to do.  We feel that our rights will come about by working with or asking politicians for our rights.  But unless you put their feet to the fire, we’re not going to get anything.”

Thayer pointed out that Russian gay- and human-rights activists are facing the lack of the basic right to assemble.  In terms of gay rights, there is a lack of support for AIDS, and a lack of LGBT-affirming education in schools.

On the day of the action, according to Thayer, “We knew something was up when we saw an abrupt change of plans.  Instead of going into the city via commuter train, we piled into a van to avoid the police cordon we heard was waiting for us.  This was a message that the organizers of gay pride in Russian live in a semi-police state.”  Thayer said that the ability to change plans so quickly and still perform the action was a testament to the tactical prowess of the Russian gay organizers.

Once there, a group performed a rolling action “with different activists revealing themselves en route to news media.”  The AP reported approximately 30 protestors, as did Al-Jazeera.  Thayer says that, by his estimation, there were about 70, and that over 30 were eventually arrested.  Thayer was initially stopped by Russian police, who asked him for identification.  When he showed them his U.S. passport, according to him, they let him go since theydid not want to deal with me” (as the holder of a U.S.  passport) .  Thayer then returned to the demonstration, and was arrested.

Thayer, Tatchell and a group of Belarusians and Russians were held in a large police processing room, but people (key organizers) like Alexeyev “were grilled for nine hours without attorneys, faced slurs, treated badly, and detained overnight with no sleep.”  Thayer said that “ [i] t speaks to the courage of Russian LGBT organizers that they braved the violence and political repression.”

What was the public response to the action? Thayer acknowledged the context in which the Pride action came about: “Many Russians are just trying to survive.  They’re not upset about LGBT rights.  You are not going to get support from non-LGBT citizenry in Russia.  Over time the bigots will be forced to acknowledge the courage of LGBT citizens, especially with the weight of international attention.”

According to Thayer, the next Slavic Pride event is to be held in Minsk, Belarus, in May 2010.  As for Nikolai Alexeyev, a court date has been set for May 26.  Thayer said that even Alexeyev’s attorney had been barred from the hearing on the day after his arrest.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 27 May, 2009

Suicides and bullying: A closer look [20 May, 2009]

Two school students as young as 11 years old recently committed suicide within 10 days of each other after enduring anti-gay harassment.  Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover of Springfield, Mass., killed himself April 6 and Jaheem Herrera of DeKalb County, Ga., hanged himself with a cloth belt April 16 after similar taunts.  The incidents have created waves of shock and dismay and generated a public conversation about such instances of bullying.

The harassment of students based on their real or perceived sexual orientation is an ongoing concern for LGBTQ education activists.  According to the 2007 National School Climate Survey conducted by GLSEN (Gay and Lesbian and Straight Education Network), “86.2% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% reported being physically harassed and 22.1% reported being physically assaulted at school … because of their sexual orientation.”

Windy City Times spoke to students and activists about how to find solutions to the problem of anti-LGBTQ harassment and, as it turns out, schools are pivotal to the issue.  Schools are where students spend a majority of their time, and they are potent combinations of the politics of power of gender, sexuality, race and other factors that are a part of students’ lives.  Given this context, we asked: What causes students to engage in anti-LGBTQ bullying? What kinds of conditions would make it possible to see an end to such harassment? What kinds of changes need to happen on a local and federal level to make these conditions possible?

In many cases, anti-gay slurs have nothing to do with actual sexual orientation and/or identity but more with perceptions of the same.  And they can be combined with racial and ethnic slurs.  According to Jaheem Herrera’s mother, who recently appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show with Walker-Hover’s mother, he was not only teased for looking feminine but because of his accent and skin color.  (The family is from the Virgin Islands.) Students who are actually LGBTQ-identified may feel vulnerable and unsafe even when they don’t experience direct harassment, or because they see their classmates being harassed.

Such was the experience of Ahkiya Daniels.  Daniels witnessed a butch lesbian friend being harassed for her gender identity by a police officer in charge of security at the South Shore High School in 2008.  According to Daniels, who graduated that year, her friend was being “put out” for aggressive behavior but, in the process, was told by the officer who pushed her, “If you dress like a boy, I’m going to treat you like a boy.”  Daniels eventually called another friend and they got the fellow student out of the situation.  However, said Daniels, from that point on, she felt that the police officer (part of the school’s security system) appeared to have identified her as a lesbian as well, and became hostile to her.  In the absence of a school support system for LGBTQ students, Daniels began to be more conscious about her safety.

Jose Delgado’s experience at Senn High School was somewhat different, but in part because he and other students consciously set out to create a GSA (gay-straight alliance) in 2006, when Delgado was still a sophomore.  Still, according to Delgado, he saw Pride stickers on lockers with the word “fag” scrawled on them and witnessed friends being “tossed against lockers.”  By junior year, Delgado said, he had learned to be comfortable enough that, when confronted with the word, he would simply respond, “Yes, and I’m proud of it.”  But he emphasized that his comfort came about in a school with affirming policies.  For the most part, he said, his teachers were “very, very affirming” but while he never heard words like “fag” being used in the classroom, he did find that coaches, for instance, were homophobic.  Windy City Times contacted Senn High School for a response, but has not yet received one.  The school’s GSA was not listed on its Web site at the time of this writing.  Windy City Times also attempted to get in touch with South Shore High School but encountered an impenetrable phone system.

Both Daniels, who is African-American and Delgado, who is Latino, are students of color, as were Walker-Hoover and Hererra—which begs the question: Why should anti-gay bullying efforts be any different from addressing bullying on any other grounds? GLSEN Press Relations Manager Daryl Presgraves spoke to the issue.  According to him, “there’s a real need for enumerating categories like gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.”  He said that the right-wing opposition to such legislation paints the anti-gay bullying issue as if it’s connected to gay marriage but “when we tell students they can’t call someone a fag, it has nothing to do with gay marriage.  Schools have this fear that they tell someone you can’t bully someone based on sexual orientation, they’re going to be weighing in on this culture war.  What we tell them is: the stand you’re taking is that your students should be safe in school.”  He added, “If you say it’s wrong to call someone fat, universally, people will say it’s a problem.  But mention the word “fag” and there’s wavering.  That’s the difference: all of a sudden you get a resistance.  And so it’s important to recognize that when you start talking about bullying, you have to include anti-LGBT bullying because it’s the one area that schools have frequently failed to address.  We should talk about all types of bullying.  The problem is most schools don’t want to talk about anti-gay bullying.”

The reasons that students might use anti-gay slurs on other students have a lot do with social conditioning and perceptions of weakness, according to Chicago-area activists.  Sam Finkelstein, a member of the Leadership Council of Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) , a group that has organized an upcoming public forum with CPS (Chicago Public Schools) CEO Ron Huberman to discuss this issue among others, said that the “stories of suicides are the most tragic end” to this kind of bullying.  [Disclosure: This reporter is a member of GJ.] He blamed “a culture of heterosexism and homophobia.”  According to Finkelstein, “the issue is not only with the actual bullies themselves, but that events escalate when students and teachers are often passive bystanders.”  Erica Meiners, a social-justice activist and associate professor of education at Northeastern Illinois and the author of Right to be Hostile: Schools, Prisons and the Making of Public Enemies, said that anti-gay bullying was “directly reflective of national anxieties around sexual orientation and gender identity, perceived or actual.  Schools mirror larger cultural and political anxieties.”  She also blamed a culture of misplaced “accountability” saying that, “it’s ironic, because we’re in a moment of hyper accountability for teachers, in terms of test scores, but see a lack of accountability in other areas.”

The question of accountability raises the issue of who is ultimately to be held responsible for bullying—and how can schools change to provide a supportive atmosphere? Presgraves pointed out that while “schools are and have been made liable for incidents arising from anti-LGBT bullying, the conversation we want to have is not about lawsuits but about we can address this problem.  How can we do more to make sure our students are safe?” Meiners said that it was essential that teachers also be unionized if we are to see better conditions for LGBTQ students: “It’s essential that you’re not worried about losing your job, about collective bargaining.  If you’re unionized, you’re protected if you take a stand on controversial issues like LGBTQ youth competencies, or if you support national Coming Out Day, or talk about Eleanor Roosevelt as a lesbian in the classroom.”

Finkelstein stressed that there could be no quick-fix solutions, and that measures like a Pride Campus were symbolically important but “there’s no point in creating one school where we can wash our hands of it, and make it harder to solve the problem by not making it systemic.  At Gender JUST, we are also asking for professional development of staff.”  Like Meiners, he stressed the importance of teaching about LGBT figures like Bayard Rustin so that ‘the curriculum fosters a sense of respect for gay people in history.  It’s also important that schools teach LGBTQ-affirming sex education.”

All the people we spoke to emphasized the importance of establishing GSAs in every school and developing faculty and student awareness of the dangers of gay bullying.  It also became clear that the voices of students who are willing to take a stand, like Daniels and Delgado, have to be taken into account.  (Both are also active members of Gender JUST.) At the same time, there needs to be a federal recognition of LGBTQ-specific issues in relation to bullying.  GLSEN is hopeful about the Safe Schools Improvement Act, a federal anti-bullying bill introduced May 5, will go a long way toward that.  Presgraves said, “students are intelligent and when you lay out what’s acceptable or not, they respond.  If a student responds to an assignment with ‘That’s so gay,’ and the teacher ignores it, it sends a message to students.  It’s important to train our educators to identify a problem when they first see it in order to reduce its impact throughout the year.”

Windy City Times made several attempts to contact CPS for comments, but calls were not returned.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 20 Mary, 2009.

Chicago Activist found not guilty of felonies [13 May, 2009]

Andy Thayer is best known for his work as a marriage activist in Gay Liberation Network (GLN) .  However, he has also been a longtime anti-war activist as well as a critic of police brutality in Chicago.

On January 7, during a visit by President George W. Bush to Chicago, Thayer was among those who tried to stretch an anti-war banner across the path of the presidential motorcade.  He was charged with two felony counts of aggravated battery on a police officer.  Thayer’s case went to trial May 5, and a decision the same day found him not guilty.

Thayer, speaking to Windy City Times, said that while he felt a ‘tremendous amount of relief,” he also felt angry about what he saw as ‘the enormous amount of [public] resources it took to get this acquitted.”  Like many in the anti-war movement, Thayer feels that ex-President Bush should be tried as a war criminal because he is “a man who has orchestrated torture and illegally invaded a sovereign nation.”

Speaking to the larger context of his trial, Thayer stressed “anti-war protestors in particular are subject to police harassment.”  Asked if he thought that an Obama administration might signal significant changes in this regard, Thayer was skeptical: “People who should know better are reluctant to protest the new President even though he’s not going to prosecute torturers because they ‘were following orders.’ Where’s the difference? We’re going to have to push for a very different agenda if we want a humane situation internationally.”

Thayer is planning to go to Moscow Pride the weekend of May 17.

WCT contacted the Chicago Police Department for a response to the decision, but received none. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 13 May, 2009

’80s Hades: Panelists talk of “surviving Reagan” [13 May, 2009]

The Reagan years defined a new era in LGBTQ organizing.  The community struggled against governmental apathy towards AIDS while forging activist communities that demanded resources and health care for those affected by the disease.

For the most part, historians have paid attention to LGBTQ activism in this decade by focusing on the two coasts.  However, Chicago witnessed its own efflorescence of intense activism in this decade, and a May 7 Out at CHM (Chicago History Museum, 1601 N.  Clark) panel entitled “surviving Reagan” provided a glimpse at the work of some of the city’s queer activists.  The event was moderated by Jennifer Brier, assistant professor of history and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of a forthcoming book on the politics of AIDS from 1980 to 2000.

The three panelists were Jackie Anderson, Debbie Gould and Gabriel Gomez.  Anderson is a longtime activist who came of political age in the 1960s and has worked to bridge the gap between the Black and white lesbian communities on the South and North sides.  She was part of the Lesbian Community Care Project and among those responsible for its annual Ball moving to the South Side.  (This year, the “Garden of Eve” gala, as it is now called, will take place on the West Side at the Garfield Park Conservatory.) Gould, soon to join the University of Santa Cruz as a faculty member, was a member of Chicago’s ACT UP and Queer to the Left (both defunct) , and is currently a member of Feel Tank Chicago.  Gomez is currently an associate professor of library science/communications media program at Chicago State University.  He was a member of ACT UP and then Queer Nation (also now defunct).

Brier began with a brief introduction to the Reagan years and pointed out that, in the telling of the history of the decade as a triumphant march of conservatism, there tends to be “a deep sense of loss and disempowerment” among queer activists.  In an effort to complicate how that came about, she asked the panel members to address their triumphs as well as their failures in the context of their groups.  Brier also asked about the impact of race and racism within queer activist groups like ACT UP, emphasizing that “knowing racial difference [is very different from] acknowledging racism,”  and about the relationship between left politics and queer politics.

The ensuing conversations revealed the complexity of experiences that made up community organizing, both from a generational and a racial and cultural perspective.  Anderson, who grew up in segregated Chicago and came of age in the 1960s, was forthright about cultural and racial segregation between the city’s north and south side lesbian activist communities.  She pointed to that as a marker of strength: “Chicago is such a difficult city for people in vulnerable communities, and therefore we have sophisticated activists.”  She said that her work was about “struggling to define issues important for lesbians, to improve lesbian visibility and to build collaborative relationships across lines of color and culture.”

Gould said she was a politically unaware 16-year-old in California in 1980, when Reagan was first elected.  After going to the University of Chicago in the late ’80s, she went to her first ACT UP meeting “and found my political home.”  She said, “It’s where my political development happened.  AIDS was a lens through which to understand how power constructs meaning, hierarchies of race, gender, and class.  “ Noting that her entry into political activism was significantly motivated by a desire to meet girls, she said “activism works when it achieves a level of desire.”

Gould also said that the popular narrative about ACT UP as a racist organization was “bullshit.”  According to her, the fact that the AIDS crisis eventually became a contest over resources and a lack of access meant that different groups at different times (people of color, women, white gay men) felt betrayed, causing tensions.

Gomez described himself as a “scared kid” in 1980, when he went to the University of Chicago as an undergraduate.  While his family was thrilled to see him enter the bastion of higher learning, Gomez soon came face to face with racism when he was told that “my roommate was excited to show his friends the Mexican.”  Soon after, Gomez left for Berlin, where even coffeehouses distributed government-supported fliers on how to survive the AIDS crisis.  He credited that kind of sexual and political culture, so different from the stigmatization in the United States, with saving his life.  Coming back to the United States, Gomez joined ACT UP and then Queer Nation where, he said, the point was that knowing that “being joyous was how we were going to survive.”

Speaking about contemporary organizing, Anderson said, “the model of bridging the gap is over in the country and the community.  The community doesn’t give a shit.”  She added that “white gay people get universalized as the gay identity but that has nothing to do with Latino or African-American communities.”  Gomez addressed the preponderance of marriage organizing in today’s movement and said that marriage did matter to him, in terms of the benefits it offered but not “in the lockstep way determined by some D.C group.”  Gould said that she felt “disconnected from … the gay movement in its mainstream manifestations” but stressed the importance of “activism as world-making.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 13 May, 2009.

LGBTQs part of May 1 immigration rally [6 May, 2009]

This year’s May Day celebration came at a time of both hope and uncertainty for both LGBTQ and straight attendees.  With an Obama administration in the White House, there is hope for substantive changes in policy among labor organizers and immigration activists.  But this year’s rally came in the midst of an outbreak of “swine flu,” later dubbed A(H1N1) by the World Health Organization.  Since this particular strain is reported to have its origins in Mexico, and because Chicago’s annual May Day march has effectively become an immigrant-rights march, concerns about contagion caused initial uncertainty about whether or not the event would even go on.

City officials initially tried to get organizers to cancel the march.  Jorje Mujica, of the March 10 Movement—a group that was key in organizing the march—said, “the flu is being wrongly cast as a Mexican disease.  The city wanted us to cancel the event, but we refused.  They didn’t issue those orders for the Bulls game.  This is not about influenza, but about political influence.”

Gina Parker, a member of the Dyke March committee, was among the LGBTQ people who made their presence known, along with members of Gay Liberation Network who stood near large rainbow flags at the southwest corner of Union Park.  Parker said she was there to “show solidarity with the immigrant community.  Dyke March is going to be in Pilsen again this year, and it’s important to show the dominant culture that there are queer people among and with immigrants.”  While there were many LGBTQ-identified participants in the march and several rainbow flags, there was no monolithic “queer agenda.”  Instead, individuals and groups participated with distinctive but connected issues in mind.

Kevin Brown of Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) was among the group’s members collecting signatures for a letter to Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) Commissioner Terry Mason to make the CDPH HIV funding process more transparent.  He said that the group wants to highlight the need for more prevention strategies to be made accessible in more than a few organizations on the North Side: “Right now, LGBTQ youth on the south and southwest sides of the city have to commute to the North Side for resources, and they should be able to access them in their own neighborhoods.”

The issue of immigration touched many people personally.  A group of queer-identified Social Justice High School students walked around with flags.  Among them, freshman Yahtzeni Gonzalez said they were marching “for all of us.  A lot of our friends struggle as immigrants, and many have had their parents deported back to Mexico, which leaves our friends homeless and without the support of their families.”

For many attendees, being at the march meant wearing multiple hats that reflected their lives at the intersection of LGBTQ and immigrant issues.  Tania Unzueta was attending as a member of the Dyke March Committee, but she was also there as the director of Radio Arte’s youth training program and producer of Homofrecuencia, a weekly student-produced radio show.  As her students bustled about interviewing people and Tweeting updates about the march, Unzueta spoke about the tangible ways in which their lives are affected by immigration policies.  One student, Rigo Padilla, who is taking a course at Radio Arte, was brought to the United States as a 6-year-old by his undocumented parents.  He was recently picked up on a DUI charge and saw the charges escalate into a deportation case; he is scheduled for a deportation hearing and faces voluntary departure to Mexico even though he has lived in the United States all his life.  Padilla was wearing a court-mandated ankle bracelet while reporting.  Unzueta said that his case pointed to the unfairness of laws, and questioned whether Chicago could be considered a sanctuary city given his case, “If you are a citizen and stopped for a DUI, you don’t face something like deportation.  His DUI should have nothing to do with his immigration status.”  17-year-old Hester Rivera, also an undocumented student at Homofrecuencia, said that he was there to “connect with students without papers.  Getting a job is really hard with my status.  I’m hoping to get legalization and become a dancer, and keep participating in this movement.”

The issue of solidarity was a common theme for LGBTQ people.  Tony Alvarado-Rivera of Howard Brown Health Center’s Broadway Youth Center said, “I’m here as a Chicano/a and as a queer, because I recognize my privilege as a citizen.  I feel we are multi-issue people—queers are immigrants and workers, too.  Besides, it’s fun to be sassy in a non-queer context.”  His handmade sign demonstrated his philosophy.  In Spanish, the words were, “Esta chueca demanda sus derechos.”  Loosely translated as “this crooked one demands its rights,” it was also a play on words, with ‘derechos” meaning “go straight” as well as “rights.”

Several members of Bash Back! were also present, and the queer anarchist group enlivened the march with its energetic dancing.  Member Maggie Block said the group was there to focus attention on immigration in its larger economic context: “As anarchists, we’re opposed to borders and states.  But the mainstream has to think about how the United States created a situation—with NAFTA and free trade—where the agricultural industry would collapse without the use of exploited labor.  Yet, we raid and deport the very people who make our cheap prices possible.  We have to end these schizophrenic policies.”  Imi Rashid of Akabaka Bangali, a queer Muslim group, said that she felt the march was “a culmination of all disenfranchised folks; undocumented people need to be treated fairly.”  She said that most people aren’t aware that immigration can be onerous even for documented people, “I’ve been through the process and it sucks.  It took me seven years to get my green card, and I came up as a documented person.”

The march, dotted with colorful signs and giant puppets, made its way from Union Park to Federal Plaza.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 6 May, 2009

Daley double: Scholar talks local LGBTQ history [29 April, 2009]

Chicago’s infamous machine politics is as much the stuff of lore as a reality of Chicago life.  Richard J. Daley, most associated with the machine, was mayor from 1955 to 1976.  His son, Richard M. Daley, has been mayor from 1989 to the present.  Except for a period of 13 years in the interim, there has been a Daley in power since the mid-1950s.  The issue of what differences, if any, mark the tenures of the two men has been the subject of several books.

Timothy Stewart-Winter, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Chicago, discussed the differences between the two Daleys in terms of their relationships to the LGBTQ community, in a talk entitled “Machine Politics and Queer Chicagoans Since 1955: From Daley to Daley.”  The April 21 event was part of Gerber/Hart Library’s “The Cutting Edge: Young Scholars Share Their Work” series.  Stewart-Winter’s paper began by noting that the elder Daley was often held up as an exemplar of middle-class family values, with a Tribunearticle describing him as “a family man in a city of family men.”  Publicity photos of the mayor showed him at home with his wife and seven children, and much was made of the fact that he lived all his life in the working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport.  Stewart-Winter pointed out that this “normative vision of family life” came with a reputation for being tough on crime, and that toughness included frequent raids on gay and lesbian bars and gathering places because the mayor “viewed gays as a law-enforcement problem.”

The 1950s saw the enforcement of “disorderly conduct laws,” which were broad enough to allow police to round up gays and lesbians for infractions as minor as “violations of city laws against cross-dressing”—which simply meant that women could be arrested for wearing fly-front trousers.  The frequency of such raids prompted one gay writer to comment, “Chicago had quite a heat wave in the 1950s.”  Despite such repression, according to Stewart-Winter, Chicago queers found ways to continue sustaining a vibrant and underground subculture, especially in the drag balls on the South side.

According to Stewart-Winter, 1968—the year of the Democratic Party crackdown on dissenters at its National Convention—was a distinct chink in the hitherto impenetrable Daley armor.  This period saw the rise of the Stonewall generation and the growing perception among gays and lesbians that they needed to be out and to be more politicized.  The 1970s saw more acceptance of gay life, with the Sun-Timesdoing a series of articles on gay life, with titles like “From Homebodies to Hustlers.”

Richard M. Daley’s emergence in public life has seen a marked difference in terms of the treatment of the gay and lesbian community.  This mayor has the overwhelming support of the community and is known for several typically pro-gay moves and announcements, including a support for gay marriage.  However, as Stewart-Winter pointed out, relations between the community and the mayor got off to an unsteady start.  In 1989, the mayor had a “stormy confrontation” with organized gay constituents who felt he had backed away from campaign promises.  The following day, members of the activist group ACT UP and others were arrested as they protested the mayor.  Over the following years, however, the mayor’s relationship with the community strengthened.  In 1997, he proposed the rainbow pylons in Boystown and, in 2009, appointed openly gay Ron Huberman as head of Chicago Public Schools.

Stewart-Winter took a few questions at the end of the talk, and one audience member asked what made Chicago’s gay history any different from that of other major cities, which saw similar cultural and political shifts over the years.  In response, Stewart-Winter said that Chicago gays had “less of an anti-establishment edge” but that in some ways they were more typical of the region than San Francisco or New York City might be in relation to their surrounding locales.  For instance, said Stewart-Winter, Chicago is historically a very Catholic city, and it is also the biggest city not automatically associated with gay culture.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 29 April, 2009

Bar none: Gay clubs reject bachelorette parties [29 April, 2009]

Dawn Turner Trice’s recent Chicago Tribune article, “Gay rights battle puts strain on parties,” has created a stir.  Trice noted that Geno Zaharakis of Cocktail, a gay bar at 3359 N. Halsted, does not allow bachelorette parties.  Neither does the popular nightspot Sidetrack (next door at 3349 N.  Halsted) , co-owned by Art Johnston, who was quoted in the article.  The story disrupts the popular mythology about the bond between gay men and straight women, and it shines a new spotlight on the gay-marriage movement, which has seen significant advances.  Is the ban a sign of things to come, and what does it tell us about the historical relationship of gay bars to their neighborhoods and their clientele? Windy City Times spoke to the principal people involved and a historian of gay political life.

Zaharakis said that he had made the decision to ban bachelorette parties five years ago after dealing with a particularly unruly group, and was motivated partly by the behavior of straight women at his bar.  As he put it, “I was at the bar and a couple of women came in, got rowdy, were kind of disrespectful to our patrons and treated [the bar] as a carnie show.  We’re not.  [And] I don’t feel that it’s fair or just for women to come in and celebrate their upcoming marriage or nuptials when I, a gay man, can’t get married and celebrate his upcoming nuptials because I don’t have equal rights.”

Johnston stated that the reasons for Sidetrack not hosting bachelorette parties had to do with the rowdiness of straight women at the events: “Because of their behavior, they are not among our most favorite clients.”  He added, “We don’t ban anybody.  We just don’t offer any particular packages or programs for bachelorette parties.  Other bars do, and they do a fine job offering those services.”  Michelle Fire of Big Chicks said in an e-mail, “We have had no problem with bachelorette parties.”

Given that wedding season is coming up, and the state of the economy, it seems unlikely that too many bars will follow Cocktail and Sidetrack’s example.  Even if this does not turn out to be a sweeping trend, the bar owners’ decisions open a host of questions about the relationship of gay bars to their neighborhoods.  Zaharakis describes his establishment as a neighborhood bar.  Jennifer Brier, assistant professor of history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, noted that, historically, gay bars have been sites of specific forms of exclusion such as race and gender expression based on clothing.  She said that in the ’40s and ’50s, when gay bars were not owned by gay people but usually by the mob, gays and lesbians had to wear whatever clothing was deemed appropriate for their sex and “there was a fear of police harassment.  There was incredible state and police surveillance.”

According to Brier, while there were more openly gay and less restrictive bars through the 1970s, in that period “many gay men of color discuss being consistently excluded from bars that were overwhelmingly white.  Marlon Riggs talks about it in Tongues Untied.  It wasn’t uncommon for them to be told they needed two or three pieces of identification to get into a bar, as opposed to what white clients were asked for.  In fact, in the 1980s, ACT UP NY regularly said that it wouldn’t hold fundraisers at bars that were known to be racially exclusionary.”

Brier, a feminist, was also struck by some aspects of bachelorette parties that appear to have gone unnoticed in the mainstream coverage of the Cocktail ban.  She said, “I’m disturbed by what it means that they can only have these parties in gay bars.  It appears that there’s no space for any kind of female sociability in a straight bar; it’s all sexualized.  Why couldn’t these young women just go to a straight bar in Lincoln Park? I’m not prudish, and I’m also not suggesting that getting drunk and losing control of your sensibility is a good way of being in the world.  But, clearly, these women desire a kind of sexual freedom that has no space in heterosexual institutions.  That, for me, suggests that women are not able to safely have a kind of freedom of sexual expression in straight spaces.  That’s intense.  But instead of looking at those issues, we’re concerned with this story of exaggerated behavior around certain bodies, with gay men being pawed and straight women being so tragically drunk that they can’t control themselves.”

Brier also questioned what aspects of gay marriage in particular would incite such a ban.  As she put it, “I understand the symbolism of the ban, and the argument.  But is this what we really see as emblematic of marriage’rowdy bachelorette parties?”

As for what kinds of bodies are referred to in this recent controversy, one category of marrying people has been left out of the picture: lesbians.  So far, there’s no word on how lesbians conduct their bachelorette parties and whether or not their parties get as rowdy and if their presence might be as threatening to the decorum of gay bars and/or the institution of marriage.  For now, Zaharakis plans on continuing his ban, despite the occasional complaint from straight women: “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and I’m entitled to serve whom I want to serve.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 29 April, 2009

Anti-gay charges leveled at police officer [8 April, 2009]

Homophobia within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has been an issue for several gay activists and attorneys of clients alleging homophobic slurs and misconduct by police officers.  A recent press conference by, among others, Jon Erickson of Erickson & Oppenheimer Attorneys at Law, Gay Liberation Network and local activists spotlighted lawsuits recently filed against Officer Richard Fiorito, an officer at the the 23rd District police station at Addison and Halsted.

The press conference was held April 2 in Dirksen Federal Court Building, 219 S.  Dearborn.  The bulk of the charges against Fiorito involve allegations that he excessively tracked innocent drivers and charged them with DUIs.  Erickson is representing clients who allege that they were routinely targeted.  According to a memo released by Erickson, “For too long, Officer Fiorito has stopped innocent motorists without cause, conducted sham investigations, refused to give breathalyzers, manufactured false reports and committed perjury as matter of routine.”

Erickson wrote that Fiorito, who is currently 60 and started with CPD late, is not eligible for a pension and is using overtime pay for court appearances to increase his salary.  Fiorito is said to have made 300 DUI arrests in the past year.  Of interest to LGBT-rights activists is that Fiorito is alleged to have routinely targeted gays and lesbians.

Erickson spoke to Windy City Times about the allegations of homophobia.  Two of the clients he represented are lesbians, but Erickson acknowledged that they did not face direct homophobia in the form of slurs.  In the case of the lesbians, said Fiorito, “It’s really more tone than actual words.  He’ll say things like “the Closet [a local gay bar] as if it’s a dirty word” in a voice “dripping with disdain.”  Also, in the cases of the two lesbians, both are hearing-impaired and Fiorito is alleged to have ignored their disability, made fun of it and insisted on them taking verbal sobriety tests.

More germane to the allegation of homophobia is what Erickson describes as systematic references to his clients as “fags.”  In one instance, said Erickson, Fiorito asked his client, “Where are you coming from?” The answer, Hydrate, apparently prompted Fiorito to respond, “that fag place.”  In another instance of marked homophobia, according to Erickson, “A client had just come from from Taco Bell and had spilt some sour cream on his shirt; his passenger was a Hispanic gentleman.  Officer Fiorito said to him, ‘Did your Puerto Rican boyfriend come in your mouth?’ That gives you an idea of the kinds of things he’s said to people.”

Erickson said that he has personally witnessed Fiorito’s “ongoing pattern and practice” of homophobia since 2002, when he got his first Fiorito DUI client.  Erickson also said that he has spotted Fiorito in Boystown waiting outside gay establishments like Hydrate.

Andy Thayer, of the Gay Liberation Network, also spoke to Windy City Times and said, “the central issue here is that you’ve got a guy working out of a ‘town Hall” police station that’s supposed to be gay-friendly and an oasis of LGBT sensitivity.  And he’s demonstrated his anti-gay animus for a period of years.”  As for solutions to such instances of homophobia, Thayer said that it was important to get people like Fiorito fired because “that sends a message to others that such activity is unacceptable and will have consequences.”  Erickson concurred that the first step was to take officers like Fiorito “off the street immediately,” followed by “better training with regard to gays and lesbians and gay and lesbian life.  The city needs to make an effort to not place officers who are homophobic in a predominantly homosexual or somewhat homosexual place.  They need to do a better job of policing themselves with regard to placement.  I think it’s a management problem to a great degree and that the sergeants and commanders are primarily responsible.  Given the amount of complaints an officer has received and the consistency of homophobia this one has, they should take them off the street while conducting their investigation.  After that, they need to educate these officers as to cultural lifestyle differences.”

On April 2, seven federal lawsuits were filed against Fiorito.  According to Erickson, 10 more similar suits will be filed against Fiorito over the next six weeks.

Windy City Times contacted CPD for comments but was told that the department does not comment on cases that are pending litigation.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 8 April, 2009

LGBT elders make themselves heard [1 April, 2009]

The Chicago Department of Senior Services is required to conduct annual citywide public hearings on the Area Plan on Aging.  This public document is designed to describe how the Office of Senior Services will use funds from the Older Americans Act of 1965 and from the State of Illinois General Revenue Funds.  Howard Brown recently conducted an LGBT Elder Needs Assessment, and the results were presented at a public forum at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N.  Halsted, March 24.  The event was organized by the Chicago Task Force on LGBT Aging and the SAGE Advisory Council.

Terri Worman, of the AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons), moderated the two-hour hearing, which began with a presentation on the findings of the needs assessment by Hope Barrett, the deputy director of elder and LGBTI women’s issues at Howard Brown.  According to Barrett, the assessment confirmed some of the previous findings about the LGBT aging population, such as its educational background, which tends to be higher than the norm.  But it was also surprising in some aspects, such as the fact that the level of negative experiences in receiving care was not as high as had been anticipated; only 14 percent said they reported negative experiences.  LGBT elders are likely to face greater forms of discrimination and, consequently, isolation in care facilities.  However, Barrett did say that the survey did not ask about gender identity.

The assessment also discovered that isolation is a huge issue for LGBT elderly, who are concerned about not having enough social spaces to go to for social interactions in the city.  It also indicated that many are afraid of going out to late-night events and bars because their diminished physical capacity makes them less able to respond to potential harm from strangers on dark streets.  There was also a significant amount of depression recorded among the LGBT elderly, and only 34 percent reported that they were satisfied with their daily activities.

Barrett, Worman and Amber Hollibaugh—director of elder and LGBTI women’s issues at Howard Brown—spoke about the different efforts to address these issues.  For instance, Howard Brown is drawing upon peer outreach coordinators whose job is to raise awareness about available services within the LGBT elder population.

The presentation on the needs assessment was followed by a speak-out by members of the LGBT elder population, and this portion was punctuated by several energetic points made by attendees.  Ron, a longtime resident of Boystown, spoke about the need for more affordable housing that could ensure that people like him could stay in their neighborhood: “I can’t afford to live in this neighborhood.  I’m getting tired of getting pushed out.”  (Note: Some attendees did not give their last names.) David Baker, who lives in a Chicago Housing Authority building in Lincoln Park, said he was happy there but pointed out that there needed to be “more sensitivity training for staff members” and efforts to “raise the consciousness of the residents themselves.”

Among the chief concerns expressed by many were transportation (with complaints about RTA’s services) and the issue of sensitivity to LGBT people among caretakers.  One person, self-identified as Earl, asked if there were any gay or gay-friendly nursing homes.  Hollibaugh said there were not any LGBT-specific places but that there were some identified as having openly gay staff.  She said, “It’s part of the agenda to begin to do training; we’re working with our partners to be sure to document the places that welcome us.”  Barrett addressed that issue as well and said that there were plans to compile a resource directory that would list such places but that they needed to be thoroughly vetted to make sure they are indeed LGBT-friendly: “We need to do some background research about the organizations we list on this guide.”

While many of the participants spoke about North Side/Boystown experiences, one of them, Steve, was concerned about outreach to LGBT elders in other parts of the city and asked, “What’s being done to reach the South Side and for people who can’t access the Center?” Worman acknowledged such issues with outreach and said that efforts were being made to hold similar events across the city.

Some participants felt that there needed to be more organizing efforts among LGBT elders themselves.  Tom said that there needed to “an attempt to mobilize community members and participants to empower themselves.”  He also said that the ownership of such issues currently belonged to the agencies, and that needed to change.  Hollibaugh agreed and said that the current program was a good model for independent elder groups or organizations that mobilized to find their own agenda.

Several of the suggestions from other participants related to similar issues around safety, empowerment and access to information; one man suggested that there ought to be a hotline for elders to call.  Worman said that all the input from the day’s meeting would be gathered for testimony to the city about the needs of LGBT elders, and she invited people to contribute more material and questions.  Worman can be reached at tworman@aarp.org or 312-458-3610.

Originaly published in Windy City Times, 1 April, 2009

Two-day confab focuses on immigrant issues [1 April, 2009]

The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) , a program of Heartland Alliance, hosted a conference on LGBT Immigration issues entitled ‘defending the Human Rights of LGBT and HIV-Positive Immigrants and Refugees.”  The conference took place March 26-27.  The conference took place at Northwestern University Law School, 357 E.  Chicago Avenue (on the first day) and the law firm McDermott, Will and Emery, 227 W.  Monroe (on the second day).

The United States bans people with HIV from entering the country.  Various groups have been working to have the ban lifted since the early 1980s.  Persecution due to sexual orientation can be grounds for asylum for LGBT migrants, but the process is often cumbersome and unwieldy.  In addition, the U.S.  government stipulates that such appeals must be made within one year of entry.  However, most immigrants are not aware of this stipulation and the situation is especially complicated if they fear exposure within their immigrant communities or cannot be out about their sexuality in U.S. workplaces where conditions for LGBT citizens are still far from ideal.

According to Eric Berndt—an attorney with NIJC and a chief organizer of the conference—the purpose of this meeting was to create a space where lawyers, LGBT community activists and officials from NGOs could pool their resources.  The aim was “to get everybody who’s concerned about protecting LGBT and HIV migrants to get together and achieve protection for those people and, in addition to achieving the protection available in the law now, create coalitions that can reform the law to increase the available protections.”

The first day of the conference was devoted to consecutive panels on specific issues like international LGBT organizing and current legislative reforms.  Rosanna Flamer-Caldera opened the conference with her keynote address.  Flamer-Caldera is the executive director of Equal Ground, an LGBT group based in Sri Lanka.  She said there was a need for “international solutions on a global level.”

The panel “LGBT Human Rights Violations: Objectives and Perspectives from around the World” featured Georges Azzi from the Lebanese group Helem; Georges Kanuma from Association pour le Respect et les Droits des Homosexuels (ARDHO) in Burundi; and Jawad Hussain Quereshi, a Pakistani gay activist.  Each of them addressed region-specific issues: Quereshi spoke about the difficulties of organizing around HIV when “there is no clear national strategy in Pakistan” and it is illegal for stores to display condoms.  Kanuma spoke about a current attempt to criminalize same-sex relations in Burundi, and the complex struggle to resist that among activists who must negotiate relationships with politicians while also seeking to find allies among international organizations.  Azzi addressed how homosexuality was policed differently in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Conference attendees came with different perspectives as lawyers, community activists, and representatives of NGOs (non-governmental organizations); this resulted in the discussions where participants clearly had differences in terms of the strategies they preferred.  For instance, several people questioned the focus on asylum as the best option for LGBT migrants.  Both Kanuma and Azzi made it clear that they only supported asylum seekers leaving their countries in the most extreme circumstances, stressing that the real possibility for change came from changing country conditions.

On March 27, panels were organized around two tracks, one for practitioners and another for community groups and advocates.  The emphasis was on legal strategies, identifying and educating LGBT immigrants about their rights [this reporter was among the community presenters] , and updates on legislation.  Kara Hartzler, an attorney, spoke about the difficulties faced by LGBT immigrants detained for being undocumented and who might be outed to potentially unsympathetic lawyers and detention officials as well as potentially hostile fellow detainees.  Julie Kruse of Immigration Equality spoke about the Uniting American Families Act, which seeks to allow U.S citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their same-sex partners as immigrants.  Friday’s events also included a keynote address by Gisela Thater, of the United Nations Human Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The conference was clearly useful for many as a resource pool, and organizers were particular about giving people access to information and sharing documentation strategies.  But there was also some sense that more needed to be done about addressing the structural problems facing LGBT immigrants.  Akim Adé Larcher, of the LGBT group Egale Canada, said that he was struck by the lack of discussion around poverty and race in relation to LGBT immigrants.  Referring to the UAFA (Uniting American Families Act), he said he was surprised to learn that it did not include provisions for undocumented people and wondered about “solving issues around poverty, for people who don’t have access to employment.”  Larcher also felt that there needed to be more discussion about how the U.S.  “affects international discourse,” and how its policies might create conditions that exacerbate issues for LGBT migrants.  Mina Trudeau, director of Al-Fatiha, the U.S national organization for Muslim LGBTQ people, remarked that the conference had been “a good opportunity to connect with groups that are working on LGBT immigrant HIV and asylum issues” and for “sharing resources and collaborating to get the opportunities that individuals in our communities need.” 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 April, 2009

Frat comes out against Kansas church [18 March, 2009]

The Westboro Baptist Church, headed by the notoriously anti-gay and right-wing Fred Phelps, made its way to the University of Chicago campus on March 9.

According to published reports, including one in the Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago’s student paper, over 100 counterdemonstrators met them.  The church—picketing the school’s connection with President Barack Obama, whom the congregants view as the Antichrist—was there to protest outside the Chicago Theological Seminary.  According to the Maroon, the church was also met by Alpha Delta Phi fraternity brothers who stripped off bathrobes to reveal themselves in their underwear, and loudly played songs like “I’m Coming Out” and “It’s Raining Men.”  Subsequently, a video of the fraternity’s counterdemonstration, which included rolling down a giant banner that read “straight Huggin,” and “NO Tolerance for Intolerance” has become popular on the Web.  It can be seen on YouTube, and is titled “Frat Boys vs Westboro Baptist Church.”

Windy City Times made several attempts to get in touch with the chapter’s president, Jacob Marshall, for details, but he did not respond. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 March, 2009

UIC’s center hosts town hall [18 March, 2009]

The Gender and Sexuality Center (GSC; formerly the Office of GLBT Concerns) at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) hosted a town hall March 12 to discuss its future directions and the search for a new director.  The previous director, Patrick Finnessey, left in November and Liz Thomson was appointed interim director.  Thomson has been keen to engage the larger LGBTQ community with the mission of GSC.

Thomson spoke with Windy City Times about her reasons for opening the event to the public.  According to her, “[GSC has] a responsibility, since we are a state institution, and given UIC’s Great Cities program … we have a commitment and dedication to the urban area we are housed in.”  While faculty, alumni and students are certainly GSC’s primary constituency, Thomson felt strongly that Chicago LGBTQ community people and organizations are also stakeholders in the future of GSC.

Approximately 30 people attended the town hall, in Lecture Room 140, in the Behavioral Sciences Building.  C. Nathan Harris), GSC advisory board member, moderated the event.  Harris said that the goal of the town hall was to consider what worked best at GSC as well as what needed improvement, how it functioned in relation to the campus and what a renewed GSC might look like.  Not all attendees gave their full names, and a few did not identify themselves.

Asked to begin with what worked about GSC, nearly every attendee who spoke praised Thomson and Visiting Coordinator Moises Villada for their work.  There was a great deal of praise for the Rainbow Resource Center, a room that serves as a safe meeting place as well as a library.  But many, like Justin, felt that the center was also underutilized and untapped.  Asked about what was useful, several spoke about the activities initiated by Pride (the UIC GLBT organization), and GSC’s Lunch and Learn events.  Many of the issues raised had to do with logistics, such as insufficient publicity for GSC events.

The question of resources for GSC was a frequent topic.  Several felt that it was severely understaffed, with the brunt of the work falling on Thomson and Villada and that this has its consequences.  When either or both need to attend meetings on campus, the Resource Center has to remain closed.

The discussion turned to the question of the degree to which GSC should be engaged with academic research.  Currently, it does not host visiting scholars or faculty research, and some audience members suggested that GSC could become a research center on the lines of CLAGS (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies), housed in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York or the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley.  Francesca, a staff member at UIC, pointed out that this could meant that Midwestern scholars would not have to move to either coast to find support for research on gender and sexuality.  Jacob Mueller suggested setting up a satellite office on the west campus, which is where the medical campus is located (the east campus houses mostly liberal arts schools) .  Mueller pointed out that LGBTQ students and faculty were to be found outside the liberal arts.

Not everyone felt that the town hall was moving in new directions.  One participant pointed out that despite Thomson’s assertion at the start that the discussion would be fluid, it was in fact falling too easily into neatly categorized topics like “outreach” and  “research.”  This participant also took issue with the setting and the format of the town hall, where a white man (Harris) led attendees, and which took place in a lecture hall that was not conducive to a participatory discussion.

The space was certainly a negative factor for many, who felt that the lecture room precluded actual conversations.  Thomson acknowledged the limitations of the room and said that efforts would be made to have the next such meeting elsewhere.  Despite her wish to have the wider Chicago LGBTQ community participate, only two attendees—Hector Salgado of Project Vida and a co-worker—were from a community organization.  Thomson told Windy City Times that the location at UIC might have to do with the lack of community members present and that the idea of having the town hall at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, had been floated as a possibility.  But the concern there was that UIC students would not be inclined to make it to a North side location.  “We could do something at a variety of community areas,” she said.  Meanwhile, the plan is to continue “having smaller conversations culminating in a job search” for a new director.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 March, 2009

Disability: A Queer Issue [18 March, 2009]

A new support group for LGBTQ people living with disabilities has recently begun meeting at Access Living, and its founders are eager to spread the word about it in the community.

Access Living is a non-residential center for independent living, aimed at providing resources for people with disabilities.  In March 2007, it moved into a brand-new building at 115 W. Chicago, which has earned praise for being green and for providing universal access.  The organization is not queer-defined, but, as Susan Nussbaum put it, “Its main mission has always been the rights of people with disabilities.  A part of that includes peer interaction and support and strength in identity through meeting, working and socializing with people with like oppression.”

According to Nussbaum, Access Living had long been aware that there was a significant LGBTQ community within the disability community.  The organization is allied with Broadway Youth Center (part of Howard Brown Center) , which caters to youth living in stressful circumstances like poverty and homelessness.  Joe Hollendoner, director of the program, and other staff at the Center saw many queer youth living with disabilities, and realized that they felt “ill-equipped to address it,” Nussbaum said.

Over the spring and summer of 2008, Nussbaum, Hollendoner and others began informal conversations about how to go about creating a support group that would address the particular needs of queers with disabilities.  Among the discussants was Tim Jones-Yelvington, who had been in contact with Nussbaum since his days as a student at DePaul University.

In the fall of 2005, Spectrum, DePaul’s LGBTQA student organization, asked Nussbaum to do a workshop on the intersections of sexuality and disability; she and Jones-Yelvington, then a member of the group, met there and began having conversations about what they both saw as a necessary support group.  They began talking about the possible needs of the group, membership limits and publicity flyers.

Jones-Yelvington, who volunteers with Access Living, is not himself disabled, but he had been thinking about the complications facing queer people with disabilities; much of his reflection was informed by both his studies and life as an activist: “My own commitment as a queer activist has been around intersections of sexuality with other systems of oppression, queer politics and issues of race and class and gender and gender identity.  I realized disability issues were frequently silent in that conversation.”  Jones-Yelvington also saw the shared histories between queers and people with disabilities, in terms of past biomedical interventions onto their bodies.

Indeed, while people might be familiar with Nazi attempts to eliminate people with disabilities, they may be less familiar with the more quotidian ways in which people with disabilities have been negatively treated.  LGBTQs, who still see attempts at “correction” by, for instance, parents who send their children to “ex-gay camps,” can understand, at least partially, what it means to live in a society that views them as inherently wrong.  Governmental recognition of the needs of people with disabilities has been slow.  The Rehabilitation Act, which protected the civil rights of people of disabilities, was passed in 1973.  But it was not until the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed relatively recently, in 1990, that people with disabilities gained a law that ensures their equal access to employment opportunities and public accommodations.

Jones-Yelvington is, at least for now, the facilitator of the queer disability support group, and is keenly aware of this complicated history and “mindful that the experiences of able-bodied people and disabled people are not part of the same oppression.”  The group had its first meeting in January.  What did Yelvington-Jones anticipate and how did the reality mesh with his perceptions of what it might be? What are the issues faced by queers with disabilities in particular?

He said that the conversations raised “issues of vulnerability and violence for folks who don’t have access to full independent living and might face violence from caregivers and family.”  While there is no hard data available yet, Yelvington-Jones suspected that these issues are compounded for queer people.  Additional issues might involve cultural and social questions.  One participant wondered about how to come out to a religious family.  Others spoke about what Yelvington-Jones described as  “really awful encounters with paramedical stuff … there were people who had a lot of accidents and series of hospitalizations where the treatment was not what it ought to be.”

Will the group take on a social-activism function? Will it be primarily a support group where people can freely discuss their issues? Will it seek to provide resources? Yelvington-Jones said that the structure of the group is entirely up to its members: “I went in with the sense that I’m a facilitator, and I’ll do what I can to help people connect with each other.”  According to him, the group will also eventually decide how it wants its leadership structure to look.

For now, Access Living is focused on continuing to get the word out and building the membership in the support group.  The only requirements are that people be in the age range of 18-30, and that they be both LGBTQ and disabled.  The group meets the last Monday of every month, 6-7:30 p.m., at 115 W.  Chicago.  Contact Susan Nussbaum at snussbaum@accessliving.org , 312-640-2170 (TTY) or 312-640-2121.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 March, 2009

LGBTs hurt in public-access TV cutbacks [11 March, 2009]

When AT&T unveiled its U-Verse television programming service, the company waxed about the new technology that allows subscribers to access 320 channels.  Recently, however, the company has come under fire for limiting access to public-access programming.  The Illinois chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers (NATOA) and CAN TV (Community Access Television) have joined a nationwide coalition to file a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  On its Web site, NATOA says that customers of “AT&T … can’t switch between commercial and PEG channels, set a DVR to record a PEG program, or depend on getting timely local emergency alerts.  AT&T’s system deprives PEG channels of basic capabilities such as closed captioning.”

The limited access affects all members of the Chicago viewing area, but it has significant ramifications for the LGBT community.  Critics contend that not being able to easily access PEG programming leaves the LGBT AT&T consumer without vital public-health information and creative programming.

Ordinarily, a subscriber can find CAN TV programming by going to one of the five channels: 19, 21, 27, 36 and 42.  He or she can flip back and forth between any of those and commercial programming, and can tape shows.

But under AT&T’s U-Verse system, a viewer must go to channel 99, where all public-access stations are.  From there, the viewer must scroll through a list of different cities and find “Chicago,” and then scroll through another menu that shows what is available in the city.  Once you leave your PEG programming, getting back to it requires that you negotiate all the menus.

Public-access television is federally mandated; every cable provider must provide access to that in its cheapest package.  This is to ensure that those not watching network television can still access public information and programming that is both educational and entertaining, and free of market-driven mandates like popularity and ratings.  So, public-access television programming can take risks by offering programs that provide health care advice without advertising from pharmaceutical companies.  It can cover events otherwise ignored by the media.  For instance, CAN TV has frequently covered events at the Gerber/Hart Library.  The coverage is of professional quality but deliberately unfiltered.  Imagine it as something resembling C-SPAN, but in different formats that include talk shows and television plays.

Mark Hodar, HIV/STD services manager at Howard Brown Health Center, is passionate about the need for CAN TV programming.  For the last two years, he has been host of the 15-year-old program “AIDS Call-in Live.”  The show rotates between four different agencies, including the Chicago Department of Public Health.  Every week, for half an hour, hosts take live calls about HIV/AIDS from the general public.  Hodar sees a real need for the program in the context of AIDS funding.  He said, “CAN TV reaches a number of communities in this one venue.  I came [to Howard Brown] around the time of the protease inhibitors, which resulted in the cutting of prevention dollars since they kept people from dying.  But you can’t cut the prevention dollars.”  Hodar felt that CAN TV allows him to compensate for cuts, adding, “I sometimes feel that CAN TV is like a garden hose to a fire.  It’s the best we can do in a lot of ways.”

Hodar pointed out that, given the lack of sex education and a renewed emphasis on abstinence-only programs, programs like his provided vital information to the straight community as well, particularly to youth: “I get questions from young women about how to talk to their boyfriends about condom use and from young men asking, “How do I talk to my girlfriend about STDs? It reaches everybody, even though Howard Brown is LGBT-focused.”  The show receives roughly 10 live phone calls every time, but operators will also take questions about referrals and anonymous queries.

To illustrate the importance of the show, Hodar related an anecdote about a woman who called in saying, “I need to access healthcare because I have HIV.”  It transpired that the woman, who was African-American, had never really been diagnosed but had assumed she was positive because she had unprotected sex and then read about the high rates of infection among Black women.  Hodar said, “so she came in to Howard Brown, her test came back negative, and she had lived like this for 10 years.  She cried and cried and cried.  We got her into counseling.  Helping people realize their status: It’s that fundamental.  A lot of us just assume our status.  And to have U-Verse cut into that is really detrimental to the LGBT [and wider] community.”

Emmanuel Garcia, a member of the Association of Latino Men for Action (ALMA), has hosted the organization’s call-in program for the last three months, titled “ALMA Latina.”  (Garcia occasionally writes for Windy City Times.) Garcia felt that the LGBT community has very little opportunity to provide information in the media: “The reality is that images of LGBT folks on television are close to nothing.  CAN TV has given ALMA an outlet to reach gay segments of the LGBT population that are oftentimes isolated if not underrepresented under this umbrella we call community.  For any cable company to get in the way of transmitting or delivering that message is an unfair use of power and really defeats the mission of what public-access television is all about.”

“ALMA Latina” is part of a weekly LGBT consortium, begun in 2001, that is broadcast every Friday night, 6:30-7 p.m., and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) also hosts the show once a month.  Marc Wigler is the host of that show, and was disturbed by the potential loss of viewers.  PFLGA, according to him, is “non-partisian, not affiliated with any religious, economic, or political group; we maintain a symbiotic relationship with everybody.”  Wigler said that the group is especially able to reach out to a broad range of viewers.  PFLAG is unusual in that it, unlike ALMA or Howard Brown, has achieved relatively high visibility in national media; its representatives have even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Despite that, Wigler believes in the central importance of the group’s exposure on CAN TV because, “We have more control, we are given free rein, with 25 minutes of uninterrupted commercial-free time.”  Like the others, he felt strongly that AT&T needed to be challenged: “For them to be a friend to the community, they need to provide accessibility to all customers so that the community message for building capacity is achievable.”

Simone Koehlinger of the Chicago Department of Public Health was, like Wigler, particularly appreciative of the unfiltered and uncensored access to information that CDPH could provide CAN TV viewers.

Koehlinger says that the effect of the public-health shows is immediate: “The phone is non-stop, all lines lit up the entire time.  People call in with very good questions, and sometimes with some very basic questions.  It’s clear that there’s a need in the community to have access to this information.  They get someone who can answer their questions live.”

Asked about the importance of the show in relation to CDPH’s larger mission, Koehlinger said, “We put a lot of stock in public information and social marketing and of course to get messages out to vast numbers of people, you have to have access to good media.  We love newspapers for that reason, we love online services but access to public TV is very important.  We don’t have a large budget and we don’t want to be censored either, so I would say it’s incredibly important.”

According to Czerina Salud, communications director of CAN TV, the structure of the station also benefits the various LGBT agencies: “With access to CAN TV, they always have the opportunity to repurpose their content for web video streaming and they also encounter the phenomenon of people surfing the television.  That’s not the same audience you’d have access to if you posted on a web site.  So the incidental traffic is increased greatly.”  CAN TV reaches a million subscribers in Chicago.

Windy City Times contacted AT&T for comments about the charge that the U-Verse system would make public access virtually inaccessible to customers, and inquired if the company had comments about the investigation.  In response, spokesperson Rob Biederman e-mailed that “ [o] ur more inclusive methodology is removing the geographic and technological barriers that sometimes separate communities and limit the distribution of important information, news and entertainment … In response to the investigation: We are certainly following the letter and the spirit of the law.  It’s absolutely acceptable under state law to deliver our PEG product this way, and it was extensively discussed during the legislative process that it would be placed in this centralized location.”  The FCC is currently reviewing the petition.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 11 March, 2009.

Group invites Huberman to speak [11 March, 2009]

Gender JUST (Justice United for Societal Transformation) is a Chicago grassroots organization.  In recent months, the group has been working on what it describes as the problems of heterosexism and violence against LGBTQA students in Chicago’s public schools.  On March 4, Gender JUST hand-delivered a letter to Ron Huberman, the new Chicago Public Schools (CPS) chief, asking him to attend a public forum convened by the group.

The text of Gender JUST’s letter, made available to Windy City Times, stated that the group shared Huberman’s “commitment to inclusivity,” and invited him ‘to attend a public meeting in May of 2009 where [he could] speak with the LGBTQ & GNC (Gender Non-Conforming) communities about [his] plans to address the obstacles to safe and affirming education.”  According to the letter, one way to do that is by “creating compulsory training for all CPS staff on LGBTQ & GNC issues, as a starting point for addressing issues such as violence and harassment.”

The letter also detailed other issues, including what the group perceives as “the lack of LGBTQ & GNC-affirming curricula including sex-education, the racist distribution of gay-straight alliances disproportionately not in communities of color, the CPS anti-discrimination policy and its exclusion of gender identity.”  However, the group does not see these issues in isolation; the letter also stated, “we would like to hear from you on how you plan to address these concerns in the context of privatization and school closings.”  Gender JUST has, in the past, spoken out against what it and many education activists have criticized as the excessive privatization of CPS.  In addition, community-education activists and parents have been critical of recent announcements of school closings.

Esmeralda Roman, a lesbian mother of a CPS student, spoke to Windy City Timesabout her reasons for wanting to deliver the letter (which was signed by her as the Gender JUST representative).  She said that she was moved to action after watching her son being harassed by fellow students: “My son has been constantly bullied because I’m a lesbian.  Kids are misinformed.  They think he’s gay because I’m a lesbian.  They think it’s contagious.  He’s been a social outcast, literally.  It’s very hard to see that as a parent, without any resources or support from CPS to address those concerns.”  Roman said she appreciated the fact that Gender JUST did not restrict its advocacy to LGBTQ students but also supported students like her son, who are bullied for the perception that they might be gay.

Roman and four others of Gender JUST went to the 5th floor office of Ron Huberman, 125 S.  Clark, and the letter was delivered without incident.  The letter asks Huberman to respond within two weeks of receipt.  The group has left the actual date for the May forum open in order to fully accommodate Huberman’s schedule, according to one of its members, Sam Finkelstein.

What if Huberman does not respond? (Windy City Times made repeated attempts to get an interview or a response from Huberman’s office, but has not met with any success.) Finkelstein said the group would continue with its attempts to get Huberman to a discussion, “It’s his responsibility to meet with the community, all of our intersecting communities that are affected.”  Roman, like the others, seemed determined to carry through with the attempts to “bring the issue to the table.  It is my time to start fighting.”  Angelica Johnson, a member of the group, was optimistic and said, “I’m really excited to see how Ron Huberman responds to our letter requesting that he come to a panel of high school students talking about their experiences of being harassed or assaulted because of being LGBT.  I hope that he cares about our agenda.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 11 March 2009.

Group holds anti-Prop 8 vigil [11 March, 2009]

On Thursday, March 5, the California Supreme Court began hearing arguments about Proposition 8.  Join the Impact Chicago organized a candlelight vigil on the evening of March 4 to draw attention to the issue.  This was part of a nationwide series of such events designed to draw attention to what organizers feel is a critical testing point for the validity of the legislation.  Similar vigils took place in cities like San Francisco; Santa Barbara, Calif.; and New York.

Approximately 50 people gathered at 800 N. Michigan for the Chicago vigil.  Mathew Zaradich spoke to the gathering, emphasizing that “ [p]eople are doing this across the country; it’s an act of solidarity.”  He also encouraged them to keep up with Join the Impact’s work and to learn more about the issues surrounding Prop 8.  Following these brief remarks, people marched around the Water Tower park chanting slogans like, “Gay, straight, Black, white/ marriage is a human right” and “What do we want? Equal rights/ When do we want it? Now.”  They also sang songs such as “Lean on Me” and “Down by the Riverside.”

At the time of this writing, gay-rights advocates were not hopeful that Prop 8 would be overturned.  However, there is some hope that the court will decide that the marriages that occurred before Proposition 8 are still legal.  For more on the California Supreme Court proceedings, see the Windy City Times Web site for updates.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 11 March, 2009.

Prop 8 donors [11 March, 2009]

In the Chicago area, the number of donations to the No on 8 campaign (to defeat the Proposition) far outnumbered contributions to support.  As it turns out, this reflects the national trend.  According to Advocate.com, opponents of Proposition 8 raised about $43.3 million while the measure’s backers amassed $39.9 million.

The San Francisco Chronicle website lists donations in the order of the date they were given, and the number of donations only reflects single contributions.  A person may have given more than once.  To find out how much an individual donated in total, type in his or her name into the search engine and the site will list all donations next to his or her name.

All eight of the donors to the Yes on 8 campaign are listed here; Paul Kepes appears to have given $9,900 twice on the same day.

It is clear that people gave what they could, when they could: Donations range from $15 to $100 to a few in the 100,000 range; several people in the No on 8 campaign gave more than once.  Fred Eychaner is the owner of Newsweb, the company that prints Windy City Times, among other publications.  The chart for the donors to Yes on 8 is the complete list of people who gave to the campaign.  The chart for the donors to No on 8 is only a partial list (out of a total of 820 contributions).  A full list of donors can be found at www.sfgate.com/webdb/prop8.

Yes on 8: Donors from Chicago area

Paul Moeller Jr.  $100

Mark Faase $100

Edward Veal $100

Dion Manly $115

Craig Odegaard $250

John Moore $400

Paul Kepes $9,900

Paul Kepes $9,900

Kermit King $25,000

No on 8: Donors from Chicago area

Robert Castillo $100

John Pennycuff $100

Vernita Gray $150

Jonathan Lehman $1,000

Barry Love $1,726

Clark Pellett $8,000

David Herro $10,000

Fred Eychaner $925,000

Originally published in Windy City Times, 11 March 2009

No on 8: Why Chicagoans Gave to the Campaign [4 March, 2009]

Last week, Windy City Times looked at Chicago Proposition 8 donors who supported the Yes on 8 campaign.  This week, we look at those who donated to the No on 8 campaign.

These donors vastly outnumber those who donated to support Prop 8.  The San Francisco Gate Web site lists only 10 contributions to support the measure in Chicago, but 820 to defeat it.  (The numbers reflect the number of contributions; some people may have given more than once, but all donations are listed separately.)  What compelled people who are residents of Illinois to donate to a campaign in California?

Windy City Times spoke to a number of donors to the No on 8 campaign, and found that their reasons for donating were as varied as the amounts they gave, which ranged from $35 to $400,000.  In addition, their thoughts about the reasons for the passage of Prop 8 also reveals that many LGBT Chicagoans have issues with the ways that both sides of the campaign were run.

Robert Castillo and John Pennycuff are longtime LGBTQ activists, and among the couples to get married in San Francisco, which they did June 27, 2008.  The couple had already married once before, in 2004, but their marriage were later nullified by the California Supreme Court.  Today, the couple’s second marriage is again at risk of being invalidated, as are those of other couples who married in California last year.  So, the two had a personal interest in the outcome of Prop 8, and that continues as the fate of the measures hangs in the balance.

“It infuriates me that they could use the passage of Proposition 8 to go after the 18,000 couples who were legally married during that time,” said Castillo.  Regarding the ways in which the proposition came about, Castillo said he was especially bothered by the ways in which the Yes on 8 campaign played on the public’s fears regarding children by asserting that they would be somehow forced to learn about gays and lesbians in schools.  Does he have any concerns about the possibility of such a measure in Illinois?  Castillo thinks that ‘there’ll always be attempts to put an issue like that on the ballot.”  He feels that the best pre-emptive measures would be to “create more outreach to communities of color; we need to educate a lot of people within the state.”

Like Castillo and Pennycuff, Gary Cozette married his partner Joseph Lada in San Francisco, on August  28.  (Cozette is the program director for the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America.) The couple donated for reasons that were as pragmatic as personal: “Gay marriage in California gives us standing to challenge the law in Illinois.  If we are legally married in California, then Illinois has the authority to recognize marriages from other states.  It does so for heterosexual couples, but not for same-sex couples.  What that means is that if we are married in California, we have a legal basis to challenge the law in Illinois.  It also means that if the law changes in Illinois, then our rights are immediately recognized; we wouldn’t have to marry again.”

Like many other couples and individuals who gave to the No on 8 campaign, Cozette felt that the recognition of same-sex marriage in California would be an important milestone and set an example for other states.  By that same token, invalidating the already existing gay marriages and allowing that invalidation to stand could mean that other states might feel emboldened in passing similar legislation.  That’s a concern for Castillo, who worries that Prop 8’s passage “may give people pause.  People might think: if California can take away the right to marry, then why put my neck out and support it somewhere else like Illinois?”

That does not, of course, prevent donors like Kevin Downer from feeling strongly about giving to support No on 8.  Downer is the founder of AChurch4Me and said that his decision to give was motivated partly by his faith: “First, as a person of faith, as an ordained minister, I saw an awful lot of other religious communities mobilizing to support the passage of Prop 8.  As a person of faith, I needed to stand for justice.”  Downer was also disturbed by the fact that the proposition deliberately set out to dissolve the legal marriages of so many LGBT couples; that felt like an injustice to him.  He also felt that supporting No on 8 was a way to send a different message about same-sex relationships because, according to him, there are too many negative perceptions of the same in society.

Downer had another and more personal reason for his decision to donate.  Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Church, was one of the first to be married: “I wanted to honor all the work he’s done over the last four years on behalf of the LGBT community, and donate so that his marriage would not be dissolved.”

As for the future of Prop 8, the donors to No on 8 are eagerly waiting to see what happens in California during the week of March 5, when the California Supreme Court will hear arguments over the constitutionality of Prop 8.  Castillo and Pennycuff plan on being there that week.  Could anything have been done to prevent Prop 8? Cozette said, “I feel that the contributions that people gave—and many gave sacrificially—could have been better utilized with a better strategy.  And I’m disappointed at the lack of professionalism in the No on 8 campaign.  That said, we must speak out and use our dollars to prevent people taking away the civil rights of any people.”

For Jonathan Lewis, who works at the University of Chicago, giving to the No on 8 campaign was also a way of supporting those who had been married.  (He and his partner were married in Massachusetts last year.) But he does not see campaign donations as the only way to speak out against such measures: “I think that part of the reason that people felt compelled to give to a cause in California is the mythical idea of California as a bellwether state in so many ways.  Usually the way I try to give the most is by having conversations about this issue, just one on one with friends and colleagues about what’s going.  I share opinions and encourage people to learn more and to support equal marriage rights.”

For a full list of donors, see www.sfgate.com/webdb/prop8/.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 4 March, 2009

Youth Pride Center honors living legends [4 March, 2009]

Several renowned African Americans got their due as Youth Pride Center (YPC) —an organization geared towards helping LGBTQ Black youth—held its 2009 Living Legends Black History Gala February 26 at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, 5480 S.  Kenwood.

This year, the group’s six honorees included DJ Frankie Knuckles and Affinity Community Services. YPC Founder Frank Walker was unable to attend because of recent heart surgery.  Walker is on the mend, but his illness meant that youth members of the organization had to put the program together on their own.  Interspersed with dedications to honorees were performances by several youth and a soul-food dinner.  Tony Taylor read poetry; Randall Walker and Dejon Smith entertained with a Billie Holliday medley and Anshae Lorenzen performed a dance number.

Knuckles, an internationally known and openly gay DJ, was clearly impressed with YPC.  He said that the youth reminded him of what it was like to grow up in New York, in the arts: “I don’t think I turned out badly,” he said with a smile, “But I wonder what it would have been like to have something like this when I was their age.”  He commented on “how focused and how clear-minded they are about what they have and what they try to do.  In this day and age, when there’s so much ugliness, it’s a small oasis but it’s a great one.”

Kelly Saulsberry, a board member of Affinity, was also there to receive the award, along with fellow board member Linda Doss.  She said that besides being “honored to be honored,” she was also impressed by the “incredible talent they exhibited, as well as their passion.  The fact that they pulled off the event by themselves speaks to their leadership skills and how they take ownership of the organization.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 4 March, 2009

Prop 8 Donors: A Closer Look [25 February, 2009]

The passage of the anti-same-sex-marriage measure Proposition 8 in California created a furor in the LGBT community.  Across the country, both groups and individuals have rallied at large protests and actions to show their support for overturning the measure.  Anti-Prop 8 work has relied on the tools of Web-based technology and social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  These tools don’t just allow quick and easy ways to mobilize large numbers of people at protests; they also make it easy to disseminate information about events and the supporters of Prop 8.

Such information includes the names of donors to the campaigns for and against Prop 8, the amounts they gave and even information about their employers.  The San Francisco Gate maintains a database that allows visitors to find donors by state and city.  Since its launch, several supporters of the proposition have alleged that they have been subject to harassment, intimidation and even death threats.  In January, a suit filed by attorneys for the measure claimed that such alleged harassment of Prop 8 supporters violated their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.  A federal judge denied their suit on January  29.

The debate around disclosure has its impact in Chicago.  A mid-January rally against the Defense of Marriage Act ended with protesters marching past Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N.  State, to protest the U.S.  Conference of Catholic Bishops giving $200,000 toward Prop 8.  That event was preceded by a protest outside the Hyatt global headquarters building, 71 S.  Wacker.  This was part of a nationwide ongoing series of actions against the hotel chain after gays discovered that Doug Manchester, owner of the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego, had donated $125,000 to Prop 8.

A search for contributors to the pro-Prop 8 campaign turns up 10 donations.  Kermit King gave the largest amount, $25,000, while Mark Faase gave $100.  A search for opponents of the measure turns up 210 donations.

If even Chicagoans are willing to donate against the measure, it’s clear that the issue of Prop 8 resonates with LGBT people across the country.  For many LGBTs, protesting the donors who contributed is one way to indicate that they are ready to publicly call out people whose actions they construe as homophobic.  But the issue of public naming and shaming raises concerns about the ethics of the same.  Is this tactic simply an essential part of participatory democracy? Are there constitutional reasons why such information should not be made public?

Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Windy City Times that such information should be kept public: “It would be better if we had a public financing system, but we don’t.  There is a compelling interest in the context of assuring that there is transparency and not corruption that is linked to campaign contributions, something we can all understand in Illinois.”  Yohnka said that people can act anonymously in a number of situations, such as when they pass out flyers at a public gathering, without revealing their identities or post comments on a newspaper Web site.

He discussed the central issues around the question of disclosure: “Donors have every right to participate in the political process by giving money.  But you don’t have an expectation of privacy when you donate to a campaign.”

Are there serious downsides to revealing names? A December op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by John R. Lott, Jr., and Bradley Smith pointed out that, in the 1950s, “Southern states sought to obtain membership lists of the NAACP in the name of the public’s ‘right to know’” and that “[s] uch disclosure would have destroyed the NAACP’s financial base in the South and opened its supporters to threats and violence.”  Yohnka’s response to this argument is that “ [i] t’s a good point, but not a good analogy.”  He added: “Those issues are issues of association.  There’s no danger that [association] will corrupt or change or alter an electoral process that’s fundamental to democracy, as opposed to contributing millions and millions of dollars to a particular campaign that could have an adverse effect.”

John D’Emilio, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also believed that donor information should be kept public.  However, he was wary of the current backlash against donors: “I completely understand the desire of people who are angry and frustrated and annoyed at these right-wing campaigns against marriage.”  But he added that he was troubled by “the idea that to aim sanction at people who contribute really implies a political strategy based on the values of intimidation and winning instead of persuasion and winning over.  Not that you necessarily should be trying to win over the contributors to a campaign against you, but you should be trying to win over people to your side.  I understand the impulse on the one hand; on the other I don’t feel that it provides you anything more than short-term emotional satisfaction.  It doesn’t feel like a political strategy.”

D’Emilio, whose work has involved the analysis of gay movement-building, also saw broader issues.  Asked about the role of the tactics of disclosure in contemporary gay organizing, he pointed out that it was part of a context where “the marriage issue has been moved forward through court cases which don’t require political organizing.  It just requires a couple and lawyers.  And then all these other things have happened in response.  Lots of people don’t mobilize and organize around marriage.”

Indeed, seen in this light, the question of disclosure is not about whether or not it is ethical.  Calling the ethics of disclosure into question is more of a strategy of distraction used by those who would like to keep the information private.  However, it seems, the disclosure of names and the backlash against donors is part of the ways in which contemporary organizing around gay marriage is based on a reactive rather than a pro-active mode.

Still, for those Chicagoans who donated to defeat Prop 8, giving money was an attempt to correct what they saw as a homophobic measure.  Windy City Times attempted to speak to several of the Chicago donors to Prop 8, but none of them responded.  Not surprisingly, people who gave money to defeat the measure were more forthcoming.  Sanjiv Sarwate is an attorney who donated $300 to the effort to defeat Prop 8.  Why would an Illinois resident contribute to a cause in California? Sarwate said, “I recognized that California was potentially a major battleground, being the state of its size, and [I hoped] it could influence action in other states.”  Like the others, he was unsympathetic to those who claim threats of intimidation: “I can see how they might feel they are being harassed, but at the same time they did inject themselves into a political issue by giving a donation.”

In the coming weeks, there will be more articles on those who contributed for and against Prop 8. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 25 February, 2009

7 arrested at V-Day marriage protest [18 February, 2009]

When Proposition 8 passed in November 2008, it prompted a series of actions across the country and legal challenges in California.  On March 5, the California Supreme Court will begin to hear arguments against Prop 8.  In order to highlight the importance of the upcoming trial, Gay Liberation Network (GLN) and Join the Impact.

Chicago organized a Valentine’s Day action at the Cook County Marriage License Bureau, 50 W.  Washington.  This began with a traditional picket outside the building and ended with a sit-in inside that resulted in the arrest of seven marriage activists.

More than 300 people showed up at the protest at 11 a.m. on February 14 in downtown Chicago, holding signs and chanting during an initial picket outside 118 S.  Michigan.  One man, with a sign that said, “Obama, Don’t 4Get,” said that he was there because “ [w] e don’t the same protections that other couples have.  The unions that that we have are just as valid as heterosexual unions.”

Several speakers spoke to the crowd before and after it marched in a picket line up and up and down the pavement in front of the building.

Brent Holman-Gomez greeted protesters: “Welcome to the struggle.”  He went on to detail the benefits that, according to him, same-sex couples are denied over their heterosexual artners, including estate inheritance rights and social security benefits.

Holman-Gomez emphasized the symbolic value of holding the protest on Valentine’s Day.  Inside the Marriage Bureau, several straight couples had shown up to get their licenses, and at least one bride to be was dressed up in a formal full-length white gown.  Holman-Gomez said that the crowd of LGBT protesters was there to congratulate the straight couples but also to remind them that the right to marry was denied to same-sex couples.

Straight advocates spoke about the need for solidarity between heterosexuals and their LGBT friends who were unable to marry.  Missy Lorenzen declared that she would not marry until her gay friends were legally allowed to marry.  Gina Pantone said that, “As a straight ally, I’m here because I can no longer stay silent while millions of Americans are denied their chance at happiness, fairness, and stability; while families in California are being torn apart and having the validity of their relationships put up for vote.”

In between speeches, protesters marched with chants that included, “Obama, Obama, let Mama marry Mama” and “What do want? Equality? When do we want it? Now!” Different groups brought their perspectives to the table, although not all of them made their point completely relevant to the issue.  On the one hand, Cory, of the International Socialist Organization, spoke of the need for gays and lesbians to recognize “so-called gender-variant identity.  This is a part of our movement, as well as a united ENDA [Employment Non-Discrimination Act].”  On the other hand, Prajwal Ciryam of the Chicago Single-Payer Action Network spoke at length about his group’s support for same-sex marriage.  However, his speech addressed mostly generalities about the need for healthcare for all and the need for change: “There is no institution that is too great for compassion, too strong for love, too proud and important for equality and respect.”

Andy Thayer of GLN spoke about the economic issues that, he said, faced same-sex couples in a recession.  According to him, “Hetero couples can take those [economic] rights for granted but we cannot.  Particularly in these hard economic times, we need equal rights.”  Thayer then announced that a group of protesters was already inside the building and participating in a sit-in to demonstrate for equal marriage rights.  The crowd followed Thayer inside the building.  Thayer later told Windy City Timesthat the seven who were arrested had “infiltrated” the building before the action.  Dale Fecker and Buddy Bell had gone up to the counter and demanded a marriage license.  Since Illinois does not grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they were automatically denied.  The two, according to Thayer, then said, “We demand equality,” and all seven then staged the sit-in.

When the large crowd showed up at the door of the license bureau, all seven were seated on the floor, holding up signs and singing protest songs/hymns that included, “This little light of mine” and “If I had a hammer.”  Erica Chu, with a sign that said, “Your silence supports the status quo.  Speak Up,” told Windy City Timesthat she was “here to support equality.”  Nick Ferrin, holding a sign that said, “End Discrimination,” told the paper that he was there because, “Marriage is used to divide people into groups, into some people who can marry and some who can’t and that’s wrong.”  The others arrested were Dan Ware, Daniel Karczewfki and Jeff Graubart (who was arrested in the 1970s in a similar marriage protest).

In a subsequent update, GLN’s press release said that all seven were arrested at 4 p.m that day for criminal trespass, a Class C misdemeanor.  They were all released at 2:15 a.m. the next morning.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 February, 2009

State colleges get failing grades on LGBTQ issues [18 February, 2009]

The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance recently issued a report card for all Illinois teacher training colleges, based on their preparedness of teachers (K-12) in LGBTQ-related matters.  The report is titled “Visibility Matters: Higher Education and Teacher Preparation in Illinois: A Web-based Assesement of LGBTQ Presence.”  The Alliance looked at school Web sites to determine, broadly, the extent to which higher-education institutions with teacher training colleges were inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity issues.  More specifically, they considered the extent to which these policies were reflected in the materials used in teacher education programs.  Forty-one out of Illinois’ 57 programs received Fs.  Only one, at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), received an A.  Four received Ds, one got a B and the rest received Cs.

According to Shannon Sullivan, executive director of the Alliance, most of the colleges have been receptive to the need for the report despite such dismal grades and even if they took issue with the Alliance relying so heavily on Web sites:  “Realistically, Web sites need to be a conscious reflection of what your values are.  Certainly, policies, especially non-discrimination policies should absolutely be there on your Web site.”  About the decision to include both sexual orientation and gender identity, Sullivan said, ‘the reality is that everyone has a gender identity.  Heterosexuals are also targeted for being gender non-conforming.  In fact, the most common way that students in schools are targeted is about gender non-conformity, even when the words that are used to harass them relate to sexual orientation like “faggot” or “dyke.”

In the case of schools that already have many of the required policies and programs but whose Web sites may not reflect those, the report is a reminder that more needs to be done to ensure a match between perception and reality.  Gary Cestaro is the program director of DePaul University’s LGBTQ Studies Program and an Associate Professor of Modern Languages, and spoke to the more general ways in which the institution has worked to create a supportive environment, “but that fact may not be as visible as it needs to be.”  He pointed out that DePaul was the only Catholic university with a program of LGBTQ studies and that there is a lot of LGBTQ visibility, from students to staff.  Cestaro had no problems that the report relied on Web sites: ‘the Web site is the most public face of the university for most people.  That’s a reality that’s set in our world.”

Emily Manes, a third-year undergraduate in elementary education at DePaul’s teaching college, is also a member of Gender Just, a local group that focuses on anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies.  Her perspective was that of both a student and an activist on the very issues addressed by the report.  She confessed that, given DePaul’s generally supportive environment, the grade left her “pretty surprised,” but it also made her look more closely at the curriculum in the teacher training college and discover that “there isn’t lot of emphasis on LGBTQ issues.  We have a lot of support systems, but not specifically within the School of Education.”  Manes, like Cestaro, considered the report a useful tool and, as the latter put it, “an invitation [to make changes] more than a criticism.”

Sullivan affirms the idea that the report is meant to be an opportunity for colleges to have an open discussion about how to best change policies and allow Web sites to reflect the commitment of universities to LGBTQ-friendly policies.  She said that the Alliance would be able to facilitate workshops and meetings around the same.  “We’d also want to see what the successful schools are doing.  What are the best practices they can share?”

At UIC, College of Education Dean Victoria Chou was happy about the “A,” and gave the credit to faculty and students who kept the College apprised of the latest research on LGBTQ-related issues: “It’s important to keep ensuring that this is one of the issues that has to be out there to be included.”

Even schools that received failing grades welcomed the report because they might lead to curricular revisions.  Sylvia Gist, director of the College of Education at Chicago State, had concerns about the emphasis on Web sites since that might not accurately reflect the campus, but also said, “It’s great that they did a study like that.  Quite often there are things that are done on campus that we do not publicize that are directed towards making sure that people feel safe on campus.  It heightened an awareness on my part about information that needed to be on our Web site and information in a lot of cases that we just took for granted.”  At Illinois State University, which received a C, Associate Professor of English Education Paula Ressler was impressed by the study: “This research is huge.  It takes a lot to do this work.”

Still, some colleges and universities that are unfamiliar with LGBTQ issues may have a while to go before they can begin to address them.  MeShelda Jackson, chair of the School of Education at Benedictine University, was eager to discuss the report with Windy City Times, but was also unable to provide any details about teacher preparation and LGBTQ issues, and did not seem entirely comfortable talking about the community: “My understanding is that they were viewing the Web site, to see how clearly we [presented] the message of different types of diversity, as with the homosexual.”  Pressed for details on what situations student teachers might encounter in relation to LGBTQ students, and how curricula might address those, Jackson provided no specifics but insisted that such issues were “embedded within the courses … because we have to teach about diversity.  And so forth.  It’s not a subject we shy away from.  Our instructors are keenly aware and they talk about it in the same way as they talk about a kid with a disability.  That sort of thing.  Right now, we’re in the process of revising the program and looking at another course that would teach all of these issues in one course versus having everything embedded.”

The fact that Jackson, and other faculty from programs that received poor grades did respond to the report is an indication that colleges are taking LGBTQ issues seriously.  These have recently been among the issues at the forefront of the education landscape.  Late last year, an attempt to open an LGBT gay high school was shelved, amid controversy in many quarters that cut across left and right affiliations.  Most recently, Ron Huberman, who replaces Arne Duncan as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has come out as gay.  As of this writing, he has refused to take a stand on the gay high school, but his sexual identity certainly makes it likely that gay issues will continue to be part of the conversation on education.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 18 February, 2009

Gays tackle Burris pick [1 February, 2009]

Governor Rod Blagojevich recently announced that he was appointing Roland Burris to the Senate seat previously occupied by President-elect Barack Obama.  The move has generated controversy, censure and ridicule.  The governor is being decried for equal parts hubris and arrogance, while Burris has been criticized for participating in what many claim is an unethical move.

This latest news may well turn out to be the most negative in Burris’s career, one that has seen a steady climb upwards, from being the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois, first as comptroller (1979-1981) and then as attorney general (1991-1995).  Burris is well-liked and respected in political circles.  Michael O’Connor, former legislative aide to State Rep.  Connie Howard, said that Roland Burris is “eminently qualified.”  Burris has been broadly supportive of LGBT-defined issues.

(On Jan.  6, Senate authorities denied Burris the opportunity to be sworn in with the newest group of senators.  Burris was slated to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid January 7 in the latter’s office.)

Rick Garcia, political director of LGBT-rights group Equality Illinois, praised Burris, saying that he has been supportive of gay rights throughout his political career and even sought out LGBT support for his possible nomination to the Senate seat as early as November 4, the night of Obama’s election.  According to Garcia, Burris approached him during the Grant Park celebrations, asking for the community’s support.

Garcia described Blagojevich’s appointment as “bittersweet,” going on to say that while “Roland Burris is highly competent and has an excellent record on lesbian and gay issues, anyone that this governor would appoint is tainted.  Governor Blagojevich could have appointed Mother Teresa and she would have been tainted.”  Garcia pointed out Burris’s record on LGBT issues: “Burris has had a long relationship with the Illinois LGBT community.  Even way back, when he was first appointed attorney general, he had openly gay staff, including Lisa Cohen, and his lobbying team lobbied the [bill designed to included sexual orientation in the statewide human-rights ordinance].

In a 1997 interview with BLACKlines and Outlines newspapers (which later merged with Windy City Times), Burris said he would not endorse gay marriage, using an argument that was somewhat evangelical in its fervor: “If you take it [same-sex marriage] to its ultimate conclusion, it will then be the destruction of the species.”  However, Garcia is not concerned about this because, as he put it, such a position is no different than that of most other pro-gay candidates who balk at gay marriage and, more importantly for Garcia, same-sex marriage is an issue to be fought for on the state and not at the federal level.  According to Garcia, Burris is solidly in the pro-gay category, given his ‘support for hate-crimes legislation, his stand on non-discrimination, and [his opposition to] DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell].”

Ben Montgomery, constituent services administrator for U.S. Representative Danny Davis (who turned down the Senate seat before it was offered to Burris), thinks Burris is “an excellent choice.”  With regard to the LGBT community, Montgomery said, “I think he’d be responsive; he’s not close-minded on issues that affect us.”  Montgomery also pointed out the significance of Burris’s stature as the first African American elected to statewide office: “In the African-American community, we’re very proud of that.”

However, Montgomery did not approve of the way race was handled during the press conference where Blagojevich announced the appointment.  Both the governor and U.S. Representative Bobby Rush used the phrase “lynching” and strongly suggested that it was incumbent upon the state to elect Burris in order to ensure that an African American would occupy the seat.  As Montgomery put it, “Roland can stand on his own track record.  I don’t agree with making it a racial issue [and] on the whole general issue of using race in order to get something accomplished, such as this.  Because the man that was chosen is above that.  He has not accomplished what he’s accomplished without the support of the white, Black and Hispanic populations.  I don’t agree with using race as a way to pressure people.  It has no place here.”

Montgomery added that he was looking forward to Burris becoming a U.S.  Senator, hopeful that he would sign on to important LGBT-focused legislation such as increasing Ryan White Care Act funding, and helping make voluntary HIV testing as routine as a blood test.

— Also contributing: Tracy Baim

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 February, 2009

Groups protest in Loop [14 January, 2009]

Chicago gay groups participated in two protests this past week, both propelled by the November passage of Proposition 8 in California and subsequent protests against them nationwide.  The first was a feeder march outside the Hyatt Global Headquarters building at 71 S. Wacker.  This was part of an action that began in California in the spring of 2008, when gays discovered that Doug Manchester, owner of the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego, had donated $125,000 to the efforts behind Proposition 8.  Since then, protesters have asked the Hyatt Corporation to sever ties from Manchester (Hyatt manages the hotel for him).  The second protest was a rally at the James R.  Thompson Center, 100 W.  Randolph, where people gathered to rally against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996.  Both rallies occurred on January  10.

The Hyatt action was called by Equality Illinois, and approximately 30 people braved the extreme cold and thick snowfall to participate.  Board president Art Johnston and emcee Allison Leber rallied protestors.  People were encouraged to sign a petition that asked Hyatt to take action against Manchester and support “marriage equality.”  Johnston talked to Windy City Timesabout the impetus behind the protest, saying that, “We’re here today to bring the message home to Hyatt that they cannot ignore the actions of Doug Manchester, whose early donation to Proposition 8 certainly helped it pass, leaving us with the consequences.”  Some have questioned whether Manchester should be punished for money he gave as a private citizen; Johnston’s response was that ‘there’s no question that he has a right to spend his money the way he pleases.  And we also, as citizens, have the right to bring it to people’s attention and suggest that they might not want to stay at the Hyatt.  As long as the sign outside the Manchester hotel says “Hyatt,” Hyatt has to repudiate his actions.”

Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, echoed Johnston and added that Hyatt was already seeing economic costs.  Garcia said that Hyatt officials acknowledged they had lost about $2.5 million due to the boycott.  Garcia also said that non-LGBT groups were paying attention: “Some associations, such as the American Psychological Association, [are] considering boycotting Hyatt.”

The Hyatt protesters joined the anti-DOMA rally, which drew about 60 people, making for approximately 100 people overall.  Sherry Wolf of Join the Impact, the group that organized the DOMA protest, welcomed everyone and stressed the importance of overturning DOMA by putting pressure on both Republicans and Democrats to overturn the legislation.

Speakers included Andy Thayer of Gay Liberation Network (which co-sponsored the event); Henry Tamarin, President of the Local 1 chapter of Unite Here; and Tania Unzueta of the March 10 Movement, an immigrant-rights group.  Tamarin asserted that his union, which works on behalf of restaurant and hotel workers, was in solidarity with the same-sex-marriage movement: “We voted to support the Illinois civil-partnership bill.  We have supported the gay marriage bill in California, and pledge we’ll do that in Illinois when the time comes.”  Unzueta spoke about the intersection between queer rights and immigrant rights, as in the case of “undocumented gay workers who are fired because of no-match letters and undocumented queer students who may not be able to access the same scholarships as citizens.”  She also spoke of the needs of people like Victoria Arellano, an undocumented immigrant transgender woman “who died shackled to her bed after being detained by immigration and denied access to her HIV medications.”  She concluded by saying that “any law that restricts the rights of people to be happy should be abolished.”  Following the rally, people marched past Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N.  State, to protest the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops giving $200,000 toward Prop 8.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 14 January, 2009.

Morten, Madigan make transitions [31 December, 2008]

Two prominent Chicago LGBT activists are making significant career transitions.

Mary Morten is stepping down as the interim executive director of Chicago Foundation for Women.  Morten was the first African American and first out lesbian chair of the board in 1999.  She became the interim executive director in November 2007.

Speaking about her future plans, Morten said that she is looking forward to new and ongoing projects, including returning full-time to her consulting business.  Also, she will be launching Executive Retreat, for women executive leaders, with friend and business partner Laura McAlpine: “The retreats came out of something Laura and I would do for ourselves twice a year; we’d go on our own retreats.  It’s so critical for your own personal and professional development.”  Morten was cautious about the advancement of people of color in the nonprofit sector.  She said, “I’ve seen more in the last several years than I’m seeing right now.  What that signals to me is that we must continue to be inclusive and diverse and really living those values in all aspects of our organizations.”

Morten will also be working on a documentary inspired by the Black Youth Project, a survey of 1,600 African-American youth overseen by Cathy Cohen at the University of Chicago.  The survey looked at nine issue areas, including gender and politics.

On another front, James “Jim” Madigan has joined Equality Illinois as the interim executive director.  He does not plan for this to be a permanent position: “I’m not going to run a Dick Cheney-style search.  My goal is to assist the organization make a push for civil unions, with their annual gala coming up and to focus on getting a long-term executive director.  So really my goal is to help get everything ready to hand over to someone in the long term.”

Madigan last worked at Lambda Legal.  He counts among his legal successes his representation of a gay-student organization in Chicago; it was the first case in the country brought under the federal Equal Access Act against a charter school.

Madigan is excited about the organization’s role in the upcoming and renewed push for a civil-unions bill, especially because he was one of those who helped draft the last version.  “I got to see that we were really on the cusp of persuading a majority of people in Illinois and the legislatures that it was a good idea, so this seemed to be an exciting opportunity to help with that.  I think the organization represents the one place where the entire LGBT community in the state can come together and marshal its resources.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 31 December, 2008

Lesbian teen pregnancy rates [27 December, 2008]

The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality recently published an article “Stigma management? The links between enacted stigma and teen pregnancy trends among gay, lesbian, and bisexual students in British Columbia.”  It presents data showing that LGB youth show higher rates (two to seven times greater) of pregnancy involvement than their heterosexual peers.  Elizabeth M.  Saewyc, associate professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia, is the lead author of the study.  A December 17 piece in The Vancouver Sun summarized her findings, “Lesbian Youth at High Risk for Pregnancy: Study at UBC,” and quoted Saewyc: “For some gay, lesbian and bisexual teens [pregnancy is] camouflage because [their sexual orientation] is still pretty stigmatized and they still face a lot of harassment at school.”

The Vancouver Sun article has been making the rounds of LGBTQ listservs and blogs.  However, the original study shows more complicated findings and reasons for the rates of pregnancy.  Windy City Times spoke to Elizabeth Saewyc for more details, and to leading Chicago advocates for lesbians and queer youth to see how the research resonated with their own work.

The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality article sums up three pen-and-paper anonymous adolescent health surveys, carried out in 1992, 1998, and 2003, among 30,000 high school students from grades 7-12 in British Vancouver.  These were not exclusively focused on sexuality.

The key term “pregnancy involvement” (as opposed to “pregnancy”) allows the researchers to take gay and bisexual teens into account.  The survey did not ask the teens the reasons why they became involved in pregnancy.  Says Saewyc, “Why” is an open-ended question and they may have different answers to that, so it’s hard to make sure you’ve captured all the possible reasons.”  The supposition that teens are using pregnancy as a way to camouflage their sexual orientation is one of several hypotheses based on past and ongoing research into LGBTQ adolescent issues.  However, it’s clear, based on the emphasis given to it in the journal article and Saewyc’s comments, that she is inclined to favor it as a preponderant reason.  She emphasizes the correlation between discrimination and pregnancy involvement: “We do see that teens who have been pregnant or caused a pregnancy are far more likely to also report being discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

Frank Walker, the founder and director of Youth Pride Center, an organization that serves LGBTA youth of color, said, “I’m shocked that people are only just beginning to realize this.”  Walker became a father after pressure from his family to fulfill a conventional male role.  He sees a lot of young men in the same situation.  Asked if the study might affect YPC’s work, he pointed out, “We’re dealing with the first issue [to make our community aware of young black queer youth]; this isn’t likely to be the priority right now.”

What other factors influence these rates of pregnancy?  They include risky sexual behavior, substance abuse, and lack of sexual education or resources.  LGBTQ youth tend to be disproportionately among the homeless.  As Saewyc puts it, “Once they come out, they’re ejected.  And in situations of survival sex, condom negotiation can be difficult.”

Lara Brooks, drop in coordinator of Broadway Youth Center, works with street-based queer youth, and she sees many who are either pregnant or with children.  According to Brooks, they tend to be invisible to both LGBT-based organizations and straight reproductive service centers since they don’t fit the conventional paradigms of families.  Their invisibility is compounded by any involvement with the Department of Children and Family Services, either as wards or as people who give up offspring for adoption or foster care.  Responding to the article and the issues raised, Brooks was wary of too much emphasis on sexual identity, “I’m really tired of the emphasis on the closet; these queer youths’ lives are impacted by multiple factors like race and economics, which in turn impact their risky behavior and/or access to safe sex or even health care.  [Teen pregnancy] is also about family support systems [or lack thereof] and poverty, even survival.  There needs to be a more complicated analysis around all the factors.”

Teenagers’ access to safe sex education is difficult.  Saewyc said to Windy City Times, “In the U.S.  abstinence-only mandated funding has meant that a lot of accurate information about sexual health has been off the table.  Even in Canada, there’s a limited amount of time allocated to the important things like how to make decisions around sexual behavior.  It’s important to make accurate and supportive sexual education accessible for LGB youth.”

Mandated abstinence-only funding is a concern for Lynne Johnson, director of advocacy at Chicago Foundation for Women, who sees a direct connection between that and the issue of LGB teen pregnancy involvement.  According to her, the Bush administration pours millions of dollars into abstinence-only funding and “all the abstinence programs have to promote a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage” as the expected standard of human sexuality, erasing LGBT [and straight] youth right off the top.  [LGBT sexuality] is not even recognized in the standard of acceptable human activity.  Then the programs make claims that condoms are not as effective.”  So Johnson isn’t surprised at the rates of lesbian pregnancies.

Catherine Jefcoat, director of Lesbian Community Care Project, is both intrigued by and cautious about how this new study’s findings are used and discussed.  She’s concerned about the possibility of creating a hierarchy of stigmatizations: “Is it easier to be a teenage mom than a lesbian?”  Jefcoat is interested in the socio-economic milieu in which teen pregnancy might occur, and factors like substance abuse and racialised poverty.  She recognizes that pregnant lesbians and parenting queer youth are a relatively invisible population in a landscape where gay male youth, assumed to be non-parents, are seen as the default population.  And Seawyc certainly wants to see the research used in its proper context: “These are co-relationships – these are links that don’t equal cause.”

Jefcoat is happy to see attention paid to the issues facing lesbians and their bodies.   She says, “We need to know more about the truth of young queer lesbians’ lives; this adds to the work.” he sees a need for more resources given that “[i]t’s incredibly hard to build programs that address young queer female lives when funders [and many segments of the public] are only interested in our ability to make babies and not our sexuality, and that includes straight sexuality.”

Conversations with God Hates Fags/Westboro Baptist Church [21 December, 2008]

I promised I’d post a transcripts of my conversations with people in God Hates Fags, so here’s a brief account of my encounter made available only on Bilerico.  Links will take you to my previous Bilerico posts.

*****************

It’s Monday, December 4, outside the Democratic National Committee Headquarters which also serves as Obama’s transition office.  233 S.  Michigan.

I’m here to cover the Westboro Baptist Church, also known as God Hates Fags because of the signs they carry with that message.  I’d already shown up earlier in the week at the Federal Building on Dearborn (Obama’s Senate office), where they were supposed to have appeared but didn’t.  So, I’m understandably thrilled to see the bright signs from inside the bus, as it pulls up at the stop.  These are professional signs, with large, bold images and simple phrases like “God Hates Pakistan,” and “Antichrist Obama.”

There are only five of them.  I’d expected a larger crowd.  It’s possible they’ve split up into small groups and dispersed all across the city and the state since, judging by the number of places they plan to visit as announced on godhatesfags.com, they’ve got quite a few places to protest.  I’m surprised by how young they are.

Except for a man who turns out to be Fred Phelps Jr.  and who seems to be about 50, none of them look like they’re even 30.  I start with Fred Phelps Jr., and it’s a relatively brief conversation, much of it involving scripture.  Throughout, my conversations with Phelps and another member of the church are perfectly civil.

I identify myself as a reporter from Windy City Times to each of them, assuming that they know it’s a gay paper; I’m sure they keep tabs on the queer community.  I expect them to refuse to talk to me or hurl sermons, but instead they’re quite forthcoming and even genial.  Which makes sense, given their professed desire to get the word out on as many channels as possible.

Fred Phelps Jr.

Yasmin Nair: So, why are you here and what are you protesting?

Fred Phelps Jr.:We’re here to do a little preaching to Obama.  He’s given over the civil rights movement to the filthy homosexuals and the baby killers.  He claims to be inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, but he’s ignoring the basic message: Thou Shalt Not Kill.  Have you read the Sermon on the Mount?

YN: Don’t remember much about it, actually.  [All I can remember is that there was a sermon.  On a mountain.  I think.  As I talk , I’m desperately trying to remember all my Bible/Moral Science classes from when I was a girl].

FPJ: It has the strongest language condemning homosexuals.

YN: What about the sign about Pakistan (God Hates Pakistan)?  What do you have against Pakistan?

FPJ: They’re not Christians.  They don’t believe in Christ.

YN: But a lot of people don’t believe in Christ.

FPJ: Yes, and God Hates the World.  (At this point, he starts quoting Scripture and talks about how the world is going to end).

YN: But what would happen to all of you?  Wouldn’t you be stricken just as much?

FPJ: No, it’s like the story of Sodom.  We’ll be like Lot and Noah.  Do you know the story of Lot?

(All I can remember about Lot is something about a pillar of salt.  I’m an aetheist, on top of being a queer lesbian, so can’t be expected to remember this stuff.  I tell him I don’t remember.)

FPJ: Well, this country is doomed.  Read Genesis chapters 18 and 19.  Lot was taken out of the city by angels.  And that’s what will happen to us as well.

We end our conversation on that note, and chat briefly about the weather.

Afterwards, I talk to someone who’s more theologically informed, and he reminds me of Lot’s incest story - about his daughters trying to get impregnated by their father.  I’m scarred.

Jon Trott, of Jesus People, is the lone counter demonstrator and stands on the opposite side of the street.  He’s got two signs, one that says “Gays are our neighbours.” I talk to him for a bit.

I don’t want to return hate for hate, but I certainly hate their message and believe God hates it too.  I think they’re cartoon theologians.  There’s an obvious psychological issue here, with the leader of the group somehow is getting his own strange reward from the hate message they’re spreading and the opposition that it stirs up among most sane people in the world.  But he’s in need of redemption and Christ loves him, whether or not he’s able to apprehend that.

Katherine Hockenberger

YN: What do you think of (Jon Trott) across the street?

KH: I think he is very misguided.  The lord has blinded his eyes.  He can stand over there all he wants to and all he does is bring more attention to our message because everybody that sees him wants to know why he’s saying that.  So they read these signs and they receive the word of God.

(By this time, passing cars are honking and they’re clearly not doing so in support of WBC; drivers and passengers are pointing third fingers out of their car windows.)

YN: So do you think you have a lot of support in a city like Chicago?

KH: Oh, of course not.  The whole round world has rejected the word of God and therefore rejects the Lord’s servants.  So there’s no support anywhere we go.  The Lord Jesus Christ said, “The emissaries of evil will hate you.” So.  We love it.  All we’re here to do is make sure that every single person, when they meet their maker, is without excuse.  They can’t tell the Lord God on Judgment Day that they didn’t know because we’ve been here, we’ve been telling you.

YN: How long have you been doing this?  You seem quite young.

KH: We’ve been doing this for 18 years.

YN: No, I mean you personally.

KH: I’ve been doing it since I was 8 years old.

YN: Did your parents bring you into the church?

KH: Yes.  I’ve been going to the Westboro Baptist Church my entire life with my parents.  We started doing this in Topeka in 1991.  There was a local park there where people would meet to have sex.  The government wouldn’t do anything about it, so we started putting up signs to warn people.  It pretty much just grew from there.  It grew pretty rapidly because it was very apparent to us that the people in the city, the churches in particular started making an issue of what we were doing because they were saying that it wasn’t right to tell people that it’s essentially not okay to have sex in a park.  Two men?  It was perfectly fine for them to go have sex in the bathrooms or in the bushes or whatever.  So they brought God into it, saying that God loves everybody.  Of course, God doesn’t love everybody.  The scriptures are very clear about that.  And so we responded, and the Lord has guided us and given us a wonderful ministry, and we’ve gone forth into this entire nation.  We’ve gone into other countries.  The world receives our message now, through our website.

YN: How are you funded?

KH: We work.  Just like everybody else.  I go to work and I use the money to support myself and my family and to travel to Chicago or wherever we need to be.

YN: So the ministry doesn’t cover any of your expenses?

KH: No.  No one pays our way.  I bought a plane ticket.  The other people bought plane tickets.  We get into the car and we go about our business.

Originally published on The Bilerico Project, 21 December, 2008.  Read comments here.

Blagojevich and gay politics [17 December, 2008]

Illinois voters were stunned this past week by the news of Governor Rod Blagojevich being arrested on corruption charges.  Along with his chief of staff John Harris, who has since resigned, Blagojevich was charged with, among other allegations, holding out President-elect Barack Obama’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat for a “pay-for-play” deal.  The two men were both out on bail December 9, the day of their arrest.

At press time, Blagojevich had not resigned, despite calls from Obama, Senator Dick Durbin and others to do so.  The situation puts the state in political flux, especially with regard to the Senate seat, which the governor can still fill by appointment.  On December 12, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a complaint with the Illinois Supreme Court, asking it to oust Blagojevich from office by considering him unfit for the position.  On December 15, Speaker of the Illinois House Mike Madigan announced that the legislature will form a committee to investigate the possible impeachment of the governor.

This recent scandal has drawn scrutiny to elected officials around Blagojevich.  The gay community is significantly represented in Illinois and Chicago government.  Blagojevich has enjoyed the support of the gay community, having signed a gay-rights measure that adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the state statute that protects against discrimination on grounds of race, gender or religion.

Among elected gay public figures are Blagojevich’s sister-in-law, State Representative-elect Deb Mell, alderman Tom Tunney, and State Representative Greg Harris.  Gays and lesbians are also among appointed officials and trusted advisors to elected officials.

How did Illinois, and Chicago in particular, come to be such a “gay-friendly” place? Does the significant presence of gays and lesbians in political organizing mean that the interests of the LGBTQ community are fully served? To answer such questions, Windy City Timesspoke to a cross-section of people who have either worked in political and grassroots organizing and/or observed the making of the lesbian and gay political machine.

Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, was instrumental in the passage of Chicago’s Human Rights Ordinance in 1988.  He has acknowledged that the ordinance’s passage was enabled by the prior work of activists like Bill Kelley.  However, one significant difference in 1988 was that gay and lesbian activists combined a get-out-the-vote campaign with a systematic effort to rally the City’s crucial aldermanic votes.  This let aldermen know that gays and lesbians had access to both money and votes.

In 1988, ACT UP Chicago was demanding that lawmakers pay attention to the AIDS crisis.  Its tactics of public demonstrations were significantly different from those carried out by Garcia and his compadres.

Eventually, ACT UP dissipated, and gays and lesbians began to accrue mainstream political power.  One symptom of this newfound legitimacy was that gay bars were no longer regularly raided.  John D’Emilio, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago answered the question, “How does police harassment of bars go from being pervasive to being occasional and sporadic?” He acknowledged the persistence of activists who protested the raids.  But he also emphasized that shifts in the political machinery had a tremendous influence on gay and lesbian politics.

The old Daley machine was notorious for its overt racism and discrimination against sexual minorities.  But, according to D’Emilio, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington’s brief tenure eventually opened up the possibilities for new ways of operating: “When the new Mayor Daley became mayor, it saw a new kind of machine, a machine that recognizes the need for representatives from all kinds of constituents.” With a laugh, D’Emilio added, “Under the best conditions [for them] , these would be their chosen representatives.  But it’s more inclusive than exclusive.”

Eventually, said D’Emilio, gays and lesbians were represented by an increasingly large number of professionalized activists, “and such organized constituents are the one in the best position to take advantage of the structure.”

Not everyone who’s queer-identified has chosen to enter that professional class of gay organizers and activists.  Many of those who participated in organizing in the 1980s continue their political works in venues and ways that aren’t strictly gay.  Michael Thompson began his activist career in the Vietnam era as a war protestor.  He went on to work in the prison-reform movement, to which he’s still connected.  Today, he’s the director of the Chicago Honey Co-Op, which provides employment to the underemployed, especially ex-prisoners, and practices sustainable urban farming.

Thompson joined ACT UP Chicago because he found like-minded people interested in the intersection of prison reform and health care.  While he doesn’t disparage the work of today’s gay activists, he doesn’t think of himself as one.  He echoed the thoughts of Jean Genet who would fight for liberation struggles, but up to a point: “When they gained power, he was no longer interested in them.”

Jeanne Kracher, like Thompson, was also a member of ACT UP.  As executive director of Crossroads Fund, which is not gay-specific but supports LGBTQ causes, Kracher today oversees the funding of groups “who don’t get a slice of the pie.” [This reporter has been involved with groups that received funding or support from Crossroads Fund.] She was realistic about gay and lesbian organizing energy today: “With any group of people who’ve been marginalized, and who [attain] a certain amount of power and traction, there’s bound to be an assimilationist segment.  [Some] people can’t believe the amount of progress, but I think progress is a relative term.  Today’s [gay] movers and shakers are effective at creating institutions that serve some and not others.”  Kracher pointed to mainstream gay and lesbian organizers’ focus on marriage, saying that “Gay marriage has become the de facto position.  Nobody would have talked that way 20 years ago.”

Both Kracher and Garcia were concerned with the issue of gay leadership, but with different communities and goals in mind.  Kracher saw gay leadership “not dealing with the intersectionality of issues.” For her, that meant the ability to see how identities, like race and gender, intersect with issues like AIDS.  She pointed out that Chicago currently does not have a single Black-led AIDS network, despite the fact that the great majority of people affected by the epidemic in the country are Black and female.

Garcia was optimistic about the growth of political organizing in Illinois, and said he was unfazed by the Blagojevich scandal: “Getting support of our issues is not contingent upon [the governor] ” As this goes to press, the Illinois Civil Rights Act, introduced last year by Greg Harris, is doomed to die as the state tries to deal with the combined effects of a nationwide economic crisis and a home-grown political scandal.  Harris is committed to refiling the bill should it die this session.

In the meantime, segments of the LGBTQ community continue to escape the notice of most gay organizers.  D’Emilio pointed out that trans youth are among those most vulnerable to police harassment.  Thompson’s work puts him in contact with communities of color, where AIDS is a reigning issue.

The mainstream gay power machine is here to stay.  The political clout of gays and lesbians in Illinois has as much to do with their economic and political presence as society’s acceptance of them.  Today, there’s not much chance that a gay bar will be raided as in the days of old.  It’s more likely to be simply gentrified out of existence.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 December, 2008

“Day Without a Gay” supporters [17 December, 2008]

In the wake of Proposition 8 in California, gay groups across the country urged people to take a day off from work by calling in “gay for a day” and refusing to spend any of their dollars contributing to the economy.  They chose December 10, which is also International Human Rights Day.

In Chicago, approximately a hundred demonstrators showed up outside City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle, to participate in the event.  In a rapidly worsening economy, taking time off appears to be a luxury few can afford.  Most of the demonstrators were students with flexible schedules, worked for their own businesses, or had gay or gay-friendly bosses who supported them.  Aaron was a rare exception in that he didn’t have a flexible job; he works as a barback and happened to have a day off.  Would he have faced repercussions if he’d called in gay? Yes, “and I don’t care.”  Maggie, passing out flyers to passersby, felt she was making a point: “This helps bring attention to our cause, to our fight for gay marriage rights.”

After 20 minutes of marching and chanting, demonstrators went into the Cook County Clerk’s office and stood outside the office while a few gay male couples talked to the clerks in charge of dispensing licenses.  They asked for marriage licenses but their demands were not met (the state of Illinois does not recognize same-sex marriages) .  Brett Holman Gomez said that he and his partner Luis Gomez “were asked if we were both of the same sex.  We said yes, and they declined to give us our marriage licenses.  We said, ‘David Orr [Cook County Clerk] : Marry us now; we will pay your fine.  Do something historic now!’”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 17 December, 2008

Chicagoan escapes Mumbai turmoil [3 December, 2008]

Doug O’Keeffe, a Chicago resident and volunteer at the Northside Grocery Center (a food-pantry branch of HIV/AIDS agency Vital Bridges), was caught in the recent attack on the Taj Oberoi hotel in Mumbai, India, but was able to escape.

O’Keeffe was in the city as part of a routine layover for his airline job on November 26.  Crew members were scheduled to leave that night.  They heard the first explosion in the building while waiting for the elevators.

The group made its way into a conference room.  After a while, one of the hotel employees discovered them, told them to turn off all their lights and stay quiet.  He left and with a group of commandos carrying assault rifles, which escorted the group through the destruction in the lobby, to outside the building.  The people were then told to run to a parking garage on the opposite side of the street.  O’Keeffe and the others stayed there until 7 a.m the next morning when the hotel manager drove them to an airport hotel in a bus.

O’Keeffe, who has visited Mumbai several times in the past, told Windy City Timesthat the experience was “beyond reality” and that, at the time, he couldn’t “believe it was happening.” The experience has not changed his feelings about Mumbai, “I’ve always found it a fascinating and interesting place and have no bad feelings about [it].  I feel very sorry for all the people who were victims.”

Some news analyses are comparing the Mumbai attacks to 9/11 in the United States.  O’Keeffe himself lost a co-worker in that event: “I find it so astronomically ironic that he should die in a terrorist attack and I should survive one.” O’Keeffe was reluctant to make any comparisons, saying that the events occurred in “two completely different societies,” and that he didn’t want to assume to know “how the Indian people feel about [the attacks].”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 3 December, 2008

Gay dollars, labor and boycotts [3 December, 2008]

The gay dollar has never been stronger.  The passage of the anti-same-sex-marriage initiative Proposition 8 brought protests across the country.  Subsequently, gay activists have released the names of prominent businesspeople who donated to the ballot measure, and called for economic boycotts of their corporations.

Such initiatives, while part of gay history, also prompt new questions.  What role do boycotts play when many corporations now woo well-off gay consumers, boast of “gay-friendly” policies and sometimes have gays and lesbians at the helm? What do boycotts say about the connection between gays and labor unions, traditionally among the organizations that call for such boycotts?

The city of Evanston saw the first of recent boycotts in Illinois November 22 when picketers gathered outside the Century Theater.  They urged theatergoers not to patronize the business because Alan Stock, CEO of Cinemark, the corporation that owns Century, gave a personal contribution of $9,999 to support Proposition 8.

Gay groups in California have been calling for economic boycotts since the summer.  Among the most prominent of these calls is the one about the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego.  The hotel is owned by Doug Manchester, but operated by Global Hyatt Corporation.  It was revealed that Manchester donated $125,000 to Proposition 8.

In response, Local 30, the San Diego chapter of UNITE HERE, joined a gay group, Californians Against Hate, to demand that Global Hyatt sever its connection with the Manchester Hyatt.  UNITE HERE is a union born of the 2004 merger between the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).  According to Cleve Jones, a gay organizer with the union, UNITE HERE has had its eyes on this particular hotel since 2006, when the hotel’s non-unionized workers protested unfair work practices.

Local 30’s political director, Dan Rottenstreich, said that Proposition 8 became the basis for an “unprecedented coalition” between labor and gay organizing.  A press release regarding a November 22 protest outside the hotel said that, “Organizers are expected to call for major demonstrations in front of Hyatt hotels throughout the nation.”

But will the Hyatt protest translate the same way across the country and in Chicago, where the hotel has a reputation for its support of the gay community?  After all, the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker, was the 2008 host of International Mr. Leather.

In 1977, the activist Harvey Milk led a boycott against Coors Brewing Company for the company’s anti-gay policies.  Ironically, a current biopic of the gay activist is being released at Cinemark theaters (and at other chains).  Both the film’s director (Gus Van Sant) and screenwriter (Dustin Lance Black) are gay.

But it’s not just the growing presence of out gays and lesbians (and their gatherings) that highlights the complexities of, and differences in, economic boycotts today.  The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association estimates that gay and lesbian customers spend $55 billion per year in North America for ‘leisure and hospitality services,’ according to one report.

So it makes sense to ask gay consumers to withhold their dollars from anti-gay hotel owners like Doug Manchester.  But will the alliance between labor and gay organizing last beyond Manchester and Proposition 8?  In Chicago, one such alliance failed to get the desired result.  In 2004, the Great Lakes Bears invited its members to book rooms at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, for its annual conference.  Queer to the Left (QTL) , a now-defunct group, asked the Bears not to patronize the Congress because its workers were on strike.  The Bears did not heed the call.  [Note: This reporter was, at the time, a member of QTL] .

This certainly did not reflect upon individual Bears but it does beg the question: Given a choice between their interests as gay people and their interests as workers, which side will gays and lesbians choose?

Furthermore, the position of some unions on the issue of gay marriage seems to contradict the basic premise of union organizing: to ensure fair wages and economic parity for all workers, regardless of individual factors like marital status.  According to Jones, UNITE HERE “reject[s] the compromise of domestic partnerships [and is] in favor of full marriage equality.” Yet, many gay (and straight) workers might prefer the flexibility of domestic partnerships over marriage.  There is no widespread consensus on gay marriage within the gay community.

Still, there are important pro-gay policies echoed in the day-to-day workings of UNITE HERE or Pride at Work (PAW), the LGBT constituency group of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the largest federation of unions in the United States.  Both UNITE HERE and PAW supported a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act; PAW also advocates for domestic partnerships on its Web site even as it presses for marriage equality.  Local 2, the San Francisco chapter of UNITE HERE, “started a Health and Welfare fund for member hotel workers suffering from HIV and AIDS” in 1989.

Finally, are economic boycotts effective?  Eric Stanley, a queer organizer with the prison-abolition group Critical Resistance, says that “the trouble with an economic boycott as a way of working change is that it also argues that everything is ‘fine’ when not in a time of boycott.” For Stanley, economic boycotts “uphold the free market myth of capitalism in ‘non-boycott’ times.” In other words, boycotts don’t challenge the systemic inequality that turns some gays into rich consumers and others into ill-paid hotel workers.  But Stanley also acknowledges that economic boycotts, as in the case of South Africa, can be a way to put specific pressure on corporations that support state policies like apartheid.

It seems likely that the gay community will press on with economic boycotts and perhaps even work, however evanescently, with labor organizers (many of whom are also gay).  The power of the gay dollar will continue unabated, regardless of the fact that some of us, gay or straight, have fewer dollars to spend in the first place.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 3 December, 2008.

Prop 8 protest in Evanston [26 November, 2008]

The Century Landmark Theater in Evanston was the scene of a Proposition 8-related protest on Saturday, November 22.

Proposition 8 bans same-sex marriages in California.  Following its passage, gay activists have been finding and releasing information about corporations and/or their employees that helped fund the measure, in an effort to bring about a widespread economic boycott.  Alan Stock, CEO of Cinemark, the corporation that owns Century Theater, gave a personal contribution of $9,999 to support Proposition 8.

Ironically, Cinemark is also set to release Milkon December 5.  The film is a dramatic rendition of the life of Harvey Milk, one of the most famed gay activists of the twentieth century.  The film’s director, Gus Van Sant, and the screenwriter Dustin Lance Black are both gay.  The group No Milk for Cinemark is calling for a boycott of all Cinemark theaters.

There have been nation-wide calls for similar economic boycotts related to Proposition 8.  This summer, gay activists in San Diego called for the community to stop patronizing the Manchester Grand Hyatt, owned by Proposition 8 supporter Doug Manchester.

Andy Thayer, of Gay Liberation Network, which organized the picket in Evanston, said that people were being encouraged to see the film elsewhere.  Vickie Maples, who marched on Saturday with a sign that said, “Don’t Let Them Profit from Harvey Milk’s Death,” had no doubts about her feelings.  Like many of the protesters, she heard about the action during the November 15 rally in Federal Plaza: “I go to this theater all the time and I was appalled that the CEO had given money [to Proposition 8].  I would have come here to see Milk but…now I won’t.  I’ll see it at Landmark Century.”

The crowd was a diverse one in terms of age and gender, and marched resolutely despite the cold.  Several passing cars honked in support, and the number of picketers swelled to approximately 350 as the evening went on.  Chants included the straightforward “Boycott Century,” to “Gay, Straight, Black, White/Marriage is a Civil Right.” People carried colorful home-made signs that ranged from the humorous (“Too Cute to Hate”) to the serious (“No More Playing Our Movies, Taking Our Money, Then Using it Against US!”)

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 November, 2008

Plans for LGBTA school postponed [26 November, 2008]

A proposal for a Chicago gay high school was abruptly taken off the agenda of the Chicago Public Schools November 19 board meeting.  Supporters and opponents of the proposal came to the downtown office of CPS, only to be handed a memo from The Office of New Schools informing them that “[t]he Social Justice Solidarity High School proposal has been withdrawn from consideration during today’s Board meeting.”

Paula Gilovich, a member of the Design Team for the high school and the Education Director of About Face Theatre said that “community input after our October 8 public hearing created changes in our proposal that we were not comfortable with” and the team unanimously decided to withdraw the proposal.  One of the changes was in the name of the school, which had originally been titled the Pride Campus of the Social Justice High School.

n addition, according to Gilovich, there were curriculum changes; About Face Theatre was taken out of the proposal; and language was watered down.  According to her, “sexual orientation” became “orientation;” the word “identity” could not be included; and neither could “transgender,” which was changed to “appearance.”

News of the withdrawal of the proposal had gone out on e-mail the night before, according to Sam Finkelstein, a member of Gender JUST (Gender Justice United for Societal Transformation).  Finkelstein and other supporters decided to attend the meeting regardless “because we’d already done a lot of mobilizing.  We don’t want CPS to define our agenda, and we needed to hold the Board of Education accountable.”

Some of the supporters who spoke out in support of the proposal felt that the design team had been forced to cave in.  Roger Fraser said “I feel that there was political pressure on this design team from the mayor’s team on down to shelve it.” Andy Thayer, of Gay Liberation Network, said that “a handful of far-right anti-gay preachers worked with CPS hierarchy [to withdraw the proposal].”  He added that “We’ve learned that some of the proponents of the Pride campus have had their jobs threatened.” According to CPS, the matter of whether or not people were threatened is under investigation.

There has been dissention on the issue in both the gay and straight communities; not all the opposition to the proposal came from homophobic bigots.  Rick Garcia, of the gay-rights group Equality Illinois, told Windy City Timesthat he had questions about the efficacy of setting up a separate campus for LGBTQ students.  He said, “If we set up a separate institution, what does it say about our other high schools? Every one of our schools should be safe for everyone.  And is it fair that gay kids have to travel across town to a safe environment? What about kids in Edgewater, Hyde Park, Humboldt Park?”

Pastor Wilfredo De Jesús, senior pastor of New Life Convenant Ministries, echoed those sentiments, saying that “[t]he reality is that harassment is happening to kids who’re obese, who are Muslim … to isolate children who are gay does not solve the root of our problem.  The goal is to teach our children to respect one another.  Gays fought a long time to be included.  Surely the gay community would argue that to isolate gay kids is [counterproductive].”

Hontas Farmer, a transgendered woman who attended the meeting, remembered being discriminated against as a student.  But she felt that the gay high school was “an easy solution to a difficult problem.  We should want every school to be safe so that LGBT students have a variety of educational opportunities.  We all have to live with one another, and schools are a big part of [learning] that.”

Farmer also felt that the process had not been open enough.  Her view was echoed by Finkelstein, who said that “there wasn’t ownership by the community.  LGBTQs are angry because this was happening in a bubble in CPS.”

Gulovich, when asked if the community proposal had been as transparent and open as it could be, said that '”We did have to move quickly but I do believe that we’ve kept it open as possible and we’ll continue to be very open.  Dissent within the community might be a reflection of how the larger community has been discussing it from the beginning.”

There’s little doubt that the harassment of LGBTQ students is or has been a real problem for many.  John Coleman, also at the meeting and about to graduate with a Master’s degree from Roosevelt University, recalled the bullying which forced him to suspend his education for twelve years before finally enrolling at RU as a non-traditional student.  “I’m only here because I’m at a university that’s supportive, where I’ve been able to come back and achieve.”

The question of how to resolve the issue, whether through a separate campus or through wider integration of anti-bullying measures and faculty training, will no doubt be a topic of discussion within both the gay and straight community.

For some, that’s not a bad thing.  Garcia commended the design team for the “the great work it had done in that the Chicago School District, school authorities and teachers have recognized that something needs to be done to protect gay kids and to ensure they get the education they deserve.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 November, 2008

Forum focuses on same-sex marriage and Catholicism [26 November, 2008]

The passage of Proposition 8 in California came about because of efforts by Christian fundamentalists and the Mormon Church.  As a result, there has been a great deal of discussion about the relationship between the gay and lesbian community and religion.  Most accounts tend to separate the two; it’s often forgotten that a significant number of gays and lesbians are also people of faith.

The Catholic Church faces a great deal of controversy in the wake of Pope Benedict’s stated opposition to homosexuality and his declaration that same-sex marriages are “pseudo-matrimony.”  On November 11, The New Ways Ministry organized “An Evening of Dialogue: Same-Sex Marriage and Catholicism.” Held at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congreation in Evanston, the event examined the theological underpinnings behind the Church’s doctrines, and the disparity between those and the lived experiences and lives of laypersons.

The evening was moderated by Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, and Matthew Myers, its associate director.  As explained by Myers, the issues of sexuality and same-sex marriage are fused as one within the Church; attitudes towards one strongly determine attitudes towards the other.

The two-hour discussion was clearly designed for Catholics who possessed an understanding of church doctrine and the Bible.  Attendees were not there to dispute their faith but to challenge and understand church doctrines.

The audience had different opinions on marriage.  One woman made it clear that she was not keen on the institution, and neither was her female partner.  On the other hand, a man believed that marriage was an important ritual to be recognized by the Church.

DeBernando and Myers discussed the major issues related to same-sex marriage, including the meaning of same-sex relationships and their effect on children.  Official church statements say that children raised in same-sex partner households live in unstable conditions.  DeBernardo pointed out that “according to the 2000 census, a quarter of same-sex couples are raising children” without any evidence of harm done to them.

DeBernardo said that for Catholics, the question was “not just about benefits but about the quality of relationships.  Catholics who support same-sex relationships tend to be the Catholics who’re concerned for society; they have respect for lesbian and gay partnerships because of the inherent dignity of them.  We want the goodness of relationships to be recognized so that all relationships can be made better.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 26 November, 2008

Packed house for Alison Bechdel at Women and Children First [19 November, 2008]

Alison Bechdel’s immensely popular Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip has been running since 1983.  Since its appearance, the interconnected lives and attachments of Mo, Sydney, Jasmine, Toni, Ginger and others have been cultural reference points of queer/dyke popular culture.

Bechdel took a break from the strip to work on her first graphic novel, Fun Home, a memoir about her relationship with her father. Published in 2006, it became a vastly popular and critical success and clearly reached audiences outside Bechdel’s queer readerhip; Time magazine named it the “#1 Best Book of the Year.”  Today, Bechdel has achieved a rare distinction for a lesbian comic strip artist in that she’s considered among the best graphic artists in the nation.

This year, Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of Fun Home, perhaps sensing the possibility of another breakthrough success, has released The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, a compendium of excerpts from the last twenty-five years.  Bechdel was in Chicago on November 13 as part of a book tour.  Over 150 fans packed the store to capacity while she took them through a brief slide show of familiar moments in the series, with their collective and interlinked sex lives forming the connective thread.

Afterwards, Bechdel took questions about her future work (she’s working on another memoir), the graphic artists who’ve inspired here (Edward Gorey, among others), and and how she keeps up with news in order to make her strip constantly relevant (she reads a lot).

In response to a question about the link between current events and her work, Bechdel explained that, for her, “the comic strip is a way of making sense of bigger issues.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 19 November, 2008

Panel speaks on Chicago’s gay ordinance [12 November, 2008]

The Chicago Ordinance on Human Rights, which banned discrimination against gays and lesbians and other minorities, was passed on December 21, 1988.  Gerber/Hart Library, 1127 W. Granville, recently organized a panel discussion to mark the occasion.

Timothy Stewart-Winter, who presented a slide show presentation about the organizing leading to the passage of the ordinance, moderated the Nov.  9 discussion.  Other speakers included three gay activists who had been among those instrumental in getting the ordinance passed.  Laurie Dittman, Rick Garcia, Arthur (Art) Johnston and Jon-Henri Damski (now deceased) were once considered so powerful in the gay community that the Chicago Tribunedubbed them the “Gang of Four.”

According to Stewart-Winter, the ordinance came about after 15 years of organizing by various gay activists prior to 1988.  “The political framework for the ordinance was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited job discrimination by race and sex, and which became a template for fundamental rights legislation at all levels of government,” he said.  Original efforts to pass the ordinance began at least in 1971, when Chicago Gay Alliance (CGA), an outgrowth of the Gay Liberation movement, began its efforts.  For instance, in 1972, Bill Kelley asked the State Fair Employment Practices Commission, on behalf of CGA, to ban discrimination in companies with state contracts.

In the mid-1980s, the “Gang of Four” began spearheading renewed efforts to pass the ordinance and saw it move through the City Council under a few different mayors, including Harold Washington, who died in office in 1987.  The ordinance went through under the tenure of his replacement, Eugene Sawyer.  Sawyer had once opposed the ordinance, but now supported because he felt it was part of Washington’s legacy.

Dittman, currently senior policy analyst for the Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, described how the activists of the late 1980s approached the ordinance in “very different” ways than in previous years.  “When we became involved in the ordinance, there was a very different philosophy in the community, where the approach for passing legislation was really seeking the approval of the greater good and the general population.  We [used] a much more targeted strategy.  What we put together was not so much [about] changing the public opinion, but what was it that each alderman needed to support the ordinance.”

Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, began by acknowledging the work of activists who’d worked on the ordinance prior to the “Gang of Four.” He said, “In my mind, it was a blessing for us to be at the point when we crossed over at the finish line.  All we did [was] build on the great work of those who went before us, like Bill Kelley in 1972.  The four of us could not have done it alone.  We were looking to a new day and a new way to do things in Chicago politics.” Garcia emphasized that one of the first lessons they learnt was that winning a vote had less to do with “winning hearts and minds” and everything to do with gathering the requisite number of votes to pass a measure among the aldermen.

Johnston, co-owner of Sidetrack, pointed to the lessons learned from even the defeats.  For instance, when the ordinance was defeated during Harold Washington’s brief tenure, “We [had] thought Washington would find the way [by garnering the votes in support].”  (Washington faced enormous opposition from white aldermen, and Johnston spoke admiringly of him).  The ordinance’s failure taught the activists “a critical lesson—you have to do it yourself.” He added that the contribution of the group was that it “brought a practical focus on where we had to go.”

William Kelley was among those in the audience whose name was evoked as one of the activists who initiated the push for the ordinance in the 1970s.  Windy City Times spoke with Kelley about the generational shifts in strategy.  He said that Stewart-Winter had done “a good job of outlining all the early work that went into the ordinance.  And the panelists acknowledged the groundwork that had been laid earlier and pointed to a new set of tactics to get the ordinance passed.”

Kelley did point out that not all the strategies deployed in the ’80s were new and that “there had been efforts at generating ward by ward support from the aldermen as early as the ’70s.  What was new was what the people who came out in the latter stages were much better organizers and their … synergy made this whole greater than the sum of its parts.” Cautioning against seeing history as a set of “new” moments with sharp divisions between before and after, Kelley said that “[h]istory is a continuum, with watershed moments.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 12 November, 2008

So Many Ways to Sleep Badly author here [5 November, 2008]

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore was recently in Chicago as part of a book tour for her latest novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly.  The book is about life and politics in San Francisco as seen through the eyes of a radical queer activist.  Sycamore was recently named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”  Her previous work includes the anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and the novel Pulling Taffy.

Sycamore read excerpts from So Many Ways to Sleep Badly and then took questions from a packed audience at Women and Children First on October 29.  Questions ranged from queries about Sycamore’s writing process to the possibilities of queer politics.  Speaking about contemporary gay politics and its emphasis on marriage, Sycamore, who’s both an activist and writer, referred to a “gentrification of the imagination.”  One audience member asked about the ongoing expansion of the acronym LGBTQ.  Sycamore, whose work critiques the politics of gay assimilation, said that “identity could be a starting point for going somewhere” but that the problem begins “when it becomes an end point … and a quest for the perfect acronym.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 5 November, 2008

Center’s auction goes to the dogs [8 October, 2008]

The Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, recently hosted a silent and live auction-events that had previously been part of its annual Human First Gala.  This year, according to Leslie DeMonte, director of special events and volunteer services, the decision was made to separate the two functions so that the gala could draw more focus to itself.

The live auction was facilitated by Michael Davis and included an eight-week-old female beagle puppy (putting the “live” in “live auction”), donated by Let’s Pet and Critter Central, which remained the center of attention throughout the three-hour Oct.  5 event.  The beagle was sold to Brett Locascio for $450.

According to DeMonte, the auction’s “greatest accomplishment is that we reached out to many different businesses and donators that had never been connected with the Center … 80 percent of our donations came from people who had never even heard about the Center before and want to be more involved.” Silent-auction items included a Basil Hayden-inspired gown by Nick Verreos; a painting titled “The Italian” by Dan Gentle; and an obedience-training course for dogs.

Proceeds are slated to go towards the Center’s various programs and services, including the AIDS hotline, the youth center and the cyber center. 

Originally published in Windy City Times, 8 October, 2008

Event marks five years of DP registry [8 October, 2008]

Five years ago, the Cook County Clerk’s Office established a domestic-partnership registry, with John Pennycuff and Robert Castillo being the first to register.  Since then, 1,500 couples have registered for domestic partnership benefits, with the most recent (as of Oct. 1) being Jim Konold and Tim Hackett.

Both couples were present at a fifth-anniversary celebration hosted by Cook County Clerk David Orr October 1 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E.  Washington.  Among the attendees were dozens of invited couples and various city and state officials, including Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commisioner Debra Shore (an out lesbian whose partnership is among those registered); Bill Greaves, LGBT liaison to the mayor’s office; and State Rep.  Greg Harris, the House’s sponsor of HB1826, the civil-union bill.

The event was largely a social reception, with brief speeches to mark the occasion.  Orr thanked his supporters for making the registry possible and made a point of commending former Cook County Deputy Clerk Brandon Neese for getting the ball rolling in the first place.  Neese was honored with a plaque honoring him for “his dedication to gay rights and his leadership in creating the Cook County Domestic Partnership Registry.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 8 October, 2008

Task force strategizes about funding cuts [1 October, 2008]

Illinois Governor  Rod Blagojevich recently cut spending at state agencies.  Among the hardest-hit was the Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse [DASA], which lost 21 percent of its budget.

The Illinois House of Representatives has voted to restore the DASA cuts, but the Senate has yet to vote.  The Chicago Task Force on LGBT Substance Use and Abuse convened September  17 to discuss the effects on the LGBTQ community and what steps it could take to escalate community and public activism around the issue.  Simone Koehlinger and Pastor Kevin Downer were moderators.

Lisa Rivitz of the Howard Brown Health Center said that the organization isn’t directly affected, perhaps because it doesn’t get DASA funding, but “it’s affecting us indirectly: Clients are calling and saying that they’re not able to get services elsewhere and they want services from us.”

Jim Pickett of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago said that there are “clear links between substance abuse and AIDS and a lot of our clients living with HIV need substance abuse treatment.” He also pointed out that “[t]he other big issue with losing these dollars is that we lose federal match dollars.”

Another population affected includes those sentenced for substance abuse who may now be compelled to spend time in jail instead of treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Joe Franklin, Outpatient Treatment Manager at Heartland Alliance, said that the cuts have forced “a lot of treatment centers to make decisions that are not comfortable, such as accepting a person who can pay versus a person who does not have the resources … the treatment capacity has been diminished so much that there are centers that are thinking of [closing].”

The Task Force discussed its next steps, with a spirited discussion about whether or not it could take on an advocacy role: Many members represent organizations whose policies may not echo everything put out by the Task Force.  One proposal to address this was the use of position briefs or fact sheets.  Overall, members emphasised the importance of working on behalf populations affected by the cuts.  Dr. David Ostrow pointed out that “like so many times in the past, it’s the most vulnerable people who get hurt the most, the programs that can serve the population really at risk: People who go to jail instead of getting treatment, programs for people who don’t have insurance or other means to get into treatment.”

Orginally published in Windy City Times, 1 October, 2008

Diverse books part of read-out [1 October, 2008]

The American Library Association (ALA) marked its 27th Annual Banned Books Week.  Among the events was a read-out during which authors and Chicago Tribune columnists like Dawn Turner Trice read selections from their favorite banned or challenged books.

Approximately 400 people made their way in and out of a series of readings, musical performances and book signings by writers like Judy Blume, Achy Obejas and Sara Paretsky.  The event took place September 27 at the Pioneer Plaza next to the McCormick Freedom Museum, 435 N.  Michigan.

Several of the featured authors are well known for their children’s books or young adult material.  Phyllis Reynolds Taylor, author of the Alice series and The Witch Saga has long been familiar with censorship.  Speaking to Windy City Times, she emphasized the importance of parents communicating with their children as opposed to forbidding them to read anything uncomfortable: “I’d much rather have my child read something that I don’t agree with and be able to talk with them about it than have them sneak off and read it.”

Judy Blume read from the first chapter of Blubber, a story about bullying among children and one of her most popular works.  According to Blume, the book has been controversial because of “its lack of moral tone, whatever that is, and for undermining authority.”  Blume reminded the audience that Banned Books Week was “a celebration of speaking out.”

Also present were Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, co-authors of And Tango Makes Three, a short illustrated children’s book about two male penguins who hatched and raised a penguin chick at the Central Park Zoo.  The book, which they read, topped the list of the ALA’s most challenged books in 2006 and 2007.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 October, 2008

Banned books to take center stage [24 September, 2008]

Since 1982, the American Library Association (ALA) has been hosting a Banned Books Week during the last week of September.  The week begins with “Read Out!” featuring several authors and celebrities reading from their favorite banned books.

According to Judith Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at ALA, Banned Books Week seeks to “bring to the attention of the American public [the fact] that the rights that we enjoy in this country are fragile and that we have to use them in order to protect them.  The way that we celebrate this freedom is by printing a list of all those material in a given year that somebody or has determined should not be in a library or a book store …” Krug stressed that today’s public is far more resistant to the idea of censorship.  When the event was first staged, “Hundreds of books were removed from libraries.  Last year, we only had 40 books removed—when you put that against the hundreds of books, we’ve made substantial progress.”

But what kinds of books get banned? According to Krug, it’s not the “little innocuous books that tell sweet little stories” but the books that talk about the “human condition,” about situations in the lives of real people.  “Very often if sex is involved, that becomes a lightning rod for people complaining.  People feel strongly about these issues and they take action to make sure that the materials that offend their principles and personal value systems are not available.  Because that’s the way you protect your principles and personal value systems: By making sure there’s no contradictory perspective out there that could indeed cause people to change their minds.”

This year, the Chicago event will include readings by Judy Blume, the popular author of young adult classics such as Are you there, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Blubber.  It will also include appearances by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, co-authors of the children’s book And Tango Makes Three which topped the ALA list of challenged books in 2006 and 2007.

And Tango Makes Three is based on the true story of two male Chinstrap Penguins, Roy and Silo, at the Central Park Zoo.  They exhibited traits of what we might call homosexuality in the animal world, even having sex with each other.  Roy and Silo attempted to hatch an egg together, mistakenly—and fruitlessly—trying to warm a rock in their abdominal folds in the manner of penguins in the wild.  Finally, their chief keeper Roy Gramzay took pity on them and handed them a fertile egg to hatch.  Over a month later, the egg hatched and their “offspring” Tango was born.

The story was reported upon in the New York Times, in an article about the scientific debate on the existence of homosexuality in the animal world.  It caught the attention of Parnell and Richardson, who then wrote a 2005 children’s storybook (with illustrations by Henry Cole) about the two penguins.  The book has received several awards, and was the ALA’s Notable Children’s Book in 2006.  But it has also been the target of communities and individuals who denounce it for exposing children to homosexuality and who have tried to have it removed from public libraries and public school libraries.  In Shiloh, Illinois, some parents at Shiloh Elementary School tried, unsuccessfully, to place the book in a restricted section of the library.

Peter Parnell, who spoke to Windy City Times over the phone, is a playwright and was a co-producer of first two seasons of the television series West Wing.  His husband and co-author is a psychiatrist who wrote Everything You NEVER Wanted Your Kids to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child’s Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens with pediatrician Mark Schuster.  According to Parnell, who spoke to Windy City Times over the phone, the story of Roy and Silo was an opportunity to present children with a view of different kinds of families.

Addressing the attempts to ban the book, he said, “There’s a confusion between parents’ own anxiety about sexuality and the fact that the book is primarily talking about love and family and friendship and security and the kind of values that are actually important to bringing up children.  There’s a certain confusion here between a larger anxiety in the country about what it means for young children to hear about two mommies or two daddies and the way that young children perceive this story, which is not in terms of … a sex act but in terms of love.”

The specter of widespread censorship has been raised in this year’s election campaigning, with the news that Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin had, at the very least, asked a Wasilla, Alaska librarian about banning Daddy’s Roommate, by Michael Willhoite.  Like And Tango Makes Three, the book concerns gay life in that it’s about a young boy who lives with his newly divorced father and his partner.  Parnell feels that a Palin Vice-Presidency promises a dire future for books like this because her record on the issue “highlights the fact that these attempts at banning books exist, they are real.”

Krug spoke circumspectly but warily about Palin.  She pointed out that, so far, there’s been no evidence that Palin actually banned books.  A list of books she allegedly wanted banned has circulated on the internet but “The list … is totally bogus, it came from our website and is totally doctored.  I’d like to think that she asked the question because she literally did not understand how libraries work.  But the fact that she did ask the question means that her future actions bear some watching.  At this point we have nothing concrete that would indicate that she took any action.  We’ll just have to wait till the next shoe drops.”

The ALA Banned Books Week, “Closing Books Shuts Out Ideas,” runs September 27-October 4.  The Read-Out! is on Saturday, September 27, 12-4 p.m., at 401 N.  Michigan, Pioneer Plaza.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 24 September, 2008

Lesbian fundraiser focuses on global crises [24 September, 2008]

Climbing PoeTree, a two-member spoken word group, was in Chicago performing its latest piece, “Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water.” The first performance was at Columbia College, the second at the Center on Halsted (COH).

The COH event, held September 19, was also a fundraiser for the Lesbian Leadership Council (a part of Chicago Foundation for Women), co-chaired by Jane Saks and C.C.  Carter.  “Hurricane Season” takes Katrina as a starting point, and is sharply critical of the mismanagement of the crisis.  But it also places the devastation of New Orleans and the subsequent mass displacement of people within a broader context of globalization and the free market system, and looks at the economic havoc wreaked upon populations as divergent as those in India and Darfur.

Saks, speaking to Windy City Times, said that the work exemplified “the relationship between the arts, culture, and activism and the idea of how we each located ourselves.” Bringing the group to Chicago was a way to showcase how the artists talked about the relationships between man-made disasters and natural ones.

Climbing PoeTree consists of two main performers, Naima and Alixa.  In their introduction, the two spoke ambitiously about attaining “a type of bliss that comes from having your eyes wide open to the horror of humanity.”

What followed was a series of dance performances within a multi-media presentation.  A white screen in the background played photomontages while audio clips from survivors of Katrina intermingled with the voices of activists like Vandana Shiva speaking about the ways in which globalization was devastating entire communities.  Shiva described the ecological consequence of Coca-Cola bottling plants that set up house in India and swiftly depleted the drinking water supplies of local communities, forcing women to walk as far as 30 miles a day to find potable water.

Water was a recurring theme in the production, presented both as a source of devastation when it flooded homes and a source of life in the form of sustenance.  The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation visited upon the poorer residents of New Orleans was linked to events like the war in Iraq.  Naima and Alixa pointed out that the devastation of the city had been imminent since the funds required for maintaining the levees were essentially diverted to the war in Iraq.  As one narrator put it in the voice-over, Katrina was “a man-made nightmare they tried to call an act of God.”

“Hurricane Season” was supposed to end with a ‘solution Cipher’ session, a discussion between audience and performers about how to prevent more destruction.  However, the performance was plagued by technical difficulties (audio and images were suspended on a few occasions) and the performance had to be truncated.  Despite this, the audience appeared to be engrossed in and riveted by the multiple and interconnected narratives.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 24 September, 2008

Hill means a Lott to Columbia’s Critical Encounters [10 September, 2008]

TPAN (Test Positive Action Network) celebrates its 21st anniversary this year.  To mark the occasion, it will honor 21 organizations and individuals “who have made outstanding contributions to TPAN and to the HIV/AIDS community,” according to its press release about the event, called “Aware Affair: Superheroes.” Among those named “superheroes” is Columbia College Chicago, for its “leadership and dedication.”  Specifically, the institution is being recognized for its AIDS-focused theme during the initial year of the Critical Encounters learning initiative.

Critical Encounters (CE) is an annual campus-wide “learning initiative” that seeks to engage Columbia College faculty, students, and the larger Chicago community in a series of dialogues about a specific issue.  In the academic year 2006-2007, that theme was AIDS, on both the global and local levels.  One of the individuals who played a key role in developing the CE initiative and the theme is Lott Hill who, along with English professor Ames Hawkins, designed and coordinated the related public talks and events.  Hill has just been named director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, and he was a member of the task force that got CE off the ground.  He spoke to Windy City Times about the initiative’s goals and achievements, and also shed some light on what brought him to Columbia.

Initial interest in CE began, according to Hill, when TPAN partnered with one of the regular classes held on campus, Ad Agency, taught by Larry Minski in the Marketing and Communications Department.  Part of Columbia’s mission statement, is to “educate students who will go on to shape public perception and who will author the culture of their times.” To that end, the class students and TPAN worked to create the “Power of One” campaign.  But even after the class was over, TPAN found that students had become engaged participants in the drive to spread AIDS awareness.  “While learning to function in their professional lives, they were also learning about HIV/AIDS and becoming peer educators.” said Hill.

The finding was a revelation to TPAN, which was especially interested in developing educational links with the student body because the highest number of infections exist in the same demographic.  What followed was a series of discussions between TPAN and Columbia; the program began with the support of Provost Steven Kapelke.

In keeping with Columbia College’s emphasis on arts and the media, CE events that year included an exhibit of works by the Brazilian artist Adriana Bertini, who makes dresses out of condoms.  They also included a dance performance by Peter Carpenter called Bareback Into the Sunset, and an exhibit titled Body Maps, about South African women with HIV/AIDS.

Hill emphasized that motivating students to think about how issues connect with their chosen professions is an important component of CE; they see “that even though they may be going into dance or writing or radio … their skills do have an impact on how the worlds works and … ultimately our future.”  According to him, students have initiated their own projects on campus, related to CE themes, including a student awareness fair to which they invited AIDS service providers.

Hill knows what it means to think about one’s work in relation to the world around us.  He began his own student career as a prospective major in Developmental Psychology at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.  He soon realised that classes in his chosen major meant nothing to him, “I was bored out of my mind; nothing that I was learning meant anything.  I burnt out pretty quickly.” Hill took two years off from school, first travelling in Europe on money he’d saved up during college jobs, and then living in California for six months.

He returned to Louisville, realised that he wanted to be a writer, and applied to Columbia College’s program in Creative Writing.  Hill eventually got an MFA from Columbia in 2000, taking night classes while working full-time.  One of his jobs was as the Director of the Writing Program at the Duncan YMCA Chernin Center for the Arts.  He continues to write, having shifted from poetry to creative non-fiction, and presents his work at Second Story.  Hill also serves as faculty advisor to Common Ground, the LGBTQIA student group at Columbia.

For Hill, the theme of HIV/AIDS is deeply connected to a range of issues around us, including that of Poverty and Privilege (the second-year theme of CE) and Human/Nature, the upcoming series.  “I’ve lost my fair share of friends; I have my fair share of friends who’re [living with HIV]; I’ve witnessed too many people, young people, discovering they’re HIV-positive … that’s ultimately where I come at it beyond my role as an educator…as a person in this world—that’s where I felt my connection to Critical Encounters was.”

The TPAN “Aware Affair: Superheroes” gala will be held Saturday, September 13, in the MCA Loft, 1747 W.  Hubbard.  See www.tpan.com.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 10 September, 2008

James Dobson and the National Radio Hall of Fame [20 August, 2008]

Gay groups are up in arms about the induction of James Dobson into the National Radio Hall of Fame (NRHOF) at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.  Dobson heads the anti-gay and archconservative ministry known as Focus on the Family.  Groups like Truth Wins Out (TWO) are calling for the induction to be rescinded.

I don’t care for James Dobson.  I grew up, in a fashion, in Indiana, where his type abounds, and I learned the useful trick of tuning out fundamentalists.  So the recent fracas over Dobson’s induction is a good reminder of the anti-gay poison he spreads.  But I’m baffled about this call to rescind his induction.

Dobson isn’t being honored for his anti-gay message.  He’s being honored for having “distinguished himself at the national level,” according to Bruce DuMont’s letter to Windy City Times.  The vague wording indicates the nature of the institution.  There’s a reason why it’s not called the Hall of Noteworthy Work and Clear and Discernible Influence.  A Hall of fame, by its very nature, can do no more than reflect the politics and temperament of its nominating and voting body at a given period of time.  A lot of amazing people get nominated to Halls of Fame, and just as many are questionable.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame began in 1986, but only got around to inducting the seminal Velvet Underground in 1996.  The Velvet Underground, people.  Don’t even get me started on that one.

Even institutions that are ostensibly about judging quality come up with odd results.  Take, for instance, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, where nearly 6000 voting members decide on categories like Best Picture.  The results are still inconsistent: crap like Titanic, a gem like No Country for Old Men.  If you think that my opinions are subjective, you’re right.  Why pretend that judgments about the value of someone’s work are strictly apolitical and impartial?

Such institutions usually have complex sets of rules that we may or may not agree with, and which may still not give us the desired results.  But consider the opposite scenario.  An anti-war lefty broadcaster gets inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.  Right-wingers cry foul and that person’s induction is rescinded.

Why should we stoop to that level, especially when we have more significant work to do? Why not simply continue to focus our valuable time and resources on exposing Dobson’s politics? If people have issues with the nomination and election process of NRHOF, make those points clearly but be prepared: there will always be nominees we don’t like.  Let’s not go down the dangerously slippery slope of telling people that a collective vote should be cancelled.  Or have we already forgotten what it’s like to have the results of an election overturned?

Originally published in Windy City Times, 20 August, 2008

Minority workshop focuses on LGBTQ families [1 August 2008]

LGBTQ families are frequently non-normative, and not just because they’re headed by queer people.  Queer families may consist of single women raising children with sperm donors who maintains links with their offspring.  Two men might raise children together even after breaking up.

All this becomes more complicated when race and/or ethnicity enters the picture.  How does the media respond to such unlikely configurations and what can—and should—LGBTQ families do to effect the representations of their families?

Lisbeth Melendez Rivera is the manager of Project Harmony, an offshoot of the Family Equality Council, which advocates for the rights and visibility of LGBTQ “parents, guardians, and allies.”  Rivera conducted a Center on Halsted-sponsored daylong workshop July 20 that coincided with Latina/o Pride week.  Project Harmony advocates for families of color.

The workshop drew attendees who ranged in age, race, ethnicity and relational status.  Participants divided into groups and answered questions like, “What’s the greatest bond a family has?”

Responses indicated that LGBTQ people’s relationship to the concept of “family” can be complicated.  For instance, in response to the question of ‘the greatest bond,” one woman said that her “family of choice” (partner and friends) was more meaningful than her biological family—which had expelled her after she came out.

It became clear that LGBTQ families of color can face particular challenges.  Rivera gave a personal example that highlighted the issue of how such families might be perceived in public.  Rivera and her partner have a son who is blonde and blue-eyed.  On one occasion, while mildly arguing with her son in public, they watched as two white gay men came up to him and asked if his “nannies” were treating him badly.  For William Hall and Kevin Tindell, two Black men raising children of color, parenting includes showing their children how to negotiate racism rather than insulating them from it.

According to Rivera, the aim of such workshops is “to collect a variety of stories.  How do we come to be families? What role does race, class, and location play in creating family relationships? Is marriage the only thing that we consider to be family?” She said that many queer parents are also single parents, and that they are legitimate families deserving of protection.

During the workshop, C.C. Carter spoke of raising a son with an ex-partner and her current partner and of the conversations she needed to have with day care providers to explain a situation that should be seen as “normal.”  For participants, the workshop provided a forum to air their thoughts about living as LGBTQ parents.  It also appeared to give them much to think about.  Sharon, who is white, said she tended to be overprotective about her twins as the children of gay parents facing questions about their family.  But, after listening to William and Kevin, she decided that it was time to let them negotiate such issues more independently.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 August 2008

Sex workers hold local conference [23 July, 2008]

Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), a national group that works on the decriminalization of prostitution, held its third annual conference in Chicago.  Members attended panels on topics like sex trafficking and the issues facing transgender sex workers.

One of the local groups that participated was Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP), which works with many, but not exclusively, queer youth in the sex trade.  Cindy Ibarra, YWEP communications coordinator, spoke of their “interactive discussion” with adult sex workers about how best to be allies with youth.

Ibarra pointed out that the world of sex workers was often different from that of youth in the street economy; the former tend to come from “the middle class sector of people.” Ibarra also said she was pleased with the turnout at the panel—approximately 50 people attended—and that attendees were receptive to YWEP.

Other attendees spoke about class and privilege, and said that sex workers can find themselves living in contradictions.  While many make a comfortable living, they’re also extremely stigmatized and prone to sexual assault and police harassment.  Violetta said that the conference had shown her the range of sex workers, not all of whom enter into it as a matter of choice.  For Karly Kirchner, SWOP highlights “how the criminal system preys on the most vulnerable.” Her concern is that “if people don’t [pay] attention to the people at this conference and this organization, we’re going to continue to see the targeting of the most vulnerable among us.”

Tara, a female-identified trans sex worker, spoke about the issues facing queer and trans people.  “Out in the ‘real world,’ a ‘freaky’ trans person like me won’t be hired by most employers … because I look like a man [even] though I’m legally a woman.” But Tara also emphasized that while many transgender sex workers did sex work because of a lack of employment options, that doesn’t mean they should be pathologised: “Because it’s their only option doesn’t mean it’s a bad option.”

Liz, a lesbian sex worker understood the distinction between street work and sex since she’d spent her youth working in the street economy: “Street work is harsh, violent, and dangerous—the goal should be harm reduction.” But she and others didn’t see clear distinctions between the street economy and sex work.  Sienna Baskin, an attorney who works with sex workers, said that there wasn’t a distinction as much as a “continuum” between the two kinds of work.

Liz and Tara emphasized that SWOP advocates for the human rights of sex workers and that “sex work is work, and we deserve labor rights.” Both see the need for health care and worker’s compensation and are concerned with what they see as the unfairness of laws that target sex workers and the conference as a way to network and build solidarity among sex workers and allies.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 23 July, 2008

Black Pride event focuses on writers [9 July, 2008]

Will print survive? That’s a question that plagues the publishing industry as it struggles to redefine itself in an era of web technology.

Within the world of African-American publishing, such questions are particularly complicated, given the marketplace of the book world.  The fact that most of the “mainstream” readership is construed as white leads to the illusion that Black authors are not as commercially viable.  Given all this, the issues and experiences of LGBTQ African-American authors are seen as less likely to garner attention, making it more difficult for them to make inroads in the publishing world.

On July 5, Chicago Windy City Black Pride held a reception for authors at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, to introduce them to the community.  Approximately 150 people came to meet established figures like Naleghna Kai (Every Woman Needs a Wife) and Rodney Lofton (The Day I Stopped Being Pretty).  But also present were newer writers, like the novelist Diane Martin (Never What it Seems) and Raymond Berry, a poet whose work appears in To Be Left with the Body, an anthology of work about Black gay and bisexual men living in a time of HIV/AIDS.

Michael Hunter organized the event, along with C. C.  Carter, and he spoke about some of the issues facing African-American LGBTQ authors.  Hunter said the reception was conceived within the concept of “a place to call home, to be Black and gay at the same time.”  Hunter was speaking of how authors have to find ways to navigate their way through the writing process, which is already “so lonely,” and also establish their visibility in the publishing world by networking.

Martin’s excitement about being at the event confirmed much of what Hunter had to say about its potential.  She saw it as “a wonderful opportunity” to meet fellow writers.  As it turned out, Martin’s table was next to that of Verlean Singletary, the owner of Da Book Joint, a South Side bookstore specializing in African-American authors—including Martin.  The two were meeting for the first time.

Following the reception, attendees listened to the authors reading selections from their works.  They included Neledi Tafari, a native Washingtonian who read from her debut novel, Dykin’, which she said was about “Black lesbian culture in late-’90s Washington, D.C,” and Carter, who read from Body Language, her 2003 Lambda-nominated collection of poetry.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 9 July, 2008

Bash Back! makes point at parade [2 July, 2008]

Chicago’s annual Pride Parade is a popular spectacle for queer Chicagoans and their straight allies.  But even its most ardent supporters often wonder if Pride, meant to commemorate Stonewall, has retained its insurgent and activist roots.

This year, a new group named Bash Back! decided to reclaim some of what it feels is the original spirit of Pride: protest, critique and anti-assimilationist politics.

Members showed up with a display that attracted the attention of the throngs of spectators lining the sides of the parade.  Inside a cage on wheels stood Lily, dressed as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, complete with a dark suit and pink tie-and a paper mask of his face.  A large poster attached to the cage charged the mayor with a litany of acts, including “enabling queer-bashing cops, pushing gentrification, terrorizing neighborhoods of color and militarization of public schools.”

According to John of Bash Back!, the display symbolically held Daley responsible for “his support of a police department with a record of torture ands abuse of queers and others, especially people of color.”  The cage was not an “an endorsement of the prison industrial complex; we’re doing to him what he’s doing to people throughout the city.”

Bash Back! also held banners that read “War is murder, revolution is fierce!” and “No Pride in corporate greed.”  It was an anomaly in the parade, sandwiched between Hydrate nightclub’s float and giant banners for gay marriage.  What about marriage?  Tristan’s response was that “It’s a shame queer people are fighting to be just like everyone else.”

According to John, the organization chose to focus energy on local issues that needed attention rather than divert it on gay marriage.  Members distributed “barf bags” with words like “Corporate Pride makes me sick” and invitations to join the group in protesting the Republican National Convention.  Would this have an effect on the thousands who lined up to cheer the spectacle of Pride? Marching, said John, was “a symbolic gesture to raise issues no one seems to care about and to try to salvage the radicalism that Pride was originally about.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 2 July, 2008

Ryan White’s mother speaks at Center [2 July, 2008]

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), the latest statistics on HIV indicate that the populations at greatest risk for new infections are African-American men who have sex with men, and African-American women.  This is a marked shift from the early years of the epidemic, when HIV/AIDS was perceived—and stigmatized—as a white gay men’s disease.

IDPH and the Center on Halsted teamed up on National HIV Testing Day, June 27, to provide information on HIV, along with testing services.  Modesto “Tico” Valle, executive director of the Center, began his introduction of the morning’s sessions with a reminder: “Let no one say that AIDS is over.  We are called to do more, to ask for more, as long as AIDS is among us.” State Representatives Greg Harris and Sara Feigenholtz spoke about the importance of prevention and regular testing.

Following them was Jeanne White, the mother of Ryan White, the Kokomo, Ind., native who was born a hemophiliac in 1971.  White told of her son being treated with Factor VIII, a clotting agent made from blood.  Unknown to the doctors and the Whites, the batches used to treat Ryan were contaminated with HIV and he was diagnosed with the virus in 1984.  The Kokomo school board ruled that the teenager could not attend classes, claiming that he would infect his classmates.  The family endured continued hostility from the townspeople, which included a bullet through their living room window.

The Whites successfully contested the school board decision, and celebrities like Michael Jackson and Elton John lent their names in support.  Ryan White’s story, and the media attention it garnered, became a pivotal point in reducing the stigma attached to AIDS.  But while much of the stigma has vanished, the rates of infection among women have risen, and African-American women are among the hardest hit.  The ‘down-low’ phenomenon is often suggested as one cause for this.  According to some, large numbers of African-American men secretly engage in unprotected sex with men, become infected with HIV, and pass it on to their female partners.

Shelly Lindahl, a physician’s assistant from Dallas, Texas, began a morning break-out session on “Women and HIV” by debunking what she considers the myth that most women are infected in this way: “We want to make it about down-low, but a much bigger picture is that of drug use and the recidivism rate.” She pointed out that given that many men in prison engage in a high rate of sex—either for protection, or because they’re manipulated into doing so, or because of the “pecking order,” “they’re not going to talk about it.” (Many prison reform activists advocate for distribution of condoms in prisons, which would prevent the spread of HIV.)

Lindahl’s talk focused on how women who contract HIV through unprotected heterosexual sexual could prevent the spread of HIV once diagnosed with the virus.  According to her, by the end of 2004, 27 percent of those newly infected with HIV were women.  The specific challenges in addressing HIV in women, for Lindahl, have to do with addressing socio-economic and cultural factors.  For instance, women are less likely to feel empowered in condom negotiation and, therefore, more likely to engage in unprotected sex.

Once infected, women are sometimes apt to not stay on their drug regimens, usually because of side effects but other contributing factors might be that they’re often the primary caregivers for children and neglect their own care.  Lindahl noted that pregnant women are usually rigorous about taking their medications during pregnancy, but falter afterwards.  She recommended adherence to medical regimens, and that women keep in touch with a provider who would answer their questions.  If, for instance, a doctor changed medications even when they seemed to be working, it was imperative that the woman know the reason for the change: “Every patient has the right to ask why.”

Lindahl also spoke about the necessity of health maintenance in the form of regular check-ups and continued protection during sexual activity, as well as forming support groups.  In response to a question about the differences in dealing with HIV, between lesbians and straight-identified women with HIV, she said that lesbians tended to be more aware of the risks and had built-in support groups due to their connections to the LGBTQ community.

Originally published in Windy City Times, 2 July, 2008

March highlights Boystown tensions [1 July, 2008]

The Coalition for Justice and Respect organized a “Unity March Against Racism and Harassment” in the Boystown area.  This was the latest such event in Chicago to address the tensions that have pitted youth of color against police officers, condo dwellers, and business owners.

On June 21, approximately 20 people gathered at the Corus Bank parking lot on the corner of Halsted and Belmont to hear brief remarks from speakers.  Marc Loveless introduced the speakers by saying that “this march is not the answer to anything, but the beginning of a conversation and dialogue.  Instead of pointing fingers at African-American trans youth, police should look at the source of the problems facing them.” Andy Thayer, of Gay Liberation Network said that citizens “still had the freedom to assemble.”

Both Thayer and Father Tommy Avant Garde addressed the issue of sex work/prostitution, accusations of which have led residents and police to complain that youth are in the neighborhood only to “hustle.” Thayer suggested that police consider punishing the johns as well because “it takes two to tango.” He added that it was pointless to blame youth for taking on prostitution in an economy that gave them no opportunities or jobs.

Father Avant Garde said that the youth had every right to congregate in Boystown, given that it was their area as well: “As long as there are goal posts with rainbow flags on them, this is Boystown,” and queer youth have a right to be there.  Addressing the charges that youth traveled in gangs to create trouble, he said, “Everyone who wears a hat and baggy pants is not a gang-banger.” Darrell Gordon pointed out that police harassment is “not a new problem; we need to make these figures [statistics on police harassment] available.”

Gregory Norels, of the Bayard Rustin Access Center, planned as a resource center for queer African-American youth, talked about the need for police officers to treat youth with respect.  He also encouraged the youth present to know their rights and to immediately report harassment as it occurred.  Several young people in the audience spoke about the continual harassment they faced from police.  One of them said he”d been taunted with racial sluts, while another said “I was walking at 2 a.m.  and they [police officers] asked me if I was working.”

After opening speeches and a brief performance by Erthe St. James, the crowd walked down Halsted chanting slogans like, “Racism on Halsted”s got to go.”

Originally published in Windy City Times, 1 July, 2008