Congregation Beit Simchat Torah - January 18, 2013
Remarks by Urvashi Vaid

Thank you to Rabbi Kleinbaum for the invitation to be here tonight and for the honor of offering some words at this service. Rabbi Kleinbaum is a leader cut from the same cloth as Dr. King. A spiritual leader who believes that faith is made meaningful by an engagement with justice, a visionary leader who challenges us to examine biases and think more critically, and a brilliant organizer whose 20 years of stewardship have made CBST a vital resource for personal and cultural transformation. Thank you for the many years you have been my teacher.

Martin Luther King Day is the one official holiday with which every advocate who fights for justice, equality and liberation feels strong kinship. It is appropriate that this year it coincides with the second inauguration of our incredible President!

This holiday reminds us of the sacrifice so many before us made to create the legal and cultural landscape we inhabit. It calls upon us to make a personal commitment to the still imperative struggle for racial justice. And it inspires us as a reminder of the power of social movements to prevail against the most extreme forms of violence and repression. It is that power – the power of social movements, the responsibility of those of us who work in them, and the responsibility of each of us, that I want to address tonight.

The great American and lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich, who died in March of 2012 captured the spirit of the movement into which I came out in these words from her masterpiece, 21 Love Poems. In Poem #13 she wrote:
The rules break like a thermometer
quicksilver spills across the charted systems,
we’re out in a country that has no language
no laws…
whatever we do together is pure invention
the maps they gave us were out of date
by years….
(Adrienne Rich, “21 Love Poems,” The Dream of a Common Language, W.W. Norton, 1993)

All that we have done as queer people has been uncharted — there were no maps, there was no language, and there were so many more hostile laws arrayed against us 30 years ago. To refuse the compulsory heterosexuality to which we were channeled and to begin to create openly lesbian, gay, bi, and trans lives was an act of pure invention. I love that about us and our allies.

A dazzling set of events appear to suggest that the ultimate victory of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement is if not at hand, certainly inevitable. Four electoral victories this past fall on marriage – at the ballot box! A President who embraces and champions our full freedom. Courts that increasingly recognize our human rights – perhaps even the Supreme Court this year. Growing recognition of our rights around the world and an active movement in every part of the globe. This is a uniquely gratifying and exciting moment in which to be working for freedom for all regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).

Despite the huge pride I feel as a movement veteran in these gains, I find myself more cautious than euphoric. (I am after all, a Hinju!). Let us always be clear-eyed and honest with each other in this giddy moment of White House invitations, gay inaugural galas, multi-million dollar queer organizational budgets, and the best influence that the money of the most powerful among us can buy – the equality we have won – is still partial, it is not evenly distributed, and its realization is affected by economic status, race, geographic location, gender, religion, among other factors.

This remains a mixed moment for LGBT liberation. We are making progress, and we face persistent prejudice. We are more visible than ever, and yet even today, large numbers of our people remain closeted, silent, and uninvolved. The economist Lee Badgett shows us that gay people report high levels of employment discrimination, even in places where there are policies and laws in place. Data from corporate surveys reveals that fewer than 50% of LGBT people in corporate America feel comfortable being out despite the 100% HRC ratings of many multinational corporations.

Cultural visibility is strong, social tolerance rising, yet family homophobia remains a pervasive reality for hundreds of thousands of LGBT people.
Support for LGBT nondiscrimination laws is high, but the national election campaign of 2012 was rife with anti-gay policy promises, and the opponents of LGBT freedom remain intransigent, crafty, and militant in their refusal of demands for justice.  Globally more than 70 nations still criminalize our existence, and 7 impose the death penalty for same-sex behavior. The entire US South is a red zone.  We are still bullied in schools and workplaces.  If we are transgender, we are even more harshly persecuted – for not conforming and for threatening violently enforced gender identities. The fact remains that the lives of large parts of our LGBT communities remain profoundly constrained by economic inequality, racial disparity, gender bias and fear. And our mainstream LGBT movement has very little to say about racism, economic inequality, the urgent need for a social safety net or gender dualism and misogyny.

Why we must address this reality leads me to the Haftorah reading tonight I want to offer, to augment this evening’s Parashat from Exodus. The words of the prophet Isaiah, who campaigned against corruption and moral failings teach us the perils of settling for a partial and provisional simulation of equality.   At Isaiah 10:1-3, it states:
Woe to those who make unjust laws
To those who issue oppressive decrees
To deprive the poor of their rights
And withhold justice from the oppressed of my people
What will you do on the day of reckoning
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches? (New International Version)

I have long believed that what made the LGBT movement “irresistible” and successful was its honesty. Truth may be unpleasant, unpopular, and sometimes unbearable to speak, but its power is undeniable. The LGBT movement changed attitudes, laws, cultural possibilities, sexual ideas, and family forms in revolutionary ways by telling truths about desire and gender, by showing the power of intimacy beyond reproduction, and by being able to bridge—with difficulty it is true, but also with success—across a wide range of social fissures: ideological, racial, gendered, and economic.
Telling the truth about desire was and still remains revolutionary in a world built upon its control and repression.

But, lately, I have come to a more cynical conclusion about our success: perhaps it is our cooptation that has made queer progress possible and so irresistible to the non-gay establishment. The LGBT movement has been coopted by the very institutions it once sought to transform. The power it once derived from the queer experience of otherness has long been replaced by the pleasure it takes in a queering of belonging.

We have invested heavily in making sure that the heterosexist world sees us as no threat to its norms and traditions. Instead of showing the broader society how we can help it to heal itself from the damage of sexual abuse, lies, sexual shame, and deadening gender roles which constrain too many lives, we insist to that broader world that we are no different from it in any way, that no fundamental change will be required if we are allowed into existing structures of family, economy and governance.

Imitating heterosexuality, the nuclear family, the monogamous couple-form are our new normal. A movement that once fought to expand definitions of family, to extend health benefits to all, to widen legal protection and recognition for forms of families not defined by marital status or parental status, now fights primarily for inclusion into existing regimes of intimacy, work, community, and governance that are riddled with inequality, and the violence of exclusion.

Lost long ago in the military fight against the anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was a decades-old critique of the military itself. It has been replaced by our acceptance of the inevitability, and the class and race politics, of war.

Women’s reproductive freedom and choice, once core values of LGBT liberation, are now absent from the mainstream gay rights movement. We do not incorporate racial justice as a goal central to the mission of LGBT liberation, despite four decades of calls for such leadership.

An agenda that addresses poverty is still absent from the mainstream movement’s priorities, while an uncritical embrace of corporations and corporate values is touted as a positive norm.

The movement today has also been coopted by its admission into the hallowed halls where decisions are made – political access for some has meant their abandonment of political freedom for others. In place of courageous policy leadership and innovation, with a handful of notable exceptions, LGBT mainstream organizations have become a passive society of spectators, following the lead of incrementalist politicians, the self-interest of donors and the trends identified by pollsters. We are more invested in protecting our access and our status, than we are in advocating on behalf of sectors of this community that are unpopular or not economically powerful.

How much time does the HRC, and other national movement organizations, spend to advance transgender equality or to defend the social safety net upon which so many queer youth, seniors, and HIV positive people depend? How much time do our mainstream LGBT organizations spend to change how prisons, jails and police treat gay men, lesbians, transgender men and women, and gender nonconforming? How central and important is the fight for immigration reform to the mainstream of this movement? Where is the movement in prioritizing passage of the Violence Against Women Act or insuring reproductive freedom for all women?

In his historic address in April of 1967 against the war in Vietnam, titled A Time to Break Silence, Dr. King echoed Isaiah as he called for a shift in the focus of the civil rights movement from racial justice alone to a broader focus on economic, social and global justice. His moral argument against the war was grounded in a call for “a revolution of values” needed to fight poverty. He said, “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Time To Break Silence,” April 4, 1967, accessed at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm)

The silence we must break in the LGBT movement is that of our inattention to the “triplets” that Dr. King identified, especially our commitment to ending structural racism and persistent economic inequality.

A justice seeking LGBT movement would not allow racial justice and gender issues to drop out of the LGBT political and policy agenda. This new social justice-based movement would foreground race and advocate for all parts of our communities. It would foreground issues like: disparate sentencing and disproportionate policing and incarceration; disparities in health care access and care; HIV/AIDS and access to treatment; the ways that the educational system targets and stigmatizes youth of color. It would fight a campaign to end homelessness. It would be in the lead on how we deal with our elderly. It would fight the over-policing and the criminalization of immigrants. It would work for the creation of more jobs and defend the rights of working people to organizes and unionize. It would challenge the shrinking of social safety net programs at the very moment that more people need them.

A movement focused on justice would engage the underlying systems of coercive gender conformity, gender binarism, it would fight for equal pay for women – who still earn 22% less for the same job.

A movement focused on justice would elevate and prioritize the religious disenfranchisement of LGBT people and aggressively support faith based activism for gender and sexual justice.

A more ambitious movement focused on justice would fight for economic justice alongside legal rights, operating from a new truth: a commitment to the principle of “No Queer Left Behind.”

If it could reform itself, a social justice–focused movement would understand the lesson of history from the experience of our sister social movements: that equal rights represent the starting line of our struggle, not the end point.

After the passage of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, the civil-rights leader A. Philip Randolph observed that the movement suffered from the “curse of victory” in which equal rights had been achieved but “blacks still were not equal in fact.” Formal equal rights were a crucial first step; next had to come the struggle for black empowerment, freedom, and respect.

The same is true for LGBT liberation – rights must be extended in all parts of our country to change the lived experience and affect the life chances of LGBT people who come from different backgrounds. But freedom for all LGBT people will not be possible until those in powerful positions within our queer movement’s leadership stand up and insist and fight for equal justice for the poor and least advantaged in our midst.

I want to conclude with my own reading of Exodus, an interpretation that aligns the story with the verse from Isaiah.  I read the story of Exodus as a story about power and responsibility as much as a story of freedom.

First and foremost, Exodus is a story of God’s power – to lend hope and salvation to the enslaved, to punish the disbelievers, to settle scores on behalf of the oppressed, to instruct the faithful in proper observance. Let me leave to the learned Rabbi the adjudication of the troubling ethical questions this story raises — about God’s apparent ruthlessness, his willingness to “harden the heart” of Pharaoh in order to demonstrate his own power. Leaving that aside, Exodus is a story of the powerful imperative of freedom and justice.

Exodus also teaches us about the power of the state — embodied in Pharaoh. The state and its agents have the capacity to act either righteously or unjustly, to be honest or duplicitous, to lead with integrity or corruption.

A third kind of power inherent in the story of Exodus is the power of the intermediary – Moses and Aaron in this instance. The intermediary is the entity or person who serves as the messenger, the interlocutor, the advocate, between God and the hegemon of Pharaoh, between justice and its fulfillment by those in power.

A final lesson in power from Exodus teaches us that the demand for justice can transform the powerlessness of ordinary people into an irresistible force. In Exodus, the powerless move the most obstinate of political leaders, with the spiritual force of justice and God’s might, on their side.
Perhaps Exodus is the first example of the old revolutionary adage that power yields nothing without a demand, it never has and it never will. For the powerless to achieve liberation and justice, their demand must be backed up by a powerful imperative, an incontrovertible, menacing power that is potent enough to shake the status quo.

The LGBT movement is the embodiment of all of these forms of power. We have the power to liberate millions of people; the power to choose to act justly when presented with options; the power to advocate for those who are less able; and the power of collective action as a people to move toward justice for all.

Isaiah and Exodus challenge us to answer — what is the responsibility of those with power when confronted with a demand for justice? For whom do we fight when we say we are fighting for justice? Will we commit to racial justice here and abroad? Do we dare stand up to militarism and its incessant destruction? Are we willing to enact a “revolution of values” and become a movement that prioritizes economic justice as urgently as it seeks nondiscrimination?

It is time for the LGBT movement to put the lamb’s blood of salvation on the door of every ordinary person who seeks freedom, justice, security and opportunity for themselves and for their families.

It is time for us to use the privilege and gains we have earned to challenge and reconstitute the status quo at its deepest roots.

The choice to be radically inclusive in our vision, and the decision to challenge the giant triplets of which Dr. King spoke, will ultimately protect LGBT people the most. Let the words of Isaiah 10:1-3 be our guide:
Woe to those who make unjust laws
To those who issue oppressive decrees
To deprive the poor of their rights
And withhold justice from the oppressed of my people
What will you do on the day of reckoning
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?

Thank you!

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Uganda’s treatment of homosexuals is one end of a wide range of approaches to gay rights around the world. Even as several U.S. states recently voted on same-sex unions, and the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in two different cases, rights for the LGBT community differ from country to country, from full recognition of same-sex marriages, even up to the death penalty for homosexual acts. As gay rights supporters push for more acceptance, the issue is increasingly being framed worldwide as one of fundamental human rights.

The above is from the Yahoo website for the Amanpour show. The heroic work of advocates working around the world demands our respect.

To read the full article go here.

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Urvashi Vaid. | JUREK WAJDOWICZ

http://gaycitynews.com/a-future-beyond-formal-lgbt-equality/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-future-beyond-formal-lgbt-equality

BY CHUCK COLBERT | If the LGBT movement is, at its core, a progressive struggle for justice and equality, then shouldn’t the gay rights agenda include issues of economics, race, class, and gender? In other words, is there more to gay rights and liberation than simply securing passage of non-discrimination laws and gaining the right to marry?

Longtime activist and LGBT community leader Urvashi Vaid certainly thinks so. For years now, she has been urging mainstream movement leaders to take up a broader economic rights and racial justice program.

In a 1996 book, “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation,” Vaid argued a larger vision for the movement, with social justice as a window into the future.

And now in a new book, “Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class, and the Assumptions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Politics,” Vaid offers pointed criticism of the movement’s shortcomings on that score.

“We need a movement that is conscious of economic realities that real people are facing,” she explained recently during a wide-ranging, hour-long telephone interview. “And our movement must address and change the serious lack of representation of people of color in its leadership and racial justice priorities in its agenda.”

Urvashi Vaid lays out the case for a broader, more ambitious agenda

Vaid was referring to a decade’s worth of economic demographics, data from the Williams Institute and other think thanks, which show many LGBT people are seniors, on Medicaid, and unemployed at the same time others are struggling to support themselves and their families on fixed incomes.

She spoke from her New York City office at the Columbia Law School, where Vaid currently serves as director of the Engaging Tradition Project, based at the school’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Her concern is that “we are not just a movement of young, wage-earning, and middle-class” people, she said, quickly adding, “which many of us are and that is a good thing.”

However, “it’s not the full picture of the community,” Vaid said.

What the Institute’s data and similar findings from studies and research by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, among others, “help us to see” are “the parts of the community that are less visible,” she explained.

Accordingly, “this makes a demand on the political side of our movement that perhaps we need to take a look at issues we haven’t looked at before,” Vaid said, citing recent congressional negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” taking place even as “state budgets are cutting out funding for social services at a time when communities, like our community, need homeless centers, community centers, and health care programs — whatever.”

“I am making the argument that those issues need to rise to prominence and that we can’t just think that passing a non-discrimination law and winning marriage is the end of the process,” she said. “LGBT people are dealing with unemployment, struggling with health crises  —  from HIV to cancer and much more — and dealing with sexual prejudice that is built into every institution we encounter. Broadening the agenda is imperative for the movement to make meaningful change in the lived experience of LGBT people.”

Vaid wrote “Irresistible Revolution,” a collection of essays on the politics of the movement, in hopes that her “voice” will “influence activists and others interested in social justice” whether or not they like the book, she said.

“I hope that the book can make it possible for people to start thinking about our work and our agenda in different ways,” Vaid explained.

“None of the issues that I raise in ‘Irresistible Revolution’ about race or class are new,” Vaid said in response to a question about whether the community has made any progress in the movement toward a broader agenda.

Vaid is certainly no outsider to the world of LGBT advocacy. From leadership positions at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in the 1980s and 1990s to her work as a funder supporting LGBT issues at the Ford Foundation and the Arcus Foundation, she has played a critical role in setting the movement’s priorities.

“The book has a pretty pointed critique” yet it is “collegial,” she said, readily acknowledging that her analysis is in fact “self-criticism because I am in that group. I don’t remove myself from that.”

Vaid emphasized, “I love the LGBT community and our movement. I feel so positively about our queer variance, our queer intelligence, and our queer resistance.” She then added, “But no, I don’t think we have done a very good job” or “have made any progress” in adding, for example, “issues of poverty,” HIV/ AIDS health disparities, and other concerns to the gay rights agenda.

Among the other priorities that have gone wanting, Vaid said, are “criminal justice issues, women’s issues — violence against women, women earning less than men — or expanding the definition of family in welfare programs to enable low-income lesbians with kids to be covered.”

With the aim of mobilizing larger numbers of feminist activists, Vaid co-founded the Lesbian Political Action Committee (LPAC), which since its founding this past July, has raised more than $750,00 from donors in 44 states, with donations ranging from $5 on up. LPAC (teamlpac.com) is open to anyone, including bisexual and trans women and also gay men and other allies who feel women’s rights are as important as LGBT equality.

For all her concerns, however, Vaid is optimistic about the movement and offered another way to look at the have-we-made-progress question. “When I see sophisticated work that activists are doing around health care, the impressive hidden work that provides access and opportunities and changes and affects people’s lives, then I feel more hopeful,” she said.

Vaid pointed to examples of efforts that back up her optimism.

“When I look at a state like Massachusetts,” she said, “where we have won formal equality in many domains, I see how the movement continues to push to do the training, implementation, and education so that all parts of our community can exercise the rights that we have won, that makes me feel hopeful.”

She was referring to the Massachusetts Transgender Civil Rights Law that took effect last year after a six-year effort by local activists, as well as the work advocates are doing to press state lawmakers for more comprehensive anti-bullying and safe schools legislation. Other statewide priorities include cradle-to-grave advocacy for LGBT youth and seniors, people living with HIV/AIDS, and survivors of intimate partner violence.

Vaid sees other indictors of the LGBT movement’s health and vibrancy, as well. “The movement is much larger than it was back then” in earlier decades, she said. “I still feel by no means has the movement peaked.”

Vaid points to the Task Force’s Creating Change conference, which each year draws together thousands of activists, as evidence of the span of the movement from moderate to conservative to much more radical grassroots groups. (Held this year in Atlanta, the 25th Creating Change gathering is scheduled for January 23-27).

“The vastness of the movement and its decentralized nature make me hopeful,” she said. “The process of being involved in something where you really can change lives and make a huge difference, that makes the movement irresistible.”

The LGBT movement’s “honesty” is another hallmark of its irresistibility, she writes in her book’s introduction.

Another positive sign for LGBT rights, Vaid said, “is the extent to which [gay equality] is an issue for non-gay people,” most notably young people. She cited the 2009 March on Washington, where large numbers of heterosexuals, many of them students from college campuses nationwide, carried signs reading, “I am a heterosexual ally.”

“It is extraordinary,” she said. “The expansion of the movement beyond the LGBT community” to increasing numbers of straight allies “is one of the reasons that we are winning.”

Perhaps the best example of non-gay allies making a difference was their key role in winning marriage referendums on Election Day, she said.

“In every one of those four states [Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington], you had heterosexual leaders — major politicians, major business figures, leaders of color, faith-based leaders, saying, ‘We support this,’” Vaid explained. “That’s really a different situation than four or eight years ago.”

President Barack Obama’s coming out for marriage, she said, was also a game changer. “If you think about it, the supporters of the president are the people who support marriage equality or the expansion of LGBT rights — young people, women voters, people of color who are overwhelmingly in support of fair and equal treatment,” said Vaid. “It’s been so interesting for me to see what Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition actually come into being for this election.”

In winning marriage equality this time around, lessons learned from Proposition 8 were helpful.

“What I took away from the 2008 California defeat was the need to do more work to engage people and involve non-gay people in our movement,” she said. “We did go back and do more public education and engagement of different kinds of [faith-based] congregations and populations, and many, many more straight allies came out and stepped up to advocate on our behalf. Public education is a critical element of how we are winning.”

None of this means the LGBT movement can offer to let down its guard, Vaid emphasized. “What always worries me is the power of the opposition,” she said. “I am not complacent about them. They are not just going to go away or withdraw because we are winning.”

The tensions between LGBT rights and religious liberty claims particularly concern Vaid.

“The resistance in some ways is becoming more sophisticated, she said, noting, “The whole expansion of religious exemptions in laws that are passed. It’s really something to be worried about.”

She explained, “I think the gay community has to get more sophisticated in how we think about religious liberty and exemptions to civil rights laws. It’s a complicated argument for those of us who actually believe in freedom of religion and religious liberty” and yet “are civil libertarians and believe in the Constitution.”

It’s not yet clear how much other movement leaders are inclined to tackle a more inclusive LGBT agenda. But the movement has matured in one way, Vaid argued.

“The LGBT community is more politically hardcore in how to work with friendly administrations,” she said, referring to Obama’s leveraging of the administration’s executive authority — through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the State Department, among other agencies — to chip away at discrimination and inequality. One good example is a presidential memorandum through which the president directed HHS to require all hospitals receiving Medicaid and Medicare to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in visitation access.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work going on in the federal agencies, and the agenda isn’t just about getting legislation through Congress,” Vaid explained. “The movement is more skilled in taking advantage of those kinds of opportunities than we were 20 years ago.”

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With his nomination of conservative Republican Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama resurrects the most stale of traditions to “balance” his administration – the tradition that a conservative Republican guy will do better in the defense of our country than any imaginable Democrat, and certainly better than that creature who seems anathema to the boys club that is the White House’s staff’s inner echelon – strong and independent women.  In addition, the President perpetuates what historian Robert Self so brilliantly calls the “renewal of the mythology of heterosexual military manhood”(2)  through the deployment of new wars launched by conservatives, and breathlessly supported by liberals.

Chuck Hagel?  An anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-women’s rights, anti-environmental, pro-defense contractor Senator with a 0% rating from Human Rights Campaign and an 11% rating from the NAACP.(3)  A guy whose election to the Senate from Nebraska involved the electronic ballot counting company he started tallying up the votes.  Hagel made his fortune by owning and selling electronic voting systems, and the company he founded has seen its optical scanning systems be dogged by claims of faulty tabulation.(4)   Hagel’s a guy who has operated with no public oversight or scrutiny as co-chair of the powerful and ultra-secret President’s Intelligence Advisory Board for these past three years.  His Senate votes on issues important to service members are contradictory –  he opposed repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but now says that he supports lifting the ban; he voted against allowing women service members access to abortion; he voted for the Iraq invasion but then came around to opposing the war; he opposed the nomination of  long-time gay Democratic leader Jim Hormel as ambassador, but he apologized to Hormel a few weeks ago.

One of the things that might commend Hagel for his nominated position is that he may have distanced himself from the neo-conservatives who have so destructively dominated foreign policy debates in recent years.  For this reason, the neo-cons despise him and have resorted to smearing him in the worst ways, leveling charges of being soft on defense because of basic policy disagreements over how the US should handle Iran and Israel. Their tactics are repugnant and debate on all positions, including those that are unpopular with certain sectors of the foreign policy establishment,  should be welcomed and fully aired.(5)  But Hagel is hardly a progressive in his foreign policy approach — favoring the current Administration’s love affair with drones that kill indiscriminately, with secretive special forces and unaccountable spy budgets.

Apologies seem to be a conservative specialty.  And forgiveness has become the liberal lap dance to power:  we excuse all manner of bad things done by a person when they had the power to actually do the right thing.  So HRC President Chad Griffin made the following statement absolving Hagel of responsibility for his hostile stance towards the Clinton Administration’s appointment of James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg, “Senator Hagel’s apology and his statement of support for LGBT equality is appreciated and shows just how far as a country we have come when a conservative former Senator from Nebraska can have a change of heart on LGBT issues,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “Our community continues to add allies to our ranks and we’re proud that Senator Hagel is one of them.” (6)

Why is the President not seriously considering appointing the brilliant and extremely qualified Michele Flournoy, the former Undersecretary of Defense under Secretary Gates, from 2009-2012, who actually ran the Department of Defense policy arm for? Why not, indeed.

It would be non-traditional for the President to choose a woman as the civilian Defense Department’s Chief.  Changing that tradition would certainly provide new balance to a field that could benefit from a change.  The defense industry is riddled with cronyism and patronage, the armed forces are plagued with sexual harassment and violence against women, the volunteer military is paid lip service by every politician but military families struggle heroically with limited support.  I’d like to see how a female Secretary would re-define the concept of defense beyond a mine’s bigger mindset.  What would a Flournoy’s position be on the role of the military in an era of smaller defense budgets?  What is her vision of the best way to prosecute the war in Afghanistan? What steps did she take as Undersecretary to mitigate the threats from nuclear weapons and materials proliferation around the world?  Would a woman Secretary of Defense be more of a hawk to prove her “manhood” or would she tackle the challenge of achieving a radically different role for military power?

Is there something to be made of this Administration’s famous gender imbalance?  Consider the many media reports that track the pay differential in the Obama White House between male and female staff.  The UK Daily Mail reported In April of 2012 that “Using the 2011 annual report of White House staff salaries that was submitted to Congress, an $11,000 difference is clear between the median female employee salary and the median male employee salary.”(7)   Or consider the report in the Washington Times in October of 2012: “The Washington Times earlier this year surveyed 121 White House Employees paid at least $100,000 and found that 47 were women and 74 were men. That is only slightly better than in 2003, the third year of the Bush administration, when 39 of the top 121 employees were women.  When all White House employees are considered, the Obama administration’s record dims a bit further. Female employees earn a median salary of $60,000, roughly 18 percent less than men, whose median salary is $71,000.” (6)

There is little hope that any nominee for Secretary of Defense would have the foresight to articulate a role for the military that questions the exploitative use of the working people who volunteer for jobs in the armed forces as tools for the economic interests of the wealthy.  Or a Secretary who questions and thwarts the colonizing ambitions of ruling parties as intent on winning elections as they are in their claims of securing the nation.  That sounds like a science fiction novel.  But nominating a Secretary of Defense who actually adhered to the values of the governing party is a much more modest aspiration.  Chuck Hagel does not meet that limited criteria.

President Obama’s aspires to a Hegelian style of leadership – debate and third ways:  a faith in thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  Perhaps that is why he keeps tacking to the Right – hoping that in the process what he does will “bend towards justice.”(8)  But Hagel is no Hegelian – he demonstrated none of the temperament to govern inclusively when he was in the Senate.  He showed no interest in dialectical thinking, just powerful lobbyists and self-serving agendas.  President Obama’s attempts at dialectical engagement with the right have only led him to debacles.  Hagel promises to be another.

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(1)   “Tradition”, Fiddler on The Roof.  Jewison, N., Stein, J., Topol, ., Crane, N., Frey, L., Picon, M., Mann, P. et.al. (2006).  Beverly Hills, CA: Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

(2) Robert O. Self, All In The Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (Hill and Wang, 2012), p. 410.

(3)  Daily Kos, “Chuck Hagel’s Dismal Sordid Voting Record,” January 5, 2013 at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176553/-Chuck-Hegel-s-Dismal-Sordid-Voting-Record#

(4)    Victoria Collier, “How To Rig An Election:  The GOP Aims To Paint The Country Red,”  Harper’s, November 12, 2012, pp. 33-41.

(5)    See, “J Street Supports Sen. Hagel, rebuts Charges Against Him,” December 17, 2012 at http://jstreet.org/blog/post/j-streets-supports-sen-hagel-rebuts-charges-against-him_1; see also, Matthew Duss, “What the Attacks on Hagel Tell Us,” American Prospect, December 28, 2012, at http://prospect.org/article/what-attacks-hagel-tell-us.

(6)    Peter Wallsten, “Hagel retracts 1988 statement on gays; Human Rights Campaign Accepts,” Washington Post, December 21, 2012 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/12/21/hagel-retracts-1998-statement-on-gays/

(7)    Meghan Keneally, Women Paid Significantly Less in Obama White House than their Male Counterparts,” Daily Mail, April 12, 2012 at Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128513/Women-paid-significantly-Obama-White-House-male-counterparts.html

(8)    Susan Crabtree, “Obama’s Record on Paying Women White House Aides Not Stellar,” Washington Times, October 17, 2012 at http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/17/obamas-record-mixed-hiring-women/

(9)    To paraphrase Dr. King’s memorable phrase, itself paraphrased by Dr. King from the 19^th century reformer Theodore Parker, that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  See Jamie Stiehm, “Oval Office Rug Gets History Wrong,”  Washington Post, September 4, 2010, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090305100.html

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Ms. Quinn is an out lesbian, who worked as a leader in New York’s LGBT movement before entering politics; she was married last year to her longtime partner Kim Catullo.  As normalized as gayness seems to be in New York, no one should underestimate how tough it will be for Quinn to win – no woman has ever been NYC mayor, much less a lesbian.  Mr. De Blasio’s family like many New York families, is multiracial and complex: he is white and she is black; and she proudly owns her lesbian past.  Ms. McCray wrote a ground-breaking cover-story in Essence magazine in 1979 titled “I am a Lesbian.”  Asked about her orientation today, the Journal wrote, “She said her sexual identity has ‘evolved’ over the years and she eschews labels like straight, gay or bisexual. ‘We’re in a committed relationship, have been for 21 years and so the only label I feel is appropriate, for me at this time, is married’,,,She said she stood by the Essence article.  ‘At the time, it was an important statement to make because black women, especially at that time, were like invisible in the gay movement.” (2)

It is a thrill to hear honesty from a public figure about her sexual or gender identity.  What is interesting is the extent to which lesbian and bisexual women are complicating the two dimensional hetero-homo, and thus far overwhelmingly male-determined, tale of public sexuality.

A look at recent political elections reveals some fascinating news: a lot of interesting women won tough races in tough places without masking their sexuality or their gender identities. The 113^th Congress was sworn in on January 3^rd, and the Senate welcomed Tammy Baldwin, from Wisconsin, who decisively defeated her Republican opponent to become the first openly lesbian US Senator.  It is notable how rarely Baldwin is actually identified that way – the media routinely cite her as an openly “gay” Senator, the L is silenced.

The House of Representatives saw the addition of Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, from Arizona, who became the first openly bisexual member of Congress, who is also the first to not list a religious affiliation.  Her story as a working class woman, non-theist, bisexual is remarkable.  Yes she made history, but she also observed, “My own family, my own life has been the struggle of making it to the middle class,” she said. “This district is a very young district. We’ll always be competitive. Folks will be making decisions on who has the best ideas.” (3)

At the state level, the news is equally exciting and interesting.  Oregon boasts two distinctions – it has the record of the first lesbian Speaker of the House of any state legislature, Rep. Tina Kotek; and the first openly bisexual woman elected to any statewide office, Secretary of State Kate Brown, who has been out as bi since the mid-1990s.  In Georgia, three lesbians were re-elected to the state legislature in 2012 – Simone Bell, Karla Drenner and Keisha Waites; Bell was the first African-American lesbian to win state legislative office (in 2009).  Stacie Laughton won her race in New Hampshire’s state House and became the first transgender woman to be elected to state legislative office.

And the first out women to be elected to state legislature in Texas and South Dakota identify respectively as pansexual and bisexual (Mary Gonzalez in TX and Angie Buhl in SD).  Mary Gonzalez noted to the Dallas Voice that she had dated women and transgender and gender-queer people, “As I started to recognize the gender spectrum and dated along the gender spectrum, I was searching for words that connected to that reality, for words that embraced the spectrum…At the time I didn’t feel as if the term bisexual was encompassing of a gender spectrum that I was dating and attracted to.”(4)

The day will come when this kind of news is common.  But today it’s still noteworthy.  For today, this is a salute to the LBT candidates, and public figures, creating space for all of us through their honesty, and complexity.

(1)    Michael Howard Saul, “Family in The Spotlight,” Wall Street Journal, January 2, 1013, p. A19.
(2)    Id., p. A20.
(3)    Alyssa Newcomb, Kyrsten Sinema Becomes First Openly Bisexual Member of Congress,” ABC News Blog, November 12, 2012, at http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/kyrsten-sinema-becomes-first-openly-bisexual-member-of-congress/
(4)    Anna Waugh, Mary Gonzalez Comes Out as Pansexual,” Dallas Voice, August 10, 2012, at http://www.dallasvoice.com/mary-gonzalez-pansexual-10123439.html

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LPAC is a Political Action Committee, formed by a group of committed activists and donors, to positively influence the current political and social landscape. After decades of being a small subset of players in women’s rights and LGBT rights political efforts, the women of LPAC are stepping up to get organized like never before, aiming to give lesbians a real and meaningful seat at the table. With significant resources behind us, LPAC plans to make a true impact for lesbians in the 2012 election cycle and beyond.

LPAC will support candidates who champion a range of issues that impact lesbians and their families, these include:

• Ending discriminatory treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and their families;
• Supporting sexual and reproductive freedom and women’s access to quality healthcare; and,
• Furthering social, racial, and economic justice for all Americans.

Join LPAC’s efforts at www.teamlpac.com.

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Order this book now – click on Amazon.Com on this linked page – or order from your favorite indy bookstore – click now …Irresistible Revolution

Early Reviews

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Predictably, the mainstream story being told is one about the wealthy and the powerful, about their lives, about abstract pledges made to beltway lobbyist Grover Norquist, about lofty sounding notions of freedom from government taxation and glorifications of the Tea Party, a “movement” manufactured and financed by lobbyists for the wealthy, whose Congressional mouthpieces are financed by Wall Street power brokers.(1)

The story ought to be about the hypocrisy of the anti-tax zealots. Their stall tactics will raise taxes and burdens on the millions of working class and middle class people, while demanding that those same people live under a deteriorating public infrastructure, and receive fewer social services and support than ever.

It is astonishing that Congress is arguing about whether the deal-breaker should be increases in taxes for those making $550,000 and above or $250,000 –about 4.2% of all Americans. (2) What about the remaining 96% — how will they be affected by the cuts being proposed? Congress refuses to increase the capital gains tax on earnings from stock market investments from the ridiculous 15% level to 20%. In either instance, still a lower tax rate for the billionaire earning income on investments than is paid by the firefighter earning $36,000 salary – that person’s tax rate would be 28% in 2013.(3)

Spending cuts in social services are politically popular since PauL Ryan became the poster child for American austerity. But the irony about the so-called “austerity” is that in the US, it is always all about cutting back on supports for the poor and the middle class, not the rich and certainly not the corporations. Rich people and corporate prop-ups like estate tax gimmicks, luxury goods exemptions, loop holes that allow untaxed off shore investments, low capital gains taxes, gift tax exemptions, subsidies for all sorts of industries (oil, gas, defense, agribusiness, pharmaceutical industries to name just a few that are subsidized by tax dollars) are considered sacrosanct by the GOP and their Democratic lapdog counterparts. Poor and middle-class people prop-ups like food stamps, unemployment insurance, support for public universities, Medicare, Medicaid, public support for housing and schools are always what are on the chopping block.

Calls for spending cuts are popular because the average Jane and Joe mistakenly think these cuts will not affect their lives.

America has always been austere for poor people – the rash and drastic cuts made in the 1980’s by Reagan era Democrats and Republicans, in the 1990’s by the first Bush and the pandering to the right Administration of Bill Clinton, and by the 2nd Bush have left poor and vulnerable people worse off than they have been in decades.(4) The new austerity demanded by Ryan, Norquist, Eric Cantor and all those who profess to care about debt, will extend this misery to middle class people.

The middle class, working people and low-income people, actually, all those making less than $200K a year, are being fiscally stiffed. Under the guise of protecting ordinary people, the lobbyists for the rich are poised to enact laws that would truly destroy this country’s civic fabric by undermining the social support that millions of people need.

Footnotes:
(1) “Wall Street Funds Tea Party Stars,” The Boston Globe, May 1, 2012, http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/04/30/wall-street-funds-tea-party-stars/WH7rV0vSidSb1fIRd3AgxI/story.html; See also, SourceWatch on the Tea Party, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tea_Party.

(2) Ron Scherer, Obama Tax Proposal : Who Makes More than $250,000 and are they Rich, Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2012/0710/Obama-tax-proposal-Who-makes-more-than-250k-and-are-they-rich-video.

(2) Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/2013-Allow-top-two-rates-to-rise.cfm.

(3) CNN News, Median Income Falls, But so Does Poverty (from 15.1% to 15%), http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/12/news/economy/median-income-poverty/index.html.

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The feminist punk band Pussy Riot comprised of Maria Alyokhina, 24, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were arrested and imprisoned in March 2012 for the above performance at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

The words to the “Punk Prayer” they sang are:
(Chorus)

St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin
Drive away! Drive away Putin!
(end chorus)

Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners are crawling and bowing
The ghost of freedom is in heaven
Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB is their chief saint
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend the Holy
Women have to give birth and to love

Holy shit, shit, Lord’s shit!
Holy shit, shit, Lord’s shit!

(Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, become a feminist
Become a feminist, Become a feminist
(end chorus)

Church praises the rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
In school you are going to meet with a teacher-preacher
Go to class – bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, you better believed in God
Belt of the Virgin is no substitute for mass-meetings
In protest of our Ever-Virgin Mary!

(Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin
Drive away! Drive away Putin!
(end chorus)

State Sen. Lisa brown was banned from State house floor for saying vagina. MI has a reactionary legislature. Take Action.

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