I reject the premise for that video of the rainbow person hugging the confederate person.
If I were that rainbow person (and I am), I’d have to tell the confederate person that the “Lost Cause” is a damn lie of rich white Southerners to the poor white Southerners.
I would ask them why they would brandish the legacy of that lie.
I would ask them why their ancestors allowed themselves to be played like a damn fiddle.
Then we’d probably fight in the street.
Today, I learned about “Gay Super-Uncle Theory.”
Say whaaaaaaaa
I really wanted the CV Pride Center to succeed, but I knew that it was burning through money from the moment it opened. I was constantly reminded of this by its operators, every time I vocalized my idea that the center should reach out to CenterLink: The Community of LGBT Centers.
The building, formerly a storage facility for ad signs, was of poor architecture, had huge glass windows on the front, and had poor insulation. It was never built to hold people, and even renting half of the building and operating the AC/Heat was very expensive.
The center was open for barely a year. I did what I could by voluntarily building a website for it as a personal project.
So I find it a weird sort of justice to know that the former CV Pride LGBT Community Center, which closed in October 2015, is now the Trump/Pence campaign office for Columbus.
But some of the most dedicated volunteers for the center now regret ever having worked for it, or for those who owned it. I don’t regret my work for it, but it should be a warning and reminder to those who want to plan another, better LGBT center here in Columbus, GA.
In the meantime, we have Colgay PRIDE of Columbus Georgia, which is operated by people who are more observant and dedicated to LGBT-inclusive social justice and community organizing. Even without a dedicated building, Colgay Pride is doing the non-partisan activism and outreach to LGBT people and their friends and family which is needed here in #ColumbusGA.
#LGBT
You know why most of us American LGBT people are not sold on cultural Christians spouting anti-Islamic rhetoric in regards to Muslim homophobia? Because we meet, know, are parented by, governed by, ostracized by, domestically-oppressed by, attacked by, and seek strategic allyship with more Christians than we are with Muslims.
To tell us American LGBT people that Muslims in other countries are the greater, more existential problem to our lives but not our fellow American citizens’ conduct and laws towards us here and now is pretty dishonest.
You never notice our organizational advocacy work with LGBT organizations abroad unless its regarding a historical “enemy state” like Russia during the 2010 Olympics.
You never notice that many of us advocate for the safety and safe refugee status of LGBT people in Iran and Iraq.
You never notice that we are angered and saddened by Saudi or Malaysian or Indonesian or Ugandan homophobia. “But ISIS throws you off buildings!” And?! What do you want us to do? If you were us, what would you do about defenestrations and beheadings and tortures? There is literally nothing more to do at this point except to dodge U.S. laws and join the Peshmerga or YPG at the front lines.
It’s a useless exercise to remind us about what ISIS does to gay men and boys. We know this. We can’t do anything about it except pressure for safe passage for LGBT refugees from the Levant to safer spaces abroad, as we have been doing since before you took notice of Muslim homophobia.
It’s a pointless critique of liberal U.S. LGBT people to distract us from the pressures we face at home. This mass shooting took place at home. We are fighting for equality, dignity and life at home. Hateful ideas attack us here at home.
Let’s take care of home first. Let us grieve. Let us build bridges. Let’s continue making this country better for LGBT people, and not settle for where we are now. #Orlando
I’ve seen some crap. Few things are as much of a travesty as how the #HERO vote went in Houston. One of the worst I’ve ever seen.
Some from the campaign were saying “Let’s not engage in Monday-morning quarterbacking”. Yet how can you not when the vote was so lopsided? How can you not when the turnout for the Houston vote was the highest in a city election since 2003? How can you not when the anti-HERO campaign was, and continues to be, particularly vicious toward transgender people?
Dan Patrick, Gary Abbott, the “Campaign for Houston”, “Texas Values” and the right-wing in Houston are pretty damn unbelievable in their “win” against transgender women.
They demand grace from Annise Parker, but are very ungracious, snidely and spiteful in their reaction to the result. The transgender people who were targeted explicitly by Patrick and Abbott as “men in women’s restrooms” in the campaign are nowhere to be found in their reactions. I wonder if, thanks to this vote, it will now be acceptable to assault, attack and harm transgender women in Houston. They were targeted hard by cartoons and vicious rhetoric throughout the state by the Christian right-wing, called “perverts” and “confused men” who would harm “6 year old girls”. This was statewide, and this was scary.
The target wasn’t even L, G or B people. None of them. It was the T. I will not be surprised when a transgender woman trying to use the restroom is violently attacked in Texas, and the Christian right clucks its tongue at the transwoman saying “That confused ‘man’ was wrong to go into the wrong bathroom and look like that, ‘he’ had it coming. No sympathy from me, he deserved it!” That rhetoric won last night. Those who spoke it are effluent in their gloating.
This is a bad way for Mayor Parker to leave office. This next year in Houston will be particularly bad for transgender women. In the name of getting a similar ordinance passed in Houston, any mention of “gender identity” may even be stripped out of the ordinance for expediency’s sake a la ENDA.
The optics of this are hard to overcome, and must be fought for years to come. But the lives of transgender people in Houston must be watched out for as the next few years unfold. I remain proud to have done what I did for HERO. I am ashamed of this tragedy. I am afraid for trans lives in Houston and Texas. #TransLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter.
Of course #tcot folks are erupting in glee at the visible, audible split which happened between these two camps – the economically-oriented social democrats like Sanders and O’Malley and the socially-oriented “social justicists” like the #BlackLivesMatter and DREAMers movements, the latter of whom were disappointed by the social democrats’ economic answers to the concerns of racial, LGBT and immigrant justice. What was one going to expect from those who use the word “nut-roots” as a catch-all disparagement?
But I wonder about this split, not because of “disunity” among the attendees supposedly equaling “disunity” among progressive, liberal and social-democrat voters for the Dems in 2016. I wonder about this split because it portends of a disenchantment among those who ally with the left and center-left of American politics for the barest weathering of top-down material disruption – the ravages of the free market, the decline of PoC-dominated inner-city neighborhoods, the lack of grassroots control over the distribution of resources, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, etc. They’re disenchanted because those ravages have happened under both Democratic-endorsed mayors and Republican-endorsed governors and presidents alike, and the socio-economic conditions which MLK Jr. had decried in the last years of his life remain with us.
When liberals point to the likes of “Fightin’ Bob”, FDR, and other folks who set the tone for the socio-economic populism of today’s Democratic Party, or point to the New Deal in the 1930s, the power of labor unions in the 1950s, and the social safety net of the North and West of the earlier 20th century, they are pointing to a time in our history in which African-Americans and Mexican-Americans were scared for their very lives, LGBT people were prosecuted into prisons and sanitariums, and women were finding out how little power they had across the board over their daily lives.
So if the point of reference is all sorts of irrelevant to the growing body of non-European-descended, non-male, non-cisgender, non-heterosexual – OK, we’ll just call us the “non-traditional American voters” – then what would be the best point of reference? For progressives? For liberals? For social-democrats and democratic-socialists?
Maybe this is what separates the current wave – those who are both disenchanted with the purely-economic reforms + the silence on intersectionality of the 2016 Democratic candidates and angrily disgusted with Republican activists’ antagonism + over appeal to traditional privilege.
The Non-Traditional American voters want something that cannot be given by the current American political frame: security (in most senses) against all ravages, some foreign and most domestic, which beset the Non-Traditional American and their communities at home and their related peoples abroad.
Without this security, on all fronts and in all respects, these varying sectors of American society are disengaged from the political process and are won over to other countries’ (and entities’) interests. They were excluded for so long from this process, their need for security only being recognized within the last 150 years of our country’s history (in delayed increments).
Liberalism serves the purpose of liberalizing the status quo to allow for more sectors of people to enter politically, progressivism democratizes the political structure, and social democracy democratizes the economy. But none of those solutions, as much good as they have done, address the personal and communal security and justice of the sectors. Neither liberalism, progressivism nor democratic socialism address past wounds which persist among the previously-oppressed diversity of sectors, nor do they seek for their full communal security.
This is where terms like “#intersectionality” come into play. This is where “don’t pull up the ladder” comes into play. This is where #BlackLivesMatter comes into play. It goes to the heart of just how well these “non-traditional” sectors of society fit into an equitable society. Their security – of mind, of body, of resource, of community – is a great concern. And only a few of those securities are explicitly protected in our laws and institutions.
And so many of us are feeling less than secure right now. African-Americans, Meso-American immigrants, Women, LGBT+ people, disabled people, and so on. College students, service workers, cannabis users, ex-cons denied reintegration, sufferers of pedestrian gun violence and tyrannical police are feeling insecure, as well, but so are those who are dealing with historical and present wounds which have impacted their communities and cultures in adverse ways. How will we address the injustices which face us when we don’t have a proper frame of reference for what our security should look like?
Security comes before Justice, so even “Social Justice” doesn’t cut it. We need an Intersectional Security, and we need it in our lives, our homes, our community, our country and the Free World. This is the security which needs to be addressed by all candidates for political office, not mere “identity politics” or “class politics”.
Sanders, O’Malley, Clinton, or whoever should recognize the need for Intersectional Security at all levels and facets of government. The “Founding Fathers” never envisioned the need for such security, and our government is ill-fitted to accomplish the job. And when our structure of government or society can’t do it, we need leaders who will replace and/or repair that structure.
This Intersectional Security is about our structure. Let’s make it happen, and prepare ourselves.
So its very important that some questions be answered! I am making this blog post to ask our LGBT activists, organizations and LGBT media to be that loud voice asking several questions of several people.
1. What are State Representative Allen Peake’s views on the legislation? Does he support it? Will he vote for its passage?
2. Will State Representative Allen Peake abstain from voting for this legislation and realize the conflict of interest because his business will be affected by the new law if it passes.
3. IF State representate Allen Peake does support this legislation and votes for its passage, what are the views and what would the course of action be by any of the parent companies that franchise restaurants to Allen Peake’s company, C&P Restaurants.
I just called Senator McKoon’s office, left my name/work with PFLAG Columbus, GA/opposition to his bill (which goes up for a floor vote in the State Senate today).
All this time, I’ve thought that these sorts of protections for homophobic expression are hypocritical. They’re being passed only – ONLY – because LGBT people are working for civic protections under law.
It reminds me of how Jim Crow laws were passed after slavery ended in order to protect racist ideology and a vengeful social architecture.
For every inch gained by the debased, someone feels “attacked”. For every expansion of the social contract to the unwanted, someone’s morality is offended and needs civic protection. Let’s be more inclusive.
Two things I noticed today:
I find it gratifying that women in Oregon are making such strides, particularly to enshrine such “equality under the law” on the basis of sex into their constitution.
Unfortunately, even after the unsuccessful fight for the federal ERA in the 1970s and after so long since the Nineteenth Amendment’s passage in 1920, these 22 states (and their various extensions of protection from mere employment to full equality under the law) stand alone out of so many states which have not constitutionally-enshrined gender anti-discrimination law. We don’t have such protection which could greatly benefit the future of half the U.S. population enshrined into the majority of constitutional documents in this country.
Why can’t we in the other 28 states spell out equality in the sexes to our states’ residents through the second highest laws of our states? Why are we so reticent to spell out gender equality? Do we even believe in the government recognizing our equality, or are we still ruled by people who represent the interests and privileges of half the population of our states?
And then we wonder why New Hampshire can’t bring forward a constitutional amendment to define equality for all sexual orientations?
Our collective mindset is our most potent enemy. We must change that mindset at all levels.
Congrats to Oregon and Gov. Kate Brown!
