Mayor Skip Henderson, Councilmember Walker Garrett and former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard all gave a good presentation on the ordinance.
Tag Archives: non-discrimination ordinance
Video: Speaking before Columbus City Council on The Need for a Non-Discrimination Ordinance
Also: DeMarcus Beckham, Southern field organizer for Georgia Equality, and Brooke Martin, member of Southerners on New Ground – Columbus Crew.
Aftermath of #HERO
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.
Pillarization in America
In regards to something that Candy said about McKoon’s RFRA, I wonder if anyone has heard of the Dutch system called “pillarization” (“verzuiling”), the system of “politico-denominational segregation of a society” in which, according to Wikipedia, “societies were (and in some areas, still are) “vertically” divided into several segments or “pillars” (zuilen, singular: zuil) according to different religions or ideologies. The best-known examples of this are the Dutch and Belgian ones.
These pillars all had their own social institutions: their own newspapers, broadcasting organisations, political parties, trade unions and farmers’ associations, banks, schools, hospitals, universities, scouting organisations and sports clubs. Some companies even hired only personnel of a specific religion or ideology. This led to a situation where many people had no personal contact with people from another pillar.” Unlike South African apartheid and American Jim Crow, this wasn’t imposed with the collusion of the state and select religio-racial institutions against other religio-racial institutions. Instead, it was imposed by a society which sought to allow for “sphere-based” development along ethical-religious lines. The Calvinist Protestants built their own social safety net in a way which favored their own parishioners, and the Catholics duplicated the same for their own parishioners in order to prevent their working-class members from joining socialist trade unions and organizations which violated what we call “sincerely-held religious beliefs”.
Finally, the socialists built their own “pillar” separate from the other two in order to support fellow socialists (a system unique to Western Europe), while the liberals were left to the remaining nonsectarian public institutions which came to be called the “General pillar”. This system was in existence from the 1860s until the Cold War, when many Dutch citizens started to merge their institutions across sectarian lines and dismantled much of the century of pillarization. Little is left of it, while Belgium has largely retained it in the form of political/language-based pillarization. Here in the U.S., if Candy and other self-identified libertarians accommodate the RFRA’s argument of only going to places where you are welcome because of/in spite of your background, and we distinguish our services/non-profits/businesses by our religio-social allegiances/ accommodations/criminations, I think the pillarization system is where we might be headed.
If we are encouraged to only go to LGBT/woman/PoC/atheist/vegan/etc.-friendly businesses and services rather than “trouble”/”oppress” those business owners and congregations who see such identities and associations as “morally wrong” or “confused”, and reactionary Christians encourage fellow parishioners to only go to places owned or operated by fellow parishioners who advertise such a religious identity, we are segregating ourselves into our own spheres and losing sight of our shared humanity, which is most apparent in the public space.
I’m not just talking about LGBT minorities choosing only accommodative spaces. I’m talking also about the allies who would willingly choose such spaces in solidarity, or would exercise the same solidarity with other groups which are criminated by reactionary politics. In our solidarity and “talking with our feet”, are we also diminishing the public spaces which are most available? Are we also diminishing chances for societal change and access to such changes?
We’re stickering up and marking our accommodational lines – progressive, libertarian, reactionary, whatever – to the advantage of those who are cynical about the social contract and wish to see it ripped apart.
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.
“They will say we are not here”: Choices, From Uganda to Arkansas
David Kato’s murder in January 2011 was a brutal footnote in the ongoing attempt to fully criminalize homosexuality in countries which are heavy in Abrahamic religion and light in liberal arts education. U.S. President Barack Obama’s statement of support for same-sex marriage in May 2012 was a touchstone in the history of LGBT people’s relationship with the U.S. electorate.
Two events in LGBT history involving two men of color of renown in two different political climates, in two years.
But I think that they, both Kato and Obama, are examples of what can happen when someone decides not to hide, but to stay, come out and fight.
Some time before his murder, Kato told filmmakers Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright this:
“So if I run away, who will defend the others?”
And defend he did, even to his last breath, even as the threat of the upcoming Anti-Homosexuality Law continued to enshadow so many LGBT people in Uganda. It has gotten worse since his death, with the bill now law and more Ugandans seeking asylum in neighboring Kenya or elsewhere.
By contrast, Obama was one of countless beneficiaries of those in the United States who did not run away from their home communities, but stayed and fought for better conditions. By the time he stated his support for marriage equality for same-sex couples, tens of thousands of couples had already gotten married and challenged other states’ prohibitions on their marriages. Several more jurisdictions – state, county, city – had placed non-discrimination laws into their books. But none of these laws would have been instituted had the LGBT residents of these jurisdictions had ran away or focused on their vacations in more LGBT-friendly destinations rather than sought change in their own neighborhoods.
California would not have overthrown Proposition 8 had safer conditions had not been fought for in the 1960s and 1970s by the likes of Harry Hay, Harvey Milk and Jose Sarria. New York would not have gained marriage equality in 2011 had the Stonewall riots not happened against gross police brutality. No anti-discrimination laws would have been sought to the present without a bunch of activists getting them put into law in Ann Arbor and Lansing, Michigan in 1972.
People stuck it out and fought for their posterities when their own sexualities and gender identities were proscribed under state law, when they were subjected to police abuse, when there was nothing to protect them from violence or discrimination.
And now, you have marriage equality in freakin’ Arkansas! South of the Mason-Dixon Line!
So if someone stuck it out here in the Southeast, if someone waited for all these years somewhere in a region which tends to be the last to do anything that is politically inclusive and progressive until after every other region has written such legislation into law, then why can’t I?
My friend Edric from Macon, who runs PFLAG Macon and MaconOUT, tells me often about how so many LGBT people in Middle Georgia would rather indulge in Atlanta Pride every year rather than have a pride festival in Macon or Middle Georgia. But is there nothing in Middle Georgia that is positive for LGBT people?
Nothing at all?
This is why I’m torn right now. I will put myself more into website design, make some money, pay for my expenses, and spend the rest on LGBT-related or UU-related work. But when I have the opportunity to leave for a greener pasture, will I leave? Or will I stay and fight?
Politically, I want to stay, whether it is in Columbus or in Macon, but I want to stay and help the LGBT community here in Georgia.
I want to help build a better, more inclusive community for HIV+ people in the community, LGBT people, women, people of color, organized labor, secular atheist, etc. – in Middle and West Georgia.
By the day, I revisit my interest in going to places like California, with its enticing tech sector, but right now, it’s only half a place I’d want to live in and half a place to visit. The people there are leaps and bounds ahead of where we are here in Georgia, but their experience of equality is only one experience by people who already have a lot more going for themselves.
I think these two regions of Georgia, if we pulled hard and long enough, can go much further. I think this place can be much more inclusive. We can have non-discrimination ordinances, and domestic partnership registries, and more pride/diversity events, and LGBT people being elected to office, and less homeless or destitute LGBT adults and young people on our streets.
I hope to help with that, just as I’ve already helped as President of a Gay-Straight Alliance in college. I plan to stay and fight, whether in Columbus or in Fort Benning, until more people are awakened to the possibilities and can fight for themselves.
David Kato stated “If we keep hiding, they will say we are not here”. That can accurately describe the present situation in Middle and West Georgia.
Edric, let’s not hide. Let’s stay and fight. For Middle Georgia and West Georgia.
My weapon of choice will be this blog.
