Nakhone Keodara is the Campaign Coordinator of A Peaceful Legacy: Petition to Remove Bombs from Laos, and sits on the Advocacy Committee of Legacies of War. He is a community organizer and founder of the Gays United Network and Editor-in-Chief of SoCal Voice based in Los Angeles, California. He can be reached at 
The gay rights movement is in the midst of a perfect storm. Hurricane Prop 8 has thrown our community into disarray. How we get out of this is the question that is on everybody’s mind. I propose that we start listening to and stop talking past each other as has been the case between the Pro-2010 versus the 2012 camps. As turbulent as it is while in the eye of the storm, we should keep in mind that there’s a rainbow after the rain.
Have we bothered to understand other people’s struggles without slight in the form of a dismissive arrogance of their point of view and minimizing their plight? If we can hold empathy, compassion and compromise in our hearts, we can truly engage and support each other in this Herculean task of winning marriage equality back in California.
At the very least, we must admit that the world does not revolve around the LGBT community, and, specifically, the burden of loss and the pain of having our civil rights stripped away is not the White LGBT community’s to bear alone. One would be hard press if we look at the Pro-2010 contingent with their go it alone at any costs mentality. The sacrificing of the most vulnerable of our community, people infected and affected with HIV and the POC LGBT community is a blind spot for most Caucasian LGBTs and is a demonstration of selfishness and self-centeredness to the extreme.
That, I think, is the root of our problems and a besetting weakness!
We all want and demand change, but CHANGE in and of itself is not some ethereal concept floating out there in space. Before we go demanding that people change their convictions, we have to change ourselves. That means that the gay culture has to change. Can we give up our tendency to be insulated and become a part of the larger society?
It’s a give and take! If we want acceptance and respect we have to earn it. If we want to join the larger society, we have to prove that we are worthy of it. Nothing transmits the message of love more than altruistic actions. Otherwise, our demands for change will fall flat on its face because it’s entitlement at best and hypocritical at least.
If there’s any consistency in human behavior, judging from my on the ground experience with regards to the complacency of the gay community during the No on 8 Campaign, gay men specifically, most if not all of us only concern ourselves with our preoccupation with the Dicks, the Dollars, the Drinks and the Drugs. We don’t have room to give a damn about anybody else if it doesn’t concern us and what we want. One would only have to look at the low turnout at Tuesday’s HIV/AIDS Protest at Pershing Square to see the latest example that Peter Pan is still unwilling to leave his ivory tower to come down to earth to join the POCS in the other good fight besides the gay marriage equality fight.
Right now, the Pro-2010ers don’t have much experience and they don’t have a plan. They don’t even know how to collect signatures to qualify for a ballot initiative. It’s scary to think that these newcomers hold they can steamroll the POCs and EQCA without having any kind of strategy or skills to get a ballot language qualified let alone run a successful campaign to win back marriage equality for California.
Make no mistake folks; the task before us is nothing less than to demythologize the institutional lies surrounding marriage. What we’re looking to do is flip the foundations of society on its head. That’s what our jobs will be in ‘changing people’s hearts and minds.’ Religious bigotry is much different than racial discrimination. At its heart, a religious conviction is what gives people a compass to guide them on how to live their lives. That we think we can just show up at people’s doors and demand they let us yank the rug from underneath them because we are morally superior is a pipe dream.
The Pro-2010 contingents are afraid that if we go in 2012, due to several developments on the national front, that California will be one of the last states to legalize gay marriage. This, they think, will make California lose its progressive status. And so it is revealed that it’s hurt pride. On that front, I get it. The POCs feels they are being slighted (again) by gay white men. They’re losing face! They too, myself included, will have to get over their pride.
Wake up people, California is a state of haters. The stain that has been left on our Constitution will be forever etched in the pages of history. It hurts yes. But, it’s not what happens to us that matters, but how we choose to respond. Rushing blindly into battle without a roadmap for success is a mistake that we cannot afford.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give the Pro-2010ers credit for being up on their history lessons. Yes, the mobilizations of the civil rights movement have given many gains before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. However, we can’t ignore the four guiding principles that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out before us, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.” The LGBT movement is still in the midst of the negotiation phase. In other words, our movement is not ripe for direct action until we’ve purified ourselves and become an altruistic movement, get off your asses and out of West Hollywood and help other people with their causes. We would do well to remember MILK’s dog poop story.
The logic that right now marriage equality is the driving force behind the LGBT movement is an excuse.
Until both the Pro-2010ers and the Pro-2012ers can learn to compromise we won’t be seeing blue birds somewhere over the rainbow. The perfect storm that our community is going through will have been for not.
Rick
WTF is POC LGBT?
Brian Stroup
Yes, calling me a racist is really going to unite our community. You have no clue. It’s dishonest attitudes like yours that are the root of our failures. You can lay insult and blame all over the state to hide your bitterness, and fail again in 2010, 2012, 2046 for all I care. With any luck I won’t be in California long enough to laugh at you. Nobody wins as long as we all hate each other. And you are as much a part of that problem as anyone.
Vito in PSP
I believe it stands for People of Color LGBT; s/b LGBT PoC, I guess.
Rick
Yeah, he writes an article on skin color and HIV status and then chides white gays on racism and discrimination.
[img]http://www.bay-of-fundie.com/img/2007/fstdt-pot-kettle2.jpg[/img]
M Shane
What a great article! Nakhone’s is right about nearly everything he said. I have less empathy for the comprehension he has of necessity of religious convictions and believe rather that a more humanistic form of belief would be abetter compass if we had a decent educational system.
I find it peculiar as hell that gay people will go around demanding their rights when they have little if any concern for our perverse and quickly deteriorating world and absolutely no empathy for the people who have suffered and are suffering at the hands of our government.
The herasy in all the mainstreaming attempts to be a part of the things is that along with marriage they want a “good” job with a company like Halburton or Enron. Very few gay people have the slightest concern for a world that is crying out with hunger.
I gay people don’t grow up and develope the kind of empathy that Oscar Wild called a “socialism of the skin”, they can hardly expect to get any empathy in return from anyone. And that is what it takes to be a human being bigger than your own confines.
Everyone keeps screaming for their “rights'” , which is crazy because we won’t have any if all we care about is what others seee as petty self concern untill we become bigger people.
Cam
The article said “The sacrificing of the most vulnerable of our community, people infected and affected with HIV and the POC LGBT community is a blind spot for most Caucasian LGBTs and is a demonstration of selfishness and self-centeredness to the extreme.”
________________________________________________________
Yeah, becuase you’re so right, the White gay community NEVER had to deal with AIDS now did it? You on the other hand sound like a typical anti-marriage queer who is trying to pull the old “Oh, lets not worry about our civil rights while people are still suffering with AIDS” line. Well I have news for you, part of the reason that people with AIDS are surviving now is due to groups like ACT-UP and QUEER-NATION who fought for faster drug approval and other breakthroughs, and guess what, those groups contained caucasions, additionally, lesbians in huge numbers participated in the fight for better AIDS care, and you know what? There were huge numbers of caucasions. You weren’t in NYC or SF or any of the other city full of the walking dead and their struggling partners and for you to minimize the hell that they went through in your attempt to try to label yourself as a true caring citizen of the world is beyond arrogant, it is blind and idiotic.
The fact of the matter is, we now know what causes AIDS, it can now in most cases be controlled, yet gay people can still be fired, still don’t have basic civil rights and are looked at as less human in spite of all the work we’ve done for the AIDS cause. It is time to fight for our civil rights, if you feel that AIDS is a cuase you want to work for excluding all others, by all means do. If you want to spend all of your time fighting for the removal of landminds/bombs from LOAS which your bio says is one of your causes, then by all means do. And far be it from me to call you a racist for centering your fights on only an Asian country when there are other countries with the same issues you are ignoring. It’s easy to lash out and attack others who don’t agree with you, it’s much more difficult for you to accept that others priorities may be different from your own.
J.Lowrot
This is an interesting piece, but here’s my take on Prop 8: the excessive focus on California is distracting for the national movement. The fight for marriage and partnership rights is a state-by-state struggle. No one state should receive disproportionate attention.
Relatively speaking, California couples have it pretty good. The comprehensive domestic partnership scheme provides all of the rights that marriage would. (At least until DOMA is repealed — which will occur on Nevuary 32nd.) Same-sex couples in 39 states don’t have the option to avail themselves of these kinds of rights.
Should we care about California? Of course, but not to the exclusion of Maine and Washington (which are likely to have ballot measures in the fall attempting to roll back gains there — marriage and comprehensive domestic partnerships respectively) or New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island (which are attempting to pass marriage equality legislation) or Illinois (where civil union legislation is being considered) or Iowa (where the recent supreme court decision could be under attack) or Wisconsin (where conservatives have filed a lawsuit challenging the limited domestic partnership scheme).
Chitown Kev
@J.Lowrot:
Thank you. I am so sick of the state of California, as if they’re the only place that matters.
Of course, I want Prop 8 overturned but California is increasingly taking time and resources away from gay communities in other parts of the country.
Bill Pier
Utter crap and nonsense.
Yet another young ignorant punk writing without understanding about what Gay persons of previous ages have had to bear.
It’s past time to be patient. I’m tired of being patient while other minorities get what they need legally from our society.
I want legal equality and I want it now.
Period.
Dick Mills
“It’s scary to think that these newcomers hold they can steamroll the POCs and EQCA without having any kind of strategy or skills to get a ballot language qualified let alone run a successful campaign to win back marriage equality for California.”
The one thing that is certain, is that even with a “strategy” and their “skills”, EQCA and the congregant committees lacked some key element that was necessary to defeat Prop H8. And, yet, Nakhone Keodara seems to be offering no suggestions other than to put the eggs back in the same basket. We’re tired of losing! Prop H8 may have been what we needed to shake us up and get our heads in the game. But the same play book?? The same losing strategy??
Maybe Nakhone Keodara has some swamp land in Guatemala that we would be interested in too??
Noah
“Make no mistake folks; the task before us is nothing less than to demythologize the institutional lies surrounding marriage. What we’re looking to do is flip the foundations of society on its head.”
Way to adopt the other side’s argument completely. I think the point is that marriage equality would NOT turn the world upside down…or did I miss something?
David
Nakhone Keodara
Project much?
Just because this: “most if not all of us only concern ourselves with our preoccupation with the Dicks, the Dollars, the Drinks and the Drugs” may be your life, doesn’t make it mine, or my friends.
In your hit piece, you repeatedly make broad, negative, stereotype based generalizations about GLBTQ that have no foundation, except perhaps in your own life.
The fact is that ‘gay community’ you describe doesn’t match any of the hundreds of gay men and lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered folk, that I know.
It appears that your hit piece was written out of reverse prejudice, and more than a little internalized homophobia.
It is just as vile for you to tell other GLBTQ people what our lives are “really” like, as you have in your hit piece, as it is for homophobes. Thanks for modeling so well the excremental tactics of the RR.
nakhone
@Brian Stroup: Brian, show me where in that article did I write “Gay White Men are racist!” I simply called them out as I see it. You should reread what I said carefully. I’m simply pointing out what some gay white men are doing and how it’s coming across.
Also, I never said anything about hate. The truth is we’re all racist to some degree and the only “dishonesty” is to pretend otherwise. FYI, all of my ex-boyfriends have been white and the love of my life, the late Marc P. Fournier, the one that inspires me to become active in the gay rights movement, was a white boy from Kennebunkport, Maine. To be fair, we’re all part of the problem to some degree and I am trying to be a part of the solution. Are you?
nakhone
@M Shane: Finally! We have at least one person who’s willing to speak the truth about who we are as a community. Until we can acknowledge honestly what our internal downfalls are, we can’t expect to affect much change in the outside world. That’s like trying to transmit something we haven’t got. Empathy and compassion is what we need. And, to drive that point home, here’s a lesson on compassion from my online course A Year of Guided Meditations by Dudley & Dean Evenson that might shed some light on what my compassion really means, “Compassion is the natural outpouring of a loving and open heart. When we understand that there is no separation between us, we will see others as a part of ourselves. What happens to the least of us happens to us as well. Cultivating compassion means letting go of only caring for our own family and friends and opening up to caring for all, no matter how we are related or not related. Turning a sense of compassion into involvement and support is an important component. Sharing and serving those in need should not come from a place of pity but will be more effective when offered with a sense of equality and empathy. When we turn our compassion into helpful action, all will benefit.”
Rob
*sigh* The fact that the article was written by someone nonwhite is the only thing any of you can focus on, and everything else is lost.
It would make me upset if I thought that most Queerty posters represented anything other than the online do-nothing contingent of our community.
Excuse me while I go volunteer for homeless LGBT youth.
nakhone
@Dick Mills: Hey Dick! Great points. Here’s my suggestions on strategies: 1. Boycott 2010 Campaign. 2. Start working on 2012 Campaign (that’s if we really want to build community like Courage Campaign, Love Honor Cherish, Equality Network, etc. have been advocating.) 3. Support Maine defeat Amendment 1. 4. Join the Power (www.thepoweronline.org)in calling for congress to expand the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT people (sign the Petition, call, write, fax, lobby Congressional leaders to support and pass Jerrold Nadler’s legislation that he’s drafting in response to the Power’s Petition. We have to fight this war on all fronts). 5. Show up for the National Equality March in DC on October 11th. That’s just some of my suggestions from the top of my head. I understand some of the fears that the grassroots leaderships have about losing momentum and passion and so forth. But, we let’s remember that if they’re always new blood that’s joining the movement to replace the more burnt out activists that were part of the first batch, of which I am a part. We just gotta keep training new activists to take our place. It’s an initiation so to speak. Besides, doing all the things I suggested above will keep us busy until 2012. Let me know what you think!
strumpetwindsock
@nakhone:
Well said, and good on Queerty for printing this article. It’s a nice change from some of the race-baiting I have seen
I think a lot of the problem comes down to some people’s inability to accept constructive criticism. If we can’t get beyond immature reactions like just attacking someone if s/he has a critical message we’re never going to learn very much.
A little less web-rage and a little more humility might be in order.
@Rob:
I hear you. How can you possibly trust someone if they aren’t white?
nakhone
@Rob: Right on Rob. And, they’re calling me a racist? @Dick Mills: by the way, your not so subtle hint for me to get out of this country via your “Maybe Nakhone Keodara has some swamp land in Guatemala that we would be interested in too?” comment wasn’t lost on me. I’m used to having racial, ethnic and my origin thrown at me. Very enlightened!
I digress. Back to Rob, I recently called on the LGBT movement to help me help the homeless families of America, specifically in Fresno, California as it is one of the poorest cities in America and my call to action fell on deaf ears. It spoke volume about our lack of concern for the pain and suffering of other people.
wondermann
Nakhone this is a great article and very honest about the state of affairs here. Please continue to write for this… Site.
Chitown Kev
@nakhone:
But gay Californians want other communities to help them…
Dick Mills
@nakhone: I think you are being a bit too sensitive. There is nothing racist about accusing someone of selling worthless swamp land. Get over yourself.
And I also didn’t see any strategy in your list of activities. Certainly none that would accomplish your suggested goal of demythologizing the marriage debate.
Noah
What is this assumption everyone is making that LGBT Americans have no empathy for other groups? I don’t understand. Maybe the people in your circles don’t, but I know a lot of LGBT people who support a wide variety of causes and communities outside of ours.
That I think is one of the big issues I have with this article. The author is taking his own personal experiences and anecdotal evidence and making it into some sort of sweeping statement on the state of LGBT affairs in America today. Just because in your experience people have not jumped to your calls does not mean that we as a group are uncaring of others. You can no more say that we as a community have a lack of concern for others using your experiences any more than I can state the opposite using mine. We aren’t a monolithic group, and we don’t all look at issues the same way. It’s dangerous to generalize. Also, I found the dicks, dollars, drinks, and drugs bit a little offensive. Maybe the author is choosing to be around the wrong types of people, as that isn’t a reflection of how I live my life.
strumpetwindsock
@Noah:
If it doesn’t apply to you or your circle I wouldn’t take it personally.
As for me, I have spent the last 24 hours talking with a couple of fellows who think all overweight people are lazy, and a burden on everyone else.
From what I see, there certainly is a large contingent of people (at least on this site) who are racist, discriminatory, have a siege mentality and are extremely intolerant of anyone who thinks differently than themselves.
Seeing ourselves as different than everyone else is just as bad when others in society have that view of us.
Nakhone brought up some very good points, and Generally, I agree with him.
Chitown Kev
@Noah:
I agree with you but…my comments are directed very specifically at California; here in flyover territory, we know better. It seems to be the California gay community that has the case of the “gimmies”
Chitown Kev
@Noah:
For example, will the California gay community help campaign against a probable ballot initiative affecting immigrants? With Latinos being 18% of the vote in California, showing support for the Latino community as far as that is concerned could go a long way to restoring marriage equality.
M Shane
@No. 17 · strumpetwindsock : well wrtten, constructively critical articles are just what this site needs. Gay identity and community have got to come to terms with the fact that we have to have dialoques about what we are doing as a group.
I nearly colapse when someone makes an inane comment like all we have to do is to change DOMA and DADT and then activism is done. It simply doesn’t work that way; we will always inhabit a unique niche in this world, from which we share a view that necessitates that we see thinks in much more expansive terms .
If the discussion just closes by making a few self centered people happy, we will have closed all the doors for ourselves. Self respect is something that by it’s very nature expands to giving all of us a responsability to talk about and make a better world for everyone.
Alan Turing was an example of that.
Chitown Kev
@M Shane:
Of course, dicrimination won’t end when we attain legal equality. We can sure make people pay for that discrimination though (cash, loss of reputation, etc.)
GreatScot
@J.Lowrot:
Bless you. We do get entirely too focused on Prop 8 and the issues of California. Though I do think that the focus of our opponents on the same issue has allowed states like Iowa to sneak by and bring about equal rights quickly and quietly. Seriously: did ANYBODY outside of a small group of people in Iowa even know about it until after it happened?
But I do think that this article has a few good points. As a gay community, we are all about our “scenes” instead of having a unified community- socially or mentally. Race isn’t the only issue separating us; age, weight, economic status- we love categorizing and then usually don’t leave our own very small circles which we put ourselves into. Unification would require younger gays looking to older/more experienced generation for advice how to progress; and the older finding new inspiration in the energies and ambitions of their younger counterparts. White gays to realize that homophobia is so much worse within the black and latino communities; while other ethnic groups don’t stereotype white guys as being privileged and/or entitled. The goal should be to look outside of ourselves to find a new and broader understanding of the community.
I also think is kind of ridiculous to say that we should be aiming to “demythologize the institutional lies surrounding marriage.” What we should be doing is explaining that the “marriage” we are fighting for has nothing to do with religion. Right now, the religious connotations of traditional marriage are the corner-stone of our opponents. It was how conservatives in Utah not only prohibited gay marriage, but dissolved common law marriages of heterosexual people a few years ago.
nakhone
@Dick Mills: Dick! I love calling your name. You must have a field day with that. :=) Well, the thing is with us POCs, any reference to our race, ethnicity and/or national origin is offensive, especially when it is being used in a condescending manner, which was the case in this instance. Dick, the list activities are strategies, an overall strategy both locally but with an eye on the national front.
InExile
@Bill Pier: I agree with you, this article is nonsense. I do not know how old this guy is but he looks young, too young to bury say 15 of his friends during his lifetime from AIDS I would guess?
He says we need to change but change to what? Our community will always he hated by virtue of religion alone no matter what we do. There will always be people that are afraid of gays or just plain hate them.
I agree we need to be more organized to be more effective in reaching our goals of equality but I do not believe we need to mimic heterosexuals to reach that goal.
I also do not believe our community is so racists the way the writer portrays us. Sure different segments of our community frequent different types of bars because different people have different tastes but lots of people in our community frequent everything. Gays bars have always been a mixed crowd, at least in Los Angeles.
Chitown Kev
@InExile:
No one is saying that you have to convince everyone. Certainly (if this website is any evidence), not all gay white folks think that POCs are equal to them. But enough of them are.
The strategy is to convince enough people, not 100% of, say, the black community or the Latino community or religious communities, etc.
Dick Mills
@nakhone: I made no reference whatever to your race, ethnicity or national origin. I made a reference to the fact that you are pushing an agenda of supporting the same agenda that we have lost with every time that we have used it. And the fact that you dismiss that and trump up a charge of racism against ME, pretty much proves my point. I am one of those here who aggressively slaps down the race-baiters. And, in this case, I am developing an opinion that you may be guilty of that. Guatemalan swampland is merely a reference to land that is not worth buying – get over yourself.
edgyguy1426
Hesitation to act because the whole vision might not be achieved or because others do not yet share it is an attitude that only hinders progress – Gandhi
InExile
@Chitown Kev: I understand that but what will it take to convince them? I do not want to wait another 5 years for equal rights. Very few of the people that are against us are going to be converted overnight, it will take years. Our Constitution supposedly gives us equal protection under the law, this needs to be our focus. If we wait for the majority to be OK with our equality, we are in for a very long wait. I just have to think about the people you meet when you travel 1 hour outside of Los Angeles, San Francisco, or San Diego, it’s like you are in the deep south with Mega churches everywhere.
InExile
@edgyguy1426: Agreed.
QueerToday
Now queerty understands the issues we’ve been pointing out about the 2010 crowd, and the importance of building coalitions and supporting our community’s infrastructure? Well, better late than never.
Chitown Kev
@InExile:
By any means necessary.
What makes you think I want to wait?
Remember, women took years to convince men to give them the right to vote; African Americans waited hundreds of years to attain legal equality and it still isn’t there all the way. I understand the impatience, I’m impatient too, but things take time.
Cam
The author of this article, in reply to other comments first said…
“No. 13 · nakhone
@Brian Stroup: Brian, show me where in that article did I write “Gay White Men are racist!” I simply called them out as I see it. You should reread what I said carefully. I’m simply pointing out what some gay white men are doing and how it’s coming across. ”
And then right after said
“No. 14 · nakhone
@M Shane: Finally! We have at least one person who’s willing to speak the truth about who we are as a community. Until we can acknowledge honestly what our internal downfalls are, we can’t expect to affect much change in the outside world. ”
————————–
You seem to contradict yourself quite a bit, and seem to try to deflect when you think you’re being called on your B.S. First you said that you called out gay white men, as you saw them, and next line said that you are simply pointing out what SOME gay white men are doing, and yet in the next comment you are lauding the person for talking about who we are as a community.
The reason we are calling you racist isn’t because we can’t handle criticism, it’s because you are using the example of a few gay bars in West Hollywood as your take on what the community is. I would call that extreamly prejudiced and bigoted. I don’t hold it against you too much, people that are into themselves and their causes tend to get a hollier than thou attitude and thats understandable when you are speaking in an acho chamber. But you may want to move out of the protected enclave of Los Angeles, where you can’t legally be kicked out of your apt. or fired for being gay, and into the real U.S. before you blather on about the unimportance of gay civil rights in this country.
InExile
@Chitown Kev: I think Prop 8 is not the most important issue, I think DOMA is. At least if DOMA was repealed gays could get married in other states and would receive Federal rights. Prop 8 is very important but our focus should be on Federal.
We have a President who made promises and we need to work to get those promises passed first.
strumpetwindsock
I don’t think the central thesis here is 2010 vs 2012… it is being open, prepared and having a strong foundation.
If there is some kind of sea change in the movement and that happens then 2010 may be viable. But until the foundation is there, even 2012 is a lost cause.
Note: I am basing my statement on his article and others I have read, not on what is actually on the ground. I am a long way from California.
But I have been involved in enough political work. it is a fact that timing can be crucial. Plus, I have read comments from many people who simply refuse to see our opponents as human beings, want no dialogue with them whatsoever, and even demonize many who support us.
So long as people in our camp work to keep that wall in place, we will never win, IMO.
Dick Mills
@nakhone: And, a strategy involves clearly defined achievable goals with clearly delineated lists of specific actions that will directly result in the accomplishment of those goals. Nothing you have offered as an activity clearly addresses any goal.
And just throwing money at Maine’s initiative, while still following the same flawed strategies that we have always followed and that have always failed, very likely will result in the same failure that we have seen everywhere else. Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results .. according to Albert Einstein .. is the very definition of insanity.
You also suggest that we need to avoid and expensive initiative campaign in 2010, but opt instead for suggesting that we spend (probably equally as much) money to get ourselves to Washington for a “March”. Instead, I would suggest that we each individually take the $300 for airfare, and the $200 for accommodations and put it toward something that will actually accomplish a goal.
Chitown Kev
@InExile:
For me ENDA (individual rights), DOMA (relationship recognition), and relationship recognition in Illinois top priority. Although Iowa is only a 3 hour drive.
As I was discussing with someone else, I think that LGBT social services are also a big issue and that is something that we can’t exactly rely on the government to do.
Prop 8 is big to be sure.
Chitown Kev
@Dick Mills:
“And just throwing money at Maine’s initiative, while still following the same flawed strategies that we have always followed and that have always failed, very likely will result in the same failure that we have seen everywhere else. Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results .. according to Albert Einstein .. is the very definition of insanity.”
Now I agree with this. Take on the fundies and expose them for the hypcrites that they are is what we need to do. Stop being afraid of taking on bigoted religious people and their beliefs. They are putting their ideas in the public square and we rarely expose their lies. That has to stop.
InExile
@Chitown Kev: We are on the same page! I’ll never forget being told someone else with far less experience than I was getting the promotion because he had a wife and family, in other words my family didn’t count. (ENDA)
DOMA repeal could be our ticket to move back to the US and try to pick up our life where we left off 3 years ago.
Richard
Nakhone – see Shaq story before you engage in any further racism
Chitown Kev
@Richard:
Nakhone can’t be racist. He can be prejudiced, yes (not that I necessarily think he’s being prejudiced in this case) but not racist.
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Agreed (and with Dick’s comment).
I think the defensive reaction many of us have to criticism is basically the same reaction as some people’s refusal to challenge these ideas in public, and take the campaign to their territory.
To simply shut the door on the straights and everyone we see as different, and assume our oppressors will die off by themselves is no strategy at all.
The Gay Numbers
@Chitown Kev: There are other questions too. What about when low income people or union groups have to face issues. Will these same people here becoming indiginant at the article also ignore those issues as well. My guess is yes since whenever you tell white gay middle class men whoa re basically immature (judging on the response here and amongst some of my gay white friends) that they must actually you know “giive a shit about oehthers in order for those others to give a shita bout them” their response is to become indignant. i remember having this conversation with a friend of mine. Nice guy. I discussed poverty with him. That while gay rights is very important to me, so is poverty. He just glossed over the subject by saying yeah that’s an issue. I wanted to say back , but held my tongue “yes, that’s how people view being gay- as an issue”
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Non-whites can’t be racist?
Are you going by the definition that unless there is oppression involved and it is coming from the controlling culture it is prejudice, not racism?
I have read about that definition and think I understand it, but I find it a bit odd, and I don’t think it’s universally accepted. Racism is a pretty basic term, but I think it applies to the theory as well as the institutional practice.
Not attacking you Kev, and I don’t want to get us off on a tangent. Just trying to clarify terms.
Chitown Kev
@The Gay Numbers:
Ah, these pesky class questions again.
It’s like I told someone else at another blog, you may help out a black gay person because he/she is gay but you are helping out the black community as well. I am sure that gay immigrants will be badly affected by whatever form the anti-immigration ballot initiative hits the california ballot. At JoeMyGod the other day, even I was surprised by the number of gay (and mostly white) men don’t have adequate health insurance. As you stated, the range of interests that are often defined as “gay issue” by gay and usually white men is too narrow.
And besides, union leadership does, by and large, support the gay community. Why shouldn’t we support them back (I.e. the Manchester Hotel boycott was actually a very small but good example of this.)
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
Well. I think straight POC’s can be racist against gay white people (and I encounter this a bit).
I also think that “racism” depends on interlocking systems of oppression, I suppose. Now can a gay POC be racist against a gay white person. You’d have to tell me the circumstances.
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
No problem strumpet, didn’t take it as an attack at all.
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Gotcha. I figured that was what you meant.
My resistance to qualifying the term racism is this:
Take the most racist GOB and give him a job in downtowm Beijing. He is no less a racist just because he is removed from his social support network, IMO.
I also think racism depends on intent. For instance, The Gay Numbers’ commend that white gay men are immature. He is completely correct that most of us do not have an experience of racism oppression.
Some people could take that statement and mean it in a discriminatory and racist way, because the statement does make a racial distinction. I do not assume that he meant it as a judgement against all whites, just those who are ignorant and act like they’re entitled to special treatment.
But as for racist gay POC, I have heard the comment “white men are dirty” from more than one asian person (not directed at me nor any specific person based on our appearance, but at our race generally).
But again, I understand that you meant a more systemic oppression when you said that he could not be racist.
M Shane
No. 48 · The Gay Numbers
‘Nice guy. I discussed poverty with him. That while gay rights is very important to me, so is poverty. He just glossed over the subject by saying yeah that’s an issue. I wanted to say back , but held my tongue “yes, that’s how people view being gay- as an issue”‘
That is the truest thing anyone has said here for a long time I hope people will give it thought.
Along that line I was picking up a DVD about the dilemma of our fellow black gays. A black guy was apparently watching me and asked if if I had seen any Noam Chomsky. What goes around comes around.
M Shane
Until we comprehend the fact that we share dilemmas with other people, they will not recognise that ours are valid. we may as well be talking to the wall, until we get dialogues going.
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
oh, it’s not simply gay asians that say that; I’ve heard that from gay blacks too. And yes, that is a form of racism, although it’s not systemic as, say, the anti-white racism of Jasmyne Cannick.
But Nakhone said this at the beginning of his essay:
“Have we bothered to understand other people’s struggles without slight in the form of a dismissive arrogance of their point of view and minimizing their plight?”
The rebuttal that Nakhone was being “too sensitive” is rather typical of the dismissiveness that gay POCs get when white gays respond to them.
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Exactly – or accusations of bias, without realizing that whites have our biases too (like the assumption there is no “white community”).
Nakhone’s statement is true, and I think we need to apply it to our enemies as well as people involved in other struggle like our own.
I don’t mean that we should compromise our goals, or not challenge their attitudes, or be nice to them.
But i have noticed, particularly in some of the comments on this site, that there is a complete blind spot when it comes to engaging our enemy. Many people here talk about the fundamentalists and bigots like they are not human (and I can understand the temptation – they infuriate me too). But like I said, That is just as immature as not being able to accept valid criticism.
And unless we engage them and take them seriously (not just ridiculing and demonizing them) we will never win.
M Shane
It’s simply reactive(protective) prejudice guys, in a word!
motleycruel
its a whos who of queerty commenters up in this shiznit…
The Gay Numbers
Chitown
One of the unspoken stories of Prop 8 was how great the unions were about voting down Prop 8.
Shane
Thanks. I appreicate that you get my point that If one views other people’s lives as just issues, then you will not have the necessary empathy. That’s what we are really discussing here- empathy, which is identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
This is what is missing in our society.
chances
@The Gay Numbers:
Amen!
spindoc
The fact is, there are ALWAYS thousands of issues that need attention in the world. This is no reason for the LGBT community to put off fighting for our civil rights. I could just as easily berate the author of this article, for worrying about removing landmines from Laos and telling him that he needs instead to worry about the human trafficking of women out of the former Soviet Union, to the Middle East, as well as women from Nepal who are kidnapped and sold to the brothels in India….How dare the author focus on AIDS and Laos when these women are being tortured and enslaved, how sexist of him, how selfish to only focus on the issues that he is interested in. Why not stop worrying about the issues he chooses to focus on because if he doesn’t a random person writing on a blog will call him a selfish racist….
nakhone
@The Gay Numbers: You got it! One of the rebuttal dismissed me and others like me or are passionate about our cause as being holier than thou just proves your point that we need to stop seeing other people’s lives as just issues. empathy, compassion and compromise is what’s missing in our gay society. You already laid it out about empathy. Compassion, based on a Buddhist definition, is “to suffer with.” And compromise is being willing to listen to other people and take them seriously without dismissing them for being irrelevant. At least that’s my definition of it.
Thank you, all, for your thoughts on this matter. Good or bad certainly adds to the discussion and it has been a lively discussion. I can’t respond any more because I have other things to do.
Peace and love,
-Nakhone Keodara
The Gay Numbers
@spindoc: You are setting up false choices.
The Gay Numbers
@nakhone: Thanks.
Rick
LAST WORD FUCKERS!
Chitown Kev
@spindoc:
“This is no reason for the LGBT community to put off fighting for our civil rights.”
Who’s suggesting that? We can actually fight for our rights feel compassion for and help many, many others in big and small ways. In that way, we build alliances. Overtime, it will become a “I gotta have their back because they had mine.”
Now the thing is this; minority communities (rightly or wrongly) are suspicious of of the gay community and it’s motives in reaching out to them. Do they want to build these relationships with other communities just to get a vote or will this be a give and take alliance? Understand, “alliance” can take on many forms.
I will say this, if a considerable number of significan factions black community ever decided to be in alliance with the gay community at some point in the future, you will not find a more loyal ally.
schlukitz
@Bill Pier:
@InExile:
I am with both of you, 100%. Nakhone Keodara wrote:
If we want acceptance and respect we have to earn it. If we want to join the larger society, we have to prove that we are worthy of it.
I am so happy to learn that Uncle Tomism is alive and well in the LGBT community. It’s the same old crap we hear, over and over and over. We’re wrong, and we have to turn ourselves inside out to make ourselves acceptable to those who hate us.
We have to “earn” the rights that should be guaranteed by the American Constitution and prove that we are “worthy” of them?
WTF? So those of us who have been around for 40-50-60 or more years and fighting the civil-rights battle have not earned them or proven that we are worthy of them?
Them’s fightin’ words, kid!
Chitown Kev
@schlukitz:
You know, at the very beginning of the black Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s, Rustin suggested to King that he form an alliance with the working and poor class whites in the South. Part of this was, of course, borne out of Rustin’s experience with Labor movements in the 1940’s. As a result, King was also allied with labor and, of course, near the end of his life began to address issues of poverty as well as race (and war).
The point is not whether we are or are not worthy of civil rights. Of course we are. But how do we build…a sufficient consensus so that the price of NOT giving us our civil rights is too high of a price for the state to pay.
The Gay Numbers
@Chitown Kev: @<a I appreciate your effort to explain the nature of alliances and how they build rather than decrease rights (a la Harvey Milk supporting the union strike against Coors in the 70s and supporting the first Asian to the city council in SF rather than Dianne Feinstein), but my sense is Schlukitz is full of shit so it will fall on deaf ears.
Rick
DAMN!
little sasquatch
Well kudos to Queerty for letting someone other than their resident blow-hards write something. And damn Mr. Keodara, you got massive response… well done!
But I do think it would be worth you considering that your self-hating tone might actually contradict the point you’re trying to make. Yes we have a lot of work to do. Yes we all must get along. But what are you doing about it?
schlukitz
@The Gay Numbers:
but my sense is Schlukitz is full of shit so it will fall on deaf ears.
A veritable paragon of eloquence!
Chitown Kev
@schlukitz:
Well, I know you don’t have deaf ears, in any event.
But, what about the allies that you do have? I think that the NAACP is an ally, for the most part, and while I don’t like their non-position on civil marriage equality, is that one position such a deal breaker for the gay community? I mean, it’s an all or nothing approach?
And there are local NAACP chapters that are for marriage equality? There are straight black progressive that are supportive of marriage equality and criticize the black church quite heavily. I could source all of this, of course, but viewing an entire race or even religion as monolithic seems really self-defeating. MLK certainly didn’t view all white people in that way.
Bill Perdue
One: Racism in the US is the cornerstone of a society built on the strategy of divide and rule. It, and other forms or bigotry are meant to divert working people from common actions to defend themselves. We can see how successfully they did that in the Prop 8 Fight.
No on 8 pretty much ignored minority communities in California, an exceedingly dangerous tactic because minorities in California are the majority. No on 8 was always afraid of being labeled LGBT and in that and their abandonment of minority communities they pandered to the christer bigots. That why Obama’s bigoted war cry “gawd’s in the mix” resonated with bigots of all ethnicities and brought them out to vote in huge numbers. Our defeat in California was unexpected and unnecessary.
Two: racism affects all of us but its origins are exclusively Euroamerican.
The responses of its victims are not racism in reverse, they are purely and solely defensive. When some of my ancestors said ‘Custer Had It Coming” they weren’t racist. When Black Nationalists like Malcolm X and the Panthers built walls of economic and political self defense around their communities they’re did it – are doing it – for defensive reasons, not racist reasons. When the Lumbee Nation in North Carolina punished KKK members they were not being racist. Nor were the Jena 6. When immigrant workers talk of La Reconquista in California they are not being racist. And ect.
Three. The great debate in California is reverberating everywhere in the US. It’s part of a huge groundswell of disgust with the ineptness and outright betrayals of Democratic Party front groups :like HRC, No on 8 and many state Equality groups. The obscenely overpaid self-appointed movement hustlers, Democrats and Obots who think they own our movement are in for a very bumpy ride.
There’s no seatbelt in existence that can save their sorry asses this time.
<b.Support the March on Washington!
[img]http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:iNCGtlZ9RlgfQM:http://whitecrane.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345161a069e2011570554d07970c-800wi%5B/img%5D
Phoenix (Don't Mind Me. I'm Just Cleaning My Pink Pistol.)
However, we can’t ignore the four guiding principles that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out before us, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.”
@ Nakhone Keodara,
You forgot Step 5: Get Malcolm X to scare the crap out of white folks so they listen to Martin Luther King.
We’ve been doing the whole non-violent campaign for 40 bloody years and we have not come along way, baby. I think reasonable and rational is useless against backward, narrow-minded bigotry.
strumpetwindsock
@Bill Perdue:
I agree with you about the divide and conquer strategy, and I don’t consider resistance actions, movements or even annexations to be necessarily racist at all.
But that doesn’t give anyone a pass. Racist attitudes and race hatred exist in all communities, and they are just as ugly, damaging and counterproductive no matter who they come from.
The notion that all white people are literally devils? That’s racist.
And I agree with you that the Europeans certainly used racism to conquer and divide, but they did not invent it. They didn’t even have to introduce it into places like Japan, China, or the Levant. It was there already, and there is ample evidence that it existed here in the Americas as well (I would be surprised if it did not).
Although the Europeans (certainly the British) have probably caused more racial tension and strife because they were ignorant of cultural realities than they ever did because of plotting and machinations.
Chitown Kev
@strumpetwindsock:
Well, that’s if you assume a category called “white people.” Any history of ethnic struggles in Europe or, for that matter, in America will show you that that’s a ficton too. There are hierarchies of “white people.”
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Absolutely, as is the myth of an aryan race.
I didn’t want to even get into that can of worms for fear of rambling even more than I usually do.
I remember being at an international indigenous gathering about 15 years ago. The most interesting native people there – laplanders, who are as white, blond and blue-eyed as they come.
strumpetwindsock
@Chitown Kev:
Actually if you are ever interested I’d recommend reading Bernal Diaz’s “Conquest of New Spain”.
It’s a very enlightening read, and not only for a look at how sophisticated the Mexican societies were (and so strange they are like something out of science fiction). As Cortez was visiting settlements along the coast en route to Vera Cruz, they were trying to track down a Spaniard who had gone native, and was warning everyone about them, and what the Europeans had already done in Cuba.
They never caught the fellow.
The Gay Numbers
@Bill Perdue: Well this is the point of What’s the Matter with Kansas (not that his point was particularly original), but still it is something we need to remember. How language and social divisions are meant to be used as a distraction that divides and conquer us economically (us being the economic majority). But, then rich gays who control the movement of gay rights are not a part of the “us” there.
So, as one person has said gay rights is just a continuation of that manipulation. It is meant to make sure that by labeling one segment as deviant it allows for control on other issues like the free market fundamentalism of American society. I have even read that it is really a continous of the women’s movement. Not so much as if they are truly the same, but that any question of the status quo is a danger to the deeper questions that discussing any deviancy as a greater part of the normalcy that difference really plays in our lives. That it is a threat to the economic ideas of accepting yor lott in life. Whether being a woman. Gay. Of a racial minority. Or economic. I don’t agree with all of it because life is never that simple. But there is a lot of truth to it.
We are not suppose to think about how crazy our healthcare system is because it is a “free market” and to reinforce this they use race and other means to divide and conquer. if we are thinking about abortion, we are not thinking about the 30 percent profit that insurance companies make off of each healthcare transaction.
Bill Perdue
@strumpetwindsock: The notion that all white people are literally devils? That’s racist. Did you think I said that. Thats uncommonly stupid, even for you.
And you’re wrong.
What you misunderstood or invented about “white devils” sometimes has a religious meaning but most of us, except you of course, understand that religion is for children and psychotics.
But it can also be used to accurately describe a “wicked or malevolent person” That’s why it’s accurately used to describe slavers. And to describe American real estate developers like Jefferson and Jackson whose armies passed out smallpox infected clothing and blankets and mandated the Trial of Tears. It’s also a very accurate description of the vermin who ran the apartheid system. I think ‘white devils’ is a telling image to describe the English armies and fleets who invaded China from 1839 until 1842 to force the Chinese to import tons of English opium and degrade their entire culture for over a century. I also believe the term accurately describes the murderers and cutthroat thugs who wantonly killed at My Lai, Sharpsville, Wounded Knee and Amritsar. It certainly describes the Belgian rape of the Congo and what the Dutch did in Indonesia. And then there’s the Nazis and Vietnam and Iraq and… theres are centuries of murder and mayhem that explain why people use the term “white devils”
But I understand why the very thought might upset a carping, pettifogging contrarian like you. It’s so… intense.
And please don’t tell us that there are bad people in all communities and nations. Like most of what you say that’s true, trite and irrelevant. The worst of them by far, both historically and in the present are Europeans and their American cousins.
By the way strumpie, just how would you describe the animals who did this? Impolite? [img]http://theblacksentinel.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/slavery_maryland_0327.jpg[/img]
rudy
@Phoenix (Don’t Mind Me. I’m Just Cleaning My Pink Pistol.): “Get Malcolm X to scare the crap out of white folks so they listen to Martin Luther King.”
I won’t ask you how old you are, but that’s how I remember it, too!
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
Is it 30 percent?
I knew your system was less financially efficient but I didn’t know it was that bad. I heard something on the radio recently that your overhead costs were in the order of 15 to 20%, whereas ours in Canada are around 10%. Don’t have the source, sorry.
@Bill Perdue:
And Bill, please.
Pay attention to what I actually wrote and chill the fuck out. I agree with much of what you said about orchestrated racism, but the Europeans did not invent it, nor do they have a monopoly on it.
If they represent the lion’s share it is only because they have the greatest technological power. But there are others who can certainly match them for brutality.
My point was that no matter what the grievance, there is no excuse for racist beliefs. And a resistance movement is exactly the sort of thing you do NOT want to have confused and fucked up by the hate, lies, and closed-mindedness that are at the core of racism – unless your goal is to become the very thing you oppose.
That’s why I mentioned the Nation of Islam’s original religious doctrine that white people are literal devils.
I had thought the word “literal” would be enough for you to understand my meaning, or at least ask me to clarify before blowing your top.
Bill Perdue
AND @The Gay Numbers: The GLBT and women’s movements are firmly linked by common goals and common enemies, more than our connections with other movements. If we’re smart though, that will change and we’ll get in on the ground floor of the reawaking labor movement by getting (or creating) union jobs.
We don’t hear the term so much but the GLBT liberation
movement is in a constant state of total war with a society best characterized as a late-stage degenerating capitalist society reeling from crisis to crisis, none of them solvable by the political or electoral methods used in the past. We’re in a period more like the one that preceded Lexington and Concord and the one that followed John Brown’s Raid.
One characteristic of that is a very deep polarization of society. We in particular are hated with a chilling passion by our enemies. I mean they really, really hate us and some of them want to kill us. We don’t emit noxious green fumes that cause passersby to faint. We don’t have horns, neon yellow eyes and tails to frighten children and pets.
They hate us because everything we fight for will end up having the most far reaching effects and being a nail in the coffin of a patriarchal, military bunkerstadt ruled by a tiny minority of uberrich looters.
1. We want to open up the whole question of partnering with a rational, humane approach that frees us, frees women and frees children from marriage, the backbone of a society based on economic oppression.
2. Our struggle, along with that of women will eventually end the sexual divisions of labor that reinforce the economic exploitation of women and children. That directly raises the question of how to create an economic system on a humane and cooperative basis. That’s not capitalism.
3. We want everyone to be treated equally and that scares them to death. Their goal is to use racism, misogyny, homohating and etc, to divide and rule. Everything we do totally challenges that basic strategy of the rulers of US society.
The amazing thing to me is that we’ve come so far in spite of that hatred. 12 and 13 year old children are coming out, even if some like L. King still pay the ultimate price for it. As Oscar Wilde said I have no doubt we shall win, but the road is long and red with monstrous martyrdoms”. In spite of things like that our communities’ militancy is increasing to unprecedented levels of strength and intensity.
strumpetwindsock
@Bill Perdue:
From reading that Bill, I think you have a bigger hard-on for the blood and martydrom than you do for actually winning our rights.
You’re even talking about demons now with your silly green smoke and tails.
Have you ever thought that this struggle might be won through teaching people to be reasonable and respect one another.
No… what’s the fun in that? you won’t get to torch everything and set up your workers’ paradise..
The Gay Numbers
@strumpetwindsock: Yes, a lot part of our healthcare cost is overhead administative costs. Or inefficient allocation of resources. Medicare has an over of 4 percent. This is by no means the only reason. Some are an aging population, the highly concentrated markets or in some cases monopolies in some geographic locations (this leads to monopoly pricing), the fact healthcare is not a commodity (which means pricing is not subject to normal market forces), a lack of ability to negotiate lower pricing for the 40 percent of the market currently controlled by government (ironically the conservatives complain about costs, but then tie the hands of government programs to preven negotiation- meaning we pay somewhere around I believe 50 percent more for medication), ineffective allocation of services do to poor incentive structure for procedures where we pay based on procedure, the lack of coverage for 45 mil (or more Americans) so that leads to emergency care. Our system is insanity. We end up paying twice what other countries pay for worse outomes. We are 38th in terms of quality of healthcare sytems in the world. The only reason is is the way it because of conservative idealogy. The practical reality is that it even when presented with the real cost savings from medicare (which despite its financial problems is still cheaper per american than private care) conservatives will say it is unAmerican. The result of all of this is fewer jobs and lower wages and the inability of busineses to compete internationally against companies not so settled with a balloning benefits problem. It also reduces innovation bc entrepreneurs (as I am personally discovering with my business) are faced with crazy choices- go get a job rather than take a risk on a great business idea because you need the social net of being a company employee. Our system is incentived in fucked up ways.
strumpetwindsock
@The Gay Numbers:
I know. We have provinces here which have provincial auto insurance (ours) and others which have private systems, most of which are a nightmare, because they are a virtual monopoly, and which have many people who cannot license a car because no one will insure them.
And on the medical front, I know we have a lot more access to cheaper generic brands than you do. There is even a large cottage industry in some provinces shipping cheaper drugs down to the states.
Not to say our medical system is perfect, but personally I have no complaints and I cannot imagine how it must be for you people down there to have to think about finances before you can visit a doctor.
Bill Perdue
@strumpetwindsock: Save it for one of your hatefests with tankie. He enjoys that kind of thing, as do you.
As you know I only reply to your idiocies occasionally because you’re such an easy foil and because you repeat, however clumsily, the myths of liberal pedants. Like trying to equivocate the racists and those who despise them. Rubbish.
Maybe we can ‘talk’ again in another few months. I hope not.
strumpetwindsock
@Bill Perdue:
Yeah, charming as usual. You have a good night.
schlukitz
@Chitown Kev:
I could source all of this, of course, but viewing an entire race or even religion as monolithic seems really self-defeating. MLK certainly didn’t view all white people in that way.
There is no need to source. I thank you for the gentlemanly response to my post.
It appears that my usage of the term “Uncle Tomism” has been misinterpreted. And if that is the case, I extend my sincere apologies. No insult was ever intended to you, The Gay Numbers or any other members of the black race.
I employed the term merely as a euphemism in reference to the self-deprecating remarks by Nakhone Keodara that I posted in italics as in the following dictionary definition.
“Deferential, subservient behavior and attitudes believed characteristic of an Uncle Tom: “Some will seek ‘status’ through renewed acquiescence and Uncle Tomism” (Alvin F. Poussaint).”
I don’t believe that I said anything in my post that could be construed as my viewing either race or religion as monolithic. I am the first to agree that there is good and bad in both.
There is certainly no harm in seeking the support of of any group that can help to advance the cause of the LGBT community and I would be the first to encourage it.
Chitown Kev
@schlukitz:
No, I know the sense in which you used Uncle Tomism; I wasn’t offended by that. I don’t think that Nakhone is a gay Uncle Tom, that’s all. Now I do think that Joe Solomnese is a gay Uncle Tom-I could name more.
Cam
@The Gay Numbers: You said “@spindoc: You are setting up false choices.”
I don’t think he/she was. The author of this article said…
“In other words, our movement is not ripe for direct action until we’ve purified ourselves and become an altruistic movement, get off your asses and out of West Hollywood and help other people with their causes.
The author was saying that we can’t take care of this issue until we have become altruistic and help other people with their causes. That was exactly what Spindoc was refering to when they said “The fact is, there are ALWAYS thousands of issues that need attention in the world. This is no reason for the LGBT community to put off fighting for our civil rights. I could just as easily berate the author of this article, for worrying about removing landmines from Laos and telling him that he needs instead to worry about the human trafficking of women out of the former Soviet Union, to the Middle East, as well as women from Nepal who are kidnapped and sold to the brothels in India….How dare the author focus on AIDS and Laos when these women are being tortured and enslaved, how sexist of him, how selfish to only focus on the issues that he is interested in. Why not stop worrying about the issues he chooses to focus on because if he doesn’t a random person writing on a blog will call him a selfish racist….”
If the author of the article can’t handle being painted with the same brush that he paints the entire gay community with, then perhaps he should think a bit more before he assumes the entire community lives in West Hollywood.
Cam
@Chitown Kev: You said “@schlukitz:
No, I know the sense in which you used Uncle Tomism; I wasn’t offended by that. I don’t think that Nakhone is a gay Uncle Tom, that’s all. Now I do think that Joe Solomnese is a gay Uncle Tom-I could name more.”
___________________________________________________________
Agreed, I think that the author of the article is misguided and has a bit of the “If I can’t be the best person in the world, than I must be the worst.” issues when it comes to the gay community, however, I agree with you about Joe Somonmese. I’d rather debate openly with the author of this article, than have Joe smile at me, and then stab me in the back when I wasn’t looking!
Chitown Kev
@Cam:
See, gay people that actively enable and co-sign homophobia and discrimination against gays to continue would be my rough definition of an gay “Uncle Tom” (which is a cultural term, in and of itself, and not an accurate depiction on the “Uncle Tom” character in the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel)
strumpetwindsock
@Cam:
I don’t take every word he said to heart, because I don’t think all of it is directed at every one of us personally How could it be?
And if some of what he said read like the “best-worst” hyperbolae you are talking about, I tried to look to the problems he was trying to identify by saying that.
Self-hatred, pandering and Uncle Tomism are not the same thing as critically evaluating our values and goals, and being prudent, respectful and fair in our actions. And taking a hard look at ourselves does not preclude taking firm and even harsh action when necessary.
Likewise having pride and solidarity in our community is not the same thing as having a siege mentality and seeing everyone who is different than us as a potential enemy rather than a potential ally.
“Worthy of” may have been a poor choice of words, because it implies that we need to live up to someone else’s standards. But I still think he is right in saying that we have to be engaged with the larger community as a positive force, as well as a challenge (indeed, many of us are already).
Cam
@strumpetwindsock: You said
“”Worthy of” may have been a poor choice of words, because it implies that we need to live up to someone else’s standards. But I still think he is right in saying that we have to be engaged with the larger community as a positive force, as well as a challenge (indeed, many of us are already).”
___________________
I agree, the problem with his article, was that it implied that as a whole the community was not involved with the larger community. It would be similar to him saying that he had gone into some nightclubs in Tokyo and in his opinion all Japanese people only wanted to dance and drink. Again, you have to be very careful if you live in L.A. to not think that West hollywood represents the gay community and I think that is where the articles major problem comes from. But I like your softer take on it.
Chitown Kev
@Cam:
Well, the essay is Cali-centric, which I do have a pretty big beef with, generally.
Mike K
If we want to join the larger society, we have to prove that we are worthy of it. Huh? Fuck you! I’m entitled to my constitution rights because I’m an American, not because I behaved in a way that was somehow worthy. Gay people need to stop being ashamed of them selves I’m old enough to have been a member of ACT_UP. We were fighting for our rights based on who we are not what others would like us to be. Man up for Christ sakes! Fuck this kumbaya shit and fuck you!
Forrest
The author simply perpetuates the stereotype he supposedly decries. By grouping all white gay men as rich,pampered, and detached from the struggle for equality. He needs to get a clue before judging everyone else.
Mike K
Sorry but I’m just so sick of liberals being such pussy’s. This is why the right just roll over us again and again. This us why health care reform is tanking even though there’s a democratic majority in the house, senate and a democratic president! My god when will the left man-up already? Thank god for the federal suit going on now because left up to our supposed “gay leaders”, nothing would ever get done because your simply to afraid to try!!!
Bill Perdue
@Mike K: Liberals and Democrats are not part of the left. The Democratic (sic) Party is a right centrist party moving right.
That’s the disconnect.
To remedy it we need to create a democratically run nationwide organization of GLBT activists to democratically adopt a strategy and elect a leadership. Nothing is half as important as that.
We need to leave the Democrats and Republicans in the dust.
With a depression looming that’s even more important
[img]http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:Rr6aOJdqLmlkhM:http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_02/donkeyAP1509_468x328.jpg%5B/img%5D
M Shane
Thanks Bill, That should be obvious to these politicos, but in the U.S. everthing has slid so far to the right that no one has the faintest idea what “left” means, and they can no means identify that fact since the U.S. refused even before WW2 to assist with the democratic socialist elected government Fight against Franco’s (with Hitlers assist) Right wing Corporation Take over. Except I should say for the Abe Lincoln Brigade from across America who went to fight.
This refusal by the U.S opened the Door for the Nazis to begin their Right Wing conquest of the world.
Because of the Business interests here we never did figure out that Fascism was in our Blood. Even after turning nearly every democratic government into a dictatorship, starting with Pinoche’ in Chili, and ruthlessly putting characters like Sadam and the Taliban in power even to running a war for Business profiteers in Iran, nobody sees the ever so rich pattern of our destroying democracy thoughout the world for the sake of Corpoations. That is not only Right wing it is Fascist.
Gays are seeing the Religious rights part, but everyone just wants to sit back and let the Big white Guys in the Military- industrial complex(Eisenhowers words) run things.
We’re are so far from being left that nobody knows what it is.
Corporations have already made the media their own. The Neocon have made it possible for Cheny to have made plans for the military to be dispatched throughout the U.S. against three Constitutional blocs.
Obama looks, now according to an article in Salon,today like he is prepared to back down on the public option fore Health Care, against the wishes of his constituency. I’m even pissed.
Usdating
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