March 4, 2010

Don’t You Do It, Kors! Don’t You DARE Do It!

Equality California, one of the most powerful gay rights groups in California, appears ready to cross a union picket line today at 5 p.m.

EQCA, led by executive director Geoff Kors, is holding a party at the El Paseo Inn in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate Mexico City’s legalization of gay marriage.

The only problem, according Richard Zaldivar, founder of The Wall Las Memorias Project, an HIV/AIDS education group based in Los Angeles, is that no social justice groups in L.A.’s Latino community meet there because it is non-union.

Zaldivar tells the Weekly that El Paseo was picketed just last week for that very reason. …

More: “Will Equality California Cross A Union Picket Line?,” Queer Town, March 4, 2010

Don’t you do it, Kors. Don’t you dare be a scab — and don’t you dare do any more damage to the LGBT community than you’ve already done.

If you can’t change venues, you cancel the damned thing — and suck up any charges, because (as QT supposes) you didn’t do your homework.

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September 10, 2009

Just Sign It This Time, Arnold

…unless you’re trying to Gaslight us with an annual case of déjà vu.

Harvey Milk Day Bill Headed To Governor’s Desk

A bill to establish a statewide day honoring slain former San Francisco city supervisor and gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk is headed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. …

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August 18, 2009

How Do You Apologize to a Dead Man for Chemically Castrating Him and Driving Him to Suicide?

We don’t know, but they should do something:

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August 12, 2009

Karel on Harvey’s Medal of Freedom

[The Medal of Freedom is] a well deserved award, one too many years in the making. But like everything else done for or to the gay community that is seen as positive, it’s a two-edged sword because honoring someone for their activism and impact on a state or nation while their cause is still unfinished, their people still unequal, is interesting indeed.

How would Harvey Milk have felt, what would he have done, and where would he be, if he’d been alive to receive his medal today?

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July 30, 2009

Medal of Freedom Recipients: Very Nice, But We Need RIGHTS, Not Awards

Per OnTop:

President Barack Obama’s list of 16 recipients to the Presidential Medal of Freedom includes 2 gay icons, the Associated Press reported.

Harvey Milk and Billy [sic] Jean King will be among the honored at a White House ceremony on August 12. …

And OnTop notes the first thing that came to my mind when I saw Milk’s name: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of Harvey Milk Day, because…

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July 24, 2009

R.I.P. Joel Weisman (1943-2009)

“Gottlieb received most of the credit for identifying the disease, but Dr. Weisman ‘contributed his open eyes. He felt right away he was observing something that was never seen before.’”

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July 20, 2009

Walter Cronkite: A Voice for Everyone… Including Us

Another side of Walter Cronkite few people knew:

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July 3, 2009

“Asking Nicely Isn’t Working”

The Real Stonewall Legacy

Waiting our turn isn’t working.
Asking nicely isn’t working.
What will work is what worked
that fateful night at Stonewall.

Forty years ago, a raucous group of transvestites, queens, dykes, hustlers, and homeless queer kids gathered at their local bar in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Inn. This wasn’t a political meeting — and contrary to the common historical narrative, they weren’t leaders in the nascent gay-rights movement. (Those leaders were far too concerned with convincing the powers that were that gay Americans were “just like everyone else” to set foot inside the Stonewall.) No, this was just an average Saturday night in 1969, and the Stonewall’s patrons had gathered for the same reasons that most people gather at a bar — to dance, drink, hang out with friends, and maybe get lucky.

Then something extraordinary happened.

It wasn’t the police raid. Raids were pretty average then, too, as cops made a habit of targeting gay hangouts. What was extraordinary was that, for whatever reason, on that night everyone at the bar began to fight back. …

Worth the full read? Oh, yeah. Click the link.

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June 28, 2009

So, What Are We Doing for Stonewall Today?

Well, my lovely wife and I stayed home. Nope, we didn’t go to Pride. Perhaps we should have lent two more warm bodies (and I do mean warm — it’s hot as hell here on the Peninsula), but we’re tired, man, tired. I wouldn’t say “burnt out,” but really, really tired. I won’t speak for Buffy here, but I’m also not in the right frame of mind at all. Last year was such a joyous event, this year going seemed like… like it would just hurt. So, call me selfish — I get to be once in a while. As every one of us has, I’ve done more than my share of hurting over the past year, and… I’m tired.

I also figure I’d be doing something a lot more productive for the cause by staying home today and continuing to work on Base8. I’m trying to ferret out the last of the education-related entries out of some 27,000 “unknown” records so I can get the next section (right, “Education”) up and running. It is a slow, frustrating, lonely process. But I am committed to it.

I probably should have written something to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall today. I didn’t. But jurassicpark at Brilliant at Breakfast did, and it’s really worth your time to click and read the whole thing. There’s also a couple of great pictures of the riots:

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June 27, 2009

Where’s Our Harvey? Or Do We Need One?

Jeremy W. Peters makes some good points re: Why the Gay Rights Movement Has No National Leader:

Gay people have no national standard-bearer, no go-to sound-byte machine for the media. …

One explanation is that gay and lesbian activists learned early on that they could get along just fine without one.

Well, yes, that’s been true, but only as long as “gay activists pursued a different approach, focusing on issues pertinent to their local communities”:

City councils and state legislatures are where domestic partnership laws and legislation extending anti-discrimination protections to gays and lesbians originated.

That’s the way it’s always been — until now. Now, we’re on the national stage.

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June 24, 2009

AARP Commemorates Stonewall, Pays Tribute to Our History

Very cool — and a nifty place to send folks who need a crash course in our heritage, with some very worthy pieces about Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society, and a great photo-illustrated timeline of milestones in LGBT history since 1958. (Click the image to go there.)

Incidentally… A few months ago, as my wife and I were talking about health insurance — and how we could expect Obama to write us a check for a million dollars before we’d ever see single-payer — I contacted AARP to ask if I became a member (which I’ll be eligible to do in just a couple of years — gulp!), would the AARP health plan cover my wife as well? I explained that we were married, but only in California, and she’s a fair bit younger than I am, and… yada yada yada… The answer was short, simple, and perfect (and I paraphrase): AARP recognizes the diverse needs of all families… so the answer is “yes.”

Nice. I’ve had issues in the past with AARP — all over its advocacy of private insurance, but nothing having to do with equality — but since knowing my wife and I will be able to get health insurance (we just need to stay healthy and uninjured for another couple of years!), and now, seeing this big, positive tribute to Stonewall… Well, nothing’s going to make me feel better about hitting my 50s, but it looks like AARP is going to ease some of the pain and horror.

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June 16, 2009

I Think I Get It Now: Awards Statuettes in Lieu of Rights (But We Still Hope Sigourney Wins)

Not that I wasn’t delighted about Dustin Lance Black’s and Sean Penn’s Milk wins at Oscar time, and not that I don’t hope Sigourney walks away with her well-deserved Emmy for Bobby — I’m just finally figuring out all we’re ever going to get is a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ear for being good little entertainers, and then locked in our cages at night while the real humans are allowed out to play.

But I digress, bitterly. This is really just a reminder that Prayers for Bobby is up for some winged gold:

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June 13, 2009

R.I.P. Harold Norse (1916-2009)

I’m not a man. I write poetry.

I’m not a man. I don’t want to destroy you.

Harold Norse dies at 92; Beat poet was a literary beacon in the gay community

A pioneer of poetry written in plain American English, Norse was mentor or peer to great talents in 20th century American literature, including Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg.

Harold Norse, a San Francisco poet often associated with the Beats, who was mentor or peer to many of the greatest talents in 20th century American literature, including Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski, has died. He was 92.

Norse died of natural causes Monday at an assisted-living facility in San Francisco, according to his conservator, attorney Mark Vermeulen. …

More at the link, including a gorgeous portrait.

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June 4, 2009

Kathy Griffin on Matthew, Murder, and Marriage

And she does it in her own inimitable way — which is a warning not to try to read this aloud, or you’ll run out of breath:

I love my gays and I’m calling bulls$%@ on the gays [for] not educating the younger gays about who Matt was. One of my goals, when I talk to younger people, I need them to let go of the idea that they don’t need to know about something that happened before they were alive. And I have a joke in my act about it and my joke is when I meet younger people and I ask them a question about Abe Lincoln and they look at me and literally say, “How [am] I supposed to know who that is, I wasn’t even born yet” and then I say, “Oh, that’s when time began, the day you were born. Nothing happened in the world till the day you were born”. But anyway, I was very shocked by that, so in our Prop 8 episode we talk about equality and marriage and yet, I said to the producers, to help them understand why they have to have equality, sorry but we have to have sort of a scared straight moment … well, no pun intended. You wouldn’t think that Matt’s story and marriage go hand-in-hand, but I said for me there is a link, because it is the same mentality that thinks Matt sorta had it coming or Matt came onto those guys, or …well if a guy is going to come onto a straight guy he’s taking his own life into his hands. I kinda make a link that is kind of a gateway drug to thinking that that is why there should not be equality in marriage or that is why gay people should not have the same rights and civil liberties and so on moment on The DList episode that I think is going to be very powerful is when I kinda surprise the teens and I show them a tape about Matt and of course there is not a dry eye in the house. Then we immediately go to a rally and I say this is what the rally is for, and you know, I think they were going to the rally thinking that it would be sorta fun and sorta fabulous and they were going to be with some fun people and you know it was fun and fabulous, but I said “you always have to keep in your mind that when you go to a rally or even if you are at a dinner party and you’re voicing your opinion, that’s its not quit as simple as: ‘but I want to get married and I want to register in Crate and Barrel just like straight people’ and if we don’t stop fighting it is possible that one of us could end up beaten to death and tied to a fence.

More at Matthew’s Place, including news of “the Prop 8 episode” coming up on “My Life on the DList.” (The new season starts June 8th.)

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June 3, 2009

Obama’s Pride Month Declaration: Disses Achtenberg, Then Splits Hairs to Cover Gaffe

In the midst of being annoyed about everything else that’s wrong with Obama’s declaration of June as LGBT Pride Month, this, I am ashamed, completely escaped my attention — but Joe Garofoli caught it:

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June 2, 2009

Sara Jane Moore is Getting All the Attention Now… What About Oliver Sipple?

On September 22, 1975, just 17 days after Charles Manson faithful Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford, Sara Jane Moore, volunteer bookkeeper for the Patty Hearst-snatching Symbionese Liberation Army and FBI informant, tried to do the same thing.

Moore was released on parole almost a year and a half ago, and is now in the news because she’s decided to go public with her much sought-after story.

OK, whatever. The question here is: Why did Moore’s assassination attempt fail?

Better question: Who was responsible for foiling Moore’s attempt to kill the president?

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June 1, 2009

Obama Declares June Pride Month (But He Doesn’t Get Brownie Points from Us)

Make no mistake: Bringing back the official presidential declaration of June as LGBT Pride Month is a very, very good thing indeed, for which Barack Obama deserves some praise — but only some. He does not deserve Brownie points for it, for the simple reason that it’s something he should do anyway; even we took it for granted he would (and you’d better believe we’d have been all over his case if he hadn’t). That, and he’s only continuing what Bill Clinton began in 1999 (and Chimpy McCokespoon refused to do for the last eight years).

Which is the long way around of saying: It’s the least he could do. The very least.

Nevertheless, we’re happy about it — although we are not at all impressed with the way the official statement claims Obama has “partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives,” when in reality his administration has done nothing to advance anything, and in fact has backtracked on nearly everything:

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May 30, 2009

So, Can We Get A Million to March on Washington Again?

The MSM (at least in our neck of the woods) has picked up on the planned National Equality March — a.k.a. LGBT March on Washington V — promoted by the Meet in the Middle folks.

Speaking of which, as you can see, we didn’t go to Fresno today; we have our reasons, which I’ve explained before, and which I’ll probably explain again — but as things seem to be going well down there, I won’t poop on anybody’s good day.

As for Washington, I’m kind of het up on the idea. First, a national march is a national march — not limited to one backwards state that has failed its citizens, miserably, and whose Supreme Court has turned the very concept of equal rights — and itself — into a cruel joke. Second, past LGBT marches on Washington have been a good thing. (Third, it doesn’t hurt that Cleve Jones is in favor of the idea. I trust Cleve’s judgment. If you can’t trust Cleve Jones on a thing like this, who can you trust?)

I don’t know what we’re going to do yet — National Coming Out Day is four months off — but already I like the idea, a lot. If you’re on the fence about going to Washington, maybe these stories of past marches will help you make up your mind:

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May 26, 2009

In Less Than Ten Hours, We’ll Know

First, the heavy stuff — and then something wonderful, uplifting, and NSFW…

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May 20, 2009

Gavin Says No, He Had Nothing to Do With Prop 8 Delay

Terse statement from the Mayor’s office:

Statement from Nathan Ballard,
Communications Director,
Mayor Gavin Newsom
on Propositon 8 Ruling

05/20/09 - Today a website posted an item that quoted a false allegation from an unnamed source: “Mayor [Gavin] Newsom reached out to the Supreme Court and asked them to hold off releasing their decision so it did not coincide with the White Night riots.”

This allegation is not true. We have asked the website to correct the item immediately.

Related:

Did Gavin Newsom Call for Delay of Prop 8 Ruling?, May 20, 2008

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Did Gavin Newsom Call for Delay of Prop 8 Ruling?

Per Towleroad via The Gaytheist Agenda:

Newsom reached out to the Supreme Court and asked them to hold off releasing their decision so it did not coincide with the White Night riots,” said our source.

As if avoiding the anniversary of the White Night riots is going to salve whatever reaction there’s going to be.

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May 15, 2009

Harvey Milk Day Passes Cal Senate; Repub Maldonado Credits Dustin Lance Black for Change of Heart

Well, that and actually reading the bill this time:

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May 14, 2009

Andrew Sullivan Lets Loose on Obama

Cick to embiggen
© AmuseYourself.com

Mind you, I don’t like Andrew Sullivan — in my book, he’s still a neocon Republican enabler, and I take an extremely dim view of his irresponsible promiscuity (while no one ever “deserves” HIV, there’s a very good reason Michaelangelo Signorile calls him “Bareback Andy“).

That said, when Sullivan is right, he’s right, and this is one of those times he’s right — at least when he’s not making Obama’s inaction on LGBT rights all about himself:

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May 11, 2009

So, Who’s Up for Gay Day at Great America?

We’re thinking about it, even though I hate rollercoasters (love speed, hate falling), ’cause it’s been forever since we’ve been to a non-political gay event, and ’cause Great America is all of 15 minutes away (Did I ever tell you I worked there as a teen, when it was owned by the Marriott Corp., and I didn’t know any better? Ask me sometime to tell you what it was like for a closeted 16-year-old to work Gay Night at the park, circa 1978)…

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May 9, 2009

Fred Karger Nails Doug Manchester’s Plan of Attack: “Divide and Conquer”

Rex Wockner took this pic of
the word BOYCOTT projected
in light against the Manches-
ter Grand Hyatt hotel during
a pro-marriage equality rally
in San Diego this spring.
Click for the original story.

The good news is that Doug Manchester, the hotelier whose $125,000 donation against equal rights prompted a boycott of his properties, is starting to understand a wee bit of the indescribable pain he helped inflict on gay and lesbian Californians, to the point that he’s willing to spend money to try to lure us back into his hotels.

The bad news is that not all LGBTs recognize this lame gesture for what it is — a buy-off designed to pit gay against gay — which Fred Karger so rightly terms a “surprise attack” of “divide and conquer.”

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