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Another reason to scrape that blue equal sign sticker off your bumper

Published at June 8, 2006 in blogging, politics/government and queer. 27 Comments

No to HRC
image from bloggy

This past weekend I drove in a friend’s car. While loading up the trunk, I noticed that there was a very faded, barely discernable Human Rights Campaign sticker on the bumper. I was quite amused, especially since, given my knowledge of her general politics, she probably likes the HRC about as much as I do. Which is to say, not at all. For folks who aren’t familiar with them, the HRC is, in a nutshell, an extremely mainstream, pandering, assimilationist LGB”T” organization that seems to work primarily for the rights of the most privileged, white picket fence (and just plain white) sort of queers. Well, not queers, seeing as “queer” is not their sort of word. They are decidedly lesbian, gay, bisexual I guess, and let’s throw in transgendered so that it looks like we care. In fact, their chosen acronym on their website is GLBT, not even LGBT. Clearly, they’re making no bones about who comes first in their hierarchy of gay importance! HRC does not serve the interests of me and many of my friends and many other folks who supposedly fall under their “GLBT” rubric. Last year at the big Pride march here in NYC, my friends and I hollered at them from the sidelines – “Racist, sexist, anti-trans, HRC, we’re not your fans!” We also squirted them with water guns. It was fun times, but it’s also unfortunate that one of the biggest, most established, resource-laden LGBT organizations has such skewed priorities.

They primarily focus on homo marriage to the exclusion of the many other issues that affect many queers on the daily. Now, I’m not an opponent of gay marriage, but I also don’t think it’s the most important issue facing the wider queer and trans communities, and I don’t think it’s going to be some amazing event makes life subtantially better and easier for most queers and trans folks. Of course, I think that the institution of marriage is pretty fucked and fairly discriminatory in terms of deciding which kinds of families are legitimate and deserve certain rights and protections and which are not, and that goes far beyond queer issues. I mean, if you’re not a traditional nuclear heterosexual family unit, you’re fairly screwed under this country’s current laws. So gay marriage, while it will have important benefits for many people, will still primarily benefit those people who want to work within that sort of two-parent rubric. Any other less conventional family formations and you’ll still be out of luck, and it seems rather unwise to push for something that will privilege and legitimize certain queer relationships and families while in turn continuing to delegitimize many others, queer and not queer.

So yes, anyhow, HRC pretty much sucks, and now they’ve evidenced it even more, as bloggy over at the Daily Gotham writes in an entry entitled “The Human Rights Campaign: dangerous to homos”. Apparently, the HRC has decided to endorse Joe Lieberman’s run for reelection as senator of Connecticut. I’m missing how he can be called pro-gay, given his stances and voting record on various issues. (Though, apparently, the “homosexuality is wrong” comment quoted by bloggy is in dispute, so I won’t comment either way on that – his record says enough, I’d say.)

The worst of it, though, is that the very narrow, single-issue focus that the HRC seems to have has pushed them to support Lieberman because, in the weird parallel universe in which the HRC seems to operate, Lieberman is somehow “pro-gay.” Does this perceived pro-gayness somehow counteract his continued pandering to the religious and war-mongering right? Does HRC really think that someone who doesn’t miss a chance to snuggle up to the GOP, as bloggy so amusingly put it, is going to hesitate before completely selling out all queers, from the ones who HRC really looks out for to the ones it purports to represent but doesn’t?

Who knows. Maybe the HRC just likes good ol’ Joe because he’s as much a panderer as they are – Liberman to the Right, the HRC to the straights.

*****

p.s. I know I’m a bit behind on responding to comments, but I’ll be trying to catch up in the near future. Thanks to everyone who’s read and commented. Also, just as a note, I got my first truly out of control comments, the kind where someone doesn’t just diagree with you, but writes a lengthy rant that is largely composed of ad hominems. Apparently this person is really upset about my post on the West Point girlfriends website (which was really rather mild as far as my posts go, probably because the whole topic doesn’t matter much to me and was merely a source of mild amusement and intrigue).

They also seem to think that I am either a hipster, or like hipsters at all, and plan to force my children to be vegans. Uh… sure. (Just for the record, I am an inveterate carnivore, though I do make attempts at obtaining meat from humane sources when I can.) Anyhow, getting comments like that for the first time, I feel like I’ve graduated to some new level in blogging! I mean, I clearly can’t be doing my job well if people aren’t calling me names.

Alison Duncan for Lieutenant Governor

Published at June 1, 2006 in friends, ny state and politics/government. 2 Comments

My good friend Alison Duncan is running for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Green Party ticket. She’ll be keeping a campaign blog, which I encourage you all to check out. I have to admit that I know nothing about the other candidates for the post, including Senator David Paterson, the NY State Senator, a person of color, who is Elliot Spitzer’s running mate. But I do know Alison, and I know that she’d be a superb candidate with lots of excellent ideas and her priorities in the right places. And I’m also a strong supporter of third (and fourth and fifth and tenth) party politics, so it’s kind of like a two-fer deal. Check her out!

“Congress passes ban on protests at military funerals; still OK to protest at funerals of murdered homosexuals.”*

Published at May 25, 2006 in civil rights, Iraq, politics/government and queer. 1 Comment

*(thanks to my friend Chris for this post’s title)

A while back I wrote about the new outcry over the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq. In these demonstrations, they spew their usual, hateful homophobia, claiming that soldiers are dying because america, unlike their twisted version of God, apparently loves fags. (Yeah. Uh huh.)

Today, Congress easily passed legislation barring such protests at military funerals held at national cemeteries. How nice that Congress was so moved and angered that they jumped to stop homophobic protests at the funerals “fallen heroes,” as the act calls the soldiers, when they can’t be bothered to do much of anything for actual queers. Maybe if a whole lot of queers go invade another country and shoot and abuse the brown people there, Congress will start caring about us, too?

The article states that more than a dozen states are considering similar legislation that would cover nonfederal cemeteries. I wonder if their wording will extend to protect all people, including queer folks, from these kinds of protests, or if they’ll specifically limit their protection to military funerals. I fully expect the latter to be the case.

From one war on people of color to another

Published at April 26, 2006 in immigrants rights, Iraq, people of color, politics/government, racism and terrorism hysteria. 6 Comments

From a CNN report: “An amendment cutting Bush’s Iraq request by $1.9 billion to pay for new aircraft, patrol boats and other vehicles, as well as border checkpoints and a fence along the Mexico border crossing near San Diego widely used by illegal immigrants was adopted on 59-39 vote.”

Really, when is the War on Illegal Immigration going to enter the official political lexicon alongside the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs? Which are all essentially euphemistic pseudoynms for Excuses to Wage War on People of Color, when you get down to it.

Also: those politicians and other people who have hardline view on immigration should read this article about a Senegalese high schooler who has struggled for years to stay in america, stay alive, stay in school, only to face possible deportation now. As I’ve written before, I’m wary of the sort of appeals that pit “good immigrants” against “bad ones” – “Look at this brilliant, well-behaved high school student! Clearly, he deserves to stay in this country, unlike those other sorts of immigrants.” No, I don’t go for that sort of thing, and I hope that this article doesn’t encourage that kind of thinking. But you’d have to be a cold-hearted bastard to read something like this and yet still support legislation that would make this kid a felon and force him out of the country.

We’re sure he’ll do a helluva job

Published at April 25, 2006 in mainstream media and politics/government. 1 Comment

Bush has named Scott McClelland’s replacement as White House press secretary: FOX News Radio host Tony Snow.

I’m too tired and my brain is too Linux-addled to write much, but this really seems to me like the final consummation of the unholiest of unions after a rather long engagement. As Jon Stewart said when Snow’s selection was only a rumor: “In other words, the White House is considering paying a Fox News reporter to tell the public what they want the public to hear. I hope he’s up to the job.”

Edited to add: Ah, false alarm, folks. This guy is no Bush lackey; in fact, he’s a Bush critic! I’m sure he’ll bring that fair and balanced viewpoint for which Fox is so famous to his new job – because remember, he’s been reassured that he’ll not only be the White House spokesperson, but he’ll also be actively involved in shaping White House policy. (Whew, aren’t you relieved to hear that? I certainly am!) He’ll now get to personally deliver critiques like this to the President on a regular basis:

“His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back . . . ,” Mr Snow wrote last November after Republicans failed to win the governor’s race in Virginia. “The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.”

A press secretary and, apparently, policy advisor who’s even farther to the right than Bush? Just what we needed.

And another edit to add: Lest you wonder whether Snow has a shred of decent race politics: a couple of years back he declared on Fox News Sunday that racism is no longer a big deal. Another one of those memos that I must not have gotten! And in his free time, Snow also enjoys bashing Kwanzaa and slandering African people as a whole in columns that are later featured on the websites of white supremacist groups. What a gem!

What’s good for the gays…

Published at April 19, 2006 in civil rights, Iraq, politics/government, queer and religion. 9 Comments

…is apparently not good for the soldiers.

As reported in this article from the New York Times, 31 states have either passed or are considering legislation that restricts demonstrations at a funeral or burial. Additionally, Congress is expected to address the issue of protests at federal cemetaries. This legislation stems largely from responses to the most recent disgusting behavior of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Cult, I mean, Church. It seems that Phelps and his despicable cohorts got tired of spewing their virulent homophobia at the funerals of queer folks; now, they’ve taken up conducting similar demonstrations of hatred at the funerals of american soldiers who were killed in Iraq. In their truly twisted logic, soldiers are dying because of the wickedness of american society, which has apparently embraced queer folks. Funny, I didn’t get the memo letting me know that we’re no longer largely maligned and discrminated against by american society and law. Wonder how we missed that one.

So, in turn, politicians are turning towards legislation to limit the effect that these protests can have on grieving families.

“Repugnant, outrageous, despicable, do not adequately describe what I feel they do to these families,” said Representative Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican who is a co-sponsor of a Congressional bill to regulate demonstrations at federal cemeteries. “They have a right to freedom of speech. But someone also has a right to bury a loved one in peace.”

…

“I haven’t seen something like this,” said David L. Hudson Jr., research attorney for the First Amendment Center, referring to the number of state legislatures reacting to the protests. “It’s just amazing. It’s an emotional issue and not something that is going to get a lot of political opposition.”

Now, don’t get me wrong – I think that what these people are doing is disgusting and, while I worry about laws that infringe upon first amendment rights to free speech, I do think that people have the right to mourn their loved ones without having to endure such harassment. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a grieving friend or family member and to see these fuckers desecrating your loved one’s memory. Well, I’d probably feel something like Jonathan Anstey, who spoke to the Times about his experience at his friend’s funeral: “It’s hurtful and it’s taking a lot of willpower not to go down there and stomp their heads in.”

Yet still, I can’t help but think: where was all the outrage when Phelps and company were pulling the same awful bullshit at the funerals of queer people? I didn’t see much outcry (outside of the queer community, of course) when that was going on, and they’d been at it for nearly a decade before they started picketing soldiers’ funerals. There was certainly not this remarkably widespread political response. There were no vets on motorcycles circling the families and trying to shield them from the awful chanting and sign-waving, as there are at the soldiers’ funerals.

And why is that? Did those queer folks, some of whom died of AIDS, deserve to die more than the soldiers did, by virtue of their sexuality? Did their families not deserve to grieve in peace as much as the families of the soldiers? Were their memories less sacred and less deserving of dignity than those of these soldiers?

Of course, my answers to those questions are no, no, and no. But I can’t help but take away that, for many of the politicians and other people taking action now, the answers would be yes.

Welfare in NYC: not as pretty a picture as Bloomberg would like to paint

Published at April 17, 2006 in economic justice, nyc, politics/government and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Last week while listening to NPR, I heard news of the drop of welfare rolls in NYC to a 40-year low, a statistic that Mayor Bloomberg is touting as a major success. From a City Limits article published today:

“We promised to move New Yorkers to self-sufficiency and we are delivering on that promise in a historic way,” Bloomberg states. Of those who leave welfare for work, 88 percent keep their jobs for at least three months, and 75 percent still have them after six.

Now, when I heard those figures, I was immediately skeptical. Those numbers sounded good, but it’s easy to make numbers sound good by leaving the bad stuff out. And, as the City Limits article reports, it seems that’s precisely what’s going on here:

But the press release [put out by the mayor on April 5] never explains that those numbers apply only to the 23 percent of former clients known to have jobs at all. The other 77 percent aren’t tracked by HRA, according to spokesperson Robert McHugh.

Most of those 77% simply stop showing up for their appointments. Welfare advocates say that much of that drop off is due to the severe difficulties, obstacles, even hostility that people face when attempting to access welfare benefits. As Jillynn Stevens of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies says in the article, “There is every attempt to not sign people up, to exclude them from eligibility, to make it as unfriendly and difficult as possible to be a welfare recipient.”

Bloomberg can dress up the numbers all he wants, but the truth remains that welfare reform has done far more to harm poor folks than to help them. To his credit, Bloomberg is currently seeking to make it easier for some adults to get food stamps, but there’s a lot more to be done to redress the harm done by the anti-poor policies of current mayor and his predecessor Giuliani.

how much longer are we stuck with this jerk?

Published at April 17, 2006 in economic justice, ny state and politics/government. 4 Comments

Have other New Yorkers been keeping abreast of Pataki’s recent budget veto spree? It seems like he’s trying to piss everyone and their mother off by both tremendously cutting spending on state services and also cutting tons of tax cuts. Some of his spending cuts include $650 million stripped from Medicaid and $4.6 million from legal services for poor and low-income New Yorkers. The New York State Bar Association is decrying the veto, saying that if allowed to stand, it will result in “a drastic reduction in legal services to the poor.” As if poor folks in New York don’t have a hard enough time already accessing legal services.

Apparently, much of this is part of an attempt on Pataki’s part to show just how fiscally conservative he can be and to demonstrate that, even as a lame duck, he’s still got some punch left in him – all with a view to bolster his 2008 presidential bid. Let’s hope that it backfires, as this NY Times news analysis suggests it might:

The governor’s strategy is not without its risks, especially for someone who is still flirting with a run for president. Vetoing more than $1 billion in tax cuts is not the kind of thing that plays well in Republican primaries, and is the kind of factoid that has been known to make its way into attack ads. How will the veto of $200,000 for a tractor rollover protection program play with those Iowa farmers he has been courting?

Let’s also cross our fingers and hope that Spitzer (who seems pretty much set to take the governorship in November) is a far sight better than Pataki. I admittedly don’t know too much about him, but somehow he makes me a little nervous. As I suppose most politicians do, especially the white male variety.

migraphobia

Published at April 11, 2006 in boricua/latino, civil rights, colonialism/imperialism, economic justice, global/international, immigrants rights, mainstream media, nyc, people of color, politics/government and racism. 2 Comments

Today’s post title comes to you from this funny and smart animation by Mark Fiore, which I discovered by reading a great post of the same name by Junichi over at Poplicks. Check that blog out for good reasons why we should be thankful that the immigration reform “compromise” bill wasn’t passed (and hopeful that something that actual resembles justice does get passed in the end.)

Yesterday’s rally was actually one of the best, most fun, and most inspiring I’ve ever been to. When my girlfriend and I arrived at Canal and Broadway, the end of the protest was right there on that block – very impressive, though possibly also a partial result of the weird spacing that the police caused with their stupid penning tactics, now familiar to any New Yorker who has seen or attended protests in recent years. The going was slow but eventually we made it down to City Hall, lots more people still flowing in behind us even though we’d gotten to the protest pretty late.

Part of the effectiveness of the protest was that it was felt very focused – it really did feel like we were all raising a unified cry for justice and immigrants rights. The mood was optimistic and almost festive – yes, there was the gravity of the matters at hand and the anger and frustration at how immigrants are abused in this country, but there was also the high energy and high spirits of many peoples gathering together to fight for something that they really think they might get – that hope is really important and I think is often less evident at many protests.

Also, Latinos know how to make just about everything more fun than anyone else (hehe, sorry other folks, gotta have the Latino pride here.) Other than the Still We Rise march back during the RNC (which probably ties this one for Jack’s Best Protest thusfar), this was probably the most people-of-color-dominated protests I’ve ever been to. Even though me and my girlfriend (who is white) were lost in a crowd of strangers for most of the protest, I felt really happy and all warm and fuzzy inside, surrounded by so many proud Latinos, yelling “¡Sí se puede!” and “El pubelo unido jamás será vencido!” at the top of our lungs.

Speaking of that, though, the overwhelming number of Latinos at the protest made me pissed off at NPR’s local NYC coverage this morning, in which three people with white-sounding last names and american accents were interviewed. Like, come on, they must have worked really hard to find those few white folks swimming in a veritable sea of brown. (Yes, I know, it might’ve been a fluke, and I can’t really say for sure that those people were white or non-Latino, but still.)

One thing that was weird for me was the amount of american flag-waving going on at the rally. Maybe it was in response to the kind of bullshit criticism of the presence of other countries’ flags that I wrote about yesterday, or maybe it was all really genuine sentiment, but either way, there were tons of ’em, everywhere. I’m not much of a fan of the american flag, since to me it can’t be anything but a symbol of the centuries of genocide, land theft, slavery, imperialism, and other assorted oppression that has been wreaked in the name of the good ol’ u.s. of a. And most of the protests that I attend are critical of the u.s. in ways that don’t seem to prompt a lot of flag flying. I know that immigration protests are a different story – the whole point is about people wanting and deserving to live in this country, so it makes sense that they should carry the flag as a symbol that they, too, are americans. But american patriotism, in any form and for any reason, still kind of icks me out.

On that topic, here’s a good look from the folks at Media Matters at the inanity, the bigotry, and the hypocricy being spewed by some conservatives over protestors carrying the flags of Mexico and other countries. One particularly obnoxious comment from Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review:

Well, aren’t there plenty of Irish flags at St. Patrick’s Day parades, and Italian flags at Columbus Day celebrations? What makes the Mexican displays more ominous is their hint of a large, unassimilated population existing outside America’s laws and exhibiting absolutely no sheepishness about it.

Hmm… now, come on, Richie, is that what really scares you about those Mexican flags? Let’s see… Irish and Italians… ethnic groups who used to be persecuted in this country but have now been well assimilated into the white ruling class. Mexicans… SCARY BROWN PEOPLE AUUUUUUGH! And look – they’re not just serving your food or cleaning your house – they’re all together! And proud! Empowered, even! Yes, for much of white america, I bet that’s a very frightening spectacle, indeed.

All right, back to the protest. About an hour or so of slow as molasses marching (thanks, NYPD!) we reached the point where speakers and screens were set up so that we could take in the speeches going on down by City Hall. We’d missed many of the speakers by that point, but two of the ones I heard – Roger Toussaint of the Transit Worker’s Union (who, in yet another travesty of “justice,” was sentenced to ten days in prison and $1000 for defending his workers’ rights) and a Filipina woman whose name I didn’t catch but who spoke before him (if someone knows who she was, please tell me!) – reminded us of something that I think many americans, especially those who are anti-immigration, tend to forget: america’s role in creating the conditions that force people to leave their home countries in search of a better life in this one. Democracy Now! provides this quote from Toussaint:

Everyone here should think long and hard about what is happening in America today. We have a government that creates immigrants by the millions and then mistreats them. I say the U.S. creates immigrants the old-fashioned way. If you have tyranny and oppression and famine and poverty around the world, you are going to have immigrants coming to the U.S. No wall is going to stop them. No fence with barbed wire on the Mexican border or no frozen moat on the Canadian border is going to stop them. It will just make it easier to arrest and brutalize them. We don’t need a wall. We need a new foreign policy, so people can make a decent living and live in peace in their home countries.

That’s crucial to remember: the u.s., along with other western powers (though I think that no one does it quite like the u.s. does), is directly culpable for the decimation of Third World economies and social structures. In turn, the u.s. is directly responsible for the tide of immigration, legal or not, to this country. Should we, as a nation, wring these countries dry for the profit of u.s. interests, then give a big ol’ fuck you to their people when, out of sheer desperation, they come to the u.s. for the only shot they think they’ve got? Apparently, there are lots of people out there who think that’s precisely what we should do. But anyone with a whit of decency and sense should, when presented with the facts, realize that such actions are irresponsible and morally inexcusable.

The Catholic Church: doing something right, for a change.

Published at March 3, 2006 in civil rights, death penalty, immigrants rights, politics/government and religion. 7 Comments

I’m an ex-Catholic. Catholicism was a big part of my life for a long time. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years. As a kid, I used to love to read the Bible – not for the rules and regs, but for the stories, the imagery. I was obsessed with the Vatican. For a while when I was in elementary school, I went on a kick of lecturing my heathen cousins (who all went to public school and – gasp – didn’t even go to CCD!) about how wonderful Jesus was. God, was I obnoxious.

Anyhow, my zealous Catholicism all started crumbling down during high school, when I started realizing that I was not only a leftist, but a big ol’ queer. I think the real turning point was when I went the big anti-abortion march in DC during my Junior year. Ironically, the primary reasons for going to the march were to a) get out of school for a day and b) more importantly, spend a lot of time with the uber-Catholic girl who I had an incredibly huge crush on. I got there and was totally horrified by most everything I saw, from the huge placards with the gross and utterly misleading images of fetuses, to the gay anti-choice activists protesting from the sidelines because they weren’t allowed to march, to the creepy fervent droning chanting of the Rosary that was going on around me. Luckily, I was able to convince my crush to escape with me and go hang out in some random government building for much of the afternoon.

Since parting ways with Catholicism, I’ve had many opportunities to cringe, sigh, and scream over the activities of my former church. The large majority of what gets the Catholic church into the news is very cringe-worthy stuff, from the rampant child abuse by priests and subsequent cover-ups, to the Church’s continuing persecution of queer folks, to the total disregard for women’s rights perpetuated by the anti-choice movement.

But, every once in a while, there’s a news story that shows that, sometimes, the Catholic establishment can do something right. My friend Dex sent me one such article today: an op-ed piece from the New York Times lauding Cardinal Roger Mahony, head of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for taking a stand against the appalling anti-immigration legislation that’s being pushed through Congress right now.

I didn’t actually know much about this legislation, H.R. 4437, until a few weeks ago, and I was both horrified at its contents and at the fact that I didn’t even know about it. I try to stay relatively abreast of stuff like this, and was shocked that I hadn’t heard more uproar about it. The uproar is there, I’m sure, but I just wasn’t hearing it for some reason.

Anyhow – in case you’re in the same boat, here’s a good summary from the Immigration Legal Resource Center of this awful piece of legislation. There’s some really horrendous stuff in there, including the creation of a whole new federal crime of “unlawful presence,” the transformation of minor offenses into aggravated felonies when involving undocumented immigrants, and the expansion of “alien smuggling” to include merely assisting undocumented immigrants, making such assistance a federal crime. That’s right – individuals and social service organizations who merely help undocumented immigrants survive could be charged with fucking crime. And it’s already passed the House, and is currently in the Senate.

It’s absolutely disgusting, frightening and enraging. And Cardinal Mahony thinks so, too. From the NY Times article:

If current efforts in Congress make it a felony to shield or offer support to illegal immigrants, Cardinal Mahony said, he will instruct his priests — and faithful lay Catholics — to defy the law.

… Cardinal Mahony’s defiance adds a moral dimension to what has largely been a debate about politics and economics. “As his disciples, we are called to attend to the last, littlest, lowest and least in society and in the church,” he said.

It’s refreshing to see the Catholic Church, or at least one member of the Church establishment, rallying people and using their political clout around the good parts of Catholic doctrine – that people should care for and help one another, that charity and justice are important, and that Catholics have a duty to help those who are most abused and neglected by our society. It’s a nice change from the usual stories about Catholic political pressure, like when the bishops decided to start denying communion to Catholic politicians who were not anti-choice.

One can only hope that those Catholics who are all too willing to use church doctrine as an excuse for their rabid homophobia, sexism and anti-choice attitudes are equally willing to heed this call to defend the human rights of immigrants. Of course, Catholics tend to let me down with their hypocrisy all the time, especially those who are virulently anti-choice but are either silent about or supportive of the death penalty. So I guess my hope is kind of slim. I’m prepared to sigh, cringe and scream as usual.

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