Heroes of the Month: The Young Generation of LGBT Activists

I have been out of commission with shingles for the past few weeks, an ailment typically associated with seniors and those living with HIV. I don’t fit into either demographic -- nevertheless, being sick and vulnerable has caused me to reflect more than usual on our youth and the theme of generational change within the LGBT movement.

My heroes of the month are the young activists who are stepping up to demand action on LGBT rights. They include, of course, Constance McMillen, Dan Choi, Robin McGeehee, Derrick Martin and the ENDA 4. They also include countless other young activists throughout the country who haven’t been making headlines, but who have been working tirelessly to effect change.

The first inkling I had that a generational change was occurring happened in 2004. I was working as an editor on UCLA’s brand new LGBT law journal and, at 38, was quite a bit older than my fellow students who were becoming new friends. I was delighted to discover that many straight students wanted to work on the gay journal, yet puzzled as well, because until then I had never known any straights who wanted to associate themselves with any LGBT cause other than the fight against AIDS, and even that was something many straight people avoided. So I spoke with one of my new friends, a 23-year old straight woman, and asked her why she wanted to work on the journal. She looked at me befuddled, as if I were a little dense, and said, “Liz, this is the civil rights issue of my generation.”

Wisdom from the mouth of babes, I thought. Of course, it had taken a few generations of LGBT community building and activism to get us to the point where young straight people could see our struggle as a civil rights struggle. Yet I suddenly realized that until that point, I had been acting and feeling like a supplicant for the civil rights to which I should have felt entitled. Thus began a different kind of education for me.

My education continued and picked up speed a few years later when two other young law school buddies helped spark the post-Prop 8 revolt here in LA. The night after the 2008 election, a vigil to mourn Prop 8’s passage was scheduled a few blocks away in our gayborhood. I had no interest in going, because I thought it would simply memorialize our perpetual victimization. Instead, my wife and I crawled into bed and turned on the local news at around 10pm. Much to our surprise and delight, my two friends had hijacked the rally and led a group of hundreds out of our gay ghetto and through the streets of LA. Helicopter journalists showed the protesters encountering police lines and taking over whole avenues. My wife and I immediately dashed off to join the group marching down Santa Monica Boulevard. At 43 and 49, we were among the oldest people in that group of hundreds and we were thoroughly inspired by the young people taking to the streets.

In the coming months, I continued to be inspired by my young activist friends. To them, I know that the caution and ambivalence members of my generation and older ones sometimes display must be frustrating. Although many activists older than I are as fiery as any twenty-something, and plenty of twenty-somethings today are timid and closeted, the differing generational experiences of LGBTs are real and undeniable. For instance, no one at my high school (class of ’83) was out, and now there are gay-straight alliances in schools throughout the country. Supposedly tolerant, liberal straight people shunned LGBT causes for fear of being called gay themselves. And then there was the AIDS crisis, which put us on the defensive and robbed my generation (today’s 45-65 year olds) of much talent and energy, even while it was also a catalyst that gave rise to ACT-UP, forced people out of the closet and moved many to become activists who otherwise wouldn’t have.

So I grew up taking our political vulnerability for granted, and with a sense that our small, proud community was subject to the whim of the majority. Many younger people, by contrast, first experienced our political vulnerability with the passage of Prop 8. They seem to be responding with defiant determination and are understandably impatient with a cautious, go-slow approach. Even more inspiring, there are signs of yet another generation of activists emerging. Witness ten-year old Will Phillips from Arkansas, and also nine-year old Ethan McNamee from Colorado, speaking out on behalf of marriage equality. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.