Gay priest was 9/11’s first officially recorded casualty

I'm not a big fan of this effort to play up 9/11 every year, but... since it seems inescapable, this is an interesting factoid. The Denver Channel:

You may not hear a lot about gay Roman Catholic priests.

But one such clergyman is getting a lot of attention this week: Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar who donned a brown robe and sandals and who was the first recorded casualty of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Among the many hats Judge wore was as chaplain for the New York Fire Department. He was killed after going to the World Trade Center with some off-duty firefighters after the first plane hit.

Read the rest of this post...

On the anniversary of "I have a dream," and how one gay men helped pull it all off

Daniel Serwer at PeaceFare:

Credit for this post, if credit is due, goes to Zaheer Ali, a New York City historian who asked in response to a tweet saying that I was at the March on Washington if I had ever written anything about it. No, I haven’t, until just now, when I should be working on a book proposal.

I remember as much about the circumstances as I do about the event. My aunt tried to convince my mother she shouldn’t let me go. I was 18, age of the immortals. Just graduated from high school, working in a factory for the summer before starting at Haverford. I was determined to march despite rumors of violence. I certainly did not want to take advice from my rascist aunt, who went livid. Fortunately a more liberal uncle weighed in on my side. Defiance proved unnecessary–my mother was a liberal and thought it natural that I wanted to go.

It’s all about witness, wanting to testify to your beliefs by moving your body to the right place at the right time. I’d been to Washington before, as a child and tourist. It was still a segregated city then, though as best I understand it more by tradition than by law. My parents would only eat in chain restaurants that had integrated. Returning by bus that August day of 1963 was a right of passage for me: a first opportunity to witness on my own.

What has become known as Martin Luther King’s greatest moment I thought of at the time as Bayard Rustin’s. No, I did not know he was gay, or even what gay was, but I knew he was the great organizer. He proved it that day, assembling an enormous mass of people, whites as well as people who then mostly still called themselves Negro. There was a long list of speakers. Martin Luther King was the climax, but I can assure you that many of the others stirred the crowd as well. I particularly remember being moved by A. Philip Randolph, but don’t ask me any longer what he said. And the music! Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary: mostly white, but “radical” as it was known then. (emphasis added)

Read the rest of this post...

Heroes of the Month: Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen

When an LGBT person is involved in a crime, whether as victim or suspect, attention focuses on that person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. But when LGBTs do something heroic, a “don’t ask don’t tell policy” reigns, as if the good deeds would be tarnished somehow by an acknowledgement that the do-gooder is LGBT. Two cases in point illustrate this disconnect.

The Larry King trial is an example of the former. Larry King was the 15 year old gender non-conforming boy shot point blank in front of his classmates by 14 year-old Brandon McInerney. It would seem that the case for first-degree murder could not be more clear-cut or straightforward. Yet whenever you read about the trial, it is not McInerney’s acts, but Larry’s gender non-conformity that seem to be on trial. The gay panic defense apparently still holds sway with the public at large. We will soon see whether it holds sway with jurors.

The acts of Torill Hansen and Hege Dalen illustrates the tendency to keep LGBT heroism in the closet. Hansen and Dalen, a married Norwegian lesbian couple, rescued 40 young people from certain death at the hands of the gunman Anders Breivik while coming under fire themselves. Hansen and Dalen were scarcely mentioned in the mainstream U.S. press. Yet they displayed extraordinary bravery in a dramatic situation worthy of a made-for-TV movie.

The German website queer.de reports that Hansen and Dalen had been celebrating the 10th birthday of their daughter at a campsite on a nearby island when they heard shots and screams. Dalen recounted those moments:

We ran to the dock and could smell gunpowder. Then we heard horrifying screams. We saw many people swimming away from the island. In a split second, residents and campers threw themselves into boats.

Hansen and Dalen were among them. They managed to make five trips to the island. Hansen said:

The boat was on the brink of capsizing. It was awful to have to decide who to take. There were so many people in the water. I ask myself how many drowned.

On one trip, Hansen and Dalen landed directly on the island and rescued people who had been hiding in a cave. Even though they managed to save so many, their conscience is troubled by those they could not save.

Of course, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly why their story was not picked up by the mainstream media here in the U.S. One British commentator identifies three reasons for the neglect -- a triple whammy as it were: (1) a reluctance to portray women as rescuers rather than the rescued; (2) an inability to view lesbians in particular as heroic; and (3) an unwillingness to deal with the issue of gay marriage. To sum it up: “married lesbian heroes would just have made … heads explode.”

I would add a general lack of interest in foreign affairs to the commentator’s list. But I think she is essentially correct. In a culture that is still caught up in vilifying and othering LGBT people, the heroic deeds of LGBTs will be downplayed and hidden.
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Belated Hero of Month: Governor Andrew Cuomo

I owe Andrew Cuomo an apology for being late with his hero designation. My excuse fits the occasion, however. My wife and I were fully occupied with buying and moving into a 90 year old fixer-upper here in Los Angeles. The deed says we hold title as “wife and wife as community property with right of survivorship.” Legalese has never been so emotionally significant.

This type of domestic milestone is what New York activists have been working so hard to make possible for that state’s same-sex couples. Thanks to Gov. Cuomo’s leadership, hundreds of them have been getting married in the past couple of weeks. The governor’s engagement was crucial to New York’s success. Just two years ago, without Cuomo, we were on the cusp of gaining marriage equality there, but lost by a crushing six votes in the Senate.

Cuomo did what good leaders do -- he set a goal and galvanized support behind it. He made marriage equality a top priority and coordinated supporters through the coalition New Yorkers United for Marriage so that they did not work at cross-purposes. The victory was a team effort, but Cuomo’s leadership made the difference.

New York’s couples will become marriage equality pioneers, like thousands of couples in New England, Iowa and California. It is strange, though, that such a quintessentially domestic act could seem so revolutionary. Part of me sympathizes with Boy George, who has referred to the mainstreaming of gay culture as “the big assimilation.”

Much has been written about the irony of gays fighting for the right to marry, as if LGB couples were all masquerading as “normal” for the sole purpose of gaining acceptance by the society at large. Lynne and I don’t see it that way, of course. We are not striving to create a conventional relationship, we simply are conventional in that regard, and would have been whether the broader society chose to acknowledge and support us or not. We are grateful to everyone -- no matter what their feelings about marriage as an institution -- who worked so hard to give us the opportunity to get married. We will do our part to make sure others have the opportunity to live their lives how they want to live them. I know that many of the other tens of thousands of married same-sex couples feel the same way. Read the rest of this post...

Heroic lesbian couple saved forty campers in Norway shooting

Another example of LGBT heroism:

A Norwegian lesbian couple saved an estimated 40 young campers from gunman Anders Behring Breivik’s siege upon a summer camp last Friday.

Out of terrible tragedy comes heroic action: lesbian couple Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen were among a group of rescuers who prevented dozens of campers from the horrific siege by ferrying survivors off the island of Utøya , risking their own lives in the process.

Wow... just wow. Read the rest of this post...

Lesbian trail blazer, Jean Harris, dies

Jean Harris, lesbian political activist has died.

"Her public persona was this gruff and tumble old dyke, but underneath her truck driver exterior she was a charming, tender-hearted woman who would do anything for her friends," Loftin said.

Harris, 66, died last week. She was found at her Palm Springs home by Denise Penn, 50, her domestic partner.

She was famous for her coalition building and grass-roots organizing. Harris' political acumen provided our movement with an aggressive template for political campaigns and LGBT organizations looking to secure and have our equal rights observed.

Harris began working with the Democratic Party in 1971 as a field organizer for the McGovern campaign. Harris left GTE to become chief of staff to San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt in 1987 and president of the city's Harvey Milk Lesbian/Gay Democratic Club.

The Harvey Milk Lesbian/Gay Democratic Club helped orchestrate the "lavender sweep," which brought us Roberta Achtenberg, Carole Migden, Harry Britt and Tom Ammiano in the early nineties.

Her shoes are going to be hard to fill. Thank you for your service and rest in peace, Jean Harris. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has gotten a lot of well-deserved LGBT love recently following Glee’s episode featuring her gay anthem, “Born This Way.”* The episode developed multiple gay story lines while promoting self-acceptance in general. It also generated some right-wing hate that was so retro as to be almost comical. One hysterical commentator called the episode the “latest depraved initiative to promote [a] gay agenda.” Lady Gaga responded with a simple message to the creators of Glee: “Never back down.”

Just as deserving of attention, however, are Lady Gaga’s efforts to help LGBT homeless youth. Lady Gaga announced recently that she is donating a milion dollars to five New York charities doing work in that field, and she is taking a clever approach to help publicize that work. Via a facebook contest, she is asking her fans to vote on how the money should be allocated among the five charities. By engaging her fans in this way, many more people will learn about their work than if Lady Gaga had simply picked an organization and donated to it. You can vote yourself and read up on each charity at the contest’s facebook page.

This is not the first time that the bisexual star has taken a creative approach to promoting LGBT causes. She was a warrior of the DADT repeal effort, for instance. She showed up at the MTV music awards with an entourage of four openly gay and lesbian service members: Mike Almy, Katie Miller, David Hall and Stacy Vasquez. She made an impromptu appearance in Maine to help put pressure on Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to vote for repeal. She brought her star power to the National Equality March on Washington. And she mobilized her “little monsters” via video to contact their representatives and encourage them to support repeal.

Lady Gaga also demonstrated her commitment during the controversy arising from Target’s hefty contribution to a PAC supporting an anti-gay-marriage candidate. She tried to extract LGBT-friendly concessions from Target as part of a distribution deal for her new single “Born This Way.” When Target refused, she dumped Target.

As the struggle for marriage equality in New York heats up, we can look forward to further engagement from Lady Gaga. She has once again mobilized her fans to pressure representatives in support of LGBT rights.

“Never back down.” Words to live by.

* On a side note, many say “Born This Way” is a rip-off of Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” As a fan of both Lady Gaga and Madonna, I guess I prefer to see the song as an homage... Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Dame Elizabeth Taylor

In 1987, a man with AIDS went for a swim in a public pool in West Virginia. Although the state health department advised that he posed no threat, the mayor of the town closed the pool and alerted the media so that “everybody in the community [would know] there was an AIDS patient in the pool.”

In 1985, Ryan White, a thirteen year old hemophiliac with AIDS was kicked out of school even though authorities had advised that he, too, posed no risk to his fellow students. When the boy was readmitted a year later, his family received death threats and people on the street would taunt him by yelling "we know you're queer."

In 1986 and again in 1988, hundreds of thousands of Californians signed petitions to place initiatives on the ballot that would have mandated the quarantine of AIDS patients.

Such was the homophobic hysteria surrounding AIDS when Elizabeth Taylor began planning her first AIDS fundraiser. Taylor remembered the reactions:

People … slammed doors in my face and hung up on me . . . [P]eople would say, 'No, I'm not getting mixed up in that!' And, 'You have to get out of this, Elizabeth. It's going to ruin your career.'

These reactions only seemed to strengthen Taylor’s resolve. Indeed, the vitriolic homophobia surrounding AIDS motivated her to become involved in the first place. She was quoted as saying

Worse than the virus there was the terrible discrimination and prejudice it left in its wake. Suddenly it made gay people stop being human beings and start becoming the enemy. I knew somebody had to do something. For God's sake, our president didn't even utter the word for years into the epidemic.

And

If it weren't for homosexuals there would be no culture. We can trace that back thousands of years. So many of the great musicians, the great painters were homosexual. Without their input it would be an entirely different, flat world. To see their heritage, what they had given the world, be desecrated with people saying, 'Oh, AIDS is probably what they deserve' or 'it's probably God's way of weeding the dreadful people out,' made me so irate.

I’ve always associated Taylor with AIDS activism. However, I did not realize the magnitude of her impact until I began to research this piece. Taylor made AIDS her life’s cause. At a time when the disease was called "the gay plague" and others were afraid to even touch people with HIV, Taylor employed her star power to help humanize those living with the disease. She made headlines throughout the world when she was photographed shaking hands with HIV/AIDS patients in a Thai hospital. She helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) in 1985, and later, in 1991, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF).

Taylor was a prodigious fundraiser and made large personal contributions to the cause. ETAF operated at zero overhead cost because Taylor personally underwrote the organization’s expenses for raising and administering funds. Over the course of her lifetime, she is said to have raised $270 million for HIV/AIDS. Last month, it was reported that she had donated the bulk of her estate to her AIDS charities.

An impassioned lobbyist, Taylor was not afraid of taking a swipe at leaders for their inaction. At an international AIDS conference, she criticized the first president Bush, remarking, “I don't think [he] is doing anything at all about AIDS. In fact I'm not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS.” She testified before Congress in 1986 in support of the Ryan White Act, and then again in 1990, when it finally passed. She also spoke at the United Nations, imploring its members to join in the fight against the disease.

Taylor carried on her work despite her own declining health. Toward the end of her life she said, "There's still so much more to do. I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around."

Now that I have learned more about Taylor's contributions, my respect for her has turned into awe. Rest in peace, Dame Elizabeth. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: President Obama (with caveats)

Despite some major ambivalence (see below), Barack Obama is my hero of the month. He and his administration deserve credit for finally deciding to stop defending DOMA and for taking the position that laws aimed at gays and lesbians should be viewed with suspicion.

The administration’s move was bold, unexpected and will be hugely helpful in future legal battles. In every legal filing against DOMA we can now hammer home that the executive branch does not believe in the constitutionality of the law. And in every case involving sexual orientation, we can emphasize the Department of Justice’s position that laws targeting LGBs should be subjected to a heightened scrutiny on a par with laws targeting racial groups and women.

Now let me lay out the caveats. Just because I think Obama deserves credit this month does not mean I am willing to forgive and forget the past two years. The man has driven me to distraction. On LGBT rights, he has been like a gifted college student who skips class half the time, turns in crappy term papers and then tries to talk you into giving him an “A” out of a sense of his own entitlement. The difference, of course, is that the stakes here not only involve his grades, but also the civil rights of a significant portion of the population.

It is hard for me to move beyond the cluelessness, timidity and active disregard for LGBT concerns that Obama has shown over the past few years. Remember how his campaign featured the infamous ex-gay Donnie McClurkin in its gospel tour? Remember how Obama justified his opposition to marriage equality by professing that “God is in the mix” during a debate with Prop 8 supporter Rick Warren? Remember how our "fierce advocate" then selected Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration? Remember the administration’s failure to speak out against the anti-marriage referendum in Maine? Or how a Bush administration holdover was permitted to help write the infamous DOMA brief that used offensive anti-gay rhetoric?

Admittedly, the Obama administration taken a number of helpful steps in support of LGBT rights. He enacted hate crimes legislation, secured limited benefits for gay federal employees, applied the coup de grace to the HIV travel ban and appears to have worked behind the scenes to gain Pentagon support for the repeal of DADT, among other things. However, many of the LGBT initiatives Obama touted were weak tea, as John has explained. As for DADT, Obama was AWOL at crunch time. Others did the heavy lifting and Obama was fortunate they succeeded.

I don’t know why Obama suddenly became emboldened now with DOMA. Perhaps the lack of political fall-out from the DADT repeal did the trick. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to perform some political jiu-jitsu by dumping a culture war issue in the laps of Republicans at a time when they would rather be focusing on the economy. Presumably, Obama recognized as a Con Law scholar that there was no way to justify DOMA under the Constitution. Whatever the reason, I am glad he made this move. I hope he continues to evolve on marriage equality. Better late than never. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: David Kato

When I first heard about the Kill the Gays Bill in Uganda, my initial reaction was an ugly defense mechanism -- I distanced myself emotionally by writing off the entire country as backwards and brutish and the victims as helpless and anonymous. Of course, such crass stereotyping is wrong in any context. And by engaging in it, even for a moment, I obscured the efforts of individual LGBTs and allies working hard in those countries to advance the cause of equality. The death of David Kato has made me reflect on their efforts once again.

Kato reportedly described himself as perhaps the first “out” gay man in Uganda. He was a fearless activist who was pictured on the front page of a Ugandan paper under the exhortation “Hang them!” Kato sued the paper and won earlier this month -- a huge victory for Ugandan LGBTs. Last week, Kato was murdered in his home.

Although Kato was murdered, the struggle continues and his spirit lives on. One of Kato’s friends wrote at the blog Gay Uganda: “Gay activists in Uganda are quarrelsome and militant. Many in the mould of David Kato.” Gay Ugandans gathered openly at Kato’s funeral, and put a stop to a homophobic pastor who began to desecrate his memory with a homophobic rant. The incident was widely reported internationally, which was a victory in itself. In another major victory, a Ugandan newspaper published an editorial in support of gay rights in the wake of Kato’s death. Kato’s friend remarked that “Kato would have loved the attention that his death has generated over gay issues in Uganda.”

The struggles we LGBTs face in the U.S. and in Uganda are merely different battlegrounds in an unprecedented global civil rights movement made possible by the internet and other new forms of communication. The culture wars have gone global, for better and for worse. We see it in the pernicious influence of C-Street and other U.S. evangelical organizations in Africa, and we also see it when African LGBTs take inspiration from developments here. Another blog entry from Kato’s friend shows how well-informed he is about developments in the US:

I have become a keen follower of the gay rights movement in the US. … The gay rights war in the US spills over to Africa. Makes me much more likely to follow it. And, follow the arguments, and convolutions. There, it is not a fight for survival, as it is in Uganda. Life is basic, life and liberty are. But, once those are established in the minds of society, then we have to go for other insidious points of discrimination.

So, in the US, don't ask don't tell seemed like something small. But it was big. That is why its repeal was celebrated. And, gay Americans have not sat on their laurels. There are other laws which go against the grain of equality. We cannot be equal when there are laws which target us, and make it impossible for full equality to be enjoyed. So, DOMA is next. The Defence of Marriage Act.

Again, the principle is simple. If the law says we are equal to the rest of our brothers and sisters, then we should be equal indeed.

Twenty-five years ago, prior to the widespread use of the internet, it would have been impossible for someone in Uganda to be so well-informed and up-to-date about developments in the U.S. -- and for Americans to learn so much about events in Uganda.

We can participate in the global struggle by staying informed about intentional developments and exerting as much pressure as we can. We have an obligation to do so, because what happens in the U.S. impacts the entire world. Here is what Kato’s friend has to say about our role:

For friends outside Uganda … we remind you that, the lessons of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the lessons of the death of David Kato are quite clear. You have a lot of clout here. It is through public opinion of Uganda in your country. It is in your country that you move the politicians to move the leaders in Uganda. And, it is not only political. It is also religious, and cultural. …

What seems to matter, to the government, to the people, is the reputation. And, if Uganda is in anyway sensitive to its reputation in the family of nations, it is vulnerable. Our country people, our government will treat us gay Ugandans like shit. But, they will not do that when you ask your leaders to ask them what justification they have to do that.

Because, Ugandans are vain. And, that vanity is susceptible to the ridicule that they are acting less than 'civilised'

So ironically, perhaps, the impulse to paint Uganda as an uncivilized place can have a useful function. But it is only useful if coupled with a sense of solidarity with the Ugandan activists, and a willingness to take action. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Leonard Matlovich

Bigotry is often accomodated as a civil rights cause advances. Redundant parallel institutions like civil unions emerge and misguided policies like DADT are enacted. Sometimes the accomodations are temporary measures that can incubate further change. Sometimes they wind up perpetuating the status quo. Half-measures like these are taken because people are slow or unable to come to grips with the simple truth that equality means equality for everyone.

DADT, instituted in 1993, will go down as an accomodation that did little or nothing to advance the cause of equality. Prior to DADT, gays were formally banned from serving in the U.S. military regardless of whether they were open or closeted. DADT may have been intended to end witch hunts, provided that LGB soldiers remained closeted. But the military failed to hold up its end of the bargain, and DADT looks like a feeble attempt by a beleagured Clinton administration to save face, not a potentially useful half-measure to further civil rights.

Leonard Matlovich, the first person to challenge the ban on LGBs serving in the military, had the foresight to reject a DADT-type compromise eighteen years prior to the enactment of DADT. Matlovich was an Air Force technical sergeant who had been the recipient of a purple heart and a bronze star and taught classes on race relations. In 1973, he got in touch with gay activist Frank Kameny, who was looking for a soldier with an exemplary record to help bring a test case against the ban. Matlovich agreed to be that soldier, and in March, 1975, he came out to his commanding officer in a letter. He was promptly discharged.

Matlovich fought the discharge. In the process, he was offered an accomodation that would have allowed him to remain in the Air Force provided that he promise never to practice homosexuality again. In effect, he could remain in the service if agreed to live a lie.

Matlovich rejected the lie and became a national LGBT rights activist instead. He helped combat and the Briggs initiative in California and Anita Bryant’s attempt to overturn an anti-discrimination clause in Miami. In his day, Matlovich was as well-known as Harvey Milk, if not more so, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine. He later campaigned for adequate HIV and AIDS education and treatment, and was arrested at a protest at the White House. He himself died of complications from HIV / AIDS in 1987.

Matlovich possessed a foresight and clarity of purpose that served him and the movement well, as he demonstrated in this interview broadcast on Good Morning America in 1987. The famous inscription he created for his gravestone eloquently expresses the injustice of the military ban:

When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.

People are often slow to recognize injustice. Some always refuse to see it, while others need time and half-measures. It has taken a long time for the country to allow open service -- much too long for Matlovich, unfortunately. But by sharing his clarity of vision, he helped bring it about. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Queen Calafia

The name California comes from a sixteenth century conquistador fantasy of a formidable island inhabited by free-loving black Amazons. They were led by a brave queen:

Know th[ere] . . . exists an island called California . . . populated by black women. . . [L]ike the Amazons was their style of living. The[y] were of vigorous bodies and strong and ardent hearts and of great strength; the island itself the strongest in steep rocks and great boulders that is found in the world; their arms were all of gold . . . [W]hen they had peace with their adversaries, they intermixed . . .

There ruled on that island of California, a queen great of body, very beautiful . . ., desirous in her thoughts of achieving great things, valiant in strength, . . . Queen Calafia. (from Dora Beale Polk, The Island of California, U. of Neb. Press, 1991)

California’s founding myth derives from a siege on sexual and racial diversity. Despite the state’s reputation as a stronghold for live-and-let-live tolerance, its tolerant spirit has been contested and has suffered as many shameful defeats as victories. Whereas the state attracts people who are drawn by the promise of social freedom and possibility, it also draws those who mainly seek riches and wind up trying to domesticate and dominate the spirit that others cherish.

I like to think of Calafia as the avenging defender of sexual minorities, feminists, native peoples, blacks and sexual, ethnic and racial diversity in general. I imagine her with the suffragists when California women won the right to vote in 1911. I picture her guiding the California Supreme Court when the state was among the first to repeal its anti-miscegenation law in 1948. I see her taking over Alcatraz with Native American students and marching with Cesar Chavez. She would have been by Harvey Milk’s side when he led the defeat of the Briggs initiative, and with Gavin Newsom when he recognized same-sex unions in 2004.

Calafia has suffered a number of defeats over the years, too, of which Prop 8 is the most recent. The laws robbing Chinese of their constitutional rights and the internment of Japanese-Americans are just two examples.

This election suggests that Calafia has regrouped and might once again be on the ascendancy. November was a good month for California LGBTs, anyway. Gavin Newsom won his race for Lieutenant Governor. Barbara Boxer, one of only fourteen senators who voted against DOMA in 1996, won her senate race. Jerry Brown, the attorney general who refused to defend prop 8, won the governorship, and our new attorney general, Kamala Harris, has vowed not to defend it. Victoria Kolakowski became the first openly transgender judge in the country. Perhaps most satisfying of all, the author of prop 8, Andrew Pugno, lost his race for state assembly. These victories demonstrate that it is possible for politicians to fight for principle and win. With the Prop 8 hearings scheduled on December 6, 2010, I’m hoping that Calafia is at peak strength. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Alan Turing

If you are reading this on a computer, you can be grateful to Alan Turing. You can also thank him for helping save the world from Nazism. Yet Turing’s contemporaries, instead of thanking him, hounded him to death at the age of 41 for being gay.

During this month in which we have lost so many young people to bullying and suicide -- a month which also happens to be gay and lesbian history month -- my thoughts keep turning to Turing, his achievements, and what more he might have accomplished had he continued his work.

Turing was a brilliant and eccentric mathematician who provided the blueprint for the modern computer in 1937. He then used his skills during World War II to design a machine that broke the codes the Nazis were using to send messages to U-Boats in the North Atlantic. His code-breaking work was part of a project so top-secret, that its existence and details were only revealed thirty years later.

After the war, Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency when he revealed his homosexuality to the police in connection with a burglary of his home. In lieu of jail time, Turing was given female hormones to chemically castrate him, and he began to grow breasts. Because he now had a criminal record, his security clearance was revoked and he could not continue at his job. Turing was later found dead in his home from cyanide poisoning with a half-eaten apple by his bed. It is believed that he committed suicide, although some have speculated that he might have been assassinated.

Once the details of Turing’s code-breaking work became known, he began to get his due. In 1999, Time Magazine recognized him as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. Last year, Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, issued an official apology on behalf of the British government for its treatment of him. There have even been rumors that Apple computer’s rainbow-apple-with-a-bite-out-of-it logo is an homage to him, although Apple denies it.

Turing’s significance and legacy deserve to be taught in every school, as do the contributions of so many other LGBTs. Here is a website that has an impressive list of notable individuals, and a quote that explains why it is crucial that we and our youth know that those individuals are LGBT:

Within the typical secondary school curriculum, homosexuals do not exist. . . . They have fought no battles, held no offices, explored nowhere, written no literature, built nothing, invented nothing and solved no equations. The lesson to the heterosexual student is abundantly clear: homosexuals do nothing of consequence. To the homosexual student, the message has even greater power: no one who has ever felt as you do has done anything worth mentioning.

We will know we are coming close to equality when the curriculum is outed and the sexual orientation of accomplished LGBTs is not hidden from students.

UPDATE: Just as this was scheduled to be posted, I saw this report in The Guardian. A London school is reporting that it has cut anti-gay bullying by offering lessons on LGBT history. The future appears to be now at that school. Read the rest of this post...

Heroes of the Month: SLDN, The Palm Center and Servicemembers United

This past month has been a tough one. The courage required to confront homophobia has been in short supply among our elected officials. While our government was busy perpetuating and sanctioning discrimination by the country’s largest employer, bullies ran rampant and gay kids were committing suicide in desperation. Indeed, one of the most notable bullies was a state official, the Assistant AG of Michigan, who, presumably, would be charged with enforcing that state’s anti-bullying law if the state senate there could manage to get it passed.

Democrats, members of the party that is supposed to support LGBT rights, couldn’t get the votes to put an end to DADT despite holding the presidency and majorities in both houses, despite public support for repeal being up to 80% (depending on the poll), and despite two federal court rulings last month declaring DADT unconstitutional (one on its face, and the other as applied to Major Margaret Witt). And despite promising repeal this year in the state of the union address, our FAINO (i.e. “Fierce Advocate In Name Only”) seemed content to let repeal die. Instead of calling senators to lobby, he opted to spend time chatting with members of the Seattle Storm, as John pointed out.

After months like September, it is tempting to despair of the political process and it can be difficult to envision a way forward. But we must not give up. We must reevaluate strategy, jettison faux allies, generally regroup and then continue to press for change. We owe it to the Victor Fehrenbachs, Katherine Millers and Dan Chois of the world, and we also owe it to the Tyler Clementis and Raymond Chases. The more we can further the cause of equality, whether we do so in the military, marriage, employment or schools, the better the outlook will be for LGBT youth.

On the DADT front, there are three organizations I am confident will do just that: SLDN, The Palm Center and Servicemembers United. They were not awed into inaction by empty promises spoken at a presidential cocktail party, but instead kept the pressure on Congress and the president as best they could. For years, they have been laying the groundwork for repeal.

My heroes of the month keep finding ways to keep the issue in the spotlight. The Palm Center is the think tank behind repeal. Since 1998, it has sponsored research that dispels myths about LGBTs in the military and kept that research before the public with a steady stream of op-eds and press releases. Like water on a stone, the Palm Center’s work has methodically broken down public resistance to repeal.

SLDN (founded in 1993) and Servicemembers United (2005), have been particularly effective at putting soldiers impacted by DADT at the center of debate. SLDN’s recent letter writing campaign, "Stories from the Frontlines: Letters to President Barack Obama" is one example. Servicemembers United’s “Voices of Honor” and “Call to Duty” speaking tours, which introduced LGBT veterans to communities throughout the country, is another.

SLDN has not shied away from using unconventional approaches, as we saw when they worked with Lady Gaga to issue a call to action at the VMA awards, through her PSA and at the rally for repeal in Maine. Right now, we need fresh ideas to challenge entrenched interests. We also need adaptable organizations that will keep up the fight despite setbacks. These three organizations have demonstrated their commitment to doing just that. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Ted Olson

I’ve never voted for a Republican, and I don’t expect to. I disagree with them on too many issues. Nevertheless, I feel that we, as a community, will advance much more quickly if two parties are vying for our support rather than just one. So I take interest when a Republican shows support for LGBT rights, whether it be Meghan McCain, Laura Bush or Dick Cheney.

Three weeks ago, I toyed with the idea that Republicans, not Democrats, would make an appeal to gay voters in 2016 by claiming responsibility for ushering in marriage equality. This strange vision continues to take shape and I am beginning to think that it could become real. Glen Beck and Elizabeth Hasselbeck, of all people, now support marriage equality. The much-reviled Ken Mehlman, the engineer of Bush’s reelection in 2004, is raising major dollars for AFER. These developments are disorienting, but in a good way.

I think Ted Olson has been a catalyst for these changes, and, for that reason, he is my hero of the month. To have someone with Olson’s stature in the Republican party champion the cause of marriage equality is unprecedented. Olson, with David Boies, has spearheaded the federal challenge to Prop 8 and, perhaps even more importantly, has been ubiquitous in making the case to the public in both liberal and conservative media outlets. He has forced many conservatives to confront their assumptions and take our arguments seriously. For instance, check out his interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, where Wallace trots out the conventional conservative talking points, only to have them systematically demolished by Olson. In the end, Wallace capitulates.

David Boies has also been a tremendous ally, of course. Boies’s withering cross-examinations of Prop 8 witnesses turned them into witnesses for us, which is not an easy thing to do. He is truly a fierce advocate.

That being said, Olson is blazing a new trail. Republican supporters of LGBT rights face a much more hostile climate in their party than Democrats do. To oversimplify, Boies’ showing support is like a straight ally flying a rainbow flag in San Francisco -- inspiring and much appreciated, but not unprecedented. Olson’s support is like flying one in Itawamba County, Mississippi. It takes extra guts to publicly challenge such a mainstay of your party's platform. Olson does so with equanimity and seems to relish the challenge.

I have never understood why supporting marriage equality (or, for that matter, allowing open service of gays and lesbians in the military) should be particularly liberal positions. As Olson has pointed out, conservative values include encouraging stable relationships through marriage and protecting the liberty of the country's citizens. Unfortunately, conservative practice hasn’t always followed conservative principles where the pet causes of the evangelical right are concerned.

Let’s hope that more and more Republicans follow Olson's lead. I look forward to the day when I don’t have to argue with his fellow party members about LGBT civil rights, and can focus on arguing with them about other issues. Like health care. And climate change. And immigration. And gun control. And a woman’s right to choose. And military spending. Etc., etc. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Judge Walker

My wife and I were in Roy-Ashburn-land when we learned about the big decision last week. We had been backpacking in the Eastern Sierra and had come down from the mountains late in the afternoon to look for a room and a shower in Lone Pine, California, in a county where 60% of the voters had supported Prop 8. While my wife discussed room rates with a young motel clerk, I spotted a copy of the LA Times on the counter. The headline announced: “Ban on Gay Marriage Overturned."

We shrieked with joy. The clerk was unaware of the decision and struggled to comprehend our excitement. It occurred to me that he, like most straight people, probably didn’t think about LGBT issues much. I thought about how indifference leads to ignorance, a condition in which fear and homophobia can take hold and thrive when they remain unexamined. Being in Ashburn’s district led me to reflect on how he nurtured homophobia there by being dishonest about his own sexuality, speaking in favor of Prop 8 and voting against every gay rights bill he encountered.

Contrast Ashburn with Judge Vaughn Walker, who called for a full airing of the fears and assumptions on which the Prop 8 campaign was based. Walker could have decided the case as an abstract matter of law on a motion for summary judgment where no evidence is evaluated. Instead, he called for a full trial and gave proponents of Prop 8 every opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence. During the trial, homophobic fears and assumptions were thoroughly and methodically exposed as unfounded

Only now, after reading Walker’s 136-page opinion, do I appreciate the import of Walker’s approach, and I have become more hopeful about the ultimate outcome. Anti-gay arguments were shown to be so devoid of evidentiary support that it will be a challenge for higher courts to find any kind of factual basis to reverse Walker’s ruling. That doesn’t mean a higher court won’t find a purely legal basis on which to do so, but if it does, it will have to disregard the evidentiary record.

The trial is also important in the court of public opinion. Facts, logic and rational argument may not sway everyone, but they do sway some people, and no open-minded person who followed the trial can credibly argue that the proponents of Prop 8 presented the better case. Oh, desperate conservatives will continue to mouth bogus arguments that such matters should be decided by popular vote, or that pro-Prop 8 witnesses were intimidated from testifying, or that Judge Walker should have disqualified himself because he is gay. But based on the trial and the evidence presented, there isn’t much room to argue that the proponents of Prop 8 were more persuasive and Walker simply got it wrong.

UPDATE: As we know now, Judge Walker lifted the stay, but it remains in effect until August 18, 2010 at 5:00 PM PDT. That gives the Ninth Circuit time to step in, unfortunately. Let's see what they do. Judge Walker's order is here. Read the rest of this post...

Hero of the Month: Iceland

There have been a number of inspiring stories this past month despite Gov. Lingle's disappointing veto in Hawaii. Let’s recap a few. We can all applaud Ted Olson’s stirring closing argument in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Justice Ginsburg came to court the day after her husband died to read aloud her opinion in the Hastings Law School case. Against the backdrop of the World Cup, "Chosen Few," a lesbian soccer team, has shown enormous courage while confronting corrective rape and ostracism in South Africa. Vandy Beth Glenn won her federal lawsuit after losing her state job in Georgia for being transgender. And the establishment of civil partnerships in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland was a seismic shift for that country.

Each of these stories gave me a lift. But the development that inspired me the most happened in Iceland. In case you missed it, that country’s parliament voted 49-0 to institute same-sex marriage. Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland’s lesbian prime minister, married her partner the next day.

In praising Iceland, I can’t help starting with Björk, my favorite Icelander and perhaps the world’s best known one. Björk sings of lesbian robots and has been quoted as saying “Personally, I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream.”

Then there’s Reykyavik Pride. In a nation with a population of 320,000, about 80,000 turn out for the celebration in the capital. That’s one quarter of the country. Reykyavik Pride includes a day-long Rainbow Family Pride Festival where everyone is welcome and people without children are encouraged to “get in touch with their inner child.” Contrast that with the U.S., where LGBTs are still slandered as a threat from whom children must be protected.

When Iceland was in crisis and its economy on the brink of collapse in 2009, Icelanders turned to a lesbian prime minister to steady the ship of state without her sexuality becoming an issue. In the U.S., all things “homosexual” are still used as wedge issues to divert attention from the country’s real problems. Iceland’s sodomy laws were repealed in 1940. Here, they were only overturned six years ago, and Republicans in Texas and Montana would like to see them reinstated.

The apparent lack of controversy in Iceland surrounding LGBT rights is what I find so inspiring and hopeful. I sometimes feel resentful that we and our allies have to spend so much time, talent, money, guts, brainpower and sheer energy advocating for rights we should be able to take for granted, and I look forward to the day when we can turn our efforts to a different purpose. In the meantime, I know we must continue because who will fight for us if we do not do so ourselves?

Iceland gives us a glimpse of what we can look forward to when our rights are affirmed, not fought over. Admittedly, Iceland is a much more homogeneous society than the United States, so we may never achieve unanimity in Congress about gay issues. But I do think the day will come when being LGBT is about as controversial as being left-handed. Read the rest of this post...

Heroes of the Month: Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga

This couple’s bravery is beyond any words that I have, so I will quote Tiwonge. Upon learning of his sentence to 14 years of hard labor for wanting to marry his lover, he had this to say:

I love Steven so much. If people or the world cannot give me the chance and freedom to continue living with him as my lover, then I am better off to die here in prison. Freedom without him is useless and meaningless.

LGBTs in Africa face a struggle that will require enormous bravery and sacrifice from many Tiwonges and Stevens. Gains made in South Africa must give African LGBTs hope, especially when Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, and South Africa’s Anglican bishops speak out on their behalf. Yet the task is daunting. Whenever a closet door cracks open just a little, it is met with overwhelming force that tries to slam it shut before the door becomes too difficult to close. I think that is what we are seeing in Malawi and Uganda and other parts of Africa right now. Even in relatively progressive South Africa, life can be brutally dangerous, as evidenced by reports of widespread “corrective” rape.

International pressure helps. The results we have seen from the mobilizations for Steven and Tiwonge and against the heinous law in Uganda have been encouraging.

While we focus on trying to make advances here in the U.S., we would do well to remember that our struggle is part of a much larger one that is taking place from Malawi to Moscow to Mexico City to Minsk to Mumbai and to Montego Bay. Thanks to citizen journalists the world over, this revolution is being televised on youtube and facebook. We have the ability to circumvent established news channels, which makes it difficult for repressive governments to suppress information. Moscow Pride was organized via flashmob. Videos of arrests in Minsk were distributed instantaneously throughout the world via facebook. Steven and Tiwonge were freed in part because of international pressure generated from the netroots up.

Only ten years ago, few of us would have learned about a couple like Steven and Tiwonge. Their courage is humbling and inspiring. Here are a few links to LGBT sites with an international focus for those of you who want to become more aware of international developments:

Global Gayz
Pink News
Peter Tatchell Read the rest of this post...

Heroes of the Month: The Proponents of Harvey Milk Day

May 22, 2010 should be marked on all of our calendars.

A state government has decided to honor Harvey Milk and its gay community with an official day of recognition. That state is California. That day is Harvey Milk’s birthday. No, we don’t get the day off, but public schools throughout California will be encouraged to conduct lessons “remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments and familiarizing pupils with contributions he made.” Harvey is only the second Californian to receive this honor; the naturalist John Muir is the other. Muir is on California’s quarter. Maybe someday we’ll see Harvey Milk’s smile beaming from, say, a $20 bill.

Having Harvey Milk Day officially sanctioned by the state and taught in schools is another one of those “I never thought I’d live to see the day” moments that I’ve been having a lot of lately. The contributions of LGBTs as LGBTs have always been in danger of being omitted from history. The broader society has effectively used silence, shame and violence to keep LGBT identities from becoming known, and in cases where those tools were insufficient, they were backed up with the threat of arrest and imprisonment. After all, it was only 2003 when sodomy laws were finally eradicated throughout the country.

How fitting, then, that Harvey Milk, the man whose motto was “come out, come out, wherever you are,” should be the first LGBT figure to be officially recognized with a day of significance for championing gay rights. Having his life commemorated in schools may well even save lives. LGBT youth are still committing suicide in California as elsewhere, and seeing a gay person celebrated may just give them the hope they need to survive.

Many people helped to make this day happen. A number of openly LGBT state legislators pushed the bill through, including Mark Leno, Christine Kehoe, Tom Ammiano and our new state speaker, John Perez. The bill was sponsored by Equality California. (I know, EQCA did a terrible job with the prop 8 campaign, but it does a great job of getting legislation passed.) And the 40,000 people who signed a petition urging Gov. Schwarzenegger not to veto the bill helped enormously.

Getting the bill passed was a struggle. The Governator had vetoed an identical bill in September, 2008, supposedly because he felt that Milk was a figure of merely local significance. But in the interim, the movie “Milk” was released and Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black won Oscars for their work on it. A whole new generation of activists had arisen and was introduced to Harvey Milk. In July 2009, Milk was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In August, Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clearly, Gov. Schwarzenegger could no longer base a veto on the excuse that Harvey Milk held only local interest.

Schwarzenegger dithered nonetheless. He was threatening to veto virtually all legislation on his desk if a multi-billion dollar water bill was not approved. He delayed signing anything until the last possible day. In the meantime, anti-gay forces were whipping people up into a frenzy over the Harvey Milk Day bill, which had become one of the most contentious legislative issues of the year. A special telephone line had to be set up just to field the Harvey Milk Day calls, pro and con. The Orange County school board decided to offer its input, and predictably voted 5-0 to oppose it.

While the water bill did not pass, Schwarzenegger caved in and started signing legislation. He signed our bill on October 11, 2009. That just happens to be National Coming Out Day. Read the rest of this post...

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. Read the rest of this post...