Gay Soup - Gay Blog

This is the time to push, and push hard for marriage equality in Washington State. We need everyone on board right now if we are going to achieve marriage as early as 2012 for gays and lesbians.

Equal Rights�Washington�took a firm step towards securing marriage for gays and lesbians. The Equal Rights Washington Board of Directors, of which I am a member, voted last month to commit significant resources towards winning marriage.

Josh Friedes stepped down as the executive director of Equal Rights Washington to become the full time marriage director. Rod Hearn stepped off the board, and has replaced Josh Friedes as executive director.

"Nationally, and especially in Washington, there is growing momentum to achieve marriage equality. The issue is so huge we wanted Josh to be able to focus full-time on building the movement for marriage equality in Washington," said Hearne.

Continue reading "The Time to Push for Marriage Equality in Washington State is Now"...

Yesterday, Campus Progress, the student-focused subsidiary of the Center for American Progress, hosted its annual national conference in Washington, D.C. While not wholly based in LGBT issues - Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and Bill Clinton served as plenary speakers for the 1,300 young activists who attended - the conference did feature several opportunities to specifically address LGBT issues.

One panel - "The State of LGBTQ Movements," included Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Trina Olson of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and Kenyon Farrow, who has worked with Queers for Economic Justice. The theme of the panel, essentially, was that just being LGBTQ doesn't make you a progressive.

The panelists spoke about the massive amount of LGBT money being poured into the marriage battle. The amount of priority marriage receives, Keisling and Farrow argued, overshadows - and, at times, cripples - other worthy LGBT causes, like anti-discrimination laws for trans people, LGBT youth homelessness, HIV/AIDS advocacy, the aging population, and local resource centers.

Continue reading "A Panel's Attempt at a Progressive LGBT Discussion"...

Yesterday's Brainstorm column in the Chronicle of Higher Education featured a guest blog by Suzanna Danuta Walters, Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University, and author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America and the forthcoming The Tolerance Trap: What's Wrong With Gay Rights. Definitely read this column for yourself, and especially check out the fascinating comments section, where academics who have studies the issue weigh in.

Professor Walters discussed her recent visit to P-town, MA, after the historic New York marriage vote, noting this:

"But pro-marriage T-shirts ("Put a ring on it") were soon eclipsed by the T-shirt slogan de jour "Born this Way." Now, I'm the last person to dis the wondrous Lady Gaga, but her well-meaning ode to immutability is less helpful to gay rights than Guiliani in drag."

I sort of agree.

Continue reading "Born This Way?"...

In the days after California voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008, the measure that stripped away from gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry, people began talking about how progress had stalled, and how the organizations that were supposed to be advancing the cause of LGBT rights had become ineffectual.

As we celebrate the New York marriage vote and the 42nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, it's time to take real pride in the LGBT organizations that do us proud every day of the year. Working together, this valiant group of underfunded, overwhelmed and scrappy organizations and their leaders, staff and volunteers has delivered (and continues to deliver) historic gains for LGBT people across the country.

Let's start with some facts. By any objective measure, the LGBT movement has made extraordinary progress in a short period of time. In just the last 10 years:

Continue reading "Proud of the LGBT Movement? You Bet!"...

Today is Pride in London, England, an event that kicks off a summer of fabulous Pride parades abroad. Pride London is, for some Londoners, a symbol of the country's progress on LGBT rights. We've talked before at Bilerico about how Europe is no paradise for LGBT people with regard to prejudice and treatment, but in terms of legally designated rights, the United Kingdom is ahead of the United States.

Same-sex couples can adopt children, anti-discrimination laws include sexual orientation and gender identity, and same-sex couples in domestic partnerships enjoy many of the same rights as married couples. Civil marriage and some transgender protections are still out of reach in the country. See a full table of rights that LGBT people are and are not afforded here.

The Independent also recently ranked London as the 8th "best place in the world to be gay."

Continue reading "London Celebrates Pride Today"...

I had a peachy time marching in Seattle's Pride parade. My partner Anne and I, members of a Unitarian Universalist church in Seattle, marched with a host of Unitarians representing churches from all over Puget Sound.

Now it behooves me to make a few notes about this year's experience, just to ensure next year things go downright seamlessly.

Note #1: Our church had a stellar turnout because we began recruiting early. We must repeat this next time. We should start signing people up...next week.

Note #2: I was one of the organizers of our contingent, but I got sick and couldn't help for a couple of weeks. The others carried on beautifully without me.

The takeaway is next year I will again surround myself with over-achievers.

Continue reading "Pride Notes to Self"...

By the end of this year, we'll have three new books covering the shamefully under-addressed issue of the targeting of queer people by the American court, policing, and prison systems.

Available now for summer beach reading, there's Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock's Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States; Dean Spade's Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law will follow in September.

Out August 15 is Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, to which Bilerico's own Yasmin Nair is a contributor. She and activist Ralowe T. Ampu spoke with one of the book's editors, Eric A. Stanley, about the historical and ongoing criminalization of queer bodies. I recommend reading the entire interview, but for those accustomed to reading in blurb format, here are a few highlights:

Continue reading "The Appropriation of Stonewall, 'Bad' Immigrants, & Sex Policing"...

This Is H.O.W. Inc., a Phoenix, Arizona-based 501c(3) non profit organization founded in 2006, is dedicated to the betterment of the lives of Trans (transsexual, transgender, and gender variant) persons experiencing crisis situations such as homelessness, substance abuse, familial abuse, and transition related difficulties.

According to the organization, their current property, which was leased, recently received a notice of foreclosure. This property is home to eight residents who are members of the most underserved population in the Phoenix metro area.

The organization has started a relatively modest capital campaign to raise $10,000 to purchase a new home for its residents. This seems to be a most worthy cause. You can donate on the organization's website.

Continue reading "AZ Trans Social Services Provider Faces Foreclosure"...

Early this morning, on June 29, the Human Rights Campaign gift shop by Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. was vandalized with pink paint and graffiti. The group behind the vandalism idiotically calls itself "The Right Honorable Wicked Stepmothers' Traveling, Drinking and Debating Society and Men's Auxiliary." They specifically chose this morning as a tribute to the 42nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

The New Gay, who reported the vandalism with glee, sarcastically described the group's press release as one that would "win them thousands of adoring fans in the relaxed, prank-loving, not-in-the-least-bit-politically-curmudgeonly gay blogosphere."

In the release, the group says it vandalized the store to send a message to "Gay, Inc." Their original plan for the vandalism, they explain, included broken windows, although The New Gay reported the only damage was the paint and graffiti.

The press release (photos below, courtesy of The New Gay):

The modern LGBT movement owes its success to three days of smashing, burning, punching, and kicking - all of it happily indiscriminate - and the confrontational tactics of groups like ACT-UP that followed in the decades since. Yet, somehow we've forgotten our riotous roots.

[...]

Why, you're asking, did we specifically target the HRC, a massive national gay rights non-profit as opposed to vomiting urine on Rick Santorum or something equally fun?
Put simply, they suck. What do they suck? Cash. Lots of it.

The HRC rakes in something approaching 50 million dollars a year in revenue--their executive director, Joe Salmonellamayonaisemanese pulls in a salary of several hundred grand. What have we gotten out of this bloated carcass? Not a thing worth mentioning and every now and then, they eagerly sell trans people up the river. Seriously, this is an organization that hordes money and does nothing useful. It's a sad, sick dinosaur.

[...]

Everyone: We know you mean well, but stop giving these idiots your money. Stop putting that equal sticker on your car. Stop going to their lame galas. And for the love of Judy Garland's Ghost and Robert Mapplethorpe's Zombie Bones, stop saying "It Gets Better" and hoping for a miracle from up on high. We don't expect you to riot (although we swear you'll love it once you get going!) but it's time for us to quit with the passivity, move to action, build community and care for each other instead of hoping the Gay Non-Profit Industrial Complex will ever get anything done.

Continue reading "HRC Store Vandalism Ineffectively Protests Gay, Inc."...