Gore Vidal died tonight as I was putting the final touches on my father’s eulogy.
Scout’s Dishonor
I was interviewed for a local newspaper article about the Boy Scouts of America decision to keep the ban on gays in place.
Lawrence University professor Helen Boyd, author of two books about her relationship with a transgender partner, said the situation with the Boy Scouts is an example of “people trying to hold on to traditions that are unequal and unfair.”She thinks the group eventually will overturn its policy, but said it would take some time.
“Policies like this are exactly the kind of things that young kids pay attention to,” said Boyd, who worries the Boy Scouts policy may lead gay youth to believe there’s something wrong with who they are.
In how many years are we going to look back & think, “what exactly was the problem?”
GoodWill’s LGBT Programming Needs Your Support
GoodWill Industries of North Central Wisconsin is helping sponsor an event for LGBTQ youth which is a celebration of 15 years of the GLBT Partnership. The Partnership is a youth group that meets and provides support to teens who identify as LGBT and their allies. GoodWill helps by sponsoring space for those meetings.
And now a local “family voice” is encouraging their supporters to call GoodWill and complain about this programming. I won’t give this person the traffic by actually linking to him, but I’ve copied some of the text below so you can see exactly what you’re dealing with. On the same page, they provide the numbers and contact info for the people at both GoodWill and Kimberly Clark. (If you absolutely must see the page for yourself, email me & I’ll send it to you that way.)
So here’s what we need to do.
- call or email:
- Thomas J. Falk, Chairman/CEO of Kimberly-Clark, 920-721-2000, or Media.Relations@kcc.com, or use their on-line form HERE
and/or - GOODWILL INDUSTRIES, webmaster@gwicc.org,1-800-482-0030
- Thomas J. Falk, Chairman/CEO of Kimberly-Clark, 920-721-2000, or Media.Relations@kcc.com, or use their on-line form HERE
- donate to the LGBT partnership
- spread the word by posting this info on your blog, Facebook, etc.
What I want to see is support for these teenagers. Too many local LGBTQ teens have taken their own lives, & the GLBT Partnership is a real light against this kind of homophobia. Do help if you can, in whatever way you can.
Below is the text of the person who is getting people to call these groups & discourage this event AND the LGBT teens. We need to outnumber them. Continue reading “GoodWill’s LGBT Programming Needs Your Support”
Two Spirits
The people who made the documentary Two Spirits – about the Native American tradition of recognition of the kind of people we call LGBTQ – are trying to get more copies of the movie into schools and libraries across the country. Why?
According to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program (YSPP), gay teens are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. And Native American youths have the highest rates of suicide among all ethnic groups.
Pride Ends: Stonewall Narrative
For the last day of Pride, a great essay on the Stonewall riots by someone who was there. Here’s an excerpt:
Coming out of the subway station at Christopher Street, we could hear the commotion. The shoving and pushing by both protestors and police yanked three of us away from the core group; we were left to fend for ourselves. When we made our way into the crowd swarming the front of the Stonewall Inn, we, too, threw bottles, garbage, and anything we could get our hands on. In the midst of the riot, I realized the moment looked and felt similar to the Martin Luther King riot. But this time I knew who the LGBTQ folks fighting along with us were.
As the momentum of the crowd pushed my small group to Waverly Place, a block away from the Stonewall, we witnessed two white cops pummeling a black drag queen. “I should shove this stick up your ass,” said one of the cops as he pulled up her dress with a nightstick in his hand. The taller of the two cops yanked off her wig and laughingly tossed it to the other cop. Spotting us, the cop who caught the wig threw it at us yelling, “You nigger fags get away!”
The wig missed and landed about a foot away from us, but the cop’s words hit, striking fear. And with just the three of us traveling together — the boys were high-school football linebackers, I a middle schooler — and being the youngest and only girl with them, I felt vulnerable after having lost Nate, Sr., and the group. Witnessing the beat-down and disrobing of the drag queen made me want to cry, but I fought back the tears and ran, following the boys down the block.
When we came home the night of June 28, we still had no idea of Birdie’s fate. Throughout that day and the night before, we had witnessed so many Birdies beaten badly. We stopped by the Andersons to convey our concerns and that we had looked for Birdie. Cissy told us that he was safely home, having sustained a number of blunt trauma injuries: a black eye, assorted bruises, broken ribs, a sprained ankle, and a busted lip. None of us know how Nate, Sr., found Birdie in the riot, but he did; we assumed parental instinct trumped the seemingly impossible.
When I look back at the first night of the Stonewall Inn riots, I could have never imagined its future importance. The first night played out no differently from previous riots involving black Americans and white policemen. And so, too, did its being underreported. But I was there.
Hope everyone had a lovely pride month. Have some Oreos.
Gad Beck
Gad Beck was the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. He died just before his 89th birthday.
Under the Nazi regime, he famously dressed-up as a Hitler Youth member, and entered a deportation camp to free his lover, Manfred Lewin. However, Mr Lewin refused to be separated from his family, with whom he was later deported to Auschwitz, and killed there.
He appears as himself in Paragraph 175, the documentary about the law that made homosexuality illegal in Germany.
New LGBTQ Leadership: South + Midwest
There are certainly organizations (hello, Trans Ohio!) missing from this list, but it’s still good to see a bunch of new names and new projects. I particularly like this one:
Kezia Curtis
Detroit, MichiganKezia Curtis wanted to learn more about bikes, but she wasn’t quite expecting to make a community out of it. Her interest took her to Fender Bender, a Detrot-based bicycle and education training program. While the program isn’t exclusively for queer women of color, it has become an important safe space for queer and gender non-conforming cyclists to give a more bicycle-friendly image to the city’s car culture. Curtis became eager about the program after taking classes this year, and is getting ready to co-teach bike mechanics classes to high school students in Detroit this summer.
Have any to add?
43 Years Ago Today…
Romney’s LGBT Record
During Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts, his administration blocked the publication of a state anti-bullying guide because it used the terms “bisexual” and “transgender,” new documents obtained by the Boston Globe and interviews with former state officials reveal. At the time of the delay in 2006, Romney aides said that the document required further review. But an email from a top-ranking Department of Public Health official said that “Because this is using the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgendered,’ DPH’s name may not be used in this publication.”
Especially while his cohorts are busy telling women not to say “vagina” around women.
These guys are a mess.
Trans People @ Pride
A young trans guy out on Long Island gets called a “girlboy” by some young gay men at Pride.
Why am I not surprised?
Because the ignorance within the LGBQ about trans identities – and even basic etiquette – is often just as bad as it is in the rest of the world.
It makes me tired and sad.
So here are some simple rules to remember:
- Don’t ask trans people about their genitals.
- Don’t be surprised if someone you hook up with at Pride has genitals you didn’t expect.
- If you think someone is “really” some gender that doesn’t match the pronoun you’re using, it is not up to you to decide that person’s gender. In other words, respect other people’s ability to self-identify.
- Learn something about genderqueer people. Learn how to use gender neutral pronouns.
- Every person who is male bodied who is tall and wearing a wig is NOT a drag queen.
- There are straight-identified trans people. Some of them will be at pride events. Deal.
Okay, that’s all for now. Although reading yesterday’s post – about how to be a good ally within a movement in which you may have more privilege than others – say if you’re a gay white man, perhaps, for instance, at pride – isn’t a bad idea, either. Continue reading “Trans People @ Pride”