Entries tagged "queer"

Happy Pride: If you’re using that Facebook LGBT flag emoticon, a small request.

LGBT Pride flag photo credit: Ted Eytan cc
Happy Pride! I’ve got a few words for everyone who is excited about Facebook putting out a new rainbow flag icon during LGBT Pride month this June. Facebook sponsored the RNC after many many anti-queer stances by the GOP. A major Facebook shareholder has been a core part of Il Dupe’s campaign. Facebook sent its COO to help give Il Dupe a photo of business support when his new election was in doubt. Facebook also took a long time to address the real names policy which posed a true threat to many queer folks. Thanks to Roma Roma and more who advocated on this issue. Enjoy Pride but know that real LGBTIQQ2S leadership comes from lives lived, real risk and real backbone. Here’s to the drag queens and the civil rights activists and to every queer who came before me. Thank you. Here’s to every kid and every grown up coming out to themselves. Welcome! I care. Here’s to every small town queer, every swishy boy in the south, every person getting policed by someone else’s discomfort around gender.
 
If you’re not queer and you really want to be supportive, rather than focusing your energy on displaying something about you…ask queer folks you know about their lives, about the parts you don’t get to see, that people don’t always post about. Be an interested person and a willing listener to folks who have often been through a great deal. Among many other stories, there are people who have been through a plague and were never really heard by the straight part of the country. Signal boost their feeds this month. Realize that queer people you know are always reading your posts, all year long. Take some time and learn about the gay pogroms happening in Chechnya and the serious obstacles still here in the US for many queer folks legal and otherwise.
 
Queer folks often have to deal with their biggest challenges in the families they grow up in. This can mean anything from difficulty to outright abuse and losing a home and these things can begin as early as 3.
 
Now that Pride is a more popular and commercially acceptable thing to decorate for, I ask you to consider using Facebook for something that truly can matter and make a difference. And that will come from you, your witnessing, your time attention and caring, not from any symbol. Showing one queer person you care and are interested in really hearing what something was like to live through and deal with can make a meaningful difference. Queer lives are often code switched.
 
So this is my Pride wish: that every person on Facebook who isn’t queer and wants to use that flag emoticon thing also is willing to spend the time online to ask, listen to and acknowledge one queer person once this month.
 
Thanks for your time.
  • November 13, 2010
  • In life
  • No comments yet

National Gallery has a show of gay and lesbian portraiture and art

 

Walt Whitman, 1891

 

The show, called Hide/Seek includes Eakins, Rauchenberg, Leibovitz, Mapplethorpe and more.

 

Listen to the NPR story on the first queer show at a national museum.

 

“Without gypsies, Jews and fags, there is no art” – Mel Brooks, To Be or Not To Be

 

HT: @ElyseSinger (fb)

 

What No on 8 should have looked like

17 year old James testifies to Vermont Senate on LGBT Equality.

He nails the second class citizenship issue. Nails it. Please excuse my choice of words.

But forget al the abstract crap about civil unions etc. Here is the point: Are we equal or are we inferior?

This is how we need to campaign in California and across the country. And we need to have lots of

meals with other people and talk about it honestly.

  • January 13, 2009
  • In life
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America needs gay people; my anti-DOMA rally speech



This was the first time I’ve addressed a rally. It was a thrill to stand where Harvey Milk stood and speak some truth to people. Is your dignity up to any one else?

  • December 17, 2008
  • In life
  • 2 comments

Obama picks Rick Warren (Yes on 8) for inauguration

Obama is clearly making as many symbolic efforts of inclusion as he can to govern from the center. Picking an evangelical preacher like Warren is part of that.

I find Warren’s support of Prop 8 cowardly and morally reprehensible.

And, like many queers, I am tired of being the one who has to “be bigger.” We know what it is to put up with ignorance and self-censorship to be “part of the family.”

But here’s the problem we face: we want a democracy that recognizes each of us as equals under the law. We say we want all difference acknowledged. We are not fundamentalists. This means we are always going to be stuck “being the bigger person” when it comes to dealing the evangelical and fundamentalist world within the democratic process.

If we really believe there is room in our democracy for us and them to both exist and be treated with dignity and be different, then our leverage comes from showing up without censorship. We can’t make it an “us or them” game and then claim our goal is democratic inclusion. Not because of how we feel about the immoral politics and “theology” of evangelicals like Rick Warren, but because of our own integrity. Because of what we stand for. We have to find as many ways as possible to make clear that they are wrong. To make our lives, our relationships, our marriages-illicit as they are now- as visible as possible.
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