Okay, but I still prefer my old copy of Les poulets n'ont pas de chaises -- Chickens don't have chairs, a great book of completely surreal French comics published by, who else, Grove Press, in 1969.
Meanwhile "buck buck b-buck, we should take our bucks elsewhere and boycott Utah and LDS owned business." There a list to a link in a post below.
Back in the 70s, when the post-Stonewall gay movement was young and feeling the rush of a number of successes, the air started to go out of the energy. GLF ceased to exist. GAA meeting attendance had fallen precipitously. And then the orange juice queen squeezed our newly claimed rights out of Dade County. And the movement had a public figure who energized us and organized us.
Thank you Mormons. You've done it again.
The lgbt movement had become complacent. We are served by organizations that for the most part have a moribund leadership. So many queer folk think that because corporations are willing to advertise to us that we have our rights. Uh, no.
More important than marriage rights, we can still be fired all over the country, with no recourse, because we don’t have employment rights, housing rights or any of the anti-discrimination laws other groups are protected by. While I have fought for marriage equality here in NYC, in much of the country, marriage is not the first issue on the table. Discrimination laws. Hate crime laws. These come first. However, the Mormons have woken up the anger of the vast population of queer folk in places where relative equality has led to complacency. And this means marriage is the order of the day.
Certainly, I understand very deeply the reasons for marriage equality. The man I wanted to marry was a foreign national, and to stay in this country he had to deal with lawyers, visas, work regulations…a maze of madness that was nothing compared to post 9/11 insanity. There are many who live overseas with their partners simply because they do not enjoy the rights of any bi-national heterosexual couple. These folks are heartened by the new awakening of queer rage. And these Love Exiles are organized.
So let’s talk about queer rage and our enemies. Alison Stateman writes in Time Magazine about the dangers of being on a gay enemies list. Give me a break. Nixon had an enemies list. Me? I just want to know who considers my rights expendable, so I can be certain not to spend my money with their businesses. Yes, they have their right of free speech — which the court has decided includes monetary contributions to political campaigns. And I have my right to know who is saying what — and respond accordingly.
Which means I want to know what businesses are Mormon owned. I don’t want to stay at a Marriot thank you very much. I also want to know how many TV and radio stations are owned directly by the LDS church. I want to know which supermarket chain is Mormon owned.
That’s my right. I’m a man who likes to do business with people I like. Which means I don’t want to shop at companies I know contributed to opposing my rights. That said, if I were an employer, I would not discriminate against a Mormon in a job interview. Hell, I once hired an evangelical Christian who took his vacation to do missionary work and who volunteered with Campus Crusade for Christ. He was a good writer, and that was all I cared about. It’s not like I wasn’t out at the office. Everyone, everywhere I have ever worked, has known I’m gay. And the relationship with this employee was interesting to say the least — after all, I’m a member of several faith communities, and I was happy to talk to him about the Gospel of Thomas, among other things. This is where minds change and relationships evolve, one person at a time.
Which brings me to another development today: the Bangor Daily News reported “that more than 120 religious leaders from 14 different faith traditions across Maine have formed the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry in Maine.”
That’s big news. And it’s news that doesn’t get out so well. Here in New York, Empire State Pride Agenda’s Pride in the Pulpit has hundreds of congregations and leaders of faith representing a whole host of denominations and faith traditions, including Methodist ministers in Syracuse, Reform rabbis in Westchester, Roman Catholics in Utica, Buddhist priests in New York City, and proud people of faith throughout New York State.” Yes, you read that right, Roman Catholics.
So I want my community to remember that people of faith are not the enemy. Organized religion isn’t even the enemy. Organized bigotry is the enemy. And bigots can use the already existing infrastructure of organized religion to pursue their agenda.
The Mormons though, are indeed a special case. This is a religion that had to have a prophetic revelation that only came under the duress of legal action, so that black people would be treated equally. It was Mormon doctrine that blacks could not be Mormon priests.
This gets into the dicey area of freedom of religion and the world of the Flying Spaghetti Monster revelations of the Book of Mormon. And it’s not like the denomination of Judaism that I am affiliated with (Conservative) doesn’t have its own issues — with women only being ordained within the last 20 years, and queer folk only being accepted in the last year. But those are fights within these religious organizations. It is when a religious organization takes those beliefs and brings them into the public political process that I take issue.
Want to start a religion where women can’t officiate? Sure, go ahead and good luck to you. Just don’t try to then pass laws that women can’t vote, hold executive jobs, or don’t have control of their own bodies. Want to invite blacks to tithe but not accept them in leadership positions? Go ahead, see where that gets you. It’s your religion and we don’t regulate it. But step into the public square with your organized bigotry and I promise I will do everything in my power to fight you.
And step into the public square and you expose yourself to public scrutiny. The LDS is crying unfair that lgbt groups are targeting their business. Boo hoo.
Writers Alison Stateman see cases like Scott Eckern, who resigned from his position as the artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento when his contribution to Yes on 8 was revealed as evidence of a gay mafia that controls who works where.
No Alison. We’re not in charge. We just choose who we want to do business with. And that may have consequences. Don’t like it? Well, pardon me, ENDA, the Employment Non Discrimination Act, which protects lgbt people on the job, is not law. That doesn’t look like power to me. Scott Eckern chose to resign in the face of protest. I could be fired tomorrow and have no recourse.
And so, to my brothers and sisters in this chaotic movement in response to 8, don’t forget that there are also other important battles we have to win. There are gay throwaway kids living on the streets who need our support. There is homophobia in minority communities that needs to be addressed. And coming out for a demo on a nice autumn day isn’t enough.
The Mormons may have made us angry. So did orange juice queen Anita, and that made us, uh, concentrate. Now, as we fight for marriage, we need to look at really building relationship — with others in faith communities who are our allies.
Tonight the NYC queer community expressed its anger at the passage of Prop 8 in California with an old-fashioned street demonstration outside of the LDS church on Broadway and 65th Street. It was encouraging to see thousands of us to fight for marriage equality, even though it was for another state. How many of those that were out tonight have been part of the marriage equality fight in New York state? Certainly quite a few, since I recognized quite a number from the annual lobbying day in Albany. But many are not connected to any organized efforts. And there were some who chanted slogans that were anti-church.
Now, I am not exactly pro-church. I continue to be amazed that the one thing that brought together all the feuding religions to sit down in Jerusalem was their desire to issue a statement condeming queer people. It's enough to make a queer Jewish Buddhist into a militant atheist. Except that's actualy accepting their definition of queer folk — outside the spiritual. And quite frankly, I refuse to deny my connection to the Divine.
Ours is a community that has been spiritually wounded by the religious establishment. And often, at demonstrations like these, where the religious establishment has truly done something heinous, the pain of this wounding comes out in expressions of hatred for religion and denial of our deepest longings for experiencing the Divine. The reason I seek loving relationships with men is that is where I experience the Divine Presence. I experience divinity and mystery in all my relations (to steal a phrase from Body Electric) whether they are physical or not, with men and women. But that highest connection has been in loving relationship with another man.
This evening I heard a lot of anger. And anger is appropriate. But I don't want my queer community to throw out the baby with the bath water by jettisoning spiritual connection while fighting organized bigotry and ignorance masquerading as religion.
Over at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver has been debunking the analysis that it was the black
community that was responsible for the Prop 8 loss. His analysis of the voting patterns showed that it was a demographic I fall in, that is voters over 45, that made the difference.
But the point i really want to make here is the lesson that needs to be learned from the Obama campaign. The queer community in California created advertising that talked to people who were already on their side. Or just to themselves. They did not get shoe leather on the ground organizing in communities around the state. They did not work hard to engage people in the middle who could be swayed one way or the other. Sure, the LDS poured lots of money into the state. But churches are also communities that are highly organized. Where is our community organization? Our leaders are not deep in the community — and they sure dont' do much cross community organizing.
The very fact that we are even having this issue be fought so closely is something I never expected to see in my lifetime. I expected when I came out and joined the gay movement in 1970 that I would see a world where we felt safe, and were not objects of ridicule, disrespect or violence. That how we expressed our love would not be a violation of the law. I wasn't expecting to see legal recognition on the order of marriage. In fact, in 1970 there were many in the movement who wanted nothing to do with the institution they saw as obsolete.
I deeply believe marriage is important and makes communities stronger. And so I want it for my queer community. I believe deeply in the American value of freedom of religion. That means there will be religions out there that will never recognize my relationships as either valid or expressions of Divine love through human action. That's okay with me. I don't have to join that religion. And they don't have to marry me to anyone.
The mixture of marriage rites and marriage rights are some of the confusion that makes this a problem in the pubiic arena. But we are not engaging the people of faith who would be on our side. I am thrilled that the Empire State Pride Agenda has a program called Pride in the Pulpit, which engages communities of faith and leaders of those communities so that they actually are a large part of the efforts in Albany to extend marriage rights. I would have liked to have seen those people at the demonstration tonight. I chose to wear a star of David and a kippah at the demonstration be be out as a person of faith, because I felt it was important not only to be queer identified, but identified with Divine love. Which transcends religion.
May we open up to the pain of our spiritual wounding and use it to reconnect. May we use this reconnection to reach out to those who would hear us and support us if we learned to listen to them and truly hear their concerns. And I know we will prevail in our cause, because ultimately, nothing can withstand the power of love.
And as I left I saw the line of police cars that we so often see even when there are no demonstrations. As though they were there to intimidate the population. When Ann Northrup was instructing the marshalls on how to make sure there was no violence at the march, all I could think was, there are provocateurs in this crowd. There are secret police taking photos. And the line of police cars did not make me feel safer, they reminded me that the Bush years have been a growing police state, that used the terrorist attack of 2001 as an excuse to further strip us of our freedoms. I can only pray that the new president can reverse this trend, even though so much of this erosion is local.
Ruth is one of my heroes — New York lost when we didn't elect her mayor. But the world won, since she went on the lead a truly great humanitarian organization, American Jewish World Service.
I remember the first time I saw her, handing out leaflets outside Zabar's, running for City Council from a very left 3rd party. Of course, she didn't win in that race. But soon she was inside the Democratic Party and raising hell when she did get on the Council from my nabe, jewish left central, the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Ruth is 68 today. And I am sure the results of Tuesday's election was present enough for her. But best wishes from this old supporter and left handed/left headed queer Jewish Buddhist.
Image credit: Chrystie Sherman
All blessings, and life, flow from One Source — a Source that is beyond time and space — and which has sustained us and brought us to this moment.
Yes, we did.
Yesterday was spent phonebanking for Obama with my friend John down at UFT headquarters near Wall Street.
We called voters in swing states. PA. FL. Then tonight we were off to Room Service in Chelsea where the local queer Dems were holding an election party to watch the tally as the polls closed.
It was a wild scene that began with some tension that lifted as the count clearly headed in our direction. When Christine Quinn took the stage after CNN called the race at 11pm, the crowd was screaming (including one man who vented his fury at Quinn for voting with the mayor on extending term limits). I left at 1am, after our new President spoke to the crowd in Chicago. I still don't know where we are in CA on Prop 8. But I do know this, while the road ahead in this country will still be hard, and while we are clearly still a country very divided, we have a leader who is clearly about healing division. Here at home. And abroad. And that is a real reason to say the Shehecheyanu prayer.
Businessweek reported that in October there were 40 invitations on Evite for Depression parties -- no details as to whether, like the old "Harlem Rent Parties" of the '30s whether guests were expected to help pay the month's mortgage to keep the hosts from becoming homeless...which brings us back to our month-long contest for a new Bush era name for the Hooverville. Details and prizes below. Meanwhile, some other depressing facts from Businessweek about the new Depression: Netflix reports a 10% rise in rentals of The Grapes of Wrath, while unemployment statistics rise to 6.5% (not counting the underemployed). And today the Chinese government, taking a page from FDR, announced a stimulus package of over $500 billion. Bush? MIA, just like he was in the National Guard.
Too bad that Proposition R, the ballot measure in San Francisco to rename the local water treatment facility "The George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant" failed to pass. But you still have a chance to give Dubya an enduring memorial by renaming the Hooverville for his incompetent leadership. Entries accepted through Thanksgiving (tho today, the day after the election, feels like Thanksgiving to me). Details follow:
In the 1930s, as the Depression threw millions out of work — and foreclosures threw thousands of families out of their homes — shantytowns sprung up all over the country, makeshift shacks and sheds thrown together from discarded wood and packing material to house the newly homeless in vacant lots, public parks, wherever they were tolerated. Sometimes they weren't tolerated and the police acted to hide the problem in the name of cleaning up the neighborhood. Right. Well. This is a familiar story in New York City.
These shantytowns were called Hoovervilles, after the president who presided over the worst financial disaster in American history — until Dubya's deregulation led to our current ongoing crisis. Above you can see the Hooverville that sprang up in Central Park. But there were local Hoovervilles all over the country. You can actually download an excellent presentation on the subject for Oklahoma schoolkids at Oklahoma Council on Economic Education site.
This brings us to an art installation in Madison Square Park created by Tadashi Kawamata, and paid for by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Shacks, "tree huts" have been built and installed as art. Reminiscent of treehouses I knew as a kid, my first response on seeing one was delight. Then, as I looked around and saw them in several trees, all I could think was that the money spent on this so-called art could have been given to Habitat for Humanity, which actually makes houses for people. But then, the board of the Conservancy all probably have so much money, for them this is simply play. I think it is in extremely bad taste. Of course, for some already living on the street, these are better digs than what they've got and are in move in condition. I supposed they're guarded at night just so that won't happen.
What is worse, I think it is an unintended harbinger of what is to come in our public parks none too soon. Except that they probably should be renamed for Dubya. Or maybe Greenspan. So this brings us to the contest: What do you think the new Hoovervilles should be called?
I'll pick 3 winners for first, second and third prizes. To be awarded the day after Thanksgiving. What are the prizes?
First Prize: $100 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Cosmic Thing. Why that CD? Loveshack, baby.
Second Prize: $50 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Funplex. Why? Cause it's a revolution I can dance to.
Third Prize: $25 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name. No CD. Wish I had put my 401k in CDs. Don't you?
Oh yeah, I'm the judge! So my family can't enter.
Okay, this has been on my mind for months. Those WaMu ads with the cool black guy who isn't at all like those old white guy bankers who are out to take your money. I remember watching them and thinking about the demographic shift in the country. How all these Mr. Monopoly type bankers look like the Republican convention — old, rich and out of touch. And how the WaMu guy looked like "us" -- the average guy. Not so different from the Apple ads of Mac vs. PC really, young, hip, relaxed and oh, if you didn't notice, black. A brilliant execution of a common strategy to differentiate the product.
And then, as the primary season ended it looked like the election was in fact cast by the WaMu ad agency, with Obama as WaMu and McCain as those Mr. Monopoly old white bankers. Well, in some ways, McCain is Mr. Monopoly -- regulation be damned, the little guy be damned, let's take
care of Keating, the S&Ls and oh by the way let's not regulate this bailout. Except in the real world, WaMu is a bank like all the others that has jumped off the edge of the building like a lemming following its greed. The campaign was just an advertiser's way of creating a non-bank image for another institution that didn't handle our money well. Still it was a good campaign, and now, both sociologically and historically interesting.
Citi tried to do something similar with their Live Richly campaign, which quite to the contrary of its critics, ran headlines that demonstrated Citi understood that the rich life was not about money, but about love, creativity, connection. They did it with words more than image though, it was an intellectual campaign, a cool campaign, like the client who bought it. I know the agency understood the message of connection and creativity as true wealth. And maybe even the marketing client understood it, but certainly what they also understood was that the creative strategy was a way to say something that differentiated the perception of the bank. However it didn't make a whit of difference to the behavior of the bank as we all know.
So don't read anything into today's worst bailout of a bank since the last Depression (note I say last Depression because if you don't think we're headed for some seriously bad times, you should get off the Zoloft) with regard to their advertising and the outcome of either the bailout or the election. I simply point out the way race and age were used in the WaMu ads to define a difference. I'm curious to know the demographic of most of the customers those ads brought in as WaMu expanded like so many Duane Reades throughout Manhattan.
Tangentially, Duane Reade is also in trouble and has been for months. Like Starbucks, they have too many locations, paying too much rent, so they cut back service which makes people want to go to them even less. However, we have to go since they killed the small pharmacists. Grumble. Grouse. Curmudge.
I'm an Obama supporter, and a serious Democrat -- after all, I'm a queer Jewish Buddhist, which in Pastor Muthee's eyes makes me a witch and an agent of Satan. Truth is I worry for the country no matter who wins, since après Bush le déluge.
One of the finest films on the subject of sexuality and oppression will be shown at the opening of the Chinese LGBT Film Festival, Friday at the LGBT Center in NYC. East Palace West Palace ranks up there with Genet's The Balcony as an examination of how sex, identity and power relationships are 
expressed not only in personal relationships but in polities. And it is an examination of how the state
becomes a presence in the bedroom, and in the fantasies, of its citizens.
The story is simple: a policeman arrests and interogates a man who was cruising in one of Beijing's most notoriously busy public toilets. What happens is anything but simple and delivers an emotionally searing experience. The really amazing thing is that it got past the Chinese censors because they didn't understand how politically subversive the film is.
However, if you tend to like action films, East Palace West Palace is not for you. Like many foreign films, it moves slowly, developing a powerful emotional punch quietly. This is not the American was of film making, and for that reason, it didn't really find an audience when it had its theatrical release in NYC ten years ago.
This is a rare chance to see it again, in a room filled with Chinese gay men (be still my heart) who will no doubt be eager to talk about it afterwards with an intelligence and insight you won't have access to if you watch it at home on DVD alone.
I am only sorry to say that I am out of town this weekend, or I would be there myself to see the film again, and to enjoy the fantasy of finding a Chinese husband (you can apply here by emailing me anyway!).
Last night, a former President, Clinton, spoke to the delegates of the 2008 Democratic convention about the need to get behind the ticket (and I couldn't agree more). But the moment that stopped me was when he mentioned gay rights as an equal to other important issues. Given that the Clintons and Barack Obama do not support marriage rights, well, it's a quibble since there is so much more that must come first, including ENDA. However, I wanted to bring up a little history, going back to the convention of 1972, when Gay Activists went to protest at the Democratic National Convention.
The FBI, which was under the control of the closeted and self-hating J. Edgar Hoover, was (and most likely still is) infiltrating political groups like the Gay Activists Alliance at the time. And one of their domestic spies reported that gay activists were planning to bring hand guns and rifles to a demonstration at the convention. Can you think of anything more preposterous? Nevertheless, you can see it yourself in black and white, below, in a document released as part of FOIA requests:
As a former member of GAA I can't tell you how bizarre this is to read. All the more disturbing is the list (see below) that the FBI complied of delegate activists from GAA organizations around the country — it includes the name of Marc Wald, who was also a member of Gay Youth when I was chair, and eventually was chair of the group himself for a brief time. I figure I'm going to come across my name sooner or later in FOIA documents. After all, what could be more threatening to the mindset of those who believe in a police state than an out and proud queer Jew?
I am glad there are security people at today's convention — they managed to catch and prevent an assassination attempt. But given the arrests at the protests at the RNC convention in NY 4 years back, arrests that were all thrown out of court recently, one can only wonder what the state security apparatus is doing (apart from using AT&T to bug all our phones). And how much the Democrats can really affect this steady erosion of rights and privacy.
Don't get me wrong, I am amazed to see how far the gay movement has come in the years since the 1972 convention. But to quote my favorite red-headed president, Thomas Jefferson: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Which means watching the watchers.
Below, an ad run by Con Ed in 1943. The message was simple: sacrifice for the greater cause. Today there are those in Congress who want to open the country's strategic oil reserve to bring down prices. Right - we're at war, and countries that control the world's oil supply are not exactly our allies, but Congressmen want to use the country's oil reserve to win back their seats in the fall. Sell out the country to save their jobs. That was the stupid idea from the Democrats, as opposed to McCain's idiot idea of gas rebate. Glad to say neither idea went anywhere. But of course, the message when we went to war from the White House was simply go shopping. I weep for our nation and the ideals it was founded on. 
The ad above can be found along with an amazing trove of historical print advertising from the last century at the Duke University online library.
