People Before Profit blog

Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 08:07:00 +0000

While the gay movement 'is one of democracy's success stories,' in recent years it has been the 'movement' of homosexual conservatives (homocons) that has drawn attention. This right-wing movement, reflected in much of the larger society 'as part of the backlash' against liberal or progressive ideas, argues Richard Goldstein in Homocons, pits elite right-wing gay writers, even some self-styled liberals, against the main section of the queer community. Queer in Goldstein's view means working class or poor, or far outside of society's designation of 'normal sexuality': this includes drag queens, transgenders, lesbians and other 'sexual outlaws.' 'If you're gay, it's okay,' say the homocons. But 'if you're queer, disappear.' The purpose of the homocon strata is to attack the 'unassimilable' in order to normalize homsexuals that seem compatible with straight society.

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Follow the Money: AIDS Funding and the Bush Administration

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:55:00 +0000

AIDS is a window through which we can see the real agenda of those who run our world. Over 500 researchers have had their government funded AIDS research projects cut by direct orders from President Bush. The National Institutes of Health, the government's biggest group of scientists, hospitals and research labs, were ordered by Bush to cut $145 million from last year's research on important diseases like AIDS, which has killed over 25 million people, and spend it on testing an experimental anthrax vaccine - a disease that has killed perhaps five people.

This is the result of Bush's obsession with keeping the country focused on terrorism. Even members of Bush's own party are concerned with these poorly thought-out policies. Many in Congress understand that it is bad to have politicians setting medical research agendas.

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Harry Hay: The Great Forerunner

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:50:00 +0000

Beginning with the 'ghetto riot' at the Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village in 1969, an open gay rights movement emerged and had been a significant force in the larger people's movement. Before the Stonewall uprising, however, an instrumental figure in the movement for lesbian and gay rights was Harry Hay, a one-time member of the Communist Party USA, a trade unionist and cultural activist. Hay helped found the first gay liberation group in the US, laid a theoretical basis for gay rights, and helped pave the way for the rebellions of the 1960s and beyond.

Harry Hay was born in England in 1912 on the day the Titanic sunk, he liked to remember. Eventually his family settled in southern California, where Harry, who became aware of his sexual orientation at an early age, began to work in Los Angeles theater and movie projects in the early 1930s.

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ACTUP Breaks the Silence

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:44:00 +0000

'Silence equals death.' With this slogan emblazoned on dozens of signs on the evening of April 15, 1987 several hundred protesters, organized by the newly formed New York chapter of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACTUP), descended on the city's main post office on Manhattan's west side. On Tax Day evening, this postal branch remains open to give New Yorkers until midnight to file. Also on this evening, local media provides customary coverage of habitual late filers. ACTUP organized their event specifically to engage the unsuspecting audience of media and taxpayers to show how taxes could be used to fight the growing epidemic. From that day, ACTUP grew to national status as among the most important organizations fighting for access to AIDS treatment.

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Massachusetts Legalizes Gay Marriage

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:38:00 +0000

With the United States Supreme Court overturning Texas antisodomy statutes and the consecration of openly gay Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire, the year 2003 turned out to be a signal one for the struggle for gay and lesbian equality. But the decision, which may have the most profound impact on society was the assertion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to the cosntitutional right of same-gender couples to civil marriage.

Marriage as an institution is not exempt from critique. The gay and lesbian theorists of the early Liberation movement of the 1970s, building on the work of the women's movement, projected that same-gender relationships provided an opportunity to dislodge the outdated patriarchal relationships that were inherent in male-female pairings.

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Whose Family Values?

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:16:00 +0000

The struggle for gay rights is moving into a pivotal moment. Over the past year there have been many victories and much to celebrate. In June, the Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy law that made sexual acts between people of the same gender illegal. Over the rest of the summer, shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Boy Meets Boy brought gay culture and life to the homes of millions. In November, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state could not bar gay couples from marriage.

However, each of these victories has come with a price. The ultra right has launched a vicious counterattack on the gay rights movement.

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April 2004

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 06:40:00 +0000

Inside... On the Frontlines with Howard Wallace Stamping Out Hate in Jersey: Talking with LaQuetta Nelson The New Traditional Family Book Review Essay - A Transgender Primer

In this issue...

This April issue is devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people’s (LGBT) rights and equality. This marks our first special issue on LGBT struggles.

Our writers take on the far right’s attack on the civil rights of LGBT people through anti-gay marriage laws and customs that condemn their families to second-class status. They analyze the class basis for far-right maneuver and also for unity in the fight back. This issue also features an interview with long-time gay activist and founder of Pride at Work, Howard Wallace who discusses the importance of coalitions and the role of lesbian and gay movements in the struggle for gay rights. An essay on Harry Hay not only deals with the tensions in his relationship with the Communist Party (Hay ended up leaving) but also points to his view of a gay culture based on sexual orientation as a basis of solidarity – both personal, community and beyond. Key to Hay’s concept was the right of LGBT people to self-definition on their own terms. This includes the basic right to express their desires and sexuality as much as anyone else. A book review essay details the specific struggle of transgender people for visibility and solidarity with the progressive movement. In an interview African American LGBT activist LaQuetta Nelson talks about the need to build the movement to oppose anti-gay violence. Two essays deal with the history of the struggle, from the enormously important ACTUP movement to other related efforts, to force the government to deal with the crisis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To wrap up, a historical study of the lesbian and gay struggle in the German Democratic Republic shows the difficulties encountered by LGBT people in that country.

A common thread throughout this issue is the recognition of the importance of the LGBT question to unity in defeating the far right. When George W. Bush defended Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania after Santorum lashed out at lesbians and gays as sexual deviants unworthy of full equality, Bush laid the groundwork for one of the far right’s most open and sinister attacks on democratic rights and working-class unity. Bush announced this attack in his State of the Union address last January in which he launched his campaign to ban gay marriage with a constitutional amendment. If Bush and the fundamentalists’ control of state power continues, their anti-democratic policies won’t be limited to attacks on lesbians and gays.

Thus, in this election year as in years past the struggle for LGBT rights has become a wedge issue. Like the fight against racism and for reproductive rights it must be met head on. Defending gay rights is fundamental to defending democracy.

We hope this issue brings PA and its readers more directly into this important fight. On a self-critical note, it has to be said that while Political Affairs has always formally opposed discrimination, the LGBT question has not always been accorded the respect and status it deserves and our theory didn’t always translate into practice. That this is our first special issue speaks volumes.

There are many sources of this problem. First a tendency in the past to downplay the struggle for democracy generally and to see it as moving away from the workers’ class struggle. This relates to basic democratic fights like those of the racially and nationally oppressed minorities or women as well as LGBT struggles.

Secondly, there has been a minimization of this particular issue by placing it in competition with other democratic struggles. In the past, this expressed itself in ranking particular democratic questions giving priority to some over others. “It’s important” some say, “but not as important as the African American or Latino or women’s movement.” This ranking leads to competition for attention opening the movement to division. This has caused much of our work to lag behind.

A third issues that feeds this problem is the influence of homophobia. In fact this question has been historically viewed through the lens of dominant bourgeois culture and that has influenced Communist and workers’ movements. It has to be said that there has been a strain in the Marxist movement in the past that has seen sexual orientation as “deviant behavior” affecting upper-middle class strata. It has been seen as an issue of lifestyle rather than orientation.

It is worth considering whether or not there is an ideological basis for these problems. Is there adequate appreciation for the dynamics of the all-class character of LGBT struggles? In this regard, Hay’s concept of the emergence of a lesbian and gay culture must be considered and discussed. Hay advanced the idea that lesbians and gays represented an oppressed cultural minority. How is this community defined? Had the Communist movement accepted this idea would its attitude to its relative weight in the struggle for democracy have been different? Still more, what assessment can be made of how it came into being, its forms of development and attributes?

In this discussion, important ideological concepts come to the fore: homophobia and heterosexism; the need for sensitivity and acknowledgement of the impact of the dominant heterosexual capitalist culture on the LGBT minority with all its discriminatory implications.

The LGBT question can be seen in two dimensions. First is the issue of human rights. In parts of the country over the last few years, civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights activists fought for and won protections of a broad range of rights in local political struggles. As a result, local entities all over the country passed human rights ordinances that guaranteed non-discrimination rights for people of color, for women, for the poor and for LGBT people. These victories required complex and politically astute multi-strata and multi-racial people’s coalitions at odds with far-right elements almost always supported by capitalist donors. In addition to human rights ordinances, LGBT activists have fought for hate crime legislation that would require federal law enforcement officials to record sexual orientation-based hate crimes. Hate crimes laws are opposed by the far right. Access to medical care, housing and other basic services for LGBT people has also raised key questions related to the human rights denied because of sexual orientation. At every point the specific measure has either been fought or undermined by the corresponding corporate interest. For example, in the struggle by gay people for access to the health care system, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies fight to protect their profits always at the cost of human life.

Secondly, intermingled with this is the far right’s use of differences to divide democratic forces as a whole and the workingclass more specifically. While many straight people might regard the ineffectual Clinton policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as necessary for unity, this viewpoint serves only to pressure a section of the democratic forces to hide themselves or to withdraw demands for equality. This attitude does not create equality now so why would it produce equality in the future? A useful model for thinking about this level of this question is the AFL-CIO constituency group Pride at Work. At its best, this group has the ability to raise issues of equality and democracy around the LGBT question within the trade union movement as well as in the larger society. It does so with the idea of maintaining and strengthening the unity of the class and community forces required to win victories.

If the Bush administration is to be replaced and a qualitative victory is to be won over the far right in the struggle against monopoly capital and for socialism, the LGBT question must be understood. At its base is the central struggle for unity. Without unity around the LGBT question (in the context of broad and diverse coalitions), the far right will continue to rule and the general struggle will not proceed. This question shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought; it must become a major concern of the coalition and union work we participate in. If there is an LGBT component to anti-war, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, worker rights struggles, we must take the lead in finding it and building unity around it. If we accomplish this, we will find that the liberation of all humans is bound up with the struggle for the democratic rights of LGBT people.

Also in the Print Edition...

Book Review - Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right, by Richard Goldstein

Features: Whose Family Values? By Adam Tenney

Massachusetts Legalizes Gay Marriage By Rev. David Carl Olson

ACTUP Breaks the Silence By Joel Wendland

Socialism and Gay Rights: The Case of the GDR By Victor Grossman

Follow the Money: AIDS Funding and the Bush Administration By David Scondras

Harry Hay: The Great Forerunner By Norman Markowitz

Also poetry, a marxist quiz, letters and much more... Subscribe today!

Stamping Out Hate in Jersey: An Interview with LaQuetta Nelson

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 06:17:00 +0000

Editor's Note: LaQuetta Nelson is the chair of the board of directors of the Newark Pride Alliance in Newark, New Jersey. She is a former officer of Local 1377 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, a military veteran and a foudner of the New Jersey Stonewall Democrats. Last November she received a national award given to outstanding grass roots activists from the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force.

PA: Can you talk about what the Newark Pride Alliance is and its purpose?

LN: The Newark Pride Alliance was founded last year by myself and James Creel following the murder of Sakia Gunn. We realized in observing everything that took place following Sakia’s murder that there was a need in the African American LGBT community in Newark for some organization that would address the needs of that community. Hence part of the larger problems that resulted in Sakia’s murder is that young people feel as though they have to go to New York to have a place where they can feel accepted and safe. In Newark there is no place for young gay and lesbian folks to gather where they can feel safe, accepted, where they can be nurtured and cared for. Many of them have said that they don’t feel comfortable going to the YM/WCA where a lot of kids go or whatever recreational centers are still open. They don’t feel comfortable going there because the other kids make fun of them, call them names or beat them up. Many adults do not do anything to protect them. They really have nothing and no one that cares about them. James and I decided to call all of the leaders together to work on trying to bring some relief. We’re still in the process of working on building this organization. We want the Newark Pride Alliance to be an organization that is around for a long time. We’re planning to use the Pride Alliance as the organization that will work to bring folks together to create a community center with special emphasis on programs for young folks.

PA: How does the Newark Pride Alliance work to turn the tide against anti-gay violence?

LN: We believe that through education we can reduce the amount of violence against the LGBT community. Many have for so long had this image of gay and lesbian folks placed in their minds by people who are hateful and do not understand what it is to be an LGBT person. Right now our fight is with right-wing extremists who’d like to see all of us just die and disappear. But that’s not going to happen. We’re planning to have a series of activities based on educating the people of Newark so that they can get to see who we really are, that we are already people who they know. We have families here. We belong to families. We’re co-workers. Many people already have a level of respect for us. For many who are in the closet, these people just don’t know that this wonderful person that does this great job and is so kind and a caring happens to be a lesbian or a gay man or a bisexual person or a transgendered person. Some people when they find that out feel as though they can treat you differently; that it’s OK to disrespect you, to say mean and hurtful things and do harmful things.

PA: So their whole attitude toward you can change?

LN: Yes, it can change. It can change in a short amount of time. My thinking is that first of all they need to have someone that’s out. I’m an out lesbian, and I want them to see that I’m a decent person. I care about my people. I care about my community. I care about the town that I live in, and it hurts me to see the violence that takes place in the streets. I’m speaking about the violence overall not just the violence against the lesbian and gay community. There are things that need to be discussed that many of the so-called leaders now are not willing to discuss: they are not courageous enough. One of the activities that the Pride Alliance is planning is an anti-oppression conference in New Jersey where we discuss racism, sexism, homophobia, domestic violence, violence against the youth and children. We want to get together and talk about things in a way that will allow us to arrive at positive solutions. Then, we as citizens can assist our leadership in making it happen.

As part of our mission we also want to work with other groups who want to make Newark a viable and prosperous place for all of its citizens, not just for the wealthy, not just for the straights, not just for the whites, not just for the males, not just for the adults. We want this to be a good place for all the citizens of Newark. If you walk down the streets of Newark and look into the eyes of the people, some of them look lost. They look like they’ve lost hope. We at the Newark Pride Alliance are hoping to work in coalition with other groups to bring hope back to the people in this town.

PA: What support have you gotten outside of the LGBT community?

LN: Short of encouragement from a couple of groups, nothing. But that, we hope, will change as we go along. It’s still in the growing process.

PA: I also read you received an award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

LN: That was a great honor for me because as a community leader at the grass roots level, you do what you do because you know that there is a need that has to be filled. You do it without looking for anything in return. You do it for love of your people; for love of the town you live in. So when I came home one evening and had a message from the director of the Task Force that they wanted me to come to Miami, Florida to their annual Creating Change Conference to receive the Anderson Prize, I was taken aback because I had never done any work with the Task Force before. I had no idea that they were aware of what I was doing. When they mentioned that with the award came a $10,000 check, it touched my heart in such a way. I had founded the New Jersey Stonewall Democrats and I served as president of that organization for three years and had just retired from that aspect of my activities in March [2003]. I got re-involved with what’s going on as a result of Sakia’s murder. I had invested a great deal of my own time and finances which I never expected to get back. It just made me feel really special that they saw and understood what I was trying to do and wanted to assist me in being able to continue the work. It was an exciting opportunity and an experience I’ll never forget.

The theme of their conference was creating an anti-racist movement within the LGBT movement. I was in heaven when I saw that because I’ve been trying to talk to folks here for that whole time I was involved with the Stonewall Democrats. We need to discuss race; we need to discuss sexism. No one was willing to deal with those issues. Some people think that when you don’t discuss issues, they’ll go away or work themselves out. But I don’t think that’s so. I think we need to have open dialogue on it and include everyone in the discussion. So we need to have access to all that wonderful leadership.

PA: What is, in your view, needed to build greater unity in the LGBT community across racial lines?

LN: Well, I think that the people who are in the majority need to have a clear understanding of their privilege and how in exercising their privilege, privilege is denied to others and how that affects those others and ultimately how it affects the place where we live. We need to have some open honest discussion. I know that it can happen because it happened in Miami, Florida and I know it can happen here in New Jersey. I have a commitment from the Task Force to, once we set that up, send facilitators who will assist us in that discussion. My feeling is that we need to stop all the divisions, people and groups being set apart. Each group has a piece of the puzzle and a piece of the answer. We need to bring all of these people together to work on the issues that underlie the violence. Because when the level of oppression increases, the level of violence increases. We have to take a look at what are the oppressive forces that are at work here: racism, sexism, homophobia, domestic violence, in some ways, capitalism and classism. These are forces that are oppressing a lot of people, and to the extent that they are not aware that they are being oppressed. This is causing the young people to hit the streets; and who they think is the enemy is not the enemy. We have to get to the young people and redirect them and show them how to fight for the things they need in their schools, in their community, so that they can be safe, healthy and grow up with a happy young life.

So this discussion about oppression is at the root of why crime is on such an increase. They say in the papers that the crime rate has gone down, but when you are out on the streets you can’t tell that. People in the streets can’t tell that the crime rate has gone down. I have been in gatherings Newark, Irvington and East Orange of people who have had family members and friends murdered. We have to do something about this. There’s too much suffering going on.

Included in the issue of violence is the violence perpetrated through war. Many of the young folks that are over there fighting in Iraq and all the other places where the US military is are poor white, African American, Hispanics and people from the working class. People in the upper class are not allowing their young people to join the military right now.

On the Frontlines with Howard Wallace

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 06:01:00 +0000

Editor’s note: Howard Wallace is a long-time peace activist, trade union organizer, senior and gay rights activist. He has been a Teamster and recently retired as a leader in Local 250 of SEIU, a large health care union in Northern California. He currently works with Senior Action building support among seniors, the lesbian and gay community and labor for health care reform and rights for health care workers. He also helped found Pride at Work.

PA: One of the earliest struggles you were involved in was the Coors boycott in the 1970s. Can you describe how you got involved in that?
HW: In 1975, two other people and I initiated an organization called Bay-Area Gay Liberation (BAGL). Its aims were to advance lesbian and gay liberation by reaching out to potential allies within the labor movement, the feminist movement and movements of people of color and national minorities.

At one point we overwhelmingly supported a city strike. There were no other community organizations endorsing a city strike. We followed up by supporting the creation of the agricultural labor board, something the United Farm Workers (UFW) were pushing for. As a result of the strike, there was some anti-union legislation that was also put on the ballot as part of a backlash against labor. So we went to the leaders of the city workers’ union and told them that we supported their efforts against this legislation – anything we could do we would do. They asked how they could help us. I said, “Well, it would be very important to let it be known in the community that labor is on our side too and is concerned about our rights.” I said, “Our influence is substantial, even though we are a fairly new organization. It would carry a lot more weight if labor took some steps in our direction.” So they said, “What do you suggest?” I said, “Maybe a press conference to that effect – of mutual support.” I suspected they might hesitate or turn me down, but they said, “That’s a great idea.” We lined up 21 labor leaders from all over the West Coast, including from the building trades, the Teamsters in the Bay Area and Richard Chávez, Cesar’s brother. It was all over the news that morning.

That laid a basis for a good working relationship. The position the labor movement took publicly when we had our press conference was, “Anyone who pays dues to the union should not have their private life the subject of anything of an employer on the job. It’s only elementary human rights to defend the rights of lesbian and gay workers.” So it was a positive statement, and we had strong statements against right-wing attacks on unions.

Close to that time, we took a position in support of the Coors boycott. The Teamsters had had a local strike at the Coors distributor. They came to Harvey Milk and I and asked for our support for the strike and boycott. Both Harvey and I endorsed it. Harvey used some of his influence with bartenders and bar owners in the Tavern Guild (a guild of about 100 gay bars in San Francisco). BAGL pushed the boycott strongly in all the bars.

At that time Coors had a lie detector test they required of all their employees, which included the question, “Are you a homosexual?” I remembered Joe Coors fighting the Teamsters in Golden, Colorado. Joe Coors, who had become an influential advisor to Ronald Reagan, also had been a regent at the University of Colorado and had persistently red baited some highly respected liberal-minded professors. He had sent people into their classrooms to spy on them and write down what they said – a very vulgar kind of McCarthyism.

Before we got into the boycott, Latinos had played a big role in the boycott in Colorado itself because Coors had almost no Latinos in its workforce in an area that was about one-fifth Latino. Corky Gonzalez and the Crusade for Justice and other forces had earlier carried out a boycott.

So I had a strong sense of the potential of this boycott because the main center of activists within the budding lesbian and gay movement was in bars because that was a meeting place and a recreational place historically. It was a meeting place where people could let their hair down and be themselves, except for police harassment, and meet other lesbian and gay people in a relatively safe atmosphere. So we started getting Coors out of the bars. We not only got it out of the bars in San Francisco, but we extended the campaign in about 13 other states.

PA: Was there a positive response from other parts of the labor movement and other progressive forces?

HW: The press conference and the boycott made a major impact on the labor movement. Another thing that helped explain some of the meaning of this boycott was that when Harvey and I were first approached by the Teamsters leadership, it was an old leadership that didn’t want to talk about our support, they just wanted to get it. Then a few months later there was a trusteeship installed led by Allan Baird and Andy Certellas. They made it clear that they weren’t going to have that position and that they appreciated our support. Allen went around the Bay Area giving speeches thanking the lesbian and gay community for its support for the boycott. About that time I heard that Kim Toomey, head of the hospital workers’ union, later the health care workers’ union which I just retired from, had put out a memo to his staff saying, “There will be no more derogatory language or references to lesbian and gay people in the staff of the union.” He made it clear that they needed to have a positive view of the lesbian and gay community. It didn’t mean that all homophobia was wiped away; it hasn’t been to this day.

PA: Why was it important to organize a constituency group like Pride at Work?

HW: At that time, we had BAGL, and I said that it was important to build alliances beyond matters of mutual conveniences to strong and lasting alliances. When Harvey got elected to the Board of Supervisors, he became an immediate ally of the unions on the board. When he was assassinated and replaced by Harry Britt, Harry was a strong labor ally on the board too. Years later Tom Amiano, a schoolteacher whom I first met in BAGL, was involved in battles with us where we saw how the union movement came out against the Briggs initiative, which was an attempt to ban gay teachers from the classroom – real Nazi-like legislation. At the beginning of the campaign the polls showed us losing two-to-one, and we eventually won two-to-one. To this day when I talk about that, I remind lesbian and gay people that labor on a statewide basis, the California State Federation of Labor, came out in support of us against the Briggs initiative early on when the polls showed us losing by a landslide. I could give a dozen other examples of labor being there for us.

There were other things happening in terms of our community relating to the labor movement. We knew that there were certain unions with a significant number of lesbian and gay people. One of them was Local 2 of the hotel workers’ union. We helped that union organize workers in the Castro area, which was the heart of our community. We were successful in a couple of cases and failed in others. But the fact is we went out on the picket lines and picketed for months at a number of restaurants. We really kept people out of those places when we were picketing. Our community supported us. That union at the time had an upstart leader named Charles Lamb who invited me and other lesbian and gay speakers to every action where there was community support presented on the platform.

In 1977-1978 the Coors boycott revived again when the brewery workers went out on strike in Golden, Colorado. I worked with Dave Sickler who heads the building trades in California today, but at the time was a field representative for the AFL-CIO and came out of the brewery workers’ union. This was a far-sighted and different kind of leadership within the brewery workers at the plant. That strike had the whole AFL-CIO involved significantly, and we played a big role in it. By the time the AFL-CIO ended that boycott the sales went from 43 percent sales in California to 14 percent. They’re still largely a non-union employer, but we took some huge bites out of their hide.

PA: Why not just say, “It’s enough to be a union member and fight for your rights and be silent on one’s gay identity?” Why organize a lesbian and gay constituency group? HW: It gets into the whole question of identity politics. The lesbian and gay movement developed without a whole lot of help from the left. I think a lot of it was that they felt they had enough of a burden with McCarthyite anti-Communism to be associated with outcasts like lesbians and gays. It wasn’t the courageous thing, but it is what happened in the early stages of the lesbian and gay movement. A lot of it was simply just not understanding the movement and absorbing puritanical and homophobic conceptions. In fact it was just basically a taboo subject in society in general for many years, when I was in my teens and twenties. It resulted in a whole lot of suicides; I was suicidal myself as a result. There were a whole lot of beatings in back alleys, and if you sought police support, they were likely to pile on and beat the shit out of you. So there’s a history there that marks the community.

The lesbian and gay community really was a part of a counter-culture that brought about some of the radicalization of the 1960s and challenged the institutions of society. Lesbians and gays had been victims of all the institutions of society in the past – church, state, legal, business, industrial, military. So there are strong anti-authoritarian currents among lesbian and gay people (and today bisexual and transgendered people).

The labor movement is insular and tends to be conservative. It needs allies just as we needed allies. When it’s backed into a corner it will look for allies any place, including gays, socialists or Communists or radicals – if those forces are ready to respond. And we did respond. It showed up in some of the restaurant organizing. Where we were not involved in the heart of the organizing, they didn’t win. I remember one sit-in at a restaurant about half a block from my house. It was planned without any input from lesbians and gays. A lot of straight blue-collar workers – good guys – came and sat in at this restaurant, and they didn’t stop to work with us, let us know what going on, when it was going to happen and gave us last minute notice. It was mostly straights sitting in at this gay restaurant. Well one of the things the employer used was, “If they get in here, you’ll all lose your jobs. They’ll be taken by straights.” That influenced them, and they lost the election by two or three votes. Those two or three votes could have been easily accounted for by the kind of chill it sent among these workers who liked one thing about this place: they could be themselves. They could yell across the room; they could be campy. And the customers liked it. It was part of the appeal of the restaurant. The waiters were real friendly; they would joke with you, and treat it like their living room. They were professional and did their job well, but the atmosphere was light-hearted and friendly. It was not morose and severe, you know, Teutonic.

PA: It sounds like not only do lesbian and gay workers have a stake in having an organization like that, but straight workers do also.

HW: Yes. In San Francisco, Pride at Work started as the Lesbian and Gay Labor Alliance. I had planned all along to organize lesbian and gay workers. If I had put all of my attention exclusively on that, there would have been a national body faster, even when Kirkland was in power. Dave Sickler said, “We ought to have a national organization,” when I had raised the idea with him. Kirkland for all of his bad positions on foreign policy was not bad on the gay issue, at least in some important instances. When there was a big anti-gay measure on the ballot in Colorado, the state federation of labor took no position on it. Kirkland sent a letter to the head of the state federation, who had recently become a born-again Christian, and informed him of an AFL-CIO policy supporting gay rights. He got that position turned around from no position to opposition.

PA: You’ve hinted at contradictions in the current leadership of the labor movement.

HW: The mainstream leadership of the labor movement for the most part is pretty insular and doesn’t often reach out to the communities, but when it does, it pays off big time. But they tend to work through their friends in the Democratic Party – that’s their outreach. Those friends may be progressive; they may be not at all progressive. But that’s where they do their main outreach. The existence of these affiliate groups drawing upon people from all unions means that you have a transmission belt. My big criticism is that under Kirkland they’d allowed the constituent groups to be paper organizations or something to help elect certain politicians.

Now under Sweeney a significant reform is that they are allowed to do more community work and do what we all want: build the labor movement. They have a dual function of building mutual support between the communities and the labor movement, and that’s a very helpful thing. No one can do it like these constituency groups at their best.

Pride at Work is now linked with an international movement. I was last year in Australia attending a world gathering of lesbian and gay trade unionists. We’re doing the same thing internationally. I have for years discussed with people the question of to what degree should your life be affected by the fact that you are gay or Black or a woman or so on. There’s no escaping the fact that your life is affected by those things and by oppression. For most of us, I think, that’s not your whole life, but you can’t ignore the side where you have been oppressed, the side you need to express. So in that much identity politics are necessary and inescapable. To be effective you can’t ignore those things.

On the other hand we are faced by assaults on our rights that go across the board and don’t discriminate much. They’re driving wedges wherever they can – between lesbians and gays, between men and women, between people of different colors and so on. So we have to be conscious of that. Again our lesbian and gay identity becomes important because we can become more and more internationalist. Once we educate our communities we can be part of that broader struggle much more effectively.

But the broader struggle is necessary right now. We need to unite these forces, and we need to find some common ground. I do that every day. I am on the board of Senior Action. Seniors and lesbians and gays are very concerned about health care issues, the lack of adequate universal health care, the uninsured and the race to the bottom of the health care industry. It’s a common concern. It is easy for us to build coalitions between seniors and lesbians and gays, and we’ve done it on a number of issues. We’ve supported the health care workers on the issue of short-staffing, which is one of the biggest issues in the health industry. It has a devastating effect on the people in the hospital bed. So there is a potential common bond there. If people don’t see it, it doesn’t take much taking to explain that the health care worker and the patient have some common interests. And often that patient is Black or Brown or lesbian or gay or both or somebody that bears all the marks of oppression in some other circumstance.

This society inculcates in us a kind of compulsive competition all in the name of individualism, but it’s not individualism. It’s what I call atomism. You break down your ties with other people and make yourself isolated. That’s not individualism. Independent thinking is individualism in the best sense. What passes for it today basically is looking at everybody commercially or socially as a potential enemy. It also serves to build paranoia. It does more to break down family ties than anything lesbians and gays could ever play a role in.

We are about to face a national attack. The ultra right is bound and determined to put gay marriage as one of the major issues in the presidential campaign. They say we’re threatening the institution of marriage. A lot of the Democratic politicians, even Gephardt who has a lesbian daughter, say the country isn’t ready for gay marriage. Well, if you were a leader, you’d help make them ready by explaining a few elementary things like that the marriage contract is basically a civil contract that has nothing to do with religion or the sacredness of marriage. You can be an axe murderer and get married, right? You can get married in prison. You could be the worst sort of criminal and you can get married. There’s nothing sacred about marriage when it comes to the state. The state has one interest: how is your estate to be divided. It’s a property question. It moves over into a lot of other rights. For example, the right to visit a loved one in the hospital. There are cities and states where lesbians and gays can’t visit a loved one on their deathbed.

PA: The federal marriage amendment is designed essentially to divide people?

HW: That’s all it’s going to be used for in the presidential campaign – a wedge issue to weaken the movement. Lesbians and gays are overwhelmingly going all out to defeat Bush. The more wedges the ultra right can drive the more difficult it is to build a unified front to defeat Bush. This regime is really a bold, brazen ultra-rightist regime that has to go, but that doesn’t mean giving up criticism of the Democratic Party because their silence is deafening at times. Popular movements and more direct action are definitely needed.

Book Review Essay - A Transgender Primer

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 05:30:00 +0000

Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity. Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox, editors, San Francisco, John Wiley and Sons, 2003.

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Leslie Feinberg, Boston, Beacon Press, 1996.

Since the 1990s, there has been a cultural boom of sorts, especially in publishing, film and theatre, which has made transgendered people more visible than ever. Several factors are driving this, but the most important is that transgendered people are leaving the closet to fight for liberation from discrimination and oppression, often inspired by past and present struggles against racism, sexism and homophobia. The transgender exodus is also connected to the Internet, which has been a powerful tool for organizing networks, advocacy groups and political campaigns. Transgender activism has so far won nondiscrimination laws and ordinances in four states (California, Minnesota, New Mexico and Rhode Island) and 61 cities. This remarkable achievement is also a result of a spirit of solidarity and inclusion that has united many transgender activists with labor and other peoples’ movements, including the gay movement, the National Organization of Women and the AFL-CIO (through its LGBT constituency group, Pride At Work).

Yet the picture is not always rosy. Like racism, sexism and homophobia, trans-phobia is a corrosive force that still undermines unity in working-class and democratic struggles. One important point of friction has been the refusal of the Human Rights Campaign to lobby Congress for trans-inclusion in its pursuit of an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). As a result, the transgender movement has had to fight on its own. As I write this, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition is preparing its annual congressional lobby to press for legislation to protect transgender and intersex lives.

Such laws would help workers like Peter Oiler, a truck driver for 20 years who lost his job when Winn Dixie Stores fired him for cross-dressing at home. They could help staunch the carnage that afflicts the transgender community, for trans-phobia is particularly deadly. In 2002, at least 25 transgendered people were murdered, but 2003 may turn out to have been an even worse year. Many of these involve beating, stabbing, gunshot wounds and torture of the type that took the life of Brandon Teena in 1993. Some are the tragic consequence of ignorance and fear, as in 1995 when Washington, DC firefighters denied emergency treatment to Tyra Hunter, a transsexual car accident victim who died of her injuries.

Those who want to deepen their understanding of the transgender movement, and contribute to strengthening its cohesion and its unity with other movements, can begin with two books: Finding the Real Me, which is of very recent vintage, and Transgender Warriors, a now-classic historical and political analysis that appeared in the mid-1990s.

Finding the Real Me is a ground-breaking collection of more than two dozen autobiographical sketches by individuals from many countries and cultures, who identify as transsexual, transgender, intersex, androgyne or multi-gendered. Editors Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox point out that this book – the first of its kind – would have been impossible ten years ago. Today, “the sex and gender diverse community” has a sense of pride and activism, which is rooted in its growth as a political movement “akin to that of women’s and gay liberation in the 1970s.” A gender diverse community is speaking out, and these are its authentic voices. This is an xcellent introduction to people who do not fit into idealized male/female boxes as prescribed by patriarchal social orders, and who are no longer willing to keep quiet. It might prove a frustrating read for anyone wedded to shopworn stereotypes or hasty generalizations, but its emphasis on gender diversity in the first-person is the greatest strength of this book.

Among these profiles, readers will meet Peter Häberle, who was born in 1969 Czechoslovakia, assigned a female gender and named Petra. But Petra was born with female and male physical features, with neither fully developed; she was not diagnosed as intersexed until she left Czechoslovakia much later and arrived at a gender identity in Amsterdam. After reaching the age of 30, Petra underwent counseling and hormone therapy, and became Peter. Before settling in Holland, Petra lived in Austria and Germany, where she learned her trade as a cook and became active in struggles for peace and for the environment, and joined antifascist and antiracist organizations. Comparing his experiences in Western Europe to Czechoslovakia, Peter remarks that, “the world does not change in this respect: there are nice people and there are assholes.” Although he is not a Communist, Peter Häberle notes that socialist Czechoslovakia was “alright actually…Heath care and education were free, nobody was hungry, and everyone had a job.”

Readers will also meet male-to-female transsexual Christine Burns, a leader of England’s Press for Change, who links her personal struggle to transition with a more general struggle to overcome her conservative upbringing in which “the unstoppable pursuit of the essential had to be interpreted as sick or bizarre, or deliberately and dangerously radical.” After her transition, Burns hoped to assimilate into the mainstream, and even achieved acceptance as a Conservative Party volunteer. But as Burns points out, “I moved on because both that party and I had evolved in different directions, on a whole range of economic and social issues.” Burns has become one of the best-known figures advocating for transgender rights in the UK, a one-time conservative who points out that transgender issues in the UK have gotten a more responsive hearing since the election of the Labour Party in 1997.

Finding the Real Me comes with a glossary of terms that is very useful to those who are just learning about issues of sex and gender diversity; there is also a forward by female-to-male transsexual scholar, and Press for Change founder, Stephen Whittle.

Transgender Warriors is now a classic book by trans-man Leslie Feinberg, who blended a personal narrative with a Marxist analysis of the history and contemporary politics of transgender liberation struggles. In becoming a transgender activist, Feinberg acquired a radical critique of society that linked struggles against imperialism and exploitation to those against sexual and gender oppression. Drawing on historical materialism, Feinberg connects the emergence and development of transgender oppression with the historical rise of societies based on class and private property. From archaeological and anthropological evidence, it is clear that many early forms of human society, based on communal forms of property, created a social space for, and even honored, transgendered people. Feinberg locates the “origin of trans oppression at [the] intersection between the overthrow of mother-right and the rise of patriarchal class-divided societies,” arguing that the “hostility to transgender, sex-change, intersexuality, women, and same-sex love became a pattern wherever class antagonisms deepened.” Feinberg supports his argument with an impressive survey of secondary sources which document the development of transgender oppression around the world, but he also reveals an equally long history of resistance to the crushing imposition of narrow and rigid gender roles. Defying the threat of severe penalties – imprisonment, flogging, shunning and death – transgendered people have persisted throughout the centuries in living the gender roles that corresponded to their sense of identity.

Feinberg also makes the important point that, at certain historic moments, cross-gendered behavior has been an expression of mass social rebellion. In plebeian celebrations of carnival in pre-capitalist Europe, cross-dressing was a common way for peasants and artisans to assert a desire to up-end the dominant social order (the world turned upside down); cross-dressing also accompanied many of the peasant revolts that erupted in Europe up to the 19th century. Feinberg also performs a valuable service to the history of the working class by reviving the memory of cross-dressing revolutionaries like Luisa Capetillo, who was a key figure in the early 20th-century Puerto Rican and Cuban socialist and union movements. From this angle, then, it is no surprise at all that drag queens were at the forefront of the 1969 Stonewell Rebellion, which ushered in the modern gay liberation movement in the USA.

Feinberg conceived of Transgender Warriors not only as a call for transgendered people to take pride in our history of resistance, but to raise our demands for justice within a broader struggle for fundamental change, and he closes with these words: “we will not be free until we fight for and win a society in which no class stands to benefit from fomenting hatred and prejudice, where laws restricting sex and gender and human love will be unthinkable.” Transgender Warriors includes a portrait gallery and biographical sketches of contemporary transgender activists, as well as appendices of transgender organizations and publications.

--Chris Frazer is a writer and activist from Providence, Rhode Island.

The New Traditional Family

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 03:36:00 +0000

Mommy. Daddy. Susie and John: the age-old nuclear family with a white picket fence and a dog named Spike the radical right simply adores. To them, this is the basis of America, the so-called backbone of the nation – and what they are so determined to get back to. But it seems that with a few exceptions, the radical right is not as vocal about promoting traditional family values these days, as fighting terrorism is the new test of political manhood…or are they? It is common knowledge that the radical right, Bush’s administration included, have used the so-called war on terrorism to distract the public from the domestic setbacks they have begun to legislate, impose and fund.

Particularly on the funding level, by holding the traditional family as the ideal goal to reach, conservative welfare reform proponents have created their own Catch-22 for low-income women trapped in unhealthy marriages. Under welfare reforms’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), married women who stay with their husbands, regardless of the relationship and even abuse that may exist there, are rewarded in some financial way. In Oklahoma, for instance, these TANF recipients received free and subsidized housing while low-income mothers without husbands did not. So many low-income women are forced to decide between an abusive marriage that comes with a house or a single family home minus the home. Even more ironic are the child limitation laws, better known as Family Caps. That’s right! The same legislators constantly criticizing China have shown that their remarks are only projections of their own personal beliefs. In particular, women receiving TANF funds are limited to a certain number of children. After that amount, no more TANF funds will be administered, and the woman will be forced to use the same amount of money she used for her previous family size with her newly increased family.

Think this sounds fair? Wait for the catch! Federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, many of which TANF recipients are dependent on, will barely cover pregnancy prevention in the form of contraception or termination of pregnancy through abortion. The little contraception that they do cover is usually long term or permanent contraception such as Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) or other more intrusive practices such as sterilization. To many women, this financially supported pregnancy prevention is nothing more than coerced and forced sterilization – a modern day eugenics. Thus, a woman who may have been forced in to sex by an abusive husband, who has given birth to her TANF limit of children (i.e. reached her family cap), but who becomes pregnant again is forced to have another child for which she will not be subsidized…that is, unless she wants to be permanently sterilized.

And if this still seems fair, consider funding for Title X, the federal funding stream that supports reproductive health care and family planning. Given the circumstances, many women receiving TANF benefits depend on clinics funded by Title X. But with the Bush administration and radically conservative legislators making so many cuts to this particular funding stream, Title X clinics are shutting down and/or have waiting lists that erase access for many of the women who need it most. Even more than cutting Title X funding, the Bush administration has vowed to place equal or more federal money in funding streams that oppose a woman’s right to determine when and how she wants to have a family.

For example, Title V of welfare reform designates spending for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that limit information about safe, healthy and responsible relationships and sexual behavior and replace it with dogmatic abstinence pledges, submissive gender roles for young girls and even the introduction of religion and faith-based reasons why marriage is most desirable.

Clearly, the Bush administration and the radical right wing have a long term strategic plan to rebuild the presence of the traditional family at any cost. By supporting the Defense of Marriage Act and even suggesting a constitutional amendment that would preserve the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, limiting in vitro fertilization to married couples, and by increasing federal tax breaks to married couples the Bush administration sends a clear message that the traditional family is back and should be held on a high pedestal. After all, why are we so opposed to the new traditional family? Even if Mommy has a black eye, Susie is hungry and there is no milk money for baby John who is on the way, at least they have a roof over their heads, right?

--Erica Smiley is national field director for Choice USA.