OPINION

March 16, 2007

Some Democrats knock national party on LGBT issues
by Eric Resnick
Gay Peoples Chronicle

Washington, D.C.--"If your goal is simply to elect Democrats, then give to the Democratic National Committee."

"But if your goal is to make the Democratic Party better on LGBT issues, then your money should go to supportive state parties and independent LGBT groups like the Stonewall Democrats," said Paul Yandura, a former Clinton administration official and Democratic fundraiser.

"This is a conversation [the LGBT community] needs to have and hasn't yet,"
Yandura added.

According to Yandura, "Not much has changed since last year" when he and his partner Donald Hitchcock openly challenged DNC chair Howard Dean over a number of incidents and issues they perceived as insulting to LGBT Democrats.

A month before Dean addressed the National Stonewall Democrats convention last June, he appeared on the *700 Club *in an attempt to reach out to "values voters" and avoid the party being labeled too pro-gay, especially on marriage equality.

Dean caused an outrage among LGBT activists by telling the 700 Club audience--incorrectly--that the party platform of 2004 says "marriage is between a man and a woman."

Hitchcock had been fired by Dean in April as part of a restructuring that abolished Hitchcock's job as LGBT liaison and all constituency desks at the Democratic National Committee. The change raised questions as to whether or not the LGBT community is being better served, or is just solicited more for funds.

The issue has surfaced again, largely because the DNC doesn't answer direct questions about its relationship to the LGBT community. Dean also gave incorrect information again, this time to the Democratic National Committee LGBT caucus in January.

Dean said there are no LGBT exit polling numbers because "people won't admit they are gay" to pollsters outside voting locations.

Exit polls have identified lesbian and gay voters since the 1990s.

Dean addressed the group for five minutes, taking no questions. He did not comment on a promise he made to the Stonewall Democrats in Pittsburgh that the DNC would create and fully fund LGBT political action committees in states with anti-gay marriage initiatives in 2006. This promise was documented in the distributed minutes of the private meeting.

At the January caucus, Hitchcock wrote on Americablog: "LGBT finance staff and key fundraisers did sit at the caucus table, as before, but what is different is that lately we seem to be treated solely as an ATM for the party, with our civil rights seeming an afterthought or burden."

"Given the meeting, it's obvious that we continue to be invited to the table, pay for the meal, but we are not allowed to eat," wrote Hitchcock.

In a January 25 memorandum to state party chairs, DNC LGBT caucus Rick Stafford shared the 2006 exit polling results that Dean said were not done.

That poll shows that nationally, LGBT voters comprise about four percent of all voters and are 75 to 80 percent Democratic--making LGBT voters a significant Democratic Party constituency.
Andy Tobias, the DNC's treasurer who is also gay, responded to Hitchcock's blog comment by noting that as Vermont governor, Dean had to tour the state wearing a bulletproof vest after signing the nation's first civil unions into law in 2000.

Tobias also wrote about the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

"The DNC has worked hard ever since I have been soliciting funds to elect candidates who in almost every instance were *far* better on LGBT issues than their opponents."

Tobias continued, "Of the 107 Senators and Congressfolk with perfect 100% ratings from the Human Rights Campaign in this past Congress, 103 were Democrats and only four were Republicans. Of the 156 who rated *zero*, 152 were Republicans. The difference could hardly be more stark."

Tobias was asked five questions by the Gay People's Chronicle, which he wanted in writing.

"I assume you are asking a similar set of questions of the Republican National Committee's gay leaders and staff," he responded.*

Tobias then said he didn't know the answers to four of the questions.

The treasurer answered a question about DNC funding to state PACs saying:

"A little DNC money was diverted in 2006 specifically to fight the anti-marriage amendments. But only a little. I don't know the exact amount."

Tobias said that is because the DNC only raises federal election dollars.

"So it makes sense for someone like me to give his federal dollars to the DNC, expecting them to be used mainly for federal purposes, while giving non-federal dollars to non-federal groups to fight the anti-marriage initiatives," Tobias wrote.

Tobias said DNC "was able to do more in some states than others" to defeat the anti-marriage initiatives.

"I don't think the same can be said of efforts at the RNC," he concluded.

According to Hitchcock, the DNC raised $2 million from LGBT contributors in 2006, and only about $20,000 made it to a few states to fight the anti-marriage initiatives, which the Republican Party admits are tools to get their socially conservative voters to the polls. Tobias did not deny this.

In a separate interview, Dean spokesperson Damien LaVera fielded some of the questions Tobias didn't answer.

LaVera said the benefit to the LGBT community of abolishing the LGBT liason position in favor of the new arrangement called the American Majority Partnership is that "Democrats took the House and Senate back."

"The days of federal marriage amendments are over," said LaVera. But he stopped short of specific LGBT political initiatives or discussing the return on LGBT donated money.

The American Majority Partnership "works on cross cutting issues," said LaVera. "It finds cross cutting issues [among different Democratic constituency groups] and works on them."

As to how LGBT issues are balanced with those of other groups in that equation, LaVera said, "You just have to talk about results."

"We have extended outreach to everyone," said LaVera, adding that "everyone" includes "faith-based voters who agree with us if they hear our message" even if they are anti-gay.

Yandura says this is part of the problem, and points to the situation in Tennessee in 2006.

The DNC was very committed to Tennessee in 2006 because Harold Ford Jr. was vying for the U.S. Senate seat, in one of the closest races of the year.

Tennessee also had an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot, which Ford and the Tennessee Democratic apparatus supported.

Ford lost. The anti-marriage initiative passed. The DNC, in effect, helped its passage by contributing money and resources to the apparatus.

Ford went on to head the right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council.

"I'm not going to talk about Tennessee," said LaVera.

"I'm only going to talk about forward-looking stuff."

But LaVera also would not talk about the Mississippi gubernatorial race in 2007 which will pit Democrat Arthur Eaves against Republican Haley Barbour.

Eaves, an attorney, is an outspoken evangelical Christian who is anti-choice, anti-gay, and whose campaign literature emphasizes reintroducing prayer to public schools and arousing social conservatives' ire over casino gambling.

Eaves has hired the consultants used by John Kerry's presidential campaign to reach out to social conservatives.

The race is seen by most pundits as a litmus test of the Democratic Party's willingness to woo social conservatives into the fold.

LaVera claimed not to know anything about it. Yandura said that races like the Mississippi race and Dean's commitment to electing Democrats in all 50 states regardless of their positions on issues is the reason why LGBT Democrats need to be careful with their money.

"Not all Democrats are LGBT friendly," Yandura said, "and money to the DNC can hurt our interests."

"The DNC does not want to talk about this," Yandura said, and referring to what happened to Hitchcock, added, "and you can see what happens to anyone who does."

Yandura said LGBT Democrats need to concentrate on building independent constituency groups like the Stonewall Democrats, building supportive state parties, and supporting LGBT-affirming candidates directly instead.

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments

OPINION
(Unedited Comments From Mr. Kramer)

WE ARE NOT CRUMBS; WE MUST NOT ACCEPT CRUMBS
Remarks on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP,
NY Lesbian and Gay Community Center,

March 13, 2007
By Larry Kramer

"Rodger McFarlane, Eric Sawyer, Jim Eigo, Peter Staley, Troy Masters, Mark Harrington, David Webster, Jeremy Waldron, and Hannah Arendt contributed to the following remarks.

One day AIDS came along. It happened fast. Almost every man I was friendly with died. Eric still talks about his first boyfriend, 180 pounds, 28 years old, former college athlete, who became a 119 pound bag of bones covered in purple splotches in months. Many of us will always have memories like this that we can never escape.

Out of this came ACT UP. We grew to have chapters and affinity groups and spin-offs and affiliations all over the world.

Hundreds of men and women once met weekly in New York City alone.

Every single treatment against HIV is out there because of activists who forced these drugs out of the system, out of the labs, out of the pharmaceutical companies, out of the government, into the world. It is an achievement unlike any other in the history of the world. All gay men and women must let ourselves feel colossally proud of such an achievement. Hundreds of millions of people will be healthier because of us. Would that they could be grateful to us for saving their lives.

So many people have forgotten, or never knew what it was like. We must never let anyone forget that no one, and I mean no one, wanted to help dying faggots. Sen. Edward Kennedy described it in 2006 as "the appalling indifference to the suffering of so many."

Ronald Reagan had made it very clear that he was "irrevocably opposed" to anything to do with homosexuality. It would be seven years into his reign before he even said the word "AIDS" out loud, by which time almost every gay man in the entire world who’d had sex with another man had been exposed to the virus. During this entire time his government issued not one single health warning, not one single word of caution. Who cares if a faggot dies. I believe that Ronald Reagan is responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler. This is not hyperbole. This is fact.

These are just a few of the things ACT UP did to make the world pay attention: We invaded the offices of drug companies and scientific laboratories and chained ourselves to the desks of those in charge. We chained ourselves to the trucks trying to deliver a drug company’s products. We liberally poured buckets of fake blood in public places. We closed the tunnels and bridges of New York and San Francisco. Our Catholic kids stormed St. Patrick’s at Sunday Mass and spit out Cardinal O’Connor’s host. We tossed the ashes from dead bodies from their urns on to the White House lawn. We draped a gigantic condom over Jesse Helms’ house. We infiltrated the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for the first time in its history so we could confetti the place with flyers urging the brokers to "SELL WELLCOME." We boarded ourselves up inside Burroughs-Wellcome, (now named GlaxoSmithKline), which owns AZT, in Research Triangle so they had to blast us out. We had regular demonstrations, Die-Ins we called them, at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, at City Halls, at the White House, in the halls of Congress, at government buildings everywhere, starting with our first demonstration on Wall Street, where crowds of us lay flat on the ground with our arms crossed over our chests or holding cardboard tombstones until the cops had to cart us away by the vans-full. We had massive demonstrations at the FDA and the NIH. There was no important meeting anywhere that we did not invade, interrupt, and infiltrate. We threatened Bristol-Myers that if they did not distribute it immediately we would manufacture it ourselves and distribute a promising drug some San Francisco activists had stolen from its Canadian factory and had duplicated. (The drug, now known as Videx, was released. Ironically Videx was discovered at Yale, where I went to school and with whom I am still engaged in annoyingly delicious activist battles to shape them up; they too are a stubbornlot.)

We utterly destroyed a Hoffmann-LaRoche luncheon when they delayed a decent drug’s release. And always, we went after the New York Times for their shockingly, tragically, inept reporting of this plague. We plastered this city with tens of thousands of stickers reading, "Gina Kolata of the New York Times is the worst AIDS reporter in America." We picketed the Fifth Avenue home of the publisher of the Times, one Arthur Sulzberger. We picketed everywhere. You name a gross impediment and we picketed there, from our historic 24-hour round the clock for seven days and nights picket of Sloan Kettering to another hateful murderer, our closeted mayor, Edward I. Koch. 3000 of us picketed that monster at City Hall. And, always we protested against our ignoble presidents: Reagan. We actually booed him at a huge AmFAR benefit in Washington. He was not amused. And Bush. 2500 of us actually tracked him down at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine, which did not know what had hit it. And Clinton. I cannot tell you what a disappointment he was for us. He was such a bullshitter, as I fear his wife to be. And Bush again. The newest and most evil emperor in the fullest most repellant plumage. We can no longer summon those kinds of numbers to go after him.

A lot of us got arrested a lot of times. A lot of us. A lot of us. We kept our lawyer members busy. It actually was a wonderful feeling being locked up behind bars in cells with the brothers and sisters you have fought with side by side for what you fervently believe is right.

Slowly we were noticed and even more slowly we were listened to.

Along this journey some of our members taught themselves so much about our illness and the science of it and the politics of it and the bureaucracy of it that we soon knew more than anyone else did. We got ourselves into meetings with drug company scientists who could not believe our people weren’t doctors. I took a group to a meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom I had called our chief murderer in publications across the land. Dr. Fauci was and still is the government’s chief AIDS person, the Director of Infectious Diseases at NIH. We were able to show him how inferior all his plans and ideas under consideration were compared to the ones that we had figured out in minute detail. We told him what they should be doing and were not doing. We showed him how he and all his staff of doctors and scientists and researchers and statisticians did not understand this patient population and that we did. By then we had located our own doctors and scientists and researchers and statisticians to talk to, some of them even joining us. When our ideas were tried, they worked.

We were consistently right. Our "chief murderer" Dr. Fauci became our hero when he opened the doors at NIH and let us in, an historic moment and an historic gesture. Soon we were on the very committees we had picketed, and soon we were making the most important decisions for treating our own bodies. We redesigned the whole system of clinical trials that is in use to this day for every major illness.

And of course, we got those drugs out. And the FDA approval for a new drug that once took an average of 7-12 years can now be had in less than one. ACT UP did all this. My children—you must forgive me for coming to think of them as that—most of whom are dead. You must have some idea what it is like when your children die. Most of them did not live to enjoy the benefits of their courage. They were courageous because they knew they might die. They could and were willing to fight because they felt they soon would die and there was nothing to lose, and maybe everything to gain.

And of course funeral after funeral after funeral. We made funerals into an art form, too, just as our demonstrations, our street theater, our graphics, many of which are now in museums and art galleries, were all art forms as well. God, we were so creative as we were dying.

It is important to celebrate. But it is hard to do so when so many of us aren’t here. At least that is the way for me. I know we are twenty years old. It seems impossible to me that it has been so many years. I remember much of it as if it were yesterday. It is difficult to celebrate when one has such potent, painful tragic memories. We held so many of each other in our arms. One never forgets love like that. Make no mistake, AIDS was and is a terrible tragedy that need not have escalated into a worldwide plague. There were 41 cases when I started. There are some 75 million now. It takes a lot of help from a lot of enemies to rack up a tally like that.

Rodger McFarlane made this list of ACT UP’s achievements:

accelerated approval of investigational new drugs; expanded compassionate use of experimental drugs and new applications of existing drugs; mathematical alternatives to the deadly double-blind- placebo-controlled studies of old; rigorous statistical methods for community-based research models; accelerated and expanded research in basic immunology, virology, and pharmacology; public exposure of and procedural remedies to sweetheart practices between the NIH and FDA on one hand and pharmaceutical companies on the other (now, with our
own decline, unfortunately out of control again); institutionalized consumer oversight and political scrutiny of FDA approvals for all drug classes and for vast NIH appropriations for research in every disease; state drug assistance programs; and vastly expanded consumer oversight of insurance and Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement formularies. Each of these reforms profoundly benefits the health and survival of hundreds of millions of people far, far beyond AIDS and will do so for generations to come.

To this I might add that out of ACT UP came Needle Exchange and Housing Works and AID for AIDS and The AIDS Treatment Data Network and the Global AIDS Action Committee and HealthGAP and TAG, too, the Treatment Action Group.

Perhaps you did not know we did all this. As we know, historians do not include gay anything in their histories. Gays are never included in the history of anything.

Dr. Fauci now tells the world that modern medicine can be divided into two periods. Before us and after us. "ACT UP put medicine back in the hands of the patients, which is where it belongs," he said to the New Yorker.

How could a population of gay people, call us the survivors, or the descendents, of those who did all this, be so relatively useless now? Maybe useless is too harsh. Ineffectual. Invisible. No, useless is not too harsh. Oh let us just call ourselves underutilized. As long as I live I will never figure this out.

Then, we only had the present. We were freed of the responsibility of thinking of the future. So we were able to act up.

Now we only have our future. Imagine thinking that way. Those who had no future now only have a future. That includes not only everyone in this room but gay people everywhere. We are back to worrying about what "they" think about us. It seems we are not so free, most of us, to act up now. Our fear had been turned into energy. We were able to cry out fuck you fuck you fuck you. Troy Masters, the publisher of LGNY, wrote to me: ACT UP recognized evil and confronted it loudly.

Yes, we confronted evil. For a while.

We don’t say fuck you, fuck you, fuck you anymore. At least so anyone can hear.

Well the evil things that made me angry then still make me angry now. I keep asking around, doesn’t anything make you angry, too? Doesn’t anything make anyone angry? Or are we back in 1981, surrounded and suffocated by people as uninterested in saving their lives as so many of us were in 1981. I made a speech and wrote a little book called The Tragedy of Today’s Gays about all this. That was about two years ago. Lots of applause. Lots of thanks. No action.

There was a Danish study a few weeks ago. The life expectancy after infection by HIV is now thirty-five years. Thirty five years. Can you imagine that? That is because of ACT UP. A bunch of kids who learned how to launch street actions and release a propaganda machine and manipulate media masterfully, and use naked coercion, occasional litigations, and adept behind-the-scenes maneuverings that led to sweeping institutional changes with vast ramifications. We drove the creation of hundreds of AIDS service organizations across the country, leveraging hundreds of millions of dollars a year and fielding tens of thousands of volunteers, all the while amassing a huge body of clinical expertise and moral authority unprecedented among any group of patients and advocates in medical history.

We did all this. And we got all those drugs. The NIH didn’t get all those drugs. The FDA didn’t get all those drugs. We got all those drugs. And we rammed them down their fucking throats until they approved them and released them.

It was very useful, old ACT UP.

It is no longer useful. The old ACT UP is no longer useful enough. There are not enough of us. Few people go to meetings. Our chapters have evaporated. Our voice has dimmed in its volume and its luster. Our protests are no longer heard.

We must be heard! We must be.

We are not crumbs! We should not accept crumbs! We must not accept crumbs! There is not one single candidate running for public office anywhere that deserves our support. Not one. Every day they vote against us in increasingly brutal fashion. I will not vote for a one of them and neither should you. To vote for any one of them, to lend any one of them your support, is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us. And we must let every single one of them know that we will not support them. Perhaps it will win them more votes, that faggots won’t support them, but at least we will have our self- respect. And, I predict, the respect of many others who have long wondered why we allow ourselves to be treated so brutally year after year after year, as they take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood. There is not one single one of them, candidate or major public figure, that, given half a chance, would not sell us down the river. We have seen this time after time, from Bill Clinton with his Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and his full support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act (talk about selling us down the river), to Hillary with her unacceptable waffling on all our positions. The woman does not know how to make simple declarative statements that involve definite details. (Read David Mixner on Hillary and Bill. It’s scary. Go to his site: DMixner@AOL.com). To Ann Coulter calling people faggots and queers and getting away with it. As Andrew Sullivan responded to her:

"The emasculation of men in minority groups is an ancient trope of the vilest bigotry!" To this very morning’s statement to the world by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, that he believes the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops fighting right this very minute for our country are immoral. That our country’s top soldier can say something like this out loud and get away with it is disgusting.

If I am going after Hillary and Bill Clinton it is because I think she just might win, or should I say they might win. Two for the price of one will prove irresistible. Thus it is important to go after the Clintons now, while it still might be possible to negotiate their acceptance and support of our concerns, nay our demands, instead of climbing on their bandwagon that is akin to a juggernaut smashing all in their way as David Mixner describes. Too many gay and lesbians and our organizations are giving her fundraisers and kissing her ass too unreservedly and way, way too early. As for Bill, yes, he is at last doing great work for AIDS in Africa but it sure would be nice if we had his generics in America for all those who fall through the cracks of the Ryan White Drug Assistance Program. Have you noticed how fashionable it is for foundations and the two Bills, Gates and Clinton, to do AIDS good deeds in Africa and obviously much too unfashionable to do them in America? I don’t like this woman, but I could, if she wasn’t cockteasing us just like her husband did.

We are not crumbs! We must not accept crumbs!

The CDC says some 300,000 men who had sex with men have died during the past 20 years. If I knew at last 500 of them, I know this CDC figure is a lie. Just as I know the CDC figure of gay people as only several percentage points of the population is a lie, instead of the at least some 20% of the population that the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School calculates it is possible to maintain. Who says that intentional genocide of "us" by "them" isn’t going on? They don’t want us here. When are we going to face up to this?

We are discriminated against at every turn. As we prepare to die the older among us will be taxed beyond belief. That prevents us leaving our estates to our lovers or to gay charities. God forbid the latter should happen, that gays with any money should endow gay organizations with all their gay riches. Do you think I am being too elitist in this concern? Well, you are using this gay and lesbian community center now. How do you think it supports itself? Taxation without representation is what led to our Revolutionary War. Well, way over two hundred years later gay people still have no equality.

Gays are equal to nothing good or acceptable in this country. It is criminal how they treat us. We get further and further from progress and equality with each passing year. George Bush will leave a legacy of hate that will take who knows how many eons to cleanse away. He has packed every court in the land with a conservative judge who serves for life. He has staffed every single government job from high to low with a conservative inhabitant who, under the laws of Civil Service, cannot be removed. So even with the most tolerant of new Presidents we will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate for as long as most of us will live.

Congresspersons now call judges to pressure them, which is illegal, and if the President doesn’t like a judge’s record, he fires them, which is also illegal. The Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality in any foreseeable future, and it is from the Supreme Court that it must come. They are the law of this land that will not make us equal. If that is not hate, if what I am talking about does not represent hate, I do not know what hate is. We are crumbs to them, if even that.
This is not just about gay marriage. Political candidates only talk about gay marriage, making nicey-nice maybes. But they are not talking about gay equality. And we are not demanding that they talk about the kind of equality I am talking about, marriage or no marriage. Gay marriage is a useful red herring for them to pretend they are talking about gays when they are not. For some reason our movement has confined its feeble demands to marriage. Well, my lover and I don’t want to get married just yet but we sure want to be equal.

I wish I could make all gay people everywhere accept this one fact I know to be an undisputed truth. We are hated. Haven’t enough of us died for all of us to believe this? Some seventy million cases of HIV were all brewed in a cauldron of hate.

Mark Harrington said to me last week that one of the great things about ACT UP was that it made us proud to be gay. Our activism came out of love. Our activism came out of our love for each other as we tried to take care of each other, and to keep each other alive.

No one is looking out for us anymore the way ACT UP looked out for us once upon a time.
ACT UP is not saving us now. This is not meant as finger- pointing or blame. It just is. No one goes to meetings and our chapters all over the globe have almost disappeared. And we must recognize this, I beg of you.

I don’t want to start another organization. And yet I know we must start another organization. Or at the very least administer major shock therapy to this one.

And I know that if we do go down a new road, we must do it right and just accept this fact that the old ACT UP we knew is no longer useful enough to the needs that we have now and move on to reparative therapy.

I also know that any organization that we start now must be an army. You have resisted this word in the past. Perhaps now that the man in charge of America’s army is calling you immoral you won’t resist it army anymore. We must field an organized army with elected leaders and a chain of command. It must be a gay army with gay leaders fighting for gay people under a gay flag, in gay battle formations against our common enemies, uncontaminated by any fear of offending or by any sense that this might not be the time to say what we really need to say.

We must cease our never-ending docile cooperation with a status quo that never changes in its relationship to us. We are cutting our own throats raising money for Hillary or Obama or Kerry or, God forbid, Giuliani, or anyone until they come out in full support of all the things I am talking about, not just some tepid maybe-maybes about second-class partnership pieces of worthless paper. Immigration. Taxation without representation.

Safety. Why aren’t they all supporting Hate Crimes bills that include us? Twenty-thousand Christian youths now make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls. I am sorry but this is not free speech. This is another version of hate. If any organization sent 20,000 Christian youths to pray for Jewish souls they would lose their tax-exempt status, or they would have before George Bush. Do we protest? It is very wearying to witness our carrying on so passively year after year, particularly now that all of us—and I mean all of us— have been given the gift of staying alive. I know that young gays don’t think this way, but many of us died to give you this gift of staying alive. You are alive because of us. I wish you would see this. And we all owe it to the dead as well as to ourselves to continue a fight that we have stopped fighting.
We do not seem to realize that the more we become visible, the more that more and more of us come out of the closet, the more vulnerable we become to the more and more increasingly visible hate against us. In other words, the more they see us, the more they hate us. The more new gays they see, the more new ways they find to hate us. We do not seem to realize that the more we urge each other to come out—which indeed we must never stop doing—the more we must protect ourselves for and from our exits from our closet on to the stage of the world that hates us more and more. I don’t think we realize this and we must. We must.

Why do I think we need the word "army"? Because it connotes strength and discipline, which we desperately need to convey. Because it scares people, and God knows nobody is all that scared of us.

Which they were for a while. The drug companies were afraid of us.

The NIH and FDA were afraid of us. Closeted everybodies were afraid of us. No more. Our days of being democratic to a flaw at those endless meetings must cease. It has been a painful lesson to learn but democracy does not protect us. Unity does. United commitment to confront our many foes.

We never consider the establishment of a gay army, just as in the approach of the Holocaust the Jews did not consider one, even though urged, no begged, no implored to do so by their great philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who had the tragic misfortune to see what was coming and to not have her warnings heeded or even believed. Why only last week Mr. Obama implored his people, albeit with a certain timidity: "Put on your marching shoes! Go do some politics! Change this country!" If all the blacks in this country did all that, he would not only win but they would have the power they never have.

What we refuse to see is what is going on around us, believing it is happening to others but not believing that it can happen to us: the use and defense of torture, concentrations of prisoners regarded as threats to America in camps where they languish indefinitely beyond the reach of law; hidden "duplicate" governments existing under the auspices of the homeland security state, shadowing the constitutional government but secret and free of legal constraint." (Waldron). You don’t think any of this can happen to you. I do. You don’t think that any of those "political" prisoners shipped off to camps are gay? You’re wrong. Much of the Episcopalian church is now aligning itself with Nigeria. Homosexuality is a punishable crime in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in a hundred different countries, as is any activism on behalf of it.

Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The Nigerian head archbishop of the Episcopalian church believes we should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we’d have to worry about Episcopalians. Well, whoever thought we’d have to worry about Wyoming. Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming.

When will we acknowledge that we are constantly being lied to? We must have fiercely observant eyes. We must understand and confront the unprecedented, with "attentive facing up to, and resistance of, reality—whatever that might be."(Arendt) Intelligent people—and gays are certainly that—have proved more than once that we are less capable of judging for ourselves than almost any other social group. When a conservative columnist can get away with calling presidential candidates "a faggot" and "a queer," without any serious reprisals, than why can’t we see that we are in trouble? When the New York Times does not run an obituary on quite possibly the most famous lesbian in modern times, Barbara Gittings, then we are in trouble.
When I can’t get US News and World Report to publish a letter about an insidiously homophobic cover story they wrote on Jamestown, we’re in trouble. When our country’s top military officer can call us immoral, we’re in trouble.

No, ACT UP is not saving us now. No one is saving us now.

We all think we have straight friends. We think if we have straight friends then everything is OK. But these friends are not protesting with us. They aren’t fighting with us. They enjoy the freedoms they have with their marriages and all their fringe benefits. Yes, they like us but are they going to sacrifice any of their freedoms to get us ours? Of course not. And what’s more we should not expect them to. Even though it sure would be nice; we’ve fought for them and theirs often enough.

The old ACT UP model served us well but it is time to take the next step. I am not saying that there are not more fights to be had for AIDS. There are and we must continue to fight them.
Infections are up again. Prevention efforts are not good enough. It is still illegal for HIV foreigners to enter America. But these issues no longer appear to excite sufficient participation. Few people come to meetings and our chapters have disappeared. Many of us have tried to figure out what happened to us and why we ceased to be what we were. We all have thoughts about what happened but as I said I think its time to stop trying to figure it out and just move on.

Expanding our demands will hopefully not silence our past concerns but invite increased numbers to meld these newer concerns I am talking about into a stronger, total mix.
ACT UP requires a new model to do this. A new model that will allow for different kinds of actions, tactics and issues, not just HIV. I am not asking you if you even want another organization.

I am hoping that you are smart enough to realize—eureka!—that the great deeds we once accomplished which changed history can be accomplished again. For we are still facing the same danger, our extermination, and from the same enemy, our own country, our own country’s "democratic process." Day after day our country declares that we are not equal to anything at all. All the lives we saved are nothing but crumbs if we still aren’t free. And we still aren’t free.
Gay people still aren’t free.

Go to Queens, go to Jamaica, go to Iran, go to Wyoming, we still aren’t free. How many places in this country, in this world, can we walk down a street holding a beloved’s hand? I went to my nephew’s wedding in Jamaica twenty years ago. They are out for blood against gay men in Jamaica now. They do it to you the minute you get off the plane. There are men with iron crowbars waiting to maim you at the airport. Does our government protest? Of course not. Who cares if a faggot dies. They are actually beheading gays in Iran. This is progress?

The European Parliament which in the past had played a key role in advancing gay rights worldwide, is about to be taken over by conservative delegates that will strengthen their neo-fascist bloc, which will actually call for capital punishment for homosexuals. You don’t think that any of this can’t happen here? I do. Our country’s top soldier said so this morning. We are immoral. The Mayor of Moscow calls us dirt. Polish leaders call us scum. Ann Coulter calls us sissies. General Pace calls us immoral. Who cares if a faggot dies. A gay person murdered in Iraq or Libya or Nigeria or Jamaica or Ghana or Saudi Arabia is the same as a gay person murdered here. Why do I harp so on gay murders in foreign countries. Because gay murders in Iran have a way of becoming gay hate in Paris and London and Chicago and in the highest rank of US Army. Particularly when our own government ignores all attacks against us anywhere. Who cares of a faggot dies. It is all one world now. The disposal of gay people is an equal opportunity employer and hate is a disease that spreads real fast. I repeat: a gay kid murdered anywhere is a gay kid murdered here.

Yes, we have many things to worry about now besides HIV.

You can get married now in New Jersey but New York judges handed down some of the most bigoted "legal" hate outside of Iran, where as I have just said they are now actually decapitating gay men.

They are stringing up gay boys and putting masks over their heads and hanging them as Saddam Hussein was hanged. For being gay. Does our government protest? Does any government protest? Of course not. Who cares if a faggot dies. Do you have friends in love with partners forbidden from entering America? To be separated by force from the one you love is one of the saddest things I can think of. What kind of police state do we live in? This is not right. This is wrong. It does not happen for straight lovers. It can only happen to gays who live in a country where we are hated. How many years do we have to endure being treated like this?

If countries like Australia and New Zealand recognize relationship residencies for mixed nationalities, why can’t we? There was not one single demonstration against those New York judges, or indeed against any judges who are such dictators of our lives, where they work and live and sleep each night. They cannot be allowed to continue to hate us so legally. America cannot be allowed to continue to hate us so actively. It is not right. It is wrong. Don’t right and wrong mean anything anymore? Why are we not specifically included in Hate Crimes laws in many states? How many Matthew Shepherds must there be before we are specifically included in Hate Crime laws in every state?

We have right on our side and we must make everyone know it.

If ACT UP is to stand for anything, let it stand for our Army Corps to Unleash Power.
Think about it. Think about all of this. Please.

We are the only people in America that it is socially acceptable to hate and discriminate against. Indeed so much hate of us exists that it is legally acceptable to pass constitutional amendments to hate us even more. This is democracy? This is how our courts and laws protect us? These are the equal rights for all that America’s Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

The biggest enemy we must fight continues to be our own government. How dare we stop? We cannot stop. We are not crumbs and we must not accept crumbs and we must stop acting like crumbs.

ACT UP is the most successful grass roots organization that ever lived. Period. There never was, never has been one more successful that has achieved as much as we. We did it before. We can do it again. But to be successful, activism must be practiced every day. By a lot of people. It made us proud once. It united us.

I constantly hear in my ears the refrain: "an army of lovers cannot lose." Then why are we losing so? We must trust each other to an extent we never have, enough to allow the appointment of leaders and a chain of command to stay on top of things and keep some sort of order so that we not only don’t self destruct as we seem to have more or less done, but also, this time, as we did not do before, institutionalize ourselves for longevity.

I am very aware that as I spin this out I am creating reams of unanswered questions. Well, we didn’t know when we first met in this very room twenty years ago what we wanted ACT UP to become.

But we figured it out. Bit by bit and piece by piece we put it together.

We have a lot to thrash out and codify in a more private fashion.

Armies shouldn’t show all their cards to the world. Many parts of the old ACT UP will still serve us: the choices of a variety of issues to obsess us in the detail that we became famous for; the use of affinity groups that develop their own forms of guerilla warfare. Our call for Health Care for All must still be sought. I have a personal bug up my ass that gay history is not taught in the schools. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were gay. It may be up to activists to ram this truth down the throats of America because gay historians are too timid to. Timidity is so boring, don’t you agree?

Much of what I am calling for involves laws, changing them, getting them. We need to cobble together an omnibus gay rights bill and then hold every politician’s feet to this fire until he or she supports it. We’d find out fast enough who are friends aren’t. TAG and AmFAR once cobbled together a bunch of research priorities into a bill that they got through congress.
How about this: Jim Eigo wrote me: "a full generation after AIDS emerged as a recognizable disease, having sex still poses the same risk for HIV infection or reinfection. Having a sexual encounter with another person—a central, meaningful activity in most people’s lives—has been shadowed by fear, by the prospect of a long-term disease and by a whole new reason for guilt for more than a quarter of a century now. How have we allowed this unnatural state of affairs to persist for so long? Where are the 21st century tools for preventing the sexual transmission of HIV: cheap, effective, and utterly unobtrusive.

Lovers deserve nothing less. Instead of sinking time, effort, and money into excavating the fossils of its ancient achievement, ACT UP might consider marking its birthday by mounting a fresh drive to remind government and industry that people have a right to sex without fear, without being forced to make a choice between pleasure and health. It’s an issue that might actually speak across the divides of generation, race, gender and sero-status. And it might regain for the organization some measure of the relevance it once had for the grassroots activists that gave of themselves as if their lives depended on it, because they really did."

Jim is calling for nothing less than the reclamation of our sex lives. What an utterly fantastic notion, or shall I now say goal? Why even raising this issue will find us hated even more. I am so ready for another organized fight.

Are you beginning to see how all this that I am talking about can be streamed into one new ACT UP army?

I have asked Eric to convey the main difference of what is available to us now that we did not have to work with in the past:

"In the age of the internet we can do much of what we did in our meetings and on the streets, on the world wide web.

"The information technology available today could help end the need for those endless meetings.
"Creating a blog could, in fact, incorporate even more voices and varieties of opinions and ideas than any meeting ever could.

"Where ACT UP once had chapters in many cities, we could now involve thousands more via simple list-serves and blogs. We can draw in students and schools and colleges all over the world. It is the young we have to get to once again.

"Creating a blog would allow for expression and refinement of ideas and policies, like a Queer Justice League for denouncing our enemies.

"A well organized website could function as an electronic clearing house for sharing information, for posting problems, for demanding solutions, for developing and communicating action plans.
"List-serves and a website could coordinate grassroots organizing and mobilize phone, e-mail and physical zaps or actions.

They could also be used to spotlight homophobic actions, articles, movies and tv, and laws.

"Why aren't we fighting fire with fire? Where is our radical gay left think tank? We need our own "700 Club" and our own talk radio show. Developing such gay content programming for the LOGO or Here Networks or for streaming on-line is completely possible today.

Why are all the shows our community is producing about fashion, decorating or just another gay soap?"

Why even Time Magazine is now stating as a fact that websites drive the agendas of political parties.

I know that even without these tools we reordered an entire world’s approach to a disease that would have killed us all. Surely with these tools and with all our creativity we can start to take control of our destinies again.

With these tools, and with a renewed commitment to love and support and to fight to save each other, with a renewed commitment to the anger that saved us once before, with the belief that anger, along with love, are the two most healthy and powerful emotions we are good at, I believe that we could have such a historical success again.

May I conclude these thoughts, these remarks toward the definition of a new ACT UP that will hopefully begin to be discussed forthwith, with this cry from my heart:

Farewell ACT UP.

Long live ACT UP.

Thank you."

Larry Kramer

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments

Editorial:
Please note that the views presented below are those of Chip Arndt and do not necessarily represent the views of the membership of Freedom Democrats.

People are encouraged to contribute their thoughts, on this topic and others, in the form of opinion pieces. Please send these to info@freedomdems.org for review.


By Chip Arndt
President, Freedom Democrats
www.FreedomDems.org

March 13, 2007

Largo is a central Florida town of roughly 76,000 people, close to the Gulf of Mexico, about 22 miles west of Tampa. Though it has a mayor, it was the first city in Florida and second in the nation to be run by an appointed City Manager reporting to a group of elected city commissioners.

Each year, for the last 14 years, they have renewed the contract of Steve Stanton for that job. Known to be forceful and energetic, his responsibilities include overseeing the city's $130 million dollar yearly budget and 1200 employees. Last September, his outstanding performance resulted in an $11,000 pay increase. It appears he will not be getting another raise this September because, by then, he will apparently no longer be Largo’s top official.

Subject to more tornadoes than the average Florida town, none struck Largo more forcefully than the revelation by the "St. Petersburg Times" that one of their reporters had ambushed Stanton with the rumor that he was transgender which he confirmed. Stanton’s wife was one of the few people who already knew, and he had planned to announce it in May or June when his 13-year old son, who did not yet know, would be out of town, away from the potentially explosive public reaction. He asked that they not print the story until he had time to tell his son, but the "Times" violated their agreement to give him 48 hours by posting it online the next day and Stanton immediately found himself in the eye of a storm that soon swept in attention from people and media around the world.

Commissioner Gay Gentry admitted that, "His brain is the same today as it was last week. He may be even able to be a better city manager." Then, before voting against him, Gentry added, "But I sense that he's lost his standing as a leader among the employees of the city." Among some 500 people who packed the commission's chamber was Lighthouse Baptist Church Pastor Ron Saunders, whom the paper quoted earlier saying, "He's not going to be a man and he's not going to be a female. He's going to be an it." During the 3 ½-hour meeting, Saunders proclaimed, "If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he'd want him terminated." Another speaker said Stanton was possessed by demons.While not verbally stooping to such levels, Gentry and four other commissioners justified their votes against Stanton with talk of dissatisfaction with his job performance. But Rodney Woods, who voted against Stanton’s firing, and the first Black commissioner in the city's history, was possibly thinking of their vote to raise Stanton's salary barely six months before when he said, "You mean that just came to your mind?"

Beyond an understandable desire not to simply sound like the religious extremists before them, there may have been, as the saying goes, method behind the madness of suddenly asserting fault with Stanton's work that might demonstrate how connected they remain to Pastor Saunders and those like him.

Some of the same people also protested at City Hall in years past when commissioners considered adding citywide job protection for transgenders and gays. They succeeded in killing that ordinance but not a later policy that applies only to city employees. So, while Stanton’s employment contract says he can be fired without cause, the “causes” some commissioners seemed to be coming up with, on the spur of the moment, might have been motivated by the fear that they were, otherwise, in legal jeopardy because of the new nondiscrimination policy.

Some say that a result of the commission even considering forbidding discrimination against gays and transgenders four years ago was that Mary Gray Black, who had been a City Commissioner once before, ran again. During her "family values" campaign, she vowed not to vote for anything that was "contrary to God's will," specifically any future ordinance that might include sexual orientation.

She said that homosexuality was an "immoral lifestyle." She had also wanted to take powers away from the City Manager’s office, and had publicly tangled with Stanton after she was elected; and was the only commissioner to vote against his recent pay raise. Few aware of this history were surprised she was the first to exploit the secret that had exploded in Largo and she was the one who introduced the resolution to fire him.

Nor were they surprised that Commissioner Andy Guyette also voted for termination. He had opposed even including the phrase "sexual orientation" in the city's internal policy. Gentry, on the other hand, was a surprise as she had voted for the citywide nondiscrimination ordinance that failed. A former social studies teacher, she had compared it to past controversial efforts to ban discrimination against people of color. With Stanton’s fate before her, she might have recalled that position, or maybe she just forgot.

As a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, she might have remembered that group’s infamous refusal in 1939 to allow Black contralto Marian Anderson to perform in the DAR-controlled Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. That prompted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the group and arrange for Ms. Anderson to sing with her glorious voice and thundering symbolism on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before an alternatingly awestruck and weeping mixed race crowd of 75,000. She had, no doubt, at some point read Mrs. Roosevelt’s words from nearly seventy years before: “You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed,” or maybe she forgot.

Ms. Gentry (and the other three women who voted against Stanton) might also have thought of the fight her gender had been forced to wage for job protections and even the right to vote. She might have recalled these challenges in her own and our nation’s history, but, apparently, she could only support full equality for someone transgender in concept, not in her presence, not in Largo, or maybe she just forgot.

Stanton has worked for the city of Largo for a total of 17 years, his employment contract renewed again and again and again. With only one dissension, he had received, less than six months before, a sizeable salary increase reflecting the commission’s approval of his performance. But six days after newspapers appeared on Largo’s streets revealing that he was transgender they were claiming they actually thought he was terrible at this job and voted to fire him as quickly as possible. Could it be any clearer that the sole reason they moved to fire Stanton was that he is transgender. Too many in our society still do not accept people who are different from them, regardless of their potential, regardless even of their proven abilities. This is a sad reality, but not a new one.

More encouraging is that not all of the some 60 members of the public the commission heard before voting were against Stanton. Many urged them to retain him, including Nadine Smith, Executive Director of Equality Florida, a not-for-profit advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, who spoke movingly in his favor.

Recently, she told me:

"Steve Stanton's firing is discrimination - plain and simple. It stems from a willingness to dehumanize transgender people in such a way that to makes firing routine, discrimination rampant and violence frighteningly common.

The hatred expressed by the mob, the fury that surrounded his dismissal that night by those who justified themselves by invoking God is a frightening and public example of what happens to LGBT people all the time but rarely with such visibility. Largo is a wake up call to those who believe quietly in equality. In your silence, the mob speaks for you and takes your absence as license to systemically ignore the civil and human rights of LGBT people."

If the action inside the commission chamber was not shameful enough, there was more. After Smith spoke, she was in the lobby with a sign that read simply “Don’t Discriminate” and flier that said the same thing. A fellow Stanton supporter asked Nadine for her flier.

A Largo’s police officers demanded that Smith take back the flier. Since people were handing out fliers inside the room debating Stanton’s “worthiness,” Smith asked the officer why she couldn’t do the same. He grabbed her, first shoving her toward an exit, then pushing her toward a back room away from the crowd. Although she is only 5 ft. 7, he and three other officers from the police force with a documented history of racism and sexual exploitation threw a woman of color to the ground and held her down. She was charged with resisting arrest with violence, a felony, and disturbing others' assembly, a misdemeanor.

Largo police spokesman Mac McMullen insisted to a reporter that no one had been allowed to distribute fliers (which from my understanding and other eye witnesses is simply not true) because they thought they might be disruptive in “an emotionally charged meeting”; incredibly adding that “…they present a fire hazard; plus, when they end up on the floor, people can slip on them. Besides..." he said, "Smith didn’t have permission to pass out fliers ‘as required by city law.’’”

It’s one thing for Mr. McMullen to have forgotten much of America's political history; that fliers don't do anything to make things disruptive, people do; and that our country, and its foundation of civil liberties, would not have been secured were it not for "emotionally charged meetings." But what about the “city law” requiring a “permit” (which would take more time to obtain, if needed, than the timeframe for the "emergency" meeting) he accused Smith of violating?

Here is the language from Largo's City Ordinance Section 3 on handbills, fliers, etc…:

Sec. 3-5. Distributing handbills, etc.; throwing handbills, etc., into vehicles or upon property.

"It shall be unlawful to distribute to pedestrians upon any street, park or other public place in the city, or to distribute to passengers in any bus, or to throw into or upon any bus or automobile or other vehicle, any handbill, dodger or advertising notice of a commercial character. It shall also be unlawful for any person to distribute or deposit any handbill, advertising notice, printed matter or rubbish upon any real property located in the city, without the consent of the owner thereof.”

Smith’s fliers concerned human rights and a resolution before the city’s governing body without any “commercial character.” She should not have been detained for any reason under this code.

Looking further, Section 3-6 regulates putting fliers on vehicles, which obviously doesn’t apply. Sec. 3-7 prohibits “advertising causing obstruction of streets or sidewalks.”
No possible violation there given that it was an indoor meeting.

Perhaps there is an applicable law that I couldn’t find; that Smith didn’t know about; that the officer refused to identify. Perhaps he couldn’t answer the simply question “Why?” because the real reason lies not in the law books but in hearts hardened by prejudice. It was not the law that led to Smith’s arrest or Stanton’s performance as City Manager that guided events in Largo that night, but the presence in Largo City Hall of the twins born of fear: bigotry and ignorance.

Five commissioners, in the Mayor’s words, figuratively threw Stanton “on the trash heap,” and four police officers, reacting with their own fears and hatred of those standing up for the rights of someone who is different, literally threw Smith to the ground, and, then, into jail. Her bail was over $5000, and she faces the possibility of going to prison.

Smith told me:

"We often talk about the connection between hateful speech and hate motivated violence. The atmosphere in Largo gave license for people to bully, humiliate, and attack Stanton – the highest ranking employee. That is a dangerous environment and I applaud everyone who was there to stand up for equality and fairness in the face of such naked hostility. We can never allow ourselves to be intimidated, bullied out of speaking up or standing up to discrimination.”

After the hearings in 2003, when the commission refused to ban discrimination anywhere in Largo against gays and those who are transgender, Commissioner Gentry said, "I think it is neat we are here in this room and heard some very divergent opinions. Yet no one is taking up arms, and our police officers are not hauling people out of the room." I wonder what she thought last week when she heard about Nadine Smith.

Behind all of this is the insidious hatred that continues to infect our society like a virus, including those in power who have no understanding of the heart and soul of our founding as a nation—the protection of the minority from the tyranny of the majority—and who, urged on by the preening pious, dismiss the civil rights of those who don't see the world the way they do, of those who are different. I wrote about some of its other symptoms not too long ago under the title, "Trickle Down of Hatred.”

The "trickle down of hatred" is very real across our society. The fury that erupted in Largo, Florida, is not an isolated incident but one that should be taken seriously. It shows how our democracy continues to be undermined and controlled by intolerance that is fueled by selective religious dogma. It demonstrates how a few closed minded, powerful individuals are able to vilify a human being for simply being who he is while dismissing his excellence and achievements as a community’s employee and neighbor. Because they suddenly discover him to be something they are not, in their eyes, in their actions, he is also suddenly less than; less than a human being, less than a fellow citizen, less than an American.

Stanton was clearly shocked by the move to dismiss him.

"It's just real painful to know that seven days ago I was a good guy and now I have no integrity, I have no trust and most painful, I have no followers.”

The irony behind all of this is that Stanton and Smith, the two main victims of this bigotry and intolerance, are the ones calling for patience, compassion, love, and understanding. When asked if he intended to sue, Stanton said:

"In so many ways, I am Largo. [It would be] like suing my mother."

“What happened that night did not represent all of Largo,” Smith said. "Many residents have called and expressed outrage, They have asked how they can help reverse the damage done that night to their community. Steve Stanton deserves to be judged by his job performance and the real Largo deserves a chance to repair the image the nation now holds.”

Stanton has used his option to appeal the commission’s resolution in a unique public meeting in the next 30 days before their second vote, the one that could make his dismissal final. Ever hopeful, he’s asked for three hours to present information about what being transgender means, while those who voted against him the first time continue to insist his gender identity had nothing to do with their decision to fire the man most of them had once praised.

"I'm realistic enough to know it's going to require an extraordinary step to stop the train going down the track with a certain degree of speed and to confront some of the folks back in the commission chambers who will be talking about what Jesus would do," Stanton told the paper that started that train.

It’s predictable that the commissioners will insist they have no responsibility to listen to the national and international gender identity experts, or highly respected civil rights groups that, like Smith’s, are siding with Stanton. But Commissioner Gigi Arntzen insisted before their first vote that his future would depend entirely on the reaction of the community, and the proverbial tide of public opinion seems to now be flowing in Stanton’s favor.

A professional poll last week paid for by the “St. Petersburg Times” found that a majority of area residents think the move to fire him was wrong. 65% of respondents to a separate, online poll said, "Keep him."

Asserting that the process had been hijacked by a handful who falsely claim to speak for all believers, 350 religiously affiliated residents demonstrated for him this week, and many more, representing both sides, than the 500 who attended February’s meeting are expected at his special hearing.

As for Smith, she told me:

"First, I would like to thank everyone who called and emailed me the past week. You reaching out and supporting me through this time is wonderful and inspiring. It is amazing how so many of you, some I have not heard from for years, took the time to see how I am. I am fine and would like to remind everyone that we still have much work to do.

It is up to each of us everyday, in our communities, to stand up and speak up so that the toxic atmosphere of hatred and bigotry does not make invisible the fair minded, compassionate majority who care about advancing civil rights for all people."

These type of things happen every day all over this country. Passionate activists put themselves on the line for our civil and human rights without knowing what might happen. It seems that a majority of the caring citizens of Largo do not support this decision to dismiss Mr. Stanton. Only through the fury of a mean-spirited mob did this all happen.

In times of deep distress, division and dishonesty, both Ms. Smith and Mr. Stanton have lessons to teach each of us about life, leadership, ourselves and love.

And I refer those who continue to excuse their treatment of their fellow human beings on so-called religious grounds to the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and, yes, the Bible:

Exodus 23:9:

“You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

And Corinthians 13:

"And though I have all faith so that I could move mountains but have not love, I am nothing."

And finally, Psalm 37:11:

"But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace."

Evidently not yet in Largo, Florida.

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments

OPINION

By David Mixner
as written on www.DavidMixner.com

I will never forget sitting in the first row of the California delegation at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco and watching Gary Hart, a young and vibrant United States Senator from Colorado, challenge Vice President Mondale for the Democratic nomination for president. While the Vice President was a good man with a distinguished record, he was the establishment candidate and represented the status quo.

On the other hand, Senator Hart embodied the excitement of youth as the first baby boomer to seek the presidency. He was one of us and a reformer with a dynamic vision for the future. His candidacy marked the beginning of the baby boomer era in Democratic Party politics.

The peak of my generation’s political power was the ascent of Governor Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992. His campaign was exhilarating, driven by a candidate cool enough to wear stylish sunglasses and play the saxophone on Arsenio Hall. Clinton campaigned without a jacket and with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He seem fearless and overflowed with hope for resolving the policy issues of the day. He articulated a vision and, for the first time, told us that we were part of it. The youthful and reform-minded Clinton led his baby boomer generation in vanquishing the entrenched Washington establishment created by Reagan and Bush, Sr.

When blocked by traditional politics or political machines who wanted to continue the status quo, Clinton filled up arenas with young people, organized thousands and thousands of volunteers, bypassed traditional ways of campaigning and appealed directly to the constituencies of the Democratic Party to create a new coalition to lead into the new millennium. It was an extraordinary time to be in politics.

It sounds almost sounds like Barack Obama or John Edwards today, doesn’t it?
How ironic that, in many ways, Senator Hillary Clinton represents the end of that era. She may just be the baby boomer generation’s last hurrah.

Today, the Clintons run the political machine trying to save the status quo in the Democratic Party. Their fundraising operation is notorious for its ruthlessness and elitism. Their circle of advisors and friends are tough and aggressive with anyone who refuses to pledge allegiance. They are surrounded by money collectors like Terry McAuliffe who shakedown donors with warnings that they will be punished if they give to another candidate. Senator Clinton’s position on the Iraq War is by far the most calculated of any candidate. And on so many other issues, her positions are measured and break no new ground. Each appearance is predictable and perfectly arranged. Whether by necessity or choice, the spontaneity, exuberance and hope we saw in both of the Clintons in 1992 is gone.

In many ways, Senator Barack Obama is today’s Bill Clinton. Like Clinton in 1992, he is packing arenas with young voters, campaigning in shirtsleeves, and calling America to believe in a new generation of politics. His candidacy stands in stark contrast to the safe predictable status quo Clinton campaign. Unlike Senator Clinton, he understood the consequences of invading Iraq and refused to support the war from day one. Like President Clinton in 1992, he is mobilizing thousands of cynical and disenfranchised voters and welcoming them back into the Democratic Party.

Ted Sorenson, President John F. Kennedy’s legendary speechwriter, recently endorsed Obama saying he represents the spirit of President Kennedy’s campaign in 1960.

It must not be easy for President Clinton to see a youthful figure like Senator Obama rise to become the hope and future of the Democratic Party. That is a place he has held for more than 14 years. And that is exactly the Clintons’ problem. He was elected almost 15 years ago and they have become the establishment. The people around them have a vested interest in preserving power and not making change.

Then there is John Edwards – the 2008 issues candidate – who is articulating bold policy positions and giving voice to the powerless. The former Senator recently mailed more than 70,000 DVDs to Iowa voters on universal health care and his pragmatic plan to make it happen. Clearly declaring his opposition to the Iraq War, Edwards’ speech at Riverside Church remains the best political address in the campaign so far.

I think famous progressive Robert Scheer captures the essence of the Edwards campaign. He recently posted on truthdig.com these comments about Edwards after Anne Coulter’s outrageous statement at the CPAC convention:

No wonder Coulter hates him: Edwards is a Democrat who believes in the progressive heritage of his party and is not afraid to tell the world.

“I want to say something about my party,” Edwards said in a speech at UC Berkeley on Sunday. “I’m so tired of incremental, careful caution. Where is our soul?” He was referring to, among other issues, the party’s failure to deal boldly with “the bleeding sore that is Iraq.”

Unlike rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, he has forthrightly apologized for his Senate vote to authorize the war and called for ending it, starting with “immediately” cutting troop levels by half and then withdrawing all troops within the next 12 to 18 months. In a pointed rebuke to the Democratic leadership of Congress, Edwards states on his website, “We don’t need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war, and Congress has the power to do it. They should use it now.”

On domestic issues, Edwards has hewed to the progressive line he maintained in the 2004 campaign, warning about the growing income inequality in the “two Americas.” As opposed to the Clintons, who still insist that they solved the poverty problem with Bill’s putting an end to the federal welfare program, Edwards points out correctly, “Every day, 37 million Americans wake in poverty.” Stating that “our response to that reality says everything about the character of America,” Edwards has called for a national program to eliminate poverty instead of leaving the poor to the tender mercy of the states as called for in the Clinton welfare reform.

It is also refreshing for a politician to invoke the image of Jesus, as Edwards did Monday, not as a divisive symbol of intolerance but rather as the inspiration for social justice and peace. “I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs,” he said. “I think he would be appalled, actually.”

As he did in the 2004 campaign as the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, Edwards has once again made relief for the struggling middle class a signature issue, strongly attacked tax breaks for the rich and the mindless globalization that is widening the class divide. He is equally strong on environmental issues, following 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s leadership on global warming, and he has had the courage to bluntly oppose the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” hypocrisy on gays in the military.

“Gay men and women have continually served our country with honor and bravery, and we should honor their commitment and never turn away anyone who is willing to serve their country because of sexual orientation,” he said. These words were of particular resonance, coming on the heels of the announcement by the first U.S. Marine seriously wounded in Iraq that he is gay.

So, there it is. While the Clintons lead the party in a chorus of “The Way We Were,” the charismatic Barack Obama and the substantive John Edwards are giving us a glimpse at the future of the Democratic Party. My baby boomer generation has had our run and the next generation is boldly stepping up to lead and to create a new vision for America.

That is a good thing.

For all information related to this article please see:
www.DavidMixner.com

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments

OPINION

Mis Dos Centavos
By Geo Bustamante

An Open Letter to Former Miami Heat’s Tim Hardaway

(Reprinted with permission from http://www.latinoboysmagazine.com/)

Dear Mr. Hardaway,

I am writing in response to your recent pronouncement that you hate gay people. I cannot help but wonder if you really understand the consequences of this recent display of bigotry so, I’ve taken it upon myself to enlighten you.

I am a college student, barely out of my teenage years and, ever since I could remember, I have fought an intrapersonal battle about my sexual identity. Since elementary school I have been consumed with shame, guilt and fear because of my attraction to the same sex.

As a child, I kept these feelings to myself and as I grew older and these feelings grew stronger, my anxiety and confusion increased. Mr. Hardaway, growing up was an emotional hell for me. Every time I heard the words faggot and queer I was reminded that, if my sexual identity was found out, I would be forced to wear these titles like some scarlet letter. More importantly, I believed I would be rejected by my friends, my relatives, and especially my parents.

So I kept my feelings to myself and endured in silence and alone. By the time I was 13 years old I was intimately familiar with depression. Mr. Hardaway, without going into detail, living the lie of trying to pretend that I was a straight teenager almost cost me my life…literally! My fear of rejection was greater than my desire to live. Why? Because I feared that people would respond to me with the attitude that you have. I was afraid that I would be hated.

I finally admitted to myself that I was gay. Through time I resolved that I had no choice but to admit it. Otherwise I would not be alive to see 21. I finally summoned the courage to tell my parents three months ago and, though they didn’t use the words hate like you used, their anger, sadness, and their shame of me was devastating. They gave me a month to get out of my house.

I am on my own now. I’m working three jobs and I’ve had to take a break from school in order to get my life together. But I am happier than I’ve been in a long time and I’m relieved to have this secret burden lifted from me. I’m lucky to be surrounded and supported by friends, gay and straight, who don’t hate who I am, and therefore, hate me.

Mr. Hardaway, I was shocked when you responded ‘yes’ to the radio interviewer’s question, “Would you hate a family member if you found out he or she was gay?” Having recently suffered the rejection of my parents because of my sexuality, I can only deduct from your response that you have conditional love for your family. It’s sad that, if you have children, they will always have to wonder what it would take to make you stop loving them. You did publicly say that your love has limits.

I’m not a basketball fan and I am not familiar with your NBA career. But you played for the Miami Heat and I’m sure you have many fans. Your disparaging remarks against gay people have the potential to embolden those of your fans that have the same view. It’s very possible that some of those fans might be encouraged to inflict emotional, and even physical harm, on persons they perceive to be gay.

Mr. Hardaway, you owe a lot of people an apology, including your family, business partners, friends, and fans. But more importantly, you owe every young gay person out there an apology for the potential harm you have caused. The children’s nursery rhyme that says, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” could never be more false. Often, Mr. Hardaway, hateful words lead to sticks and stones-emotionally and physically.

Respectfully,

Geo Bustamante
http://us.f526.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=latino_boy_geo@yahoo.com

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments

OPINION

Joe Solmonese
President, Human Rights Campaign (“HRC”)

Ann Coulter is clueless and callous. She has built a career out of demonizing other people and dividing our country. In fact it's that very behavior that made her rich. There is no reason to expect her to reform her ways. So, it should have come as no surprise to anyone to learn that, last Friday, she called Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, a faggot.

We are never going to change Ann Coulter -- she will always be hateful and ignorant. However her bigotry is big business. It provides a huge revenue stream for Universal Press Syndicate, the largest independent newspaper syndicate in the world. They are betting than Ann's hate will bring more readers to her columns and they will be left out of the fray. Well they bet wrong. Companies cannot be allowed to profit from hate speech and that's exactly what Universal Press Syndicate does.

When Editor and Publisher asked to comment on Ann's remarks Universal Press Syndicate took no responsibility even though they give her a platform to publish her hate in 100 newspapers.
"When contacted by E&P today, Universal Press Syndicate issued a statement saying it "can only address Ms. Coulter's newspaper column," not her speeches. Universal added: "To date, we have not heard from any of her client newspapers about the verbal remark. Yes, her client list is still about 100."

If Coulter submitted a column containing the word "faggot," would Universal allow it? A syndicate spokesperson replied that Universal "is not going to speculate about a column that hasn't been written."

Universal was also asked how it would have reacted if Coulter had slurred an African-American politician with the "N" word (the racial equivalent of "faggot"). The syndicate declined to answer."

That is unacceptable. Join me and send a clear message to Lee Salem, Executive Vice President and Editor, Universal Press that providing a platform for Ann Coulter to spout anti-gay rhetoric by syndicating her column must stop now. You can make your voice heard by going to http://www.hrc.org/ and send a letter to Universal Press.

This is not a question of censorship; there are plenty of other people on the right who share Coulter's values and views but understand the value of civility and respect.

Further showing her cold obliviousness, Ann later defended her comment as a "schoolyard taunt" that doesn't target gay people. Perhaps she should tell that to the thousands of gay kids today who, too often threatened with their personal safety, are called "faggot" in school hallways and playgrounds all around the country.

It is a sad commentary on our country that she thought she could get away with this. Presidential candidate, Rudy Guiliani, and Democratic leader, Howard Dean, did eventually condemn the remarks, but GOP candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney, offered only muted criticism through their spokespeople. Edwards used the attack as a fundraising appeal, and with very few exceptions, the Democrats in power adopted a "duck and cover" strategy.

Even Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Senator from California, and a usually strong ally for the gay community, failed to exercise any leadership. When asked about it, she said only, "Oh, I'm not a fan of that kind of rhetoric. And I really don't want to get into it."

Not a fan? Really? Does anyone understand what the real issue is here? It's not that Edwards was attacked. The issue is that anti-gay epithets should be so beyond the pale that anyone who uses them immediately becomes anathema to public discourse. But, instead of that happening, Romney laments that Coulter wasn't more "thoughtful," Fox News continues to provide her a platform to spew her hate, and Coulter continues to make money off her ignorance.

Would our public officials and national news outlets be so indifferent if Coulter had gone on a racist, anti-Semitic tirade? Of course not. The fact is that we all should be treating Ann Coulter as the equivalent of David Duke. Because she is.

"Faggot" is a loaded word. It is a weapon used to demean and wound. Unfortunately, these days, it's just not bad enough to exercise any real outrage. Many straight politicians don't fully understand this - just like many whites don't always understand the power of the "N word" used against African Americans. But it's time for us all to start showing some backbone against this form of homophobia. This indifference is outrageous at a time when one in six hate crimes are motivated by the victim's sexual orientation.

Former NBA star and Human Rights Campaign spokesman, John Amaechi, explained it best when he said, "Coming out and living openly can be challenging -- and that challenge only grows when people like Ann Coulter mockingly use it as a cheap joke.

Words have power -- and it's time that Ann Coulter is held accountable for her hate speech.
We may be close to seeing legislative progress for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. And, the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment may be dead. But, our politicians need to understand that a truly inclusive agenda includes standing up against hate speech. They have a moral obligation to condemn this language and work to remove it from political discourse.

Not only should they promise to disassociate themselves from Coulter, they should vow never to attend any event at which she appears. And, that means never appearing on any talk show or news program which continues to give her a soapbox. Already today, three major American corporations have spoken out and pulled their advertising from Coulter's website. We must insist that the news media follow the lead of Verizon, Sallie Mae and Georgia-based NetBank and place Ann Coulter in the "off-limits" category along with the "David Dukes" of the world -- where she belongs.

The behavior of public figures matters. Americans know that and will no longer tolerate gay-bashing. The real question now is whether people in power also understand that.
To take action, go to http://www.hrc.org/ and let Universal Press know that providing a platform for hate is unacceptable.

For all information related to this article please see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-solmonese/this-antigay-epithet-sho_b_42805.html

Posted by Freedom Democrats at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments