Culture

Pinkwashing, NYC Style: The LGBT Center Caves to Pressure

By |

Watching NYC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center succumb to pressure to cancel a kick-off party for Israeli Apartheid Week, I feel compelled to write an epilogue to my recent post on Pinkwashing. I am reminded once again that we must be vigilant in refusing to allow queer liberation to be pitted against Palestinian liberation because as we know from our queer Palestinian colleagues, the two struggles are intertwined. On February 22nd, Michael Lucas, a right wing Advocate columnist and gay porn entrepreneur, issued a press release calling on the LGBT center to cancel the scheduled “Party to End Apartheid,” which he called anti-Semitic. He threatened to “organize a boycott that would certainly involve some of the Center’s most generous donors.” Infamous for his attacks against Islam, Lucas argued that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death…”

Gender and Sexuality

The Great Recession and Gender Marriage Transformation

By |

The latest census figures (9/28/2010) have resulted in such mainstream articles as “New Vow: I Don’t Take Thee” in the Wall Street Journal, “Marriage Rate Falls to About 50% As People Say Institution Is Obsolete” in Bloomberg, and “Recession Rips at US Marriages, Expands Income Gap” from AP. The articles cite census figures showing that US marriages fell to record lows in 2009. For the first time since the US began tracking marriage statistics in 1880, unmarried people of prime marrying age, 25-34, out numbered those who are married. What has happened to create this tectonic shift in American marriage? Two related changes are important to consider.

Culture

Is DOMA Done?

By |

Tonight we’ll celebrate President Obama and Attorney General Holder’s decision to NOT defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. Following in the footsteps of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the White House announced that the Justice Department could not defend DOMA, in part because “congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the (Constitution’s) Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.” Could this be the beginning of the end of DOMA? My husband, Derrick and I were married at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto on April 8th, 1990. As we approach our 21st anniversary, it is stunning to have been witness to the evolution in America on people’s opinions on gay marriage.

Gender and Sexuality

Submissive Wives and Working Stiffs? Towards a Conservative-Progressive Alliance

By |

Is it possible for pro-family conservatives and pro-human progressives to come together to block the job-killing, recession-reviving agenda of pro-corporate Republican elites? A perusal of conservative Christian websites makes me think it might be. As you may know, every week I monitor as many Christian Right websites as I can find for “Tikkun Daily,” and again this week the websites continue to be dominated by anti-health care, anti-abortion (including attacks on Planned Parenthood), and anti-gay posts. With all the problems this country is facing — with high unemployment and heartless budget-cutting threatening ordinary Americans, with health costs sky-rocketing and expectations of secure old age dashed, with young men and women dying in a war that has no clear purpose and no end in sight — why would conservative Christians support the Christian Right’s narrow agenda? I can understand the moral imperative for conservatives around abortion, but why the virulent attacks on making health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans and on legal equality that would help gay and lesbian couples and their children?

Culture

Personal Reflections on "Real Housewives" and the Virtue of Modesty

By |

Does the “Real Housewives” franchise have anything to tell us about American politics today? I have been pondering this question for a while, but my thoughts began to congeal this morning in a bit of a circuitous way. It all started as I was perusing the Christian Right websites, thinking about what to write for my weekly post covering the Christian Right beat. While every newspaper is covering the uprising in Egypt, that was not even mentioned on any of the websites I checked. Instead, opposition to the health care bill and abortion were featured on almost all the sites, including Concerned Women for America, The Susan B. Anthony List, Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family’s Citizen Link, and the Family Research Council, as well as the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property.

ESRA

Have You Heard About the "Manhattan Declaration?"

By |

Rabbi Lerner, in his recent post, alerted readers of Tikkun Daily to two pieces of policy legislation introduced in Congress this week: the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment and the Global Marshall Plan. Both aim at creating a more caring society. In direct contrast to the humanitarian agenda of the interfaith Religious Left articulated in those initiatives stands the exclusionary and divisive agenda of the specifically Christian Right, as exemplified by the Manhattan Declaration (2009). The authors of the Declaration describe themselves as a coalition of “Christian leaders known for their public witness on behalf of justice, human rights, and the common good,” yet they are motivated by what they see as “growing efforts to marginalize the Christian voice in the public square, to redefine marriage, and to move away from the biblical view of the sanctity of life.” While the “sanctity of human life,” “marriage,” and “religious liberty” are ideals that most people support, an exclusionary and anti-democratic political agenda clearly underlies the Manhattan Declaration.

Gender and Sexuality

Dreams and DADT: Joy and Sadness

By |

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed by the Senate, and now only awaits the President’s signature. A great day for social justice, right? It is. But my joy is profoundly mitigated by the Senate’s failure to pass the Dream Act, a bill that would have granted legal status to undocumented immigrant students and allowed them to go through a process by which they could have become U.S. citizens. What a wonderful pro-lives stance that would have been.

Gender and Sexuality

Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Dream Act – Straight Up and Down Please!

By |

Senator Reid has announced that he’ll take a cloture vote on Saturday on two bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives. The first bill would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the immoral and harmful rules preventing gay people from serving honestly in the armed forces. The second bill, known as the Dream Act, would help children of undocumented immigrants get an education and allow them to embark on a path to citizenship. The Senate requires 60 votes for cloture, closing debate on a bill and moving it forward for an up or down vote by senators. Senator McCain, among others, has threatened to fillibuster to prevent cloture.

Empathy

On Making It Better

By |

It had to happen sooner or later: critiques of the “It Gets Better” campaign. But not from antigay religious conservatives; oh no, that would be too easy. Instead, the critique appears to be coming from the left, and it comes down mostly to the following: the campaign is too assimilationist; it only really supports white middle-class young gay men and its vision for them is that they will turn into Dan Savage, though perhaps with fewer insights about how to write a sex column. Left out of the equation are women, queers of color, transyouth, and poor LGBTQ young people, according to these critiques (well-represented by Jasbir Puar’s piece, which ends by claiming that the campaign might be making things worse for queer youth who don’t fit the wealthy white male profile). Then there’s Danah Boyd’s research on how teens in general don’t conceptualize bullying the way adults do, with the consequence that well-intended adult attempts to address teen bullying are falling on largely deaf teen ears.