In 1787, the year the Constitution was adopted, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to a friend, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
That’s how he felt before he became president, anyway. Twenty years later, after enduring the oversight of the press from inside the White House, he was less sure of its value. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” he wrote. “Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
Jefferson’s discomfort was, and remains, understandable. Reporting the news in an open society is an enterprise laced with conflict. His discomfort also illustrates the need for the right he helped enshrine. As the founders believed from their own experience, a well-informed public is best equipped to root out corruption and, over the long haul, promote liberty and justice.
“Public discussion is a political duty,” the Supreme Court said in 1964. That discussion must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and “may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
In 2018, some of the most damaging attacks are coming from government officials. Criticizing the news media — for underplaying or overplaying stories, for getting something wrong — is entirely right. News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes. Correcting them is core to our job. But insisting that truths you don’t like are “fake news” is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the “enemy of the people” is dangerous, period.
These attacks on the press are particularly threatening to journalists in nations with a less secure rule of law and to smaller publications in the United States, already buffeted by the industry’s economic crisis. And yet the journalists at those papers continue to do the hard work of asking questions and telling the stories that you otherwise wouldn’t hear. Consider The San Luis Obispo Tribune, which wrote about the death of a jail inmate who was restrained for 46 hours. The account forced the county to change how it treats mentally ill prisoners.
Answering a call last week from The Boston Globe, www.gaysomoma.com is joining hundreds of newspapers, from large metro-area dailies to small local weeklies, to remind readers of the value of America’s free press. These editorials, some of which we’ve excerpted, together affirm a fundamental American institution.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to your local papers. Praise them when you think they’ve done a good job and criticize them when you think they could do better. We’re all in this together.
Are Republicans trying to lose their majorities in Congress this November? We assume not, but you can’t tell from the party’s internal feuding over immigration that is fast becoming an election-year nightmare over separating immigrant children from their parents. This is what happens when restrictionists have a veto over GOP policy.
Democrats fanned out across the U.S. this weekend to highlight the turmoil caused by the Trump Administration’s new “zero-tolerance” policy of detaining all adult aliens crossing the border illegally. That means separating parents from children who arrive together because courts have said migrant children can’t be jailed.
Children are put into tent encampments or other sites while their parents are processed for deportation. That can take several days, which is bad enough, though much longer if the adults challenge their deportation. Trump officials are defending the policy as a deterrent to illegal entry, but surely they understand that separating parents from children is morally unacceptable and politically unsustainable.
The immediate solution should be for the Administration to end “zero-tolerance” until it can be implemented without dividing families. Congress can also act to allow migrants to be detained with children in facilities appropriate for families. Until that is possible, better to release those who have no criminal past rather than continue forced separation.
This episode underscores the larger GOP dysfunction as it debates how to deal with the former immigrant children known as Dreamers. The threat of Dreamer deportation isn’t imminent while the courts consider Barack Obama’s legalization order and Donald Trump’s revocation of that order. But it is sure to return with urgency next year.
A bipartisan majority in Congress wants to solve the problem of these young adults brought to the U.S. illegally as minors. But a minority of House Republicans continues to block a compromise that would solve the Dreamer problem and give Mr. Trump more money for border security.
Last month conservatives sank food-stamp reforms to pressure leadership into holding a vote on immigration legislation by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte. The bill imposes an e-Verify mandate, a flawed agriculture visa program and sharp cuts to family-based immigration, among other restrictionist priorities. Moderate Republicans who represent large numbers of Hispanics would have to sell out employers to protect Dreamers.
To side-step this trap, moderates threatened a discharge petition to force votes on four immigration bills including the Goodlatte legislation. Whichever bill passed with the most votes would have gone to the Senate.
House leaders thwarted the discharge petition by promising votes this week on the Goodlatte bill and a compromise bill that would fulfill Mr. Trump’s priorities: $25 billion for a border wall, limits on family migration and an end to the diversity visa lottery. The bill would also repurpose 88,000 or so diversity-lottery and other visas for a merit-based green-card program that Dreamers could apply for with a path to citizenship. Another 65,000 visas for family-based preferences would be reallocated to employment-based categories.
This should be acceptable to moderates, and White House aide Stephen Miller has urged conservatives to support the bill. But then former aide Steve Bannon riled up the restrictionists by blasting the compromise as “amnesty.” The restrictionists don’t want anything to pass because they want to use immigration to drive conservative turnout in November.
This is self-destructive politics. This year is the GOP’s best opportunity for immigration reform in a decade. If Republicans lose their House majority, they will have less leverage when the Supreme Court rules on legalization for Dreamers. If the Obama program is upheld, Mr. Trump won’t have obtained money for his border wall or anything else.
As for November, House control will be won or lost in swing districts where legalizing the Dreamers is popular and separating families isn’t. Members like California’s Steve Knight and Florida’s Carlos Curbelo need to show voters that they’re working toward a solution for Dreamers.
Even better would be for Congress to pass the leadership’s compromise that legalizes Dreamers, ends the family separation fiasco, and gives Mr. Trump some of his priorities. Republicans would solve a problem while depriving Democrats of a potent issue.
But that will only happen if Mr. Trump sells it. On immigration he’s been a study in confusion, one day preaching compassion for Dreamers while deploring “amnesty” the next. The smart play is for Republicans to show they can solve at least some immigration problems.
If Mr. Trump wants to lose the House and risk impeachment, he’ll take Mr. Bannon’s bad advice and keep giving Democrats a daily picture of children stripped from their parents.
Democrats will keep losing elections if we don’t accept after a primary that we must unite and enthusiastically endorse and vote for the Democrat who will be on the general election ballot.
If we learned nothing else from the 2016 presidential election it should be that dithering for a month after the primary before making an endorsement; allowing your supporters to believe it might be OK to vote for a third party or stay home in protest; and not getting your ego under control will all lead to a Republican winning whether it is for the state legislature, the governor’s mansion, or Congress.
We Democrats, conservatives, moderates, progressives or far left will always fight over which road to take to our destination. If we listen carefully to each other we find we have many similar goals all radically different than those of the current Republican Party. We want racial justice, economic equality, good and affordable healthcare for everyone, and quality public education and affordable college no matter where you live or your socio-economic status. We want a world at peace and a prosperous United States where everyone shares in the prosperity.
Our fights are often over the path to these goals and how quickly we can reach them. If we don’t vote for a Democrat in every possible race for state legislature, governor, and Congress in 2018 we are assured not only won’t we reach any of our goals but we will continue on the path away from them that Republicans have us on.
Primaries are the place for our fights. But if we are to replace Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion in Georgia, and pick up congressional seats in Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and a host of other states, the internecine fights must be put on hold for the general election. To me it’s a waste to primary Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, but you may think supporting Cynthia Nixon is crucial, so be it. But on Sept. 14 we must all join hands and support the winner and do so with no reservations. We saw how important that was in Virginia last year when Tom Perriello immediately and wholeheartedly endorsed Ralph Northam after a tough primary and helped elect a Democratic governor.
Nov. 6, 2018 may well be the most important election in our lifetime. We are fighting for our democracy. It is crucial we get people to the polls.
The founding fathers understood that to build a lasting and prosperous nation, it would require compromise. They set out a blueprint for a government, our Constitution, with checks and balances. We know they didn’t get it all right from the start as there are 27 amendments.They anticipated that and provided a way to do it in Article V.
So today we have two viable national parties in the United States — Democrats and Republicans — with a host of smaller ones trying to influence them. We have a few independents elected but to be effective they choose one of the two major parties to caucus with.In 2019, the agenda in the United States Congress, and state legislatures, will be controlled by one of the major parties. The simple fact is if you believe in the principles of the Democratic Party and in the general election you don’t vote or vote for a third party, then you are helping to elect Republicans. I may not agree with Joe Manchin, the Democrat West Virginians sent to the Senate, or Heidi Heitkamp, the Democrat North Dakotans sent there, but they are both miles above the Republicans they ran against. They also will vote for a Democratic majority leader, giving us the chance to stop Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) from being Majority Leader again.
In my lifetime as a Democrat I have yet to see where the Democrat I don’t like isn’t better than the Republican he/she ran against. Every positive step forward our country has taken happened when Democrats were in control. Voting rights, civil rights, women’s rights, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, the rights of Dreamers, Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and more. Those are only some of the reasons Democratic unity on Nov. 6 is so crucial.
If we truly care we must set aside our differences on that day. Your candidate losing the primary cannot stop you from working your heart out to get everyone to the polls to vote for the Democrat on the general election ballot. If we all do that we can, and will, win.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
Police are looking for three suspects in an anti-gay attack last week.
You’ve probably heard all about it by now, or even seen the horrific cell phone video capturing most of it. Just after midnight on Sunday, April 15, two gay men were viciously assaulted on the corner of Vermont Avenue and U Street. Sort of a strange place for such a thing to happen, given that it’s practically in sight of the entrances to three of the city’s busier gay bars, one of which, for better or worse, was recently named the best in the nation.
These instances are always jarring, especially when they happen in your own city, in stretches of pavement you pound with regularity. It’s even more jarring given the statistics surrounding it — LGBTQ hate crimes are on the rise here at home and around the world. It’s depressing. And I’m not so naive to think that Obama’s magic gay marriage wand would have done away with this sort of thing. But I was hopeful that it might help.
People are struggling to find a cause for this uptick in hate. D.C.’s own top cop Police Chief Peter Newsham admitted that, “it’s hard to say exactly what the increase is due to.” This much is certain, It seems to be an angry age we find ourselves in. And it’s certainly not just the queer community feeling the brunt of this. Hate crimes generally seem to be on the rise across the board. Even instances of anti-Semitism are up. Here in Washington, D.C., there were 66 instances of bias-related crimes in 2015 and 107 in 2016. Last year saw at least 163 instances. So where is it all coming from? Certainly, there is some from-the-top-down blame to go around.
When Obama announced in 2012 that he had ‘evolved’ on gay marriage, it provided a tone of acceptance that other Americans were able to draw from (just look to Maryland for an example of this). So, when it comes to tone and trendsetting, can the same be said for the current administration, meaning can this sort of thing cut the other way? Is President Donald Trump to blame for the uptick in bias-related hate crimes? Well, maybe. At the very least he might be an unindicted co-conspirator. And this is not all that farfetched. It’s been proven that the man and his rallies incite violence. Any cursory reading of his Twitter feed shows that he has no boundaries whatsoever. The man sitting in our highest office has no qualms about petty insults and name-calling. And this sort of hateful and reckless rhetoric tends to trickle down.
So what’s to be done? Know that soon, something has to give. And it will certainly break our way. But until then, take a cue from others. Yes, it is incredibly disheartening that someone posted the video of the assault on Twitter, as if to brag of it and further humiliate the victims. But at the end someone does come to their aid, and someone called for help. It’s in these worst of times that people can show the best in themselves. Take solace in the fact that the community raised over $20,000 for the two victims. And know that a local gay dentist volunteered his time and skill to repair their cracked smiles, charging nothing for his services. Know there’s a lot of love out there to counter this trickle down of hate.
In the long run, eventually something has to give. And if these waves of hate tend to come and go, the next crest may be ours. So until then, stay vigilant, stay active, and stay charitable.
The LGBTQ Victory Fund is “the only national organization dedicated to electing openly LGBTQ people who can further equality at all levels of government.”
That makes it one of the most important LGBTQ organizations in the world. The reason it is so important to elect more members of the LGBTQ community is capsulized in what former Rep. Barney Frank often said: “If we are not at the table we will be on the menu.” It has been shown again and again for every minority and interest group, people don’t pay attention to you if you are not in the room. The Victory Fund helps us to be in the room.
The Victory Fund was founded in 1991 by LGBTQ activists and donors who recognized the success of EMILY’s List at attracting attention and support for women candidates for public office. At that time there were fewer than 50 openly LGBTQ elected officials across America at any level of government. Today there are over 500. That number is still minuscule when pitted against the hundreds of thousands of elected officials at every level of government from school boards, to county councils, to state legislatures, to Congress. So we have a long way to go before we see any level of equality and a seat at the table in every elected body.
LGBTQ Victory Fund CEO and President Annise Parker speaks at the National Champagne Brunch last Sunday. (Washington Blade photo by Wyatt Reid Westlund)
Last Sunday, the Victory Fund held its annual national brunch and it was a success. They start off this crucial election year with a new president and CEO, Annise Parker. This is the first time in its history that VF has been led by a person elected to office in their own right. Parker served her community of Houston for 18 years culminating with six years as mayor. In 2010, Time magazine named Mayor Parker one of the 100 most influential people in the world and in 2014 she was named top U.S. mayor and seventh ranked world mayor by City Mayors Foundation. The Victory Fund is lucky to have her as its leader and her keynote speech on Sunday showed why. She understands the rigors of running and knows what candidates will go through when they throw their hat in the ring.
The 2018 elections may be the most crucial in decades. We will be voting to take back our democracy from the ultra-right wing of the Republican Party now running and destroying it. The Victory Fund is non-partisan. Their criteria for winning an endorsement include being openly LGBT; demonstrating support of federal, state or local efforts to advance LGBTQ civil rights via the legislative or regulatory process; and demonstrated support of federal, state and local efforts to safeguard privacy and reproductive freedom.
At the sold-out brunch, attendees heard some rousing speeches. They heard first from Maryland State Sen. Rich Madaleno, who is running for governor and could become the nation’s first openly gay elected governor and his running mate Luwanda Jenkins. Then from Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) who was there to speak and introduce Virginia Del. Danica Roem, the first transgender person elected and seated in a state legislature. Roem brought the crowd to their feet and credits Victory Fund with playing a crucial role in her election.
As we head into the midterm elections on Nov. 6, we have strong LGBTQ candidates everywhere in the nation. The Victory Fund endorsed and will continue endorsing candidates as they apply over the next few months. You can find the list of currently endorsed candidates on their website and make a donation to their campaign. But know when you click on a candidate’s picture the first donate button you will see at the top right is a contribution to the Victory Fund.That is great if it is what you intend. But if you want to make a donation directly to the specific candidate look for the second ‘donate to candidate’ button.
We have a chance this year to elect many more LGBTQ candidates across the nation at every level of government and the Victory Fund is crucial to helping us to do that. They help candidates learn how to run a campaign and then help them raise the money to do it successfully. As we fight for full equality we must continue to support the Victory Fund and keep it strong.
I remember feeling confused and angry the first few times I was blocked or rejected by an online prospect who said they were on PrEP.
David Duran
I was confused, because—in every case—there was interest right up until I disclosed my HIV status. I started feeling angry when I realized and confirmed that it was because of my HIV status that the guys I was chatting with were no longer interested.
I ended up asking one of the guys I was chatting with what had caused him to lose interest, and it wasn’t without some probing that he told me the truth: He wasn’t interested in positive men. When I continued to question him, he blocked me on the app.
PrEP is touted as bridging the serostatus divide. It’s heralded as one solution to HIV stigma and discrimination. HIV-negative people have a nearly 100% effective way (under their own control) to remain HIV-negative. When combined with treatment as prevention—when people living with HIV take HIV medications and remain virally suppressed—the risk of HIV transmission is in all likelihood zero. So why the fear? Why the rejection? Why the discrimination?
I probably don’t have to tell those of you on Grindr or any other dating and hookup app this. You’ve probably experienced it firsthand.
Just because someone says they’re on PrEP doesn’t mean that they are interested in having sex (or a relationship) with someone living with HIV. Stigma still exists, and unfortunately will continue to exist until everyone is on the same page about the effectiveness of PrEP, the power of treatment as prevention, and the realities of modern-day HIV therapies.
For me, bouncing back after experiencing the sting of HIV stigma didn’t take too long.
When I first began texting back and forth with the guy who is now my boyfriend, it began as a typical online conversation (we met on Instagram). We invested hours typing away questions and answers to each other—starting the process of getting to know one another. Since we hadn’t met on a traditional dating/hookup app, he knew much less about who I am and what I was looking for in a relationship right away.
I really liked him, and knew at some point I would have to send that disclosure text. Instead of a casual short line or two, I ended up writing a paragraph linking to an article I had written about disclosing my status. It seemed like overkill, and I spent a good five minutes reading over what I had written to make sure my words were just right. I even gave him an easy out, if he wanted one.
Before I could send the message, I received a lengthy one from him right back. As I read his text, I realized he was disclosing his HIV status to me, and giving me an easy out, if I wanted one.
The relief I felt in the moment was momentous. I experienced something I hadn’t felt in a long time when messaging guys. Suddenly, I felt everything would be OK. I could pursue this guy and not have to worry about further discussion about HIV, risk, being undetectable.
We spent the next hour reliving our disclosure experiences with guys online, and talking about how stressful and hurtful they could be. It takes a lot of courage and resilience to disclose your HIV status. Even when the response you get isn’t negative, it leaves you feeling vulnerable and questioning how the person you’ve disclosed to will treat you.
It’s been a while since I’ve dated someone else who is living with HIV. Honestly, now that I am, it makes me wonder why I haven’t made it a priority or a preference before. Partly I think it was because I wanted to believe that the world was moving past HIV status as a way to categorize people, but maybe we’re not quite there yet.
What can we do?
I’m not suggesting that people who are HIV-positive should only date other HIV-positive people—that would be ridiculous.
In addition to doing our part, apps should (and are) doing their part to create better experiences for their users. Some apps are already working to combat HIV stigma by working with researchers, public health experts, and community members to share information about HIV treatment and PrEP, provide HIV testing reminders, inviting users to communicate openly about HIV status and PrEP, and more.
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David is a nationally recognized HIV advocate and writer who contributes to HIV focused publications including POZ, Plus, Positively Aware and The Body. Additionally, he focuses on travel writing and spends approximately 90% of each month traveling the world on different assignments. To read more of his HIV writing, visit his online portfolio, or follow him on Twitter.
President Trump’s proclivity for racist remarks comes as no surprise to me. His now- infamous comment stating a preference for immigrants coming from a Scandinavian country like Norway than from Africa and Haiti which he depicts as “shithole” countries with nothing to offer the U.S is based solely on his ignorance (Also, Mr. President, Africa is a continent.). As some matter-of-fact, black African immigrants are the most educated demographic group in the U.S., surpassing those of us born here- black or white. According to the Los Angeles Times, they come from five major countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South African.
While Trump’s comment will now make it more difficult for these immigrants to enter the U.S. the challenge, however, will be particularly arduous for its LGBTQ asylum seekers. These people flee their countries to avoid criminalization, torture, violence, public persecution, political scapegoating and moral cleansing.
Many of the governments they flee argue they do not like the world’s interference in their business, especially the U.S. They contend that being LGBTQ are anathemas to African and Afro-Caribbean identities, cultural and family values, and it’s one of the many ills brought over by white Europeans (a similar homo/transphobic polemic still argued among religious and uninformed conservative African Americans). Sadly, the debate between” authentically “African” and Western colonial remnants always finds some way to dispute the reality of the black LGBTQ existence. Therefore, coming out LGBTQ in many of the African and Caribbean countries is dangerous.
For example, approximately thirty-eight of fifty-four countries in the African continent criminalize same-gender consensual activity.
We all have heard of the human rights abuses of Uganda’s LGBTQ population. The country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill dubbed “Kill the Gays bill” criminalized same-sex relations. And, depending on which category your sexual behavior was classified as —” aggravated homosexual” or “the offense of homosexuality”—you’d either receive the death penalty or if lucky life imprisonment.
Gay activist David Kato was the father of Uganda’s LGBTQ rights movement. He didn’t live to receive either punishment. Kato, beaten to death with a hammer, was murdered in January 2011.
John “Longjones” Abdallah Wambere, a friend of Kato’s and co-founder of Spectrum, an LGBTQ rights organization, is an activist, too. Fleeing from persecution Wambere was approved asylum in 2014. He now lives in my ‘hood” of Cambridge, MA.
And last summer, at the 2017 DignityUSA conference in Boston Warry Joanita Ssenfuka, director of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG), spoke on being a Catholic lesbian activist in Uganda, where LGBTQI people have no legal protections, and frequently suffer violence and imprisonment. Ssenfuka is a plaintiff in “Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively.” Lively, a white racist, homophobic Pentecostal pastor of Springfield, Massachusetts, is accused of persecuting LGBTQI people abroad, resulting in the introduction of an Anti-Homosexuality Bill he helped engineer in Uganda, which was prosecuted as a crime against humanity under international law.
Throughout the African continent, there are stories of homophobic bullying, trans bashing, and every kind of abuse of its LGBTQ population. However, the one country you don’t expect to hear anti- LGBTQ rhetoric and human rights abuses from is South Africa.
South Africa is the first African country to support openly LGBTQ civil rights. But South Africa has a problem with its LGBTQ population, especially its lesbians. South Africa’s method to remedy the problem with lesbians is “corrective rape.”
On any given day in South Africa, lesbians are twice as likely to be sexually molested, raped or gang-raped as heterosexual women. Reported estimates of at least 500 lesbians are victims of “corrective rape” per year. And in Western Cape, a province in the south west of South Africa, a report put out by the Triangle Project in 2008 stated that as many as 86 percent of its lesbian population live in fear of being raped.
And, in Haiti, a country that is predominately Roman Catholic homosexuality is condemned. Among Haiti’s LGBTQ middle and profession classes they find ways to socialize out of the public “gaydar” and with impunity. However, for the poorer classes of LGBTQ Haitians who live, work and socialize in the densely populated and impoverished capitol city of Port-au-Prince and its countryside, discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender expressions is commonplace. The 2002 documentary “Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Men and Gods)” by anthropologist Anne Lescot exposed the daily struggles of Haitian transwomen. Blondine in the film said, “When people insult me because I wear a dress I am not ashamed of how I am. Masisis (gay males) can’t walk down the street in a wig and dress.”
Trump’s administration may very well make it difficult for Africans and Haitians to come to the U.S. But, he cannot stop asylum seekers.
Legally, it is a universal human right to seek asylum, and the U.S has been offering asylum to LGBTQ people from around the world since 1994. And, morally, governments have an obligation to come to the aid of those fleeing persecution, a minimum standard any decent government recognizes.
But as much as Trump’s “shithole” comments didn’t surprise me, any effort by his administration to halt LGBTQ asylum seekers from black nations would shock me even less.
Rev. Irene Monroe, who is an ordained minister and motivational speaker, does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio and a weekly Friday television segment on New England Channel NEWS (NECN’) “The Take,” covering the latest pop culture headlines. She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also she writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and Cambridge Chronicle.
Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig protest Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2012.
Courtesy of Dave Mullins
Last week the U. S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case “Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.” The case – which has many of us LGBTQ Americans on pins and needles – will litigate a baker’s rights to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple-Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig- on the grounds of religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment.
If the case is decided in favor of the baker, Jack Phillips, it will be a colossal blow to civil rights gains and state nondiscrimination laws, legalizing denying services to LGBTQ Americans based on business owners’s religious belief. Trump’s solicitor general, Noel Francisco, suggested these businesses should hang anti-LGBTQ placards like “No Gays Allowed” warning us to stay away. When Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to clarify the president’s position on the matter at a White House Press Conference, she responded: “The president certainly supports religious liberty…I believe that would include that.”
As a black lesbian in this Trump administration, I now feel like I am moving into a new Jim Crow era reestablishing discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ Americans. I grew up knowing about racist placards that said “Colored Water Fountain,” “Waiting Room For Colored Only,”We Serve Whites Only, and “No N-word Allowed, to name a few.
Since Trump has taken office there has been an erosion of LGBTQ civil rights under the guise of religious liberty. For example, transgender Americans being denied access to public lavatories is eerily reminiscent of the country’s last century Jim Crow era denying African Americans access to lunch counters, water fountains, and, libraries, gas stations, theaters, and restrooms, to name a few. Signs that read “whites only” prohibited entry.
In Jim Crow America restrooms were a hot-button issue, as today, and a battleground for equal treatment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on national origin, race, hue, gender, and religion. The law mandated desegregation of all public accommodations, including bathrooms. The Obama administration expanded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect LGBTQ Americans. However, in February Trump’s administration revoked federal guidelines permitting transgender students from using “gender-appropriate facilities ” which aligned with their gender identity.
This June Trump paid tribute to the 49 LGBTQ victims of last year’s Pulse Nightclub massacre, but failed to issue a proclamation for Pride Month.
And, in July, LGBTQ Americans received a one-two punch from the Trump administration. The first punch was President Trump’s ban on transgender service members, eerily reminiscent of when the military did not want to integrate its ranks racially. In his inimitable style of communicating to the American public, the order came in the form of a tweet. Ironically, Trump’s tweet came on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman’s executive order desegregating the U. S. military in 1948.
The second punch occurred on the same day of Trump’s ban. The Justice Department filed court papers citing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in the workplace but it does NOT bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
While Trump’s ban caught the Pentagon and Capitol Hill off guard, the announcement was enthusiastically applauded by numerous anti-LGBTQ hate groups across the country who have long advocated for it, promulgating the fear that healthcare services to our transgender troops would gravely hurt defense spending. In an ad by the Family Research Council, for example, Chelsea Manning was pictured next to a military jet with the question “Which one do you want our military to be spending your tax dollars on – transgender surgeries or equipment?”
On December 11, a federal judge denied request of the Trump administration to delay enlistment deadline for transgender Americans into the military. They can enlist as early as January 1, 2018.
I am immensely thankful as a married lesbian that I reside in Massachusetts, especially if Trump tries to overturn “Obergefell v. Hodges,” the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
However, that may not be the case for many LGBTQ married couples outside of my state. For example, in a Trumped-up Supreme Court there is talk among Christian evangelicals of walking “Obergefell v. Hodges” back without disrupting other precedents on marriage,” Rebecca Buckwaler-Poza wrote in the article “The End of Gay Rights” in the June issue of Pacific Standard Magazine.
“The Supreme Court can significantly undermine LGBT rights even without reversing a single case,” Buckwaler-Poza wrote. “Right now, the federal prohibition against sex discrimination doesn’t bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity; the Equal Protection Clause affords no specific protections for LGBT people, as it does for members of groups defined by race or nationality. The Court can strip the rights to intimacy and marriage of their meaning, carving away gradually and masking the magnitude of changes by phrasing them in arcane legal terms.”
A movement for some time now has been afoot in state legislatures across the country to disenfranchise LGBTQ Americans. These bills are called “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” (RFRA), and are a backlash to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage and the growing fear of when the Supreme Court legalize it nationwide. Since lawmakers used them to codify LGBTQ discrimination to justify denying us services on state and local levels, and Trump is in lock-step with these discriminatory practices, Jim Crow is already here.
Rev. Irene Monroe, who is an ordained minister and motivational speaker, does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio and a weekly Friday television segment on New England Channel NEWS (NECN’) “The Take,” covering the latest pop culture headlines. She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also she writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and Cambridge Chronicle.
Joyline Maenzanise responds to the resignation of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe
Joyline Maenzanise, a queer writer based in Zimbabwe, responds to the resignation of the country’s long-serving homophobic President Robert Mugabe.
I must say, I never thought I would see the day when President Mugabe would be removed from office. I sincerely hope that this can only mean the dawn of a brighter era.
The ordinary Zimbabwean has borne the brunt of his tyrannical Presidency and we all hope that his successor will fulfil the promises they are making during their campaigns leading up to the elections next year.
We want a leader who will uphold our right to hold their conduct to account; a leader who will serve the people and not one who will place their own interests and those of loyalists above the ordinary citizenry. But yes, there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of what has been very long and very dark tunnel for the ordinary cisgender, heterosexual Zimbabweans.
As a queer person based in Zimbabwe, I would be lying if I said I share the same excitement that has been exuded by fellow countryfolk. Zimbabwe is a country that is generally homophobic. Homosexuality is not only a punishable crime but is also frowned upon as being un-African, a Western neo-colonial imposition, an act of sin against the deity or an illness requiring conversion therapy.
President Mugabe is known for his blatant homophobic utterances where he compared queer folks to pigs and dogs. Unsurprisingly, many Zimbabweans applauded him when he uttered such vitriol which only served to strengthen the hatred targeted towards the LGBT+ community.
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No amount of activism – or warnings of conditional aid from the West – has worked to change the old man’s stance regarding the queer community. I’m sure many will agree with me that President Mugabe is diehard and defiant – he is not one to be easily swayed into relinquishing his deeply-held beliefs. It is this defiance which has been seen at play as he brazenly held on to his Presidential seat.
It makes for an interesting speculation how the same people who would stand with him in condemning the LGBT+ community are the ones who now call for his resignation.
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One would think that since it is crystal clear that it is not the interests of the ordinary Zimbabwean (queer or not) that this old man had at heart, it would be easier for the masses to see how we all need to stand together and help each other eradicate the different forms of oppression that we have all endured informed by class, gender or sexual orientation. Sadly, that has not been the case.
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The issues faced by the queer community are regarded as unimportant and not needing urgent attention. It is clear that the cause at the forefront is to fight for the liberation of cis heterosexual folks from the tyrannical rule of despots such as President Mugabe. And, Zimbabwe being a “Christian nation”, many folks also remain adamant about their stance concerning the queer community. We are still seen as sinners in need of religious intervention. We are not regarded as humans whose existence needs to be acknowledged and whose rights need to be upheld.
As Zimbabwe looks set to start a new chapter with a new face at the helm of the country, what happens going forward – especially the upcoming Presidential elections – makes for an interesting analysis. However, even as a registered voter, I am still unconvinced by the candidates vying for the Presidential seat. As a Zimbabwean, I do not trust any of them. I have learnt not to trust politicians. History
has shown us that politicians will sell us a dream in exchange for our votes only to crush those dreams before our eyes once they are in power.
As a queer person, my deepest fear is that we may only be replacing one homophobe with another, even if they may not be as dramatic. I highly doubt that that new leader will express sentiments that are any different from what President Mugabe has staunchly believed about the LGBT+ folks.
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They may not publicly condemn us and compare us to animals – which have also been shown to have homosexual species, thus refuting the dehumanising comparison – but they will, most likely, not be a champion for the queer community.
I know none of those candidates have the best interests of people like me at heart. I know that if I am ever attacked by queerphobes or if I am refused a job because of my gender identity, none of those candidates will come out to publicly condemn oppression of others on the grounds of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Until Zimbabwe has a leader who will recognise the rights of the LGBT+ community, I am always going to feel like an alien in my own country; a part of me will always feel caged even as I have accepted my queerness. I am always going to worry about possible eviction by landowners who mind having a queer person under their roof.
I am always going to harbour a fear of finding myself as just another victim of queerphobic attacks. And should what I fear happen, I wonder what the chances are that the if the justice system will not fail me as a queer person. I am always going to be looking over my shoulder one can never be sure what people will do out of hate.
I am always going to wonder if getting married is a dream I cannot afford to have. Sadly, a part of me is also going to wonder if being true to myself is worth it.
While I may not see a brighter future for my life as a queer person living in Zimbabwe, I can only hope that whoever succeeds President Mugabe will work to improve the current cash crisis. I would love to stop waking up at 3 AM to prepare for my trip to the bank…
Joyline Maenzanise is a queer, gender non-conforming writer and poet based in Zimbabwe.
I have deep roots in Southern California. My maternal grandparents were part of the Great Migration, and moved from Jackson, Mississippi, to San Diego when my grandfather joined the Navy in 1955. They eventually settled in Riverside, CA, where my mother and her siblings grew up. My father moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to Perris, CA, a small suburb about 20 minutes outside of Riverside, when he joined the Air Force in 1975.All of them moved here for opportunities they felt didn’t exist where they came from. For my grandparents, the idea of raising children in the Jim Crow South was unfathomable.
However, the reality they were met with was not what they expected. Despite the fact that my grandfather came to San Diego to serve in the Navy, they were denied tenancy over and over again. My mother tells stories of growing up in Riverside and being one of only five Black students in her high school. Three were her siblings. My grandmother once told me how she found their family dog murdered, shot in the head. She told her children it ran away.
By the time I was born in the late 1980s, things were better, but racism still colors many of my memories. I spent much of my childhood confused because my reality was so different from what I was taught: that we didn’t have “those problems” in Southern California and that the color of my skin presented no obstacles to my trajectory of my life.
While racism in California might not be as prevalent as it is in the South, where systemic oppression has a longer, bloodier history, there is no denying that it exists as part of our history as well. When the Southern Poverty Law Group released their “Hate Map” last week, which charts active hate groups around the country, many were surprised to see our state lead the nation with 79. Florida follows close behind with 63.
Some will dismiss this as a result of our state’s large population and argue that we have less hate groups per capita than other places on the map. However, this does not diminish the fact that those groups found a home here, and probably with little resistance.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for the last decade, and many Angelenos like to think of themselves as the liberal elite. Whenever events like Charlottesville happen, I see my Facebook timeline light up with self-righteousness.
“This is exactly why I left (insert flyover city and state here),” they’ll declare smugly. “I’m so glad we don’t have to deal with this in California.”
Except we are dealing with this in California. Orange County has plenty of TV dramas named after its likeness, but all of them fail to depict the racial discrimination that still washes up on its sparkling shores. This past weekend, white supremacists were outnumbered at an “America First” rally in Laguna Beach. Just last week, the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery removed a Confederate Memorial following public outcry and threats of vandalism. San Diego took similar actions and removed a statue of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate states, from its downtown Horton Plaza.
Some of the white supremacists leading the Charlottesville riots were from California, with one of them making headlines in April for punching a woman in the face at a Berkeley protest. While it is true that Trump gave these cowards the courage to be more open about their views, to believe that they were previously cut off from society is dangerously naive.
These people are your coworkers, police officers, teachers, and students. Some of them are your fathers and mothers. How many times have you allowed them to spout stereotypes and tell racist jokes without pushback? How are you complicit?
Like the rest of the country, we are seeking to distance ourselves from our racist history and show the world that we no longer honor these figures or what they represent. What I think is missing from this conversation is an understanding of why we allowed them to be celebrated for so long, and how that enabled racism right underneath our noses. For those in positions of privilege, it means contending with how they have excused racism with their actions or non-actions.
It is not enough to show up to rallies and tear down statues. Residents of California, just like those around the rest of the country, must recognize their roles in allowing hatred to plant itself into our soil, and the ways in which they’ve tended to it over the years.
