On The Road To Refuge -- Radical Inclusion

A Radical Church Reaches Out To Queer Communities.

by Pete Muller for ColorLines, the national news magazine on race and politics:

“You, and everything about you, is welcome in this house of God,” Pastor Kendal Brown declares as he removes thick-framed glasses to wipe sweat from his brow. “Welcome home.”


His outstretched arms wave before him, palms open and extended toward a crimson crucifix at the front of the church. Members moved by the Holy Spirit run circles around pews filled with teary-eyed worshipers. Organs and drums invade the air with deafening force as members cry out in Pentecostal tongues.

Each Sunday, in the desolate town of Lanham, Maryland, north of Washington, Brown preaches the controversial doctrine of Radical Inclusion, an emerging trans-denominational philosophy that aims to provide safe, affirming space for those wounded by “oppressive,” traditional religion. His church, the City of Refuge, reconciles this concept of GLBT-focused, “affirming” worship with Pentecostalism, a branch of Christianity known for a conservative doctrine as well as intense worship styles, like speaking in tongues.

Under Brown's bold words, the church's wooden pews are growing warmer every week.

“For centuries, the church has been an integral aspect of African-American culture,” Brown explains. “Throughout our history, the church has served as a place of worship, community and organization.” For Black people of alternative sexual orientations, however, the conventional church, and many of its followers, pit faith against self-acceptance.

“There are so many congregations across the Washington, D.C. metro area where GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] persons are forced to check an essential part of their being at the door, while their gifts and talents are exploited Sunday after Sunday,” he says. In the City of Refuge, his passionate weekly sermons indicate that this ain’t your granddaddy’s Pentecost.

The City of Refuge's doctrine of Radical Inclusion casts a wide net around the castaways of conventional churches. On a typical Sunday, the turnout reflects the church's targeted base: the poor, same-gender-loving and transgender people, people living with HIV and AIDS, recovering drug users, and the formerly incarcerated. Many members arrived in Lanham only after years of painful searching for a place that fit.

“Pentecostalism, the notion of holiness and living in strict codes of behavior, [does] not have a lot of flexibility for same-gender-loving persons,” says Associate Pastor Cedric Harmon, a spry and energetic St. Louis native. City of Refuge's progressive concept of “being affirming” he adds, “was a watershed for many people who never thought that they could be part of a Pentecostal environment and yet remain true to who they are.”

The City of Refuge leadership actively reaches out to local Black communities, many of which trace their roots back to historical migration from the Deep South, where traditional cultures of worship prevail.

“Most affirming churches... don’t offer the celebrated forms of worship that are grounded in the African-American tradition,” says Brown, referring to the hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and gospel-singing that define Sunday services at the City of Refuge. Brown believes that many same-gender-loving Black Christians would feel out of step without “participatory” worship. “Affirming churches that lack traditional African-American worship,” he says, “set up yet another dynamic where [Black] GLBT persons have to leave another part of them at the door.”

• • •

Jazmin Sutherland, the organist who generates the Sunday soundtrack at the City of Refuge, is a 29 year-old transgender woman. Graceful and elegantly dressed, it's hard to picture her two years prior, when she donned a goatee and planned to marry a female partner.

Unlike some Black transgender women, Jazmin exudes tremendous comfort in her transition. “I’m not saying it’s easy, but it was something that really needed to happen,” she says while speeding in her car toward Lanham from her home in Alexandria one clear Sunday afternoon. “I knew I wanted to be a female since I was a young child. The outside finally matches the inside and I feel much stronger and more balanced as a result.”

Still, like many at the City of Refuge, Sutherland has struggled to reconcile her sexual identity with her faith. “I grew up as part of the first family in Middlesex, Virginia,” she recalls, using a common phrase to describe the pastor’s family in the Black church. Both of her parents are Baptist ministers. While her upbringing imbued her with religious devotion, it also exposed her to tremendous pressure regarding her sexual identity. “While my parents are finally coming around, I’m still not welcome in their church unless I’m willing to go as a man,” she says. “I missed my sister’s wedding last year because everyone thought my attendance would just cause too much of a scene.”
In her experience, she says, compared to the Black Christian community, “other cultures seem to adapt more quickly to change.” This expands beyond the religious context. “In Black culture, there are very rigid standards on gender roles and expression,” she says. “Breaking away from those expectations is difficult and requires a lot of courage.”

Sutherland started playing the organ at the City of Refuge when her identity was outwardly male. Then, she recalls, “I sat down with both pastors and discussed my plan to transition.” Soon, “they called all the relevant members to pass the word, and when I arrived next Sunday, they publicly welcomed me as sister Jazmin.”

Each week, she drives other transgender women from around the Washington area to church. “I’m trying my hardest to fill that place with other transgender persons,” she says.

• • •

Alan Jones, one of the church’s more elusive members, prefers to minister on the fringe One day, he enters D.C.’s Malcolm X Park, a once-notorious destination for cruising and prostitution in the gay black community. Within minutes of his arrival, a young, gay man, apparently on drugs, strikes up a conversation with intense sexual overtones. Jones spends an hour with the man, using non-judgmental street slang to counsel and encourage him. “You don’t have to put yourself through this, brother,” he says. “God loves you just as you are and you deserve better than this.” The exchange ends with a hug–a hallmark of “A Jay's” routine.

“God showed me the path of alternative sexuality so that I could minister to the gay community as part of it,” he says. But it took him a long time to find his way to affirming ministry. Like Sutherland, Jones, 49, spent decades in conventional churches, keeping his sexuality a secret out of fear of rejection.

Jones's denial was a key factor in two failed marriages. His second marriage deteriorated after he was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, contracted from an affair with a male partner. “We just couldn’t survive it,” he recalls, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Between the trauma of my diagnosis and the damage caused by the affair, there was just no coming back.”

“I used to ask myself, why do I have to struggle with τηισ issue,” Jones says. “Why couldn’t I have been an alcoholic or a drug addict or something else that the church would accept?”

HIV nearly defeated him on several occasions, most recently in 2004, when his doctor discovered that his T-Cell count and viral load had reached levels that qualified him as having full-blown AIDS. “At that point, I needed help with everything: bathing, cooking, you name it,” he recalls. He eventually recuperated through a regimen of anti-retroviral drugs. He believes that his religious devotion and positive outlook also aided in his recovery. “The fact that I’m still here makes it clear that I’ve not yet fulfilled my purpose on this earth.”

Today, he proclaims, “I am positively positive.”

Joining an affirming ministry was a milestone in Jones's journey to self-acceptance. “For a good core of African-Americans, if we would see more of these types of affirming ministries spring up, I think you’d see a larger influx of people coming out for support,” he says. “It is places like City of Refuge that really gave me the courage to stand up and embrace who I am and not want to live a double life anymore.”

His eyes grow momentarily distant, lost in memory, and then he shakes his head and recites Psalm 139. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” he says with a hesitant smile.

• • •

Pastor Harmon thinks intolerance toward GLBT people in the Black community should be viewed in the context of structural problems. “I do not believe that the African American community just inherently can’t deal with gay people or is exceptionally conservative,” he says. “It’s that there are additional burdens, pathologies and challenges already and this issue is often couched as yet another threat.”
“Many messages from society, from pulpits or just street wisdom,” he says, “claim that someone who identifies as gay or lesbian is somehow a threat to the family structure in the African-American community.” While the view that homosexuality poses a threat to the family is pervasive in other racial groups as well, Harmon believes that it resonates more deeply in Black communities. Defending the conventional family structure is a sensitive issue, he says, as many are troubled by the high prevalence of single-parent households and children in foster care.

“All of the gaps, or threats, are wider in communities of color,” he adds. “The healthcare gap. The technology gap. The education gap. When same-gender-loving persons are perceived as an additional threat, people do not know how to respond.”

But Pastor Kendal Brown says attitudes are changing. When the City of Refuge community reaches out to traditional circles, he says, “It really is about giving people permission to say what they’ve already been thinking, that we are and have always been a part of the African-American community.”

The slow pace of social change quickens for two hours each Sunday in the City of Refuge. In this space, the formerly incompatible worlds of traditional Pentecostal worship and alternative sexuality coexist in ecstatic harmony. Painful memories of exclusion dissipate as rainbow flags become symbols for participatory expression.

As members are moved to dance and weep, Pastor Harmon looks at his fellow worshippers and smiles. “This, my friend, is the radically inclusive love of Jesus Christ.”

Pete Muller is a photographer and multimedia reporter based in Washington DC.

October Is GLBT History Month

Modeled after Black and Women’s History Months, GLBT History Month highlights annually the achievements of 31 gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender Icons—one each day—with a free video, bio, bibliography, downloadable images and other resources.



Learn More HERE

Gay Rights In America

Kate Kendell of the National Center for Lesbian Rights discusses the future of LGBT rights: “I am inspired by the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘We gain strength, courage, and confidence when we stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.’”

IN or OUT

Getting Fixed - Harmed By "Ex-Gay" Therapy

Patrick McAlvey endured ex-gay therapy. Now, he wants to let other gay teens know they're not broken

by Jessica Carreras:

Confused. Isolated. Depressed. Angry. Lansing resident Patrick McAlvey was all of these things both before and during his stint in ex-gay therapy. Now, through a new video produced and released by Truth Wins Out, he's just determined to make sure that no one else goes through what he did.


The 24-year-old McAlvey's video was released last month just as the American Psychological Association announced that "mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments."

It was too late for McAlvey, but he hopes that the APA findings - plus stories like his - will help other gay youth to love and accept themselves.

Like so many other gay youth, McAlvey was scared when he realized he was attracted to men in sixth grade. Raised in a conservative Christian home, "I didn't think it was safe to tell anybody," he said of his young adulthood.

But he did tell one person: Mike Jones, director of Lansing-based ex-gay organization Corduroy Stone.

"When I was 19, I was kicked out of a missionary training school and was forced to move back home with my family," McAlvey recalled. "I was kicked out because of my attraction to men, so in that time I was sort of in a crisis mode and was very low, very depressed and just trying to make sense of my life and my attraction."

He contacted Jones, whom he had spoken with before about his "problem," and began several months of therapy with Jones that supposedly would cure him and make him straight.

Therapy consisted of embarrassing questions and uncomfortable situations. Jones would instruct McAlvey to lie in his arms for an hour at a time - known in the ex-gay circuit as holding therapy. He forced McAlvey to learn about tools and home repair, and to watch the play "Equus" with him, which features full male nudity. He would ask him to rate his attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.

Then there were the questions. "He asked how large my penis was. He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore," McAlvey explained. "On one occasion, he asked me to take my shirt off and show him how many push-ups I could do, which I did not do.

"He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I'm attracted to."

But despite all his efforts, McAlvey never stopped being attracted to men. "I never felt like I was changing," he said of the therapy.

Eventually, he told Jones he wasn't going to come to therapy anymore. But the damage had been done.

"I just really came to hate myself; to loathe myself," McAlvey said. "I didn't trust anyone and I didn't allow anyone to get close to me because I was terrified that they might find out my secret and that they would think less of me. I spent many years locked up in my room, crying by myself for no good reason."

McAlvey hopes that telling his story will mean less LGBT teens face the same tough years he did. "I view it as a real assault on some of the more vulnerable members of the LGBT community," he said. "I think it's important to speak up to prevent other people from being harmed in the ways that I was."

Now, less than five years out of his time in ex-gay therapy, he's doing just that. And while McAlvey hopes that his video will help others, he also thinks it will help him to move on. "(It's) a bit of a cathartic experience for me, saying publicly that this is not something anymore that I need to be embarrassed of or regret," he explained. "Instead, I'm going to turn around and use it for good. ...It's turning a negative experience into something that can be used positively."

The decision to take his story public took time, and a lot of personal healing for McAlvey. When he stopped seeing Jones, he was still grappling with his sexuality and acceptance of himself. Eventually, he was able to see that it's OK to be gay.

"I realized that I don't think change is going to happen and I don't think it needs to happen," he said. "It was getting to the point where I really was comfortable with who I am, and that takes time, a lot of processing and figuring out how to undo some of the internalized homophobia that was the result of this therapy."

The video, which has almost 6,000 views on YouTube, is the final step in that reparative process - and McAlvey wants to get his message out to LGBT youth.
.
"I would communicate to them the freedom that I felt when I finally embraced my sexual orientation and accepted it as a beautiful and natural part of myself," he said of speaking to another teen like himself. "I would certainly convey that it is my belief that their sexual orientation is a beautiful, natural part of them that they should feel no shame for and should not think needs to be changed."

Out, Safe and Respected

LGBTQ students having knowledge of their legal rights is a key factor in creating safer schools. In 2004, Lambda Legal launched "Out, Safe & Respected," a campaign to provide in-depth information on a range of rights, along with specific steps students can take to make sure those rights are respected.

Learn more at Lambda Legal, making the case for equality.

Good Old Traditional Family Values

Bank Robber Preferred Jail To Marriage

from The Derrick:


Lancaster, PA -- A central Pennsylvania man ways he robbed a back in 2007 to go to jail and get away from his overbearing wife.

At a sentencing hearing, 39-year-old Anthony Miller said he robbed a bank in Ephrata because he wanted to leave his then-wife but she had threatened to commit suicide if he did.



Defense attorney Robert Beyer said Miller approached tellers with a BB gun, asked for money and told them to call the police. He said Miller even asked for updates on their efforts to reach authorities.

Miller pleaded guilty. Lancaster County Judge Louis Farina sentenced him to three to six years in prison.

The Truth About Tea Parties

The Wing-Nut Code: What Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Really Saying to Their Followers

You Thought They Were Just Unhinged. But Here's What They're Really Saying To The Armed And Dangerous.

A Must-Read.

By Adele Stan for AlterNet:

When Glenn Beck offers an odd-looking icon for his 9-12 Project, or Sarah Palin says something about her native state that sounds a bit to off-kilter to the ears of those in the lower 48, it's tempting to think, well, they're just nuts.


Perhaps they are, but that's beside the point. The point is that when Beck throws up a graphic of a segmented snake as his project's mascot, or Palin speaks of her native land as the "sovereign" state of Alaska, they're blowing a kind of dog-whistle for the armed and paranoid who make up the right-wing, neo-militia "Patriot" movement and the broader "Tea Party" coalition.

The loose affiliation of right-wing groups under the Tea Party umbrella can make it difficult to discern who's truly dangerous, and who's just an angry blowhard.

For instance, in its report about the resurgence of the militia movement, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that a Minuteman militia in Southern California uses the Tea Party anthem as its call to arms.

Scott Roeder, the militant anti-abortion activist who is charged with the killing of Dr. George Tiller, counts himself among the members of the patriot movement.

But in Pittsburgh earlier this month, I sat among a group of disgruntled senior citizens at a conference sponsored by the astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity, who probably don't spend their weekends training for a war with the government, but nonetheless consider themselves to be part of the Tea Party coalition -- and perhaps even the patriot movement. Nonetheless, when conference speakers made reference to gun rights, they received heartfelt applause.

The Tea Party coalition is mobilizing for what it promises will be a big march on Washington on Sept. 12. As the date approaches, expect to hear more disguised shout-outs to patriots and tea-partiers, as right-wing politicians seek to placate the hordes said to be on their way to the nation's capitol.

Members of the far-right Tea Party and patriot movements love the iconography of the American Revolution. They fancy themselves as "patriots" in the mold of Ethan Allen and Charles Gadsden -- men who led militias against the troops of England's despotic King George III.

Yet much of their ideology stems from the states' rights philosophy of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and sometimes the ideas and symbols of the two wars are drawn together in a tangle of rage.

Some self-described "patriots" take part in the resurgent militia movement, but many do not. However, gun enthusiasts are rife in their ranks, and many view their role as one of "resistance" to what they see as government encroachment in their lives.

They oppose virtually all forms of taxation and almost anything run by the government. (Hence, the title of the site run by Grassfire.org known as ResistNet.)

Here are some words and images used by right-wing political and media figures as signals to the patriot and Tea Party constituencies, signals used to organize the throngs against health care legislation, environmental reforms and all things identified with President Barack Obama.

Continue Article HERE

From the Shadows to the Sunlight

This is part 1 of 18 in a video playlist series. In June of 2008 several individuals who were active in the gay liberation movement of the late sixties and early seventies held a panel at the Center to share their experience. It was sponsored by Services and Advocacy for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Elders (SAGE). The program called 'From the Shadows to the Sunlight' focused on the first year of the LGBT movement from the Stonewall riots of 1969 to the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March in 1970. This video excerpt was produced by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of New York City.

Learn more at The Center.

Goddes and She

Faith In A Holy Cause -- Authoritarian Threats

President Eisenhower's Forgotten Warning and the Threat of Authoritarian Currents in Our Politics

In this summer of town hall disruptions and birth-certificate controversies, it is worth recalling a now-obscure warning from President Eisenhower.

by Max Blumenthal:

In this summer of town hall disruptions and birth-certificate controversies, a summer when it seemed as if the Republican Party had been captured by its extremist wing, it is worth recalling a now-obscure letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower.


Although Eisenhower is commonly remembered for a farewell address that raised concerns about the “military-industrial complex,” his letter offers an equally important — and relevant — warning: to beware the danger posed by those seeking freedom from the “mental stress and burden” of democracy.

The story began in 1958, when Eisenhower received a letter from Robert Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran. Biggs told the president that he “felt from your recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty.” He added, “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth.”

Eisenhower could have discarded Biggs’s note or sent a canned response. But he didn’t. He composed a thoughtful reply. After enduring Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had smeared his old colleague Gen. George C. Marshall as a Communist sympathizer, and having guarded the Republican Party against the newly emergent radical right John Birch Society, which labeled him and much of his cabinet Soviet agents, the president perhaps welcomed the opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society.

“I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed,” Eisenhower wrote on Feb. 10, 1959. “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.”

Eisenhower also recommended a short book — “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer, a self-educated itinerant longshoreman who earned the nickname “the stevedore philosopher.” “Faith in a holy cause,” Hoffer wrote, “is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

Though Eisenhower was criticized for lacking an intellectual framework or even an interest in ideas, he was drawn to Hoffer’s insights. He explained to Biggs that Hoffer “points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society.

Alluding to Senator McCarthy and his allies, Eisenhower pointed out that cold war fears were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

It is worth noting, of course, that these Cold War exaggerations weren’t just a Republican specialty: John F. Kennedy was making a supposed “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union a key element of his presidential campaign.


In closing his letter, Eisenhower praised Biggs for his “fortitude in pondering these problems despite your deep personal adversity.” Perhaps it was the president’s sense of solidarity with a fellow soldier that prompted him to respond to Biggs with such care; and perhaps it was his experience as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe that taught him that the rise of extreme movements and authoritarianism could take root anywhere — even in a democracy.

Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute. His new book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books) has just been released.

Third Annual Venango Digital Film Festival Next Weekend

The third annual Venango Digital Film Festival, which was organized to promote western Pennsylvania's digital film making and filmmakers, begins next Friday.

Screenings of films by the finalists will take place Friday at the Crawford Center in Emlenton, Saturday, Sept. 12, at DeBence Antique Music World in Franklin, and Sunday, Sept. 13, in Rhoades Auditorium at Clarion University-Venango Campus in Oil City.

The Venango Digital Film Association accepts submissions from all mainstream genres. Videos are pre-viewed by an organizing committee and winners are selected by the audiences.

Winners will be announced at the end of the third screening in Oil City. The audience selects three favorites that receive Peoples Choice awards and cash prizes.

Public screenings will begin at 6:30 p.m. on the three evenings. The film festival committee accepts submissions throughout the year, and this year’s deadline was Aug. 14. Films must be 10-30 minutes long, and submissions can only be accepted from western Pennsylvania locations.

Past festival winners include the Paul Newbury family for their film "The Emlenton Mill Movie" and Matt Hovis for "Iron Furnaces." Screenplay winners include Michael Moon for "The Love of a Son" and Amy Dittman for "A Warning to Young Ladies." The committee is in the process of arranging a filming of the two screenplay winners.

The festival is intended for both amateur and professional filmmakers to share their art publically. The film association says it would like to see more submissions for the new youth category and more diverse subject matters.

Tickets for the festival are $5 or $3 for students with a valid ID.

More information is available by visiting www.vdff.org. or calling 676-3927.

Freedom Is Still Fleeting for GLBT People

PROVINCETOWN, Mass -- When I told my friend Jane, a lesbian, activist and teacher, that I planned to write about the vicarious sense of freedom I experience in this gay oasis by the sea, she warned me to make sure to note high up that I come here with my wife and that we are a straight, square couple from the American Heartland.

She was joking. But I took her advice seriously; which goes to show I'm still not as free as I pretend to be.

It reminds me of President Obama jumping through hoops to assure some of his wackier critics that he's not a Muslim.


For the last three years, my wife and I have marked the end of summer with a group of close friends in Provincetown, Mass., a colonial whaling village and artist colony with a year-round population of about 3,400 people, located at the spiraling tip of Cape Cod.

In the summer, the Provincetown population explodes to almost 60,000. No wonder. It's a beautiful little place, filled with shops, restaurants and history -- the Pilgrims landed here before moving on to that famous rock in Plymouth -- beaches, dunes, bike trails, ocean breezes, incredible nightlife and lots of gay people.

As one tourism Web site describes P-town, "Gay life is everywhere.''

My wife and I started coming here because our friends invited us. Usually, there are seven of us in various salt box shingled vacation houses: My wife and me, two gay couples -- Carlos and Michael, John and his partner -- and Joyce, a straight woman whose brother is gay.

This year our group was joined by Jane, our friend from Chicago.

Our gay friends -- for the most part strait-laced, middle-aged Ivy Leaguers and Manhattanites -- come to P-town because it is one of the few places in the country they feel completely free to be themselves without fear of consequences.

Visiting gay bashers would be badly outnumbered -- and out-muscled by the looks of some of the guys strolling down Commercial Street, P-town's main drag. No pun intended.

When Carlos is in P-town, he says, he doesn't have to edit his behavior. He can reach across the table in a restaurant and touch his partner's hand without having to pretend they're fighting over the check.

"Michael and I never hold hands anywhere else,'' he says.

That stopped me short. If my wife and I want to hold hands, we don't think twice about it. We've been married seven years. Carlos and Michael have been together for more than 15. But if they want to feel safe holding hands or any other innocent display of public affection, they have to drive six hours from their home in New York and go to P-town.

"Any population that has to go somewhere to feel free isn't free,'' Jane said. "In a way, this is like Brigadoon: We will leave and it will be like it never existed."

That's true. Even so, the gay and lesbian rights movement has made tremendous progress over the last 40 years.

But there is still a long way to go, and that is one reason our friend John keeps returning to P-town.

"Being here is like taking a big deep breath,'' John says. "Everywhere you look, there are gay people. When I'm here I get this rare feeling of being in the majority.''

As a black man, I recall having that same feeling of inclusion and belonging 14 years ago. It was during the Million Man March.


It felt good. But it felt fleeting. It, too, was like Brigadoon.

"We've manufactured a gay Mayberry here,'' an actor named Douglas said at a dinner party. "But it's a false sense of security. It doesn't represent society at large. Tomorrow we have to go home.''

But when we unpack, we will all be carrying a piece of P-town with us.

Pennsylvania Senators Co-Sponsor LGBT-Inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Today, Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organization, applauded Pennsylvania Senators Casey and Specter for co-sponsoring an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act(ENDA), which would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. The bill, which enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing federal employment non-discrimination laws. This bill was introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley (OR-D), Susan Collins (ME-R), and Edward M. Kennedy (MA-D).

"Workplace protections for LGBT people are urgently needed and long overdue," said Jake Kaskey, Policy and Outreach Coordinator for Equality Advocates Pennsylvania. “The President has said he is ready to sign this bill. All we need now is for the Senate to act."

Currently, 12 states and more than 100 localities have LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination protections, covering nearly 40 percent of Americans. And, according to numerous surveys, large majorities of likely voters in the U.S. support federal employment non-discrimination laws to protect LGBT people.

Pennsylvania State Representatives are currently debating House Bill 300, an amendment to the state’s Human Relations Act that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Earlier this session, House Bill 300 was voted successfully out of the State Government Committee, the first-ever vote this legislation has received in Pennsylvania’s history. Polling from 2007 shows a majority of Pennsylvanians from every ideology, region, political party, and age supporting this type of legislation.

Equality Advocates Pennsylvania continues to work with organizations and individuals across Pennsylvania to not only pass this important federal legislation, but also show the need for a state law that protects all Pennsylvanians from discrimination.


"We urge Congress to take speedy action to put this bill on the President's desk," said Kaskey. "LGBT employees work just as hard and contribute just as much as other workers. They should not have to fear losing their jobs simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression."

For more information about ENDA or to send an e-mail to Senator Casey and Senator Specter thanking them for co-sponsoring this bill, visit the Equality Advocates Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Equality Summit - Sept. 26

As more and more states progress toward full equality for LGBT citizens, pro-equality legislation remains bottle-necked in the Pennsylvania legislature.

It is now more important than ever before for activists from across the state, from every region, to come together and share ideas, take part in educational programming, network, and build the infrastructure necessary to be the change we wish to see in Pennsylvania.

Join activists, organizations, and supporters from across the Commonwealth at the first-ever state-wide Pennsylvania Equality Summit on Saturday, September 26 in State College, Pennsylvania!

This exciting day-long educational summit is sponsored by the Value All Families Coalition, Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Come together with organizational leaders from across the state for this day-long intensive training on LGBT legislative priorities and strategic planning.

This important and first-of-its-kind summit will train and prepare activists of all backgrounds, from all parts of the state, and equip them with tools and information to bring back to their own communities to continue the work and organizing necessary to see full equality for LGBT Pennsylvanians.

Sessions and panels will include speakers and experts focusing specifically on pending LGBT-related bills in the Pennsylvania legislature. Included in the summit will be dedicated time for regional working groups, networking, and a screening of the ground-breaking documentary Out in the Silence, a powerful tool for community organizing and action in the movement for fairness and equality for all.

Lunch and all training materials will be provided. A detailed schedule of events and agenda will be published closer to the summit.

WHAT: Pennsylvania Equality Summit

WHEN: Saturday, September 26 from 10:00am – 6:00pm

WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County

780 Waupenlani Drive Extension, State College, PA 16801

COST: This summit is FREE to attend, though donations are encouraged to help cover costs

RSVP: Participants are encouraged to RSVP through eventbrite. Space is limited.


QUESTIONS: Please direct all questions to Jake Kaskey, Policy and Outreach Coordinator with Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, at jkaskey@equalitypa.org or 215-731-1447 x 14

Gay Western Pennsylvania Man's Gender Bias Lawsuit Reinstated

PITTSBURGH (AP) ― A federal appeals court has reinstated a gay western Pennsylvania man's lawsuit contending that co-workers who nicknamed him "Princess" and otherwise allegedly harassed him about his effeminate behavior discriminated against his gender, not his sexual orientation.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reversed the decision of a federal judge in the suit filed by Brian Prowel, of Penn Hills, against Wise Business Forms Inc. of Butler.


"There is no basis in the statutory or case law to support the notion that an effeminate heterosexual man can bring a gender stereotyping claim while an effeminate homosexual man may not," Judge Thomas M. Hardiman wrote. The employee must simply present evidence of harassment or discrimination "because of sex," and let a jury decide, he said.

Prowel's attorneys hailed the decision as important for workplace discrimination law. Attorney Timothy O'Brien said it was significant for any worker "who doesn't meet expectations because of their gender."

Prowel said he was fired in 2004 from the job he had held since 1991 after complaining that co-workers nicknamed him "Rosebud" and "Princess" and ridiculed the way he walked, spoke and even sat. He said workers left a feathered tiara at his work station and wrote graffiti about him and AIDS on bathroom walls, among other things.

Wise Business Forms said Prowel was laid off with other workers due to a business slowdown and alleged that he had complained about his pay and developed attitude problems. The company says other workers complained about Prowel trying to "recruit" them to testify for the bias lawsuit he eventually filed in 2006.

The suit was filed under Title VII, the federal law that bars discrimination based on sex, religion, race and national origin. The law covers gender stereotyping but does not protect against harassment based on sexual orientation, which is handled by individual jurisdictions.

U.S. District Judge Terrence F. McVerry had dismissed the suit in 2007, calling the workplace behavior "reprehensible" but saying Prowel had been discriminated against because of his sexual orientation rather than his gender.

Hardiman, writing for the three-judge panel, said that decision was up to a jury. He cited a 1989 case in which the Supreme Court held that sex discrimination laws protect women who fail to conform to a traditionally feminine demeanor and appearance.

"Unlike (in that case) there is no dispute that Prowel is homosexual. The difficult question, therefore, is whether the harassment he suffered at Wise was because of his homosexuality, his effeminacy, or both," the judge wrote, adding that the record was "ambiguous" on that point.


"(I)t is possible that the harassment Prowel alleges was because of his sexual orientation, not his effeminacy," he said. "Nevertheless, this does not vitiate the possibility that Prowel was also harassed for his failure to conform to gender stereotypes."

The appeals court, however, upheld the lower court's dismissal of Prowel's contention that he was the victim of religious discrimination. Prowell, who identifies himself as a Christian, quoted some co-workers as saying homosexuality was a sin or that he was going to hell. The court said such remarks were based on sexual orientation, not behavior.

School Protects Gay Student After Law Suit

Will This Ever Happen In Venango County School Districts?

from The Advocate:

A school district in Herkimer County, N.Y. has agreed to take immediate action to protect a gay student before the academic year begins in September.


The agreement is only a step in resolving a lawsuit that was filed on behalf of a 14-year-old student who was constantly harassed by students at his high school for his sexual orientation. A federal judge approved of the New York Civil Liberties Union's suggestions for the school district, the specifics of which cannot be disclosed.

Jacob, a student at the Gregory B. Jarvis Junior/Senior High School in central New York, had been subjected to constant verbal abuse, and was regularly pushed or the target of thrown objects. Some of his personal property had also been vandalized, according to the statement by the legal organization. Jacob had sprained his ankle earlier this year after a student pushed him down a flight of stairs. Another student brought a knife to school, threatening to kill Jacob.

Though district officials like the superintendent and school principal were notified of the incidents, there was no discipline for the harassment.

The NYCLU filed the case in August.

"It shouldn’t take a lawsuit to motivate school district officials to protect a student from vicious harassment," said NYCLU staff attorney Corey Stoughton, lead counsel on the case. "Our case will proceed until the district addresses the systemic failures that allowed it to ignore Jacob’s plight for two years."

NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman added that the district must take steps to "ensure that all students are safe at school and treated with the dignity and respect they deserve."

Are You Ready for the Revolution?

New Book -- QUEER MOBILIZATIONS

Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law

Edited by Scott Barclay, Mary Bernstein and Anna-Maria Marshall for the NYU Press:


“Queer Mobilizations is one of precious few volumes that manages to bridge divisions between legal and cultural analysis and between scholarship and partisanship. Brilliantly interdisciplinary, moving fluidly between ‘theory’ and empirical-legal analysis, these essays force us to approach law as central to the current struggles over the American erotic landscape. A truly must read!”— Steven Seidman, author of Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life

“What is the complicated relationship between the LGBT movement and the law? The contributors to this fascinating volume offer a rich and thoughtful analysis of this important question by exploring an array of important policy issues. Timely and well written, this book should be of keen interest to teachers, scholars, movement activists, and citizens.”— Craig A. Rimmerman, author of The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilationist or Liberationist?

Learn more about Queer Mobilizations HERE.

The Pathology of Purity

by Wayne Besen:

In observing American fundamentalism for more than a decade there is one common thread that runs through the movement. It is the romanticized idea of purity, particularly sexual and doctrinal. While the idea is ostensibly innocuous, in practice it can be insidious and always threatens to politically spin out of control.


The idea of applying purity to human beings - who are impure by definition - creates an impossible standard that can't be met. The result is that millions of people are haunted by perceived moral failure and tortured by unnecessary guilt. Instead of producing healthy spiritual lives, this concept can create neurotic people with various complexes, who view themselves as worthless sinners. Such a damaging belief system may have a corrosive affect on self-esteem and creates needless internal conflicts.

The pursuit of unattainable perfection has led to a cottage industry of so-called "experts" who allegedly can help one achieve the unachievable. The proliferation of products and websites profiting from "purity" is problematic. There is no shortage of charlatans to fight "The War on Pleasure" and strictly forbid any form of fun for a fee. In some cases, the rules are so stringent that masturbation is considered a menace.

"God designed sex to be profound, which masturbation is not; it is shallow," wrote Dr. Harry W. Schaumburg on the website Restoring Sexual Purity. "God made sex to be fruitful, but masturbation treats sex like a commodity rather than a capacity for producing life. God made sex to be selflessly God-centered, not self-centered and self-satisfying."

Ultimately, religions and cults that focus on purity have an ulterior motive, which is to maintain control over the lives of its followers. If pleasure is policed, then faith-based father figures can ration it. By squeezing out the "impure" competition, such groups create a monopoly over one's mind.

The idea of protecting the potential sinner from "falling" is as elusive a goal of purity itself. No matter how cloistered, people will seek to explore their humanity, which includes enjoyment and fulfillment. Some fundamentalists hate secular society because temptations - epitomized by the concept of demons - are often stronger than their faith.

Instead of learning the healthy practice of moderation, many of these individuals embark on the pathological path of prohibition. Indoctrinated with a "just say no" ethos, the repression builds up until the fantasies become overwhelming fetishes that spiral out of control.

Unable to extinguish the fire internally, some of these individuals work though external means - namely politics - to eliminate temptations. This is why they have feverishly fought to close down adult bookstores and nude beaches. Such nosey behavior mirrors that of the teetotalers who fought to enact the disaster known as prohibition. Those who cling to this philosophy subconsciously want to ban from society what they cannot banish in themselves.

The quest for "purity" takes its most perverse form in the hands of Christian Reconstructionists. They believe that in order for Christ to return, they have to purify the world by instituting theocracy. This vision often includes executing gay people and adulterers.

The equivalent of such repression is already carried out in many Islamic countries. In Malaysia, which is considered a relatively moderate nation, a Muslim woman was recently sentenced to be whipped for the "crime" of enjoying a beer. God forbid Allah Time had to compete with Miller Time for personal satisfaction.

Of course, the puritanical enforcement of behavior rarely extends to those on the top of the moral hierarchy. In his chilling book, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power", Jeff Sharlet writes in alarming detail about members of Congress who believe they are above the law because they are ordained by God as leaders. This must-read book gets into the heads of the hypocrites and allows one to grasp how they justify their tawdry affairs, while passing laws to penalize the very behavior that they had embraced on the sly.


The quest for purity is a sign of sickness and insecurity. It comes from individuals with serious hang-ups who want other people to be as miserable as they are.In order to make the world antiseptic, these zealots often become virtually anti-everyone and everything. It is with great irony that the more a person or nation obsesses about moral cleanliness the filthier, more violent and corrupt they usually become.

In chasing a concept that is elusive, many fundamentalists have become more elitist and exclusive, while intellectually reclusive. This helps explains the perpetual anger, bitterness and frustration that defines populist and political social conservatism.

Gay = Sin

GAY = SIN from Matthew Brown on Vimeo.

An Odd Silence On Marriage Equality

by Steve Chapman for the Chicago Tribune:

Opponents of same-sex marriage reject it on religious and moral grounds but also on practical ones. If we let homosexuals marry, they believe, a parade of horribles will follow -- the weakening of marriage as an institution, children at increased risk of broken homes, the eventual legalization of polygamy and who knows what all.

Well, guess what? We're about to find out if they're right. Unlike most public policy debates, this one is the subject of a gigantic experiment, which should definitively answer whether same-sex marriage will have a broad, destructive social impact.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have all decided to let gays wed. Most of the remaining 44 states, however, are not likely to follow suit anytime soon. So in the next few years, we will have a chance to compare social trends in the states permitting same-sex marriage against social trends in the others.

But with the experiment looming, some opponents seem to be doubting their own convictions. I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators -- marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it.

You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states.

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Virginia-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, has declared that losing this battle "means losing American civilization." But she politely declined my invitation.

Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, has been equally dire. The change, he has warned, would weaken social taboos against adultery and incest and "set in motion a series of threats to the ethos of monogamy from which the institution of marriage may never recover."

When it came time to offer more specific predictions, Kurtz was missing in action. I e-mailed him twice and left a message on his office voice mail. After two weeks, I'm beginning to lose hope.

The only person willing to talk was David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. His 2007 book, "The Future of Marriage," made a serious and temperate effort to grapple with the case for same-sex marriage. Blankenhorn opposed it out of fear it would drain marriage of its central role by making it "exclusively a private relationship" that is "essentially unconnected to larger social needs and public meanings."

When I talked with him, though, he declined to predict what tangible bad things will occur in same-sex marriage states. "I disagree with those who say it will have no impact at all," Blankenhorn told me. "But beyond that, I don't think you can say."

What's equally striking is that when I made similar inquiries to people on the other side of the debate, I encountered no such reluctance. They forthrightly asserted that granting gays access to matrimony will have no discernible impact.

"I wouldn't expect much effect on the social indicators that would be visible to the naked eye," said Jonathan Rauch, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington and author of the 2004 book, "Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America." Evan Wolfson, founder of the organization Freedom to Marry, agreed: "I don't think social indicators will get worse" in same-sex marriage states.

M. V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of the new book, "When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage," was happy to answer my question. "I don't think we'll see those kinds of negative social consequences," she said. "In Europe, there's no evidence that patterns have changed for marriage, divorce or non-marital births because of same-sex marriage or registered partnerships."

In a few years, we won't have to rely on such forecasts, because the facts will be there for all to see. And they should settle the issue once and for all.

But I have a strong suspicion that both sides of the debate are right. The supporters of same-sex marriage are right in predicting that it will have no bad side effects. And the opponents are right not to make predictions.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.

What Makes A Space "Safe" ?

By John Corvino for 365gay.com:

A friend writes, “I’m coordinating a safe-space training at [an urban public university]. One participant stated that she felt she was a strong ally, but her religious beliefs dictate that homosexuality is a sin. What should I do? Can I deny her a safe-space sticker, or ask her not to advise students on religious issues?”

This is a hard question.

It’s hard partly because of its legal implications. Georgia Tech, another state school, recently lost a lawsuit because its safe-space program distributed literature uniformly criticizing traditional interpretations of the Bible. Not surprisingly, a federal judge ruled that this practice violated the First Amendment by favoring particular religious viewpoints. (Georgia Tech has kept its safe-space program but dropped the religious literature.)

Legal matters aside, the question raises difficult policy issues. What counts as “safe”?

Safe-space programs generally involve a school-sponsored diversity training focusing on LGBT issues. Upon completing it, participants receive a sticker to display on their office doors announcing their “ally” status.

Given how often religion is used as a weapon, I can understand why many LGBT students would not feel “safe” while being judged as sinners. We should never underestimate the potential damage done by telling youth, at a delicate stage in identity formation, that acting on their deep longings could lead to eternal separation from God.

In contemplating my friend’s question, I mainly thought of those vulnerable students, and how best to protect them. I also thought of my friend John.

John is a faculty member at a small private liberal arts college. He is an evangelical Christian who believes that homosexual conduct conflicts with God’s plan as revealed in the bible. And yet John defies easy stereotypes. He supports civil marriage equality, decries the various ways religion is used to harm LGBT people, and avoids “heteronormative language” (his words) in his classroom.

While he believes that homosexual conduct (not to mention plenty of heterosexual and non-sexual conduct) is sinful, he also believes that all humans - himself included - have an imperfect grasp of God’s will, and that we should generally strive to respect other people’s life choices and give them wide latitude in forging their own paths. John and his wife have welcomed me in their home, and during grace before the meal, his wife asked for God’s blessing on me, my partner Mark, and our relationship. (For the record, I did not take the latter to imply approval for every aspect of our relationship.)

In light of all I know about John and his loving treatment of LGBT persons, I can think of few spaces “safer” than his office. Any program that would disqualify him draws the circle of “safe spaces” too narrowly.

Moreover, there are good strategic reasons for wanting to make the circle of self-proclaimed allies as inclusive as possible, consistent with the well-being of LGBT students. We need people like John to make their presence known.

Yet I am not suggesting that we draw the circle so broadly as to rob “safe space” of any real meaning. Any student in any campus office - stickered or not - should expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. Presumably, the safe-space sticker denotes venues that substantially exceed that bare minimum (as John’s office would).


So how does one draw the circle broadly enough to include John and other conservative religious allies while excluding those who might rant about gays burning in hell?

As with any policy question involving human beings, there’s no perfect formula here (just as there are no perfect people). To some extent, the desired group will be somewhat self-selecting. Those interested in condemning LGBT people to hell generally don’t attend voluntary pro-gay diversity trainings.

Yet there are also steps one can take to tailor the circle. My recommendation would be to include, among various other elements of a pledge taken by safe-space training participants, something along the following lines:

“I understand that my own values and beliefs may differ from those of students who seek me out for a ‘safe space,’ and will refer students to appropriate resources given their particular values, beliefs, interests and desires.”

The idea here is that students who wish to retreat to a “narrower” circle will be assisted in doing so. Note that religious people offer such assistance all the time. Think, for example, of the Christian who helpfully directs a student to the Buddhist Student Center, despite her personal conviction that eternal salvation is through Christ alone.

On this approach, students who want pro-gay religious literature can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. At the same time, those who want the advice of fellow conservative evangelicals, for example, or fellow Orthodox Jews, can receive it and evaluate it for themselves.

Admittedly, my recommendation would allow conservative religious students to request and receive - in a designated “safe space” - literature of a sort that’s often deeply damaging to LGBT people. But the approach is preferable to the alternatives: a public university’s (illegally) favoring particular religious viewpoints, on the one hand, or its becoming silent on religious issues–the Georgia Tech solution–on the other.

Universities are places for free exchange of ideas. As long as that’s done in a compassionate manner that respects student autonomy, it should never be considered “unsafe.”


John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Hate Crimes In A Small Town -- This Is What Leadership Looks Like

from the Imagine 2050:

Hate crimes throughout the United States are on the rise. While many state governments have ignored the statistics and refused to address rising hate crimes, one small town in Ohio is taking a stand.


Joseph P. Sulzer, mayor of Chillicothe, Ohio, has sprung into action by creating a diversity task force. Mr. Sulzer recruited city and county officials, ministers, school administrators, community members and educators to join him in the effort.

The mayor’s reason for creating the group is simple: “The unfortunate thing is we’re seeing a lot of hate groups becoming more visible, not just here but throughout the state, and I think this is an appropriate response to that.”

In recent years, hate crimes in the community have increased. Swastika graffiti was found on an African American family’s home last spring. Other graffiti depicting a lynching and racial slurs was found in a park bathroom. In February of 2008, a Martin Luther King march in the town was disrupted when residents came across a large sign on the back of a pickup truck that read, “A real white person would not march for MLK.”

Instead of the usual method of a fruitless police investigation, which usually fails to apprehend the culprits, the mayor hopes that his task force will help to prevent incidents from happening completely through education and awareness. “We’re hoping this group can act as a voice for the community,” Sulzer said.

The task force has also had meetings with officials from the FBI, Department of Justice and the US Attorney General’s Office. A member of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division detailed how relatively simple and cost effective a task force like this can be. He stated, “This can be a volunteer effort and not cost the city anything,” “Part of this is in training the youth, teachers, police officers, and offering interfaith dialogue — getting groups worshiping together who normally wouldn’t.”


Ohio has turned into a hotbed of white nationalist activity recently, with groups such as the Counsel of Conservative Citizens setting up new branches throughout the state. Be that as it may, it’s nice to hear about a community that has decided to take a stand against white nationalist’s who are spreading hate. With the increase in hate groups and hate group activity, other communities should follow Chillicothe’s lead. Creating a task force is relatively easy and cost-effective for most communities as long as there are residents committed to making it work.

One of the main goals of white nationalist groups is to divide communities by increasing tension between different racial groups. By creating a successful diversity task force like the newly formed one in Chillicothe, a community can defeat racism by bringing the entire community, men, women, and children of all races together in an effort to eradicate hate crimes.

Learn more HERE.

Sunday Sermon: Democracy, Religion, and Overcoming Prejudice

Leadership and Human Rights

This Arcus Foundation video tribute to NAACP Chairman Julian Bond was shown at the July 2009 Spingarn Medal Dinner during the NAACP's Centennial Convention.

Jocks Pose for Photos to Fight Homophobia

Wouldn't It Be Cool If Venango County Started Such A Campaign?

If Local Leaders And Everyday People Throughout The Oil Region Got Involved In Making Sure That All People Felt Welcome and Respected In Our Communities, Schools, Churches, Businesses, Etc.?

Hopefully Someday ...

from The Advocate:


The high-profile muscled jocks of Australia’s national rugby team, the Qantas Wallabies, have joined forces with the country’s largest LGBT-focused health and HIV/AIDS organization for a campaign to fight discrimination against LGBT people.

Team captain Stirling Mortlock and other players were photographed holding handwritten signs championing inclusiveness in sports as part of the This Is Oz campaign, an online photo blog where users can upload photos of themselves with messages that challenge homophobia and celebrate diversity and social inclusion.

"Having the Wallabies and the Australian Rugby Union demonstrating their support for social inclusion for GLBT people will hopefully increase visibility for the campaign [and] help change attitudes amongst some rugby supporters who might otherwise think it's OK to be antigay," AIDS Council of New South Wales CEO Stevie Clayton said in a media release. "[It] sends a message to young GLBT people that there is a place for them in a rugby union."

The Wallabies also showed solidarity with gay rugby team the Sydney Convicts by posing with players in photos for the project. The Convicts, founded in 2004 as Australia's first gay rugby team, are the current titleholders of the Bingham Cup, the International Gay Rugby Association's world championship.

"To have representatives of the national rugby union team taking a public and positive stance against homophobia speaks volumes to counter negative stereotypes,” Sydney Convicts president Charlie Winn said. “It also sends a message to the many young players that their role models at the professional level accept diversity and support our community."

Now Is The Time To Lead

America's Gay Leadership Crisis

by Rupert Russell for The Huffington Post:

The leadership struggle for civil equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans is in crisis. A glut of organizations, with competing interests and shifting priorities, of professional lobbyists pitted against grassroots activists, splintered over race and religion, jostling for influence whilst shirking responsibility, has created an unprecedented leadership vacuum.


It is this crisis of leadership -- not the conservative movement, the Republican Party or the Mormon Church -- that represents the single greatest threat to LGBTQ rights. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the attempts to overturn Proposition 8 and restore marriage equality to California.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest group, is abstaining from this "state" issue to focus on federal campaigns. A host of groups, lead by Prepare to Prevail, is undermining a 2010 attempt. Equality California, the single organization charged with repealing Prop 8, decided to ignore a ballot of its membership who voted 69 to 24 percent in favor of a 2010 challenge, to put it off until 2012 because that's when the "experts" told them they could win it.

So, the very organizations that so vocally criticized Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration for asking the LBGTQ community to "wait" for the appropriate political moment, have come to embrace the very same principle of "the fierce urgency of whenever," as Andrew Sullivan aptly puts it. Now, it is the Human Rights Campaign and Equality California, and not just the Democrats, who say: cut your checks now and wait a little longer, equality is right around the corner.

And they have been waiting, patiently: 13 years for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, 16 years to end Don't Ask Don't Tell, 22 years to lift the HIV travel and immigration ban, and 233 years to have their relationships recognized by a Republic that declared "all men are created equal."

Maybe the "experts" have a point. Isn't the practical road just the safest route to a principled destination? According to them, we must wait until support for repeal reaches a safe number, around 60%. How is this to be achieved? They say by a coordinated "grass-roots" campaign, "outreach" initiatives to minority communities, and "generational replacement," which is a cruel euphemism for waiting for our opponents to die.

Yet attempting to launch any mass volunteer based movement with the expectation that it will be able shift 10 points in the polls in the absence of an election campaign is perhaps the least practical of any of the options considered. The idea behind their thinking is that little actual campaigning needs to be done because in the long term society will move in a linear progression towards marriage equality by itself. But the long view has a short-term memory, forgetting that was precisely the mindset of activists in the 1970s on the eve of the Reagan-led conservative backlash that set them back decades.

Nor is this the consensus among political professionals: Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager for Obama's presidential bid, recently declared that "2010 is the right time to courageously win back marriage rights in California -- as strongly as I felt when I decided to devote two years of my life to help Barack Obama run for President despite warnings from the pundits and pollsters that he would never occupy the Oval Office."


America's LGBTQ leaders only want to lead when there is nobody left to be led. This could not be more opposed to the very leader from their own community who has been posthumously awarded this week the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Harvey Milk. Milk was not afraid to risk defeat, and was defeated many, many times. He also understood that each time he went into battle he was one step closer to winning the war, whether he won or lost.

This was not hopeless idealism, but a kind of pragmatism that is entirely missing from our political culture. Let us not forgot that the when the Brigg's Initiative was first placed on the ballot in September 1978, 61 to 31 percent favored the passage of the proposition. Had it passed, it would have fired the homosexual employees of California's public schools, under the slogan of Anita Bryant's "Save our Children." In fewer than three months, the numbers had flipped with 58% voting against the measure. The consultants who say we must wait for 60% approval before committing to a vote should take note of Briggs and Bryant's defeat.

At a time when gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are flourishing in America's public life like never before, those charged with advancing their civil equality have retreated into the closet. In the spirit of Milk, it's time to say: "come out!" not just to your friends and your families, but your own communities who need you now like never before. Now is the time to lead.

Rupert Russell is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Harvard University

Health Care for All, or Gay Couples Rights?

By Lisa Duggan for Bully Bloggers, the queer bully pulpit you never dreamed of:

The battle royal has now been engaged over the question of whether health care reform will include a public option, with insurance industry flacks and free market ideologues drumming up hysteria and hauling out the loonies to denounce any public option as “socialist” (I wish) and “Nazi” (say what?), while mild mannered liberals defend it for bringing “choice and competition” to the health insurance markets. It’s a hard war to watch, given that the so-called public option is a pale shadow of single payer–the approach that might bring provide universal quality care without siphoning buckets of money into executive salaries and profits for the health care robber barons.


But here’s my question for today: Where are the homosexuals? While all the mainstream gay groups and lgbt media and bloggers are rehashing Prop 8 and planning a march for equality in October, honey, Rome is burning right here right now. Much of the furor over marriage rights in the United States is fueled by the desire for access to health care–employment and marriage being the primary routes for insurance coverage.

In countries with universal health care, the battle over same sex marriage rights has been much less intense and consequential. Gaining universal access to health care in the U.S. now would meet the widespread need that is now largely expressed in campaigns for partnership recognition. In addition, it could address the crying need for adequate health care for masses of queers who have no wish to marry. In the large balancing scale of benefits–free universal health care, or single payer, would do more for The Gays than marriage equality. So where are the gay groups and activists? Where have they been for the past decade when organizing for single payer might have helped push it onto the national political agenda, before it was so unceremoniously replaced by the “public option”? And where are they now that the public option may be replaced by the even paler, more impotent health co-op plan?

Are gay groups and activists serious about gaining concrete benefits for queer constituencies–homeless kids, transgendered sex workers, lgbt populations that are unemployed, elderly, migrant or immigrant, disabled and sick? If so, then it would make a lot more sense to spend $50 million in donor funds pushing for free universal health care, than even thinking about spending that sum to redo the Prop 8 referendum next year. Should we rename the current organizations to peg them as the Gay Couples Rights Movement?

Access to health care is a national emergency, for queers folks more than most. Thousands line up for health care

It’s past time for us all to mobilize on the front lines of this political battle–it matters more to more queers than marriage ever will.

Queer Prehistory

The Gay-Rights Movement Did Not Begin With The Stonewall Riots In 1969.

(How Are We Shaping and Documenting the Movement for Fairness & Equality for All in Venango County?)

by Doug Ireland for In These Times:

Myth has it that the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village were the first open queer rebellion against discrimination. Not so. In 1965, the first queer sit-ins on record took place at a late-night Philadelphia coffee shop and lunch counter called Dewey’s, a popular hangout for young gays, lesbians and drag queens.


The establishment began refusing service to this LGBT clientele, prompting a protest rally on April 25, 1965. Dewey’s management turned away more than 150 patrons while the demonstration went on outside. Four teens resisted efforts to force them out and were arrested and later convicted of disorderly conduct. In the ensuing weeks, Dewey’s patrons and others from Philadelphia’s gay community set up an informational picket line protesting the lunch counter’s treatment of gender-variant youth. On May 2, activists staged another sit-in, and the police were again called, but this time made no arrests. The restaurant backed down, and promised “an immediate cessation of all indiscriminate denials of service.”

In August 1966, there was a riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour San Francisco eatery popular with drag queens and other gender-benders, hustlers, runaway teens and cruising gays. The Compton’s management had begun calling police to roust this nonconformist clientele, and one night a drag queen precipitated the riot by throwing a cup of coffee into the face of a cop who was trying to drag her away. Plates, trays, cups and silverware were soon hurtling through the air, police paddy wagons arrived, and street fighting broke out. Some of the 60 or so rioting drag queens hit the cops with their heavy purses, a police car was vandalized and a newspaper stand was burned down. The Compton’s Riot eventually led to the appointment of the first police liaison to the gay community.

These are just two of the many nuggets of little-known or forgotten queer history to be found in Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights, June 2009), the new anthology edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca, himself a veteran of the earliest gay liberation struggles, and today a San Francisco-based gender-bending performance artist.

By the time of the Stonewall riots in June 1969, rebellion and radicalism were in the air. The country had been riven by the mass agitation against the war in Vietnam. America’s cities had exploded in urban riots by the black underclass. Feminists had begun to articulate their own liberation ideology and burn their bras. Stonewall and the militant gay liberation movement to which it gave birth arose out of this ’60s turbulence.

If the first night of the Stonewall riots was spontaneous, the ensuing nights benefited from activist participation. Mark Segal, who for 32 years has been the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News writes, “Marty Robinson recruited me into the ‘activist group,’ a subgroup of Mattachine New York. If there were organizers of the demonstrations on the nights following the [first] Stonewall riot, it was us. After the first incident in which cops raided the bar, Marty had the brilliant idea to have us write in chalk on Christopher Street, ‘Stonewall Tomorrow Night.’ For three more nights, we gathered and protested.”

Stonewall became the much-evoked milestone because it was followed by the launch of a concrete and militant political organization, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Within two years, imitators of the New York GLF had launched some 300 independent Gay Liberation Front cells across the country. At GLF demonstrations, one frequently heard the chant “2-4-6-8, smash the church, smash the state!”—hence the title of Avicolli Mecca’s collection of articles.

Nick Benton, a founder of the Berkeley Gay Liberation Front, writes that for him and his fellow GLF activists, “gay liberation was part of the larger struggle of human beings for liberation, in solidarity with the civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and Third World liberation struggles.”

The personal testimonies collected for Smash the Church, Smash the State! help recreate those heady, joyously rambunctious days of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.” Queers, influenced by the hippies, Yippies and Zippies, built their own radical wing of the youth counterculture and created their own influential publications—including Boston’s Fag Rag, which published the notorious Charlie Shively article, “Cocksucking As an Act of Revolution.”

There are contributions by women who tired of the male domination of GLF and founded groups like RadicalLesbians, RedStockings and Dyketactics. There are also accounts both of radical gay liberation’s earliest and often campy direct actions and of the factional fights that eventually destroyed GLF and led to its replacement by the much larger—and single-issue—Gay Activists Alliance.

Avicolli Mecca has not abandoned the anarchic radicalism of those early days. He writes in his introduction, “In many ways, the new millennium gay movement is the antithesis of the early ’70s gay liberation. It cavorts with politicians who may be good on gay issues, but not on concerns affecting other disenfranchised communities. It courts corporate support for its … pride parades, which used to be be protest marches and celebrations of the Stonewall Riots. Now those marches seem more of a market than a movement.”

On this 40th anniversary of Stonewall, that’s a critique that deserves to be heard.