This photo is from last week’s Pride parade in New York. Everyone is always pretty friendly in allowing me to take their photo at these events — it’s one of the only times people are that gracious about having a stranger stick a camera in their face, and it’s one of the things I love about NYC Pride. I also love that it’s one of the most racially diverse queer events you could ever participate in. Not every state is that lucky. What I hate about Pride, though, is that like any queer-related event, the focus is still on very homonormative goals and values.

This year, there was a lot of focus on DADT and on marriage, as there was last year. Don’t get me wrong, when I decided to sneak into the march last year, I ended up walking with Marriage Equality NY – and they were lovely people! But the emphasis on “gay marriage” is problematic for a number of reasons: it ignores the fact that not everyone who wants a same-sex marriage is gay, and it also prioritizes marriage (something that mainly affects gays and lesbians) over issues that affect the other letters in our acronym, such as trans-inclusive hate crime legislation. Last year, I was at an LGBTQ conference with other colleges in the Northeast, and we were asked to state our opinions on a number of issues affecting our community by standing in various boxes ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When marriage came up, 95% of students strongly disagreed with Prop 8. When HRC’s actions concerning ENDA came up, 95% of students stared blankly at the man asking us questions, as they had no clue what he was talking about.

Let’s think about this for a minute: a bunch of students living on the east coast were up to date and very much concerned with a law in California concerning marriage, yet none of them knew about HRC lying to the trans community and pushing for a non-inclusive ENDA, an action that probably set our community back a good decade. They’ve since apologized, but it’s still troubling that this doesn’t quite register as a big concern within the LGBTQ community (at least not within my age bracket, though I don’t think this is really specific to us).

I also saw a lot of “born gay” signs this year, a phrase that annoys me more and more every time I hear it. I think it’s one of the worst approaches to homophobia our community has ever created. Besides the fact that it (absurdly) singles sexual orientation down to this one so-called “gay gene,” it assumes gender by suggesting that biology predetermines our attraction to gender. If we understand gender to be biologically innate (rather than a social construct), the “born gay” standpoint further complicates the LGB relationship with the trans community, and we have enough tension there to begin with. “Born gay” is an easy comeback to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as well as the religious argument, but it’s more problematic than anything else, and completely ignores the fluidity of sexuality.

In addition to the born gay posters were signs that appropriated the language of the Civil Rights Movement. I believe I’ve posted about this before (one one of my blogs, at least), but I’m bothered by it so much more after Prop 8. As it is, offending the black community by equating our struggle with the Civil Rights Movement does nothing to help our relationship with people of color, but it’s especially offensive after we blamed black and Latino voters for the outcome of Prop 8. And that was only after opponents of Prop 8 did not go into communities of color to appeal for their vote in the first place…

I still love Pride events, and I always enjoy myself in the craziness of it all. But we’re not immune to homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or racism just because we are a fairly progressive community. As a community so focused on our own oppression, we should be more conscious of the prejudice within our own community and the voices we silence in favor of the ones more marketable to heteronormative society.

(cross-posted on my tumblelog)

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These photos are from this morning, when the Westboro Baptist Church — the hate group known for protesting Matthew Shepard’s funeral and soldiers’ funerals around the country — came to campus to picket outside of Rutgers Hillel. Almost everyone on campus was anticipating their visit, so Hillel has been rounding up different religious organizations, queer organizations, and music groups on campus for the past couple of weeks to help organize a counter-protest in the form of a rally against hate. Despite the rain, it was a huge success — the a capella groups, the unified diversity speeches, and the mass amount of cheering drowned out the WBC completely…

To begin with, there was a lot of debate surrounding the WBC’s visit and how our community should respond. Immediately I thought of Romaine Patterson’s Angel Action and the impact of such a creative and positive response to the WBC… some wanted to merely treat it as a joke, others wanted to throw a dance party noiseout, and still others wanted to completely ignore them, believing that to be our safest bet. Thankfully, Hillel put together a very well thought out program that took attention away from WBC rather than emphasizing their visit, which I hope makes an impact on those who argued against any sort of recognition of their visit. For one thing, it wasn’t practical — regardless of whether or not anyone organizes around the WBC, signs like “God hates fags” and “the Jews killed Jesus” and “thank God for dead soldiers” generally attract a lot of attention. One way or another, a mass of people would have circled around them, and when the WBC has the chance to provoke unprepared and unsuspecting bystanders, they take the opportunity to attack and then sue them for their engagement, alleging verbal and/or physical attacks. The fact that their entire organization is built around verbal and visual displays of violence doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the outcome of these lawsuits, which usually result in funding for the WBC. Thankfully, we didn’t run into any such problems, and all in all, I’d say the event was a complete success — in fact, I only have one photo where the WBC is actually visible, because the 1,200 participating supporters of Hillel completely blocked them out. They gave up fairly early, but our rally continued.

A lot of people, I think, are actually glad that the WBC came to Rutgers. If nothing else, their extremism provides us with a unique opportunity to build alliances between groups of people with a long history of dividedness between them, and I hope that sense of unity will stay with us.

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This year’s NY Pride marked the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. During a time when raids of gay bars were rather common, the queer community finally organized itself in a fight against police brutality one night in June, almost immediately after receiving the news of Judy Garland’s death — a death that deeply impacted many members of the LGBT community. Ever since, this has been cited as the moment that gave birth to the modern gay liberation movement, and as I myself marched in NY Pride this year, I passed by a number of Stonewall veterans who were looked to with great honor and respect. One of the veterans in particularly was carrying a sign that read “WE NEED A MILLION STONEWALLS,” which I thought was particularly striking. The sign, of course, was not suggesting that more raids and rioting must happen, but that our current generation must revolutionize the way these Stonewall veterans did — but with more relevance to the issues we are facing today, of course, as raids and police brutality are no longer considered normative.

Unfortunately, though, the Stonewall sign seems to have taken on a more literal significance after this weekend. Though our community has seen much progress in the time that has passed since June 1969, our commemoration of the event that sparked the modern gay liberation movement coincides with a raid extraordinarily reminiscent of the raid on Stonewall. This past weekend, Fort Worth police raided a new gay bar called Rainbow Lounge. On that night, Rainbow Lounge was itself remembering Stonewall by screening documentaries about the event, and the night was going well until police showed up unexpectedly to make arrests — particularly targeting the most effeminate looking men. This targeting of individuals in a gay bar combined with the excessive violence used by police — violence that landed one man in the hospital with a fractured skull — is disheartening enough when we think of it in terms of history, but when we consider the fact that this is continuing in the year 2009, it’s difficult to still feel optimistic about the accomplishments we’ve made in society.

To add to the striking similarities between these two events, we have recently lost our own icon. Admittedly, a comparison between Judy Garland and Michael Jackson is quite the stretch — if only because Garland was more of an LGBT icon in particular than Jackson (I suppose sister Janet is more appropriate for that label). However, that in itself is the sign of progress evident in this unfortunate raid. Why? Because today, there is no icon like Judy Garland. If that seems strange to you, let me put it this way: the LGBT community is facing a lot of battles in 2009. This raid comes amidst debates about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, ENDA, Prop 8, and many other issues. There is so much going on within our community that it is almost impossible to keep up with it all, and just as there is no main icon within our community, we are not all dependent on one main issue, either. Our community is more diverse, more spread out, more visible and more active than ever before, and despite the constant struggle for our rights, we must remain proud of what we have accomplished and see the positive signs of change we have helped create.

If nothing else, this is for sure something we would have never heard in 1969: “Rest assured that neither the people of Fort Worth nor the government of the city of Fort Worth will tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens.” Stated by Joel Burns, a Fort Worth city councilman and Tarrant County’s first openly gay elected official, this quote should give us faith in the strength and support of our community. It should remind us that there will be plenty of battles, setbacks and disheartening moments along the way, but in the end, we know we’re facing the right direction.

(Also posted at Associated Content)

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Personally, I say props to Obama to recognizing the fact that LGBT issues don’t begin and end with marriage. Good for Obama for commemorating the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the resistance out of which the modern gay liberation movement was born — an event many Americans don’t even know about, and one that is often missing from US history textbooks. Good for him for recognizing LGBT youth, the problem of harassment in schools, adoption rights, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” HIV/AIDS, and other crucial LGBT-related issues we must combat but often ignore while wrapped up in debates about same-sex marriage.

Last week, a gender-variant person was shot in Memphis for “misrepresenting his gender.” How many people have read about that? Because my guess is everyone’s up to date on California and Prop 8, but not so much stories like this one.

Don’t get me wrong — I think marriage equality is important, and I think it’s quite the shame we’re so behind many other countries on that front. But I think it’s more of a shame that when a transgendered individual is shot in an apparent hate crime, we don’t care enough to talk about it. I think it’s a shame that when we elect a president who makes an effort to become a friend to the LGBT community, all we can do is criticize. I think it’s a shame that so many people are completely unaware of the various issues plaguing the LGBT community because marriage takes precedence in our minds. I’m all for the rallies, the letters, the push for legalization, and so on. But we can’t get so caught up in that one issue that we forget the others, and I’m glad that Obama hit on a lot of those. Perhaps this month is a good time to reassess our priorities.

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For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll briefly explain the project. We basically turned a room into a work of art that viewers experience as they watch a video that shows acts of hate throughout history. The walls are covered with graffiti containing hateful and discriminatory words, but after the hate video plays, the room transforms from dark to light and the walls become covered with sheets painted instead with words of peace. The video then transitions from acts of hate to acts of love. It’s hard to explain and it’s something you really had to experience, but basically, our goal is to spread a message of hope to our community, showing that love can overcome hate. After seeing the reactions from our audience, I think we’ve accomplished that.

Of course, there were times when a lot of us thought this project wouldn’t happen. Many of us didn’t believe we could pull it off. It got to the point where our class considered electing a delegate to speak with our teacher and gently explain that we simply didn’t have the capacity to complete what we started. But despite the doubts, the disagreements, and some mishaps along the way, it all came together in the end. Every individual person brought their own unique ideas and creativity to the classroom, culminating in a project that we are all extremely proud of and extremely blessed to have been a part of.

After the presentation, one girl came up to me in tears to express her appreciation for all of our efforts. And if she’s the only person at all affected by our work, the project was worth it. Seeing it affect just one person that deeply means it was a complete success, and that we accomplished what we set out to do. At that moment, the meaning of our presentation overshadowed every problematic detail and stressful debate we had along the way.

It’s interesting how after everything we put into that project, our own message didn’t fully hit home for me until I saw how it affected other people. Our presentation showed individual acts of courage in contrast with hate, war and genocide throughout history to prove that one person can make a difference, and ultimately, it was this one student who made the difference in my feelings about this project. If every single student in our school agreed to sign our pledge and stand up to an act of injustice after seeing our presentation, I don’t think it would mean nearly as much as this one student’s reaction.

We all crafted this idea from the start because we wanted and expected it to make an impact, but I don’t think any of us expected such gratification from the project or the response from our community. We certainly didn’t expect it to change our own feelings about our message and about ourselves so much, but the experience has definitely changed us all. When we spoke about peace and individual power and righteousness before, those were all just words. It was all theoretical. But now, we’ve proven it not just to our school, but to ourselves. We’ve never had such faith in our own words and ideas, and we’ve never felt closer to one another. All in all, I think Emily said it the best: “Yes — we complained, argued and struggled — however, I wouldn’t change a thing about our process or presentation. What we’ve done will be remembered for years to come, and I couldn’t be happier.”

For those of you who haven’t come yet, I hope you come next week to our evening presentation. I think you’ll find that the result completely speaks for itself.

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