Thoughts at the end of the Summer of Violence

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The marriage vacuum and the future of the LGBT movement

I've been doing some thinking about the Uniting Against Hate conversation I was involved with last night. It's led me to some reflections -- not altogether uplifting -- about the state of the LGB[sometimes]T rights movement, and where we might go from here.  

At some point in the conversation, I noted that lesbian, gay and bi people have been known to be especially transphobic, and haven't really been the advocates for trans rights that they could be.  An audience member questioned me about that observation, and expressed an alternative view.  In my response, I noted that there were, indeed, abundant examples of the LGB leaving behind the T, the 2007 debacle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act chief among them.  My critique was (and is, and has been for some time) that the focus on marriage rights above all else has done a huge disservice to other, frankly more important fights.  Marriage is a policy goal of the relatively well-to-do who can afford such things.  Sadly, too many in the LGBT community (such as it exists), have other, far more pressing issues to deal with.  I constantly harp on the four issues that the Sylvia Rivera Law Project so poignantly mapped out:  healthcare, education, employment, and housing.  

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Thoughts on hate crimes and their impacts on trans communities

I was asked to speak at a panel earlier today called Uniting Against Hate, following a showing of Robert O'Hara's new play BOOTYCANDY at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Below is the essay I wrote to frame my remarks for the event. Thanks for reading.

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Celebrate 8 years of your favorite activist couple!

Elijah and I are celebrating our 8th anniversary in November 2010, and we decided to celebrate in a big way.  There shall be a party (comment/email if you want details), and you can bring us presents help us support a noble cause!  We're working with a bunch of awesome people to support the first transgender/gender non-conforming needs assessment study in DC in over a decade.  It's a major undertaking, and such things aren't cheap!  So as we celebrate our many, many, many years together, we hope you'll join us in supporting a cause that's near and dear to our little world-changing hearts.  Please donate as little or as much as you can using the handy tool below!

P.S.  We're handing over the cash to Latin@s en Accion, the fiscal sponsor for the study.  They're one of those 501(c)3 things, and so we can get you a receipt for a tax-deductible donation if you really want it.

P.P.S  If you're mean and don't like queer people, you can give us money to buy a KitchenAid.  We'll take one in either Pear, Ice or Green Apple.

Sunday news: red edition

It's Sunday again!  There's a nice fall breeze in the air, and you know what that means:  a surge of evil left wingers are plotting the disastrous overthrow of life, liberty, and capitalism.  At least that's how the story goes.  Join us as we explore the downfall of humanity, subtly disguised as being nice to poor people.

• In Britain, the out-of-power Labour Party has a new leader, Red Ed Miliband, aka Miliband the Not-As-Cute.  He says that if in government, his party wouldn't dramatically slash the national budget deficit in one fell swoop, as the ORLY coalition is doing now, and thus would attempt to avoid wide-scale economic upheaval.  Clearly Ed is a commie, and should be vilified by the Daily Mail immediately.  Oh, wait.
• Yesterday in Washington, a rally endorsed by over 400 organizations called for more jobs, real justice, and genuine improvements in education.  Your humble blogger was in the midst of the fray, and can confirm that no marginalized groups were demonized even once during the festivities.  Obscenely wealthy corporate overlords didn't fair so well though.  Clearly these people are commies, and should be vilified by Glenn Beck immediately.  Oh, wait.
• Also here in Washington, our recent primary election has led to the likely downfall of our very own Tyrant Education Queen, Michelle Rhee.  This reality has made affluent, largely white, "concerned citizens" who in many cases don't actually have kids in DC schools piss their pants with fear.  This reality may also diminish the chance that the largely poor parents of children in DC schools will be talked to as though they were the peers of their children.  Clearly these parents are commies, and should be vilified by the Washington Post editorial board immediately.  Oh, wait.
• This Supreme Court opens its new term this week, and it's full of girls.  They'll probably want to rule on things.  They may even want their faces in a museum.  Clearly these lady justices are commies, and the ever-oppressed man should vilify them immediately.  Oh, wait.

So there you have it.  Go out and be a-feared, or something.  Oh, wait...

Decision time for the DC primary: my picks and armchair analysis

For those few lucky DC residents just returning from a summer's long hibernation at Rehoboth Beach, you may not have noticed that we're engaged in a heated election battle for truth, justice, and stuff.  I've been following along closely, going to candidates forums, listening to radio debates, following tweets, reading interviews, dissecting candidate questionnaires, tracking endorsements, soaking up blog posts, and, of course, perusing candidates' websites.

There have been times when I've truly enjoyed this campaign season.  There were some real high points, good quotes, and fine attempts at outreach.  The conversation has, of course, been dominated by the mayoral campaign, which certainly isn't lacking in heat or energy.  However, it's also been trying.  After awhile it's just the same old crap recycled over and over and over and over and over and over again.  I'd really rather hear genuine debates between adults than the persistent "neener, neener, neener" we've been getting since August sometime. 

But let's get to why you're really here:  the choices!  (As though anyone in the universe gives a live-long day about my political opinions!)  And if, at any point you get bored in reading this, just get up and go vote already. 

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Diving into deep waters in re: millenials and IR

Yesterday Daniel Drezner raised the question of how millenials (meaning folks in their 20s like me) think about international relations.  There are some really thoughtful responses in the comments, mentioning things like the interconnectedness of our current world, the massive sea of information in which we swim, how a huge growth economy that precipitously tanked on us impacts our lives, and how we see a role for the United States to play in the world without necessarily resorting to hyper nationalist imperialist misadventures. 

I want to respond to the piece, but I want to do so by altering the premise a bit.  Like one, if not more, of the commenters, I was a student of both history and political science.  But then, influenced by a Quaker educational setting and my own personal struggles for social justice, chose to pursue graduate work in international conflict resolution, rather than straight up international relations.  Because jobs in conflict resolution are just a wee bit scarce, I've ended up working in international education, while continuing to do very local level activism at the same time.  And in these past few years, an insight that sparked as an undergrad has become a core belief:  we cannot separate the local from the global.  Or, in other terms, the distinction between domestic policy and foreign policy is purely academic.  As I see it, such a division doesn't actually exist.

This insight first came to me, somewhat unexpectedly, while writing my senior project for my history major oh so long ago.  Through a someone circuitous path, I ended up writing on the domestic political constraints that impacted U.S. decision-making in the Korean War -- a war that could have ended two years sooner had Truman not been afraid of appearing soft on communism at home.  Today, we see that a faulty immigration system impacts our relations with our immediate neighbors.  Our unwillingness to provide healthcare to our citizens evokes scorn from some of our allies.  Because we have a massive array of ill-conceived farm subsidies, we dump unneeded foodstuffs in foreign markets and crush local farmers' livelihoods, all the while calling it aid.  We can't actually cut the bloated military budget because people need the jobs.  The United States lectures the world on human rights, and yet contains fully a quarter of the world's prison population -- jails filled predominantly with young black men serving time for petty crimes in an attempt to keep our longstanding racist history going full steam, but with less overt fanfare.

As I see it, the lesson for my peers is that we must recognize that our domestic politics have impacts on our foreign relations -- beyond the obvious choices in fighting wars, managing economic crises, or cleaning up oil spills.  It is arrogant and hypocritical to claim to be a shining city on a hill so long as children are going hungry, the elderly can't afford their medicine, and it is legal in about 30 states to deny employment and housing to people just for being gay or transgender.  We have enduring cycles of poverty and repression in this country, based on racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism and all manner of xenophobia's other children that we consistently fail to address.  My family came to this country 400 years ago, and yet I was the first of the line to get a college degree.  It wasn't until my grandfather's generation that my someone in family was even able to earn a steady paycheck, and yet my father has been unemployed for at least two years.  It's still far too likely that if you're born poor in this country, you'll die poor.  In our society, you either have privilege or you don't.  And if you don't, getting it takes work.  And that's an understatement.

In my mind, politics should be about the pursuit of justice.  We have a moral obligation to pursue it domestically and abroad, concurrently.  I don't just mean justice in a legalistic sense.  I mean justice in its fullest context -- social, cultural, economic, political, legal, and everything else.  But that isn't happening in our national politics.  Turn on cable television any night of the week and you'll find blabbering dunderheads of both the left and the right nannering on in a language that isn't the least bit powered by a brain.  Rather than focusing on issues that actually matter, politicians and commentators have spent fully two weeks debating where exactly one single mosque ought to go.  Stephen Walt points out that this kind of blubbering reminds him of the political discourse of the Weimar Republic -- not exactly high praise given what happened next.  If this is the kind of leadership my forbears want to demonstrate to people of my generation, then I'm afraid I must protest.  

Thus it is my sincere hope that my generation embraces a politics -- domestic and international -- rooted in justice that honors our fundamental humanity.  It is incumbent upon us to act where our predecessors have failed, namely to address some of the huge systemic problems we face.  I don't have any grand illusions about what can or might be achieved before my eventual demise, but I do know that we have to do better.  That we have to march on.  That we have to realize that justice is peace and that peace is justice.  And finally, I know this:  we damn sure better get to work. 

Sunday news: let's embrace our trashy side edition

Are you looking for something more?  Are you looking for something less?  Are you looking for anything at all?   Join me in today's somewhat-weekly exploration of things that make the world tick.

• Six reasons to have casual sex.  No additional comment is really necessary.
• U.S. to WikiLeaks dude:  We gon' find you.  Even if we have to make stuff up.
• It's a well known fact that visitors to U.S. National Parks have an average IQ of -12.  With a cell phone, this goes down to -57.
• More in the e-readers are cooler than books saga. 
• Tired of motorcades?  Blame Theodore Roosevelt. 
• So Obama is the next Reagan?  Yee haw.  Let me just start packing my bags now.
• Coverage of Australia's PM has a sexist bent.  Are we supposed to be surprised?
• Speaking of Australia and it's super weird electoral system, they're in electoral limbo for an indefinite period.
• Continuing on the sexist line, were you aware that women are fully capable of managing tough things like nuclear weapons policy?  O.  M.  G. 
• DC Mayor Adrian Fenty has determined that being a dick to the entire human race may not be the best strategy, so he's gonna do better next time 'round.  I don't buy it.

Well now, that's that.  Don't you feel enlightened?  Ladies, don't go nuke anything.