Princeton Qmmunity

The Silver Lining of All the Hate

2010-10-01T15:17:21Z

Cross-posted with Equal Writes. *TRIGGER WARNING*

by Elizabeth Cooper

I feel like I'm "supposed" to feel one way or another about major LGBT news stories - generally some variation of happy or sad and/or mad. Let's complicate that original impulse. All of the stories Brenda mentioned are objectively, very sad. And the momentary win for same-sex marriage in California this summer was very happy and exciting. But there are other, perhaps unexpected, impacts of both stories.

Today, I went to a lunch about Bisexual Health, sponsored by Health Professions Advising, the LGBT Center, University Health Services, and Women's Center. One comment noted that in light of the general positive trend towards acceptance (exemplified by support for same-sex marriage), people have been expressing hate that much more vehemently. The presenter pointed out that while LGBT people already firm in their identity can brush off hateful words, these words can deeply hurt those still questioning their identities. The youth that are currently being highlighted in the media as victims and survivors of anti-gay sentiment are among those most vulnerable.

But there is a silver lining. In the wake of these heartbreaking deaths, we as a country are forced to take homophobia and transphobia seriously. LGBT youth are four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts. These incidents have started a dialogue on what we as policy makers, teachers, students, etc. can do to help what is clearly still a problem.

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And what some individuals are doing warms the cockles of my heart. The comedian Dan Savage started a YouTube channel called "It gets better" about how life for LGBT folks "gets better," even great. Savage said that, "hearing about these kids that have committed suicide, the reaction as a gay adult is always, 'God, I wish I could have talked to them for fifteen minutes or five minutes and told them it gets better...'" was the inspiration for the channel. So now LGBT adults across the country are telling youth how life has gotten better for them. Over half a million people have viewed their stories.

That said, these tragic stories could also be very triggering. Whatever your reaction, I encourage you all to go to "an open discussion to talk about these incidents and how they impact each of us as well as our community at large" hosted from 1:30 to 3:00 pm today, Friday, in the LGBT Center. The discussion is meant to be "a confidential setting with no set program or agenda." I encourage you to talk and listen about these events and how they impact us as individuals and as a community.

Too Much Hate

2010-09-30T07:05:36Z

Cross-posted with Equalwrites.org. Trigger warning: hate crimes, bullying, and suicide.

There have been far too many hate-crime-related deaths in the past two weeks, and they are only the tip of the iceberg of those that go unreported.

On September 17, 2010, Curtis Martin, a waiter, was stabbed inside a Denny's restaurant after answering affirmatively to the perpetrator that he was gay. Fortunately, he has survived the attack.

On September 19, 2010, Seth Walsh, a Houston 13-year-old hanged himself from a tree after enduring homophobic bullying, passing away this past Tuesday in the hospital.

Asher Brown, another 13-year-old, shot himself in the head last week after enduring homophobic bullying at school, even after his parents had called school administration in attempts to intervene. The police will not file charges, and the school denies ever having heard complaints from the parents.

On September 30, 2010, William Lucas, a 15-year-old high school freshman in Indiana, hanged himself after being tormented about his sexual orientation.

And this Wednesday, September 29, 2010, we learned of a Rutgers freshman who committed suicide after his roommate secretly broadcasted him having sex with another man.

The types of repeated psychological torture that LGBTQ youth endure at the hands of bullies are terrible and tragic crimes. LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide than their straight-identified counterparts. It is unfathomable to me that our society continues to condone and dismiss homophobic attacks and verbal abuse. I am speechless at the events of this past month. The hate must end.

Marriage as a human right and remembering Republicans are humans, too

2010-08-28T19:40:02Z

This article was originally published by Freedom to Marry.

Paying almost any level of attention to the pseudo-reality that we call 'politics' in the United States, one might get the impression that identifying as 'conservative' is anathema to being 'gay' and vice-versa. Hypocritical behavior like that of former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman who publicly came out as gay recently, might certainly be viewed as validation of this 'reality'.

The Republican Party will have you believe that you can use the same line of political reasoning to scoff at government's role in healthcare, as you can when vigorously maintaining a government interest in promoting an 'ideal' human relationship. They call this all conservatism. If you believe in by-your-bootstraps-capitalism, and marriage equality? Why, then you're fiscally conservative, and socially liberal.

Wrong.

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It's wrong because political conservatism (also known historically- and ironically- as 'classical liberalism') is a political ideology that calls for skepticism in determining the appropriate presence of government; it is a compass- not a roadmap- for belief systems, which serves as a foundation upon which other opinions and beliefs are built. The Republican Party- not unlike the Democratic Party, or any other political party- claims to champion an ideology (in this case, conservatism), but has happily abandoned this guiding compass when there were bigger electoral victories to be claimed.

Keenly aware that many religious and rural voters identified using the term 'conservative' as a synonym for 'traditional', the Republican Party adopted these 'traditional' beliefs, and hoped we wouldn't notice they were far from 'conservative'. If you believe government ought to be identifying certain relationships of love and commitment and declaring them more valuable than other relationships of love and commitment, then you are not socially conservative--you are socially Republican.

I am a conservative, and I am gay; these two things make perfect sense to me. And because I believe the Republican Party- on the whole- does a better job of representing my preferred political ideology than realistic electoral alternatives, I am registered as a Republican. My party, my candidates, and my public servants fail me with a good deal of frequency--but this is by no means an exclusively Republican problem.

Trained, as we are, to assume political issues exist within a zero-sum reality where one side can't be right without the other side being wrong, we might be tempted to wonder: given my definition of conservative, would a 'liberal' be against marriage equality? No. Because while liberal Democrats might be more willing to allow for individual sacrifices in the name of a collective, they, too, understand that individual liberties- especially ones that do no harm to others- must be defended and preserved. Believe it or not, equality is an American ideal--in theory, anyways.

At this point its worth taking a moment to comment further on an assertion I've made or implied here more than once now: that marriage equality is about individual liberties uninhibited by government intervention, that can exist at no one's expense. Supporters and opponents of the freedom to marry alike share in their belief- supported by empirical data- that the social approbation and force behind 'marriage' bestows certain goods upon individuals and families that are independent of the legal rights and privileges that come with the marriage license; married individuals, for the example of all examples, live longer than single individuals, for instance. In the Proposition 8 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, experts for both sides indicated that gay couples would reap these 'social-rewards' as do non-gay couples.

The fear, they assert, is that this 'redefinition' of marriage will mean that the social charge that is responsible for those social-rewards, will be lost in the long term; that same-sex couples are not just different than opposite-sex ones, there is also something intrinsically detractive about them that will erode the positive stigma attached to marriage as it exists now. Unfortunately for those making this argument, it assumes the general public is as intolerant and unthinking as they are. Marriage might be defined by two things, but to most Americans those things are love and commitment--not one man and one woman; gay Americans' lack of access to the institution of marriage perpetuates the same stigma that is used to justify their lack of access in the first place. This circular nonsense is on trial, and it is losing.

So if we are to believe that marriage equality is about individual rights that require no sacrifices on the part of anyone else (a claim fought by many who are nowhere to be found in a court of law that subjects testimony to an oath, but whom parade their opposition in the court of public opinion where no such oath exists), and that both liberal and conservative ideologies stand for the preservation of such rights, how can discrimination and inequality still be the law in so many places?

Unfortunately, party politics have cashed in discomfort and closed minds for electoral victories--and I believe much of the gay rights movement has been all too quick to accommodate that exchange. A minority- especially one as relatively small as the LGBT community- simply cannot afford to align itself firmly with an individual party. By staking out a home in the Democratic Party and demonizing Republicans as a whole, marriage equality and other LGBT issues are made untenable to Republican candidates and officials, while Democrats continue with their lukewarm support (at best) all the while comforted by the notion that their LGBT 'base' isn't going anywhere. If nothing else, it's just not good political strategy. It's the strategy that brought us a liberal President with a stance on marriage indistinguishable from Carrie Prejean's, even while Glenn Beck starts to sound a little more like Evan Wolfson. Arguing over whether the Republican Party's unfriendly platform alienated the LGBT community, or the LGBT community's alienation made permissible the unfriendly platform is a losing chicken-and-egg game for us; in the end the Party still exists, and nationwide marriage equality still doesn't.

As true conservatives continue to make the case for marriage equality to fellow conservatives, it's important that the LGBT community fights their battles like the civil rights struggles that they are. If we mean it when we say that civil rights are human rights- and we do, and they are- we have to acknowledge that human rights are not the exclusive jurisdiction of any one party, that neither party has done enough to ensure equality is the law throughout the country, and that support from the LGBT community cannot be taken for granted and is available to any individual or party that joins us in this fight.

The Rainbow Weekend - a Party, Protest, or both?

2010-07-30T13:50:00Z

Cross-posted with Equal Writes, Princeton's feminist blog.

Pride invaded NYC a few weekends ago, and like many queer women, I partook in some of the festivities. Note my choice of language. Festivities. I just read a Gawker article "A Straight Person's Guide to Gay Pride" where they describe Pride as "a giant celebration of living somewhere over the rainbow." Yet the organizers of the Dyke March, an event in Pride weekend, describe it as "a protest march, not a parade." So, what is Pride? A party or a protest? What does it represent to the LGBT community, LGBT individuals, me and you?

]]> My personal point for comparison to this past weekend was the National March for Equality back in October, which EW editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux called "transformative" and "an incredible high" because we were "fighting for what was right." I felt similarly high from the day. I had spent many hours organizing to get our busload of Princeton students to come march for equal rights, and the fruits of my labor tasted sweet indeed.

The Dyke March, on the other hand, did not feel transformative, at least for me. Although I wanted it to be a protest, it didn't feel like such for a few reasons. Most importantly, I hadn't been invested in the organization of the march, and therefore hadn't really thought about what the march meant to me - it was happening, and I felt like since I was in the city partially for Pride and consider myself an activist in some respects, I should go. Amongst the people I marched with, I felt we shared this sense of not exactly knowing why we were marching. A couple of people thought we were going to be watching a parade, rather than participating in a protest. Once they realized the nature of the march, namely that it was a protest rather than a parade, they asked what we were protesting. I ventured a vague answer about protesting homophobia, but even the question made me insecure about not being more informed about what the march was about, as a whole, and for me personally.

As I was thinking about what I was marching for the day before, I had identified what meant and means the most to me personally right now - acceptance of LGBT children by their parents and family. I thought writing a slogan encapsulating that on a shirt would be cool both during the march and as a keepsake. I am happy and proud that I took the time to invest in my idea. However, at the march, it didn't prove as valuable for making me feel engaged. People didn't seem to read it like they would read and interact with a sign.

Also, it turns out not having the physical task of carrying a sign made me feel less physically engaged with the march. I wrote a paper about this connection between physical experiences and knowledge last fall for my Performance Studies class (highly recommended). I concluded that a reason for the psychological success of the march for myself and many others was that we were engaging physically for something we believed in, encompassing the way of knowing from the body in addition to from the mind. Chanting, and carrying heavy signs, all parts of my Princeton marching experience, were absent from my Dyke March.

In direct opposition to my reasoning that I would have enjoyed the Dyke March more if I had felt more engaged physically and politically, the Gawker article describes the main Pride event, the Gay Pride Parade on Sunday, as "no longer very political. It's mostly about corporations telling us that they're 'down with the gays' and an excuse for gay people party." After which they write, "Don't judge us." Why judge? I might if I got up on my high horse, but really, I think I would have enjoyed the Dyke March more if I had fully embraced whatever I wanted to get out of it, whether that be political engagement or just a grand old time with old and new friends. The Dyke March website also acknowledges its celebratory aspects by describing itself as "in celebration of LBTQ women" in addition to its purpose as a "protest against ongoing discrimination, harassment, and anti-LBTQ violence in schools, on the job, in our families, and on the streets."

Whether you love politics, partying, or both, Pride can be incredibly fun, engaging, and important. (Especially for the urban gays, because I would like to acknowledge that the major cities' gay pride parades do cater to and represent an urban crowd.) And regardless of all this internal mumbo jumbo, whether you were clear on your intention for being at pride, or not, like me, being there does count for something for the LGBT community. Visibility. As they used to and still do chant on the streets, we're here, we're queer, get used to it.

Image courtesy of Elizabeth Cooper.

Vitter's Family Values

2010-07-01T21:44:38Z

I was living in New Orleans when the David Vitter prostitution scandal first broke, and many of my progressive friends wondered when Vitter would resign — especially since a year earlier Vitter said that he was “a conservative who opposes radically redefining marriage, the most important social institution in human history.” It turns out that despite cheating on his wife and breaking the law, Vitter would not only refuse to resign, but would be cruising to re-election a few years later. It turns out that Republican voters don’t actually hold Republican office-holders to their own professed standards:

Vitter is clearly being boosted by President Obama’s unpopularity in the state, and by Melancon’s low name recognition. But a bigger factor may be a peculiar form of partisanship.

Within the past year, PPP has canvassed Republican voters in three states represented by scandal-dogged GOP politicians: Vitter in Louisiana, Sen. John Ensign in Nevada and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. (Ensign and Sanford both had extramarital affairs.) In all three cases, the support of Republican voters remained solid. Last year, when Vitter’s embarrassment was fresher in voters’ minds, Republican voters in his home state still gave him a 62-19 approval rating.

]]> It’s not necessarily shocking that partisans would support one of their own. But this doesn’t apply across the board. When Larry Craig was caught in a gay scandal (no prostitution or even actual sex was alleged), Republican voters abandoned him in droves. And Republican officeholders didn’t rally behind Craig like they did with David Vitter — John Ensign, then head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee (before his own sex scandal broke) encouraged Craig to make a quick exit: “I wouldn’t put myself hopefully in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do.” Well, he hasn’t resigned, either.

The truth is that for most conservatives “family values” doesn’t mean much beyond discriminating against gays and opposing abortion rights.

Cross-posted at Matt Yglesias' blog at http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org

AIDS in D.C.

2010-06-14T20:20:14Z

At the D.C. gay pride festival this past weekend, I heard a lot of anti-Fenty rhetoric regarding the mayor’s supposed lack of attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Having been a D.C. resident for only a week or so, I’ll defer to others on Fenty’s performance, though there is some evidence that he has on at least one occasion inappropriately used the issue as a bargaining chip in his battles with the City Council. But Fenty has dealt with some of the most severe failings of the District’s AIDS Office since his term began and called HIV/AIDS one of “most serious problems” facing the city. And he’s right.

At least 3% of D.C. residents have HIV or AIDS, and officials believe that figure significantly underestimates the true number of those affected, as the estimate is based only on those who have been tested. For purposes of comparison, the CDC characterizes a population with a 1% incidence of HIV as experiencing a “generalized and severe” epidemic, and Shannon L. Hader, director of the District’s HIV/AIDS Administration, notes that the District’s HIV rate is “on par with Uganda.” The most recent data shows HIV/AIDS is on the rise throughout the U.S., but the District has the highest AIDS case rate in the country and new AIDS diagnoses are twice as high in D.C. than in New York and five times higher than Detroit.

]]> There are many sobering figures contained in the report, but perhaps the most striking is that 7% of black male residents have HIV or AIDS, and, somewhat surprisingly, heterosexual sex is the primary mode of transmission for blacks — not gay sex or drug use as is the case for whites.

I wonder if Americans realize that one out of every thirteen black men in the U.S. capital has HIV/AIDS. Given the decline in the amount people are hearing about the subject, the answer is probably no:

Aside from the obvious suffering involved, the saddest aspect of this tragedy is that it’s preventable. We know how HIV is transmitted and we know how to prevent its spread. 14,110 Americans died of AIDS in 2007, which is far more than the zero who died due to terrorism and about half of those dying in car wrecks. And yet nationally we spend less than $600 million annually on domestic HIV prevention services, a figure that has remained flat even as the CDC announced in 2008 that new cases of HIV are actually 40% higher than previously believed. HIV prevention programs work and are extremely cost-effective. When less than 5% of AIDS-related spending goes to prevention even though HIV/AIDS costs us about $40 billion every year in total, we need to take a fresh look at our priorities.

Note: this post was cross-posted at Matthew Yglesias' blog at the Center for American Progress.

Smearing Elena Kagan, and a counterfactual

2010-06-03T20:35:00Z

In a recent blog post and an appearance on -- our favorite. . . FOX News! -- Newt Gingrich has claimed that the New England penal colony we know as Harvard has a double standard on gay rights. His real agenda, though, is to smear Elena Kagan, whose vociferous opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is hardly a secret. The back-story is that Kagan was dean of Harvard law school in 2005, the same year that the University accepted a large gift from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to advance cross-cultural understanding. As we all know, the Saudi regime is notoriously repressive towards homosexuals, and sodomy is punishable by death under the law of the land -- which just happens to be Sharia (Islamic law). Gingrich never explicitly questions Kagan’s moral character, but the implication is clear: Harvard (and by Harvard we mean Elena Kagan) has historically lambasted the US military for its discriminatory policies towards gays and lesbians, yet is willing to accept a donation from a country infamous for its persecution of homosexuals. Never mind that 1) it wasn’t Kagan’s decision to accept the gift, 2) she was in a poor position to undercut Harvard’s initiatives as its employee, 3) this happened in 2005 yet Gingrich has waited until now to smear “Harvard," 4) Georgetown University’s 2005 acceptance of a similar gift from Prince Talal is glossed over, and 5) that this tells us nothing whatsoever about the kind of Justice Elena Kagan might be.

Here’s a counterfactual. Suppose Kagan had come out (pun intended) against Harvard’s acceptance of Talal's gift to the detriment of the school's public standing. Do you really think Gingrich would have applauded Kagan for taking the moral high ground? Isn't it more likely he would have suggested that Kagan’s views on gay issues compromised her ability to be professional, and that this has implications for a career as Justice? Who does Gingrich think he’s fooling here? Newt me.

Freedom of (personal) Expression

2010-05-11T22:16:27Z

When I first read Andrew’s op-ed piece in the ‘Prince’ this week, then his resposting on Qmmunity, I was a bit distressed about his assumptions of what it means to be gay. Unfortunately, his assumptions are also held by many others in and out of the LGBTQ community, so I think it’s useful to address some of this confusion.

I should start by saying that I appreciated Andrew’s honesty in speaking about the ever present homophobia on this campus. Though there is great institutional support, many students would rather LGBTQ people be unseen and unheard, quietly left to the confines of the rainbow lounge in the LGBT center. A printed article describing this environment speaks to the strong desire for this to change. As someone who has been harassed in the ways Andrew describes, I appreciated that section.

My issue with the column, however, has to do with the descriptions of ‘homosexual expression.’ What is homosexual expression? Let’s deconstruct that phrase. A homosexual is someone desiring of sexual relations with someone of the same sex. So wouldn’t homosexual expression be acting upon those desires? Andrew describes the harassment (gay) male students at Princeton have experienced while making out with other males. He even goes on to note that the kind of harassment gay males endure is strikingly different from the kind endured by gay females. In fact, the harassment of gay females is more aptly described as over-sexualization and infatuation, neither of which are appropriate responses. This is a rather unfortunate double standard that I would hope one day changes. This is the homosexual expression to which he seems to refer.

]]> However, he then goes on to describe homosexual expression more along the lines of gender expression:

“There has long existed a stereotype about homosexuals coming out of the closet: The Midwestern boy secretly stashes away some savings and quietly packs a suitcase so that, on his 18th birthday, he can announce to his corn-husking parents that he is gay and flee to New York or Los Angeles with nothing but his gayness”

What is this ‘gayness’ he’s referring to? I would venture to guess that he’s referring to a stereotypical effeminate or flamboyant gay male, perhaps clad in pink and vibrant in his movements. But those features are not integrally to one’s sexual orientation or preference. A male can be effeminate and attracted to females. Just as a burly male can be attracted to other males. One’s gender expression is not determined by one’s sexual orientation, and vice versa. Correlated perhaps, but certainly not causal.

This past Monday I saw a performance of ‘The Tempermentals,’ (which Prof. Dolan posted about on Qmmunity. The show also touched on the conflation between gender expression and sexual orientation. Harry Hay, one of the founders of The Mattachine Society in the 1950s goes through a transformation throughout the show, which ultimately ends in his starting another movement: The Radical Fairies. His insistence on being gay enough so that no one ever mistakes him for heterosexual again is in line with Andrew’s claim that “to be most successful, budding gay leaders at Princeton seem to believe they need to be the most straight. Gay. But not too gay.”

Regardless of one’s outness, he seems to imply that some gay people would like to suppress their ‘gayness’ for the sake of their student group involvement. Is he suggesting those people not make out with people of the same sex on the dance floor? Or perhaps just that women should wear skirts and men should wear dark colored Polo shirts. Either way, it doesn’t seem a very necessary discussion. Not every LGBTQ person expresses their gender in quite the same way, but that speaks nothing of their ‘gayness’ (as if there even is a ‘gay enough’).

It’s important to understand the distinctions between gender and sexual orientation and acknowledge that there are many varieties of LGBTQ people. I for one am content to simply allow a non-judged freedom of personal expression.

Why "Don't Ask, Don't Give" Is a Mistake

2010-05-10T04:39:24Z

Almost everyone in the LGBT community is disappointed with the Obama administration. Granting hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners was a step in the right direction, but then came more of the same: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) -- the most visible gay issue nationwide besides marriage equality -- has yet to be repealed. This latest failure to achieve equality has come to embody the totality of Democratic inaction in recent years regarding gay rights, and LGBT resentment is mounting as the party continues to balk at the gay agenda.

Some -- John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay, to be precise -- have made it their mission to finally stick it to the Left after years of waiting in vain for change. Their brainchild, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Give” campaign (DADG), is a boycott of the DNC pending the repeal of DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Unfortunately, DADG won't force Democrats’ hand on these issues. Even worse, it will likely damage the gay rights movement in the long-run.

]]> DADG advocates have a straightforward argument, namely, that we should promote only the political viability of those willing to push for LGBT rights. If that means promoting no major party at all, then so be it. Why give our money to people who won’t be our staunch advocates? Consider two extremes. At best, the financial contributions of the gay community are so vital to the Democrats that the party will be forced to act on DOMA, DADT and ENDA to maintain political primacy. At worst, the boycott will have absolutely no legislative effects, but some less tangible ones if it is supported widely enough. For one, DADG is a way to consolidate and unite the LGBT community around a central, nationally-visible issue. Individual bloggers can rant all they want, but if a boycott had a large enough following, it would demonstrate the ability of the gay community to take truly collective action, to organize itself to accomplish something at the national level. That kind of visibility counts.

 However, DADG wouldn’t be the only initiative to accomplish this type of unification and visibility (consider the Equality Marches in Washington, DC). This begs the question: why do it? Because contributions of the gay community are necessary for the financial viability of Democrats? In other words, because DADG has a real shot at getting DADT and DOMA repealed, and ENDA passed? Probably not. LGBT people are such a small minority in this country, it is hard to believe that their votes, campaign contributions, and those of their die-hard allies are a necessary condition for the success of the Democratic party, all else equal. If this were the case, given the vibrant history of LGBT activism in this country, we would expect to have seen real progress on gay issues in past Democratic administrations. In short, it is unrealistic to think that DADG will actually accomplish its stated goals. Unfortunately, in this country, gays just don’t have the needed political clout for the campaign to make a difference.

    If, as I’ve argued, the DADG boycott won’t accomplish its goals, then we are left with only one reason for supporting it, which I discussed earlier. DADG might function much like the National Equality March, as a unification opportunity for the LGBT community. The relevant question is then: are there cheaper ways to unify the community to achieve just as impressive a display of solidarity? If there are, which is probably the case, then supporting DADG is unnecessarily costly and the boycott should be lifted in favor of other forms of activism.

    But even if DADG were in fact the best option at this time for unifying the LGBT community at least possible cost compared to other kinds of activism, there are still overwhelming reasons to oppose it. “Why not show our contempt for the Democrats’ broken promises?” some ask. I think it is here where the real party-lines are drawn between supporters and opponents of DADG.

    The fact is, Democrats already know just how upset we are. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to care, hence their continued inaction on gay issues. If the boycott -- with no hope of success -- is purely a manifestation of our anger towards Democrats, then we need to think about whether it is worth our precious financial resources to drive home the extent of that anger. I would say “no.” Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but keep in mind that the money used to organize and publicize DADG could be spent elsewhere: to hire attorneys; in HIV/AIDS clinics; in LGBT centers nationwide; to promote openly gay politicians; the list goes on.

    What’s worse than wasting resources that could be put to more productive use on a campaign that will inevitably fail? How about angering the only powerful political party that is friendly towards LGBTs and endangering the special Democrat-LGBT relationship? We all believe that Democrats have already broken their promises and that our affiliation to the party is basically giving us nothing. Does it really make sense, though, for us to add more fuel to the fire?

Even if important pro-LGBT changes haven’t happened under this Democratic administration, or under others in the past, here is the indisputable reality: a Democratic majority across our government is a necessary condition (but not sufficient!) for the tide to turn decisively in favor of gay rights. For us to preserve any hope of progress on the issues, we need to do all that we can to ensure that Democrats are elected to office, even if they fail to make good on advancing LGBT equality. Everyone, Democrats included, recognizes that doing so is our only choice. No rational person believes that a financial boycott of the DNC spearheaded by the LGBT community will translate to an LGBT boycott of Democrats at the polls. What other party would we vote for? We should stop pretending that we have political power over the Democrats with this boycott, and take stock of the political reality.

Like it or not, the Democratic party is our best option for change, and we need to stick by it. Protests are one thing. They show that we’re here, we’re queer, and that the nation -- not just Democrats -- should get used to it. Democrats in office must cope with the fact that segments of our community will organize and seek voice opportunities in the political process so long as our needs are not met, but know that despite our general anger, we support them. Specifically withholding financial contributions to the Democratic party, however -- to its detriment or not -- is quite another gesture. And a dangerous one.

Democrats don’t support the big points of the gay agenda (DOMA and DADT repeal, etc.) because doing so is not politically viable. At least due to campaign contributions from the LGBT lobby, the Democrats now feel an iota of indebtedness to the community for its support. Do you think Obama’s decision to grant hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners -- even while cast in a more inclusive language -- was not a small gesture specifically to appease LGBTs after their loyalty to him at the polls? If we want to lock in Democrats’ support for making small steps towards full equality -- small steps that can be couched in such a way as to minimize inevitable backlash from the Right -- then LGBT individuals and their allies need to continue to support Democrats in return. It’s that simple.

DADG threatens to completely undermine this support. If the goodwill and faith that the LGBT community has historically placed in the Democratic Party were to disappear -- symbolized by a noticeably smaller financial contribution from the LGBT lobby due to DADG -- the Democrats would no longer have any reason to incur the slightest political costs to appease supporters of gay rights. Things like granting hospital visitation rights will be of the past. I want you to ask yourself, and answer honestly: where will we be as a community for taking the moral high ground? Supporters of DADG, I’m begging you, please: before you mount your high horses, stop and take stock of DADG’s political consequences -- not for the Democrats, but for the LGBT movement.

Jazz: A Straight Man's World?

2010-05-07T22:37:08Z

“Are you straight?"

As a jazz pianist, I'm asked this almost every time I’m at a session. In this context, it is slang that we musicians use to verify that players know what the form of a tune will be before it starts. Among a few close musician-friends who know my sexual orientation, I sometimes joke in reply: “No, actually.” But when the question comes up at a gig or jam session with unfamiliar musicians in France, Holland, or Boston, I just smile to myself and reply, “yeah.”

It goes without saying that one’s sexual orientation -- just like gender, race, religion, you name it -- has no place on the bandstand. All that should matter is what a player brings to the musical conversation. If any genre has come to stand for an affirmation of common humanity, it is jazz. Despite being borne out of the suffering of a distinct ethnic group, its endeavor to transcend the historical memory of African American suffering has earned it almost universal appeal.

]]> That’s why it’s so ironic that the culture surrounding jazz musicians has, I believe unconsciously, excluded other minority groups, namely women and homosexuals. How many people in larger society, let alone from these demographic groups, are jazz musicians? Not many! It’s worth exploring elsewhere why this is the case, but I want to focus here on the place of gays in jazz, what is truly a “straight man’s world.”

Jazz as an institution is heteronormative beyond one’s wildest dreams. The sometimes-rough quality of the music gives it a distinctly “straight” vibe in popular culture -- it’s as if the sexuality of musicians is constructed from the nature of the sounds they produce. Openly gay pianist Fred Hersch relates here that some listeners take the beauty and lyricism of his playing for granted. After all, what straight man could play with such emotion and sensitivity? Or, turn this question around: how can a gay man possibly produce rough, edgy music?

It’s easy to reinforce such stereotypes in a musical environment where being openly gay makes one stick out like a sore thumb, even more than in mainstream society. It’s hard to make an accurate guess, but I would say that less than one in every 500 jazz musicians is openly gay. And Fred Hersch’s life-story is instructive: if a man playing with the great saxophonist Stan Getz found it difficult to come out because of what his sexual orientation could mean for his career, there have got to be some jazz musicians out there in the closet, with no plans to come out anytime soon. In fact, I believe I’ve met two myself.

However, it’s worth noting that Hersch has become remarkably successful as one of the greatest jazz pianists of his generation. Gary Burton, also openly gay, is world-renowned for reinventing the jazz vibes. We can’t run a tidy experiment, controlling for talent or luck, of which these men have obviously had their fair share; or for sexual orientation. That would be nice. But I’m convinced that even if the jazz world is heteronormative -- and yes, a bit homophobic, just like the larger world -- that it is a place where talented LGB people can make inroads.

The success of Hersch and Burton -- two homosexuals in an overwhelmingly heterosexual environment -- is a testament to the facts on the ground. Jazz is a straight man’s music not by nature, but by sheer numbers, and this is why LGB jazz musicians -- even though they are and will always be outnumbered -- need not fear homophobia or discrimination.

Gay Princeton of Yesteryear; or, Continuity and Change

2010-05-06T14:00:00Z

Princeton history is something of a hobby of mine, and reading between the lines of Princeton history to pick out the gay bits is even more of a hobby. It's a really entertaining game, partly because the homoeroticism that pervaded pre-coeducational Princeton is just so blatant: they don't call it the Princeton rub for nothing. Princeton is in the mold of plenty of other elite universities catering primarily to wealthy young men in the 19th and early 20th centuries: homoerotic as all hell. Like Harvard and Yale, we didn't just copy Oxford and Cambridge's architecture! (A tour of between-the-lines homoeroticism at Princeton is necessarily going to leave out women, I'm afraid--coeducation coincides with gay liberation in the historical record, such that by the time queer women arrived on-campus, forms of understanding queer identity had changed somewhat from the protohomosexual attachments of yesteryear.)

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Back in the 1890s, round about the time that "homosexual" was becoming a category of people in the eyes of sexologists and psychoanalysts, Princeton's undergraduate culture would definitely look pretty gay to modern eyes. In January, the Press Club's blog posted a link to and excerpts from a fantastic little book called Princeton Stories, by an alumnus from the class of 1892. The memoir of an effete, ennui-filled life as a member of the American aristocracy is filled with tales of hazing rituals involving the seduction of freshmen by older boys dressed in drag; there's one awfully suggestive line in that chapter that appears in its own paragraph without any explanation: "you had only casually to drop word to a freshman on the way to recitation to wait for you when night came, back of Witherspoon -- as you would bid a classmate come to a spread in your room -- and he would turn up promptly and smilingly, take his little dose meekly and cheerfully, and go to bed a better boy for it." You might find yourself wondering what "his little dose" might be, but let me just say that, based on the content of the rest of the book, I have some ideas. Another chapter features an older boy who seems to develop quite the crush on a freshman, doing such exciting things as "gazing mournfully" at him; when the freshman rebuffs his advances, the older boy "skulked off and tried to forget the freshman, like a rejected lover." Reader, I think I need hardly tell you that the simile is not really necessary to get the point across. The subtext is perfectly clear.

Of course, 1892 is long before such homoerotic behavior would be regarded by all and sundry as "homosexual"--keep in mind that the trials of Oscar Wilde, which did much to bring homosexuality to the public attention, do not begin until 1895. And even if homosexuality had existed in the world of these boys--as it did for certain by around the middle of the 20th century--it's fairly certain that none of them would have associated themselves with it. From good east-coast families, destined for public and well-paying careers, it would have been ruin to profess that the playing at lovers of Princeton Stories was anything but hazing fun-and-games. Well into the modern era of Princeton (certainly until coeducation, if not subsequently) male homosexuality was of this boys-will-be-boys, we're-not-really-homosexual nature--so pervasive that former Princeton history professor Martin Duberman wrote in his book Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey about being at Princeton in 1962 and finding other gay men only in the public restrooms and in bushes behind the Dinky, where there's a parking lot now. The bathrooms in Firestone were also known to be popular cruising spots well into the era of gay liberation, coeducation, and the first incarnation of a gay and lesbian student organization, the Gay Alliance of Princeton.

This barely-closeted homoeroticism certainly does seem like a period piece, reminding us of Mad Men but perhaps less of our own lived experience (depending, I suppose, on whether our own lived experience includes the Mad Men, Dinky-bushes-cruising era). And yet I was reminded of these little anecdotes of history on Monday, after reading Andrew Blumenfeld's Prince column about a perceived prohibition on being "too gay" on-campus. I'm not sure that everything Andrew said correlates with my own lived experience, though to be fair being a queer woman instead of a man gives me a necessarily different perspective. Nevertheless, I was much reminded by Andrew's column of the era of Princeton Stories, when the big men on campus--no doubt, with their steadies at Bryn Mawr or Vassar--didn't seem to need too much of an excuse to make out with a fellow male Princetonian under the excuse of a hazing ritual. Princeton culture has come a long way from the 19th century, to be sure--but perhaps we would do well to wonder whether there's still a bit of holdover.

The New Coming Out Story

2010-05-05T02:51:50Z

Coming to Princeton as a brand new, bright-eyed freshman is, let’s admit, a terrifying prospect all on its own. While we’re being honest, I should confess: Arriving as an openly homosexual male has brought its own set of challenges. Battling through the suffering that accompanies hiding an identity for years, then rejoicing through the triumph of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when the truth demands to be liberated — these experiences taken in their entirety represent a coming out story. But that was before Princeton. Since arriving — and approaching the end of my first year — I have learned that the story is far from over and, for better or for worse, requires rethinking.

There has long existed a stereotype about homosexuals coming out of the closet: The Midwestern boy secretly stashes away some savings and quietly packs a suitcase so that, on his 18th birthday, he can announce to his corn-husking parents that he is gay and flee to New York or Los Angeles with nothing but his gayness. With a self-congratulatory attitude, many like to believe this stereotype is a relic of the past. It’s possible that the new coming-out story, however, will make us yearn for that original rainbow stereotype.

]]> This new reality may be grimmer than the stereotype of old and seems to manifest itself quite prominently at Princeton University. At Princeton, it’s okay to be “out” — as long as you’re not gay about it. Boys should only hold hands in the final stretch of their 3:30 a.m. walk home from the Street, and same-sex dancing should only occur among straight girls. After all, gays are meant to be “tolerated,” not seen or heard. It doesn’t take more than a quick review of PrincetonFML, Princeton GoodCrush, or (the epitome) BoredAtFirestone to discover the true venues for which people are apparently supposed to save their “gay.”

Theodore Olson, a prominent conservative who served as President George W. Bush’s lawyer in Bush v. Gore in 2000, characterized the struggle for gay equality as potentially “the last major civil-rights milestone yet to be surpassed in our two-century struggle to attain the goals we set for this nation at its formation.” His statement is particularly noteworthy because he, with his conservative credentials, is one of the lead attorneys battling California’s anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 in federal courts right now. If there is any remote validity to this statement, the lack of political action around this issue on a major college campus such as Princeton is unnerving. True, the institution is a small one (and the LGBT community, then, necessarily even smaller). But surely any potential for action is only hindered by conforming to this new brand of pseudo-tolerance that is steadfast in its principled, academic resolve that LGBT rights ought to be promoted — but we would prefer never to have to, say, see two women kiss or something gross like that.

The suppression of homosexual (as well as a variety of non-heteronormative) expression at Princeton is certainly not exclusively the fault of the school’s heterosexual majority. Of course, years of hate and intolerance have left a cultural legacy of oppressed behavior; however, minority and majority alike share the blame. It is a common political phenomenon that minority leadership (either selected or self-appointed) is often taken up by those who fall a bit outside of that minority’s norm. Even today, black leaders tend, for example, to be far less in favor of government assistance for the black community than the average black citizen. To be successful, many black leaders had to be (or, at least, felt they had to be) the most white; and to be most successful, budding gay leaders at Princeton seem to believe they need to be the most straight. Gay. But not too gay.

At a fundamental level the question at hand is one of expression: How free do individuals feel in allowing their external behavior to reflect their internal thoughts and desires? It is likely that there are few thresholds more basic in experiencing genuine and meaningful personal liberation. It is not too radical then, I propose, to recognize a link between the extent to which individuals consistently enjoy the experience of matching their outward behavior with their inner desires and the success we are entitled to claim in architecting institutions, cultures and communities that espouse tolerance, justice and equality. Certainly the distance between our current realities and the ideal can be measured in the number of “selves” we use to distance certain elements of our identity from outward expression. Is this true for any number of demographics and identities? Is it particularly true at Princeton? I am inclined to answer: Yes and probably. The fact that this issue is not unique to the LGBT community seems like less of a reason to disregard the question than a reason to be even more deeply troubled, and to reflect on it even further.

Perhaps we wrote off that original stereotype too hastily. The Midwestern boy who preferred his sister’s dolls to his brother’s football escaped to those big cities with himself for the first time in his whole life. At Princeton, it’s not clear if everyone can claim the same just yet.

Pop Culture's Obsession with "Hermaphrodites"

2010-05-03T16:55:00Z

Ciara recently released her new music video for "Ride" (ft. Ludacris) in which she busts out some fantastic dance moves, my favorite of which seems to be an above-ground version of Michael Phelps' Olympic breaststroke (0:34). Tracy Clark-Flory has praised the agency of Ciara's sexuality in this video and how she has appropriated the sexual aggressiveness of male rappers without necessarily making herself a trophy object to be attained or exchanged. This song illustrates her female sexual power; Ludacris plays a fairly small role in the video, he spends much of his time squatting on the ground under her stiletto and hanging out in the corner of the frame. He's more of a sideshow than a sexual agent. Ciara is large and in charge, which is confusing to those who envision a monolithic female sexuality that is characterized by passivity.

Which reminds me of the 2005 pop news obsession with her alleged "hermaphroditism". Sound like something we heard in 2009 about another female artist, the one-and-only, the ever-so-queerpopular Lady Gaga? ]]> Does Ciara" or "Does Lady Gaga" and fill in the blank. Publicity or stunt or not, the public fascination with the possibility that either of them might have been born with a penis reflects an anxiety about masculinity.

These women can already be read as possessing some of the markers of masculinity by virtue of their professions as powerful and influential artists. And while some women use hyperfemininity in response to possible readings of their personae as masculine, Ciara and Gaga push the envelope by employing lyrics and dance moves that are gender-ambiguous (perhaps a little less hip-swinging and gyrating than we might expect for a dancing woman) or traditionally the terrain of their male counterparts. And both artists repeatedly and explicitly resist and criticize the trafficking of female bodies as objects of exchange between men through themes and narratives in their videos.

If they had penises, it would be easier for us to understand why they won't simply conform to passive standards of femininity. But lo! both of these stars were born female-bodied (note the explicit reference to Lady Gaga's non-penis in the beginning of her "Telephone" music video at 1:05. Guard 1: "I told you she didn't have a penis." Guard 2: "Too bad."). Combine this with their outward feminine presentations, and pop culture gets a little antsy about the meaning of masculinity and the fact that masculinity can be divorced from the male body.

The Temperamentals

2010-05-03T15:27:42Z

Gay plays, as they've proliferated and mainstreamed over the last 10 years, tend to address relationships between lovers, friends, and family. Plays by and about gay men often delve into sexual conquests and disappointments; the more exploitative ones use nudity to draw audiences and encourage a prurient, if fun, spectatorial pleasure. Plays by lesbians, which thanks to gender discrimination remain relatively fewer than those produced by or about gay men, tend to be more relationally based, dwelling on family dynamics and the domestic sphere.

I'm overstating grossly here to underline how refreshing it is to see a play about gay (or "homophile") activism in the 1950s as the focus of an evening at the theatre. Written by Jon Marans, The Temperamentals tells the story of Harry Hay, considered by many historians to be the father of the U.S. homophile movement, who doggedly persuaded men to sign the manifesto of what he called The Mattachine Society. The Society was named after a troupe of medieval dancers who only appeared publicly in masks, an apt metaphor for closeted homosexuals of the '50s. Hay was the first to publicly call gays and lesbians a "minority" and to argue for homosexual rights along the lines of what would soon become the civil rights movement.

As an event happy to succeed by telling its important story, this production's one acquiescence to commercial pressure is director Jonathan Silverstein's casting of Michael Urie (of tv's Ugly Betty fame) in one of the supporting roles. Although some of his tv character's flaming gestures and flamboyant sarcasm seeps into his performance as Rudi Gernreich, Harry Hay's young Viennese-Jewish clothing designer boyfriend, Urie's acting is subtle, generous, and sincere, bringing depth and intimacy to the complicated exchanges between the two lovers.

]]> In fact, all of the acting dignifies a slightly too earnest script. Marans skillfully describes the difficulties of being the least bit "out" and homosexual in the early 1950s in the situations he sketches. For instance, although he was one of the first gay proselytizers, Hay was married (to a woman) through much of his initial activism. And while he was aggressive about asking famous but closeted men (like film director Vincent Minelli, who makes a campy, sad appearance as a character here) to sign on to his manifesto, Hay's own paranoia made him reject Rudi's more public gestures of affection, so terrified was he of inappropriate display. The Temperamentals' perhaps most important contribution is its portrayal of just these contradictions and the social disapprobations from which they rose.

As it traces the beginnings of a language for gay activism (well before the word "gay" was commonly used to name homosexuals), some historical contrasts become amusing and poignant. For example, Hay and his few faithful compatriots--energetically portrayed by Tom Beckett, Matthew Schneck, and Sam Breslin Wright, who impersonate an array of good buys, bad guys, and the occasional woman, lesbian, or mother--discuss whether or not gay men should be allowed to get married . . . to women. One of the few lesbian voices in the play belongs to a radical butch who says she'd never marry, unless it was to a woman. The script deftly highlights historical shifts in its construction of these conversations, as it leads the audience to understand how the course of events and the contours of activist discourse have changed over the last 50-odd years.

Although gay news outlets, bloggers, and commentators have lately expressed disappointment in President Obama's failure to follow through on his campaign promises about LGBTQ issues, watching The Temperamentals is a happy reminder that progress has indeed been made for gay men in U.S. culture and politics, despite what the movement still needs to accomplish. For example, when Rudi networks his way into an apprentice position with a noted, publicly visible clothing designer, the man tells him in no uncertain terms that Rudi requires a wife by his side, implying that the field's obvious homosexuality needs to be defended by the normalizing choice of fake marriages. A spectator need only think of the overt queerness of a tv show like Project Runway to note how far gay male visibility and acceptance--in fashion design alone--has come since the early '50s.

Throughout the story, Rudi pressures Harry to leave his wife, Anita. Ironically, when Harry finally gathers the courage to tell her that he's a homosexual, Rudi finds himself marrying a woman coincidentally also named Anita. The moment's sadness, necessity, and ubiquity resonates as a poignant reminder of what gay men in the 1950s gave up to lead socially and professionally successful lives. Vincent Minnelli, who's played as a limp-wristed, lisping, utter stereotype of a gay man who couldn't pass for heterosexual if he tried, explains to Harry and Rudi that his career took off when he married Judy Garland.

Director Silverstein leads the audience to see that while from a contemporary perspective, these men would never be mistaken for straight, the persistence of the closet, and the social contract that enforced a purposeful refusal to see sexuality as anything but heterosexual, required the kind of visible and public declarations for which Hay fought. What queer theorist Eve Sedgwick would by the 1990s call the "open secret" of homosexuality clearly operated in the 1950s as a way to repress progressive public discourse about sexual fluidity and choice. The men Hay approaches to sign his manifesto believe in his work, but they can't risk their lives and livelihoods by lending it their signatures.

Even hard won declarations of agency were often foiled. In one scene of The Temperamentals, the working class, police officer boyfriend of one of Hay's friends is entrapped in a public bathroom by another police officer, who cruises him for sex then arrests him. While most men tricked in these situations pled guilty, Harry persuades this man to insist on his innocence. When he does, and the judge decrees him not guilty, the triumphant activist moment is defanged and neutralized when the press refuses to cover it. The moment goes unnoticed, unwritten as history that matters.

Many of Hay's inner circle are portrayed as racist and anti-Semitic in The Temperamentals, despite their willingness to fight for their own homosexual rights. Maran does a nice job complicating identity politics with such contradictions, as these men fail to find common cause with other oppressed people unless their struggles provide helpful models. That Rudi is Jewish and his family dead at Auschwitz gives Harry a built-in analogy through which to ply a gay rights manifesto. But a general lack of political affiliation with people unlike him seems to weaken Hay's cause, just as it would decades of subsequent too-white, too-middle-class, and too-assimilationist LGBTQ activism.

Although Marans' script covers important moments in 1950s homophile activism, the characters mostly appear to be ciphers or stereotypes, mouthpieces for history rather than embodiments of people who are more than cogs in a predetermined wheel of time and social change. And although the script details the impossible contradictions of closeted gay life in this period, Marans lets a preachy didacticism creep into his writing, particularly in the second act. More judicious editing for length and tone would enhance the play, whose potential is signaled by the five actors and Silverstein's sensitive, fluid direction.

The theatre at the Barrow Group space on 36^th street in which I saw the production (on August 7, 2009) was set up with spectators seated on two sides of the stage facing each other, raked up from the square wooden platform that provided the playing space. The surrounding audience seemed to embody the ever-present hegemony that enclosed Hay and his gay friends. Silverstein moved the actors through various locations using only six wooden chairs and a few props (a telephone, a clarinet, some pieces of clothing), cutting away extraneous visuals and business to focus on their human interactions.

The actors succeeded in finding the humanity of men (and the occasional woman) struggling to make sense of lives few words described in the 1950s. Even if some of the subsidiary characters are caricatured by the script, Beckett, Schneck, and Wright draw them sharply, with respect and care for what they represent in the history told.

As Hay, Thomas Jay Ryan provides a square-jawed performance, finding an arc of emotional growth in a man who begins by protesting (too much) his masculinity, only to begin a second movement 25 or so years later, this one called The Radical Fairies, in which he rejected conventional maleness for the free-flowing garments and gestures of men who refused gender constrictions and embraced spirituality.

Ryan finds generous ways to communicate Hay's necessary contradictions, as his radicalism and conservatism bump up against each other through the period The Temperamentals covers. With Michael Urie as his sympathetic if bemused, ambitious but frustrated lover Rudi providing a lovely, warm emotional grounding for Hay's barnstorming, Ryan delivers on the sense of promise in the pioneer's vision.

Even though its script devolves into platitudes toward the end, The Temperamentals offers a necessary, gentle reminder of how difficult it was for two men to create physical, emotional, sexual, and political spaces in which to be together not so very long ago. For that, it's worth celebrating--and seeing. It closes in New York on August 23^rd.

The Feminist Spectator

Doublethink on Don't Ask Don't Tell

2010-04-28T02:35:26Z

On January 27, 2010, President Obama promised America to put an end to Don't Ask Don't Tell this year. But just five days later, at a closed-door meeting with select LGBT leaders at the White House, administrations officials indicated they would not push for the DADT repeal to be included in this year's Defense Authorization bill. More recently, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has indicated that the administration will sit on its hands until December 1st, 2010, to wait for the results of a Pentagon study on the issue; Senator Carl Levin has said the White House wants Congress to wait for the study before taking legislative action.

Let's not pretend that the idea of a study to determine the effects of DADT is anything other than myopic, patronizing, and offensive. DADT isn't an issue to be studied or a policy to be reviewed. It's blatant discrimination that needs to end. And it doesn't just affect people in the military: when the government enforces the closet, it hurts all bisexuals, gays, and lesbians by making us less visible.

But don't we need to know whether gays serving openly would damage "unit cohesion"? That study has already been done. Twice. The Pentagon's current review, by contrast, is using its time to literally poll homosexual troops about their thoughts on ending DADT. "How would you feel about keeping your job?" "Actually, I'd prefer it if you suddenly ended my career for an arbitrary reason unrelated to my performance."

While the White House wants us to believe that we can wait until December to repeal DADT. And December is still this year, right? Sure. But because of Senate procedure and the impending elections, waiting until December could mean that DADT won't be repealed at all.

If you want to see DADT repealed, you should get on the phone right now.

]]> The issue is urgent because waiting until December would mean the DADT repeal would be put out as a stand-alone bill, making it a lot easier for Republicans to block. "You can't do the standalone bill," says Representative Barney Frank. "It belongs in the defense authorization." Tacking other issues to the Defense Authorization is a proven way for Democrats to pass measures that would result in a legislative battle or filibuster if they stood on their own. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act was passed this way last year. Now, without an urgent bill like Defense Authorization that the repeal can piggyback on, delay tactics might push the issue into the next Congressional term. Depending on the results of the midterm election, this could mean the end of the repeal effort.

Now, there's been quite a bit of conflict recently among LGBT advocates about the effort to repeal DADT. One of the main issues is that the HRC wasn't honest about the White House's lack of enthusiasm on DADT, even though they were represented at the February 1st meeting. The criticism is completely valid, but what's urgent right now is getting DADT repealed--and as a practical matter, the HRC's strategy of lobbying key Senators seem like a necessary part of the effort. It's also one that you can get on board with immediately, right from where you are.

The HRC has identified six Senators that need to be lobbied for the DADT repeal to have a chance of passing:

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) 202-224-5623
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) 202-224-4543
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) 202-224-3954
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) 202-224-6551
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) 202-224-5274
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia) 202-224-4024

These are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is in charge of writing the bill. If DADT is included in committee, it's almost guaranteed to pass the Senate.

If you oppose Don't Ask Don't Tell, you should make phone calls to all of these Senators. It will take ten minutes. I am making mine right now. Just leave a message--phone calls do make a difference, and you're not the only one making calls this week. Some talking points (mostly from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network):

Don't Ask Don't Tell is discrimination. This is a government policy that tells people they're not good enough to serve their country--not because they lack the strength or the skills--but because of who they are.
It's irresponsible to continue Don't Ask Don't Tell in a time of war. DADT is hurting the military. More than 13,500 service members have been fired under the law since 1994. The military has discharged almost 800 mission-critical troops and at least 59 Arabic and nine Farsi linguists under DADT in the last five years.
Don't Ask Don't Tell is a waste of money. The first decade of Don't Ask Don't Tell cost taxpayers at least $364 million.
Seventy-five percent of Americans support gays serving openly. Majorities of military members, churchgoers, conservatives, and Republicans favor the repeal.
All of the relevant studies have already been done. Openly gay people don't hurt the military. A 1993 RAND Corporation study showed that openly gay people in the U.S. military do not negatively impact unit cohesion, morale, good order, or military readiness.
One in four U.S. troops who served in Afghanistan or Iraq knows a member of their unit who is gay.

Since President Obama has failed to lead, it's up to us to push for a DADT repeal.