LGBT 
Thu Oct 14, 2010 at 14:53:03 PM EDT
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In case you've missed the stink in New York this week over Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino's remarks at an ultra-Orthodox synagogue this past sunday, the NY Jewish Week is today running my op-ed on some of the implications. The takeway, I argue, is that while "Carl Paladino has expressed regret for his remarks, which at least says something about the state of acceptable political discourse in New York. () the decision of Rabbi Levin to then withdraw his endorsement of the candidate, and the silence of many others in the Orthodox community, together with the applause of Carl Paladino's audience this week" has other implications. The piece begins: Reading about New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino's homophobic turn in front of an ultra-Orthodox audience last Sunday, my thoughts drifted back to painful memories of my middle school years. The first time I contemplated suicide was at a charedi middle school in Manhattan. I felt out of place there, and though I didn't have a name for my depression, my parents were aware enough of my state that I spent three years seeing a psychologist. With that help, I found some happiness in my solitude. Then I was sent away for high school to a right-wing Orthodox yeshiva boarding school in Westchester. In ninth grade I developed a crush on a boy in the eleventh grade. He was handsome, funny, and he took a reciprocal interest in me, arranging for me to switch to sharing a room with him. Our first kiss, initiated by him, was when he drove me home from a Purim party at a yeshiva in Flatbush. But when we returned to boarding school, he pushed me away. The thoughts of doom returned. Without a protective older "brother," I became the victim of a bully at school, an older boy with problems of his own. But I was younger, and I was odd, and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis ignored the situation. Thoughts of suicide returned, and throughout 10th and 11th grade, I sometimes would imagine the varieties of ultimate solutions to the isolation and sense of difference I felt.
Continue reading the full piece over at the Jewish Week site, here.
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Fri May 22, 2009 at 13:24:24 PM EDT
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I will admit when I am wrong. Grudgingly and with teeth clenched, but I'll admit my errors nonetheless.
So I was wrong.
The subject in question is gay marriage, specifically whether the movement for legalizing gay marriage had overreached a few years ago. It was February of 2004, just as John Kerry was sealing up the Democratic presidential nomination. Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, ordered the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Rather predictably a storm of fecal matter erupted.
In the month between the directive from Newsom and the California Supreme Court's ruling to halt the marriages, some 4,000 gay and lesbian couples wed. Later that summer, the court went further still and voided all of those marriages. Still two months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, making it the first state in the union to legalize the practice.
There was something else going on that year: A presidential election. In response (partly, at least) to the actions of Newsom and the Massachusetts court, conservatives came out in droves to support 11 state-level amendments that banned gay marriage. They also backed George W. Bush for a second term.
After all of the controversy kicked up by Newsom, and all of the hand-wringing over Massachusetts, gays and lesbians in this country were left with a Republican president, an unfriendly Congress, and exactly one state in which they could wed. Early in Bush's second term, they got Samuel Alito and John Roberts, further shifting the Supreme Court away from their side of the argument.
To which, I said, the gay rights community had overreached. They had gone for it all without winning over enough of the court of public opinion. Gavin Newsom was looking for headlines and front page photos of his toothy smile. In their rush to utilize executive fiat and legislative override of majority opinion, the efforts to achieve equality for the gay community had been set back years, I argued, possibly decades.
I wasn't alone, by the way. The openly gay Representative Barney Frank criticized the San Francisco move as a "symbolic point" that did no favors to gay rights.
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Tue Dec 30, 2008 at 23:21:22 PM EST
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Last weekend, I saw Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first out gay person elected to public office. I thought the film was excellent, although not without problems. For instance, there was a lack of honest representation of the extensive violence inflicted upon gay people. However, I thought the film powerfully depicted the historic struggle for gays rights and spoke to the continuing battle for equality for LGBTQ people.? ?The film spoke to several themes that have contemporary relevance, such as the importance of visibility of gay people in campaigns for gay rights (a key issue in the recent passing of Prop 8). There is an ongoing debate about whether campaigns for gay rights are more effective when they portray gay people, gay families, gay faces or alternatively when campaigns try to speak to “universal” notions of individual rights. Depicted in the film, thirty years ago, California defeated a bigoted ballot initiative that would have allowed schools to fire gay teachers or teachers who supported gay co-workers. The initial campaign, which Milk criticized, stressed individual rights rather than acknowledging and portraying the gay people who would be the ones affected by the bigoted legislation.
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Fri Nov 14, 2008 at 10:19:54 AM EST
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After the crushing blow of Prop 8 passing in California and similar actions from Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas – it was nice to see the front page of the New York Times yesterday morning. Check out the great photo… 
Equal rights to marriage started in Connecticut on Wednesday. Last month, the state’s highest court ruled that excluding gay couples from marriage was unconstitutional. Of course, the California Supreme Court made a similar ruling six months ago, until voters decided otherwise on Nov 4.
Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote an excellent letter in response to the ballot initiative loses… “Now is the time to be constructive with our hurt and disappointment. This weekend, thousands in all 50 states will take to the streets with one common goal in mind—full equality for all—let us not forget that our cause is one of civil respect rooted in justice and fairness. Marchers will call not only for justice for LGBT families, but for an end to all the oppressions that hold our nation back and give the false impression that our differences are more profound than what we have in common. To locate a Join the Impact rally near you, visit http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/.”
Read Joe's entire letter here. Tomorrow – Saturday, November 15 – protests have been organized in every state to promote love and equality. Read Join The Imact's mission statement here. NYC’s protest will take place at 1:30pm at City Hall.
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Thu Nov 13, 2008 at 16:41:06 PM EST
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Dan Savage, while elsewhere having some useful things to say about Proposition 8's passage, notably wrote a screed blaming homophobic Black people for the anti-marriage amendment in California. To be fair he's not the only one; in fact I regularly encounter this sentiment online and off, often accompanied by a sort of quid-pro-quo argument that makes it out as if LGBT people voting for a Black presidential candidate is some sort of big favor to Black people. Both of these sentiments point to the white LGBT community's failures at successfully organizing with people of color.
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Fri May 16, 2008 at 13:38:08 PM EDT
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Yesterday the California State Supreme Court made a decision that will affect my congregation—in a 4-3 majority, they decided the following: 1) It is unconstitutional to discriminate against gay people (they are a "suspect classification", meaning the state is subject to greater burden of proof that laws targeting gay people as a class both serve a legitimate interest of the state and are necessary to serve that interest—a challenging thing to prove in court) 2) To reserve the name, as well as rights, of marriage for opposite-sex couples discriminates against gay people by denying their unions and families equal dignity with opposite sex couples 3) Voter initiatives that unequally affect gay people are subject to the same strict scrutiny (see 1 above) as any other law As far as I know, the only way to reverse this decision short of a federal supreme court decision that infringes upon the judicial authority of the state supreme court is to amend the state constitution, which is what many anti-gay groups are now trying to do. This will affect my congregation particularly because it is our practice to honor same-gender couples equally with opposite-gender couples. All our marriages finally can be as legally binding as the Conservative shul up the road or the Methodist church around the corner. There are a lot of problems this doesn't really address—like how to get the federal government to honor the decision and give married same-gender couples their federal rights—but it goes a long way and I'm pretty thrilled. It also affects the rest of the state, because naming gay people as a "suspect classification" sets a new precedent. Any further legislation that targets gay people, whether by voter initiative or by legislature, short of a constitutional amendment, will have to pass strict scrutiny. This is a really good step forward. Chief Justice George (a Republican appointee like most of the rest of the court) has written an excellent opinion in this decision. You can find the full text of the decision here.
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Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 14:59:06 PM EDT
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Events in my congregation have stirred up some feelings among community members about transgender people's participation in services, as it relates to our progressive Jewish understanding of the Divine. At a Kabbalat Shabbat service recently I heard one congregant say something like "How can he (referring to a transgender man) lead prayer? He has rejected the Divine feminine by becoming a man!" I couldn't, in the moment, interrupt my prayer to turn to this person and be a force for education, but I very much wanted to. Are all men inherently set apart from Shekhina? Are all women inherently more in touch with Her? Survey says no. Even if that were true, you'd think a man who has been a woman for some portion of his life would understand women's experiences and feel closer to feminine manifestations of the Divine than one who is not, not the reverse. The sorrow and anger I felt about that comment temporarily shook me out of my communion with the Divine (masculine, feminine, or otherwise). I don't want to hear that my relationship with the Divine is limited by my experience of my gender, especially not while I'm enjoying a prayer service skillfully led by someone, no matter what gender, who is obviously in touch with Holiness in a form that is working for me. Much of the rest of my experience of that service had to be taken up struggling to forgive my fellow community members and myself, for being so caught up in klippot, and in judgment, that we attempt to circumscribe each others' relationships with the Holy One.
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Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 11:42:17 AM EDT
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I spent last Wednesday at my alma mater, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in a day long celebration of the first anniversary of the decision to admit gay and lesbian students into the rabbinical and cantorial schools. It was an amazing day, one I long thought might never happen at this bastion of the Conservative Movement of Judaism. There was text study, discussion on the changes in culture created by this change, paralleled to the change when women were admitted; text study, personal coming out stories, and discussion on where to go from here, including expanding this to bisexual and transgender students, how to make a difference out in congregations, and other issues. There was also an awareness that not all parts of the community are comfortable with these changes, let alone further changes.
It was wonderful to see the relief of so many people to come out of the closet, the opening up of new ways of thinking, and mapping of tasks for the future. Truly a "Shehechiyanu" Day! On the other hand, JTS is still not really inclusive. The students who organized the event made note that it still does not have a policy of including bisexual and transgender students in rabbinical and cantorial school. Other groups, such as the polyamorous, are not even under discussion. It seems there is still a lot of work to do.
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Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 13:22:26 PM EST
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cross-posted from JVoices
Yesterday, I posted about Lantos' support of trans communities. Later that day I was alerted to the murder of Sanesha Stewart, a 25 year old black transgender woman from the Bronx. Her murder is not an isolated incident, nor is the horrific coverage by the news media new. What I think is new is how the blogs offer a strong counter lens and opportunity for people to have a different conversation, one that immediately calls out the disgusting media coverage--one that immediately calls out the use of "tranny panic" defense as legitimate. One that helps push out GLAAD's immediate call to action to communities who will take action, and one that adds to GLAAD's call to also challenge the stereotype and bias that all trans woman must be sex workers, or that sex work is an inherently bad thing.
While I commend Lantos' support of transgender people in the public policy realm, I also know that this still wouldn't get at the root of all of the reasons why Sanesha's life and memory is being treated so horrendously in the media, and that her murder is immediately viewed as "her own fault."
Folks have already been blogging up a storm, including Megan Julca, Lisa Harney, The Curvature, Belledame, GallingGalla, and Holly over at Feministe, who gives a good overview, which I'm including below:
A man named Steve McMillian apparently stabbed Sanesha Stewart to death on Saturday morning. Who was she? She lived in the Bronx. She was tall and femme and well-liked by her neighbors. She was a client at the law project where I volunteer, but I never met her myself. Some of my colleagues helped her get her name legally changed more than a year ago. None of the above mattered at all to the news media, which handled this tragedy with the appropriate combination of sensitivity, respect for the victim, and a very cold eye for the man who the police dragged from her apartment, covered in her blood.
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Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 11:46:40 AM EST
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Personally, I don't think Jews should be celebrating Valentine's Day, and not just because I don't have a date tonight. V-Day originates in the veneration of the Catholic martyred saint, Valentine. That American consumer culture has morphed it into yet another excuse for you to buy a bunch of cr-p doesn't make it any less a Catholic holy day at heart.
But, based on my friends' Facebook traffic, I'm guessing that persuading Jews to give up this day is a lost cause. So here's a better idea: Freedom to Marry Week.
Running from Feb 10-16, here's the pitch from the FTM Week (and no thats not a trans allusion) website:
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