LGBT 
Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 16:27:12 PM EST
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cross-posted from JVoices:
 Folks have probably heard about Rep Tom Lantos' passing. One tidbit you may not know yet is the support he gave to transgender folks. Emails flooded my inbox highlighting this not so well-known talking point. Here's just one of the emails I received from the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition:
NTAC Remembers a True Hero to the Transgender Community: Rep. Tom Lantos
The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) is saddened to report the passing of Rep. Tom Lantos on Monday (D-CA) from complications due to esophageal cancer. The longtime congressman from suburban San Francisco had recently announced he'd not seek re-election due to his illness. Rep. Lantos was 80.
While low-key, Rep. Lantos was a quiet but distinctive hero for the oppressed and voiceless of the world. It was befitting of a man who survived the holocaust after losing his family, and later emigrated to the United States from Hungary, virtually penniless.
Particular to the transgender community, Rep. Lantos authored and sponsored the very first legislative language introduced into Congress that mentioned "gender identity." After an initial entry into the congressional session in 1998, Rep. Lantos introduced HR 259 in early 2000.
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Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 15:52:39 PM EST
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Seems that some in the GLBT community have had enough of our old friend Rev. Fred Phelps and his religious fundamentalist lunacy. On March 30th there will be a "benefit" in Topeka, KS for the Westboro Baptist Church. According to their Facebook page:
The Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, is a hate group masquerading as a Christian church. Led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, the misguided members of this church target homosexuals and a range of others with messages of hate. The church's outrageous protest actions - the group prefers to picket funerals - have earned Phelps and his ilk much media coverage.
To date, the WBC's protests have taken place in at least 22 states, and have inspired a wave of grassroots anger. As a result, 38 states have introduced bills to limit protests near funerals, and at least 29 of those states have passed such measures. Phelps has vowed to challenge the legislation, alleging that these new restrictions unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech.
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Tue Jan 29, 2008 at 16:00:45 PM EST
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Catching up on some reading, great post by Ami Eden over at JTA on the Jewish angle on Heath Ledger's death. Of interest to us (because Hannah seems to think some of my posts have nothing to do with Justice) in that:
1) Goes to the whole question of why does everything have to have a Jewish particularistic angle in order to get air play in our media?
2) The angle, in this case, is the ravings of our old buddy Rev. Phelps, who once again takes his right-wing religious wingnut behavior on the road for some good old fashion gay-bashing.
Phelps and his virulently homophobic church have vowed to picket the actor's funeral,
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Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 16:25:20 PM EST
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In case you missed it, Rep. Bob Filner pulled off an unusual plea deal after a rather disturbing airport stunt. The AP reports that he has:
entered a plea days before he was scheduled to stand trial on assault and battery charges over accusations that he pushed a United Airlines baggage employee at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia. At a hearing in General District Court in Loudoun County, Va., Mr. Filner entered what is known as an Alford plea to trespassing, according to a statement issued through his lawyer. The plea means that he did not admit guilt in the Aug. 19 episode, but acknowledged that sufficient evidence existed for a conviction. Mr. Filner, whose trial was to have begun on Dec. 4, was fined $100, the court clerk said.
Last time a politician got busted at an airport, Sen. Larry Craig got into a lot more trouble than that. Granted I feel that Craig was a hypocrite and a pig, but what are the chances that you or I would get the same deal as Filner if we pulled a similar stunt at an airport? And seriously, who's airport actions are the greater affront to our nation and our security.
It feels like Filner is getting special treatment twice over, from The Law, and from us.
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Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 11:00:12 AM EDT
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As Jill has previously noted, we're thinking a lot around here about Jewish approaches to Tzedakah. In that context, I was intrigued by an article in yesterday's NY Times -- their angle on Halloween -- which noted the decline of traditional "gayborhoods" like San Francisco's Castro district. Essentially, the queer community is no longer herding to these distinct areas, choosing to live in nearby but more mixed communities, for reasons of class & identity.
Personally, I've never seriously considered living in Chelsea, NY's gay ghetto, though certainly a number of my friends have and do. I've also never joined Beth Simchat Torah (CBST), NY's GLBT synagogue. There are a variety of reasons for doing so; most essentially that while each of these spaces can and has at times fulfilled some of my needs, neither of them can fulfill the needs of my complete self identity.
I am not just gay, but also Jewish, not just Jewish, but self-defining my practice in a pretty traditional way. I also identify as a lot of other things that inform where I want to live and what kind of groups I want to be connected to (a member of a created -- i.e. mostly non-biological- family, a New Yorker, a dog owner, a Mexican-American, a liberal, etc...).
So I end up wanting to live in a community like the Upper West Side that is gay positive, but also with a rich Jewish life and lots of good parks. I join (and am very active) in a spiritual community, Darkhei Noam, that is traditionally interpretive of halacha, but also committed to being open and inclusive of "alternative" families. And so on & so forth.
My point?
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Mon Oct 29, 2007 at 10:37:31 AM EDT
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Yesterdays' Sunday Arts section had an extensive cover story celebrating the DVD release of the complete My So Called Life, that mid-90's groundbreaking series that introduced the world to Claire Danes.
As the Times rightly notes:
To claim that "My So-Called Life" is great, watershed television is to say something so firmly ingrained in the conventional wisdom that it hardly bears repeating. The series brought us the experience of adolescence outside the bounds of artifice, peril and pathology that had provided the context for nearly every other depiction of teenagers on television. Here what it meant to be 15 was not to discover that you suddenly had to raise your 6-year-old sister or that you might be pregnant with twins but merely that you suffered everyday indignities: overhearing people talk behind your back, the plop of a grim-looking lump of mashed potatoes on a pallid cafeteria tray.
Here's the problem. The paper of record completely ignored a big chunk of the show's fan base, as well as one of the reasons it was watershed: the introduction of Wilson Cruz, an out teen actor, as Rickie, the queer confidant to Danes' Angela. For the 1st time on TV, a gay teen could be seen every week, dealing with the same struggles (and pining over the same god-like Jordan, played by Jared Leto) as his girlfriends. And the gay community, appreciating the character and the show, have been a big part of the market driving this week's release (see the Advocate's newsmercial last week for this perspective).
But not a word in the Times. While they take care to have photos of Danes, Leto, and "gal next door" A.J. Langer -- and tell us where they all are now -- not one mention is made of the 4th leading member of the cast.
And so the NYTimes, bastion of liberal orthodoxy, doesn't quite get all the news that's fit to print, and overlooks a key part of a cultural turning point. Why?
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Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 09:44:30 AM EDT
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In the mid-90's I was working in the NY Attorney General's office working closely with the Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project to make a big push to build a coalition to pass a state Hate Crime bill. One thing was clear; many legislators were more than ready to pass a bill that prosecuted hate crimes, but not for gays and lesbians. Certainly, such a bill, which would have made a significant difference in protecting blacks, Jews, immigrants and others from bias-crimes would easily have passed the Democratic Assembly, and probably the Republican State Senate.
Significantly, a coalition of civil rights groups said "no thank you." Led by the local chapter of the ADL, and including black clergy, Latino and Asian groups, the New York civil rights community made it quite clear -- they would tolerate no bias-crime bill that left the queer community out.
And at a moment when it made sense for the AVP to stop hosting the coalition, the ADL went so far as to step up and host, in its office, the campaign coordinator who came over from the AVP staff to work for the ADL (keep in mind, the idea of a mainstream Jewish organization in NY having openly gay staff professionals was unheard of at that time -- the local AJCongress chapter director only came out at work after he left them in 1992, and they were the "liberal" group).
Well, with the ADL's strong leadership and a coalition that held together, within a few years we passed that hate crimes bill, with the support of the Republican Senate and Governor, and with gay and lesbian protection explicitly included.
This memory, of a noble coalition in which the mainstream Jewish community played a prominent role as an anchor and ally, comes to mind these past few days for two reasons.
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Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 17:34:38 PM EDT
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Here's a tall tale we used to tell in yeshiva, to elucidate the bizarre origin of certain minhagim (customs in Jewish practice). It came to mind very recently.
It's 19th century Europe. A young, say 14 year old boy, comes to the great yeshiva of Telsze to study. Traditionally the newest students stand in the back row during prayers, and on the 1st day he observes the boys in front of him praying the amidah with their feet spread apart (the standing central part of the service, traditionally recited with legs together).
"Why this odd custom?" he inquires. "We don't know" they respond, "It's because the older boys in front of us were doing it when we got here.
The boy works his way up to the front of the room, getting the same response over and over. Finally, the oldest teachers in the front row say "we don't know the origin of this custom, but the rosh yeshiva does it." And so the boy, with great trepidation, approaches the great rabbi with his question. "Oh rabbi, why is it your custom to say the amidah with legs apart?"
"Custom, what custom?" responds the great man. "I've got hemorrhoids.
Makes you think about wide stances and what Larry Craig would do at a mikvah. See the AP report that "wide stance" has entered the lexicon:
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Tue Sep 04, 2007 at 19:22:54 PM EDT
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So, Senator Larry Craig has resigned. For the past weeks, he has been the butt of jokes, both in the mainstream media (including NPR) and on the left. Now the Senator has announced his plans to leave his office in a month.
I like to see hypocrisy unmasked as much as the next guy, and I won't deny that there was a smile on my surprised face when I first heard the news about Craig earlier this week. I firmly support Jeremy's decision to award the Senator a Piggy Award. But let's be clear: this was no victory against hypocrisy. It was a victory for homophobia and a blow to privacy rights.
Let's remember that Craig's arrest was not for having sex in a public place, but for allegedly expressing his interest in sex--and in a subtle enough way that it's designed not to get attention. Does anyone doubt that somewhere in that airport that day, there were at least five men propositioning women in far more overt and obnoxious ways? But of course, they would only face arrest--or even social censure--if there is clear and flagrant harassment.
If Craig had actually been having sex in a bathroom stall, then sure, there would have been grounds for his arrest. But even there, had it been with a woman, I doubt that we would have heard nearly such an outcry. Subtle sexual overtures between men in airport restrooms are obscene, but heterosexual sex on an airplane is joked about and admired as "the mile-high club." And as Senator David Vitter showed us, heterosexual sex outside of marriage--even for pay--is no big deal to one's Republican colleagues.
Craig's arrest and the reaction to it are rooted in a heterosexist double standard. But the whole affair also helped to entrench that double standard. The overwhelming response
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Fri Aug 31, 2007 at 14:36:09 PM EDT
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There is a lot to be written about the breaking news out of Iowa. A judge ruled that the state's same-sex marraige ban is unconstitutional; then issued a stay of the order today. In the meantime, a few folks took advantage of the brief window to get married. Among the first were Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz.
Hard not to enjoy this piece of their story:
The couple attempted to get married at Temple B'Nai Jeshurun. The men -- and numerous people in the media -- went to the temple but were told the Rabbi was unavailable to do the ceremony.
Rabbi David Kaufman, in an interview with The Register this afternoon, said he was at a cemetery this morning and didn't know anything about the people at his Temple until after the actual marriage was performed by Mark Stringer.
He said he wouldn't have performed the ceremony anyway because neither man was Jewish.
But, he added, "I would have performed a same-sex commitment ceremony for a Jewish couple, but neither of these people are Jewish... I'm commend Mark (Stringer) for doing the ceremony."
So, instead of a rabbi, they found a Unitarian minister. More fun details below:
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