Archives for 2009

Let us never forget both the event and that we squandered the potential of its aftermath to be better people than we were before it.

Dear HRC,

No, I don’t have a minute for gay rights. I don’t even have a minute for lesbian rights which is a tad ironic on its face. I might have a minute for transgendered rights but only if I don’t stop to think about it (after all, the gender discrimination that transfolk face is the primary color to the pastel that any lesbian or gay man who doesn’t meet heteronormative gender expectations in public or in the workplace is often subjected to; trust me, I know). I would have a minute for civil rights or equal rights, but how would you ever know?

Your representatives, those scrubbed, shiny people you station on the street in those lovely navy blue t-shirts stenciled with your name and the equals sign never ask about those. No, those aren’t attention getting enough. They “don’t have time to educate people” that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people don’t want anything special yet they, and by extension you, don’t see how damaging the phrase “gay rights” is and how useful a tool it is for those opposed to equal protections under the law for everyone in every aspect of life. And don’t try to tell me that argument is past its pull-date, because it’s not.

You act as if you are the thought leaders in the lgbt community, as if you represent all of us out here, outside your big building in Washington DC. Yet, search as I might, I can find no mechanism for the average person, or even the average donor, to influence the direction of your programs. Your Contact Us form is a model of generic passivity.

Even if I wanted to talk to you about how badly you’ve bungled the “marriage equality” fight by sadly insisting on prizing assimilation through the use of the word marriage while you’ve ignored all chances to actually achieve equality under the law for legally bound couples, I couldn’t.

Even if I wanted to tell you that if by some miracle you succeed in getting that equality while calling it marriage that still doesn’t protect us out here from being fired from our jobs or being denied housing because we are, or are perceived as, different, I couldn’t.

No, your national board members guide the state-based steering committees quite likely as agents of policy and direction on which the decisions have long been made. There is no way to tell you these things or to even get any explanation on why you insist on proceeding the way you do.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I generally support the ideals that you say the phrase “gay rights” represents.

No one should lose custody of their child because she’s dating another woman.

No one should lose out on the sublime pleasure of expanding a child’s world through knowledge of math, science, literature, and all the other things we learn in school simply because he lives with and loves another man.

No one should be denied housing or access to public accommodations because her biology at birth didn’t match who she felt she really was.

And no one should be denied the measly comfort of holding his beloved’s hand at the time of death simply because they both have the same letter by the sex descriptor on their government issued identification.

If these are the things you stand for then yes, I support you, but I can not support the way in which you choose to pursue them. It’s exclusionary and it’s making the goals that we both so want unnecessarily difficult to achieve. But, again, I have no way of telling you these things because you will not, as represented by your front-line, by your street canvassers, let go of what is “easy” and what “pops.”

So instead I write to remind you of your very name: the Human Rights Campaign. I know that presents a communications problem itself; after all, Amnesty and other larger groups have so branded the phrase “human rights” in the American mind that most people likely think of refugee camps, physical torture, and forced sex slavery when they hear that phrase. Still, your name is not the Gay Rights Campaign. But rather than just criticize, which is so easy and often brings such a wonderful boost of pleasing chemicals to the brain, I’d like to offer a potential solution.

Look at your own visual branding. Take your queue from the mathematical symbol you’ve put to service as a political message. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it says everything that needs to be said.

Yes, I have time for equality, but until you stop implying that we want something more than what everyone else has, how will you ever know if the rest of the country does too?

Political discourse in America is at a frightening crossroads, and as a people we’ve been standing in the intersection turning the map this way and that trying to figure out which way to go for quite some time now. This is not news. I am not the first person to point this out. Liberal pundits and actual journalists point this out on a regular basis multiple times a day.

And even though I’m not involved in the townhall fracases that the media have been orgasming over all summer, I still find myself affected by this creeping paralysis of thought. It’s hard not to be. I work for a progressive environmental organization, “my” party is in power in both the executive and legislative branches of the Federal government, and DC is flooded, much as it was in the mid-90s, with the young and the enthusiastic who want to change the world for the betterment of all not just for the betterment of the white, middle-class, and heterosexual. It should be a great time. Yet that closed mindedness that has lead to fist fights, shouting matches, and, at one recent meeting, the loss of body parts isn’t just happening on the right. There is a pervasive undercurrent, at least among the progressives I know, that people who disagree with them aren’t to be trusted. The problem, rightly unpacked into the three Ls (labels, lifestyle, and listening), boils down to one of time. All of the labels, all of the technology, allow us to short-cut the opinion forming process. They, plus party affiliation, are the moral equivalent of TV dinners in a world that requires slow-cooked, gourmet meals. Since identifying the problem is but the first step toward a solution I’ve been wondering:

What is the best way to maintain an open mind?

In his article on CNN.com Rudy Ruiz recommends the following:

For starters, we should eschew the notion that changing our minds is a character flaw. To the contrary, experts believe it’s a manifestation of higher intelligence. Renowned psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote in “Irrationality,” his seminal 1992 book: “The willingness to change one’s mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of rationality not weakness.”

To further free our minds, we should aggressively treat the three Ls:

Let’s lose the labels: from “flip-flopper” to “commie,” from “fear-monger” to “right-wing nut job.” Trash the diatribe; mull the ideas.

Let’s engage in some constructive lifestyle management, slowing down to ponder — and make independent decisions — as enlightened people. We cannot allow the technological evolution to rob us of the intellectual strides of the American Revolution.

We must value the art of listening, reflection, comparative analysis, and civil discourse if we’re to make the most of our democracy. In the process, we should signal to leaders that we’re willing to expand our horizons beyond party lines. Maybe they’ll get in front of our parade, collaborating for a change.

Let’s request a second opinion and listen to each other. Switch channels. Visit different Web sites. Read a newspaper, while we can still find one. How about stepping into a town hall with an open mind, prepared to converse with people hailing from diverse circumstances? A range of perspectives enriches our viewpoint, empowering us to craft nuanced responses to complex situations.

Ultimately, we must stop thinking that the only thing to think is what we’ve thought all along. As we learn more about multifaceted matters, our positions should evolve accordingly. Let’s accept that it’s OK to change your minds.

Most of this is good advice. I’d argue that the polarization of debate has so infected the media that it is impossible to find anything of value from media outlets that you aren’t already inclined to browse (honestly: if you normally get your news from Rachel Maddow watching Glenn Beck isn’t going to inform, it’s just going to raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels).

But Ruiz hits on something when he writes that we should slow down, that we should take time to listen and reflect. What he misses is the examination of existing opinions and beliefs and our commitment to them even without new facts. Take for example this meme that has been going around the progressive circles in which I run:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. (RT if you agree)

This is something that I both retweeted and posted to my Facebook status yesterday. It’s a concept that I happen to agree with and it’s one that I believe is based on compassion. Yet there arises the question: At what point do your poor lifestyle choices – alcohol abuse, drug use, poor nutrition, lack of exercise to name a few – that adversely affect your health cease to be the object of compassion and become solely your problem?

A more pointed example is this poster pressuring President Obama to take action on AIDS. The group behind these posters, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation states that their mission is to “rid the world of HIV/AIDS.” Not knowing that, though, let’s unpack this poster and how it works.

It’s easy to see that it plays on a particular progressive – because yes, there are people out there “on the right” who believe that New Orleans, and its people, got what it deserved – mindset that sees the massive government corruption and institutional racism that was manifest in how Dubya’s administration handled the disaster that was Katrina. And it’s easy to let that knee-jerk feeling of agreement wash over you. Yet, the two situations, when you slow down and examine them aren’t the same at all.

Katrina was a natural disaster. Its path and course measurable and vaguely predictable. A lot of the ramifications of Katrina – the flooding, the wind damage – were foreseeable (New Orleans is, after all, below sea level), and a lot of the problems that afflicted the people of New Orleans during and directly after the storm hit are a direct result of living in poverty. But the reality is that we could have done absolutely nothing to stop the storm, or the flooding, or any of the other physical damage that happened as a result of Katrina. The only thing better handling of the situation could have done was mitigate the effects on the people. The same is not true of AIDS.

Standing on a street on August 29, 2005 you could not have died of AIDS in New Orleans. The same can not be said of exposure to Katrina. Even though poverty does have a detrimental affect on education about AIDS, outreach in DC is pervasive and has been for the past 20 years. Free HIV screening is readily available as are the best identified means to prevent infection. The people flattened by Katrina didn’t have a lot of choice; it’s not as if they could have said “No, I choose not to participate in this hurricane. Let’s go outside and play some frisbee in our nice, sunny bubble while the storm rages around us.” Nearly all of whether or not you get AIDS is under your control.

These situations aren’t even marginally comparable. So why as a person who subscribes to the progressive view point that Katrina was badly handled am I expected to automatically believe and support the idea that “AIDS is DC’s Katrina?” The answer is I shouldn’t be, but that’s what the labeled viewpoint would have me do.

As a total sidebar I’d like to propose a corollary in progressive circles to Godwin’s Law: When you have to resort to invoking Katrina, you’re essentially saying that you have not thought out your argument.

The only real way to know what I think is to actually think it myself. Not to let any pundit or reporter, no matter how cute, or politician, no matter how charismatic, think it for me. Key to that is sitting down and figuring out what exactly it is I actually believe on a variety of issues. Until I know that, how can I know if I agree or disagree with what someone else is saying?