Bronski’s History: queer, indeed.

My review of Michael Bronski’s book Queer History of the United States has just been published on the Tangent’s website. Tracy Baim’s book, Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America, does a much better job of covering the important details Bronski leaves out. 

Jonathan Ned Katz writes:

It is the responsibility of LGBT leaders and scholars to criticize the LOSS for black and Hispanic equality and GAIN for gay equality represented by the recent Supreme Court decisions.

A story in the New York Times on Sunday, June 23, warned that the upcoming Supreme Court rulings might support gay equality and hamper the equality of Hispanics and blacks (once again disappearing those who are black and Hispanic and gay).

THIS REALLY HORRIBLE POSSIBILITY has now come true. There’s a long history of the dominant society pitting various groups’ interests against each other, and I hope that LGBT leaders and scholars will  publicly criticize this aspect of the Supreme Court’s decisions.

The Times story says that if the Court’s decisions “require only [formal] equal treatment from the government,” as opposed to taking into consideration historical and still existing discrimination, “same-sex couples who want to marry would be better off at the end of the term, while blacks and Hispanics could find it harder to get into college and to vote.”

Committee on LGBT History's statement regarding today's DOMA and Proposition 8 Supreme Court rulings

For LGBT rights, only a handful of Supreme Court cases have been as truly historic as today’s DOMA and Prop 8 decisions. We are proud that historians helped make them possible. Through amicus briefs and testimony at lower court levels, members of the Committee on LGBT History produced a rigorous understanding of marriage as an institution that has consistently changed over time. As historians of sexuality and gender, we also view the marriage decisions within the context of the Court’s other rulings this week, particularly those about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and adoption. The Committee on LGBT History urges scholars and the media to explore the ways in which these cases and the issues they address mutually inform each other. While collectively they seem to define equality in this moment as a kind of “difference-blind” sameness, the history of intersections between sexuality and race suggests that their implications will be more complex. For same-sex families in the South, for example, many of which are headed by African American women, changes to the Voting Rights Act could have deeper ramifications than the overturning of DOMA. Members of the Committee on LGBT History will continue to contribute thorough and nuanced scholarship to the ongoing work for justice.

Don Romesburg

Co-Chair, Committee on LGBT History

Guest Blogger: Toby Grace

Toby Grace, editor of Out in Jersey Magazine, writes:

To everyone who sent congratulations and notes of happiness regarding the Supreme Court decision that overturned DOMA, or who intended to—thank you for joining the celebration. 

It has been a very long road, marched by a very small army. It has been almost 50 years since I stood on Christopher Street the morning after the riots, surveying a scene that looked is if a small war had been fought and wondering if my friends who had been in the fight were OK. 

The only other person on the street at dawn was a young boy sweeping up broken glass in front of a shop. He was singing to himself—softly—a song from West Side Story: “There's a place for us, somewhere a place for us, hold my hand and I'll take you there—some place, some time, some where.”

For me that was a galvanizing moment. I swore that THIS would be the place and the time was NOW! I became an activist in that moment. That was a long time ago and a great deal has happened. Often the exigencies of life interfered with commitment to the movement but the dream was always in my heart. I have been greatly blessed by being permitted to live long enough to see this day—to see the day when the young people who are so very dear to me can live openly and love the person of their choice without fear and in an environment that, when I was their age, I could not have conceived as possible. 

I will spend a little quiet time today by myself, remembering all the ones who, but for the terrible plague of AIDS, would be here today, ecstatically celebrating this victory that they contributed so much to, in laying the foundations of our liberty. 

The voices of hate are still heard, but they have become as the croaking of frogs—a chorus of meaningless noise that fades into the night. When one has lived as long as I have, one begins to see a certain repetition in the unfolding of history. I noted the protest signs held up by the religious fanatics opposing this decision outside the Supreme Court yesterday bore slogans identical to the ones the same sort of people used in opposing the court’s 1967 decision in Loving vs. Virginia—the decision that struck down laws against interracial marriage. In ’67, they claimed marrying the person one loves was against God’s law just as they did yesterday. Evidently God was not impressed with their twisted logic or their primitive theology. 

However, the millenium has not yet dawned. Thirty-seven states still outlaw marriage equality. That will change. Gays are still executed in some medieval foreign lands. That must stop. We are not at the end of the road but we have at least arrived a beautiful rest stop and we can celebrate with real joy. 

Have a wonderful day, because it IS a wonderful day and today, life is very sweet.

Toby Grace

Editor

Out in Jersey

Reaching the Places Equality Hasn’t, by Mark Segal

Mark Segal of the Philadelphia Gay News writes:

The Supreme Court will be ruling on marriage equality in the next few days. Whatever the outcome — and it would surprise most court watchers if it were not at least somewhat supportive — the case for marriage equality has already taken center stage as the civil-rights issue of the day. 

Unless the Supreme Court rules that marriage is an outright civil right for LGBT people, and the chances of that are slim, this battle will go state by state, and therefore will go on for possibly decades. Decades, you say? Think Mississippi and Alabama, think Ohio and Pennsylvania, which still don’t have statewide nondiscrimination laws. 

So a victory of any sort at the Supreme Court is not the end of the fight; it’s just one battle that was started over 40 years ago when the Rev. Troy Perry and Metropolitan Community Church applied for “same-sex marriage licenses around the nation.” Take a look at how much work still will need to be done by just looking at Perry’s actions. 

Two of the states where his church members applied for marriage licenses were California and Utah. We all know that California will shortly have marriage, with or without the Supreme Court, but Utah? That is a place that will need lots of work — read: education. 

And that is where we sometimes miss our lobby opportunities. Using Utah as an example, the strongest group in that state are the followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. They control the political system, and are viewed by many as antigay. They certainly were the major funders of Proposition 8 and other ballot initiatives. The question is, like with some other religions, can they be educated to change their position and, thereby, if not support marriage equality, at least not fight against it? We’re not asking them to change, but to accept our civil rights. 

That change might have already happened. The Mormons were one of the first religious organizations to announce they’d accept the new Boy Scouts’ rule on nondiscrimination. It’s time to start to support LGBT Mormons, Catholics and others who are trying to educate their religious orders, rather than making them feel as though they are outcasts. 

Our job as activists is to advance progress, even in the religions that have oppressed us for thousands of years. That is how change happens. And those LGBT fighters in the Mormon, Catholic and other churches are heroes who should be supported by the rest of the community.

Amen  BUT, I truly do not understand Scalia, who apparently has again just said that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to (homosexual) sex. I wonder how he reads the Ninth Amendment?

Article: 20 Years Ago, Knox County Commission Unleashed a Wave of Vitriol Against the Gay Community

Ed White writes:

Besides the main article, there's also a sidebar about me.  Many thanks to Betty Bean and Coury Turczyn at Metro Pulse for exploring the 20th anniversary with this coverage!  It’s a pretty lengthy exploration that really brings out the drama of what happened in a way I couldn’t on my website, trying to be the sober historian.  It was interesting to read voices of people like our mayor Madeline Rogero as they remember it today.

You can find my historical website here.

 This is a good example of how the media could educate on issues of homosexuality.  It may seem mainly of local interest—it tells citizens today of what the citizens 20 years ago said and did on our civil rights—but it also is an example of how brave and exploring people like you came to be a part of a successful movement/cause.  I am glad they covered you and your work. 

AND, reread this and even you will feel strange, in this time of everyday bringing “out” a new person, and the “not quite-end” of Exodus, and the coming marriage decisions, and Obama talking about our rights in Germany, this IS a different world, but one young people will need to support and work to keep.

From Mary Ann in Los Angeles:

Mary Ann, from Los Angeles, writes:

Scroll down for a nice photo of Don Slater at the Barney's Beanery picket. 
I was surprised to see him there (well, to see a photo of him there) as my understanding was that he wasn't opposed to Irwin Held's constitutional right to have a sign in his establishment (you know, the Libertarian stand). Decent article, even if the facts are a little mixed up.

I hate you.  You confused me to my core.  I think I know how the Exodus man feels—if he is sincere.  To have what you believed for over 50 years challenged by a picture is NOT a gay feeling.

BUT, the fact was and is that Don Slater opposed the picketing.  He believed, as a conservative Republican and based on his personal faith and beliefs that the owner (of a private business) had a right to be wrong.  The answer was to educate him and NOT support his business.  (If taxpayers were involved, that was different.)

If that is truly a sign of him at the picketing, I can assure you his sign was not like the rest. I did not know he went there. I did not. We had enough work to do with the magazine and organization so did not take on every project, no matter how worthy. He did like—even though he worried about the idea of a ghetto church—Troy Perry and Morris Kight, even though we also did not agree with Morris’ EARLY idea that anyone showing up for a meeting had a right to vote.  That was one of Harry Hay’s ideas too as I recall.

What this article, I gather based on the death of one of the owners, does is force us to think about what the media and historians are finding of “importance” in our movement's history.  There is a new film about the fire at the gay bar in New Orleans.

Why, I ask, is it not just as important to have covered the picketing of the Los Angeles Times, by these same pioneers/activists?  It was successful in more ways than one.  Morris, Troy, Joe, Don, Melvin, I and others picketed, peacefully, at the newspaper when it refused an ad for a forgotten (I gather) play, The Geese, by a man later honored as a Louisiana celebrity, because it hadthe word homosexual in it.  There had first been a meeting with the paper’s representatives and ours.

The religion person at the paper (John Dart) came down and talked to Melvin and Troy.  He did not interview Melvin (Cain) as his church was not a “gay” church, but the writer decided Troy’s was, and his interview/ article went “viral” as it did in the old days-other papers reprinted it, and the MCC got publicity.

And the paper changed its policy. And later had the same problem with gay and lesbian.

I welcome any facts that differ from my history.  I have no contact with Troy or others still living, and have NO faith in what is said or claimed by people who were not there or got in the movement, say at ONE Archives, years later and have  only taken the time to learn/hear one biased version of “history.”

Sadly, that includes most “media” people.