Harvey Milk Day

 "My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you."
"And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone." - Harvey Milk, 1978
 
Today, cities across the USA are observing Harvey Milk Day.
By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

 

Robin Galbraith never thought she'd be a gay-rights activist.

Then the 46-year-old military ship designer moved home to Mobile, Ala., from Houston four years ago and encountered a gay community where many are afraid to live openly.

Taking inspiration from slain gay-rights leader Harvey Milk— the San Francisco supervisor whose struggle inspired the 2008 movie Milk— Galbraith is helping gays and lesbians be more visible in the mostly conservative city. She speaks to local colleges and created a website to make it easier for people to connect.

On Saturday, she'll celebrate with California as the state marks the first official Harvey Milk Day on what would have been his 80th birthday. Galbraith will host a viewing of the movie, then a forum on issues vital to gays and lesbians in the South, such as electing openly gay politicians.

California is the only state with an official Harvey Milk Day, but 26 cities in 20 states scattered nationwide will hold rallies and events to honor the first openly gay man to be elected to public office and icon of the gay-rights movement.

"He knew you had to make change," Galbraith says. "Our community has to understand you have a voice, and if you don't use it, nothing will change."

Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He fought to end discrimination against gays and lesbians and built coalitions of gay-rights groups, labor unions and small-business owners. He was 48 when he was killed a year later by a former supervisor, Dan White.

Equality under law

The Milk events come as gay-rights advocates are pressuring Congress to pass a bill that ends job discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and to repeal the military ban on gays and lesbians serving openly.

Twenty-one states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 12 ban discrimination based on gender identity, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Advocates are lobbying Congress to include a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" — the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military — in a spending bill a House committee took up Wednesday and a Senate committee plans to take up next week.

Gay-rights activists stepped up their protests this week, rallying at the U.S. Capitol and in front of legislators' district offices and chaining themselves to the White House gates to call attention to their causes.

Robin McGehee, co-founder of GetEQUAL, one of the groups leading the rallies, says that despite gains since Milk served, gays and lesbians still lack full equality. "Thirty-two years later, sadly, we still wait," she says.

Opponents are just as passionate. Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis at the conservative American Family Association, says the lack of movement so far shows "these issues are radioactive enough" that Congress doesn't want to go there.

Gay-rights activists, he says, are trying to steamroll unpopular legislation through Congress and using Harvey Milk Day to "force acceptance of homosexual behavior."

"They know they are running out of time," he says.

Both efforts face hurdles as legislators dealing with tough re-election campaigns hesitate to back the bills, says Paul Yandura, a political consultant who works on gay-rights issues.

If Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections, he says, the bills have even less chance of passing.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, says she wants to pass both bills and is meeting with lawmakers about the timing. He would not say whether either has the votes needed to pass.

Education as first step 

Advocates say Harvey Milk Day allows them to celebrate Milk's legacy as they fight for full equality.

Raymond and Byron Moya, who are married with twin 3-year-old daughters and a newborn son, plan to spend the day going door-to-door in East Los Angeles with their family, talking to residents about same-sex marriage and gay rights.

The couple is among hundreds canvassing neighborhoods in nine cities with Equality California, the group that led the two-year effort for Harvey Milk Day.

"We want to educate people about who we are as a family," says Raymond Moya, 38. The couple has been together seven years and married in 2008 during the five months that California allowed same-sex marriage.

Galbraith dreams of the day when gays and lesbians in her community will feel free to live so openly. "We should not be hiding," she says.

Milk's nephew, Stuart, who is gay, says it is inspiring that communities such as Mobile are celebrating the day.

"It is difficult in places like Mobile," he says. "These people are standing on Harvey's shoulders and creating new shoulders for others to stand on."

Keepin' it real - When being gay isn't so "fabulous".

I subscribe to John's YouTube channel, couver87. He's a young 22 yr.old student from Arizona who usually posts video blogs on general gay issues. However, tonight he speak from a very personal place and expresses what we don't hear often from gays; what it really is like to be gay and lonely in a society that reminds you every day that you are different and not as good as... Usually, this guy is Mr. positive; so this posting is all the more poignant. If you're think you might be interested, please watch and comment.

He had a dream - Martin Luther King

Today was Martin Luther King day in the United States of America. And as the struggle for LBGT rights makes its inevitable journey to the American Supreme Court, Mr. King's long struggle against inequality still inspires hope that a change can truly come.

There are many, and not just in the black community that take offense when gays compare our struggle to that of the civil rights movement in the United States. Coretta King was not one of them.

"We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be," she said, quoting her husband. "I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy."

And she pointed out that many gays and lesbians had fought for black civil rights, demanding that blacks return the favor: (Ed Brayton)

"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement," she said. "Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."

In 1994, again invoking the words of her late husband in support of equal rights for all:

"For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law...I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

On another occasion he said, "I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible." Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.

Coretta Scott King's strong and clear voice for freedom and equality will be sorely missed, she died January 30th, 2006.

Historic US Trial has repercussions for all of us.

From the great guys at Gay Family Values

"O.k....Brace Yourself...the mother of all Gay marriage trials has just begun. This is the first trial to bring marriage equality to the Federal court system and the first step to bring it to the U.S. supreme court. We are playing for all the marbles this time! Cross your fingers and say your prayers!"

The Prop 8 trial currently taking place is an extremely important and historic event in US civil rights. Although there are many who argue that the fight for gay rights is not a civil rights issue as compared to the black rights movement, this court challenge to the Proposition 8 referendum has repercussions that will affect American society almost as profoundly as the Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs Board of Education in 1954.

This ruling stated "that the segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws."

Even more significant, let's take the Loving vs Virginia ruling of 1967 that struck down state laws that made inter-racial marriage a felony. In 1958, two residents of Virginia — Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man married in the District of Columbia and when they returned to Virginia (where time seems to have stopped), they were arrested and charged with interracial marriage:

"...On January 6, 1959, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail. Their sentence, however, was suspended for a 25 year period on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. According to the trial judge:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Frightened and unaware of their rights, they moved to Washington, D.C., where they lived in financial difficulty for 5 years. When they returned to Virginia to visit Mildred's parents, they were arrested again. While released on bail they wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, asking for help.

In 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the Loving decision, Mildred Loving released a statement dealing with the denial of the right to marry to persons because of their race and/or sexual orientation. She wrote:

"My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry."

Let's hope that Mrs Loving is right and fear and prejudice will give way to a willingness to treat everyone with respect and equality.

The lines in this battle have been clearly drawn. The vast majority of those opposed to same sex marriage rights are those that argue and fund the case from the position of family values, a thinly veiled aphorism for religious intolerance. That this is clearly an affront to the enshrined constitutional separation of church and state matters little to these hypocrites who would hide their bigotry behind the words of the bible just as Muslim fundamentalists justify all sorts of atrocities by citing the Koran.

There is much concern that the battle for same sex marriage is moving too fast. That by rushing this to the Supreme Court, especially the current one which is decidedly conservative, risks setting the movement irrevocably back. It's a huge gamble that can only be won if the court actually makes its decision based on the 14th amendment as it did in the aforementioned "Brown vs Board of Education" and "Loving vs Virginia" cases.

A lot rides on this fight, and not just for Americans. As a beacon for freedom, the United States of America shines its light of democracy across the world and espouses its constitution as a model for other nations to strive for.

I'll take our Charter of Rights anytime. However, if the most powerful nation on the earth officially sanctions civil discrimination against gays and lesbians, what hope is there for those living in countries where they can be imprisoned or hanged for being gay? This would tell all those young gays out there that:
"You are inferior and sinners and although we'll take your tax money and benefit from your community service, you will never be one of us; oh, and stay away from our kids."

The fight against Proposition 8 isn't just about gay marriage, it's about whether a democracy should protect it's minorities against the tyranny of the majority. It's about the separation of church and state. And it's about the right to life, liberty, economic freedom, and the "Pursuit of happiness" as being a basic American truth or a faded mythology.

I'm fading, I'm fading

I'm a big fan of David Sedaris. I share the dysfunctional upbringing but not the fame and fortune it bequeathed Mr. Sedaris.

His remark from this interview in the Times about turning 50 resonated with me. Becoming invisible as you get older takes some getting used to. And I never considered that it might be easier the more "deep into invisibility" you are.

Rupert Everett, another older gay icon, told the Daily Telegraph, "Unfortunately, I am single, yes, but I'm too exhausted for anything else and being gay is a young man's game."

"Now no one wants me," Everett said. "Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one let me tell you."

When Rupert says it, it just sounds so much more tragic.

Like Casper, perhaps we're just visible to our friends and to those who aren't afraid.

clipped from women.timesonline.co.uk I am what I am: David Sedaris David Sedaris 52, is an American author. His latest book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, is out now. He lives between London, Paris and Normandy with his artist boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick - It was hard to turn 50. Maybe because I don’t have kids — perhaps being able to think “Well, I’m 50, but I have a grandchild” makes it easier. You just become invisible — people stop looking at you. Once you’re deep into invisibility, it probably doesn’t bother you. But that first period is tough. - Hugh and I have been together for 18 or something years. What’s our secret? Hugh never listens to a word I say. He has no idea who I am! And, after you’ve been together for a certain time, you can have a bad year, but that doesn’t mean it won’t turn good again. It has a lot to do with expectations.

Inspirational

Ellen gives a very inspirational (and funny) commencement speech upon being awarded an honourary degree at Tulane University in New Orleans, her hometown.

Now that she's hugely successful with a talk show that is second only to Oprah's in popularity, it's easy to forget that just a few years ago, after the cancellation of her sitcom in 1998, she was largely forgotten. More than that, she was often the butt of jokes; being laughed "at", not "with". After celebrating her historic coming out, some of the gay community thought that she went too far by making her show too "gay". She made us feel uncomfortable. She became too "preachy".

In this address, Ellen refers to this time and the period that followed her show's cancellation when the phone went silent.

I think that whatever happens in her career, Ellen will always somehow manage to get the last laugh.

All the colours of the rainbow...

(from Pam's House Blend) 359 people from 48 countries take part in massive global web video project to mark the IDAHO 2009

05.17.2009 - A global project to create a public awareness video for the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHO) on May 17 has attracted the participation of 359 people from 48 countries across six continents around the world. The groundbreaking project is a joint undertaking of the Paris-based IDAHO Committee and the social network Gays.com, attracting 50,000 people to its website within a month.

In April, members of the global LGBT community were invited to step out in front of the camera and in their own language introduce themselves, state where they are from and how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The result is a video that sends the powerful message that LGBT individuals are present in every country, every society and every corner of the world. Participants submitted videos in all of the world's key languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil and even American Sign Language.

When so many places in the world have laws against homosexuality and even in some cases deny it's existence within their borders, this campaign and video manages to portray in a very simple and positive way that "I'm proud to be gay."