Carl Matthes: UGLA members, in addition to being long-term members and officers of NEDC, have been part of the successful visibility and national coming-out campaign the LGBT community instituted since the early ‘80s.
Historic Roots of Homophobia in Black America
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David Love: Another reason for the rift between blacks and the LGBT community has been the historic lack of synergy and inclusion regarding blacks and the gay rights movement.
Gay Pride
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Kivi Neimi: I have heard and seen many gays who want to limit who may participate in gay pride marches – especially eliminating the drag queens and leather queers who started the Pride parades when many “mainstream gay” individuals were too closeted to attend a parade.
Pride Celebrations? Haven’t We Assimilated?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: Cultural acceptance is just one of a few things LGBTQ communities of color still do not experience from larger Pride events, instead at times experiencing social exclusion and invisibility.
Arizona, Lady Gaga, and the LGBTQ.munity
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Matthew Kavanagh: For queer folks threats of being locked up by the sheriff for not having an ID card carry special dangers. For LGBTQ people whose relationships cross borders for which they may not have the right paperwork, immigration is a gay rights issue.
LA Progressive: January 24 to 30, 2010
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LA Progressive: January 24 to 30, 2010 — This week’s articles.
Will Faith-Based Agencies Help Haiti’s Gay Community?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: It is my hope that the many conservative faith-based groups and organizations that are now part of Haiti’s earthquake relief effort will not discriminate against Haiti’s LGBTQ community as many of them did toward New Orleans’s queer communities during Katrina.
Let Obama be Obama
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President Obama was the one that was most in tuned to both the welfare of the Gay citizenry and the liberal views I hold near and dear. I campaigned for him, he won, and now it seems my role, and that of all his supporters is to support him.
LA Progressive: July 5 to July 11, 2009
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Large Immigrant Populations Keep Cities Safe, Just Ask El Paso, Texas. Many Americans believe that immigrants are associated with high levels of crime. According to criminologist Jack Levin, El Paso is safe because of its immigrant population. –Michele Waslin Broken Immigration System Breaks Up a Jamerican Family. In the end, 200,000 non-citizens are deported every [...]
No Nonsense Census
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There’s been another informed and intelligent decision by the Obama administration. In August 2008, in an LA Progressive article entitled “Census Nonsense,” which decried the Bush administration’s move to exclude legally married same-sex couples from being counted as married couples during upcoming the 2010 census, I wrote, “…to capsulize the situation, as it stands now, [...]
Equality: Obama vs Truman
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July 26, 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman signing Executive Order #9981 ending racial segregation of the United States military. 2009 also marks the 16th anniversary of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law passed by Congress mandating the discharge of openly gay, lesbian or bisexual military servicemembers. According to Servicemembers Legal [...]
Civil Rats Are Human Rats!
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I watched the movie Gettysburg again the other day. It is one of my favorites because the producer was a Mexican American and it is about the real reasons why democracy exists. In the movie, there is a scene where a New Hampshire officer is talking to two rebel soldiers. He asks them why they [...]
Gay Pride Speaks to Equality
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In the Oxford English Dictionary “equality” means, “Identical in amount; neither less nor greater…having the same measure, number, value, intensity.” How did three Democratic presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Lyndon Johnson, speak to equality? President Barack Obama on Monday, June 1, named June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month” issuing a proclamation: [...]
Obama Not Marching with Black Pride
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June is Pride Month. And Black Pride contributes to the multicultural aspect of joy and celebration in the queer communities. Black Pride symbolizes not only black LGBTQ uniqueness as individuals and communities, but it also affirms our varied expressions of LGBTQ life in America. This year will be our first Black Pride parade with an [...]
A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community: Chapter 9: Take a Chill Pill
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THE PROBLEM: Strong feelings of entitlement, refusal to work with others, racism, extreme issues with class, sudden temper tantrums THE PRESCRIPTION: Take as needed one chill pill with a large glass of reality… The gay community needs to take a chill pill…seriously. Protesting President Barack Obama outside of the Beverly Hilton Hotel during a fundraiser [...]
Lieutenant Dan Choi Takes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Directly To Obama
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Wednesday evening, in an act of daring befitting a West Point graduate and veteran of Iraq, recently discharged New York National Guard Lieutenant Daniel Choi defied the orders of dozens of crowd control police and stepped into the ‘no protest zone’ street to ceremoniously salute his Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, out of site at [...]
Marriage Equality, Beyond the Lying
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My first essay for the L.A. Progressive was about Proposition 8 and the lies that self proclaimed Christian activists were telling in order to promote their bigotry. It seems almost ridiculous to catalog the number of violations of the Commandment against bearing false witness that these “Christians” embraced in order to sell their ballot measure. [...]
Proposition Hate Redux
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The California Supreme Court ruled again on same-sex marriage. This time it did to uphold Proposition 8, restricting marriage to one man and one woman. In a 6-to-1 decision, the justices decided that Proposition 8 would remain part of the state constitution. And the 18,000 same- sex couples that ran to the altar to legally [...]
Who Celebrates Our Queer Servicemembers on Memorial Day?
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There will be parades all across the country this Memorial Day commemorating our U.S. servicemembers who died while in the military. But not all of our servicemembers will be honored for their acts of bravery and patriotism. Back in the day, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer servicemembers who served our country were either closeted [...]
Another Reason to Skip Wal-Mart
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The CEO of Wal-Mart, just like Mormons, can exercise his right to free speech and expression however he sees fit. I too have that right — and will exercise it by refusing to give the company that pays him my business and by saying so. Why? Well, I have many reasons for not shopping there, [...]
When Queer Communities of Color Are Not Needed to Win Marriage Rights
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With Iowa being the fourth state to approve marriage equality, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans’ optimism is high, believing many more states will follow suit. “We’re hoping this momentum is contagious,” Daniel Richards of Rhode Island told me. And should Rhode Island soon approve of same-sex marriage, it would be the fourth New [...]
Amazon Steps In It Big Time, Can’t Get The Sh*t Off Its Shoes
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For years, Amazon.com has been a flawless on-line marketer. It has an easy-to-navigate website, the search function is intuitive and fast, products are almost always in stock, lower price alternatives are displayed, targeted recommendations for additional purchases show up when customers buy a book, shipping is reliable and problems get resolved quickly. As a result, [...]
Equality Advances? Attack the Gays!
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Be warned: Those new National Organization for Marriage anti-GLBT “actor auditions” videos posted are gone. NOM noticed that its evil ruse had been exposed and demanded that YouTube take them down. Even a clip of a recent MSNBC Rachel Maddow clip that included the audition tapes is gone. NOM’s reason: copyright infringment. YouTube has to [...]
U.S. Military Needs a Radical Homosexual
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Is he the U.S. military’s worst nightmare? Imagine, a radical homosexual with his hands on the military’s purse strings. It’s hard to believe that after 15 years of repressive, misguided military policy (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”), which stigmatized and prevented gay men and lesbians from serving honestly and openly in our country’s Armed Forces, the [...]
Court Should Strike Down Proposition 8
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The California Supreme Court finds itself center stage this Thursday when it will hear oral arguments on whether it should uphold Proposition 8′s ban on same-sex marriage. The case touches the heart of our democracy and poses a profound question: can a bare majority of voters strip away an inalienable right through the initiative process? [...]
Prop 8: 18,000 Same-Sex Marriages Hang in Balance at California Supreme Court Hearing
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Within the next week, the California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments to help determine the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November 2008 election ballot constitutional amendment that removed the right of same-sex couples to legally marry in California. The Court will convene in San Francisco on March 5, at 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. [...]
The Election of Barack Obama and the Politics of Interracial and Same-Sex Marriage
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The election (and now the inauguration) of Barack Obama has inspired a widespread sense of awe at the scope and scale of change in race relations in America—and more than a hint of self-congratulation. The news media just can’t seem to resist trumpeting the example of interracial marriage. When Barack Obama’s white mother married his [...]
Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
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For those of you worried about militant radical homosexuals, you can rest easy because Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, a “newly reorganized national organization devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda,” is out to protect you. AFTAH seeks a “single-minded determination” to oppose “the radical homosexual agenda (while) standing for God-ordained sexuality [...]
Marriage – Gay Grassroots Style
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I had conversations with four recently married same-sex couples during the first week of January. There were two lesbian couples, one from the Sacramento area (Davis) and the other from West Hollywood. The two gay couples were from the Bay Area and Orange County. Along with my spouse, we represented five of the over 18,000 [...]
Bigotry Still Rules
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In the summer of 2006 I attended the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard. One of the guest presenters was 95-year-old Johnnie Carr, the woman who took over the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1956 after the successful Montgomery bus boycott when Martin Luther King, Jr. went [...]
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