The One Thing All LGBT Activists Agree On

How do I begin to even describe Lillian Faderman’s The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle? By saying it’s a book that nearly every reviewer and activist has described as the most well-written and researched, epic historical book about the LGBT movement? First of all, I want to confess: I am in this book. So is my wife. But were we not in this book, I would still regard it as the greatest literary achievement chronicling our struggle for equal rights, human rights, liberation, and finally, civil rights.

Most of us know —and if you don’t, you should, so Google — who Lillian Faderman is. She is a Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book award-winning author, scholar, and retired college professor. (She is also married to Phyllis Irwin, and they are mothers and grandmothers).

Faderman covers everything from the early witch hunts of homosexuals and the first attempts to fight back, to Stonewall to Anita Bryant to “don’t ask, don’t tell” to the marriage equality movement. But what makes Faderman’s book so compelling is that she did over 150 interviews, not just of the famous activists, but everyday LGBT people harmed by the hatred against us. She depicts the rise and fall of the early gay rights groups, compelling stories that have not been told very much but deserve to be. 

She gets it right about Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings, two people rightfully described as what they called each other: the mother and father of the gay rights movement. The book is a page-turner, very difficult to put down. But I am just one activist saying that this is a brilliant must read book. Why believe just me? So here are some quotes about The Gay Revolution:

“The Gay Revolution fills a yawning gap in history literature, providing readers for the first time with a history of the entire LGBT civil rights movement, from its inception in 1950 up through the current day. Anyone who reads Faderman’s passionate narrative will recognize it as a story that ennobles the human spirit and upholds the democratic ideals at the heart of this country’s founding documents.” — David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution

“The Gay Revolution docments the momentous effort to decriminalize homosexuality and humanize homosexuals.” — Col. (ret.) Margarethe Cammermeyer, highest-ranking officer to challenge the military’s antigay policy

“Lillian Faderman has delivered the comprehensive account of one of the most extraordinary social movements in modern history. As gay people approach equality under the law, Faderman charts the course that brought such remarkable changes so swiftly. It is a dynamic book that matches the power of the movement it describes.” — Cleve Jones, founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

“The Gay Revolution is the definitive history of the gay rights movement in America. This book will play with your emotions as Lillian Faderman takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of the victories and sacrifices made by the LGBT community and its allies to arrive at this point in time. This is the story of civil rights for the 21st century!” — Rev. Troy D Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches

“The Gay Revolution will be the standard by which all subsequent histories are measured. The fact that it is written in clear English is in itself a cause for celebration.” — Rita Mae Brown, author (Rubyfruit Jungle) and lesbian activist

I have left out glowing remarks by Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson and other fantastic reviews. What is so astounding about all of the reviews is — and I will let you in on an open secret — is that many activists (dare I say most) have fought with each other over the decades.

So what finally brought so many of us to agree on one thing? It was Lillian Faderman’s book. The Gay Revolution should be taught in every civil rights class in every high school and on every campus. And everyone, all of you, should buy it and read it. I won’t ask you to do it for us, the old ones who gave so much for so many decades (although I want to ask, but I don’t need to guilt you). I will ask you to do it because this is the most honest, compelling history of our movement, and if you participated, you will love remembering, and if you did not, it will inspire you to passionately rise up and get involved.

ROBIN TYLER (left) is a longtime Los Angeles-based LGBT activist, and with her wife, Diane Olson, was one of the original plaintiffs to sue for the freedom to marry in California. 

Robin Tyler

www.advocate.com/books/2015/9/11/one-thing-all-lgbt-activists-agree

Liam Payne slams Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson gay rumors: ‘It’s like a conspiracy or a cult’

One Direction’s Liam Payne has spoken out about the longstanding rumor that his band mates

Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are gay lovers – saying it drives him ‘insane’.

In a new interview with Attitude magazine, the Drag Me Down Singer says: ‘When the law changed in the US, there were loads of rainbow flags flying at our shows, but I think that was mainly because people think of the Louis and Harry thing, which is absolutely nuts and drives me insane.’

A romance between Harry and Louis – or ‘Larry’ as followers call them – is frequently featured in fan-made slash fiction on the band.

He continued: ‘It becomes like a conspiracy or a cult, the people that watch them and think that every move they make is a gesture toward them being together, and I know it’s not true and it makes me mad.’

The star also spoke out on the fans posting sexually explicit drawings of the band, saying: ‘I remember one time I was sitting next to my dad and I see this picture of me on top of Niall [Horan], which is intimidating. It’s just really weird to have people drawing these sexually-explicit pictures of us in strange situations.’

Discussing the young age of 1D fans, Liam said: ‘I don’t think it’s the right hobby for these girls to be enjoying. I find it very strange that someone so young can think of these stories or even imagine these things going on. That, for me, is the sad and sorry side of what we have done.’

After some fans took issue with the Drag me Down singer’s comments on Twitter, the star hit back: ‘It’s funny, I thought people appreciated honest they days.’

It’s funny I thought people appreciated honesty these days

— Liam (@Real_Liam_Payne) September 10, 2015

Can see people saying I’m playing ‘the victim’ I don’t feel even 1% a victim at all I had a wonderful time doing the shoot …

— Liam (@Real_Liam_Payne) September 10, 2015

And am blessed with the best job in the world massive thank you to @AttitudeMag for having me along and for everyone who enjoyed reading

— Liam (@Real_Liam_Payne) September 10, 2015

The post Liam Payne slams Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson gay rumors: ‘It’s like a conspiracy or a cult’ appeared first on Gay Star News.

Jamie Tabberer

www.gaystarnews.com/article/liam-payne-slams-harry-styles-and-louis-tomlinson-gay-rumors-its-like-a-conspiracy-or-a-cult/

Someone Is Distributing Antigay Fliers Around Queens Neighborhood

Antigay fliers were being distributed throughout a Queens neighborhood, tucked into car windows near 82nd Street and 34th Avenue and even pushed under apartment doors in various buildings throughout the area, the Jackson Heights Post reports.

Written in English and Spanish, these fliers quote Romans 1:18-32, which reads in part:

“Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error… deserve to die.”

Though an investigation is ongoing, councilman Daniel Dromm points out there’s not too much that can be done legally; the biggest offense the flier distributors could face is a littering ticket. Still, he encourages residents to speak up if they see this happening.

“We have to teach that love is a good thing,” he said. “We have to eradicate this hatred against gay people.”

H/t: LGBTQ Nation

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/bEaH75C2bCI/someone-is-distributing-antigay-fliers-around-brooklyn-neighborhood-20150910

Watch: Trans woman denied driver’s license in Louisiana for not looking male

A video of a transgender woman being denied a driver’s license for not looking like a man has forced Louisiana to change its policy towards transgender people.

Alexandra Glover, 21, was turned away from the Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) in Baton Rouge when she went in to replace a lost ID card wearing a dress and makeup.

The exchange was filmed by her friend and at the time of writing had more than 30,000 views on Facebook.

Glover, who was upfront about being transgender, was told she had to remove her makeup before she could take an ID picture.

‘You can’t present as a woman if you’re listed as a man,’ an employee says in the video.

‘If you have makeup on or anything like that you’re supposed to take all that off, because you are actually a man.’

Glover points out that if she was pulled over for speeding, she could be arrested because she would not look like the person in her ID picture.

‘This is such discrimination,’ she says.

‘If a goth guy came in with all his black lipstick and makeup, you wouldn’t tell him to take it off.’

Louisiana OMV Commissioner Stephen Campbell initially defended the decision, citing a 1986 state law that bans applicants who ‘misrepresent’ their gender.

But he has since changed his stance and said a new transgender rule would be formulated ‘in the next 24 hours.’

‘It has brought to light that we may not be up-to-date, and we are in the process as we speak – and I mean it, right now – revising our policy,’ he said.

‘And we will contact the individual who feels that he was wronged and will attempt to make it right.’

Watch the video below:

The post Watch: Trans woman denied driver’s license in Louisiana for not looking male appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/watch-trans-woman-denied-drivers-license-in-louisiana-for-not-looking-male/

The Personal in the Political
With marriage equality back in the news — thanks to Kim Davis confusing her theology with our democracy and now Mike Huckabee jumping out of the clown car and onto the bandwagon — I just want to “put out there” (again) that for all the hype, drama and analysis sparked by the political dimension of this controversy there is also a personal/pastoral dimension that is easy to overlook.

It is what comes up for folks
who have their internalized homophobia triggered
by the “old tapes” of messages they’re hearing again:

Messages that they’re not good enough
— not worthy enough
— not deserving enough
— to be treated equally.
Only they’re not hearing
those tapes in their heads
— they’re hearing them
on the radio or the television
at courthouse rallies
and from presidential candidates.

It is what happens
when children see families like theirs
being talked about in “the news”
with question marks
about whether they’re “real” families –
whether they deserve
the same protection the family next door has.

And it is the ongoing indignity
of having our deepest, holiest,
most precious loves and relationships
debated and dissected
in the public arena
as if it was OK
as if it wasn’t dehumanizing
and as if it’s not profoundly personal.

So if you find yourself hurting, angry,
anxious, scared or snarky
reach out and let someone you love
remind you that you’re loved
and that no matter what
we’re going to get through this.

And if you know someone
who may not reach out
find them where they are
and remind them that they’re loved
and that justice WILL roll down like waters
and the arc of history WILL bend toward equality
and in the end all will be well
and all will be well
and all manner of things shall indeed be well.

And if all things are not yet well
then it’s not the end. Yet.
La lucha continua. The struggle continues!

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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FRC’s Pat Fagan: Let’s start calling gay marriage ‘garriage’

The Family Research Council’s Pat Fagan has suggested equality opponents start referring to gay marriage as ‘garriage.’

Fagan, director of FRC’s Marriage and Religious Research Institute, made the proposal at a book presentation at the anti-gay group’s office on Wednesday (10 September), Right Wing Watch first reported.

The Ireland-native said ‘language was key’ to preserving traditional marriage and the Supreme Court had no right to redefine it.

He then came up with three new words to redefine gay marriage:

‘A proposal, something along this line, that we in the pro-family movement start using related terms, but keep “marriage” for what it always was,’ he said.

‘So we might call – and this is to be worked out – but something like, if you’re talking about gay marriage you call it “garriage.” If it’s lesbian, you call it “larriage.” If you want a generic homosexual marriage, it’s “harriage.”

‘But getting these words into use I think is key. And that will take time, but whomever holds the language ultimately holds the whole game.’

Watch his Fagan’s full speech below:

The post FRC’s Pat Fagan: Let’s start calling gay marriage ‘garriage’ appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/frcs-pat-fagan-lets-start-calling-gay-marriage-garriage/

Escorts Unite in Defense of Rentboy

Six male escorts known in the industry as Silas X, the Legendary Dave, Master Avery, Danny Cruz, Steven Kessler, and Simply Adam have united in support of Rentboy.com, the all-male escorting site that was shut down last month after the Department of Homeland Security raided its Manhattan offices. Seven employees were arrested under charges of promoting illegal prostitution. 

The site billed itself as “the world’s destination to meet the perfect male escort or masseur,” and boasted a database of more than 10,500 men in 2,100 cities worldwide.

Many LGBT organizations have come out in support of Rentboy, including Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center, saying that the site was a safe option for sex workers. Now the supporters also include the six escorts, who are urging erotic service providers, clients, and others involved in the adult industry to support the arrested employees by donating to an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. 

“The money raised from this fund will be equally split amongst the seven Rentboy.com staff charged, and will be used at each individual’s discretion,” says the campaign page. “This includes use for primary legal funds, rent, food and other resources.”

The company’s CEO, Jeffrey Hurant, is among the seven people arrested. One of the escorts promoting the campaign, Danny Cruz, organized a protest in West Hollywood last Saturday at which he relayed to The Advocate something Hurant once told him: “These guys you work around in the escort industry, they’re not your competition, they’re your colleagues. You should know that, you should reach out to them, you should keep each other safe.” 

Alexander Cheves

www.advocate.com/love-and-sex/2015/9/10/escorts-unite-defense-rentboy

We Now Have Bigger Things to Fight Than Kim Davis
In the heat of our nationwide marriage equality victory, can LGBT and allied Americans resist a hate group’s bait?

The movement to preserve discrimination against gay and lesbian couples in the matter of legal marriage has met its irreversible failure. As the new nationwide reality of marriage equality unfolds, Liberty Counsel — a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group connected to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University — has found a figure to serve as Ultimate Victim and also as bait for the LGBT-and-allied community.

Kentucky’s Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis defied the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Judge David L. Bunning by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. As a government employee, she violated her oath to serve all the public, and for those repeated violations, she predictably spent five days in jail. Were she truly unable to perform her duties because her of religious beliefs, resigning would have been the principled response.

Davis emerged from Liberty Counsel’s likely nationwide search for someone to label a “prisoner of conscience.”

I can guess some of their search criteria — can you?

1. Female. A more sympathetic Victim, especially before a male judge. Also less like to assert herself with Liberty lawyers or to see herself as being used.

2. Rural. Smaller than Caribou, Maine, Davis’s home town of Morehead, Kentucky sits in the Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains. Its historical highlight was reportedly an 1880’s “war” that was a classic family feud.

3. Educational status as a power differential with her attorneys. Where are the references to Kim Davis’s education?

4. Fundamentalist Christian, the stricter the sect, the better. Plain appearance, well-covered.

5. Troubled marriage history (that’ll drive opponents wild) and recent born-again status (four years — nothing like a recent convert).

6. Plenty of shame in background. This makes her more eager for redemption and therefore firmer in defying the law and serving as Liberty’s tool. Also invites opponents to be mean as hell and to have a field day with her — all at Liberty Counsel’s behest.

7. Inexperienced on the national stage. Kim Davis’s mother held this county clerk job for 37 years, and the daughter assisted for 27 years before getting elected herself. Then the daughter hired her own son to work in the office to set up the third generation. Nepotism is completely legal where Ms. Davis lives. Does this say something about how insular and ingrown her world is?

8. Nearly impossible to fire. Liberty Counsel wants the longest possible run for this Victim. The longer the media firestorm, the more lucrative their fundraising bonanza. The meaner the attacks from LGBT and allied people, the more Liberty can crow about how evil LGBT and allied people are. Every nasty meme means more sympathetic donations for Liberty.

Because Davis is an elected official accountable to voters, she can’t be fired from her job. The Kentucky Legislative Research Commission says Davis would have to be removed by the legislature. The Kentucky Constitution requires impeachment by the state’s House of Representatives and trial by the state’s Senate. The legislature is not in session until next year, and this process would take months even if there WERE the political will to remove her, which there is not.

So she won’t disappear — perfectly serving Liberty’s long-term purpose.

I am not interested in demonizing such a person as Kim Davis, but even if I were, I would not want to play into Liberty Counsel’s hateful, manipulative hands.

Simply in humanitarian terms, consider the rest of this woman’s life after such extended public pillorying. Her life as she knew it is likely over. Her safety — and that of her loved ones — will always be a worry. From total obscurity in her sleepy little mountain town, she has become a household name on a polarizing topic, her face everywhere on the Internet.

Liberty Counsel will keep her visible as a target just as long as they possibly can. Do we think she has any idea what Monica-Lewinsky-scale Internet harassment is really like?

LGBT and allied people have a clue about the long-term psychological effects of such harassment. How will her psyche hold together? How will this affect the people she loves most?

Kim Davis is a perfect pick by Liberty Counsel for their own gain. Doubtless her ultimate fate is little concern of theirs. Despite the harm she has knowingly done to a few gay and lesbian couples, there is no way that her endless public punishment will be commensurate to that harm.

Meanwhile, Liberty Counsel lawyers are men of wealth and privilege. Lead attorney Mathew D. Staver lives in a 1.2 million-dollar Florida home, and others likely in affluent gated communities from which they can beat an easy retreat to their comfy second homes, pools and boats. They face no such risks as Kim Davis does.

We LGBT and allied Americans have won the struggle for marriage equality in law. Our hard-fought victory raises questions about who we have become through the pain of our struggle, who we will be now as more equal Americans, and what we will contribute to a more perfect Union.

In the matter of Kim Davis, we now have the law on our side. We also face critical unfinished work to achieve a comprehensive federal law protecting us from discrimination in employment, housing, credit, public education, public accommodations, jury service, and access to federal programs. Why allow our attention to be distracted?

Let’s leave Ms. Davis in the law’s hands and not demean our own souls by taking Liberty’s bait. Let’s just Leave. Her. Alone.

Instead, let’s choose to live inside the joy of what we have won through our sacrifice, love and relentless courage. Let’s be proud of what we have contributed to the growing realization of our country’s ideals. Let’s rejoice in the new world we have made for and with our LGBT young, whose personal stories now hold so much more hope and promise.

That is the real victory, and there’s no going back.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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James Franco on being the target of gay jokes

It was two years ago that James Franco agreed to face a comedic firing squad on a Comedy Central Roast.

He went in expecting it to be a tough room but he did not expect to leave feeling gay bashed.

Among the jokes:

‘I don’t think James Franco is necessarily gay or straight. I think he literally can’t open his eyes enough to see who he’s fucking,’ said Sarah Silverman.

Host Seth Rogen asked: ‘Who is the real James Franco? Is he an artist? Is he an actor? Is he a scholar? He’s tough to pin down; although I’ve heard many guys have been able to do it.’

In an interview with The Independent, Franco calls out as homophobic some of the jokes that night as well as some of the comedy in the films in which he’s appeared.

‘I was a little shocked, I didn’t write those jokes [at the roast], they did. I didn’t make any gay jokes. There is still a little bit of homophobia. I think part of it, when I do films with Seth, it’s more playing on straight male anxiety about any sort of same-sex interaction.

‘To me that is really a comment on a larger anxiety and not really anything about denigrating or criticizing anything about the gay community.’

Franco has not let jokes discourage him from tackling gay-themed projects.

He produced and starred in I Am Michael this year opposite Zachary Quinto. Franco played the lead role of gay activist Michael Glatze who went from editing a gay lifestyle magazine to denouncing homosexuality.

He has also played gay roles in Howl, Milk and The Broken Tower and directed Interior. Leather Bar. which reimagined 40 minutes of bondage footage cut from the film Cruising more than 30 years earlier.

The post James Franco on being the target of gay jokes appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/james-franco-on-being-the-target-of-gay-jokes/

Sifting Through the Stonewall Morass

As we put this issue to bed, the trailer for Stonewall was released, and comments and headlines flew around the Web accusing director Roland Emmerich of whitewashing and trans erasure. None of the detractors, at this stage, had seen the film. The film might be great and all-inclusive and true. Or it might not. But at that moment, all of us who decried the content of the film were literally, by definition, prejudiced. We were raving on about a one-minute-long marketing tool, and a marketing tool bedeviling to filmmakers who don’t make them.

Soon enough we’ll know more about what’s actually in the film. In the meantime, the uproar is instructive. Here we have the confluence of two conditions that primed us for protest: the legendary importance of the riots, and the mechanisms of hair-trigger social-media-fueled outrage.

It was especially bad timing that the Stonewall trailer came out the very day that USC’s Annenberg School put out a study that delineated the overwhelming predominance of white, straight men in film roles. With hashtags, pitchforks, and boycott petitions at the ready, we leapt in. We’re all now primed to lash out at injustice, inspired at least in part by the very anger that led to the Stonewall riots. Such anger can be very useful if properly deployed, but as I write this, none of us can say with certainty if the “how dare you, Roland Emmerich?” comments are a warranted or good or useful deployment of anger.

In David Carter’s book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (just one of many accounts, some conflicting), he describes the atmosphere that night. The patrons of the bar had been put through a series of recent raids, and they were at a breaking point when the police raided just after 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969.

Drag queens had been subject to humiliation in repeated raids, ushered over to policewomen for “examination” until they were forced to acknowledge, “All right, honey, I’m a man.” That night, they were not complying with orders to congregate in the bathroom. One drag queen hit a cop with her purse when being led outside, and she was beaten with a baton. A tall, butch lesbian resisted police and fought with cops for several minutes; as she was forced into a police car, she cried out for help from the already-evicted gay men gathered outside. Her pleas were the flashpoint for rioting.

Actual photos of the nights of rioting are scarce. (One of the few images shows homeless “street kids” who slept in Christopher Park nearby, and who found a refuge at the Stonewall Inn, being pushed back by police.) And testimonials vary: Who, among the queer people living in New York then, wouldn’t want to claim they’d been there that very night?

But so many of us were represented there those nights: gay men, lesbians, gender non-conforming people, black, Latino, white, the well-heeled, the homeless. We can all be proud of the Stonewall riots. And in the 47 swirling, heady years since then, Stonewall has become the mythic, Arthurian stone from which each of our communities is pulling a sword — proof of our claim to a heritage that includes that transformative night. But there is room for all of us to claim it.

No single movie nor any one book can completely tell the story of the riots. But by preemptively decrying a movie without a firm basis for doing so, do we risk an outcome in which fewer — not more — movies about LGBT history are made? I know that’s not the primary issue here. We will speak our truths, and the consequences will flow.

But if Stonewall sucks, let’s make another, and another. Whose permission do we need?

Matthew Breen

www.advocate.com/current-issue/2015/9/10/sifting-through-stonewall-morass