Sochi's missing ring

So, everyone probably knows that the Olympics have started, happening this year in the Russian city of Sochi. Probably even folks who are completely indifferent to such things know about this installment of the games, given that they were drenched in news coverage long before the opening ceremony. There are so many geo-political stories around these games and their location.

There’s the story of Vladimir Putin’s personal interest in the spectacle and the prestige that he hopes will hang off the next two weeks’ happenings. Then there’s the story of the regional chaos in this part of Russia, where civil war has raged on and off since the USSR came apart in the early 90s. And there’s the story of the threats of terrorist attacks by anti-Western militants and recent suicide bombings in several locations around Russia. Then there’s the story of the lavish sporting venues that will show up in the international media—and the unfinished, shoddily built hotels that won’t. And the usual stories of poor people displaced and exorbitant amounts spent in the midst of a new economic downturn in Russia. And then there’s the story that seems to have gotten the most coverage: the gay story.

In case you haven’t been following this story, during the run-up to the Olympics—although not explicitly linked to that event—Russia announced a multi-faceted anti-gay law ostensibly intended only to protect children from gay “propaganda.” Leaving aside for the moment the (patently false) implication that LGBTQ identity is in any way a threat to children, in truth, this law has had far wider consequences than that framing suggests. For instance, it not only prohibits adoption by LGBT people in Russia, it has also raised concerns that LGBTQ parents might lose their own children. The law has also resulted in arrests and harassment for peaceful demonstrations on behalf of gay rights, and anti-LGBTQ assaults have increased dramatically, some witnessed by police offers who stood by or even participated. It’s the worst memories and the worst fears of Western gays come to life in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

To return to Sochi, there has been a great international outcry over this law, and it has come to a focus around the Olympics. Some have urged a boycott of the Olympics. Many have worried that LGBTQ athletes and spectators—and their families and supporters—would risk their safety and perhaps their freedom by attending the Games. Progressive groups around the globe demonstrated their support for LGBTQ rights in ways great and small. In Berlin, for instance, on the first day of the Olympics, gay activists lit a “rainbow flame” that will burn throughout the Games in support of Russia's LGBTQ community. 

And in what seemed to me an excellent move, the Obama administration decided that no top-level administration official would be sent to the Olympics, as would usually be the case. Instead, Obama sent a delegation that included “out” gay athletes—a move so perfect that it even inspired one formerly closeted athlete/delegate to come out.

So, all of that is background to this tale:

During the opening ceremony Friday night, a huge lighted display of the five intertwined Olympic rings failed to come off as planned, leaving one ring unlit. Here’s a picture of the actual scene at Sochi Friday night.

  

This instantly struck me as perfectly fitting. The Olympic rings are supposed to symbolize community, union, the coming together of the five continents (I know; there are seven continents) in the name of sport. So the failure of one of the rings to “participate” in that union just seemed to me quintessentially right: for so many reasons, this Olympics is characterized by divisiveness and exclusion rather than unity—the repression of dissidents, the militaristic rule over peoples seeking independence, the hostile, even violent exclusion of LGBTQ folks.  

  

So, this morning, I turned on my computer and saw this: 

The “glitch” had already become a t-shirt. Now, some part of the creation of this t-shirt may have been crass nationalism—let’s make fun of another country’s mistakes because we’re so cool. But I was struck by something else: the perfect symbolism of this otherwise inconsequential mistake. The missing ring that would have made the symbol whole.

Russian television, which, in another missing-ring move, is essentially state-run, didn’t show the glitch. So Russians didn’t know about the mistake—instead, they saw rehearsal footage with all five rings intact and intertwined. The Russian government was not interested in general in having anything but a perfect show for the Olympics. To be certain that everyone was kept in line, across the land, a bunch of gay rights protesters, regionalists demonstrating against a history of genocide in Sochi, and everyday political protesters were arrested even as the Olympics were getting underway. 

Part of what has fascinated me about this whole story, though, is precisely the prominence that the gay story has achieved, given the many stories that have been floating around. The mainstream media have featured countless stories about this topic. One of the most interesting discussions I encountered was a New York Times article about Russia’s “culture wars.” This piece couches the whole gay issue (and other current actions as well) in terms of Russia’s retreat to an imagined glorious past—a sort of extreme form of our own conservative movement. Framed in this way, the anti-LGBTQ law and many other events in Russia today actually make sense—an awful sort of sense, but sense. It also explains why the Russians appear to have been so open to the anti-gay propaganda of certain American activists—folks who have largely lost their impact in this country (although they had plenty in their day.)

Even commercial interests got involved. Several sponsors of the US Olympics Committee—beginning with AT&T and then expanding to Chobani (Greek yogurt) and DeVrey University (home to many Olympians)—issued statements condemning Russia’s anti-gay law. Perhaps most striking, Chevrolet aired two ads during the opening ceremonies that included gay couples (you can watch them here—be sure to listen to the really nice narrative that goes with the pictures).

The media participation hasn’t been confined to mainstream media. Many of you likely saw Google’s “doodle” at the beginning of the Olympics. It looked like this:

It’s about the Olympics, sure. But the color-coding isn’t coincidental: red–orange–yellow–green–blue–purple … precisely the color scheme of the LGBTQ rainbow flag.

And taking it another step, in the words of another New York Times writer, social media have “served as a prism” for this issue, reflecting and refracting the Sochi-gay connection in a variety of ways.

  

For instance, a British company that encourages innovation through social media invited folks to create an ad that could be used by Olympics sponsors in support of equal rights for LGBTQ people. Here’s my favorite: 

And maybe best of all, the official United Nations Twitter account shared a quotation from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was pictured wearing rainbow-fingered gloves (which some sources insist are not a statement about LGBTQ rights).

“Many professional athletes, gay and straight, are speaking out against prejudice. We must all raise our voices against attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people,” Ban said in a statement to the Olympic Organizing Committee. “We must oppose the arrests, imprisonments and discriminatory restrictions they face.”

And as a final touch, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was pure coincidence when Attorney General Eric Holder selected the morning after the opening ceremony to announce further extensions of Federal rights to same-sex couples. Take that, Putin!

So what does all this mean in the larger scheme of things? For one thing, it seems to me yet another indication that the LGBTQ movement in Western countries is on a trajectory of amazing, rapid progress. This is not to say that there isn’t still much to be done, and it’s not to say that all is well for all of us. Our well-being still depends hugely on accidents of geography, family, income, race/ethnicity, family and faith community acceptance—on too many variables. But things are definitely looking up. In some strange and sudden way, we have largely ceased being pariahs and have become human beings—even likeable ones. That’s a nice feeling. On the other hand, I worry that we are serving as the current mascot minority, the downtrodden folks whom everyone loves to love—but in that role, we may also be serving as a distraction from the persistent oppression of other groups.  

There’s more to say about this, of course. I’ve said some of it before and will likely say more later on. For now, though, I just want to make note of fact that the awful anti-gay laws that bring us this clever t-shirt and colorful Google doodle today will still remain to haunt LGBTQ folks living in Russia when the Olympic spotlight fades.

I wonder… will the media still care? Will we?

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Changing the world (and missing a beat)

We just got back from the Creating Change conference in Houston. I’ve mentioned this conference before. It’s the annual gathering of LGBTQ activists sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (aka “The Task Force” or NGLTF). The Task Force is a genuinely progressive, grassroots national LGBTQ rights organization, and this conference is always correspondingly inspiring and uplifting. Weather-wise we were really lucky—we arrived in Houston just as they thawed out from the last freeze and left just before their next cold spell. “Cold” being a relative term—it was supposed to be in the mid-40s I think. We arrived to the bright white snow and icicles of Colorado’s own “cold” spell, all 10° of it.

            

But back to Houston … Creating Change is always a lively and energetic conference, in part because it brings together the single greatest concentration of LGBTQ youths I’ve ever experienced in one place. There are hordes of them moving around in little herds, crowding the lobby and the aisles, chatting in animated groups. They seem beside themselves with the sheer pleasure of being with scores of their queer peers at an event specifically dedicated to queer life and queer politics. It’s an environment where they can be totally, outrageously themselves—and that’s just what they do. Frankly, it makes me tired just watching them. I mean that in a good way.

Being immersed in all this youth presence is always one of my favorite parts of Change. It reminds me that there are plenty of folks behind us on the people mover, younger folks filling in the places as the old activists slow down and rotate off the end. Sure, the younger folks see the world differently. Sure, they won’t do the movement like we do/did—heck they’re already not doing it like we do/did. But that’s the point. They can do it differently because we did it at all. And they should do it differently because it’s not the same movement as it has been in the past. After all, the point is precisely Creating Change.

Here are two examples of that. First, the standard official welcome to the city was issued by Houston’s three-term lesbian mayor, Annise Parker, who campaigned from the start as an openly lesbian candidate. When I was these kids’ age, such a candidacy would have been unimaginable. But now, “out” politicians are almost commonplace—along with out news reporters, out sports figures, and out performers. A second hit of how the world has changed came in the form of the keynote speaker, Laverne Cox, the transwoman actor who plays a leading role as a transwoman prisoner in the currently fabulously popular Netflix series, “Orange is the New Black.” Both that role and an out transperson's playing it would have been unthinkable until recently, both because the very concept of transgender identity existed only in the most limited ways and because any portrayal of trans identity would likely have presented it as a disordered state. But now, with Laverne Cox as the most visible representative of perhaps the least represented of LGBTQ identities, LGBTQ roles and LGBTQ actors are common on screens large and small. The world is changing. And this particular corner of the world is changing really fast. So it’s both inevitable and right that these youths’ movement will be—already is—different from ours. Being at Change reminds me of that, every single year.

Many parts of the conference pointed to other sorts of changes in the movement. In a very heartening way, the movement seems to have matured enough that it (we) can begin to look beyond our own pain and our own needs. We can begin to participate in the broader agenda of progressive social change for a wide range of groups—an agenda of which the LGBTQ movement is a part, but only a part. Not all branches of the movement are doing this—at least not yet—but the folks at Change sure are. For instance, there’s growing emphasis in the program on issues like immigration, poverty, and reproductive rights. There’s more attention to sexism and racism inside as well as outside the movement, and more mention of the awful irony that LGBTQ people’s rights were expanded by the Supreme Court on the very day that the same Court rolled back the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action.

This shift strikes me as a rough parallel to individual development—similar to when individuals outgrow their adolescent preoccupation with themselves and their own individual lives and start to see the world through a broader perspective. Perhaps the LGBTQ movement is maturing beyond the more self-obsessed period of its own development. This conference meta-message left me encouraged by our collective movement forward and outward and reassured that the queer people mover is well populated with good-hearted and right-minded people of many ages.

But my sense of the conference is not without disappointment. In particular, I was sorry to witness—and to experience—in this apparent progressive oasis the same sorts of ageism I encounter elsewhere. I say it’s the same as elsewhere, but I actually wonder if this phenomenon at Change (and maybe in the queer movement more broadly) is aggravated by our focus on youth, which I find generally so laudable. The organizers of Change have clearly worked hard to welcome youth and to encourage their active involvement. This is excellent for so many reasons—queer youth have so few places where they can congregate en masse and feel genuinely “normal” instead of marginalized. Also, this movement is theirs, too—they will inherit the fruits of what happens now, so they should rightfully be involved in it. Besides, the extra emphasis is needed to overcome our long history of not including youth in LGBTQ activities or organizing—largely because of old myths and stereotypes (e.g., about adults “recruiting” or “initiating” youths) that made us fear we would be wrongly judged or that youth would be wrongly stigmatized. So it is wonderful that youth are so involved, so eagerly embraced, and so highlighted at the conference. Still, this intense focus may contribute to my sense that people who are not youth—especially those of us toward the other end of the age spectrum—are marginalized by the ageism that floats around in our culture, including in LGBTQ communities.

Whatever the source of this ageism, I was aware of it at Change. It showed up frequently in the clear sense that my comments were less noticed and less valued because of my age. In the failure of folks in elevators to greet me and banter with me in the way that they did with younger folks. In the scant programming around aging, most of which was about medical issues, the need for aging services, and similar topics that generally presented old LGBTQ lives as framed by nothing but decline, disability, and dependence. But it especially showed up, and glaringly, in the acceptance speech of a filmmaker who was given an award for “Gen Silent,” a movie about old queers—about “really old” LGBTQ people, he said, “like 60.” Throughout his talk, he referred to these LGBTQ elders as “they,” and he addressed the audience as the “we” who must take care of “them.” Now, if you’re young and don’t get why this feels bad, just imagine being talked about as if you weren’t present and as if your only role in others’ lives is as someone who needs their help. The fact that the “really old” age of 60 passed some of us by many years ago left me wondering about his assessment of our place in his world. However well intended, his comments felt invisibilizing, dismissive, and patronizing. I could almost feel the kindly pat on my graying head as he talked to others about me. And this from a man whose award was for a film about aging, a person whose perspective is presumably honored by the organizers.

Now, to be fair, this discomfort didn’t weigh heavy on me through most of the conference—it just cropped up occasionally and left me wincing. It’s not an awful problem. It’s just that the context of the generally clear intention to be inclusive at every possible level, I’d have hoped it wouldn’t happen here. I actually whimpered about this concern in my comments about Change last year, but I didn’t figure out a way to address it at this year’s conference. I would love to see something more positive, celebratory, and educational—not about elder care and dying, but about old LGBTQ folks’ engagement in the world and about our varied, complex lives. Creating Change will be in Denver next year. I would like by then to have identified some way to address this issue.

Meanwhile, one incidental but valuable outcome of the conference was a (slightly) more expansive view of Texas. It turns out that Houston actually has a very active LGBTQ community with numerous queer organizations and publications. A hint of their history was posted in the form of posters strung across a long wall of windows in the conference space (excuse the feeble picture—shooting directly into the Houston haze-covered sky):

Houston also has a creative/progressive bent that reminded me a bit of Boulder (OK, only a little bit), with a focus on environmental issues, community engagement, public art, etc. Just across from the hotel where we stayed is a community park called “Discovery Green,” where I walked around for a bit one day. The park, which is largely run by a non-profit, showcases public art (like the huge balloons suspended in trees shown below) and provides a whole bunch of free programming, including festivals, interactive art projects, music, yoga, recreational activities for kids, etc. During winter, a lot of the programming happens at the park’s ice rink. As you can see from the picture below, “ice” rink takes on a new meaning in Texas (check out the ice near the skater's feet). While we were there, they were having a weekend fund-raising fair complete with free music, food vendors, local artisans, face painting, and a swarm of people. As you can see, a few even went “ice” skating. 

Now, the strong LGBT community and the promise of sloppy ice and public art at Discovery Green weren’t sufficient to persuade me that Texas would be a great place to live. 

But they did remind me to notice what I might miss if I let my biases run the show.

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Alive

By afternoon, last Friday felt a bit like Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Just after a difficult mid-day encounter that left me pretty bummed, my partner called with some bad news. A friend had died that morning. Her death was not unexpected, but very sad nonetheless. Sad in its own right and sad as part of this recent drumbeat of deaths in my age cohort. The reality of mortality staring me in the face. The whole day felt heavy, and I just wanted it to be over so I could wake up and start again—hopefully on a less depleting trajectory.

But as my partner and I talked about this friend, we kept returning to how inspiring she was. She and her partner of many years had spent their professional careers working in settings where they didn’t feel like they could be out as lesbians. They had a large and very loving social circle, so they never felt isolated, but their identity as a lesbian couple was never shared in their workplaces. Then, when they both retired, they asked themselves the question so many of us ask: “What can we do now that we couldn’t do before we retired?” For many folks—maybe most folks—the answers are things like take more time for ourselves, travel, grandkids, gardening, golf, reading all those things I never got to read, maybe some volunteer work. But for this couple, the answer was different: “What can we do now? We can be out!” And they have been. As retirees, they became hyperactive in LGBTQ politics, lobbying at the statehouse, prodding their local Democratic caucus to get on board with LGBTQ issues, generally making themselves heard and seen in circles that had been very unused to seeing strong, smart, committed, vocal old lesbians. Straight from the closet into the streets! And because they made this choice, I’m certain that they’ve helped change the world for folks around them and for folks who will follow.

Thinking about the legacy this woman leaves behind, I recalled a recent Bruce Springsteen song that is my partner’s current absolutely favorite song . It’s called We Are Alive, and it narrates a story from the grave, as you can see from these excerpts (you can listen to it here). 

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart …

Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend
It’s only our bodies that betray us in the end …

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our souls and spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
We are alive

The message seems so perfect to honor our friend. Physically, she has left, but her spirit is still here, still inspiring the rest of us. As I thought about that song, another came to mind, this one by Sweet Honey In the Rock, called Breaths. Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder will be singing this in their spring concert, and a woman in the chorus sent it along to my partner after learning how much she loved Springsteen’s song. The message is so similar—but this time, in women’s voices. And fittingly, women whose music focuses unwaveringly on social justice, just as our friends’ work has done. You can listen to it here. Excerpts:

Those who have died have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass
They are in the moaning rocks
The dead are not under the earth…

They are in the woman’s breast
They are in the wailing child
They are with us in our homes
They are with us in this crowd
The dead have a pact with the living…

Thinking these songs reframed our friend’s death and reminded me how powerfully people’s presence, in some larger sense, remains after they pass.

And then, like gift from the universe, into this difficult day came an email from a dear, longtime (younger) friend announcing that she has achieved a marvelous pinnacle in her path toward work as an immigration attorney—she will be opening her own practice next week. I’ve watched her journey, often a very difficult one, that led eventually to a move to Grand Junction where she managed to get a job with a law firm—a job that met her needs but never matched her passion. She wanted to do immigration law—not a lucrative field, and not a direction this firm was especially interested in supporting. But she has a deep sense of social justice, and her commitment from the start was to find a way to use her skills on behalf of folks who had less opportunity than she, who were trapped in an unjust system. So she worked really hard, gradually earned the trust of the immigrant community around Grand Junction, and finally found a way to do the work she wants to do. When I read her email, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. This, I thought to myself, is amazing!

The next morning, these two stories came together for me: One friend just died and another just came fully into her own. As different as those stories seem, they have the same heart to them. Both of these women chose to be alive—really alive—to their choices and to the possibility of making a difference. It’s this that makes their time here so precious and so meaningful. There's a certain symmetry to the two stories. Endings coinciding with beginnings, intertwined somehow.

“We are alive!” The words could be sung in either of their voices. 

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May Day!

Yesterday was May 1, a celebratory day for a variety of reasons in many countries around the world. So, it should come as no particular surprise that yesterday was a certifiably remarkable day here as well. I’m not talking here about the international labor movement, Maypoles, or rituals of pagan origin (well, maybe that last one, sort of). I’m actually talking about an amazing day of celebrations signaling the stunning progress of LGBTQ rights.

First, as many of you know, yesterday was the day when civil unions became legal in Colorado. The event featured parties of all sorts around the state, with some—like Boulder’s—beginning Monday evening, well before the magical midnight moment and extending on into the bleary-eyed hours of May 1. Although my partner and I didn’t get “unionized” (or, as someone said, “civilized”), we went anyway to witness this momentous beginning, as did scores of other folks who weren’t entering into unions. Out Boulder, who coordinated the party, managed to turn a gaggle of people gathered into a functionally bland room into a joyful community festival—lots of cake decorated with rainbow flags, lots of munchies, lots of excited chatter, lots of roses, lots of dancing to tunes set up by a local DJ. And lots of people. Couples, of course, and also whole families, groups of friends, whole “wedding” parties who came to celebrate this moment in the lives of folks they love. All in this big, beige room in the county clerk’s office building.

I didn’t get to actually see anyone go through the interview and sign the document registering their relationship as “real” before the law. But a friend who did said it gave her goose bumps. I believe it. When same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, where we were living at the time, I blogged from the courthouse in Northampton and had the same experience. The officials performing these administrative formalities were anything but perfunctory as they welcomed each couple. In fact, they were so happy, so gentle and respectful toward the couples who came in that it brought tears to my eyes. That moment is hard to describe, the moment when you get to be present as relationships that have been largely invisible and totally discounted, sometimes for decades, are finally acknowledged as authentic in the eyes of the state.

After welcoming May 1 at this midnight gala, I then spent a piece of the afternoon at a middle school assembly—which, perhaps surprisingly (it was middle school, after all), continued the same theme. Here’s the story: A few years ago, the librarian at Manhattan Middle School decided she needed to be more active as an ally to LGBT folks—especially LGBTQ kids. So she devised some strategies to get LGBT-themed books to kids without their needing to check them out (and thereby reveal what might be seen as forbidden curiosity). Gradually, she also began to do other things—speaking gigs, working with Boulder Valley Safe Schools Coalition, and founding an allies club. That club, which started as a small group of kids, now has over 100 members.

For the past two years, the club has organized a diversity assembly focusing on LGBT issues. This year, the theme was taken from Gandhi: “Be the change.” The assembly included brief, one-sentence testimonials from several club members (“I’m an ally because …”), music from two local LGBTQ-affiliated choruses, and a rap performance by the allies club based on a video about Gandhi. The event wrapped up with lots of incredible food and chat time with the performers, some of the kids, some school personnel, and audience members, who included the superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District, several school board members and staff, and assorted community activists.

Afterward, driving home, I was thinking about the day and the pace of change it represented. I grew up before Stonewall—which is to say, before the contemporary LGBTQ-rights movement was even launched. I hid out for decades out of fear, some of it realistic and some goblin-generated. Then things began to change—slowly, it seemed, frustratingly slowly. Yet now, here I am, living in a world where same-sex couples are granted the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage and where middle school kids (that’s middle school kids!) take visible, active, and vociferous stands on behalf of LGBTQ rights. And they do it with the active support of allies who include librarians, teachers, and school superintendents. All within my adult lifetime. Not, it turns out, so slow at all. And I get to witness all of this, all on one lovely day in May.

Out Boulder’s ED said it so well in her comments at the civil unions celebration: There’s still a long way to go, a lot of work to be done. Much more than just full marriage rights. There’s work to be done on trans* issues, work on divisions within our own community, work on the lingering (and recently increasing) incidence of HIV/AIDS, work on poverty and poor health care, on bullying, on immigration rights and parenting rights, on lingering discrimination in employment and housing, on the high rates of smoking and alcohol abuse in our communities. There’s plenty left to do. But this May Day, it was time to dance with a DJ, rap with Gandhi, and eat cake with rainbow icing.

As I write this, I find myself regretting that I don’t have any pictures of these great events to share with you. So to make up for it, let me share some photos of yesterday’s other big event: our May Day snowstorm! 

Here's the view outside my bedroom window this morning

        

         

followed by scenes in my yard and bunny prints outside the coffee shop window .

      

         

                              

Snow in April—even tons of snow—was a bit unusual, but still tolerable. But May? Boulder got a foot of snow on Wednesday, obliterating the former 6-inch record for the date.

I figure it was Nature’s way of celebrating May Day and all the glorious joy it held.

For better or for worse

Marriage equality (aka “gay marriage,” “same-sex marriage”—ssm, for short) seems suddenly to be on the fast track toward nationwide acceptance. The speed of the shift seems really breathtaking. But I have to say, I find myself as much troubled as excited by its speed and magnitude. First, more on the trend and then on to the troubles …

This shift toward support for ssm has been in the wind for a while. I’ve mentioned before the growing sophistication of queer organizing around this issue—the smarter messaging, the sharing of resources and ideas across state organizations fighting for ssm (or against laws prohibiting ssm). We’ve also seen hints for a long time in the steady change in the polls. Gradually, over the past few years, public support for ssm has increased; now it’s over 50%.

The gradual trend took a major leap when President Obama “evolved” last year to a position of support for marriage equality. Lo and behold—partly because of his public support, but also because of the two other items I just mentioned—last November saw a sea change. For the very first time, after losing every single electoral battle over the years (more than 30 of them), ssm won in four states: it was approved in three, and a fourth state refused to pass a law banning it. First time ever! Times 4!

Also, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear two ssm cases. Whether that’s a good thing or not remains to be seen. If they rule against it—which could well happen, given the make-up of this court—that will set a precedent that could block serious progress for a long time. But still, the fact that the issue has moved to the fore enough that it’s on the Supremes’ docket is itself amazing.

And then this week, some combination of those events has brought unexpected supporters of same sex marriage out of the woodwork. First, a whole flock (100+ and counting) of noted Republican politicos have signed on to an amicus brief (an argument submitted as a “friend of the court,” or amicus curiae in Latin … who says it’s a dead language?) urging the Supremes to support same-sex marriage. Not to be outdone, today, representatives of a bunch of major corporations—Alcoa, Apple, Citigroup, Facebook, Google, Intel, Nike, REI, Starbuck’s, etc.—submitted their own amicus brief urging the court to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.

It’s astonishing: just one presidential election cycle ago, opposition to ssm was the political default, even for liberal folks like Obama. Now, a short 4 years later, the folks we usually think of as conservative obstructionists when it comes to progressive social issues are stumbling over each other to make the biggest, boldest statement in support of same-sex marriage. And these are important stumblings: some folks argue that these particular amicus briefs, coming from conservative politicians and staunch capitalists, may have real impact in swaying the court toward support for ssm. More impact than briefs submitted by the more natural allies of LGBT equality—human rights and social justice groups, professional fields like psychology and family services, etc.

On one level, this is wonderful, astoundingly good! Equal rights for LGBTQ people are not only being recognized by more and more people; they are being actively promoted by individuals and institutions long considered enemies to that very equality. But let’s not get so carried away by the exhilaration of being seen and supported that we fail to think about the implications of being seen and supported by folks of this particular political stripe. Now, I'm not the first person to have this concern—in fact, I just heard the African-American writer and activist Kenyon Farrow talk about very similar issues in a presentation at CU. But it struck me today in a whole new way as I saw these erstwhile opponents lining up on “our” side. 

To frame my point, I want to drift back a few decades to the feminist movement in the 1980s. I was teaching a course in the Psychology of Women, and one particular book sprung from nowhere to become the talk of the field. The book was based on what has been called “cultural feminism.” Briefly, this approach says that women and men are inherently different (a position that feminists had been arguing against). But turning the old devaluation of women on its head, cultural feminism argued that these differences are good. Women are actually superior to men, the approach suggests, in many ways that matter—empathy, social connection, a morality of caring, cooperative (vs. competitive) problem solving, etc. Remarkably, even folks who had previously opposed feminist aims loved this book, too. It promised the best of all worlds: you could claim a feminist position without alienating anyone.

Then, some feminists said, basically, “Wait a minute. What’s wrong with this picture? Feminism is a social change movement. If folks who support the status quo love what we’re doing, we must not be challenging much of anything at all.” As people began to analyze this cultural feminist position, the problem became clear. Cultural feminism was popular with supporters of the status quo because it reinforced long-standing stereotypes about women. Sure, it glorified those stereotypes, but as early feminist had argued, a gilded cage is still a cage. Cultural feminism allowed people who represented and wanted to protect the status quo to claim support for feminist aims while actually keeping women in their place.

You see the parallel here. Perhaps it’s time for us to say, basically, “Wait a minute. What’s wrong with this picture? The LGBTQ rights movement is a social change movement. If folks who support the status quo love what we’re doing, we must not be challenging much of anything at all.”

At minimum, we should be asking whether we cease to be a social change movement when our goal is to be assimilated to the status quo. Is same-sex marriage, like that Psych of Women textbook, so well received precisely because it doesn’t challenge the status quo? Because it buys into conservative principles, promising that queers who are brought into the institution of marriage won’t be causing any further trouble, making any more demands? Is “marriage equality” to become our gilded cage?

Now, I get how grand it feels to see Republicans and corporations arguing for our equal rights. That’s a refreshing change! But doesn’t it say something about how progressive the achievement of those rights will really be? Could their support be viewed, instead, as co-optation for now, a debt to be repaid in the future?

“Sure, let them in. That will make them more stable, like us. Make their families look like ours. Make them beholden to the same political and social forces that keep us in line. As long as they don’t do anything different with marriage, let them in. Give them this, and maybe they’ll forget about all those other pesky things they sometimes nag us about. Like immigration reform that honors LGBT families. Support for trans rights. Recognition of a range of diverse sorts of families. Support for homeless queer youth. Separation of medical benefits from marital status. The continuing battle with HIV/AIDS, especially for poor people. The links between LGBTQ people and other oppressed groups. Absorb and divide; divide and conquer!”

And then, once subdued by the gift of belonging, might we find we've indentured the movement for the foreseeable future? As Kenyon Farrow pointed out, might these newbie supporters argue (as they already did in New York, where he lives) that we owe marriage equality to them. “The Democrats could never deliver,” they could say. “It wasn't until we stepped in that the marriage equality movement was finally successful.” Might we be persuaded, and in the process sign on for a whole philosophy that we would otherwise reject? 

I'm not just being a grinch here. I know that being let in, finally belonging feels good. We all want to feel like we’re part of our community. But as a wise teacher/heterosexual ally once said (in a video co-produced by my partner), we all want to be part of the family, but sometimes the family is dysfunctional. I’m not arguing that we should refuse these folks’support, questionable though the motives and outcomes may be. I’m not saying that we should just stand down on the same-sex marriage issue. Plenty of people have much to gain by the success of this part of the LGBT movement. But I am saying that we need to think about this, think about who we’re signing up with, who likes us now. It says something crucial about the movement that these folks are joining in. It says that we are not dangerous, are not threatening to the existing social order, the status quo. And to me, that is a very sad outcome—some would say simply an unfortunate by-product—of a movement whose goal was initially precisely to change the social order.

The LGBTQ equality movement is not about to abandon this particular cause. It may be in for some though times, or we may be witnessing the approach of the end of this particular struggle. In either case, I beg us not to lose sight of our potential for changing the world—as opposed to being absorbed into the world as it is. We have other issues to address, and if we consider our cause won if/when we win this skirmish, we’ll have dropped out of the battle for social change and taken social acceptance as the consolation prize.

And the systems we started out to challenge will love us. How cool is that? (she asked, ironically).

Sunrise in America, part II

If you’re like me, you’ve been reading and listening to endless commentaries on the election—what happened and why, what lessons are to be learned, where we go next. Of the many, many post-election pearls of wit and wisdom, here are some I thought were especially good. If you haven’t already read them, take a look:

• Gail Collins (New York Times opinion columnist) on lessons from the election. I really enjoy her writing—her humor, her sort of down-home presence. And, of course, her politics.

• David Brooks (New York Times opinion columnist) with a very different “take” on what the Republicans should learn from this election, especially about the changing face of America. Brooks is the NYT’s most noted conservative columnist, yet I very often am challenged by his thinking and learn a lot from him. Instead of scolding, this column “schools” the Republican party in a most thoughtful way.

• Richard Socarides (former special assistant to President Clinton on LGBT issues— and son of a prominent psychiatrist, Charles Socarides, one of the prime proponents of so-called “conversion therapy” for LGBT folks) commenting on the amazing progress toward equal rights for LGBTQ folks we saw in this election. The steps forward were remarkable, and so is the deep shift in attitudes that these steps reflect. Which leads me to …

• Glenda Russell (the person who probably knows more than anyone else in the nation (the world?) about the impact of anti-LGBT politics on queer folks) writing about on the meaning of these events for the LGBTQ community. The positive across-the-board results were unexpected, and this piece discusses how we got here and where we go next.

•  Finally, to highlight the speed with which LGBTQ rights have changed, yesterday, Colorado’s Democratic legislators elected the state’s first openly gay Speaker of the House. This is an especially poignant event given that it was exactly 20 years ago, on November 2, 1992, to be precise, that Colorado voters passed the now-notorious Amendment 2, which literally legalized discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, leading Colorado to be branded the "Hate State." 

In case anyone thought “that hopey changey thing” wasn’t working …

“8” (The Play)

Save the date! There is a play coming to Boulder—for one night only—that you definitely want to see (if, that is, you’re near Boulder. For those who aren’t, you'll want to find it somewhere near you.) The play is called “8.” Mark your calendar: Thursday, December 6, Nomad Theater. Let me explain what this is and why you want to be there.

First, a bit of context. As you likely know, this is shaping up to be a landmark year for same-sex marriage. Not only did President Obama (finally) declare his support for marriage equality, but the topic of same-sex marriage will be on the ballot in four states next week (MD, ME, WA, WI). And, as if that weren't enough, it seems likely that during this year's session, the US Supreme Court will hear at least one of several same-sex marriage cases that are currently sitting in the Court’s “to do” pile. Depending on which case(s) they choose to hear and how they rule, things may change in a big way for LGBT people from this year forward.

So it’s a wonderful coincidence that just as LGBT rights are likely to take center stage in the Supreme Court, what could be called a “reality play” about those rights is coming to several community stages around the country. And Boulder is one of the locations chosen to see that play. (Actually, it’s no coincidence at all. It’s due to excellent planning by Out Boulder.) Here’s the back story:

As you all know, in 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, which overturned an earlier state Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in that state. Between the initial Court ruling and the vote on Prop 8, thousands of California same-sex couples chose to marry. This created an especially stark contrast between the presence and absence of equal rights: some same-sex couples were legally married, and just down the block, other couples were forbidden from marrying.

Now, this was not—by far!—the first time that LGBT rights had lost at the ballot box. In fact, we have never won when marriage equality was put to a popular vote (although that might change this year). But this was California, the most populous state in the nation. California, the state known for leading the nation forward toward progressive social change. California, the home of San Francisco, the Castro, and Harvey Milk!

Not surprisingly, Proposition 8 was almost immediately challenged—in the streets and then in the courts. In addition to LGBT rights groups, other, very surprising people also stepped up. Chief among these was an “odd couple” from the highest ranks of the legal profession who uncharacteristically joined forces to challenge Proposition 8: Ted Olson, the attorney who represented George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case that installed Bush as President in 2000, and  David Boies, the attorney who represented Al Gore in that same case. Despite their diametrically opposed political views on most matters, they both agree that same-sex couples should have the same right to marriage that heterosexual couples have. So this improbable team is leading the legal challenge to Prop 8 in the courts—perhaps all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The case moved up the judicial hierarchy to US District Court. There, the original plan called for the trial to be videotaped and streamed live, but the broadcast was blocked by legal maneuvering. In response, a playwright by the name of Dustin Lance Black decided to find a way to make the transcript of the trial accessible to folks in the real world.

Which brings us back to Harvey Milk.

Dustin Lance Black is probably best known for having written the Oscar-winning screenplay for the movie “Milk,” which tells the story of Harvey Milk’s rise to political office and then his assassination. Not coincidentally, “Milk” opened just before the vote on Prop 8. So now, determined to bring the Prop 8 trial alive for people on the street, Black has written a “play” that is basically an artistic rendering of excerpts from the transcript of the US District Court trial. That’s the play called “8”. It opened to rave reviews in LA and New York, where the parts were read by a megastar cast including Kevin Bacon, George Clooney, Jamie Lee Curtis, Morgan Freedman, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, and others you’d know if I could remember them. I saw the play streamed live from LA in those opening days, and it is amazing, compelling, jaw-dropping. You can see clips (with parts read by those very stars) here.

And now, “8-The Play” is coming to selected community theaters around the country. Each performance is hosted by a local group, which chooses a cast from among local folks (heck, your friends might be in it!). The idea is to bring the story home to people who should have been able to watch the trial as it unfolded but were prevented from seeing it. Until now. 

And here’s the best part (drum roll), our own Out Boulder is one of the groups selected to host a reading of “8-The Play.” But there’s more. Not content with only staging the play, Out Boulder aims to create an opportunity for the community to really engage in this story. Especially since Colorado has a unique connection to Prop 8 that makes this trial particularly relevant to us. So they have organized a panel to follow the play that includes experts in a range of fields and a variety of perspectives—law, political organizing and activism, religion, psychology—and even an economist who testified in the Prop 8 case. To see what I mean, check out the outstanding panel line-up. As the kids say, awesome!

This is going to be a wonderful evening—a thought-provoking play followed by an informative and engaging panel discussion combined with audience participation. You really don’t want to miss this!

Tickets are on sale at the Out Boulder site (or click here to order now). Get ‘em early, as seating is limited, and the play will happen on this one night only.

So if you haven't done it already, mark your calendar: Thursday, December 8, 7:30, Nomad Theater. 

You’ll be ever so glad you went.

Evolution

I've been fascinated by evolution, in all its forms, for a long time. The evolution of the natural world is just mind-boggling. How did the forget-me-not evolve to have that beautiful, precisely drawn face? Why do turkeys have a wattle—what possible purpose might it have served in getting them here? Equally fascinating is the evolution of human thought. I wonder where consciousness itself came from, what were the tiny steps that led to its emergence as another function next to, say, the opposable thumb or the ability to digest whale blubber and cactus leaves. And I wonder about the “evolution” of a society’s worldview or an individual’s thinking over time.

For the past year and a half (or so), President Obama has said his ideas on same-sex marriage were “evolving.” This week, that evolution reached a new level, as he declared in a televised interview that his now-evolved belief is that same-sex couples should be able to marry. Other parts of that interview showed up on a morning TV show the next day. This is a particularly striking example of “evolution.” The topic is contentious enough even without the storm often stirred up by the mention of “evolution.”

In its basic form, evolution occurs when organisms change over many generations in ways that help them adapt to their environment. This happens, as far as we currently know, when particular variations in a trait prove useful in adaptation. So, the organisms that have this trait live longer, reproduce more, and pass it on. Their offspring are then more likely to have the same trait, so they live longer, reproduce more, and pass it on … Think of giraffes with longer necks who can reach the high leaves when drought has thinned the trees.

If we translate this idea directly to human thought, it seems like our ideas would change when having a different idea would help us get along in the world. In the case of Obama’s evolving ideas, some might say he did this for political gain (which, as many commentators have noted, is not a likely outcome). His own explanation is that he’s gradually shifted as he’s gotten to know LGBT people, has talked with his kids about their friends’ families, and has reflected on principles taken from his faith, especially the “golden rule.” Either of these interpretations suggests events in his world that might encourage him to change his position—to adapt to this new world we inhabit.

Follow me on a short digression:  

A couple of years ago, we visited the Galapagos Islands, the place where Darwin famously made the observations that helped him formulate the principle of evolution through natural selection. The animals were amazing in their variety and striking uniqueness. What ever benefit would blue feet have for a bird? And how long did it take for the tortoises to develop  different-shaped shells on each island? 

They were also remarkable in their indifference to humans. With no predators, they've never developed the escape behaviors we’re used to seeing. So it’s actually possible to stand within a few feet of a nursing sea lion pup and have neither mother nor child so much as raise a flipper ... not to mention the over-sized father napping next to them.

But maybe even more fascinating to me was my awareness that we were standing on the same ground where Darwin made his famous observations. “He walked right here,” I thought to myself. “He saw these birds, these tortoises, these plants, this lava field.” It was here that Western thought spun off in a direction that would change our understanding of virtually everything. The mechanism that makes change happen was suddenly sketched in systematic terms. It made sense of aspects of reality that had been shrouded in mystery. Like how organisms change—and maybe, how societies change.

So, to get back to Obama's "evolution" ... Darwin was exploring physical evolution, and the physical environment was the “tool” that shaped these changes in organisms. But human beings have this other dimension. Call it reason, call it a moral sensibility, call it a soul or a spirit, call it a cerebral cortex. It sets human experience apart, and it also allows, even demands, new kinds of evolution. This dimension, like long necks or opposable thumbs, has evolved over time because it helps us get along. It helps us live in the social, moral, self-aware human environment that is our "Galapagos." 

Somewhere in that sensibility is the invitation (if not the imperative) to “do the right thing.” My own preferred interpretation of Obama’s move lies here. Whatever other factors impinged on this evolution in his thinking, I believe he took this final step because he decided that it’s the right thing to do. His kids are telling him, directly and indirectly, that this is the morally obvious path to follow, and he’s listening to them. He’s getting to know and care about more and more LGBT folks, and that humanizes them, individualizes this often-vague, impersonal morass of “LGBT people.” He sees that the arc of history is carrying us (if with some painful setbacks) toward full equality for LGBT individuals, and his belief in equality makes this seem right to him. His own rhetoric of integrity and hope urge him to take the high road.

Sure, his evolution was much slower than many of us would have preferred. Sure, you can argue that he’s simply reacting/adapting to the historical, political environment. That’s a fair interpretation. But maybe his finally coming to this point reflects the most human, though not the easiest, of adaptations: he changed his mind. His view broadened, his choices became clearer, his sense of who he is and who he wants to be, perhaps especially in his children’s eyes, urged him to dare this position. Gradually, to be sure, but in the end, he found the courage to change his mind. That’s hard for any of us to do, especially in public and facing inevitable criticism. Especially in an environment where changes of mind are regarded as “etch-a-sketch” maneuvers. A change of mind as fraught as this would be hard for any of us, just trying to get along in our own small worlds. Imagine how hard it is for the President, who's doing it on the world stage and for the history books.

It makes perfect sense that this evolution actually took time. Evolution in its truest form always takes time because it’s foundational. In truth, this is precisely the path that most of us follow when we change our minds about complex and thorny questions: if we do it from our core, it takes time.

Watch the videos. Obama invited this interview. He was clear that it was his time to take a stand. He looks completely at ease with his position. It looks to me like he’s found his moral ecological niche.