Soapbox Social Speeches
On Sat, Nov 14, YBCA will hold a "Soapbox Social," where queer luminaries each will deliver a five-minute State of the Union address followed by cocktails and conversation. Participants include Therese Stewart (Deputy City Attorney and Marriage Equality Advocate), Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch (co-founder of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc.), Ryan Clary (Project Inform), and Anna Conda (Queerer Nation and Charlie Horse).
You can RSVP for the Soapbox Social, along with our Big Idea Night pARTy, at ybcafree.org. Read their prepared speeches below.
Therese Stewart
Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch
Ryan Clary
Anna Conda
Therese Stewart
I'm currently working on a case about marriage equality. It's the federal case in San Francisco that will go to trial this January. I've been doing a lot of reading, including reading the arguments made by the proponents of Proposition 8.
This is my fourth case relating to the subject of marriage for same-sex couples. So I've prepared and argued about marriage equality many times. You'd think that reading our opponents' arguments about why gay people should not be allowed to marry would be old hat. That it wouldn't be painful to read them anymore because none of them are new. Every time I do this, I go into it thinking the same thing. Reading this stuff won't bother me this time.
But each time I do it, I end up being wrong. I find myself feeling dreary, down, depressed. And I say to Carole, my wife, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm sad but I don't know why." And she looks at me in the way that only your spouse can and says with certainty "I know why. This always happens to you when you read the other side's briefs and arguments. It always makes you sad." And she's right. It does get to me to read and hear the things they say about us. It gets to me again and again and again.
So this time I didn't even think to myself that reading the reports of the Proposition 8 proponents' so-called experts wouldn't be hard, even though they have been careful to couch what they say in positive terms.
They focus on the importance of honoring heterosexual relationships, of bridging the gap between the sexes, of children needing to be raised by a mother and a father and preferably by their biological parents. It's really not about gay people, they assure the court, and its certainly not about animosity toward them. It's just that society needs heterosexual couples more. It needs heterosexuality in order to ensure a healthy society. And we need to reserve marriage for the people and relationships that society really needs.
But implicit in that, of course, is that society does not need homosexuals. It does not need same-sex relationships. Our families are not valuable or necessary or helpful to society. When we have and raise children it is not ideal, not "optimal". And the security and happiness our relationships provide us, and the ways in which they enable us be productive in the work world, to care for our aging or disabled relatives or friends, to contribute to the community in so many ways — none of that matters much in their eyes. Or it is invisible to them.
In their view, homosexual marriage is not only an oxymoron; it would be destructive to the whole institution of marriage and to society at large. Because in their view, our relationships are only about adult desire and pleasure, not about society's needs. So instead of marriage being an institution that exists primarily for the betterment of society, it will become an institution that is selfish and narcissistic and socially useless.
When I read all of this, it of course makes me angry because it so devalues us and is so blind to the many ways in which we, like everyone else, contribute to our families and to society. It is tempting to write off their views as the beliefs of a fringe group filled with hate and bigotry — the "religious right," the "right wing nuts," or whatever you want to call them. But what really makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach is that these beliefs or some facet of them are not isolated to a few in our culture. They are widespread. Widespread enough to have produced majorities to prevent us from marrying even in progressive states like California and Maine. Where ever and whenever we have been put to a vote, a majority has voted us unworthy of marriage and in many places of any recognition at all.
During the trial in our case, it will be our job to bring out the beliefs and biases that led people to strip gay couples of the right to marry. But that raises the question of what those beliefs and biases boil down to and how we frame them.
The Prop. 8 proponents say that in order to win we must prove a majority of California voters are bigots. They know no court will want to find that everyone who voted for Proposition 8 is a hater of gay people, someone who fits the profile of Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell.
I don't think the dichotomy is nearly so stark. "Bigotry" is a loaded term. And what we must attempt to unmask is not something nearly so blatant. Instead it is something very human. It is prejudice — to be sure. But it is prejudice of a kind most human beings harbor at some point in their lives about people who are different from them.
Prejudice about gay people is deep seated and, for many, unconscious. The legacy of political and religious actors demonizing gay people for so long is a lasting one, even if the stereotypes have been watered down and diluted. Most people today don't think most gay people are demonic pedophiles out to recruit, molest and children or see us as sexual predators who lurk in dark places to prey on and convert them and other heterosexuals. They don't see us as the Philistines from Sodom and Gommorah who God condemned for their hedonism. But the ads used to promote Proposition 8, as well as the current arguments its supporters make, do allude and harken back to these images. The belief that gay people are more self-absorbed or narcissistic and more sexually obsessed than heterosexual people, that we are only interested in ourselves and not in the well being of children, or family or society at large, that we are largely secular and lacking in religion and spirituality, that we are mostly wealthy and white and powerful and conspiratorial and that we have an agenda of upending the social order — these more current stereotypes all harken back to earlier more demonic portrayals of us, and for that matter of Jews, black men, communists, Catholics and other once-hated minority groups.
Even as we recognizing these stereotypes and their continued influence on today's voters, we must try harder not to see those who voted against us as some of them see us. We need not to view them all as hateful or bigoted or religious zealots, though some of them surely are. We need instead to better understand who the non-extreme voters are — those who voted for Proposition 8 but did so out of something less than unadulterated hate.
An experience I recently had that has nothing to do with the case helped me think differently about the voters' mindset. My spouse and I have been thinking about making a big move — from a rural area where we have lived for many years, to an urban one, the one — the City where I grew up. There are many reasons it makes sense for us to make that move, but in doing so I have been feeling a great deal of fear. I am afraid of losing what we have enjoyed in the place we currently live -- the bird and animal life, the peace and quiet, the hiking trails, the ease of living with neighbors whose houses are not on top of our own. I have been afraid of the traffic, of our dogs adjusting to an urban environment, of the noise, of the crowdedness of city life. More than anything, though, what I fear is the change, from the known and the familiar to the unknown and unfamiliar. This is not logical at all, because I grew up in the City and have worked there every day of my life for almost 30 years. And it is not unfamiliar — it is the opposite. But there is something about where one's home is that speaks to the deepest part of our humanity. And our feelings about it — including our fear of loss — are not logical or reasonable.
It dawned on me that the same thing is true of marriage. Marriage has deep symbolism in our society; it symbolizes how people live their lives. And so while the reality is that every marriage is different, and that the way one married couple lives may bear little resemblance to another couple's life, the idea of changing marriage in any way raises fears of loss that are deep seated. And when I listen to the Proponents' arguments about why allowing gay people to marry would be a bad thing, I hear something real, something genuine, even if it is not in any way logical. Many of those who voted against us are afraid. Their explanations make no sense because they are not logical. But the fear they have is real, and it is a fear that changing marriage will somehow harm or destroy a way of life that people hold near and dear, that is familiar and good.
Gay people and gay unions symbolize something new, something not deeply familiar. After all we were largely invisible for the last several centuries — we were hated and feared, and we were censored to the point that many people barely new we existed. Likewise, for men to enter the domain of the household and women the domain of the workforce is also new, and for many, something they have not fully embraced or become comfortable with. To allow marriage of same-sex couples would be to embrace two major social changes, and that is not something human beings readily do.
When I look at it this way, I can do so without demonizing the voters; I can even have compassion for them. But at the same time, fear and prejudice — whether hateful or unconscious and just human -- are not legitimate bases to treat one group differently from another under the law. That is the case we must make to the Court.
It is also the case we must make to the voters here and around the country. If we condemn them, they surely will not hear us. If we have compassion, they just might.
Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch
WHERE HAVE ALL THE RADICALS GONE?
Where have all the radicals gone?
Longtime passing,
Where have all the radicals gone?
Long time ago,
Where have all the radicals gone?
Gone to sleep every one.
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
The vital role of queer radicals using political theater is legendary. The Cockettes set the standard in the late 1960's. A former Cockette characterized their performances: "Of course they were political, but no one among us verbalized it. We had no need of rhetoric. We were madcap chefs cooking up a storm and the ingredients were theater, magic and tribal anarchy."*
Their successors, The Angels Of Light, carried on with "Paris Sights Under The Bourgeois Sea", attacking the ruling class, the anti-imperialist "Sci-Clones", and the Hindu queer spiritual odyssey "Holy Cow".
In 1973 The Radical Queens sponsored a "Kiss A Queer" booth at Temple University.
The Cycle Sluts used gender-fuck as a potent theatrical weapon. Then came The Radical Fairies, ACT-UP and Queer Nation in the 1980's and currently, since 1979, The Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence.
We must be the imaginative visionaries supplying originality to a movement that is often reduced to a civil rights agenda.
CIVIL RIGHTS ARE NOT A PANACEA. Civil rights are a tool for social change, not just electoral change, but radical cultural transformation.
I will work my ass off to reverse Prop 8, signature collecting, phone calling, canvassing and campaigning but an election victory is not what excites me about this issue.
While visiting my mom 3 summers ago as the marriage issue began to be debated in Iowa, we were watching a news report on the subject. As a lesbian couple appeared on the TV screen my mom blurted out, "Well, their relationship isn't at all the same as your dad's and mine!" In that moment I realized how passionately PERSONAL Americans feel about marriage. Most people care less about gays in the military, hate crimes, workplace discrimination, domestic partnerships or civil unions. When it comes to marriage, as my mom so eloquently stated, "they" aren't equal. WE aren't equal.
Precisely because Americans value marriage so intensely, marriage is a powerful tool for confronting homophobia/gender conformity where it lives. It lives in the minds of all Americans. But marriage equality is not an end in itself. Marriage equality is a marker on the road to cultural transformation.
On the left, queer radicals perform a valuable role for the LGBT community in the current cultural "Tug-Of-War". The rightwing has their heavyweights at their end of the rope. Fundamentalists are tugging mightily. At the left end we need more radical activists using theatrical social commentary, crystallizing the issues, tugging the debate in a leftward direction, framing the discussion on our terms and setting the agenda.
Following the passage of Prop 8 we publicly exorcised Archbishop George Nederauer, stripping him bare to his homophobic bones. George played a pivotal role in Prop 8's enactment. People are afraid to criticize Christian clergy. The Sisters exorcised the Archbishop's homophobic demons, calling him to redemption.
Jesus Christ. He's a fag! The Archbishop can kiss my queer ass on his unrepentant pilgrimage to hell!
The necessary role of our LGBT liberal allies is to go before the establishment media, make "apologies" for our shocking behaviour and negotiate the dialogue. As long as "comdemnations" are not substituted for "apologies", this symbiotic system works. We play the "Bad Guys". They play the "Good Guys". When some of our LGBT allies accuse us of "ruining it for everyone", I ask, "ruining" what? If "ruining" it means "ruining" religious oppression and bourgeois conformity then I say, "Yes, let's ruin it!"
We need a new Queer Community based on values, not based on a sex act. The whole idea of a homosexual is only 100 years old. It was created by the dominant culture attempting to identify and control us. We can not continue to define ourselves on their terms.
Rightwing Christians are right, it's about values, though their values are drenched in homophobia, sexism, bigotry and religious intolerance.
I share few common values with LGBT assimilationists. Serving in the military, getting married, moving to a suburban home with a white picket fence, a kid, a dog, a car in the garage, and working as an upwardly mobile cog in the corporate world order are nothing I aspire to. What we do have in common is I don't want to be killed or discriminated against because I suck cock.
But, are we to be defined by a sex act or by a spiritual vision?
To paraphrase Don Kilhefner: Now, for the first time, the forward-moving force of history compels us to MAXIMIZE our differences from the dominant culture as an act of love to ourselves and to them - the emergence of a new radical queer consciousness.
"Let us pursue relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation. An identity to our unique selves."**
Let us challenge the assimilationist values of our LGBT compatriots. We must be the vanguard of the truth, the early adaptors on the cutting edge of a new radical queer consciousness. The world depends on us. Lead and they will follow.
* from "Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning", by Mark Thompson.
** Michel Foucault
Ryan Clary
I am not exactly sure why I was asked to speak at this event. I am not an artist. I am not a poet. I am not remotely creative. I think I was asked because I always have a lot to say. I appreciate the opportunity and would never miss a chance to talk about my view of the state of the queer nation.
I moved here 20 years ago - almost to the day. Like many of you, I came looking for people who were just like me, for community, for the gay mecca I read about in Maupin's Tales of City that I devoured during my teens.
Instead, what I found was a ghost town and a city ravaged by unspeakable death and grief. It was shocking as a relatively sheltered 20 year old from the suburbs to experience such massive suffering and the difficulty of imagining myself and my friends growing old.
What I also discovered, though, was a community of angry, scared, passionate, loving queer people who knew that they were the only ones who could change this story in the face of government inaction and public indifference. They took to the streets. They got arrested. They shut down business as usual. They wrote legislation and lobbied government. They built the San Francisco model of HIV care — indeed the national model -- and they saved lives because they knew no one else was going to do it for us. I knew I had to join them and I am grateful to have spent much of adult life fighting this fight with them.
Where did this community go?
This summer, Governor Schwarzenegger launched an attack on the lives of people living with and at risk for HIV — including thousands of gay men and other men who have sex with men — by eliminating all state funding for HIV testing, prevention, housing, and early intervention care programs. These outrageous funding cuts come at a time when HIV increasingly and disproportionately affects gay youth, low-income people, and people of color — and when President Obama has reconfirmed his commitment to addressing the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The result is obvious: more people will learn their HIV status in the emergency room, there will be more infections, more homeless queer people, more people not linked to lifesaving care. Just like in the 80's and the early 90's.
What is the difference this time? With some exceptions, this community didn't fight back. We used to fight back — and hard. That is what changed the story. That is what saved lives. When did we become so complacent about our health? Why don't we fight for gay youth to have the same lifesaving health messages and opportunities for HIV testing I received when I was their age? Why don't we fight to ensure that all people with HIV have care and housing regardless of income? What does it say about us that we stopped fighting when the epidemic started affecting the most vulnerable and disenfranchised among us?
Can we start talking about this?
While still a top priority, however, HIV is not the only health crisis facing our community. Tonight, I want to talk about some other issues that are rarely discussed among us with the hope that it sparks a dialogue lasting beyond this forum. I want to talk about queer people I've known and loved who faced these health issues. They were all in my life: people who gave me joy, taught me lessons, made me a better advocate and a better person. They are all members of our community who should still be alive today.
I want to talk about Ellen George. She was one of my best friends for years. She was one of the most creative and generous people I've ever known, and always the life of the party. But she was damaged — disowned by her family for being a lesbian and suffered from depression. She fought alcoholism and drug use the entire time I knew her but she could not overcome her anger and shame. After two unsuccessful suicide attempts, in September 2004, she stood in front of a train in the East Bay and ended her life. She was 42.
Substance abuse and mental health issues disproportionately impact our community. Why don't we talk about it? Why don't we fight back when programs to address these health issues are slashed?
I want to talk about Gil Turner, my partner from 1996-2001. It would take all night to describe Gil and what he did for me and my life, so I won't even try. In March of 2001, Gil become violently ill and learned in intensive care that he had liver cancer and chronic hepatitis B. We barely even knew what hepatitis B was. He was given 6 months to live and didn't even get that, dying at the age of 33.
I want to talk about Martin Delaney, the founder of my agency, Project Inform. A brilliant man who spent his adult life saving the lives and giving hope to countless people with HIV. One of those who truly can be called a hero in the fight against this disease. Martin retired last year and deserved to enjoy time for himself. However, a few months into retirement, he was diagnosed with liver cancer caused by chronic hepatitis B. He died two months later at the age of 61.
Hepatitis B — a completely preventable disease with a vaccine — disproportionately affects gay and bisexual men. Why don't talk about it? Where are the educational materials and the billboard campaigns?
Finally, I want to talk about Danny Cusick. The only way to describe Danny is a “gentle warrior†— another fierce AIDS advocate but with the biggest heart this planet will ever know. Danny almost died from AIDS in 1995, but came back from the brink of death thanks to protease inhibitors. But this year, he died from hepatitis C and — you guessed it — liver cancer.
Hepatitis C disproportionately affects gay and bisexual men, particularly those who are HIV-positive. We are finally starting to talk about that one but not enough.
The most disturbing part is that I could keep going and talk about other people in my life who are gone. And I know that many, if not all, of you have similar stories. This is one of our tragic shared experiences as queer people. And it needs to stop.
I am sick of it. Aren't you sick of it? I am 40 years old and I want to stop burying friends. I want to stop going to funerals. I have other things I would like to do on weekends. I want to grow old with my friends. Don't you want the same? I want to grow old and gray with them.
This is worth fighting for.
We can change this story just like we did with HIV many years ago. But it won't happen until we prioritize queer health along with our other important battles. No one is going to fight this battle for us. We should be leading the fight for health care reform. We should be leading the fight to restore the unconscionable cuts to HIV and other health care programs made by the Governor. We should be leading the fight to make sure mental health and substance abuse services are available and that all queer people have access to basic health information and prevention messages that can save their lives.
You might be a believer in gay liberation or you might be a believer in gay equality. Either way, we will never be free and we will never be equal until all queer people have the opportunity to live a full and healthy life and we end our story of grief and broken hearts.
Can we please start talking about it?
Anna Conda
The biggest problem for me in Queer culture today is two fold; first is the lack of knowledge of our history and second the fact that we feel that we need to include any gender variance into our numbers to make us have a broader platform. The truth of the matter is that not all gender variance is queer and mainstream society shunning something as abnormal does not make it part of Queer culture either. Most people; both gay and straight; believe that sex and whom we choose to have it with is the only thing that makes us queer identified and they have no idea what a rich and glorious past we have. In the 20th century things move so fast that we often find it hard to keep up with our past and the history that we are sharing today. This leads us to ghettoization and self loathing creating the need for everyone to accept us. This need to fit is and have as many people join our ranks is detrimental to the Queer or Gay agenda and serves only to make us look pathetic and needy. Everybody will not like us no matter what we do or how ever many people join our ranks. Bigotry does not work on a numbers game. It is a fear based reaction of people who are filled with fear and cling to that fear as if it was the very oxoygen that keeps them alive. My parents are born again christians who will never accept me and even after 42 years of knowing me and seeing what a hard working caring individual I am would turn me over to the Nazis if they asked them to. They believe that I am an abomination and nothing I do will ever cure them of that. However that shame is not MINE to take on. It is my duty to believe in my path and move on and work on educating people on my queer history and the fact that we have been around forever, with glorious results in arts, leadership, scholars, and spiritual abundance.A perfect example of the problems that arise from this belief that everyone must like us is the use of LGBTQQIP as our moniker. We want so desperately as a culture to gain acceptance we will take on any gender groups that do not fit into the main stream culture and try and claim it as our own in the attempt to show the world that there are more of us than they think and therefor we deserve rights. Gay and Lesbian is NOT transexual, intersex, Bi sexual, Questioning or Pansexual. Transexuals are people who are born into the wrong gender and feel that their sexual identity and personal identity are of the opposite gender. Although most come out as queer at an early age the true transexual most often finds them selves becoming straight or bi sexual. Bi sexual also is not gay. A true bisexual has no preference as to whom they have sex with and mostly identify with either the straight or gay culture when all is said and done. If a bi sexual is in a straight relationship they can have all the privileges of modern society; if they end up in a gay relationship they join us as third class citizens and continue to promote and live with their queer identity in tact. These bi sexuals are queer identified and have the same gender issues societally as other queer peoples and there for identify mostly as gay or lesbian. Intersex and Questioning have nothing to do with queer identity unless they are or become Queer peoples and in that case they identify as queer. This need to make everyone happy and include as many people is cheating the gay and lesbian people not only of their heritage but their history as well and dumbing our identity down to the lowest and broadest common denominator. These attempts to make ourselves as universal as possible in the hopes that people will understand or like us more is harmful to the gay cause and seems to point out our own self loathing and inability to be whom we really are. Not everyone is queer and just because we are a minority that is searching for equal rights in the world we don't need everyone to fit in to the Queer identity. If we were to stand and be proud of our history and the persons we are without compromising ourselves for the sake of heterosexual approval; we would be much further along in our struggle for equal rights. To want to include everyone as a queer person just shows that we as a culture have a very week identity and are unsure of what it is that makes us gay and lesbian other than sexual appetite. We loose our unique history and become a less effective group because we make excuses for ourselves instead of understanding the great traditions and rich history that we come from as Queer peoples. Queer people have been the shaman, the storytellers, and spiritual leaders in the world up until the white male European christian culture has completely forced them to become homoginous in their ways. Native Americans heralded the queers in their community as having a connection to the mother earth and to the gods that was so special they were given roles of great leaders of entire vast tribal lands. Weh Wa was one such leader. He was a gender variant male who led one of the largest Western tribes for over 40 years. He was taken to Washington DC in the 1800's and shown to society as an Indian Princess dispite the fact that he was a man and over six feet tall. He was known as a great ruler with a kind heart and until his death due to smallpox was one of the great leaders of his people. Similarly Quan Yin the father of Toaism and modern Chineese poetry was also a queer man. Sappoh, a lesbian who was internationally known for her poetry was a queer Greek woman with emense power and influance. The list goes on and on yet we as a community are convinced that Madonna is the first to have a voice and speak for our people and she isn't even Queer. She is a straight woman. The likes of Gertrude Stein and the martyring of Oscar Wilde are our story yet so few know anything about these lives. Because shame and fear is what most of us experience in the world we have learned to hide not only our feelings and true selves but have let our history and its value be erased. We believe that only in the Castro or West Village/Chelsea do we really have culture. Queer peoples are everywhere and the ghettoization out of fear for our safety has robbed us of our place in society and much of our culture. We spend much of our time trying to find a conquest or drinking till we forget what it is we were escaping. If sex was the only thing that made us gay we would be able to blend more easily into society. Straight people have anal sex and vaginal sex and sex with multiple persons of both sexes and yet they identify as straight. They are protected by laws even if they do "gay" sex. therefor it is my belief that it is not our SEXUAL practices that make us gay but the CULTURE of our people that does.As a drag queen I am not relating stories or the power of the female side of myself for straight people. Truly straight people do not have the same history and issues that I face as a feminine queer male or a gender variant. They come to shows to be risk takers or to see the freaky ladies. They don't understand that Drag Queens and Kings are sharing cultural references and a long tradition of gender bending that dates back to earliest history as a way of sharing ourselves and our stories because they are not of our culture. These are the things we must make our Queer identity. We should seek to save our past and future and be proud of being Queer identified and accept that we have a struggle ahead and not everyone is going to be on our side. That doesn't make them right just a bigot. If you are queer you are queer and if you are not you just aren't. Becoming a flag less homogenized culture defeats the whole point of Gay rights and surpresses our ability to find our voice to achieve that end.