Tag Archives | In the Media

Revisionist History

By on March 11, 2016 in HIV/AIDS, Politics, Queer Culture
Jacket belonging to ACT UP activist David Wojnarowicz, reading "If I die of AIDS forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the FDA."

Jacket belonging to ACT UP activist David Wojnarowicz.

In 1987, friends of my parents gave me a book of Oscar Wilde stories for my 10th birthday. No one ever told me what gay was, and it is only in retrospect that I recognize that they were a couple. By 1993, when I started volunteering for a youth AIDS hotline, one of them was dead and the other gravely ill. By 1994, when I started to come out to myself, I didn’t know any LGBTQ adults who weren’t involved in AIDS activism, and very few who weren’t sick themselves. I am only just starting to grapple with what it means to have come up and come out in a community that was itself coming out under the shadow of death.

I started activist work fueled by rage and anger. It burned away everything that was good, that generated life and dreams and possibility. It left me hollow inside. I didn’t have a concept of a healthy queer life. I subscribed fully to the “live fast, die young” model of civic engagement. I couldn’t imagine living past 30.

Now I’m 38, and I can imagine 38 more years of speaking truth to power. The older I get, the more I know that I need to be driven by love, by connection, by possibility. I’m still holding fast to my revolutionary ideals of liberty and justice for all. Most of the time I come to the work from a place of love and joy and inspiration. But reading Hillary Clinton’s comments on Nancy Reagan as an AIDS activist brought back the rage. Tonight, I want to BURN IT DOWN.

But today, Hillary Clinton praised Nancy Reagan for her quiet activism on AIDS, and I am DONE. I am ENRAGED. I can’t sit by and let her tell these egregious lies about the Reagan Administration, who arguably could have stopped the global pandemic we grapple with today, and instead chose to spit on their gay friends. Since Teen Vogue and The Guardian UK have written about this I don’t need to say more about the Reagans’ horrific legacy.

I haven’t spoken up much on this election cycle, for a lot of reasons. I’m pretty pragmatic at this point in my life, and I know there is no such thing as a perfect candidate. Many people, especially women, whom I love and respect are big Clinton fans. I can see the sexism in most of the arguments against Clinton. In a lot of ways Bernie Sanders speaks my language, but I’ve been around long enough to be cynical about the feasibility of a real class revolt. Everyone on the Republican slate scares the bejesus out of me. But today, I’m done being silent. Clinton’s hawkish positions on foreign policy, and her involvement in racist/classist “welfare reform” and mass incarceration of people of color makes me sick, not to mention the legacy of DOMA that we are starting to shake off. Yes, if she becomes the nominee we need to support her over any of the possible opponents, who want to roll back all of our rights save the right to bear arms. But we don’t have to accept that as the inevitable end game. SILENCE = DEATH. ACT UP. FIGHT AIDS. Live for more.

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My new Love

By on July 19, 2011 in Gender, Queer Culture

Don’t start any rumors, I’m keeping my old love, and not just because I’m afraid to give up the political connections our partnership contains. But I’ve got a new love: local anonymous queer propagandists f.i.e.r.c.e.n.e.s.s.. They have posted a really excellent text on privilege and queerness, which I’m happy to attribute to its author if they come forward….

It’s not just what you know — it’s what you never have to know. It’s happening every day, at that party or park or potluck, when you can look like what you really are and touch who you really want to touch without feeling like you’re violating others’ expectations. It’s never being forced to examine accepted ideas of gender and sexuality, despite their arbitrary nature. It’s never having to realize that people are seeing you as something you know you are not.

Privilege is about safety and belonging. It lies hidden in identities and desires that don’t need to be justified or defended or even spoken of, because they reaffirm the identities and desires of most of the people around you. Privilege is assuming, before you even get there, that your gender and your sexuality are welcome and expected wherever you might want to go. (emphasis mine)

I don’t know about you but I think about how welcome my gender and sexuality will be whenever I go out, and I’m almost always prepared to be unexpected at best. It doesn’t usually influence where or when I go, or much of how I present myself, but it certainly influences my feeling of armoring up to go out into the world. Being visibly queer is a complicated thing, and many brilliant folks I know are marginalized because of it. Being accepted in the mainstream is lovely in many ways, but it comes with the pressure to be acceptable to the mainstream. I think hard about where I am and am not willing to compromise. (I don’t shave my legs, but I always wear pants.) My gender is not an unconscious thing – it’s something I do, think about, wrestle with, and prepare to confront folks about on a daily basis.

I’ve been hearing some pushback that some recent queer events have been hostile to folks perceived to be heterosexual or heteronormative. This is not part of my vision of queer liberation. I’d love to think and talk more about how we create spaces to be queer in its original sense: transgressive and nonconformist, outside the norm. Not to rigidly expect that everyone look like us, or that only freaks and outlaws be invited, but where the new norm is no norm. Because we all deserve the privilege of feeling like we’re welcome and expected.

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Bishop Tobin is a Neb Nose

By on July 1, 2011 in Marriage, Uncategorized

The Bishop and I are share a hometown with a unique dialect, wherein “neb nose” is someone who is butting into another’s business without warrant.
(And let me be very clear that while I disagree wholeheartedly with his position here, I also wholeheartedly support his right to believe, and preach, whatever he likes.) We might both bleed black and gold during football season, but that’s about all we agree on. Here’s his absolutely appalling statement on civil unions, released despite the horrible Corvese Amendment that basically allows religious institutions to ignore civil unions in any context (including making medical decisions at religious hospitals, recognizing parental rights at religious schools, and obtaining housing from a religious shelter). Essentially, this is like passing legislation that allows religious institutions to ignore divorces. Hope you feel good about having your first wife make those end-of-life decisions for you….

I am deeply disappointed that Rhode Island will establish civil unions in our state. The concept of civil unions is a social experiment that promotes an immoral lifestyle, is a mockery of the institution of marriage as designed by God, undermines the well-being of our families, and poses a threat to religious liberty.

In this context it is my obligation to remind Catholics of the teachings of the Church on this matter. First, the Church continues to have respect and love for persons with same-sex attraction; they are indeed children of God and our brothers and sisters in the human family. We pray for their well-being and offer them spiritual guidance and pastoral care. We also extend our love and support to families of homosexual persons who sometimes struggle with this difficult emotional issue.

At the same time, the Church reminds its members that homosexual activity is contrary to the natural law and the will of God and, therefore, is objectively sinful. Persons with same-sex attraction are required to live the Christian virtues of chastity and modesty, as all persons are. The importance of these virtues is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures and in the constant tradition of the Church.

Because civil unions promote an unacceptable lifestyle, undermine the faith of the Church on holy matrimony, and cause scandal and confusion, Catholics may not participate in civil unions. To do so is a very grave violation of the moral law and, thus, seriously sinful. A civil union can never be accepted as a legitimate alternative to matrimony.

Can there be any doubt that Almighty God will, in His own time and way, pass judgment upon our state, its leaders and citizens, for abandoning His commands and embracing public immorality? I encourage Catholics to pray for God’s patience, mercy and forgiveness in these distressing times.

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In the Media: Civil Unions pass the R.I. House

By on May 21, 2011 in Marriage
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