CommuniKate: Blog

July 01, 2009

Princess Dianu

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June 29, 2009

Take a Straight Person to Lunch

The philandering politicos John Ensign and Mark Sanford, the Iranian revolution, the death of Michael Jackson. And you were all worried what I would do without George Bush!

On this the 40th anniversary of Gay Liberation, it’s one big sexual revolution out there.

Heterosexuality is in crisis. What if Ensign and Sanford were in open relationships with their partners and had to negotiate honestly with them, without benefit of giant civil and religious institutional support like say, oh, gay people? The necessary fluidity of gay relationships often allows for more understanding of a partner’s concealed mid-life crisis affair. Okay maybe not the four-day break-up sex, I mean crying in Argentina. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it does acknowledge human sexuality. With Ensign and Sanford defending the sanctity of marriage, who needs to be against it?

In Iran, strict gender roles are under assault. The brutal crackdown on the Iranian opposition ordered by the supreme cleric Ali Kahemeni, is being aided by a fiendish caller ID system sold to Iranian security by Nokia-Siemens. What twittered the brave opposition to critical mass is now being used to track them down. Women are never shown in the crowd of the election-stealing, Holocaust-and-gay denying Ahmadinegad supporters, while Mousavi, who campaigned with his outspoken wife, has inspired Iranian women to be out and visible in the streets. I am so glad we don’t have one of those caller I.D. plans here in the U.S. We don’t, right?

Watching the life of Michael Jackson, looped endlessly following his death was like watching a sad gender train wreck. Performance footage showed Jackson to be a precocious then genius entertainer, dancer, and singer. In interview footage he revealed the abuse he suffered as a child, his desire to mother a child and his feminine side. His very appearance revealed obvious physical transformations he denied. A whole lot of people abused him under the ruse of helping him. I just wish the poor transman could have gone to a few support groups in our burgeoning trans movement.

We are watching the openly closeted secret of the failures of heterosexist supremacy. They’d prefer we not ask nor tell about it. Too late.

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What trashy, guilty pleasure novel do you plan to read this summer?

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June 23, 2009

Gut Check

When Dick Cheeeney was asked why he had not served in Vietnam, he harrumphed that he “had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service.” Like applying for six deferments.

Side note: come to find out, the very long E in “Cheeeney” is the family’s preferred pronunciation of their surname. The ubiquitous-as-homemade sin, Liz Cheeeney announced this top-secret fact on a morning show, and now Chris Matthews has dropped the long A in Chaney and cheeses out Cheeeney whenever he can. I just thought he was being sarcastic. I won’t tell you how my household still says the name.

But forty years after the 60s, prioritizing is still a problem.

As much as I was fully prepared to be disappointed in the Obama administration, I am surprised by my disappointment. They seem to have other priorities than full civil rights for LGBT people.

And heck I know Obama has a lot going on – health care, the economy, two wars. I’m not one of those old coot guys complaining that Obama’s trying to do too much. I think they’re just jealous of his energy. In fact, under the federal radar, many things are changing at the agency level. The US Census will now count married gay Americans. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, now unrecognizable from its early iteration, creeps through committee. Hate Crimes legislation moves forward.

After an LGBT firestorm greeted the Justice Department’s review of the Defense of Marriage Act with its concluding argument that put gay marriage in the same paragraph as pedophilia and incest, the White House quickly announced domestic partnership benefits for some federal employees. Coinky-dink? Ya think?

It was perhaps symbolic that the photo op of Obama signing the memorandum entitling federal employees to the equivalent of a gift certificate to the early bird special at The Olive Garden in Bethesda [one time only!] seemed to chop off the heads of the gay leaders present behind him. Awkward.

In our house, we often wonder if Obama has any gay advisors close to him on staff. The fact of the matter is two thirds of the Obama administration is former Clinton staffers. They are still traumatized by the early hijacking of their administration by the issue of gays in the military. I’ve always thought when the history of that moment is written, it will be revealed that some Republican mole was in the crowd whenever Clinton jogged on the mall or stopped in at McDonalds and would shout “What about gays in the military?” Finally Clinton just offhanded something off-message and undisciplined like “yeah, we’ll look into it” and off the rails we went.

The Clinton people in the Obama administration still seethe when they recall the day Clinton’s OMB was announcing exciting details of their new budget to an empty room because the press was over covering cranky little Sen. Sam Nunn giving his report on the difficulty of humping in confined quarters on submarines. Mind your head! The disastrously chicken Don’t Ask Don’t Tell non-solution became the cynical mantra of the next sixteen years.

I don’t really want to hear how naïve I am in the ways of politics. Save it. I have grown up a lot in the sixteen years since the Clinton years. So has the gay movement. So has America. It’s time for the Obama administration to gut check their priorities.

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If you Twitter, what tweet would you send out on June 28 – the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall? Now send it out.

Kate wants to hear from you! The next question of the week, straight from Kate, is: If you Twitter, what tweet would you send out on June 28 – the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall? Now send it out.

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June 22, 2009

STONEWALL 40

On an early morning flight from Orlando, after appearing at the 19th Annual Gay Days at Disneyworld, I was “sirred” twice by a cab driver and flight attendant. All before 7 a.m. I would have thought the brand new faux leopard Croc flats I was sporting would have thrown them off. Or that the “Gay Day” banners everywhere would have heightened their threat levels to rainbow.

Usually I find mistaken identification an embarrassment or irritant. In past years I would correct quickly with “That’s M’am not Sir,” and then try to lessen their discomfort. But this 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I wear the gaffe as a badge of pride. I stare them down. Even if they seem remorseful, I don’t help them through their moment. In solidarity with the unsung butch lesbians who were with the fags and drag queens at the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, I have been doing my own version of butching it up.

It used to be hard to find a NY gay person of a certain age who did not claim to have been at the Stonewall Riots. I am a New Yorker of that certain age, but I most certainly was not at the Stonewall Riots. In 1969 I had just graduated from a small Jesuit college in upstate New York. Insert “Class of 69” joke here.

I was a member of the Gay Resistance. I was trying not to come out. Because of that resistance, I could not and then would not hear the news of gay liberation spreading upstate from Greenwich Village. Though pre-internet, the Stonewall message quickly reached upstate gays in the anti-Vietnam war, women’s liberation and civil rights movement. Before long even my little town in upstate New York had out gay activists organizing, educating and agitating.

And they had the best parties. At one I met a brilliant lesbian Political Science professor, fired from her tenured job because of her anti-war activism. Hesitantly, I invited her and her partner over for dinner in the apartment that by then I “shared with a teacher friend”. On the apartment tour, before I could point out my bedroom, she gleefully yelled to her partner, “Here’s the fake bedroom!” Perhaps it was my cinder block bed with the Indian bedspread that tipped her off.

With my don’t ask, don’t tell cover blown by my out and outrageous new lesbian friends, I slowly began to come out. First to my girlfriend at the time, to more friends and then to family. Finally, to make up for lost time, I just grabbed a microphone and have yapped about it for twenty-eight years.

Of course there had been gays and lesbian activists in the in the 1950s and early 60s: The Mattachine Society, The Daughters of Bilitis, The Society of Individual Rights, the North American Homophile Organization. I am in awe of their courage. The rage and outrage of the Stonewall Inn fags, butch dykes and drag queens, who had finally had enough, kicked the courage of early gay activists to another level of visibility.

Back in the day, only 25% of my generation came out before the age of eighteen. It was 31% in the generation after me. Today 57% come out before the age of eighteen. Our challenge today is certainly to transform gay visibility into LGBT action. The reaction to Prop Hates promises a new generation of rage and outrage that will pass trans-inclusive ENDA, overturn DOMA, abolish Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and enact federal marriage equality.

But just as Stonewall and the gay liberation movement came from anti-war, women’s liberation and civil rights activism, we will only succeed if we reinsert ourselves into those activisms. To pass ENDA we must be part of the labor. To overturn DADT we must work for peace. To repeal DOMA and attain marriage equality we must work with women and people of color.

Think of it as Stonewall rebooted. It’s a size fourteen and a half stiletto. Today in honor of my butch forebears, I’m wearing only two items of women’s clothing.

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June 17, 2009

Dear Michelle,

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Well hello there.

Welcome to Kate Clinton's blog, CommuniKate, rated one of the Top 10 Lesbian Blogs by About.com.

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