Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
LGBT
New Federal Rule Makes LGBT Housing Discrimination Illegal
05 days ago
On Saturday the Obama Administration announced historic new federal rules that will strengthen housing discrimination protections for transgender and other LGBT people.
The new regulations were announced by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan at the 24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, and will be officially published this coming week.
The new rule prohibits owners and operators of federally-funded or federally-insured housing, as well as lenders offering federally-insured mortgages from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The update also clarifies the definition of “family” to ensure that LGBT families are not excluded from HUD programs.
“If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, actual or perceived, you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law, and you will be held accountable. That’s what equal access means, and that’s what this rule is going to do,” said HUD Secretary Donovan in a statement.
HUD cited The National Transgender Discrimination Survey showing that 19% of transgender and gender non-conforming people had been refused a home or apartment and 11% had been evicted because of their gender identity or expression. The study also showed that 19% of transgender people have been homeless at some point in their lives, and 29% of those had been turned away from homeless shelters and a majority were harassed when they could get in to a shelter.
Young Activists Plot the Future of the LGBT Rights Movement
06 days ago
A few minutes into a breakout session at last week’s Creating Change LGBT equality conference in Baltimore, the presenter noted that more than 150 colleges in the U.S. have programs aimed at supporting LGBT students–but none of those schools are HBCUs.
Historically black colleges and universities, presenter Dominique McIntosh said, “are lagging behind in providing institutional support.” While HBCUs have long been known for providing greater support for their students than majority-serving institutions, based on her research, she sees a different story emerging for students who fit outside of the dominant narrative of “black womanhood.”
Recently, McIntosh, a professor at Smith College, conducted a focus group at a southern HBCU–she declined to say which to protect the anonymity of her subjects–and there she found that traditional themes of black womanhood like “resisting domination, respectability, and relationship to men,” are being challenged by black lesbians and bisexual women, who, in addition to respectability, find “resisting stereotypes, and relationships to women” more important. These women also said traditional ideas of the positivity of sisterhood and “othermothers”–concerned female caretakers in the community–can be estranging and sometimes intrusive.
McIntosh’s findings were fascinating, but of the 2200 registered attendees at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference, only about 10 sat in on her presentation.
A few doors down, dozens of young people attended a session on how to build a youth-led organization–of which there are only a few in the country. The presenter drew parallels between the National Women’s Party (NWP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), two successful youth-led organizations that found themselves frequently at odds with their more grown-up counterparts within the suffrage and civl rights movements.
Only a handful of youth-led LGBT organizations exist today. “We’re a very small tribe,” said Jason Landau Goodman of the Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition. Most often, he added, larger, established LGBT advocacy groups bring in a youth voice as a token, or to represent the problems with mental health and bullying. Rarely is the resilience or proactivity of young people shown.
Audience members agreed. “Youth are portrayed as victims,” one attendee said. Another added, “By the time you’re no longer a youth, is when you’ll have a say.”
The session offered tips for creating a youth organization: fighting burnout and adultism, and recognizing privilege are key, said Goodman.
Perhaps a sign that young LGBT activists are hungry for help organizing, the conference attendees seemed to skew younger–though there were plenty of middle aged and older attendees–and they represented a wide range of racial diversity and gender identity. “Usually LGBT conferences aren’t diverse at all,” said Felipe Matos, a DREAM Act and LGBT activist.
And the sessions were pegged toward just about every intersection of LGBTQ identity. Of the 140 or so breakout sessions, caucuses, and open meetings on Saturday, 22 were explicitly about race. There were sessions about the black church, sex positivity and people of color, the history of Native Americans honoring “multiple gender traditions,” how immigrant and LGBTQ communities can work together, and ways of reducing violence agains transgender and gender-nonconforming people of color.
The Saturday plenary session was devoted to international LGBT activism. Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the death of David Kato, a Ugandan teacher and LGBT activist who was murdered in his home after winning a lawsuit against a magazine that published his name and address–along with those of others the editors believed to be gay or lesbian.
There are positive things happening in Uganda though, activist Val Kalende told the audience. “Journalists come to Uganda and all they say is people are being arrested.” But she says she’s seen a “new breed of activism” in the wake of Kato’s murder. “Now is the time to ask us what we need on the ground.” While it’s important to monitor things like the so-called “kill the gays” bill going before Uganda’s parliament–it would criminalize homosexuality as an offense punishable by death or life imprisonment–supporting the activism that’s happening in the country is critical.
On the domestic front, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) was handing out statistics on black transgender people pulled from the results of a national survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality. In the results, half of black transgender people in school reported being harassed, 27 percent reported physical assault, and 15 percent reported sexual assault. Twenty-one percent left school because of harassment. Six percent said they were expelled due to bias.
If one theme emerged from the people I spoke to at the conference, it was that “activating” the power of under-heard groups like people and youth of color is desperately needed. “The youth of color community doesn’t feel like it has a voice,” says Rodney Nickens, Jr., a senior fellow with the NBJC. “No one is hearing their perspective.” For that, he says, Creating Change “has been phenomenal.”
Sarah Audelo, the senior domestic policy manager at Advocates For Youth, an organization that promotes reproductive and sexual health for young people, agrees that young people, “and youth of color especially,” aren’t being heard. “I love that there is something” for youth to attend, but she adds, “I think the conference could be more intentional about how it brings youth of color together.”
One suggestion? “We should have had some workshops to help youth of color organize,” Audelo says. “We just expect them to come into the larger queer movement.”
New HUD Rule Delivers for LGBT Americans
01 week ago
Last year, we told you about a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Among the key requirements of the rule is a prohibition on inquires regarding sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as a prohibition on using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration (FHA) programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT).
This afternoon, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that the final rule will be published in the Federal Register early next week, meaning that it will take effect in just a little over one month from today! Needless to say, this is a tremendous step forward in efforts to stamp out discrimination against LGBT people in housing.
Of critical importance, the rule will require all organizations that operate HUD-assisted or HUD-insured housing facilities to serve LGBT Americans looking for shelter and housing—including religious organizations. As a coalition of more than 30 civil rights organizations (including the ACLU) wrote to HUD last year, once a religious organization chooses to provide housing services or programs with the aid of federal funds and benefits from HUD, it cannot shield itself from traditional safeguards that protect civil rights in the provision of those services. Those religious organizations that provide wholly private housing services will be unaffected by this new rule. We are pleased that HUD said that all organizations must provide equal access to HUD housing programs and did not sanction the use of religion to discriminate.
As Secretary Donovan stated last year at the time of the publication of the proposed rule, “This is a fundamental issue of fairness. We have a responsibility to make certain that public programs are open to all Americans. With this proposed rule, we will make clear that a person’s eligibility for federal housing programs is, and should be, based on their need and not on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The ACLU could not agree with Secretary Donovan more strongly. This new federal rule will move us one step closer to an America where decent, affordable housing is available to all Americans.
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‘Pariah’ Director Dee Rees and Kim Wayans Talk With Colorlines.com
01 month ago
It’s no secret that films that tell stories about people of color have a hard time getting made. Seasoned Oscar-nominated directors like John Singleton, Spike Lee and Gregory Nava have a hard enough time finding investors to back their films, so when Dee Rees decided she wanted to tell a coming of age story about a young, black lesbian, she couldn’t go the traditional route and went as far selling her Brooklyn apartment to raise funds.
“We knew that if we could just get the film done, that regardless of sexuality, race and identity, people would be able to see themselves in different parts of the story,” Rees told Colorlines.com last month, as she awaited the release of her feature directorial debut “Pariah.”
“We’d go to pitch meetings and the moment we said ‘black, lesbian, coming of age,’ they would turn around, validate our parking and hand us a bottle of water.”
Actress Kim Wayans, best known for her comedic performances on “In Living Color” says she was aware of how powerful this film could potentially be. She said while they were filming, there was a string of young gay teen suicides.
“I was moved by the entire project,” says Wayans. “It was so beautiful, so powerful and so relevant given all that’s been going on with kids committing suicide because they don’t have a safe place to go.”
The actress said she wants to continue doing serious roles like the character she plays in “Pariah” but says she wants to go back and forth between comedies and dramas, “similar to Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams.”
Watch above as Dee Rees and Kim Wayans discuss “Pariah” with Cololrlines.com and talk about the importance of having directors of color in Hollywood.
All Families Can Love Their LGBT Kids–Really, There’s Data to Prove It
02 months ago
Edward Plata, a self-described “macho Marine dad,” struggled to accept his eldest son E.J.’s homosexuality.
As a young child, his son wore jewelry and a wet towel around his head that he pretended was hair. Plata repeatedly threw away the Little Mermaid doll with which his son played and replaced it with G.I. Joes; E.J.’s mother, Elizabeth, always went to the store and replaced it.
“If E.J. likes the Little Mermaid, he likes the Little Mermaid. And if he wants to play with it, that’s fine,” she says now. “It made him happy and if it made him happy than it was okay with me.”
In spite of his wife’s persistence, Plata still had misgivings about his son–even scolding him when he said his classmates had picked on him in school. “As time went on, I started thinking about myself and what I’m going to tell my friends,” he told Colorlines.com as he, his wife and their five other children drove home to Modesto, Calif., recently, after visiting E.J. in San Francisco. “A macho Marine dad doesn’t put out gay kids. He puts out athletes and scholars and devil dog marines.”
It came as no surprise to Plata when his wife told him that E.J. had come out to her. E.J. was a 14-year-old eighth grader at the time, but something had changed within his father. “I did have a talk with E.J. and with teary eyes I said, ‘Son, I love you and we will deal with every situation here,’ ” recalled Plata.
The Platas are among a group of families profiled in a unique research project at the Marian Wright Edleman Institute of San Francisco State University. Researchers there have set out to document the specific experiences of families from varying racial, ethnic and socio-economic communities whom have LGBT children–and to develop support tools for similar families based upon the findings. Dubbed the Family Acceptance Project, it was launched in 2002 by researchers Caitlin Ryan and Rafael Díaz and has followed participants from their teens through young adulthood.
The project contains four components: study how parents, families and caregivers react to and adjust to an LGBT child’s coming out; develop training and assessment materials based on this data for people who work with LGBT youth and their families, ranging from health care providers to juvenile justice officials; and create resources to help families support their LGBT youth.
The researchers’ first step was to establish an understanding of how families in various California communities reacted to their LGBT children’s sexual orientation and gender identity–whether they accepted, rejected or acted ambivalently to the teens coming out. Ryan and her team of researchers started by looking at white and Latino families, because they are California’s most prominent ethnic groups.
Gradually, they expanded into several racial and ethnic communities–working with families of African-, Asian- and Native-American descent and with Spanish-speaking families. Many of the families with whom Ryan and her team have worked are multilingual. Others are farm workers, immigrants or live far below the poverty line. Some parents could not read or write because they lack a formal education, while other families have limited cognitive abilities. One father in the study is a former KGB officer.
“Our work with them has really helped us to understand how do we communicate this new information to families who have a wide range of not only cultural, but literacy and educational experiences,” said Ryan. “Culture is really a part of everything we do and it’s very important to us to not only have worked with families from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, but also to depict their experiences in a very real way.”
Ryan and her fellow researchers interviewed LGBT teenagers about their early childhood experiences, based on a long list of factors–their gender, culture, ethnicity, faith, values and education. They also asked the teens about their parents’ or caregivers’ reaction to their sexual orientation and gender identity. Researchers recruited study participants through California’s LGBT youth programs and gay-straight alliances.
“We were really trying to document what are the range of experiences, because historically the perception is that families aren’t expecting this, that they can’t support their children,” says Ryan, who is a clinical social worker. “Because I had worked in the field, I knew it was much more diverse than that.”
The project’s second phase focused on what happened to the youth after they separated from their families, between the ages of 21 and 25. The goal was to document how each a rejection impacted a young person later, as an adult. Strikingly, researchers took their findings back to the families whom they studied, and further documented the families reactions. They then interviewed the families again three months later, to examine how the information impacted each families’ thoughts and beliefs.
“We learned a lot about how this information affected their relationship with their child, with their other family members,” says Ryan, who noted she and her team asked the families how they could share it with those who have similar backgrounds. “They really educated us. Everything that we have done has come from the lived experiences of LGBT young people and families.”
As a someone who has worked on LGBT health and mental health for nearly four decades, Ryan found herself in Atlanta at the start of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. She helped launch AID Atlanta, the Southeast’s first HIV/AIDS service organization in 1982, and worked closely with the families of gay and bisexual men who were succumbing to the virus.
“I was present for them, to comfort them, to help them to whatever extent I could as they were standing by their son’s bedside, [a son] who might be on a respirator, was dying and had little time left. And within a matter of minutes their parents would learn that their son was gay and was dying of AIDS,” she recalls.
“So many people lived a compartmentalized life,” she says, “but it really came together around their death.”
Decades later, Ryan’s project hopes to prevent that kind of distance from developing inside families. One of the research team’s particularly striking findings is that most parents who kicked out their LGBT child came to regret that decision later. Today, a wide range of research estimates that anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT. While there is little race-specific data, anecdotal evidence from service providers suggests those youth are overwhelmingly people of color.
“The first inclination of parents is not to push that child out of their home,” said Ryan. “Maybe they might be angry or hurt or upset in so many other ways, but underneath that there is still that deep bond with that young person.”
That’s one of the many lessons included in the resources for parents that the Family Acceptance Project is developing. Among those resources, for instance, is a series of 10- to 15-minute videos that feature culturally and ethnically diverse families who discuss how they came to embrace their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
“What we’ve learned over time is that families can learn how to support that LGBT person, but how one looks at them has to be culturally appropriate,” said Ryan. “It has to really be done in ways that respect their religious traditions and their cultural values.”
The Platas are among eight families whom the Family Acceptance Project has documented, and Edward Plata is the first to acknowledge the transformation he has undergone. He and his wife started an LGBT youth group after their son came out, and they routinely work with other parents who are struggling to accept their LGBT children. E.J., who is now 21, lives with his boyfriend of nearly four years, P.J., in San Francisco.
“P.J. brings out the best in E.J., and E.J. brings the best out of him,” said Edward Plata. And that’s enough to embrace.
Michael K. Lavers is a regular contributor to Colorlines.com. His work has also appeared in the Village Voice, WNYC, BBC and the Advocate.
Showtime and Lee Daniels Developing Drama Series Set in NYC Ball Scene
03 months ago
Lee Daniels, the director of “Monsters Ball” and “Precious,” has partnered with Showtime to develop a contemporary drama series set in New York City’s “house and ball” scene–a largely black gay and transgender cultural scene, organized around adopted families and balls featuring dance and gender-play competitions. The mainstream culture first noticed the scene after the 1990 documentary “Paris Is Burning,” which chronicles Harlem’s disenfranchised black, Latino, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities who come together to “battle” on runways.
Joining Daniels will be screenwriter W. Merritt Johnson, who was nominated for an Emmy for “Temple Grandin” and has also worked on the HBO series “In Treatment.” Both will be executive producers on the series, with Johnson writing and Daniels directing. The series doesn’t yet have a title or broadcast date announced.
New York City’s ball culture has spread to other parts of the country and branched into both activism and sex education campaigns. Recently, Los Angeles’ REACH LA hosted Ovahness Ball 6 as part of a three-day gathering too discuss HIV/AIDS and other health disparities amongst young men of color. Below you’ll find a clip from the Ovahness Ball held in Los Angeles last weekend and a clip from Current.tv looking at the significance of “Paris is Burning.”
Hat Tip: Shadow and Act
Former Marine Evelyn Thomas on the Fight to End Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
04 months ago
Corporal Evelyn Thomas was two weeks shy of graduating from high school when she enlisted in the Army National Guard on May 17, 1986. She was 17, and her mother had to sign the contract that allowed her to enter the military because she was not of legal age.
Thomas was transferred from the National Guard to the U.S. Marine Corps in Camp Pendleton, Calif. She lived with other cadets in the on-base barracks, but Thomas soon found herself in the crosshairs of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian servicemembers, after a fellow Marine found a letter in her footlocker from her mother that asked her about a woman she was dating. The letter was turned into Thomas’ commanding officer–and military police promptly arrested her.
“They asked me if I’m a homosexual–I literally began to shake in my boots because I thought, ‘How did they find out?’” she says now. “As I’m standing there shaking, my commanding officer and my supervisor began to laugh, because they thought it was funny.”
Thomas was isolated from her fellow cadets the next day. She was transferred out of the barracks with two other Marines–one who had been accused of shoplifting and another who was the girlfriend of a cadet. “I was an ideal Marine, but because I was a gay or lesbian and loved someone of the same sex I was considered a problem Marine,” says Thomas.
Thomas was honorably discharged from the Marines more than two years before then-President Bill Clinton signed the don’t ask, don’t tell policy into law. That policy was officially repealed as of last week, on Sept. 20. It marks the end of a discriminatory era that was widely believed to have had a particularly negative impact on black women who served in the U.S. armed forces.
Even though black women comprise less than one percent of servicemembers, they represented 3.3 percent of all don’t ask, don’t tell discharges. Women in general appear to have been targeted under the policy. According to a 2010 Service Women’s Action Network report, women were 15 percent of the armed forces in 2008, but comprised 34 percent of the don’t ask, don’t tell discharges. People of color represented just under 30 percent of active duty personnel, but 45 percent of don’t ask, don’t tell discharges. The Pentagon discharged more than 14,000 servicemembers under the policy between when it took effect in December 1993 and its official end last week.
African Americans have long been overrepresented among both new recruits and among those who re-enlist after their initial term runs out, thus choosing to build a career in the armed forces. (Those numbers have, however, dropped dramatically in the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) For many, that has been an economic choice–military recruiters offer immediate jobs and potential for college in neighborhoods where both things are in short supply.
“Many view the military as a viable employer that will improve their quality of life,” says Sharon Lettman-Hicks, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. Her husband spent 26 years in the armed forces. “By virtue of that I respect the United States military to be a viable outlet for many African Americans.”
These considerations are exactly what prompted Thomas to enlist. She recalled doing her homework by candlelight because her mother did not have enough money to pay the electricity bill. Thomas enlisted under the G.I. Bill, which allowed her to become the first member of her family to attend college. She eventually earned a master’s degree in education.
“Nothing could go wrong with me by enlisting in the military and giving four to six years of my life,” Thomas recalls thinking.
So what went wrong for so many gay women who chose to serve?
Many women who have been discharged under don’t ask, don’t tell were reported to their commanding officers as lesbians after they rebuffed a fellow servicemember’s sexual advances. Sexual harassment and sexual assault remain serious problems within the ranks. Recent reports continue to indicate that the Pentagon has not done enough to address them.
The Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office indicated in a March 2011 report that there were 3,158 reported sexual assaults in the military in 2010. The Pentagon estimates that this figure represents less than 14 percent of the actual number of rapes and sexual assaults in the armed forces during this period. Furthermore, the SAPRO report indicates that 90 percent of sexual assaults and 80 percent of sexual harassment go unreported.
“Sexual assault is a crime that is incompatible with service in the U.S. Armed Forces,” states the report’s executive summary. “It undermines core values, degrades military readiness, subverts goodwill and forever changes the lives of victims and their families.”
Seventeen male and female servicemembers allege in a federal lawsuit filed against the Defense Department in February that the Pentagon has not done enough to investigate sexual assaults and harassment and prosecute those who committed them. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Northern Virginia is expected to move on the case later this fall.
Are there parallels between efforts to mitigate sexual violence in the military and to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly?
A provision in the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act requires military academies to investigate and report incidents of sexual harassment and assault. The House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committees both included a provision in their mark ups of the 2012 National Defense Reauthorization Act that would allow servicemembers who have been victims of sexual assault or harassment to request legal counsel, the right to obtain a base transfer and the right to maintain confidentiality when speaking to representatives and advocates. Another bill, the Defense Sexual Trauma Response Oversight and Good Governance (STRONG) Act, would also mandate more training for preventing sexual harassment.
Making Repeal Real
President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen certified the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell in July. Implementation, however, is far easier said than done.
“We have a [military] culture that’s so hostile,” says Greg Jacob, policy director of Service Women’s Action Network. He warns that anti-gay discrimination in the military could nullify any tangible benefits from open service. “[If unchecked], it’s just going to drive those individuals right back into the closet.”
Stacey Long of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also acknowledged that it will take more than the repeal of a discriminatory law to change attitudes towards gay and lesbian servicemembers. “It’s progress, but it’s cautionary progress,” she said. “We’re glad that it happened, we’re glad that the president followed through on his promise and now we want to do everything we can to support the servicemembers and make sure they continue to be treated with dignity and respect.”
For her part, Thomas herself founded the Sanctuary Project in 2009 as a way to minister to those who have been adversely impacted by the ban on openly gay and lesbian servicemembers. Thomas is also among the 13 gay and lesbian servicemembers who were arrested last November after they chained themselves to the White House fence.
Reflecting on the emotions she felt as she and her wife witnessed the policy’s repeal, and the victory they helped create, Thomas says she was once again shaken. “My body had a physical reaction,” she says. “It’s been a long-time coming.”
Michael K. Lavers is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has appeared in the Village Voice, WNYC, BBC, the Advocate and other LGBT and mainstream publications.
The Unapologetic Homophobia of ‘Tyler, The Creator’
05 months ago
The realest moment in Sunday’s MTV Music Video Awards was when Tyler the Creator’s proud mom’s hands rose to the sky as she jumped for joy when she heard her son was the winner of MTV’s Best New Artist award.
Her 20-year-old son, born Tyler Okonma, with origins in Los Angeles’ Ladera Heights (a community on the South-West Side, centered near Slauson and La Cienega Blvd.) got that award because of fan votes.
Tyler the Creator’s Mom at the MTV Music Video Awards Sunday.
But if you consider all the moms who have gay and lesbian teens who come home crying complaining of the bullying they face in schools, or the moms who have lost their young boys because they couldn’t take it anymore, you really wish that MTV executives would’ve never put Tyler the Creator on the ballot for Best New Artist in the first place.
His latest album, “Goblin,” uses the word “faggot” and variants of anti-gay lyrics a total of 213 times, according to NME, a music weekly. (Tyler uses the exact words “fag” or “faggot” a total of nine times on “Goblin,” according to The Fader).
His use of the word in his music, interviews and on Twitter is so prevalent that after a “red carpet” interview Sunday during the MTV awards pre-show, one of the hosts joked about looking forward to reading Tyler’s homophobic tweets about the interview. (This, of course, after Tyler put the microphone up to the hosts mouth as if he was performing fellatio.)
“I’m not homophobic. I just think ‘faggot’ hits and hurts people. It hits. And ‘gay’ just means you’re stupid. I don’t know, we don’t think about it, we’re just kids. We don’t think about that shit. But I don’t hate gay people. I don’t want anyone to think I’m homophobic,” Tyler told NME in an interview earlier this year after the group the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said it would be “monitoring his lyrics more closely.”
“Well, I have gay fans and they don’t really take it offensive, so I don’t know. If it offends you, it offends you,” Tyler told MTV News of his gay slurs. “If you call me a n—a, I really don’t care, but that’s just me, personally. Some people might take it the other way; I personally don’t give a sh–.”
But regardless of his intent, the words are still problematic.
“Whether or not Tyler the Creator intends to offend gay people is irrelevant. The reality is that anti-gay slurs are harmful,” GLAAD’s Kimberley McLeod told Colorlines.com. ”They have the power to fuel intolerance and hostility. It’s an irresponsible message for him to send to his young fans,” McLeod continued.
Canadian indie-band, twin-sister duo Tegan and Sara wrote a call to action in May for journalists and colleagues that celebrated Tyler’s music. Their message is one MTV execs should take a look at:
When will misogynistic and homophobic ranting and raving result in meaningful repercussions in the entertainment industry? When will they be treated with the same seriousness as racist and anti-Semitic offenses? While an artist who can barely get a sentence fragment out without using homophobic slurs is celebrated on the cover of every magazine, blog and newspaper, I’m disheartened that any self-respecting human being could stand in support with a message so vile.
Tyler’s response?
H/T to Towleroad
Ghana’s Growing Gay Pride Faces Now-Familiar Evangelical Backlash
05 months ago
On particular midweek nights, throngs of men and women gather at a few particular clubs to dance the night away to pulsating beats, and sometimes live music. The men dance provocatively close to each other, with reckless abandon. The few women around do the same with each other. Kisses are even exchanged.
At seaside dance parties where beer and reggae flow to all and sundry, it’s no longer uncommon for men and women in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, to test the waters and try to pick up companions of the same sex. Even in conservative Ghana, it seems that gays and lesbians are taking steps out in the public domain, at least at night.
But like elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, a backlash to that new openness has erupted as well. Since late May, it has spilled out onto the radio. Hours are spent debating whether gays should be allowed to exist here. Then Ghanaians wake up to national headlines screaming that gays and lesbians are dirty and sinful and ought to be locked up.
The pattern is becoming a familiar one throughout sub-Saharan Africa. As evangelical Christianity has seen its fastest growth on the continent, gay communities have simultaneously grown more open. The parallel developments have led to a growing list of countries in which politicians and media outlets have both incited and exploited social panic around sexuality. In the late 1990s, a beleaguered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe drew global attention as he invited violence against gay people and blamed the country’s growing troubles on the European deprivation he said they symbolized. Since then, similar moments have struck in places stretching across the continent. Most recently, Uganda has been embroiled in controversy over a proposed law that would, among other things, allow the death penalty as a punishment for homosexuality. The authors of that law are closely tied to the U.S. religious right.
Now, this West African nation is having its own gay-dialogue moment and, once again, much of it has been unsavory, with religious leaders and some politicians stoking the flames.
“Gay bashing had never been a feature of the Ghanaian social landscape until, oh, I would say the last 10-15 years. And it came with the evangelical Christians,” says Nat Amartefio, 67, a historian, lifelong resident and former mayor of Accra.
“It’s these evangelicals who are looking for Satan everywhere, in everybody’s drawers, who have created this specter of an expanding gay universe. In all fairness, maybe they see things that those of us who are not involved cannot see. But they are the ones who are driving this hysteria,” Amartefio adds.
The recent hysteria began when a front-page article in the Daily Graphic, Ghana’s largest circulation newspaper, claimed that organizations doing health work in two regions had “registered” 8,000 gays–many supposedly infected with HIV. The claim was taken from a participant in a workshop for health workers to assist them in dealing with patients with sexually transmitted infections, particularly HIV. The U.S. government, through its Agency for International Development, sponsored the training.
Religious leaders took to the radio to denounce the gays and ask the government to intervene, with one cleric saying he didn’t want Almighty Allah to destroy Africa. The Bureau of National Intelligence claimed it was investigating, and one Presbyterian leader branded gays as “unbiblical, un-African, abnormal and filthy.”
Each week in June brought a slew of new headlines with one legislator, David Tetteh warning that gays could be lynched like robbers.
”You cannot trace this act to any of the settings in Ghana. So this is foreign and I am I saying that Ghanaians cherish our culture a lot so for anybody to adulterate the cultural setting in Ghana … I have the fear that people could take the law into their hands in future and deal with this people drastically,” he suggested to a local journalist.
The “un-African” claim has recurred in each anti-gay backlash that’s hit the content, despite mounds of historical research showing that, in fact, gay and lesbian people have been part of many African cultures for centuries. Rather, homophobia was imported with European colonialism–and today’s growth in evangelical Christianity. Amartefio and other noted Ghanaian intellectuals have pointed out that gay men have been in the society from time immemorial and are sometimes referred to as ‘Kodjo Besia.’
Despite the rhetoric, Amartefio believes the moment will pass quietly. He doesn’t expect a “kill the gays” bill like what was proposed in Uganda. “I don’t believe it will lead to an open pogrom. There just are so many gays in this society who are in all walks of life, in all stations of society who don’t draw any attention because nobody is looking out for them.”
But the daily newspapers trumpeted a different perspective–the voices of those most virulently opposed to sexual freedom. Breda Atta-Quayson, a Daily Graphic deputy editor who wrote many of the headlines that had “Homos” in bold type, says the paper has no anti-gay agenda but wants the issue discussed openly.
“Unfortunately the stories we are getting are the ‘negative’ ones. But it’s not that we are putting it there because we are anti-gay,” he told Colorlines.com. “That is why we have refrained from even writing editorials. We wanted it to be in the public domain for discussion.”
Nana Banyin Dadson, a senior editor at Graphic Communications, adds that interest is high. “Editors are supposed to have a pulse of readership. It is what is strange that sells. It’s strange because this is the first time that it has come up as a subject of discussion openly.”
Against the onslaught from the religious leaders in the media, however, very few voices for LGBT rights could be heard.
One popular radio journalist, Ato Kwamena Dadzie, spoke out and devoted two articles supporting Ghana’s gay community. The response was vitriolic. He was called gay himself and many wrote in response that was the reason he had gone through a divorce.
“One of the jobs of the journalist is to give voice to the voiceless and one of the most deprived people in this country–in terms of voice–is the gay community in the country and I’m more than delighted to speak for them,” Dadzie says.
The former country director of Journalist for Human Rights adds that the piling on is a direct result of poverty. “If I struggle to get one meal a day and I have a band of homosexuals coming into my community and I’ve been told that this band of homosexuals cause God to come and take away the single plate of food that I have, I would fight,” Dadzie says.
Ghana has a high unemployment and nearly 30 percent of the populace lives below the poverty line, according to figures from the CIA World Factbook.
Accra resident Atta-Quayson, 59, says the frenzied coverage is ultimately good. “This topic is going to lead into a liberal society. Now that it is coming to the fore, a lot of people will want to find out what it is. Even though the religious right is so anti-gay.”
Dadzie believes that as the country grows more prosperous, society will be more open. He’s putting together a “coalition of the willing” to challenge the current interpretation of the unlawful carnal knowledge law, which criminalizes homosexual sex acts.
“We’re not going to get to the point of same sex marriages soon, but we’d get to a point where people will decide, ‘He’s gay so what.’ Maybe when I’m dead and gone we can get to same sex marriages,” Dadzie jokes, “but I’ll be surprised if in my lifetime we talk about same sex marriages in this country.”
Still, gay Ghanaians interviewed by Colorlines said they are waiting for the government to offer some protection and leadership in turning down the volume.
“This is what we are praying for,” says one corporal in the army, who has lived with a partner for two years. They would like to move openly into the barracks one day, where the accommodation is free. But for now, freedom on the dance floor is the only option.
Frankie Edozien is a New York City-based journalist who is the director of New York University’s Reporting Africa program.
Federal Health Officials Push ‘Strength Through Affirmation’ of Black Gay Men
05 months ago
When the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest estimates of HIV infection earlier this month, it made unexpected headlines with a startling finding: 30 years into the epidemic, researchers have found a burgeoning epidemic among young black gay and bisexual men. This week, at the agency’s massive annual convening of HIV prevention scientists and experts, federal health officials rolled out a rare national campaign targeting black gay men.
According to the CDC, new infections among black gay and bisexual men under 30 years old shot up by 48 percent in recent years, rising from an estimated new 4,500 infections in 2006 to an estimated 6,500 in 2009. The findings–which also confirmed the U.S. continues to log 50,000 new cases a year overall, roughly half of which are among African Americans–prompted many to ask the perennial question: Why is this happening and what can be done about it?
The CDC has pointed to several factors, including limited access to both HIV testing and sexual health education, stigma surrounding HIV and homosexuality that has gone unchallenged in communities of color and a higher incidence rate of other sexual transmitted illnesses, which have been show to facilitate transmission of HIV.
But many prevention experts say it’s also a result of public health’s slow start on specifically targeting gay and bisexual men of color with efforts that speak to their lives and their needs. “We’ve been behind about 10 years,” says Heriberto Sanchez Soto, executive director of the Hispanic AIDS Foundation.
“The initial response to HIV prevention was largely targeted at gay, white, and upper middle class, who were very well-connected socially and politically,” Soto adds. “It was only when it was recognized that we had an epidemic emerging in IV drug users that African-American and Latino women, by association, emerged as a huge group of those infected. Black men who have sex with men populations began to be addressed afterward, but we still fail to recognize youth in this equation.” (Public health researchers often use the term “men who have sex with men” as a broad term to encompass gay and bisexual men as well as those who reject gay identity but still have same-sex relationships.)
Presently, one of the biggest concerns for prevention campaigns of all sorts is funding. Federal and state budgets have significantly reduced HIV-prevention for the 2011 fiscal year and beyond, limiting the chance that programs targeting communities of color are funded.
Nor can organizations doing prevention work count on private funders and donors to fill the gaps, says Soto. “While there are a number of two-to-three year grants available, there are not enough to fund every program,” he explains, “and once they end, many organizations cannot sustain their operating budgets.”
CDC officials said in a press briefing at this week’s HIV prevention conference that it will meet the increasing budget constraints by targeting resources where they are most urgently needed. That includes a national campaign to encourage HIV testing among black gay and bisexual men, and to counter both homophobia and stigma around HIV among black men. Richard Wolitski, a deputy director in the CDC’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Division, spoke with Colorlines.com about the Testing Makes Us Stronger campaign and the CDC’s concern over the increase in HIV infection rates among black gay and bisexual men.
Why is the Testing Makes Us Stronger campaign significant as an effort of the CDC to reach black gay and bisexual men?
Wolitski: Testing is a critical part of what we can do to reduce HIV risk because knowing one’s status is important in order to get medical care and treatment for their infection. The CDC has shown that people who know their status engage in behaviors that significantly reduce risk for others of contracting HIV.
And the reality, based on 2008 data out of the National Behavioral Surveillance System surveying 21 major urban areas, is that 59 percent of black men who have sex with men who tested positive for HIV were unaware of their status.
The testing campaign uses images that show black gay men alone and as couples. How was the visual design conceived? Why is this particular design so useful?
Wolitski: Testing Makes Us Stronger builds on the strengths of young black gay and bisexual men. This campaign was developed based on extensive input by a panel of 19 black men who have sex with men who are leaders in their community. The CDC then used these recommendations to expand the formative research to develop images and final concept for final campaign with 400 men participating by the end.
We believe that the message of this campaign is affirming. We wanted to show black gay couples who are loving and supportive and, at the same time, we wanted to document a diverse range of strong men in community. We hope to show that their isn’t one idealized form of masculinity but men who represent different forms of strength that come from a place of affirmation.
What role, if any, is social media playing in shaping this campaign?
Wolitski: In our initial research phase, we looked at the different types of channels and sources of information for black men who have sex with men. Clearly social media is one of the major ways that particularly younger men are getting information, so it was a no-brainer that we want to maximize use of social media. While we’re primarily utilizing Facebook and Twitter, we’re also working with bloggers to get banner ads placed on websites that are frequented by younger black men who have sex with men. We also think it is vital to reach out to larger black community to get everyone more invested in this issue.
How does the campaign respond to the role of homophobia and discrimination that have been shown to increase rates of HIV infection?
Wolitski: I think it would be naïve to assume any one campaign could undo years of damage related to homophobia and discrimination that black men have experienced. But we hope that this campaign will show the positive aspects of the black gay community. Ideally it would play a small role in breaking down these issues in the community. Part of why we think Testing Makes Us Stronger can be successful is that the models chosen in this campaign are real people. Our hope is that black gay and bisexual men and others outside of this community will be able to relate. Through this, we hope they can feel a connection to their experiences and struggles.
Let’s the shift the focus more specifically on youth, who suffer from the highest rates of new HIV infections. In particular, CDC showed in a 2009 survey that eight out of 10 students were harassed at school and one out of five had been physically assaulted. How does this data relate to HIV infection?
Wolitski: It’s clear that bullying, harassment and rejection lead to higher rates of HIV infection. Those that suffer from bullying at school are far more likely to experience depression, suicide attempts and engage in unprotected sex, which increases HIV infection risk. The same has been shown for families who reject LGBT youth. Our data here have shown they are three times more likely to engage in unprotected sex.
What ways can we begin to combat these specific types of discrimination?
Wolitski: The CDC offers a website with links to resources for youth, families, administrators and school educators. But we recognize that we’re not going to erase homophobia and discrimination overnight. Respect and building strength of LGBT youth must begin at home and include the broader educational community as well, centered around policies that help reduce bullying and discrimination. There is not one single approach that will solve all of the problems related to homophobia.
Right now we face challenging economic times, with budget cuts and higher rates of unemployment, poverty and homelessness. Can you speak more to these challenges?
Wolitski: Unfortunately, we’ve found that higher rates of HIV prevalence can be attributed to unemployment [2.6 percent vs. 1 percent of those who are employed], poverty [2.3 percent vs. 1 percent of those employed above the federal poverty level] and homelessness [3.1 percent vs. 1.7 percent who are not homeless; see study here].
At the same time, people are making hard decisions, given that we face a large debt. Particularly state and local governments are making hard decisions about the efforts that they have to support HIV prevention. We’ve seen dramatic reductions in state and local funding for HIV prevention as well as a growing number of people living with HIV being put on waiting lists for treatments.
Is there a silver lining to all of this? What specifically can be done to overcome all of these challenges?
Wolitski: It’s important to take a big picture perspective. We’re seeing many fewer newer HIV infections now versus those occurring in the mid ’90s. In particular, we’ve greatly reduced rates of transmission between mother and child and among injection drug use. And while there are budget cuts, the Obama administration has consistently shown strong support for HIV prevention efforts and this is reflected in the president’s budget request for 2012.
Yes, the number of infections is much too high. But it’s not 1986. In those early days there wasn’t any funding at all. What I saw during that time is a community coming together to raise awareness on HIV while demanding action and accountability. Today that sense of community ownership is lacking. The reality is we all have to be doing a better job to help turn this epidemic around.