Tooting My Own Horn

The interview I did with Representative Jared Polis (D-CO), a.k.a. one of my favorite people ever, is now online at Campus Progress. In researching (rather exhaustively) Polis’s career in preparation for this interview, I definitely found a good chunk of issues on which I disagree with him. But anyone who champions education, environmentalism, and of course equal rights for LGBT Americans still gets my support. What’s more, he’s funny and personable, and didn’t treat me like a kid. For that reason, this interview is my favorite thing I’ve ever done in the year-plus I’ve worked for Campus Progress.

I’m making an effort to step outside the LGBT bubble and cover other issues affecting young progressives—just as Polis, I think, would like to further his work on the wide variety of issues that are addressed by the House instead of having to devote so much time to being one of only three point people on LGBT issues. But I’m so grateful that my summer job affords me the opportunity to meet and talk to people like Polis who, whatever their way of dealing with LGBT identity politics, represent incredible advances in diversity and equal representation in our country’s most august institutions. Fifty or so years ago, Polis, as a federal employee, would probably have been fired on the basis of his sexual orientation. Yesterday, I saw him stand at a press conference with Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, all three of them able not just to be out but to introduce a bill that, if signed into law, will ensure that such things won’t happen again. What’s the line about the arc of history bending towards justice?

QOTD (2009-06-24)

Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO), speaking to me in an interview yesterday:

You know, the more Congress can look like our country, in general: we need more women around here, we need more minorities, we need more gays and lesbians. Congress can function best when it reflects the broad diversity of our country.

That whole interview will be up at Campus Progress tomorrow, and I’ve been doing plenty of other reporting these past couple days. Expect something early next week-ish on topics related to this afternoon’s Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) press conference, where I got to ask Barney Frank a question! (That’s still the most exciting thing that’s happened in my life recently.)

Also something on health care and university adjunct faculty. Because hey, I need to write about something that isn’t gay.

Responding to Comments

Last week (God, was that really last week? How time flies), I wrote an article about Facebook reinforcing gender binarism. It got an unusually large number of hits for a CP article, as it was linked, to my pleasant surprise, at Bilerico, Feministing, and Queerty. But all that traffic meant that I got a lot of critical comments on the article, and this was really my first experience dealing with the humbling, no-holds-barred experience of anonymous people on the Internet telling you frankly what they think about something you’ve worked hard at. At my editor’s urging, yesterday I wrote a response to the 20 comments on the article itself, and it took me nearly two hours to write these four or so paragraphs. I don’t usually have that much difficulty writing something like this, but since I spent so much time on it yesterday I thought I might as well repost that comment here:

Hi all,

Thanks very much for offering your thoughts! As the author of this article, I wanted to respond in a general fashion to some of the issues you raised in your comments.

Firstly, it seems as if there’s a prevailing sentiment that Facebook and its attitudes toward gender identity are not as important as some issues that Campus Progress could be covering. While I can certainly see that Facebook seems trivial, I decided to write about it because this issue is a good example of how gender is represented in our culture—that is, binarily, in a way that conflates it with the differing concept of biological sex. Facebook is also overwhelmingly populated by users under the age of 30—the group that is meant to be more progressive than ever before on social issues such as same-sex marriage, and yet is perhaps less aware of the more theoretical and perhaps less political aspects of gender identity and our culture’s often-gender-essentialist nature. My belief is that, while this issue may not have as convenient a political application as something like same-sex marriage, it is no less essential to understand. Moreover, this article hasn’t caused Campus Progress to lessen its coverage of issues such as health care and the environment—we continue to address a wide variety of issues important to young progressives.

To those who believe I misleadingly conflated sex and gender: if my writing was anything less than clear, I apologize. I am well aware of the distinction between those two concepts and it wasn’t my intention to confuse them. However, the problem, as commenter JD helpfully pointed out, is that Facebook is conflating sex and gender, which can lead to some very confusing language and difficulty in rendering Facebook’s own definitions in terms of modern gender theory rhetoric. I do certainly grant that I could have tried harder to lessen the confusion, though.

And to those who believe that this issue is a non-issue because Facebook users are not obligated to list a sex, or who believe that it could be easily solved by adding an “intersex” or “both” or “neither” option: it’s not as simple as that. Just as sexual orientation is often conceived of in broader terms than “straight/gay/bisexual,” gender identity has as many gradations as there are people. While this article was more intended to raise awareness of how websites like Facebook implement a binary understanding of gender than to hand Facebook a policy proposal, I believe it would be best to have either a fill-in field or no field at all. The most progressive way to treat people is to allow them to define themselves, rather than attempting to choose their labels for them.

I understand that the way I addressed identity and its social constructions in this article may seem reductive to people more familiar with august writers who advance more complex academic theories of gender. I was writing with the knowledge that Campus Progress is not a publication dedicated to queer issues, and so its readers may very well be new to thinking about gender in an abstract way—as, perhaps, some of these comments indicate. I had hoped that the words and experiences of the people I interviewed for this article might have helped deal with this problem of writing to a variety of levels of familiarity—but if they didn’t, I’m happy to self-promote the personal essay I wrote last February which gave me the idea for this article, and which deals with more theoretical issues. (It’s posted on my personal website here.)

If you’re interested in discussing this any further, feel free to contact me.

Emily Rutherford
Editorial Intern and Staff Writer
CampusProgress.org

QOTD (2009-06-16)

From a post at The Bilerico Project:

In just the past two days, our nation’s capital has went from RuPaul, Martha Wash and Capital Pride to a smackdown on LGBTQ issues. From the D.C. Board of Elections just saying NO to a proposed voter referendum suspending recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere to the allegations that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he does not have ANY senator willing to sponsor the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – this town is hitting the ceiling on the perceived betrayal of the Democratically-controlled executive and legislative branches of government.

And I’ve been right here in the middle of it, covering Pride and starting some research on DOMA for Campus Progress, reading all the blogs, spending day after day right in the middle of the discussions over LGBT rights that are going down in this town. I know that my schedule next week is going to put me even more in the middle of things. And it’s so bizarre to think that I actually am doing what I read about. In however small and insignificant a capacity, I work in Washington, covering the things I know and am passionate about.

I keep apologizing to my editor for covering too much LGBT stuff, keep promising her I’ll branch out. But at the same time, I like being able to be an expert on something, and I like staying in the middle of things. DC Pride was one of the coolest events I’ve ever attended, and I’m glad that it feeds back into my work and that my work in turn feeds into the most up-to-date conversations about important public issues that matter to me. I’m a very, very lucky person indeed.

(For frivolity’s sake, here’s a picture of RuPaul from Pride):
RuPaul

One Thought on Iran

I was sitting outside at a café, eating breakfast, and a contingent of what looked like a few hundred people marched by, many wearing green and many more carrying Iranian flags, chanting “Give us our votes!” Some people were singing a song in what I took to be Farsi. I took a picture on my cell phone, though it didn’t come out too well:

I am always glad to see expressions of political outrage in physical space (not just in internet-space), and I was also glad to see that there are people living in America who are personally invested in the tragic and messed-up situation in Iran. As I said before, I don’t feel that I’m sufficiently informed to comment in much detail about the Iranian situation, but I am glad that there are people in America supporting the Iranian people who appear to have been disenfranchised on an unbelievable scale. This sort of emotional link between countries that on the face of it could not seem more different is a good thing to have.

Dissent of the Day

(My apologies, first off, for not covering the truly most important story of the weekend—the Iran elections. I can’t top the coverage of real bloggers, though, so I might as well talk about things where I can make a legitimate contribution to the discourse.)

That said: at Bilerico, Monica Roberts writes:

Since today is Flag Day, starting like yesterday, the TBLG community should make sure Old Glory is front and center at every protest, every march, and the backdrop at every press conference that’s held from now until the next electoral showdown in 2010 and beyond.

One factor as to why the GLBT community continues to lose is that it hasn’t forcefully made the unassailable case that we are AMERICANS who deserve and are demanding our constitutional rights.

And how do we do that? The easiest way to prove that we are is by flying the flag.

[…]

Face the facts that no American civil rights movement agitating for the constitutional rights of a minority group has been successful or done so without consistently flying and prominently displaying the American flag at its myriad events.

[…]

Failing to fly it makes the rights case a non starter with persuadable people who do believe in mom, apple pie, fairness, the American Dream and tear up when they hear the Star Spangled Banner.

And if you won’t do it for yourselves, do it for the TBLG veterans who served and the GLBT service members who died defending it on foreign soil so you can use it.

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree on this one. I am as patriotic as the next person, and I wouldn’t be devoting so much of my time and energy to writing and thinking about LGBT rights if I didn’t believe in fighting for American constitutional principles such as equality under the law. However, my experience with the Stars and Stripes is, I sense, a very different one from Roberts’: as someone from a younger generation whose first real political memory was the outpouring of empty gestures of patriotism in the wake of September 11, I am cynical about the use of the flag to make a “we are all Americans” point to folks who might not otherwise be on board with LGBT rights. My experience with the flag in middle and high school in a predominantly conservative neighborhood is that it was used to shame me and mock me, to call me un-American because I did not reflexively display it or engage in other apparently patriotic gestures. To me, the American flag represents little—and I don’t believe that makes me any less American or any less a patriot; I don’t believe that it means I have any less support for the men and women in the armed forces or that I believe any less in the ideals of freedom and equality. It just means that, to me, the flag does not represent those ideals.

I’m not any more enthusiastic about the rainbow flag; I’m really just not a flag-waving kind of gal. But I suspect I’m not the only person out there for whom the American flag represents something more exclusionary than inclusionary, and for whom singing all the verses of “This Land Is Your Land” is a more meaningful patriotic gesture than displaying the American flag. Of course, one of those great American ideals I’m going on about is the freedom of expression, and I wouldn’t dream for an instant to suggest that Ms. Roberts, if she is so inclined, should not bring an American flag to any rallies, demonstrations, or celebrations she attends. But I also bristle at the suggestion that all of us should be doing the same, because for me (and granted, this is a very personal reaction) the last thing that I want to do is to brandish a piece of cloth because it means something to someone else that it does not mean to me.

QOTD (2009-06-12)

A letter from Charles L. Schultze (LBJ’s Director of the Bureau of the Budget and later Carter’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers) to Senator John McClellan (D-AK), as quoted in the Congressional Record, 16 August 1974:

The evidence emphatically refutes the popularly held view that government deficits and profligate government spending are the chief causes of recent inflation: and (2) under current conditions a substantial cut in federal spending would add to unemployment and virtually guarantee a serious recession, without significantly reducing the rate of inflation in the next year.

Budget Director Roy Ash has been quoted (New York Times, June 27, 1974) as estimating that a $5 billion reduction in federal spending would reduce the inflation rate by only one-tenth of one percent. Such a reduction, however, could be expected over the course of a year, to add perhaps 200,000 people to the ranks of the unemployed. A larger budget cut might reduce the rate of inflation by another fraction, but it could well tip the scales of an already precarious economic situation into a new recession and swell the unemployment rolls by a much greater number.

I love it when history is relevant to current events. I’m not going to be a political or economic historian, most likely, but finding things like this—or, for example, turning on C-SPAN or MSNBC and seeing the regulation debates of the ’70s and ’80s echoed in today’s discussions about the auto industry or the banks—makes me feel like I’m doing something valuable by intending to study history.

The DOJ and DOMA and … Outrage?

Today, this happened:

Now, in a legal brief submitted to a federal judge, Obama’s Department of Justice, writing in the name of the United States government, whose CEO is Barack Obama, argues that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act is appropriate, carefully balanced and justified by reason, and not by animus toward gay people. A lot of the same rhetoric used to justify actual discrimination against gays is cited in the brief as a reason why DOMA is necessary. (Child abuse precedents, all of that.) The brief even resorts to the argument that DOMA doesn’t deny gays anything because they’re still entitled to all the benefits that heterosexuals get — if they act heterosexually. The brief also suggests that gays accessing federal benefits will be free riders.

Needless to say, studied silence by gay groups, who have been counseled by the White House to be patient, seems to giving way to out-loud expressions of anger. (That this weekend marks DC Pride shouldn’t be overlooked; gay people are in a mood to celebrate their status as persons.)

I’m starting to get just a little cynical about basically anything the federal government has to say about LGBT rights—I barely blinked when this news came out earlier this afternoon. I don’t even know quite what to say in response to it now, but I feel as if I should because the blogosphere is so angry. It’s very weird: here I am living and working in Washington, DC, at a progressive think tank. I see more LGBT people in my work environment and just walking around (despite the fact that I live in Georgetown!) than I do in any of the other places I’ve lived. This weekend, I will indeed be going to Capital Pride, celebrating my status as a person. And it makes sense to me, somehow, that there are still battles in Princeton or in my neighborhood in San Diego. It makes sense to me that there are still battles in red states and in the more rural areas of blue states. But I look around Washington and I see such a major disconnect between real life in this city and the policy of the governing bodies that operate here—something which I suspect will only become more apparent at Pride this weekend. I just can’t wrap my mind around how out-of-date the policies of the Washington government are, so out-of-sync with the real world of Washington or indeed of America.

This reminds me of the historians’ brief in Lawrence v. Texas (which I’ve discussed before), or that in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (the MA marriage decision), or any number of other arguments supporting LGBT equality legislation or court rulings over the years: popular sentiment moves ahead of the government, it seems, and the government needs to be told that it’s behind the times and now needs to catch up. It’s the same with the data suggesting that an overwhelming majority of Americans support the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: I know that in reference to LGBT issues, the military has repeatedly said that it does not move ahead of the arc of social progress, but how can the presidential administration maintain that LGBT soldiers are a threat to “unit cohesion” when the arc of social progress has moved so far beyond that stance?

I ramble; it’s the end of a long first work week and my mind has turned to jelly. I guess that the thing is, I’m not outraged, as I have been outraged before by homophobia-prompted suicides, by hate crimes, by even op-eds in the Daily Princetonian. I’m just confused, by this most recent DOMA stance and by everything that seems to happen on the federal level these days. Maybe this is just my little gay microcosm, and maybe I’m just delusional, but it seems to me as if policies which enshrine the belief that LGBT Americans are somehow abnormal or fundamentally different from their straight compatriots are desperately out of sync with the real world as I know it.

UPDATE: Sullivan has more, including the text of the brief in question, and it’s even more alarming. I haven’t read the brief yet, but I will, and I’ll be sure to rant about it, never fear. How strange, it bears repeating, to juxtapose this with this weekend’s Capital Pride.

Obama Recognizes Pride Month

This is actually really awesome—from a PDF linked at The Atlantic, which I’m going to quote in full:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release June 1, 2009

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009

– – – – – – –

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country’s response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration — in both the White House and the Federal agencies — openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in
me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine,
and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

# # #

I’m not really going to start jumping up and down until we get some action on DADT, DOMA, ENDA, etc. But when was the last time you saw a president issue a proclamation like that? Oh yeah—Obama’s the first one. Well done him.

Happy Memorial Day

The best way to support our troops is to ensure that no more of them have to die in Afghanistan and Iraq. In honor of Memorial Day and all our men and women in uniform, here’s Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and friends singing Pete Seeger’s song “Bring ‘Em Home” at Pete’s 90th birthday concert a few weeks ago:

This song got Pete banned from television when he played it on the Smothers Brothers show at the height of the Vietnam War. And it seems relevant, perhaps, to quote from a Memorial Day post by a very dear college master of mine:

I wonder if, on a day slated to honor the noble sacrifices of fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, you and I might make room as well to honor the silent inclinings of the hidden heart, along with more conspicuous and civic movements, to avoid the necessity for those sacrifices in the first place.

Amen.