Tracey Cooper-Harris, highly decorated Army veteran, denied spousal benefits because she is lesbian

Los Angeles, California – A highly decorated lesbian veteran of the U.S. Army is being denied disability benefits because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and today the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed an important lawsuit to challenge DOMA on her behalf. Tracey Cooper-Harris served with honor in the U.S. Army for 12 years, and received an honorable discharge in 2003 after having received more than two dozen medals and commendations.  But because she married a person of her own sex in California, a perfectly legal marriage still in force, the United States government is denying her and her spouse Maggie equal disability benefits to those heterosexual spouses are receiving.

Cooper-Harris, who achieved the rank of Sergeant for her service in Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, was diagnosed in 2010 with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a disabling disease of the brain and central nervous system for which there is no known cure. Government doctors determined that Cooper-Harris contracted MS as a result of her military service. Faced with a daunting future, she is trying to get her affairs in order as any responsible spouse would. Cooper-Harris received individual disability benefits, but since DOMA is still federal law, the government says that she and her spouse are not eligible for the spousal benefits her service truly entitles them too–all because of anti-gay discrimination, even after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).

Cooper-Harris said, “I dedicated 12 years of my life to serving the country I love. I’m asking only for the same benefits the brave men and women who served beside me enjoy. By refusing to recognize our marriage, the federal government has deprived Maggie and me of the peace of mind that such benefits are meant to provide to veterans and their families.”

The federal lawsuit, Cooper-Harris vs. United States, filed February 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, challenges the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the laws governing the Veterans Affairs policy that denies equal treatment before the law for Cooper-Harris and other married same-sex persons in the nation. Christine P. Sun, Deputy Legal Director of the SPLC, said, “The government’s refusal to grant these benefits is a slap in the face to the gay and lesbian service members who put their lives on the line to protect our nation and our freedoms. Especially given the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it’s shocking that the federal government continues to demean Tracey’s years of service and the service of many others in this way.”  The case is being litigated on Cooper-Harris’s behalf pro bono (at no charge) by the SPLC.

Tyrone Garner (l) and John Lawrence celebrate Lawrence v. Texas.

Houston, Texas – Lawrence v. Texas, set in motion by a couple of accidental gay activists, broke the back of anti-sodomy laws in the United States. What they did amounts to the “Brown v. Board of Education for gay and lesbian America,” according to Harvard constitutional law expert, Laurence Tribe.  Yet when John Geddes Lawrence, aged 68, died on November 20 of heart disease at his home in Houston, no mention of the landmark Supreme Court decision was made in the obituary or at his funeral.  Tyrone Garner, the other half of this remarkable couple, had preceded Lawrence in death back in 2006. Only when a lawyer in the case, Mitchell Katine, called Lawrence to invite him to a ceremony commemorating the law-changing decision, did he receive word of Lawrence’s passing from his life-partner, according to the New York Times.  Katine let the rest of the world know that an inadvertent giant in the struggle of LGBTQ equality had died.

Lawrence and Garner were arrested on September 17, 1998 for sodomy in a private home by Houston Police.  The police had been called in to investigate a false weapons report by a jealous former lover of Lawrence’s, who admitted he had falsified the report as an act of revenge. Nonetheless, the arrest went down, and Lawrence and Garner, who had hooked up earlier that day, were thrust by events upon the stage of history.  Lawrence was angry at the arrest, feeling that his privacy had been violated unjustly. That anger was a fire in his belly that saw the case through lower courts to the U.S. Supreme Court for its decisive ruling of June 2003, striking down anti-sodomy laws in fourteen states.  Writing for five of the six Justices on the prevailing side, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared, “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state,” he continued, “cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”  A compilation of documents and the text of Lawrence v. Texas, provided by Justia.com, the U.S. Supreme Court Center, may be accessed here.

We cannot overestimate the significance of John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner’s decision to fight back against an unjust law.  So much hung in the balance. They were not professional activists, the rainbow-flag-waving kind.  They were simply two gay men, attracted to each other, whose right to privacy was trampled by a legal system that upheld a heterosexist status quo.  One black, one white, this gay couple set the wheels in motion for every forward step in human rights since 2003: the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2010, and its full implementation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and President Barack Obama in 2011, and the whole raft of same-sex marriage laws passed on the state level around the nation.

Professor Dale Carpenter, who wrote a recent book on Lawrence v. Texas, interviewed John Lawrence.  In conversation, this unassuming naval veteran and obstinate gay man asked Carpenter, “Why should there be a law passed that only prosecutes certain people? Why build a law that only says, ‘Because you’re a gay man you can’t do this. But because you’re a heterosexual, you can do the same thing’?”  Tyrone Garner told the Houston Chronicle in 2004 that he took quiet pride in the role he played in history.  “I don’t really want to be a hero,” Garner said. “But I want to tell other gay people, ‘Be who you are, and don’t be afraid.’ ”

Sometimes a couple of men get mad, and dig in, and the world changes.  That is what the LGBTQ community owes John Lawrence and Tyrone Garner. Because of their courage, the United States justice system has changed forever.

Phyllis Lyon, hero of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement

Today is Phyllis Lyon’s 87th birthday, and we at the Unfinished Lives Project pause to celebrate her life and work as a pioneer of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement.  Born November 10, 1924 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Phyllis earned a journalism degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She, along with her spouse, Del Martin, founded the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco in 1955, the first lesbian social and political organization in the world, along with a handful of other courageous lesbians.  In 1956, Phyllis became the first Editor of the landmark lesbian paper, “The Ladder,” from 1956 until 1960 when Del took over from her.  In 1964, she and Del co-founded the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, bringing religious leaders together for the first time to address the roles of queer women and men in communities of faith, and to encourage faith groups to accept LGBTQ people.  She and Del were active in the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, and were the first lesbian couple to join the National Organization for Women (NOW). In the 1960s and ’70s, they used their influence to de-criminalize lesbian and gay behavior.  In 1995, the couple were prominently active in the White House Council on the Aging.

Coming out in the 1950s was tricky and dangerous.  Originally, Phyllis used the pseudonym “Ann Ferguson” in her writing and editorial work, but dropped it to come out openly and fully as an encouragement to all LGBTQ people to speak the truth as who we are.  Interviewed by young queer journalists during the 2009 National Equality March in Washington, D.C., Phyllis reflected on the courage it took to live openly as a lesbian or gay man in the Eisenhower Era. She told her teen interviewers for The Advocate, “The time was not the time when you could wear a sign that said, ‘Hi, I’m a lesbian, be friendly with me!’” 

Phyllis and Del met in Seattle in 1950, and became lovers in 1952. In 1953, they moved to San Francisco. In February 2004, they were issued a Marriage License by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, and were married–only to have their marriage dissolved by the California Supreme Court that same year.  Not to be denied, Phyllis and Del were the first couple to be legally married in San Francisco City Hall on June 16, 2008 once the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in the Golden State–in fact the only couple married that day by the mayor. Del passed away later that year.

Technician photo of hate attack on NC State LGBT Center

Raleigh, North Carolina –  A perp with an anti-gay agenda vandalized the North Carolina State University GLBT Center on Monday.  Though the university was quick to obscure the slurs spray painted on the outer door and display case of the center, the campus newspaper, The Technician, got a good photograph of the message the hate tagger sent to LGBTQ staff and students at State.  The words “Fags Burn” and “Die,” along with a broad slash across a wall display were sprayed in purple paint across the whole front of the center, which is in Harrelson Hall on the main campus.  Campus Police Sergeant Jeff Sutton told The Technician that the hate act took place between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm, when the vandalism was discovered. Adam Ward, a graduate advisor for the GLBT Center, and a graduate student at State in comparative biomedical science, wrote on a Facebook post, ”No one was able to see who sprayed-painted this, but believe me, there will be a University response. We will continue working with University Police, and I thank all of our community members and allies for standing up for equality and what’s right.”  On her Facebook page, Center Director Justine Hollingshead posted this assurance to the LGBTQ community on the State campus: “We are working on some positive follow up and of course education. Just wanted to keep folks in the loop. Thanks for all of the messages of support.”  Hollingshead was employed to lead the GLBT Center in 2008, and has built it into a vital player in forming campus opinion about diversity and inclusiveness issues.

Sergeant Sutton said that since this was an act of vandalism against property, it would be considered a hate incident, rather than a hate crime against an individual.  Campus police are reviewing video surveillance tapes for the identity of the perpetrator.

On Tuesday evening, a public meeting was called by the GLBT Center leadership to generate ideas about a proper response to this act of hatred.

Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, has been the guest of the NC State GLBT Center on two occasions, most recently in April of this year.  Dr. Sprinkle said, “This act of hate is not an isolated incident, in my opinion. North Carolina faces a divisive anti-same sex marriage ballot measure due to the work of extremist elements who took over the State Legislature in Raleigh for the first time since Reconstruction.” He continued,  ”Radical, right wing homophobia is more likely to be unleashed against the LGBTQ community during times of high publicity on sexual orientation and gender expression issues.  Vigilance and swift action to identify and prosecute the vandal or vandals is necessary to send the counter message that gays and lesbians will are no longer viable targets for violence in the South.  The leadership of the NC GLBT Center should be commended for working so quickly to involve the campus community in education for justice and moderation in the wake of this disturbing incident.  Hate speech links up to hate violence, and words like “Fags Burn” carry the situation to a whole new level in Raleigh.”

The anti-LGBTQ vandalism occurred a month after the North Carolina General Assembly moved its same-sex marriage ban for state-wide vote to the May 2012 primary ballot.  If passed, the provision pushed by the Republican majority in the Legislature not only would ban same-gender marriage, but would also strip domestic partner benefits from North Carolinians. Adam Miller, interim director of Equality North Carolina, issued this statement in response to the NC State vandal attack: “The passage of this amendment clearly sanctions other discriminatory acts against LGBT people and, in the process, creates a climate of fear for LGBT people, their families, their children, and all who love them,” Miller said. “This hateful act will only serve to draw attention to our efforts and push us to work even harder to inform the public about the dangers of anti-LGBT legislation to our state, our communities, and our young people.”

Charlie Howard Memorial desecration, prior to refurbishment

Bangor, Maine – Two weeks ago, unknown vandals spray-painted “Die Fag” on a memorial to hate crime murder victim Charles O. “Charlie” Howard. On Saturday, 75 people gathered to rededicate the newly cleaned and restored memorial beside the State Street Bridge in downtown Bangor, the site where 23-year-old Charlie was thrown to his death into the Kenduskeag Stream below.  Howard’s death by drowning at the hands of three youths from respected Bangor families shocked the town in July 1984. For twenty years controversy raged over whether and how to memorialize the young gay man’s death.  Finally, in 2009, a tasteful, unassuming granite memorial was erected at the State Street Bridge site. The Howard Memorial is the focal point of a small ornamental garden featuring tulips, hollyhocks, magnolia bushes, lilacs, cosmos and crabapple trees. Local and state social justice advocates made the murder of Charlie Howard a celebrated cause, bringing about the forerunner organization to today’s Equality Maine, and giving impetus to the drive for marriage equality for same-sex couples in recent years. His death pricked the conscience of Mainers in a way that has proved more productive for practical human rights advances in New England than the more well-known story of Matthew Shepard’s murder has ever effected in Wyoming and the Mountain West.  The Bangor Daily News reports that local residents were repulsed by the recent act of hate and vandalism.  Margaret “Miki” Macdonald, who lives in the neighborhood of the memorial, had gone to care for the flowers and weed the plot around the Howard Memorial as she had often done in the last two years, when she saw the angry words painted across the dedicatory plaque.  As Macdonald told the Daily News, “At first I couldn’t even read what it said.  I wasn’t sure if it was writing or just some random lines. Then when I saw what it said, I said, ‘God, that’s pathetic. How ridiculous for someone to do this.’ Just seeing that was disgusting.”  The act of desecration spurred local and state church and advocacy groups to action.  If the perpetrators, who are still at large, intended to scare the local populace and the LGBTQ community, they failed miserably. Now, in light of the community energy to remember and honor Charlie Howard, Macdonald says she can see something good coming out of the ugliness. “Actually, having something so offensive like that happen to the memorial made all these people regroup, and I think it’s rekindled our intention to encourage tolerance in our community,” she explained to Daily News staff reporter, Andrew Neff. “So in a way, it’s a good thing.” Diversity Day, observed annually in Bangor on Charlie Howard’s birthday, July 7, was established to promote acceptance of a whole range of human differences. This year, the words carved into the stone of his memorial will take on refreshed meaning: “May we, the citizens of Bangor, continue to change the world around us until hatred becomes peacemaking and ignorance becomes understanding.”

North Carolina Faith Leaders Speak Out

Raleigh, North Carolina – Outside the State Legislature on May 17th, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ right wing activists pushed their discriminatory agenda–but inside courageous faith leaders and legislators announced their opposition to a constitutional amendment that could prevent any legal recognition of same-sex couples in North Carolina.  According to Equality North Carolina, Marcus Brandon (D-Guilford) organized an impressive gathering of clergy who spoke passionately of their desire for North Carolina to remain open and tolerant, and who also announced how faith-based communities throughout the Tarheel State were mobilizing to defeat the anti-gay amendment to the state constitution.  At present, North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast not to enact anti-LGBTQ discrimination into its bylaws and constitution. Five faith leaders held an hour-long press conference in the Legislature Building to speak on the harms Senate Bill 106/House Bill 777 would impose on the citizens of the state. Rev. Anthony Spearman of Clinton Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Hickory said,  “This extreme legislation will only cause needless pain and suffering. It sends a message to major employers that North Carolina does not welcome a diverse workplace,” Spearman said. “It tells young people who are gay they’re second class citizens, unworthy of basic dignity and equal treatment…It is not fair and it is certainly not just.”  Bishop Toniya Rawls of Unity Fellowship Church in Charlotte said it is time for North Carolinians to show the nation “what type of a state we really are.”  Assistant Rabbi Ari Margolis of Raleigh’s Temple Beth Or, speaking for all who revere sacred scripture, said, “We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equality to gay and lesbian couples.”  Rev. Dr. Amy Laura Hall, an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church from Durham, warned, “Don’t let those selling fear on the cheap, buy your hearts.”  Rev. Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, Senior Minister of Charlotte’s Myers Park Baptist Church, drew on the heritage of justice handed down to Tarheels from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Referring to Dr. King’s dictum, that the long arc of history bends toward justice, Dr. Shoemaker announced that this same arc “also bends toward inclusiveness.”  The Clergy announced that over 300 faith leaders from across the state had already signed a declaration opposing the amendment, and invited every person of conscience to add their names to the growing list of fair-minded believers.  The document may be accessed here for signatures to be added, and reads as follows:

Declaration of Religious Leaders and People of Faith Against Anti-LGBT Legislation

l to r: Ted Olson and David Boies

San Francisco, CA – in a landmark decision, Judge Vaughn Walker of the federal bench handed down a keenly anticipated decision yesterday ruling Proposition 8, the 2008 plebiscite on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.  Walker found for the plaintiffs in the case, two same-sex couples, that barring their marriage under the provisions of Proposition 8 is a violation of their due process and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution.  The attorneys for the plaintiffs, conservative Republican and former Solicitor General of the United States, Ted Olson, and liberal Democrat, David Boies, who once opposed each other during the court battle over the election of George W. Bush in 2000, joined forces to argue to this conclusion.  On the Wednesday edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, Olson and Boies stated that “Equality is both a conservative and liberal issue.”  Their work to press for the overturn of the California law demonstrates that millions of allies for LGBT human rights are working alongside the gay community to win against discrimination in the United States.  The opposition has pledged to appeal the decision, which will ultimately go to the Supreme Court.  Pundits have preliminarily declared that Judge Walker, a President George H.W. Bush appointee to the federal bench, has done a powerful job of establishing the facts of the case–over 80 findings of fact that will make it hard to overturn his decision on appeal.  The Unfinished Lives Project is watching the effect this surge in publicity will have on hate crimes attacks against LGBT people in California and around the nation.  There is a well-established correlation between increased visibility and media coverage of LGBT issues, and violent backlash against vulnerable gay folk.  This landmark decision moves the LGBTQ community one step closer to a more peaceful, equal life for all the citizens of this republic.  The ruling, amounting to 138 pages, is a tour de force of judicial precision.  It is a page turner and worth reading in its entirety.  The entire decision may be found in .pdf by following this link: https://docs.google.com/fileviewid=16CwOdcVWzEocsoGYqbeC0s22vr6bX8udtW3iUe1ol1UZsFRqE3EglP4oFnm4&hl.

Images on hate mail sent to gay professor, John Koster photo for North County Times

San Marcos, CA – Authorities for the county, state, and federal governments launched a co-ordinated investigation last week into menacing postcards being sent to three gay Palomar College professors.  Since mid-2008, 20 postcards threatening murder have been sent to the trio, with 1o of these targeting Dr. Fergal O’Doherty, an open and out gay man who teaches English at the San Marcos campus.  O’Doherty said that FBI agents had contacted him on January 21, informing him that they are carrying out an investigation.  Sending threats through the U.S. Mail is an automatic federal offense.  O’Doherty told Morgan Cook, staff writer for the North County Times, that the cards sent to him have included images of sexual violence and death, the most disturbing of which showed skeletons engaged in sex acts with a repetitive caption reading “I’m glad I’m not dead” 10 times.  The tenth caption omitted the word “dead.”  One of the most recent cards Professor O’Doherty received shows a collage of pop culture images, a Nazi swastika, and a drawing of Elvis Presley sporting devil’s horns.  The caption on this postcard reads, “I want to go to Hell like Elvis.”  Authorities have not yet determined that these cards constitute a hate crime, but colleagues on the Palomar College campus are not waiting for such a determination.  They have founded a group to raise awareness of hate crimes and combat them before they are acted out, called the Palomar College Committee to Combat Hate.  Members of the group are committed to the human rights of LGBT people on the campus.  O’Doherty says that since he is one of the few openly homosexual professors at the 30,000 student community college, located 30 miles north of San Diego, his sexual orientation is probably the magnet for the hate mail.  From the variety of academic and pop culture icons incorporated into the cards, some as eminent as singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and author Ernest Hemingway, but also including relatively obscure philosophers, O’Doherty speculates that the person creating them is intelligent, well-read, and dangerous.  ”[The card-creator] mentions works by writers and philosophers that aren’t even assigned in undergrad classes,” he told the North County Times.  While this is not the first time O’Doherty and other gay faculty have been harassed for their sexual orientation, this is the first time officials have taken the threat seriously.  Even then, when the postcards started appearing, campus police refused to act, apparently believing that they were written by a harmless crank.  With over 13,000 documented violent crimes perpetrated against LGBT people throughout the nation in the decade prior to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in October 2009, and spiking numbers of anti-LGBT hate crimes in California where Proposition 8 and Marriage Equality are such hotly contested issues, the decision to launch an investigation is more than prudent on the part of law enforcement.  Prevention is possible only when the menace is taken seriously.  That is exactly what Professor O’Doherty knows to be true, as he shows his most recent death threat by mail to the press.

Anti-LGBT violence is up 28% in one year

As Stonewall 40 approaches next week, a New York-based coalition of anti-violence programs reports that bias crimes against LGBT people rose 28% from 2007 to 2008.  The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) confirms the grim trend Unfinished Lives has been reporting for months: hate crimes against members of the sexual minority are not only higher than at any time in a decade, but the degree of brutality in the execution of these crimes has also intensified.  Marcus Franklin of the Associated Press notes for the Huffington Post that the 29 confirmed bias-related murders of queer folk in 2008 reported by the NCAVP matches the number of similar killings it registered in its 1999 report.  The Unfinished Lives Project has noted dramatic increases in anti-LGBT murders and assaults since the latter part of 2008 in California, Michigan, Minnesota, and Tennessee, and has highlighted the extreme savagery of these attacks as in the case of 45 stab wounds in U.S. Army veteran Michael Scott Goucher’s murder in East Stroudsburg, PA, and Duanna Johnson’s shooting death in Memphis, TN.  The Huffpost article issued today quotes Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, which co-ordinates the NCAVP nationally with pointing to an increase of violence during the presidential campaign last fall, as well as ominous increases during the high-profile national debates over same-sex marriage, the possible passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and the proposed repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).  ”The more visibility there is the more likely we’re going to see backlash, and that’s exactly what we see here,” Stapel said.  Since the NCAVP reports anti-Transgender hate crimes in distinction from the annual FBI’s hate crimes report that does not, Stapel is able to reference a more accurate picture of the landscape of peril in which LGBT Americans find themselves.  Even so, organizations from only 25 of the 50 states report to the NCAVP, indicating that the

Duanna Johnson, Transwoman, murdered in Memphis

actual number of bias-related hate crimes against LGBT people may be much higher.  Additional factors arguing for higher numbers of these crimes than are reported by either the NCAVP or the FBI are the stigma and despair often associated with violent crimes against queer women and men.  Local law enforcement agencies tend to skew their investigations away from anti-gay or transgender motives as a reflection of the bias rampant in their home locales.  Victims often fear exposure and media scrutiny for themselves and their loved ones, and therefore do not report crimes against their persons.  LGBT victims are often discredited as sources of reliable information and are routinely blamed somehow for their own misfortune.  Finally, as the Unfinished Lives Project has noted in repeated instances, American heterosexism and homophobia have created a climate for LGBT people such that their lives and deaths are valued less than those of other people, causing reports of attacks and murders against them to be far less likely to gain attention.

The high-profile events surrounding Pride 2009 will be a tempting target for hate groups around the country.  At no time since the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998 has the public presence of LGBT people and their allies been more significant than this season.

The large crowd moved up Cedar Springs Road to TMC, The Mining Company, a popular gay bar on the strip with a large, street side patio, where the rally heard a number of powerful speeches protesting “separate but equal,” second-class status for LGBT Americans.

Dallas Queer LiberAction protest at the Legacy of Love column (Dallas Voice photo)

Police told WPBF television, an ABC affiliate, that Harris was shot 12 times at close range in a manner resembling an “assassination.”  Homophobia is under consideration as a motive for the murder, officers said.

Harriss grew up in Fredericksburg, Texas, in the Hill Country.  He was an enthusiastic water skier, and loved gardening, according to his high school classmate, Theresa Valenzuela, of Austin.  He had moved to Florida in 2007 to take a job with Best Western Motels.  Salvosa, a classical piano student, lived with him until his student visa expired, at which time he returned to his native home in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Harriss was tying up loose ends as quickly as he could in Delray Beach, so that he could find a job in Canada, go to live there in early summer, and marry his beloved.

Now Salvosa is returning to Florida to mourn Harriss and to oversee his memorial service.  Harriss wished to be cremated, and to have his ashes interred back in New Braunfels, Texas, a city between Austin and San Antonio.

Investigations into Harriss’ savage murder continue, and the Delray Police Department vow to follow all leads until the tragic mystery of this killing is resolved.

By a bipartisan vote of 24-14, the California Senate has approved May 22 as Harvey Milk Day, according to Advocate.Com.  Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States, was slain on November 27, 1978 by jealous San Francisco City Supervisor, Dan White, along with Mayor George Moscone. Milk’s murder rocked the gay rights world, and secured a martyr’s respect for the affable politician whose advice to all LGBT activists was “You gotta give ‘em hope!”  Milk would have been 79 this coming May 22, the choice of his birthday a deliberate effort to preserve his story and legacy for generations to come.

Harvey Milk Day will be a “Day of Significance” throughout the Golden State.  The designation differs from a state holiday in that state employees will not be given the day off, and state offices will not close.  Nonetheless, the action of the state Senate is unprecedented in recognizing the importance of Milk’s contribution to the struggle for human rights in general, and for LGBT rights in particular.  In view of the controversy surrounding same-sex marriage and Proposition 8, this first annual commemoration becomes even more timely.

Among those testifying in favor of the Harvey Milk Bill was Dustin Lance Black, who received an Academy Award for his screenplay of the film Milk, starring Sean Penn in the title role.  Black expressed his debt to Harvey Milk who kindled hope in him as a Mormon boy in Texas who was isolated and hedged in by anti-gay sentiment.  The sole Republican to join the Senate’s 23 Democrats to vote for the creation of Harvey Milk Day, Senator Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, credited Black’s testimony before the Senate Education Committee with causing him to flip his vote from “no” to “yes.” “I rarely get swayed by testimony,” Maldonado said.

Ventura County Star Editorial Cartoon on Prop 8

365gay reports a 300% increase in homophobic hate crimes in Santa Clara County, California, just south of San Francisco. Two years ago, 15% of hate crimes were designated as anti-LGBT in nature. Last year’s statistics showed a dramatic increase to 56% of all hate crimes in the county.

An official for the District Attorney’s Office said to reporters for the Mercury News, “Marriage equality and Proposition 8 have been in the news, and we have seen an increase of gay bashing.” Stats for the rest of California’s counties will be released in the Attorney General’s annual report on hate crimes, due out in July.

In November, the “Yes on 8” campaign prevailed at the polls, 52% to 48%. The California Supreme Court has heard arguments on both sides of the question concerning a repeal of Proposition 8 on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Also at stake are the 18,000 same-sex marriages carried already in the state. The judges have 90 days to issue a ruling.

In the meantime, the potential voting public in the Golden State remains sharply divided over the issue of same-sex marriage. A public opinion poll shows that 47% would now vote to maintain the ban. 48% report that they would vote to repeal Proposition 8.

Meanwhile, the bashings continue at a breathtaking rate. Stay tuned.

FBI Hate Crimes Statistics for 2007: Sexual-orientation bias related crimes are up 18%.* National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs disputes these statistics, claiming a 24% increase, at least. The official report says that in 2007, law enforcement agencies reported 1,460 hate crime offenses based on sexual-orientation bias to the FBI. Of these offenses:

• 59.2 percent were classified as anti-male homosexual bias.
• 24.8 percent were reported as anti-homosexual bias.
• 12.6 percent were prompted by an anti-female homosexual bias.
• 1.8 percent were the result of an anti-heterosexual bias.
• 1.6 percent were classified as anti-bisexual bias.

(*Note: Anti-transgender incidents are not reported in these statistics, since law-enforcement is not required by law to report them.)

Clarence Patton, Executive Director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (NYAVP), noted the “dramatic increase in the number of anti-lesbian, gay and bisexual incidents reported—though the overall number of reports captured by the FBI rose only 8%, the number of reports impacting our communities rose at more than twice that rate.”

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), a coalition of 30 member programs including the NYAVP, reported that gay bashing incidents actually rose 24% compared to 2006. 2007 also had the third-highest murder rate in a decade, more than doubling from 10 in 2006 to 21 in 2007.

Even these statistics hardly give the picture of the crisis of violence against LGBT people all across the United States. The true number of incidents perpetrated against queer folk is probably much higher, as Avy Skolnik, national programs co-ordinator of the NCAVP, reported:

“We know that the 2,430 people who called on our organizations in 2007 are only a small fraction of the actual number of LGBT people who experienced bias-motivated violence. Anecdotally, we constantly hear stories of LGBT people surviving abuse—sometimes multiple attacks per day when that violence comes from a fellow student, a neighbor, a co-worker, a landlord, or a boss.”

 

Richard Hernandez, butchered in his apartment bathroom

Dallas, Texas, boasting one of the largest LGBT populations in the country, saw LGBT people taking to the streets in protest of the alarming number of attacks. Two high-profile murders and several brutal assaults, including the “Silence of the Lambs style” dismemberment of gay man, Richard Hernandez, a 34-year-old citizen of Dallas, sparked street protests from United Community Against Gay Hate Crime to draw the attention of the public to the plight of LGBT citizens.

Gay Apartheid

Behind each number in these statistics are real people: victims, family, friends, bereaved lovers. This is the human cost of Gay Apartheid. The real target of these atrocities, however, is the idea of America, a country where all people may pursue their lives without fear of intimidation or violence. Until American laws and the attitudes behind them change to reflect the inclusion of all people in the constitutional rights and privileges afforded some, then this nation must be brought to face so-called “legal” acts of apartheid against the LGBT community.

Forty years after the Stonewall Uprising in New York, universally recognized as the birth of the LGBT Rights Movement, 29 states have constitutional amendments passed for the sole purpose of depriving LGBT citizens the same rights as heterosexuals. States have enacted bans against gay parenting and adoption. Not only has the Federal Government passed the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), and instituted the oppressive “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy for the U.S. Military, but 15 states have barred same-sex marriage, and 18 states have legislation limiting domestic partnerships and civil unions. The passage of Proposition 8 in California, repealing the right to marry given to its citizens earlier in the year, is just the latest act of apartheid in this country. Violence is following the law, not the other way around.

The definition of Apartheid is “a system of laws applied to one category of citizens in order to isolate them and keep them from having privileges and opportunities given to all others,” according to elder LGBT statesman, Herb Hamsher, writing for the Huffington Post. The Unfinished Lives Project cannot agree with Hamsher more when he says, “Our role is to hold a mirror up to the country and no longer allow it to shift the focus away from what we have become. We have become a nation increasingly devoted to an encroaching system of apartheid for a designated category of its citizens.”

When the tyranny of the majority goes unchecked, and the apartheid system apes the bias against LGBT people in communities and religious institutions, the American ideal of the protection of the minority from the excesses of their neighbors is exposed as a fantasy. An Apartheid America is not the nation of the free or the brave. Hate Crime murders and other violent crimes against LGBT people are hundreds and thousands of mirrors held up to the nation. We must continue to stand up, hold up these brutally frank mirrors to the disfigurement of America until our fellow citizens repudiate the travesty of the law these hate crime statistics represent.

by Stephen V. Sprinkle

One step too far: that is the step opponents of civil rights for LGBT people, the LDS Church and the Knights of Columbus, took in their all-out effort to repeal same-sex marriage in California. I do not contest the freedom of church organizations to voice their opinions about court decisions in America. But the desperate over-reach of Mormons and Roman Catholics to strip same-sex couples of the right of civil marriage the California Supreme Court had vouchsafed to them has awakened millions of LGBT people and allies to the power of a movement whose time has come. Pouring millions of church dollars and thousands of radio/TV advertisements into the struggle over Prop 8 has rebounded upon those who briefly celebrated beating back the high court’s decision on same-sex marriage. The agents of heterosexist theocracy may have won a single battle at the ballot box, but in doing so they have set in motion a war for public opinion they cannot win.

Our opponents managed one thing by their desperation and arrogance: they have galvanized the grassroots power of the millions of LGBT folk and allies who surged to the polls on November 4 to elect Barack Obama president. With the internet as the vehicle for equality, 300 protest events sprang up in less than twelve days. No other civil rights movement in American history has been launched in cyberspace before, and as the presidential campaign of 2008 demonstrated, the internet has vast potential to rally millions and to fund a national movement. As a witness to the No On 8 Protest at the Austin, Texas Town Hall, I can report the zeal and determination of 3,000 mostly first-time protesters to seize this time as our time, the long-deferred time for a true LGBT Civil Rights moment. As a marcher myself, I can testify to the thrill of taking it to the streets as a 50-something gay man in a new way. I was too closeted and too far removed from the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 to take to the streets then. But this is today, and Prop 8, no matter what LGBT people may privately think of marriage for ourselves, is a thumb in our eye. Myriads of young Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender people built up their electoral muscle in Obama Pride, and now are ready to infuse new life, energy and possibility into the struggle for sexual and gender expression equality. The rally organizers did a fine job at the Austin Town Hall Plaza for the thousands who came out. All the usual advocacy groups were there, lending leadership and direction to the surging crowds of neophytes straining at the bit to do their part for justice. But closing the proceedings and urging protesters to sign up on contact lists or to buy tee shirts could not shut off the electricity generated by restless youth. When a movement goes viral, it cannot be shut down with the flip of a switch.

Perhaps the organizers of the Austin No On 8 Protest tried to get a march permit, but couldn’t. Whatever the story, hundreds of fired up queers and allies took their signs and passion into the streets, and marched up to the Texas State Capital, where we demonstrated outside the gates in the shadow of the tallest governmental dome in America. “What do we want?” “Equality!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” ricocheted up and down Austin streets as dozens of cars and pickups sped by blaring horns and shouting encouragement. The citizens of Austin stepped back, some smiling, some scowling at the surging rainbow line marching up Congress Avenue. Two descriptors came to my mind as I marched along chanting with the others: Power and Peace. This was no flash-in-the pan afternoon protest, no lark by first-timers seeking to get their pictures in the paper. Others have seized their moments: the anti-war movement, African Americans, the Moral Majority, women. But this has the feel of our time, the time when the issue of same-sex wedlock changed from a political hot potato into a viral movement elevating marriage to the status of a civil right for all Americans.

There are serious problems to work out. Before the rift with people of color tears any further, African Americans and Latinas/Latinos must be appealed to directly. LGBT people and straight people of color have a stake in the fight for justice together, not apart, and LGBT people of color must lead white queer folk to avoid driving a wedge between natural allies and us. That is where LGBT people of faith and progressive religious leaders have a major role to play by giving a faith rationale for the marriage equality movement. One of the lessons of the defeat in California is that when church bigotry waves crosses and distorts the issues for the voting public, the most potent antidote is the public witness of queer and progressive faith leaders wearing all their ecclesiastical regalia. God must not be hijacked any longer by the radical right in the fight for equality. Further, from what I saw and heard, LGBT rallies need media savvy and speakers need coaching on how to call out the passion and motivation that will translate into effective action for change. It was clear that we haven’t learned how to do this ‘thing,’ yet. But we must learn how, and quickly, if we are to ride the tide of commitment building in our queer communities.

My work on LGBT hate crimes murder victims teaches me that our movement already has its martyrs. I cannot help thinking of Harvey Milk, wondering if after 30 years since his assassination in San Francisco we have finally become ready to realize his vision and to vindicate his death and the deaths of so many hundreds of others. As we march and protest, their stories can give us the drive to confront a society yet unwilling to see us as equals. Never again must LGBT people stay silent when some of us are killed for simply being who we are. And never again may we sit idle on the sidelines while others struggle to win our freedom and equality. I saw and felt a justice movement building in the capital of the Lone Star State this past Saturday. As one sign in the Austin No on 8 Protest proclaimed, “Our Love Will Outlast Their H8!” We who believe in justice cannot rest! We who believe in justice cannot rest until it comes!

Stephen V. Sprinkle
Director
The Unfinished Lives Project