A Call to Link Arms

In the days before civility was trampled under the jackboot of political partisanship, the phrase “loyal opposition” meant people could disagree with those in authority without resorting to personal attacks questioning someone’s character and destroying their reputation.  

Now, in what seems like a blink of an eye, civility — that notion of being polite without surrendering principle, of disagreeing without being disagreeable — may be making a comeback, at least on a personal level. An estimated 1.8 million people gathered in the freezing cold on the National Mall to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama, for instance, while more than 200,000 others — many with tickets — were refused entrance. And yet there was not one arrest. 

This new era of civility is a long-overdue, welcome change. It is the first by-product of Obama’s historic election, as well as a recognition that we are all in this leaking economic lifeboat and it is imperative that we all work together to save ourselves.

But working together for the common good does not mean we should surrender our dignity in the process. And this is where we LGBT people find ourselves now.

We understand President Obama’s request for time to deal with the economic crisis. But “time” is not a free pass to ignore the promises Obama has made to the LGBT community. To paraphrase San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in his pre-election interview with IN Los Angeles magazine, when did equality for American citizens lose its importance in a democracy? When did second-class citizenship become acceptable?

Since there is no one speaking on behalf of LGBT people within the Obama Administration, we must all act as the “loyal opposition,” regardless of political persuasion. We must all remind the new president who promised change that change includes securing our equality. We must all call, write, e-mail, Twitter and otherwise bother everyone—our elected representatives, news editors, bloggers and radio and TV producers. In other words—we must take personal responsibility for our visibility.

Most importantly, in this dire economic crisis, we must take care of our own. We cannot rely on government to help — California alone has a projected $40 billion shortfall.

We can do this — we’ve done it before. It is embedded in our history as an LGBT people.

Before Stonewall, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis helped LGBT people network and fight profoundly cruel discrimination. After Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front fought to make being LGBT something to be proud of — storming psychiatric association meetings to challenge the official designation of homosexuality as “perverse” and “abnormal” and changeable through behavior modification and lobotomies. And, as the movie Milk points out, we banded together with straight allies to stop the terrible anti-gay Briggs Initiative.

Here in Los Angeles, GLF members Morris Kight and Don Kilhefner and others such as therapist Betty Berzon founded the Gay Community Services Center with peer-to-peer rap groups and social services. And in 1979, when gay men started appearing at the Center’s STD clinic with mysterious symptoms which suddenly lead to their premature deaths, LGBT doctors, nurses and volunteers set up a hotline — which eventually grew into AIDS Project Los Angeles.

As friends and lovers died every week, the federal government ignored us. Religious leaders said AIDS was “God’s punishment” for being gay and right-wing politicians tried to quarantine people with HIV/AIDS. 

There was nowhere to turn but to each other. We took care of our own, we fought back, we got laws changed and we helped others.

We must do the same now, economically. This, too, is not a new idea. The African-American community, for instance, has a special day during Kwanzaa that celebrates the 4th principle, Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): "To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together."

In 1982, Jeanne Cordova had a similar idea for the LGBT community when she created the Community Yellow Pages: Southern California's Gay and Lesbian Telephone Book — now the Frontiers Yellow Pages. And during Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, David Mixner found a way to track all of the $1.3 million in LGBT contributions to ensure that the politicos knew we were significant stakeholders.

In these difficult times, instead of directing negative energy into boycotting Prop. 8 contributors, let’s embrace civility and positively support LGBT and pro-LGBT businesses and organizations with time and money. Perhaps the Lesbian and Gay Chamber of Commerce can produce an LGBT “Good Housekeeping”-style sticker of approval.  

To all of our readers, this is a call to link arms: Let’s do something to help each other and by extension, America. Let us proclaim that this is who we are.

—The publishers and staff of Frontiers magazine