Tag: lgbt rights
American History Proves We Can Still Save Democracy From Trumpism

American History Proves We Can Still Save Democracy From Trumpism

Have you ever thought about the role guilt has played in our national life? It’s not omnipresent, it’s certainly not felt by everyone, most especially those sinned against, but I would say guilt rivals pride as the thing that has most motivated us. Think about it for a moment. The founding of this country wasn’t an immaculate birth – for one thing, there wasn’t a Founding Mother among all those long-heralded Founding Fathers, and one of the two greatest mistakes they made the day they came to an agreement on our founding document was what they left out. They didn’t award women full citizenship, and they failed to deal in any way with the sin of slavery.

But an important portion of what makes America exceptional is how we have endeavored to fix our mistakes. We have yet to make adequate amends to the Native Americans who were here before we were and were systematically murdered and kidnapped and abused as this country spread West before and after its founding. But in fits and starts, we’ve been trying – some of us have, anyway – to make amends.

Out of the frying pan of the abject mistake of slavery and into the fire of the Civil War went our first attempt to deal with what we may as well call our founding errors. It took a century that included decades of Reconstruction and Jim Crow and tens of thousands of dead black bodies and burned-down churches and homes and seized land and wealth until the moral clarity and power of the Civil Rights Era forced us as a nation to begin to repair the damage we had done to our fellow citizens who were Black.

Even then, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act faced massive resistance. Laws against segregation had to be enforced in some cases by armed soldiers to be carried out in schools and colleges in the South. We stumbled through fights over busing in cities like Boston and neighborhoods like Canarsie. White flight from cities across the nation – Detroit and Baltimore among them – damaged tax bases, hurt schools, and let’s not forget the continuing PTSD of having been on the receiving end of the racism behind it all. How would you like to have been a Black family that moved into a white neighborhood anywhere – South, North, East, or West – and watched the “For Sale” signs go up around you and the schools to which you sent your kids nearly empty of white kids?

And we must not forget what this country did to its women. It took until 1920 and the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution for women to get the right to vote. That is more than 130 years that women were what is commonly called second class citizens in this country. But I would go further: the everyday work of women was used to build this country. By giving birth to new citizens, women, alongside immigrants, created the population that made possible the formation of territories and then the new states that would comprise the United States of America – all 50 of them.

When men went off to war, women stepped up and did every single job a man had done in their place. And what did they get in return? For decades, a one-way ticket back to the kitchen and the nursery. Women had to start an entire new movement, the Women’s Movement, to begin the long process of realizing some modicum of equality with men in the workplace and in the home, and as we all know, it’s not finished. Women earned 57 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1969. Today, the gap has closed to women’s 80 cents for every male dollar, but jeez, 23 cents over 54 years? That’s an improvement of only a half-cent a year.

It would take a lengthy book to discuss gender inequality in the eyes of the law. Before the Women’s Movement made rape an issue with the publication of Susan Brownmiller’s epic Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape published in 1975, complaints by women that they were raped were often brushed aside by police and prosecutors. It took decades for laws to be passed against using women’s sexual history against them in rape cases. Women are still dealing with inequality on college campuses on countless grounds – how charges of harassment and abuse are dealt with, inequities in sports, inequities in employment of women by colleges and universities. And practically every time women have thought they have secured a right they have fought for and won, it is either challenged or taken away altogether, the right to abortion being the prime example.

We have made great strides in the rights of LGBTQ people, but with the right wing attacking trans people and forbidding the teaching of LGBTQ books in schools, we’re not finished. We’re not finished with any of it – with how we treat Native Americans, Blacks and other minorities, how we treat women, how we treat immigrants…we could go on and on and on.

The only people who haven’t been crapped on in the 236 years of our history are white Christian males, and now with God only knows how much of the nation’s wealth and land, they are whining about being discriminated against by the people on whose shoulders they have been standing, if not stomping further into the ground.

We have been tested before and found wanting, but as a people, we have found a way to rally and at least attempt to overcome the problems we have faced since our founding. Often the tests we face boil down to politics, because within the political process has lain the solutions we have found, often by enacting laws to forbid the bad and elevate the good.

We are being tested yet again. The Republican Party, which was once the party that stood against slavery and for equality, has made an about-face on so many issues, it’s hard to list them, but race, equal rights for women, gay rights, immigrant rights, and equality of economic opportunity are certainly among them. And now they have chosen a leader, and even elected him president for one term, who not only wants to turn back the clock of progress on so many of the things that have made this country a shining light to the world, he wants to destroy the democracy that has haltingly, imperfectly, but steadily made progress possible.

What I’m here to tell you today is this: look back at the long and often difficult history of our country. Almost all of these things that have been problems since the day of our founding are still with us in some measure, but we have accomplished the end of our original sin of slavery and we are at least still trying to make amends for the original sin of the slaughter of the people here on this continent before us who are now our fellow citizens. We’ve done the same with the other people and issues I have cited here. We must look at the victories we achieved in these fights with pride and renewed determination to overcome what stands before us in the next election.

He is one man. He may lead a movement, but it’s a movement that has lost the fights we fought to get where we are. He, and they, are not the future. They represent the dead, rotting flesh of our disreputable past, the awful instincts of man to which we first had to admit guilt and then find a way to put behind us.

I am telling you that if you look back at our accomplishments as a people, you will see our democracy is stronger than maybe we have been thinking. We keep hearing that our democracy is under threat, but our democracy has been threatened before. We defeated Hitler and Hirohito and saved the world from a monstrous end, just for starters. We are strong. We have united in the face of adversity before. It’s not all of us who will rally in defense of our democracy this time, but so what? It wasn’t the entire nation who rallied behind civil rights, either, but we did it, and we can do it again, not with guns and bombs but with our ideas and our ideals and our votes. There are more of us than there are of them. Remember that.


School Board Battles Open New Front In US Culture Wars

School Board Battles Open New Front In US Culture Wars

Levittown (United States) (AFP) - As Joshua Waldorf was running for a third term on the Pennsbury school board in November, one particularly heated debate triggered a flood of vitriolic messages to his inbox -- one of them urging him to shoot himself.

In a shift mirrored in cities across America, his local council overseeing schools in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia had unwittingly become a battleground in the politicized culture wars roiling the nation.

The hateful messages aimed at Waldorf were just one example of the flow of anonymous slurs and threats directed at him and fellow members of the nine-seat board in past months -- as their once studious meetings turned to angry shouting matches.

"I've been pretty consistent in terms of my views," Waldorf, a 58-year-old businessman, told AFP as the board prepared to meet in an elementary school gym in Fallsington, in a leafy neighborhood of family homes. "But I'm being vilified for those that I wasn't 18 months ago."

In much of the United States, locally elected school boards are tasked with governing a community's public schools -- deciding who to hire as superintendent to manage day-to-day operations, which textbooks to buy, and what education policies to enact.

But over the past year, with the country in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic and a historic reckoning over race relations, the boards have had to rule on far more charged issues -- prompting intense backlash from parents often bitterly divided along political lines.

For choosing to require all students and staff to wear masks, the Pennsbury School Board -- all Democrats -- were accused of "child abuse," and seeking to "dehumanize" students.

After hiring a specialist in "equity, diversity, and education" last year, the board came under fire from parents convinced they had a "far left radical agenda to indoctrinate students."

'National Polarization'

School boards from coast to coast have had similar experiences, reflecting "a national polarization now seeping into other levels of government," according to Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

"By and large, school board politics in the United States tend to be relatively uneventful and relatively free of emotion," Hopkins told AFP.

But now, he says, "the really contentious questions that occupy national politics are finding their way" into the meetings.

In Pennsbury, things took a turn for the worse after the board appointed Dr. Cherrissa Gibson -- a local assistant principal -- to a newly created role overseeing diversity and equity in the district's 10 elementary schools, three middle schools, and one high school.

Her first audit in April 2021 found "an underrepresentation of professional staff of color," as well as a disproportionate level of discipline targeting Black students.

Situated in the woodsy outer suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsbury has about 10,000 students, of whom 75 percent are white, seven percent are Black, eight percent are Asian, and four percent are Hispanic, according to the district's website.

For Thomas Smith, the district's superintendent, the audit was a way to help "ensure that every student regardless of where they come from, regardless of their gender, or regardless of the color of their skin are treated equally."

But opponents, like 54-year-old Simon Campbell, believe such initiatives only sharpen divisions.

"It is all about trying to stereotype people by race, by gender, and separate them and then customize education based upon those separations," said the former school board member and stock trader.

"Basically kids are being taught that if you're Black ... you are impoverished and need help from the government," he told AFP. "If you're white, then you are an oppressor."

Campbell, who no longer has children in the school district, posts videos of his remarks at school board meetings to YouTube, where he now has more than 30,000 subscribers.

Like other disgruntled parents, he has been invited to appear on conservative radio and television programs to discuss so-called "critical race theory."

The term, which refers to the study of persistent racism in social institutions, has been seized upon by Republicans to broadly attack Democrats' racial equity policies in what has become a lightning rod for conservatives across the country.

'Campaign Of Misinformation'

Christine Toy Dragoni, the outgoing Pennsbury school board president, blames a national "campaign of misinformation" for the intensity of the backlash.

"People are being gaslighted," she told AFP.

The 50-year-old psychotherapist said the deluge of emails began after videos of heated board meeting exchanges went viral online.

Most of the emails wished bad things "happen" to the board members, versus direct threats, but "when they do it repeatedly, you start to worry," said Dragoni.

"Are they going to take the next step and, you know, take action on their words?"

The risk of violence is real: many school districts have been forced to ramp up police presence at board meetings, to remove unruly attendees, as well as to escort members to and from their cars.

Two months ago, US Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI and federal prosecutors to meet with local law enforcement to discuss strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.

Republicans and conservative media seized on the memo, accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing law enforcement to intimidate parents.

"People are within silos," said Waldorf, who won reelection in November, "we've lost the ability to compromise."

North Carolina Rebuffs Transgender Bathroom Law Repeal

North Carolina Rebuffs Transgender Bathroom Law Repeal

RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) – North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature on Wednesday rejected a bid to repeal a state law restricting bathroom access for transgender people, which has drawn months of protests and boycotts by opponents decrying the measure as discriminatory.

A one-day special legislative session ended abruptly after the state Senate voted against abolishing a law that has made North Carolina the latest U.S. battleground over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.

The repeal legislation was rejected 32-16, leaving the bathroom restrictions in place statewide. The rejection followed Republican-led political maneuvering that tried repeal to a second provision that would have temporarily banned cities from affirming transgender bathroom rights.

Democratic Senator Jeff Jackson said the repeal effort was defeated because Republicans reneged on their deal to bring the measure to a floor vote with no strings attached.

“They got here with strings attached so it failed,” Jackson said. The moratorium on municipal bathroom regulations, described by Jackson as a “poison pill,” withered Democratic support, and in the end all 16 Senate Democrats joined 16 Republicans in voting against repeal. Another 16 Republicans voted for it.

The Senate then adjourned without acting on the temporary municipal ban. The state’s House of Representatives already had called it quits.

Democratic Governor-elect Roy Cooper accused Republican leaders of back-peddling on an agreement ironed out in lengthy negotiations. He said both chambers had the votes for a full repeal, but divisions within the Republican Party killed it.

“The Republican legislative leaders have broken their word to me, and they have broken their trust with the people of North Carolina,” he said.

Senate Republican leader Phil Berger earlier defended the proposal to link repeal with temporary municipal restrictions as a “good-faith” effort to reach a compromise, citing “the passion and disagreement surrounding this issue.”

BACKLASH OVER BATHROOM RESTRICTIONS

Earlier in the week, outgoing Republican Governor Pat McCrory had called the special session to consider scrapping the law, which passed in March and made North Carolina the first state to bar transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity.

Supporters of the statute, known as House Bill 2 (HB 2), have cited traditional values and a need for public safety, while opponents called it mean-spirited, unnecessary and a violation of civil liberties.

The national backlash was swift and fierce, leading to boycotts that have been blamed for millions of dollars in economic losses for the state as events, such as business conferences and the National Basketball Association’s 2017 All-Star Game, were moved out of North Carolina.

The pushback contributed to McCrory’s razor-thin defeat in a fall re-election bid against Cooper, an opponent of the law. On Monday, Cooper had said he reached a deal with state Republicans to do away with the law.

HB 2 was enacted largely in response to a local measure in Charlotte that protected the rights of transgender people to use public bathrooms of their choice.

The Charlotte City Council on Monday repealed its ordinance as a prelude to the state repealing HB 2.

Civil liberties and LGBT rights groups condemned the outcome, accusing the legislature of breaking its promise to do away with HB 2.

“It is a shame that North Carolina’s General Assembly is refusing to clean up the mess they made,” said James Esseks, an American Civil Liberties Union executive.

The North Carolina Values Coalition hailed the legislature for upholding the law and refusing to give in to “demands of greedy businesses, immoral sports organizations or angry mobs.”

(Writing by Letitia Stein, Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman, additional reporting by David Ingram; editing by Tom Brown, G Crosse and Lisa Shumaker)

IMAGE: Opponents of North Carolina’s HB2 law limiting bathroom access for transgender people protest in the gallery above the state’s House of Representatives chamber as the legislature considers repealing the controversial law in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. on December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

Two New Reports On LGBT Poverty Shatter Media Myth Of LGBT Affluence

Two New Reports On LGBT Poverty Shatter Media Myth Of LGBT Affluence

Published with permission from Media Matters for America

Contrary to media misperceptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) affluence, two new reports by the Williams Institute and Center for American Progress show the LGBT community continues to face higher rates of poverty, low wages, and economic insecurity than non-LGBT people.

The Williams Institute, an LGBT think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), released its findings “that poverty remains a significant problem for LGBT people” in a report on September 13. The study found that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would dramatically cut the poverty rate for same-sex couples — a 46 percent drop for lesbian couples and a 35 percent decline for gay male couples. The author, economist M.V. Lee Badgett, noted that the study showed that the notion that the entire LGBT community is wealthy is nothing more than “a misleading stereotype” and that “raising the minimum wage would help everybody.” From the Williams Institute:

The Williams study follows a September 8 report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) that focused on the significant barriers that LGBT people face in accessing middle-class economic security. The study analyzes how anti-LGBT discrimination in employment and housing creates major hurdles for economic security, contributing to wage gaps faced by the LGBT community. CAP reported that up to 28 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans have been fired, not hired, or passed over for a promotion as a result of their orientation. As many as 47 percent of transgender Americans have experienced an adverse job outcome, such as “being fired, not hired, or denied a promotion” because of their gender identity, according to the report. CAP also noted that “LGBT people often struggle to find stable, affordable housing” and experience disparately higher out-of-pocket health care costs, which compounds the impact of economic insecurity experienced by LGBT people and their families.

Media frequently focus on the buying power and affluence of the LGBT community, and on companies that eagerly court the “pink dollar.” On July 20, when one marking firm — Witeck Communications — published its findings that LGBT American buying power reached $917 billion in 2015, it was picked up by Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, CNBC, and USA Today. While another study quoted by Business Insider claimed LGBT Americans take “16% more shopping trips” and have more disposable income than their straight counterparts — claims echoed by a Nielsen study published in the National Journal in 2015.

Gary Gates of the Williams Institute told The Atlantic in 2014 that the downside of this media-created perception “is that those marketing studies looked at the LGBT community as a consumer market” and may only be seeing LGBT Americans who are in an economically secure enough situation to come out. Marketing studies don’t show that LGBT individuals face higher rates of poverty than their non-LGBT counterparts, or that 29 percent of LGBT Americans have experienced food insecurity in the last year. Right-wing media use the myth of LGBT affluence to dismiss LGBT discrimination and claim laws protecting the LGBT community are not needed. Currently, there is no federal law that protects people from being fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. CAP concluded its reporting by noting that the best way to address LGBT economic insecurity would be the passage of a broad-based federal nondiscrimination law called The Equality Act — which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, employment, and housing.

Photo via Flickr/Ted Eytan