6 Weeks After Prop 8 Passes,
No Castro Town Hall
No Castro Town Hall
Has it really been six weeks since election night and the California voters approved Proposition 8, largely due to the sheer closetry and ineptness of the A-gays who ran the No side, and gay marriage rights were rescinded?
Here I am in one of the world's most recognizably gay neighborhoods, where thousands of married gay couples and singles live, with the local theatre showing "Milk," all about the fierce Mayor of Castro Street who did his community organizing and accountability-delivering in public view, where the headquarters for the No on 8 campaign was based, and the lead organization of the campaign, Equality California, maintains its primary office, and there hasn't been a single town hall in this uber-homo district.
Might as well be 1968 for homosexuals.
Not only that, but no announcement or effort to hold town hall is being talked about by the gay elected officials who represent the Castro, and I have to ask this question: What would Harvey do in this situation?
Can any sane person make a plausible argument that Harvey would allow all this time to pass, without bringing the wounded community together for some venting, criticism, and eventual healing, through public gatherings of our tribe?
I've not heard a damn valid reason why Supervisors Bevan Dufty and David Campos, SF Treasurer Jose Cisneros, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Senator Mark Leno - all political and spiritual descendents of Harvey - can't individually or collectively organize a bunch of town halls to simply hear what community members have to say about our loss and ways to move forward.
It is appalling to not only have Goof Kors and his Equality California fiefdom not taking responsbilty to host publc forums, but to also see no community-organizing action being taken by the gay politicians on top of the non-accountability from EQCA is shameful.
At least in LA LA Land, they've had one town hall, organized by Robin Tyler, with an open mic where everyone got to speak. The gays of San Francisco can't make the same claim.
But EQCA held its invitation only board meeting a week ago, with no public comment allowed, Leno and Ammiano, at the behest of Kors and EQCA, have introduced a worthless resolution to the legislature that will have no impact on the state Supreme Court, Dufty tells me over and over he's speaking with Kors in the closet about potential community meetings, Cisneros is an active member of the EQCA board, and all the gay pols need the A-gay network of EQCA for their next election.
So who can honestly expect these men to deliver what Harvey would have done - hold some open forums?
Frankly, I can't see much good in terms of Prop 8 accountability from all the A-gays at EQCA, the elected queers, all the political clubs and professional advocacy organizations in this town.
If gay power in the Castro in 2008 equals no town halls or even discussion of them post-election, then it's time to finally acknowledge what has only been whispered for years - the lessons of Harvey and genuine accountable gay leadership, that is also visionary, have been lost.
Our community has been collectively traumatized by the passage of Prop 8. It is unprecedented in our recent history for an entire group of people to systematically lose an existing major civil right; the best analogy to this is the rights lost by Jews at the start of the Holocaust (and remember, that's HOW it started: loss of civil rights first, then loss of freedom, then loss of LIFE).
ReplyDeleteOur community, nationwide, needs an entire SERIES of town halls to vent their frustrations, their grief, and their demands of our gay leaders on what we as a community want to do next.
I think we need an entire public education campaign of the most BASIC tenets of gay rights. When I was volunteering for No on 8 on election day, an apparently new immigrant Latina with very sparse English who was apparently voting for the first time, squinted at me with furrowed brow and said, "Ohhhh, noooo. I'm voting Yes. Gay and lesbian people have Satanic souls." These are the kind of people we have to educate and reach. Those, and many loyal church-going African-Americans who don't make the connection between gay civil rights and African-American civil rights, because they have erroneously been taught "it's a choice" that can be "cured" by religion.
We need advertising and public education campaigns that explain the BASICS of what "gay" is -- that it is what we ARE, not what we DO. This misconception is held by many Yes on 8 voters. What many Yes on 8 voters have in common is that they are naive to the full impact of such a horrible initiative on real, live gay couples and their families -- the ones who were "invisible" in the No on 8 advertising. It's very hard to attack on enemy you "know" in any way personally. Many Yes on 8 voters were simply "supporting" the vague romantic notion of good ole-fashioned marriage, without realizing the devastating consequences to REAL gay/lesbian couples that Prop 8 represents.
We need to publicly discuss this in order to discharge the traumatic reaction and get some peace, and to build a consensus on how to move forward from here. If our gay leaders are truly leaders, they can withstand a little criticism. They volunteered to be our leaders; they get credit when they get their leadership right and win, and they get to take the heat when they get it wrong and lose.