Sorry in advance for the generation gap fights
But I'm not sorry I'm a Millennial!
Well, this newsletter has existed for all of a day and it already has over 100 voluntary subscribers! Thank you to y’all for the inherent affirmation that you’re interested enough in what I might write to accept more unread emails in your inbox. I was inspired enough to put together another issue already!
As the AOC pic teases, I’m gonna get a little preachy about some stuff down below, so let’s start with something light:
Sports!
I’m probably not going to write about sports too often in this newsletter, because — frankly — I’m a geek and they just don’t do much for me. But important LGBTQ fights are still playing out in athletics that I do care about, because sports is one of the last strongholds of anti-LGBTQ views, and important cultural shifts are happening through sports every day.
As part of Pride month, my fabulous colleagues over at OutSports are profiling “30 LGBTQ athletes who showed ‘Stonewall Spirit.” They’ve been highlighting trailblazers (including some literal trailblazers) like Caster Semenya, Justin Fashanu, Michael Sam, John Amaechi, Sue Wicks, and Chris Mosier. Their stories are just as much a part of the fabric of the LGBTQ movement, even if their activism has been on the fields and athletic courts instead of in the streets and judicial courts. I hope you’ll check them out!
Tooting my own horn re: conversion therapy study
Last August, anti-LGBTQ conservatives were all tittering over a new academic study purporting to show that ex-gay conversion therapy was effective. In an exhaustive investigative piece over at ThinkProgress, I outlined the massive flaws in the study itself and provided important context about the bias underlying it. The study wasn’t technically new, the author Paul Santero personally profits off of providing ex-gay therapy, and the journal it was published in, The Linacre Quarterly, is a Catholic publication that believes homosexuality has “personally disintegrative effects.”
Well, my buddy Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist reports that the study has been retracted! Apparently, no statistical review had been conducted, and when the editor commissioned one, it found some of the same flaws in the methodology that many of us had noticed at face value. (Trust me, I am no statistician, though I guess Hemant used to be a math teacher.) There was no consistency regarding what kind of treatment the different participants received, nor any objective measure for assessing the validity of those treatments.
The anti-LGBTQ hate group Liberty Counsel has been challenging bans against conversion therapy all over the country, and they were very excited that the study would help substantiate their legal arguments. Hemant wonders when they’re going to issue their own apology and correction, but I’m not holding my breath. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they still try to cite the retracted study in their cases.
World Pride ≠ worldwide Pride
The country of Georgia was preparing to hold its first-ever Pride march in the capital city of Tbilisi this weekend, but activists had to call it off because of threats from the Orthodox Church and right-wing extremists. Earlier in the week, anti-Russian protesters clashed with these same extremist pro-Russian counterprotesters, with police deploying tear gas and rubber bullets to try to control the riots. With political tensions so high and police unable to guarantee safety, the march’s organizers couldn’t take the risk.
As we prepare for the massive World Pride celebration in New York next weekend, it’s important to keep in mind that in other parts of the world, LGBTQ people can’t safely march together at all.
No exceptions for exceptionalism
Conservatives were so eager this week to attack Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for describing our — yes, our — immigration detention facilities as “concentration camps.” They sure looked stupid on their high horses as we learned that detainees have to stand on toilets to breathe, that kids can’t sleep or access soap or toothbrushes, and that even citizens’ constitutional rights are flagrantly violated at the border.
At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart reasons that “AOC’s generation” (blech!) doesn’t subscribe to American exceptionalism. We are perfectly willing to admit that the United States is capable of perpetrating evil indistinguishable from atrocities other countries have committed. Well, yeah! It’s a compelling framing for understanding why so many people are eager to deny the reality of country’s atrocities, but it’s also infuriating to realize that egotistical jingoism is blinding so many to our own capacity for evil.
There’s a queer lens to all of this that Beinart doesn’t touch on. It’s important to remember that many of the refugees are fleeing anti-LGBTQ violence and persecution in their home countries, and we already know of numerous transgender people who have died in ICE custody after being denied proper medical care.
Meanwhile, we’re debating all of this during the “Stonewall 50” Pride Month, in which we’re commemorating our resistance to yet another of America’s evils. There are still many living people who can remember when queer people were rounded up in paddy wagons thanks to laws against sodomy and “crossdressing” (which, of course, wasn’t what trans and nonbinary people were doing). I was a high school senior when SCOTUS issued its ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. My generation — especially those even a few years younger than me, like AOC — has grown up seeing queer people as far more normal than any of our predecessors did. With queer people likewise far more visible in our own lives, it’s yet another evil of the far-more-recent past that we acknowledge and that we’re working to distinguish ourselves from.
Our country’s list of sins is long — slavery, Jim Crowe, Japanese internment camps, and so on — and it’s almost always longer than anyone wants to admit. We really need to get over our exceptionalism and realize just how much evil we’re capable of because right now the list is still growing. The “generation gap” argument just isn’t cutting it.
Oh, and if you don’t believe that the Trump administration literally argued in court that these kids don’t deserve sleep, soap, or toothbrushes, watch the video:
Even gay Boomers can still sound like Boomers
While we’re on the subject of annoying debates framed as generational divides, I’ve seen a number of people sharing an article by a certain transphobic writer about older gay men who think younger generations are ungrateful for their sacrifices. We shouldn’t complain too much about our current struggles because hey, at least our friends aren’t dying of AIDS week to week.
I’m not going to link to it, but I do want to briefly address it. Just because things are better now than they were doesn’t mean things are good or even good enough now. Progress isn’t a box you check; it’s something you keep fighting to maintain and improve. I’m grateful for the queer people who came and fought before me — they inspire my own activism! — but I can’t help but look at the ones who think my generation is ungrateful as having settled. They won their victories and now they’re done. It reminds me of the queer Republicans (mostly gay, white men) who are comfortable enough now that they don’t want to fight for anyone else’s rights.
The Netflix reboot of Tales of the City tackles this head on in an amazing scene in which a group of older gay white men are talking about all their glamorous vacations. The young, gay, black character Ben (at 28, a year younger than AOC) watches on as their stories are laced with transphobic and racist rhetoric until he can’t take it anymore. When he objects, they have the gall to condescendingly preach to him that they’ve somehow earned the right to not care how they offend other groups because of the fights they survived. Check it out:
We’re going to keep fighting for things to get better for everybody, and we’ll even hold veteran activists accountable if they’re getting in the way. If you’re done fighting, just own it instead of trying to project your guilt onto those of us calling you out, thank you very much.
My own taste of the generational divide
This week, New York became the sixth state to ban “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses in court cases. A much younger gay friend asked me what this even means, because he had never actually heard of the concept before. I explained that for decades — and in several high-profile cases — people who have committed murder or violence against queer people have argued that their violence was justified because their insecurities were triggered by the victim’s identity. And in many cases, these arguments have convinced juries to acquit and/or reduce the penalties for their crimes.
In helping this young friend understand this aspect of anti-LGBTQ persecution, I discovered that Wikipedia actually maintains a thorough catalog of cases in which “gay panic” or “trans panic” was used as a defense. If you yourself are curious about this harsh history, I definitely recommend looking at this timeline. You’ll see that it’s not as historic as you might think.
When living is activism
Variety published a wonderful little interview this week with Pose star MJ Rodriguez. If you aren’t watching Pose, you’re missing out on some brilliant queer television that celebrates the lives of trans women of color — including by portraying them with trans actors.
In her interview, Rodriguez explains that all the fame she’s experienced as an actress doesn’t necessarily make her feel safer as a trans woman. Just waking up and being trans in this society, she feels, is a form of activism. Give it a read.
“Undetectable… that’s what you are…”
Let’s close today’s newsletter with this great clip of Toronto drag queen Jade Elektra serenading us with a classic Nat King Cole song with a twist of HIV advocacy. “Undetectable in every way… and forever more, that’s how you’ll stay [as long as you take your meds!].” Watch it here!
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(Photo Credit: The Intercept/Screenshot)