On Friday, June 1, I called my friend Robert on his cell phone shortly before 6 p.m., when he is usually preparing to leave his office in Manhattan. This time he was in Brooklyn, approaching Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), which calls itself a "Community Organizing Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color." As Robert pronounced this I added, "When the Rainbow is Enuf," referring to the famously long name of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls.... He laughed and said, "Yes, when does it stop?!"
Titled "Living a Legacy: Celebrating Action, Imagination and Struggle," the fundraiser was to start with food and gallery at 6 p.m., and performers and speakers at 7:30 p.m. The program included several speakers plus performances by the Lavender Light Gospel Choir and the Legendary House of Ninja (those are two separate groups, incidentally). I told Robert I had enjoyed the music of Lavender Light, a member of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses and the world's first non-church-affiliated LGBT gospel choir. By then he was at the church door, and we hung up.
The next morning I returned from breakfast to find this message in Robert's rich, bass-baritone drawl:
"The goddamn thing went on - it started at six with the dinner, and lasted until ten minutes till eleven. And I have to tell you that I knew something about the Audre Lorde Project, and I laud some of the work that they do, but I owe you an apology for some of the things that I've been dismissive about that you've said about some of these groups [meaning leftists]. Some of these people are crazy.
"It's like, America's a horrible place, and we're neo-colonialist and need to open our borders and let everybody in the world come in if they want to for whatever opportunities they want, and we need to end the war on terrorism. Perhaps we need to end the war in Iraq, but why the war on terrorism? Oh, let's just be sitting ducks and let them kill us all. And how America is no longer a democracy despite the fact that you can stand up in this church and say all these things."
Experience suggests that if I were to express these views myself, I would be charged with neo-colonialism, based on the idea that as a white person I have no right to oppress people of color with my opinions. Robert, on the other hand, is African American, though I doubt it will go any better for me on this account with the professionally outraged left, who can charge me with arrogantly appropriating opinions of color. As Katharine Hepburn once said, "Never. The less."
The ALP website (at www.alp.org) includes statements on war, immigration and marriage. In each case, as Robert suggested, they take things to extremes.
ALP opposes not just the war in Iraq but the war in Afghanistan and the war on terrorism. In the case of Afghanistan, the U.S. overthrew the Taliban regime for refusing to turn over the Al Qaeda terrorists who were behind the 9/11 attacks and whom the Taliban were harboring. As to the war on terrorism, ALP throws out the anti-terrorism baby with the Bush Administration bathwater. Many of us who oppose President Bush's use of torture, warrantless wiretaps and suspension of habeas corpus nonetheless recognize the need to defend our country against Islamist extremists. Similarly, one can oppose Bush's unilateralism, military overreach and doctrine of pre-emptive strikes without ignoring the need for a strong military.
ALP not only opposes the recent nativist hysteria on immigration, but states, "Full legalization is a nonnegotiable demand." They oppose the "path to legalization" compromise, oppose all guest worker proposals, and support "immediate access to full legalization" for all illegal aliens. I agree with their call for repeal of the HIV immigration ban; I agree that undocumented workers contribute to America's economy; and I would like family unification with my own foreign partner. But the notion that we have no right to control our borders amounts to a denial of national sovereignty, which is radical indeed. And ALP's rhetoric about dismantling the "prison-industrial complex" is designed to persuade no one.
ALP supports gay people's right to civil marriage, but also embraces the more radical principles of the "Beyond Marriage" manifesto which I criticized last year, and of which ALP's executive director, Kris Hayashi, is a signatory. As an example of the lunacy to which their Marxist-inspired, all-oppressions-are-linked philosophy leads them, they criticize gay-owned businesses that encouraged gay wedding trips to Hawai'i during that state's marriage struggle. This is because "many within the indigenous Hawai'ian sovereignty movement - who had supported same-gender marriage - consider tourism to be one of the most destructive forces impacting Native Hawai'ians and their struggle for sovereignty."
Robert had nothing but praise for one aspect of ALP's celebration: the food. "It was quite ethnically diverse. They had Caribbean food and Indian food and soul food. They served several different kinds of meat, including pork. One of my friends pulled off some pieces of fatback, and this is a guy who's a big health nut, and he went back and had a second piece."
Let's give credit: while they may charge bravely into political irrelevance, seizing the furthest margins of the national conversation, they sure can lay out a first-rate buffet.
12 Comments for “Advance Guards of Unreality”
posted by Craig2 on
I agree with Robert’s comments on Afghanistan- for one thing, the Taliban was executing gay men! For another, though, it was also being fomented by Pakistan’s Deobandi Sunni Muslim
madrassa (theological schools)
which displaced Afghanistan’s
rich Sufi gay-positive Muslim tradition, which celebrates the work of Jalaladin al Rumi, and his homoerotic love and devotional poetry.
Iraq is a different situation. Saddam wasn’t any better, but
without him, Moqtadr al Sadr’s
Shia militia are harrassing and
‘disappearing’ lesbians and gay men in areas under their control.
Can the Iraq War be said to have benefited LGBT Iraqis? Better to build coalitions with Muslim social liberals and solidarity with LGBT Muslims, Arabs and Iranians, which is why that’s useful.
In terms of indigenous ethnic minorities, again, cultivating multicultural inclusion and respecting their cultural values enhances the prospect of diverse majority support for passage of progressive legislation for LGBT rights.
I would note that there’s a difference between deep and strategically based multiculturalism and cosmetic posturing for the sake of name and claim identity politics, though.
Craig2
Wellington,
New Zealand
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
(shrug) Until someone tells them to quit hijacking homosexuality for use as cover for unpopular leftist causes, they’re going to do it.
But boy, that would get you some shrieks of “racist” and “bigot” — which is probably why it hasn’t happened yet. After all, the “LGBT community” is one of the loudest shriekers and encouragers of shriekers itself; they don’t want to have visited on them what they so often visit on others.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton’s power started to wane when people stopped being afraid of them — or, basically, when they discovered that they were being called “racist” and “bigot” by incredibly-bigoted and horribly-racist hucksters.
Just as the power of these groups will wane when someone actually stands up and tells them to f*ck off.
posted by Brian Miller on
Until someone tells them to quit hijacking homosexuality for use as cover for unpopular leftist causes, they’re going to do it.
Here’s the problem:
1) “People” have been telling them to do it for years, and they get ignored.
2) Your own party is perfectly willing to hijack homosexuality to promote right-wing big government causes, and “people” have also told them not to do it (and have also been ignored).
3) It’s hard to take a psuedonymnous “person’s” complaints seriously, in either event.
Say what you will about the nutty left, at least they have the nads to stand behind what they believe with their own John Hancocks.
posted by Roy on
I’m all about the buffet. I don’t know if I could have sat through that presentation just for the buffet though.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
LOL….thank you for so obviously demonstrating the problem, Mr. Miller.
Basically put, people are saying this:
It?s like, America?s a horrible place, and we?re neo-colonialist and need to open our borders and let everybody in the world come in if they want to for whatever opportunities they want, and we need to end the war on terrorism. Perhaps we need to end the war in Iraq, but why the war on terrorism? Oh, let?s just be sitting ducks and let them kill us all. And how America is no longer a democracy despite the fact that you can stand up in this church and say all these things.
And you’re over here attacking me for choosing to use a pseudonym.
This sort of behavior, common as it is among gays like yourself who aren’t willing to confront other leftists for fear of being shrieked at, always reminds me of Jerry Tarkanian’s wry observation when basketball powerhouse and NCAA cash cow the University of Kentucky was caught breaking numerous recruiting and player compensation rules: “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky, they put Cleveland State on probation.”
posted by Brian Miller on
you’re over here attacking me for choosing to use a pseudonym
Attacking you?
Oh my dear “man,” if I’m attacking you, you’ll know it.
My point is that it’s simply rather difficult to get all inspired into outrage by something that may simply be a fuzzy-logic post-bot.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
One would think, Mr. Miller, that the words I cited above coming from people who are invoking your sexual orientation as reason for them were enough to move you to outrage.
But the problem here is that I pointed them out and went after the gay community for not speaking up, and as a result, you need a reason to explain why I’m wrong.
posted by Brian Miller on
I’m not in the business of being professionally “outraged” as a tactic to avoid actually thinking about the issues (and the facts behind them). I view such activities as your fundamental role, ND, and I’d never want to nudge into your territory! 🙂
posted by Anthony on
Brian Miller: You haven’t actually responded to the substance of anything said by North Dallas Thirty. Whiny arguments about psuedonymity don’t cut it — the validity of an argument depends on the argument itself, not the speaker. Etc.
posted by Brian Miller on
I certainly have responded to his points. His demands that I renounce other people based on his twisted interpretation of their perspectives and questionable connections between themselves and me are thoroughly ridiculous.
They’re also completely invalid given that I’m a public person whose stance on the issues is well known, and whose life is open, while he is an anonymous person who could be anything (or anyone). He has no basis for claiming the moral authority to demand accountability from others when he avoids the minimal level of accountability himself.
posted by Anthony on
“I certainly have responded to his points.”
Sadly, no.
“His demands that I renounce other people based on his twisted interpretation of their perspectives and questionable connections between themselves and me are thoroughly ridiculous.”
No, he didn’t demand that you or anyone personally denounce anyone. He did point out a seeming inconsistency, but that’s not demanding anything.
“They’re also completely invalid given that I’m a public person…”
Again, no. As I stated above, a valid question is a valid question regardless of the questioner.
That you style yourself a “public figure” would seem to actually place more of a burden to respond on you.
“…whose stance on the issues is well known, and whose life is open, while he is an anonymous person who could be anything (or anyone).”
A very convenient rationalization to avoid a discussion on the merits.
BTW, the only Brian Miller I could find seems to be a (presumably straight, since married to a woman) actor. Perhaps you’re not as generally well-known as you’d like to be. Who exactly are you?
posted by Joe T. on
Well…if you’re willing to throw yourself into the middle of a cult, don’t be shocked at what you see and hear. If I’d visited the Mansons at that ranch for a picnic…I’d never expect relevant people. Annoying, and a few dangerous, but none relevant.