Act Queer! Teleconference: The Drug War and Queer Communities
The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice research, organizing and advocacy.
Our October 29, 2009 teleconference focused on how the drug war has affected queer communities across the country.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
gabriel sayegh, Drug Policy Alliance (New York City) discusses the Obama administration’s drug policy agenda and updates on drug policy reform; medical marijuana laws; Rockefeller Drug Laws.
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Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (Washington, DC) discusses the connection between reproductive justice and drug policy reform; the history of prohibition of alcohol, abortion and drugs; denying the essentialness of choice in reproductive rights and in the queer community
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Miss Major, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (San Francisco) discusses drug addiction within the transgender, gender variant and intersex community inside and outside the prison system.
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Kenyon Farrow, Queers for Economic Justice (New York City) discusses how the war on crime and drugs aimed to “correct” black and brown families through social welfare reform; the effects of the drug war on HIV epidemic in black gay men and transgender women.
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If you have questions, comments, or know of other resources or events related to this topic, please feel free to post in the comments section!
How Queers Are Organizing For Health Care Reform
Since May of 2009 QEJ has been mobilizing queers from across the country to create a collective response to the current state of health care reform. A large part of this mobilization has been focusing on the inclusion of a public option within the health care reform bill. A public option that would be available to people most discriminated against in the health care system is necessary, and immigrants, people of color, and LGBT people should organize to help save the public option in the current legislation.
Below is a list of steps and additional resources to use as a reference to create days of action in your community:
- Call your Senator! This number will connect you directly to your state’s senator: 1-877-264-HCAN (4226)
- USE THIS SCRIPT when you talk to them.
- Want to send a letter instead? USE THIS SAMPLE LETTER as a guide.
- Want the NUMBERS? READ this QUEER HEALTH CARE FACT SHEET QEJ created.
- Health Care Reform and the LGBT Community: This document outlines key concerns in regards to health care within the LGBTQ community (National Coalition for LGBT Health)
- Key Facts Race, Ethnicity and Medical Care: Want additional facts and figures? This report discusses health, health insurance coverage, access and quality of health care of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
More Progressive organizations working on health care reform:
Move On is a collective that strives to bring real Americans back into the political process. With 5 million members across America they work together to realize the progressive promise of our country. They are quite well known for their partnerships with celebrities and artists. They just released a new video satire of insurance companies featuring the comedian Will Ferrell. This organization hosts events across the country and facilitates community building through their website.
Health Care Now! is an education and advocacy organization that addresses the health insurance crisis in the U.S by advocating for the passage of national, single-payer healthcare legislation. By logging on to their website you can sign petitions, call your legislators and get updates on upcoming events across the country.
Mad As Hell Doctors is a group of doctors that are advocating for single-payer health care system. They are currently on a national RV tour so check out their website to view their itinerary.
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is a national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people dedicated to winning quality, affordable health care we all can count on in 2009. They also have support from President Obama, Vice President Biden, and more than 190 Members of Congress. You can sign petitions, call your legislators and view numerous reports reviewing health care in the United States.
Here’s what progressive LGBT and people of color organizations are doing across the country around health care reform:
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chapter in North Carolina put together a Day of Action around health care issues.
Triangle Foundation is Michigan’s foremost statewide, civil rights organization and is a leader in effective, innovative and visionary grassroots organizing and advocacy for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. They brought a contingent to a march and rally hosted by MoveOn.org and Health Care for America Now. Click here to view the press statement.
Family Equality Council works to ensure equality for LGBT families by building community, changing hearts and minds, and advocating social justice for all families. To ensure that our government provides accessible and culturally competent health care to all families they created the ad to the left (black and white version). They plan to submit the collected stories to congress.
Raising Women’s Voices is a national initiative working to make sure women’s voices are heard in the health reform debate and women’s concerns are addressed by policymakers developing national and state health reform plans. They have produced numerous publications including What women want vs what women get: Do current health reform proposals meet our needs? Check out their website for upcoming events in your area.
Women of Color United for Health Reform issued a document entitled Health Reform Imperatives for Women and Communities of Color in addition to a fact sheet.
Kenyon Farrow on Obama & Human Rights Campaign
On the eve of the National March for Equality, President Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign in Washington DC, and laid out his gay policy agenda for his adminstration. But does that agenda speak for the rest of us? Kenyon wrote an opinion piece for The Grio.com, proclaiming “HRC doesn’t speak for me.” He writes,
When Obama delivered his “gay agenda” speech to the well-fed, well-scrubbed mostly white crowd of gays and lesbians at the Human Rights Campaign’s Annual Dinner on Saturday night, anyone outside of the LGBT community would have assumed by the applause that the entire “gay community” is in agreement that access to serve in the military, gay marriage, and hate crimes legislation are our primary issues. But in reality, HRC’s political agenda is not what I want. It does not speak for me, nor for the lives of many other black, poor and working class LGBT people.
Given the fact that we’re in a long recession where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in almost every month of 2009, and national unemployment numbers are at nearly 10 percent, why are we not talking about the issues that most people are concerned about – health care and the economy – and their impact on the LGBT community? The truth is, for many people at that dinner who could afford the cheapest ticket at $250 a plate, jobs and wages are of little concern.
To read the rest of the article, go to THEGRIO.COM.
Act Queer Teleconference: Queer Immigration & Immigrant Organizing
The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice research, organizing and advocacy.
Our July 30, 2009 teleconference focused on queer organizing and advocacy on immigration issues, or issues impacting queer immigrants.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
Yasmin Nair, Gender JUST. (Chicago, IL.) Discusses the national immigration policy landscape, and the impact of the “families” and “partner” reunification frame for queer immigrants.
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Nancy Ordover, Researcher/Scholar, Author of American Eugenics, Race, Queer Anatomy and the Science of Nationalism. (New York, NY) Discusses the US ban on HIV-positive immigrants: It’s history and where the current policy stands.
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Materials from Ordover
Priscilla Hale, allgo:a statewide queer people of color organization. (Austin, TX). Discusses the coalition work allgo did in the state of Texas: framing the black/brown conflict in immigration advocacy, and working in coalition with straight-idenitified ally organizations.
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Glenn Magpantay, National Queer Asian/Pacific Islander Alliance (NY/DC/Seattle). Discusses NQAPIA’s queer immigration principles, and the economic/class diversity of API immigrants.
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Materials from NQAPIA:
NQAPIA Principles on LGBT Immigrant Rights
Lisbeth Melendez Rivera, Unid@s:The National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Human Rights Organization (Washington, DC). Discusses the work to build Unid@s and their advocacy work.
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Additional Materials from Jordan T. Garcia, Immigrant Ally Organizing Director, AFSC/Denver, CO.
Queer Immigration Reading List
What’s Immigration Got To Do with Queer Liberation?
On LZ Granderson’s “Gay is Not the New Black”
This piece just ran on CNN.com by Black gay journalist LZ Granderson. I am totally shocked CNN ran it. Granderson’s central point is illustrated here:
Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black.
Black is still black.
And if any group should know this, it’s the gay community.
Bars such as The Prop House, or Bulldogs in Atlanta, Georgia, exist because a large number of gay blacks — particularly those who date other blacks, and live in the black community — do not feel a part of the larger gay movement. There are Gay Pride celebrations, and then there are Black Gay Prides.
There’s a popular bar in the heart of the nation’s capital that might as well rename itself Antebellum, because all of the white patrons tend to stay upstairs and the black patrons are on the first floor. Last year at the annual Human Rights Campaign national fundraiser in Washington, D.C. — an event that lasted more than three hours — the only black person to make it on stage was the entertainment.
When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent. At protest rallies that followed, some gay blacks reported they were even hit with racial epithets by angry white participants. Not to split hairs, but for most blacks, the n-word trumps the f-word.
I like that this piece continues to do, as myself, Jasmyne Cannick and others have been doing for the last several years, to continue to raise the issue of racism within the gay community. And I am happy that more of us are able to access mass media to break intervene in the hegemony of gay politics. But, I think there are two places where I depart from Granderson. One, Granderson suggests that there are no Black LGBT folks who are unhappy with Obama. I think there are Black LGBT folks who have critiques of Obama, but are very different critiques from what are raised by the mainstream LGBT Movement. I think that there is a way in which Obama, and everything his restoration of Black masculinity and Black family values he represents, implicitly supports and encourages heterosexism & homophobia in the Black community. For me, this is as critical as an end to DOMA or the HIV travel ban.
Also Granderson goes onto say that
The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told…While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated.
I think rather than using Stonewall as a moment separate and apart from historical structural Black oppression, I think Granderson misreads the racial and sexual/gendered dynamics of police oppression of queers that led to the Stonewall Riots, and factually misses who was present, or that police don’t or did not, actually kill queers, and that the spectre of that kind of violence wasn’t also especially targeted at Black queers–we still see that to this day, as last year black transgender woman Duanna Johnson was beaten by Memphis police officers while handcuffed in the precinct, and was later shot to death after filing for a lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department. Granderson could have actually talked about the way this history has been re-cast as white and bourgeois, and as a natural pre-cursor to same-sex marriage and military inclusion fights, rather than actually being in direct opposition to the current LGBT movement projects. In fact, it was widely rumored after Stonewall that the Black Panthers and/or Students for a Democratic Society had been behind the riots. While proven untrue, it was clear that the powers that be saw Stonewall as part of the radical black power, anti-imperialist and feminist movements, rather than assimilationist.
So while we have to continue to push and challenge racism in mainstream LGBT politics, we also need to be critical of the Obama Administration, and not allow for racist and revisionist history to obscure and de-value radical politics of Stonewall.
Act Queer! Teleconference: Police, Prisons and Queer Organizing
The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice research, organizing and advocacy.
Our June 25, 2009 teleconference focused on queer organizing around prisons, policing, and violence around the country.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
Travis Sands & Christoph Hanssmann, Queer & Trans Jail Stoppers (Seattle, WA). Discuss the reasons for the forming of the group, the work they’re doing in coalition to stop $232 million dollar jail, and how they’re using this as an opportunity to build movement toward a queer movement that sees racial justice as part of its work.
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Materials from Queer and Trans Jail Stoppers
Join the Facebook Page Queer and Trans People Say no New Jail in Seattle (or Anywhere)
Queer and Trans Jail Stoppers Talking Points
No New Jails Queer Graphic Image
Ejeris Dixon, Safe Outside the System Collective, Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, NY). Discusses the politics, vision, and strategies of building community led solutions to violence against LGBTQ and gender nonconforming folks in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
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Deon Haywood, Women With A Vision (New Orleans, LA). Discusses how an HIV prevention & education organization is having to transform its work to doing organizing, leadership development and advocacy, due to the post-Katrina criminalization of sex work through Lousiana’s “Crimes Against Nature” statues, that forces sex workers to be distinguish as sex offender. This work is happening with the help of CHAMP’s Project Unshackle.
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Materials from Women with a Vision:
Newspaper Article on Crimes Against Nature Laws
Louisiana Crime Against Nature Law
Lori Girshick, Sociolgist/Researcher/Writer. (Arizona). Discusses the results of an upcoming research project on masculine-identified women in the California Prison System.
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If you have questions, comments, or know of other resources or events related to this topic, please feel free to post in the comments section!
Stonewall 40th and Pride Unveil NYC’s Shameful Priorities
Marsha P. Johnson: Stonewall Veteran, Artist and Activist
Written by Yasmine Farhang & Kenyon Farrow
Just months before the 40th anniversary of one of the most significant rebellions of poor and working class queer and transgender people (mostly of color), out-lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced the city’s proposal for rich gay tourists to commemorate this anniversary—shop till you drop. But for us at Queers for Economic Justice and our allies, our movement for sexual liberation is not for sale.
This announcement was made weeks after New York City refused funding to organizations that house and provide services to homeless queer youth, leaving several organizations on the brink of closing. Speaker Quinn made the City’s priorities clear when she announced that two million dollars would go to launching a gay tourism marketing campaign called Rainbow Pilgrimage. The campaign claims to commemorate the forty year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion by imploring tourists, domestically and internationally, to connect with this proud lineage.
The campaign’s website encapsulates Stonewall in a nostalgic distant light; a movement of the past now best found in a culture of style, restaurants and hot new clubs that are profiled in the ad campaign. The past violence and homophobia is replaced by the promise of a New York experience akin to Sex In The City. Further denying the violence of that fateful night in June, the Rainbow Pilgrimage describes the West Village as having a “population [that] has matured and neighborhood scene [that] has quieted along with it.”
But that “quiet” has come at a cost to poor and working class queers today. What tourists may or may not see coming to NYC this Pride.
- Every day, Jay Toole, QEJ’s Shelter Director, works with scores of homeless LGBTQ adults in NYC’s shelters who face homophobia, transphobia, and isolation from queer community.
- The recent string of false arrests and police abuse gay men who were set-up for prostitution charges by undercover cops this past February in the East Village being led by the Coalition To Stop the Arrests.
- Several Black lesbians reported being beaten and harassed by NYPD in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn outside a party in May for which Audre Lorde Project’s Safe Outside the System Project has demanded accountability.
- The constant policing and harassment of queer and trans youth of color that FIERCE! continues to organize around.
- ·Due to the constant targeting of transgender people of color by police and prison guards, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project provides legal services and advocates on behalf of the safety of trans people in custody.
- Our Welfare Warriors project, led by Reina Gossett, is documenting the many ways LGBTQ folks in NYC continue to survive and thrive despite poverty, violence, and police brutality.
Rather than representing queer progress, the policies supporting the Rainbow Pilgrimage campaign (that the groups mentioned above are all fighting against) are frighteningly similar to the conditions that created the Stonewall Rebellion–Mayor Robert Wagner in the 1960’s launched a campaign to crack down on the city’s queer bars to clean up the city’s image for the 1964 World’s Fair. Similar to the raiding and closing of queer working class spaces and social services in the West Village over the last 10 years, Wagner revoked the liquor licenses of the bars, and undercover police officers regularly entrapped gay men, and arrested butch dykes, trans people, and drag queens for wearing clothing of the “opposite” gender.
Instead of commemorating the rich history of New York City’s movement for queer justice, the campaign tokenizes its leaders and landmarks and dilutes this history to a gimmick that will benefit corporations. Once the parade packs up this summer, and tourists leave with Rainbow Pilgrimage-themed t-shirts and mugs, those who need economic support more than ever – such as Sylvia’s Place and other resources for low-income and homeless queer folks and youth in New York City – will be right where they were, struggling to survive.
Struggle On,
Queers for Economic Justice
Act Queer! Teleconference: Healthcare Agenda for the LGBTQ Community
This is the first of a new monthly teleconference series called Act Queer! QEJ has started as a part of our national public education work. The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice issues.
Our May 21, 2009 teleconference was on what the healthcare debate means for queer communities.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
Katie Gjertson, AFL-CIO Health Care Reform Now. Reviews the timeline of the upcoming health care bill, how the plan is likely to be structured, Labor’s role in reform and their position on H.R. 676 (the universal coverage bill also in Congress).
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Health Care for America Now June 25 Lobby Day Flyer
AFL-CIO Health Care Reform talking Points
Eesha Pandit, MergerWatch/Raising Women’s Voices. The fight to protect reproductive health access in the health care reform, how reproductive justice issues in the legislation also impact LGBTQ folks, and grassroots efforts to impact the healthcare debate.
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Materials from Raising Women’s Voices:
Principles for Quality, Affordable Health Care for All
Rebecca Fox, National Coalition on LGBT Health. LGBT inclusion in healthcare reform, and the strategies being used to ensure LGBT issues are included in reform, expanding definition of family for coverage, and advocacy for transgender specific care.
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Materials from National Coalition on LGBT Health:
Guiding Principles for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Inclusion in Healthcare Reform
Ajamu Sankofa, Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition. Focuses on the history of a single-payer system, fallacies of the so-called public/private option and that the Conyers plan and Sanders plan are the plans that would end the crisis.
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Materials from Private Health Insurance Must Go:
Recent Bill Moyers Show on Single-Payer Health Care Debate (video)
April 2009 Protest: Your Ass Isn’t Covered (Youtube Video)
If you have questions, comments, or know of other resources or events related to this topic, please feel free to post in the comments section!
Tell Your Senators to Support LGBT Data Collection in National Health Survey!
Contact Your Senators and Urge Them to Support an LGBT Demographic Question to the National Health Interview Survey
The addition of an LGBT demographic question to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) would provide more accurate and complete data on LGBT communities, which would allow federal prevention appropriations and programming to target vulnerable LGBT populations.
Thanks to advocacy efforts, 46 Representatives in the House supported the addition of an LGBT question to the NHIS. Now Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) is circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter in the Senate to rally support for appropriating the $2 million necessary to add this question to the NHIS. Contact your Senator today to ask them to sign o nto the Whitehouse Letter in the Senate. To contact your Senator, please call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121, tell them your state, and ask to speak to your Senator. When you are connected to your Senator’s office, ask for the staff member who works on Health and Human Services appropriations.
Tell them that you are a constituent who supports appropriating an additional $2 million for the National Health Interview Survey and that you would like them to sign on. In order to sign on, they need to contact Jordanna Davis in Senator Whitehouse’s office by close of business on Friday, May 1.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Persistent gaps in information about the gay men, bisexual men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) – including gay men and MSM of color – mean that fewer than 8% of gay and bisexual men surveyed in 15 cities received group-level HIV prevention services and only 15% received individual-level interventions.
The bottom line is 85-92% of all MSM at risk for HIV do not encounter prevention intervention services. Most transwomen, also, experience exclusion from prevention programs, and the rate of HIV in this hard hit community is estimated to be as high as 69% (limited data available suggests a range of 14-69% transwomen HIV prevalence).
We need accurate and complete data on LGBT communities, so that federal prevention appropriations and programming will target the communities that bear a disproportionate burden of HIV risk and vulnerability.
Demand Congress Count LGBT People! We have less than a 48 hour window to call for LGBT health data collection!
Thanks to advocacy efforts, 46 Representatives in the House supported the addition of an LGBT question to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Now Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) is leading the charge in the Senate to rally support for appropriating the $2 million necessary to add this question to the NHIS that guides health policy, funding and programs nationwide.
As of Friday, April 24, only 1 of 100 Senators signed on to support LGBT health data collection!
Call your Senators now. Tell them that to end AIDS, LGBT people cannot be ignored in federal surveys any longer. Ask your Senators to sign on to the Sen. Whitehouse “Dear Colleague” letter about LGBT health data collection by Tuesday, April 28.
Contact your both of your Senators by calling the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 (two calls). Tell the operator your state and ask to speak to your Senator. When you are connected to your Senator’s office, ask for the staff member who works on Health and Human Services appropriations.
To locate your U.S. senators’ names, click here.
Talking points
- I urge you to sign on to support the Sen. Whitehouse letter asking for LGBT data collection in the largest federal health survey, the National Health Interview Survey.
- LGBTs have many acknowledged health disparities, but until the federal health surveys stop ignoring us, our hands will be tied in getting the data that’s needed to eliminate these disparities.
- VERY IMPORTANT: For the Senator to join this important effort, please contact Jordanna Davis in Senator Whitehouse’s office by close of business on Tuesday, April 28th.
This is the springboard to getting LGBT people on the Census, and it’s the single thing that would completely change LGBT health overall. So please call your Senators now and insist they sign on to this letter!
Call Script
My name is [NAME], and I live in [CITY, STATE]. Thanks for taking my call. I’m calling to encourage Senator [SENATOR'S NAME] to sign on to the Sen. Whitehouse “Dear Colleague” letter about LGBT health data collection by Tuesday, April 28th. LGBT people have many health disparities, including high rates of HIV. Until the federal health surveys stop ignoring LGBT, our hands will be tied in getting the data that’s needed to eliminate them. For the Senator to join this important effort, please contact Jordanna Davis in Senator Whitehouse’s office by close of business on Tuesday, April 28th. Thank you.
Please make your calls by Tuesday, April 28th. Let us know how your call went by emailing champ@champnetwork.org.
Thanks for taking action,
Vanessa and all of us at CHAMP.
New Report Proves Need for Queer Focus on Economic Justice
New Report Proves Need for Queer Focus on Economic Justice
by Joseph DeFilippis, Executive Director of QEJ
Hey, have you heard about that economic crisis? You know — the historic one that seems to have been noticed by everyone else in the world except the LGBT movement? I only ask because with the country facing an economic recession of massive proportions, it is sort of surreal to see our LGBT organizations and media continuing to behave as if the most important issue facing queer people is whether or not we can get married. But a new study documents what some of us have been arguing for a long time now: that poverty is a far more pressing life-and-death issue for many in our community.
“Poverty In the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community”, which was just released this week by The Williams Institute documents that the widely believed myth of gay affluence and financial clout is just that – a fairy tale.
The report documents, among other things, that lesbian couples and their families are much more likely to be poor than heterosexual couples and their families, and that children in gay and lesbian couple households have poverty rates twice those of children by heterosexual married couples. It also shows that queer couples who live in rural areas are much more likely to be poor than urban queer couples. And same-sex black couples have poverty rates significantly higher than married black heterosexuals, and are roughly three times poorer than their white same-sex counterparts.
So how did we come to be seen as a community of wealthy, white men with no children? The myth of gay affluence gained prominence in the 1980s, in no small part due to some highly publicized marketing surveys of the readership of gay magazines. The existence of gay people with lots of disposable income was an appealing pitch to make to advertisers, and it was quickly used by some gay political leaders eager to flex the community’s developing muscles. But it has also been used against us by our foes who have depicted us as privileged white gay men who do not need additional ‘special rights’. Sadly, our movement has done little to challenge that notion.
The reality is that although those magazines’ subscribers were predominantly gay white men, our community also includes people of color, who, like their heterosexual counterparts, generally make less money than do white men. And in a country where women still make 80 cents for the same work that men earn a dollar, it should come as no surprise that lesbian-headed households often struggle economically. Transgender people find it very difficult to obtain employment at all. LGBT seniors are more likely to live without the financial support of families, and without the social security survivor benefits of a spouse. And in cities like New York, queer youth make up about 30 percent of the homeless youth living on the streets.
The Williams report sheds clear light on the economic crisis that many in our community face. But the report was not able to address the lives of so many others – of gay, lesbian and bisexual people who did not report to the U.S. Census that they live in coupled households. Thousands of single LGB people also live in poverty. Nor does the report attempt to address the financial struggles faced by transgender people, about whom other reports have painted fairly bleak economic pictures.
The information in the Williams report about our community was gathered prior to today’s headlines about our county’s continued economic free-fall. We have every reason to assume that the financial struggles documented in the Williams report have only gotten worse since the data was collected.
And so, it is beyond maddening to continue to see millions of dollars poured into fighting Prop 8 in California and other marriage equality battles across the country. At the exact same time that this is happening, there has been a stony silence from most of our national LGBT organizations, media and funders about the current economic crisis. None of our national LGBT organizations have prioritized poverty as an issue in our community, and our queer media continues to ignore it.
But if you look below the radar, you will see queer organizations across the country that have been working for years on the real issues facing the less-financially privileged segments of our communities. Small groups like Queers for Economic Justice, where I am Executive Director, work with low-income and homeless LGBT people on vital issues crucial to their basic survival. And we are not alone. Other grassroots organizations across the country do amazing work with the most financially disenfranchised LGBT people on the issues that are most crucial to them – housing, welfare, immigration, police brutality, access to health care, etc.
But these groups are underfunded as millions of dollars continue to pour, instead, into the fight for gay marriage – an issue which was put on the top of our movement’s agenda primarily by people who are not facing the harshest of our economic realities. It is time that our movement prioritized the needs of the rest of our community – of the financially struggling or impoverished. And as the current crisis pushes more of us into that category, it is time that our leaders opened the newspaper to something other than the marriage announcements.
