Chicago Free Press Editorial: AIDS, the Times and the ‘Flame of Consciousness’/Debate Over Gay March Exposes Split in Approach

Chicago Free Press Editorial: AIDS, the Times and the ‘Flame of Consciousness’
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
October 15, 2009
http://www.chicagofreepress.com/node/3984

An article that appeared last week in the New York Times, “Debate on March Exposes Split in Gay Rights Movement” (nytimes.com/2009/10/10/us/10march.html), described various controversies surrounding the Oct. 11 National Equality March and the difficulties GLBT activists have had in determining what would work best: advancing our agendas state-by-state or on a larger, national scale.

What most caught our attention, however, was the article’s flippant attitude towards HIV/AIDS. The article first stated that, “as the AIDS crisis has receded, gay activists have had a more difficult time mobilizing around a more diffuse agenda, including issues like same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws.”

A quote from gay historian Dudley Clendinen follows. He adds, “We can be thankful that the threat of AIDS has ebbed and is no longer the death warrant it was, but that also turns down the flame of consciousness.”

The references to the “ebbing” of the AIDS crisis are sloppy journalism at best and set a bad precedent at worst. Many in the mainstream media look to the Times for their standards on how certain subjects are reported. References like these send signals to readers and other, less-informed journalists that AIDS no longer poses a threat.

Few can deny that we know much more about HIV/AIDS today than we did when the disease first made national news in 1981. Drugs have allowed patients to lead long, healthy lives. New vaccines are being tested. Stigma, at least in many locales, has eroded.

But a person with the infection is unable to obtain an insurance policy in most states. Government funding for programs that help infected men and women get housing, medication and other necessities is drying up. Infections amongst young people are climbing at frightening levels, as they are in African American and Hispanic populations. The disease is still very much in our community.

Worst of all is that many scientists have predicted that, at the current rate of infection, by mid-century we will reach catastrophic numbers of people with the disease.

Numerous organizations remain dedicated to working on behalf of men and women with HIV/AIDS, but it no longer seems to put fire in the bellies of as many activists as it once did.

To be fair, we should point out that the Times also reported last week on Sean Strub, a man with HIV whose life had changed for the better thanks to these advancements in HIV medications. That article clearly illustrated this shift in the community’s attitudes and perceptions.

We are not trying to inspire fear and panic over the infection, but we must not act as if HIV/AIDS is going away because it has become more manageable. Educating people about prevention and getting them the tools they need to cope with the disease remain as huge challenges.

This is not the time to drop the ball on HIV/AIDS. Though many in the gay community are, unfortunately, moving on, there are still people living with the disease who need them.







Debate Over Gay March Exposes Split in Approach
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: October 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/us/10march.html?scp=1&sq=Debate%20on%20March%20Exposes%20Split%20in%20Gay%20Rights%20Movement”&st=cse


It was meant to be a unifying show of strength at a critical juncture in the gay rights movement.

Cleve Jones, left, and David Mixner, second from left, are helping to organize the march with the goal of federal action on gay rights. Jesse Connolly, right, is focused on a local agenda in Maine.
But a march planned for Sunday on the Mall in Washington is exposing deep divisions among gay rights advocates around the country as they grapple with whether to continue pushing for gains state by state, or embrace a more aggressive strategy to pressure the Obama administration and Congress for federal action.

The march is occurring as referendum campaigns in Maine and Washington State seek to overturn laws that expand the rights of same-sex couples. Faced with the specter of a defeat similar to the passage of Proposition 8 in California last year, gay rights advocates have split over whether an undertaking as large and expensive as a march on Washington will come at the expense of ballot fights this fall.

The debate around the march — the first mass gathering of gay rights supporters in Washington since 2000 — suggests that as the AIDS crisis has receded, gay activists have had a more difficult time mobilizing around a more diffuse agenda, including issues like same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws.

“We can be thankful that the threat of AIDS has ebbed and is no longer the death warrant it was, but that also turns down the flame of consciousness,” said Dudley Clendinen, a scholar of the American gay movement who teaches at Johns Hopkins University.

“And there’s nothing that remotely replaces it as a galvanizing force for the gay movement,” Mr. Clendinen said. “Marriage is probably the next biggest thing that touched and touches many. But that’s an issue, not an attack. And movements don’t always respond to issues as well as they respond to an attack.”

In the vacuum left as AIDS became less of a threat, more of the movement’s attention shifted toward action in state legislatures and city councils. Organizers of the march are now arguing for abandoning that strategy, saying it is too incremental and leaves important rights vulnerable to the whim of state legislatures and ballot initiatives.

“The endless pursuit of fractions of equality, state by state, county by county, locality by locality is not enough,” said Cleve Jones, a veteran organizer who has been involved in gay rights battles since the 1970s. “It is a failed strategy. Until we get federal action, every one of those local victories — as important as they are — every one is incomplete and impermanent.”

Activists of this mindset believe that with a large Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House, now is the ideal time to take on issues like overturning the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

“There has never been a better time than now,” said David Mixner, a longtime advocate for gay rights. “What are you waiting for? When will you have better than 60 votes in the Senate?”

There are signs of progress in Washington that are certain to embolden advocates like Mr. Mixner. The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of hate crimes to include those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation.

But the push to focus on the federal government has angered activists on the state level, who have refused to commit money and volunteers to the march.

Of particular concern is that the march could divert volunteers and money away from several crucial battles over same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships under way in various states.

In addition to the ballot initiatives in Maine and Washington, gay rights advocates in New York and New Jersey believe legislatures there are close to approving measures that would legalize same-sex marriage.

“The march is happening and that’s fantastic, but were focused on what we’re doing here,” said Jesse Connolly, manager of the No on 1 campaign in Maine, which is fighting the ballot initiative that would overturn a law allowing same-sex marriage. “Our effort is so critical for these last four weeks that we need everyone we can on the ground here in Maine. So we’re not going to be sending anyone to the march.”

Lynne Bowman, executive director of Equality Ohio, said, “I hope we don’t wake up the day after Election Day and realize we could have won Maine if only so many resources weren’t put toward the march.” Equality Ohio has also declined to endorse the march.

State activists are not the only ones who are wary.

The nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, waited nearly three months after the idea was first proposed in May before it agreed to get on board. Another influential group, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, did not endorse the march until last month.

A war of words has erupted in the gay news media between the march’s organizers and prominent figures in gay and lesbian circles who think the march has been hastily planned and will draw meager crowds. “One of the worst ideas ever,” was the initial judgment of Bil Browning, a widely read gay blogger.

Of course, other gay leaders say the debate does not have to be framed in either/or terms.

“You are welcome to your opinion that it’s all or nothing and reject incrementalism, but I think we can be fighting for both,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which eventually decided to support the march because of its potential to energize a new generation of volunteers and activists.

Beyond the dispute over strategy, other factors may be at play in the divisiveness that has characterized the efforts to organize the march. With the exception of Mr. Jones, 54, and Mr. Mixner, 63, the organizing has largely been the undertaking of young activists who are making their foray into gay politics. And their brand of activism is not the kind that was hatched in the offices of established gay rights organizations. It has spread through Facebook and Twitter and the blogosphere.

Longtime gay rights advocates said they have seen a surge in activism among people in their 20s and 30s, who seemed especially energized after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which outlawed same-sex marriage in that state, and gave many of them their first taste of adversity.

Many of these new activists were in diapers when Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco city supervisor, was assassinated, and in grade school when the AIDS crisis was at its peak.

“I’m 27 and I wasn’t even out of the closet when the last LGBT march on Washington took place,” said Kip Williams, the co-director of the march, which is officially called the National Equality March. “This is really the first opportunity for so many people of my generation to take a stand for our equality and march for our rights.”

Mr. Williams and the other co-director, Robin McGehee, 36, said they had recruited a considerable share of volunteers and march participants through the Internet and without the help of national and state gay advocacy groups.

Strife has characterized previous such marches on Washington, in 1978, 1987, 1993 and 2000. In 1987, for example, organizers debated whether to include the word “bisexual” in the march’s title. They ultimately decided not to; the term “bi” was added to the title of the 1993 march.

“Whenever you have these kinds of events, ones that seek to portray a national public image for a group of people, you’re going to see this kind of dissent,” said Amin Ghaziani, a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton who wrote a book on the previous gay rights marches.

As seen by the endorsement of groups like the Human Rights Campaign that were initially resistant to the march, there are signs some of the dissent is being resolved. The question remains whether the infighting has already doomed the march.

“We’ve undercut the very people we’re supposed to be supporting and empowering,” acknowledged Mr. Browning, the blogger who had said the march was one of the “worst ideas ever” but later came to believe that such a march could be a powerful statement of solidarity for the movement.