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A Legacy Lost

It seems that George Bush is finally waking up. What he thought was going to be a legacy built on “mission accomplished” is instead a waking nightmare born of a country demolished.

He’s bucking for a Nobel Peace Prize by trying to revive a U.S.-led Middle East peace process that has been all but abandoned since the U.S. Supreme Court gave W. the Oval Office. Now he’s trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians to forge a peace treaty in time to make the Republicans look better on Election Day 2008. With Rove gone, I’m not sure who is giving George advice. But, placing his Peace Prize hopes on a political quagmire as impossible to navigate as the one he created in Iraq is a little like rearranging furniture on the Titanic.

I’d love for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be resolved. But, if George wants a meaningful legacy by actually accomplishing something all he needs to do is turn his attention to the millions of people living in his own country who are without rights, who are victims of hate crimes, who have families that are considered second class.

All George needs to do is pro-actively turn his attention to his country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. By doing so, he would create a legacy that all commanders in chief desire—a legacy built on actions that may at first be seen as controversial but in the end were considered by the majority of the country as the absolute right thing to do.

Right off the bat, George could make history by telling both houses of Congress to pull The Matthew Shepard Act, also known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, out of a defense reauthorization package and to send the bill to his desk as a stand alone piece because he was going to sign it into law.

The bill is needed more than ever. Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its 2006 Hate Crime Statistics. The findings are frightening—hate crimes of all kinds increased eight percent last year. Those committed based on sexual orientation are the third most common—right behind race and religion—comprising 16 percent of all hate crimes. That’s an increase of two percent from 2005.

The Matthew Shepard Act only needs George’s signature in order to expand the current law to include hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

This weekend, George could walk out on the National Mall and take in the enormity of the 12,000 U.S. flags that will be placed there by a coalition of national LGBT organizations. The flags are a tribute to the 12,000 LGBT service personnel who have been thrown out of the armed forces since the failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has gone into effect—the 14th anniversary of which is tomorrow, Friday, November 30th. George could then call on Congress to repeal the bill and do all he can to make it happen.

Next, a simple phone call to openly gay Congressman Barney Frank. “Barney,” George would say, “Let’s put gender identity back into the Employment Non-Discrimination Act—otherwise I won’t sign it.” Then George would act like a real commander in chief and send his army of White House lobbyists to the hill to make sure the bill makes its way through the House and Senate and lands on his desk.

There are also simple things that George could do all by himself. He could issue his own executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the federal workforce and tell Scott Bloch, the right wing henchman and White House Special Counsel, to stop his war against equal protection for LGBT federal workers.

George could take a cue from a great many Fortune 500 companies and with a stroke of his pen extend full domestic partner benefits, including health care and all the other rights and responsibilities granted to straight, married federal employees, to their LGBT counterparts.

George only has a little over 13 months left to retool his reputation as the absolute worst President in our history. Only doing something cutting edge, acting outside his constrained box, taking a risk that will actually be good for the country can redefine his presidency. In 50 years, being known as the most gay-friendly president would actually help his biographers reinterpret his tenure—look what making trips to China and the former Soviet Union did for Nixon!

Thanks for the Day

I don’t know about you but Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

It just evokes great memories. It was one of the only meals my mother cooked really well. She’d start early in the morning and by noon the house was filled with great smells. We didn’t do the 3 p.m. Thanksgiving Day dinner. We ate around 6 just like we always did.

Of course, the meal was gone in about 45 minutes—turkey, dressing, her special green beans (right out of a can), sweet potatoes and dessert which was always either coconut custard or pumpkin pie with Cool Whip.

OK, so I was a child of depression era parents whose idea of a middle class life was a house on Long Island with plastic slip covers on the furniture and a dishwasher. I didn’t fare too badly though. They sent both my brother and I to college—something neither of them did—and were quite proud when we both achieved our respective graduate degrees.

Thanksgiving was always the one holiday that the whole family got together—all four of us. There were various visitors in different years but the constant, until my dad died, was all four of us around our grand dining room table that was only used for special occasions.

Now that I’m a parent, all grown up approaching 50, in a committed relationship Thanksgiving Day Dinner is on me. Well, actually, it’s on Lynn. I don’t cook—but I can clean a kitchen faster than most.

What’s important is that the day is still all about family—but the one we define for ourselves. Alex, our son, is home from college. His dad and step-mom would usually be with us but a bit of surgery is keeping them close to home. My best friend from first grade, her partner and their son will be driving up from Jersey to join us.

I know how lucky I am to have this family of mine. The ability to define one’s family is a relatively recent phenomenon although the legal protections that come with the standard heterosexual family unit largely escape the collective grasp of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

I’ve written ad nauseum about the myriad of rights and privileges lesbian and gay couples are denied on both the state and national levels. Domestic partnerships and civil unions just don’t cut the mustard. The civil union experiment in New Jersey bares this out. The new law was passed with the idea of providing the same rights to lesbian and gay couples as to straight ones. Over and over, we’re hearing the horror stories of folks being denied what the law says they should get.

Governor Jon Corzine had to intervene to get UPS to do the right thing. The federal courts are involved in the case of two lesbian couples who wanted to use a pavilion on the beach at Ocean Grove but were denied access because the Methodist Church that owns it doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. The New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission held a hearing recently and heard from close to 100 couples about how the civil unions law is not working—even to the point where partners were having difficulty visiting one another in a hospital.

If a ballot measure passes in Arkansas, only married heterosexual couples will be able to foster or adopt children. Here we are wanting to be parents, hoping to provide loving, stable homes to kids who need them and the state wants to deny us because our love isn’t the right type.

Unfortunately, Arkansas isn’t alone. Florida, Utah and Mississippi actually do practice equal opportunity discrimination—only married couples are allowed to adopt or become foster parents.

Wouldn’t it be better for kids in the foster care system to be in a loving home on Thanksgiving, rather than in a setting that may be cold and institutional? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when we sit at our Thanksgiving Day table with our family that, as lesbian and gay couples, we knew we had legal protections? Wouldn’t it be great if the LGBT community could really give thanks for living in a country that respects us and values us as citizens?

But, I’m not about to let the powers that be in DC define who I am—a professional, a parent, a partner and a pundit who wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving!

What a Difference a Day Makes

I wouldn’t want to be a Republican right now.

Not that I ever would be but the results of Tuesday’s elections does not leave the GOP with a lot to celebrate.

Right here in Albany, one of its Red Rock Republican suburbs, Colonie, has broken 80 years of one party rule by electing a majority of Democrats to its town council. As of press time, the results of the town supervisor’s race are still up in the air. The Democratic challenger has a slim lead over the long-time Republican incumbent but the count won’t be final until all the absentee ballots tallied.

In Virginia, after a decade of total dominance, the Republicans lost control of the State Senate giving Democratic Governor Tim Kaine at least one house with which he can work. This also sets the stage for next year’s U.S. Senate race where analysts are now considering Virginia a battleground state.

Gay-baiting auto-calls from the baby boomer crooner Pat Boone did not win the day for Ernie Fletcher, Kentucky’s first Republican Governor in over thirty years. Fletcher’s one-term tenure was marked with scandal and homophobia—much like his campaign. Not even the smooth voice of Boone who told voters that the Democratic candidate, former Lt. Governor Martin Bashear, would turn the Blue Grass State into “another San Francisco” scared the voters into keeping Fletcher in office.

And then there were those 31 gay candidates, endorsed by the Victory Fund, who got elected across the country. We now have an openly gay mayor, Democrat Craig Covey, in Ferndale, just outside of Detroit, MI, where Affirmations, the area’s LGBT services center recently moved into a new multi-million facility. The Victory Fund is the LGBT community’s national political action organization that trains candidates and puts its money where its mouth is by raising funds for their endorsed candidates. Of the 71 endorsements this year, the 31 who were successful on Tuesday join 10 who were elected throughout the country earlier in the year.

Among the stand-outs of those LGBT candidates are Democrats Michelle Bruce, an openly transgender incumbent on the Riverdale, GA City Council who was the top vote getter and will now advance to a runoff election and Lydia Lavelle who became the seventh openly LGBT candidate in North Carolina to win office by taking a seat on the Carrboro Board of Alderman.

But Michelle and Lydia aren’t the only ones to take their rightful place in the South. There’s Republican Brian Bates from Georgia. He won a seat on the Doraville City Council and is the first openly gay Republican to win a seat in that state.

Now, I know that all these LGBT elected officials give the top of the GOP a big headache but having one of their own who is also one of our own get elected must make for a splitting migraine. While the Republican talk about a “big tent” it’s hard to feel welcome when the rhetoric is always so homophobic. Perhaps Brian will be able to bring a little humanity to his party because the compassionate conservatism of George Bush certainly hasn’t.

It seems as if we may be heading into a perfect storm of change in this country. People are fed up with Bush and the war. Gas is now over $3 a gallon and the housing market is in a free fall. Health care is still a privilege, not a right. Gay bashing politics just ain’t what it used to be as evidenced by Wednesday’s Congressional vote of 235-184 to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. What’s a Republican to do?

Well, it might be time to read the handwriting on the wall and recognize that it’s no longer business as usual. It’s time to pay attention to the trends.

When it comes to the mountain, Midwest and southern states—what pundits consider the red Republican ones—folks running for office from either party need to recognize that the number of LGBT couples moving into their neighborhood is increasing at what some may consider “an alarming rate.”

According to a new study from the Williams Institute out of the UCLA Law School, the number of couples who identify as same-sex has quadrupled to nearly 780,000 since 1990. Now, conventional wisdom would lead one to think that New York and California would see the biggest increase.

That couldn’t be farther from the truth. We’re moving to the states that have passed amendments to ban same-sex marriage. And what state has the largest increase? Utah.

Perhaps as Gary Gates, the study’s author put it, we need to get ready for some “purple states.” And what a lovely color it is.