Blaming POCs for Prop 8 is not progressive politics.

Sometimes you catch yourself just waiting for someone out there to print and publish that bewilderment you've been having but can't seem to express very articulately or persuasively. Robert Chlala helps out:

Beyond Black vs. Gay: A Wake-Up Call to Gay Marriage Activists in California

I’m not quite sure when the mainstream gay rights advocates adopted George W. Bush's "you are either with us or against us” mantra, became obsessed about exit polls, and started to believe that it's OK to marginalize people of color, but here we are.

Caught this on RaceWire -- 'hat tip'!

Facing Race

Responding to a call by TUPOCC founding co-chair Renée Sánchez, and organized by USF 3L and NLG-SF Student Vice President, Aliya Karmali, about ten TUPOCC members and our friends attended the Applied Research Center's Facing Race: A National Conference in downtown Oakland, California this past weekend.

Attending plenary panels and workshops from Thursday's opening keynote by Sherman Alexie to Saturday's closing plenary on Race and the Global Economy, TUPOCC was present and representing radical "queer, colored" legal activism, as we connected with our friends and allies from other organizations dedicated to interracial justice, as a critical dimension of the people's intergenerational movement toward social justice.

While there were many interesting panels and workshops, I found two workshops particularly helpful to my interests in helping us build TUPOCC and creating community in Oakland.  

BYOB: Build Your Own Blog was led by Liza Sabater of CultureKitchen.com and Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen.  Beyond an introduction to blogs and blogging, Liza and Chris provided great information about technologies that could substantially help us represent our racial justice work like Utterli (mobile audio/video sharing) Shoebox (photo management) and Drupal.

That last software, an open source package (as in GNU and the free software movement) seems particularly promising in helping us build TUPOCC's infrastructure beyond our previous and present attempts with Yahoo! Groups, the TUPOCC website and our Legal Activists of Color blog.  Liza particularly indicated that Drupal has a module that can realize my idea of literally mapping TUPOCC's membership, by integrating Google Maps with a membership database that we could create based on the 141 folks in our Y! group.

While I have yet to download Drupal and likely won't start learning it until mid-December, I am very excited about its potential for TUPOCC and the several other organizations for which I volunteer, e.g., Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc., the East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association, the Berkeley Law Foundation and the National Latina/Latino Law Student Association (NLLSA).

It's been a while since I've focused my energies on non-law and non-text learning and culture making, and I miss photography and film-making a great deal.

The second workshop I attended, Creating a Culture of Racial Justice, was powerfully synergistic.  Moderated by Melanie Cervantes of Dignidad Rebelde and Taller Tupac Amaru, this workshop also featured Favianna Rodriguez, co-founder del mismo taller, Tumi's Design and the Eastside Arts Alliance; and DJ Phatrick and Samantha Chanse -- popular educators, community builders and radical cultural workers of color who are (or in the recent past were) based in the SF Bay Area.

Melanie's prompts and questions were particularly stimulating and merit mentioning three of the most memorable:

• How do people create a racial justice culture to support social justice movement(s)?
• How do folks who have become artists inspire and materially support others who desire to make art but feel unable to do so vis-a-vis their racial subordination and other forms of oppression? 
• How can artists serve as visionaries for the racially just world we want to create?

By themselves these questions may not seem revolutionary to some, but witnessing Favianna, Melanie, Patrick and Samantha share how they have made their lives and their art into living visions of racial, immigrant, gender and sexual justice was deeply inspiring.

I have lived, loved and worked hard to develop mi conciencia (a radical racial, political, sexual and spiritual awareness of my place in people's history), but to study law I stopped making photographs and films, dancing, journaling and writing poesía.  While I tried to remain aware of the importance of "in xochitl, in cuicatl, flor y canto, flower-and-song" (art, poetry, dance, singing), my daily practice of making art basically stopped, as I focused on learning the law, reading critical legal scholarship and organizing students.

Witnessing Favianna, Melanie, Patrick and Samantha, reminded me of the crucial necessity to make soul and face as our elder compañera Gloria Anzaldúa and other radical lesbian Chicana poetas, artistas, scholars y filósofas have written.

While directly serving the people as a community lawyer in West Oakland's Homeless Action Center is a powerful practice of transgression against class norms and teaches me daily about solidarity across the many dimensions of power and identity (especially interracial and gender justice), Creating a Culture of Racial Justice reminded me that I also need to regularly practice love-inspired art-making -- in order to feel joyful and strong enough to serve nuestra lucha por justicia para el pobre (our struggle for justice for the poor), as the old La Raza Law Students Association slogan goes.

I have a lot more to write but more has already been reported.

I will end by mentioning four mujeres with whom I spoke briefly on the last day of Facing Race.

First, I briefly saw Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, the fierce and fearless poverty scholar and co-founder of San Francisco-based POOR Magazine / Poor News Network.  Tiny mentioned that POOR is on the move to the Mission District, after having resisted its threatened eviction, naming "development" for the 21st century colonization that it recapitulates and organizing the people to take back the land by holding a ceremony that calls upon the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

I also caught a glimpse of Evelyn Sanchez of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC), whom I spoken with briefly at Friday afternoon's plenary on The Race Debate: Challenging Colorblindness with Race Conscious Solutions.

Next, I took the opportunity to speak with Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez, who was book-signing at the AK Press table and whose sixth book, 500 Years of Chicana Women's History / 500 Años de la Mujer Chicana, was recently published.  

I first read Betita's work while surviving law school: as I did at least once a semester, I left campus and got lost until I found myself in a bookstore, seeking words to nurture my spirit against the profound alienation of formal legal education.  

In San Francisco's Mission District, I came across De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century, which introduced me to Betita's profound writings on mujerista and youth activism from New Mexico a California and across much of the twentieth century.  I had most recently seen Betita across the table during La Raza Centro Legal's 35th anniversary dinner earlier this year, and when I mentioned it, she told me that she recalled how I was sitting to her right and asked about my work in West Oakland and the meaning of my middle name, Tizoc.

As she carefully composed the brief inscription she wrote on the book's frontispiece, I waited, kneeling before the table and feeling ever more deeply the significance of our brief momento conjuntos.  I thought of my dad y abuelitas and my mom y tías and knew I was exactly where I should be.  

Afterwards, thanking her and moving on, I was pleased to share the book con alguna de nuestras compañeras, Teague Briscoe (an El Paso homegirl and president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild - San Francisco Bay Area Chapter).

Finally, I had the fortune of seeing Tommy Escarcega, another El Paso Tejana and long time community activist who was organizing in support of the voting rights of people in county jails this past election.  

We first met four or five years ago when she knocked on the door of La Raza Law Students Association at the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), saying she had heard there were Raza law students and asking for our support of her work in Proyecto Common Touch, which she founded to protect the due process rights of convicted women on parole or in custody.   

Since then I've seen La Tommy a few times over the years, like when her project was based at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland's Fruitvale District.  We spoke briefly about her recent work on the voting rights of people in jail, and I introduced her to other TUPOCC xicanas as the conference ended.

+++

As I've tried to show, the ARC's Facing Race was a powerful meeting of what Liepollo L. Pheko, of The Trade Collective, dubbed "the manys" who remain committed to the compact for racial justice.  I encourage you to read more reporting on Facing Race.

Muchismas gracias a Renée y Aliya for motivating and organizing TUPOCC to represent at Facing Race.  We did good outreach work in identifying allies and nurtured relationships con nuestr@s compañer@s across the law / non-law divide.

As Betita wrote, "Thank you for your good work, ¡Adelante juntos!"

"queer" As A Tool Of Colonial Oppression: The Case Of Israel/palestine

I'm seriously not trying to start anything, I just thought this piece was interesting. I feel like this is really worthy of a discussion at the convention. The debate is growing.

From Znet - "queer" As A Tool Of Colonial Oppression: The Case Of Israel/palestine

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=91&ItemID=10756

by Blair Kuntz; August 13, 2006

As the second Palestinian Intifada erupted in the autumn of 2000, a curious and persistent argument began being employed by supporters of the Israeli state. At many talks with guest speakers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, Zionist supporters of Israel, many of them rather macho young men who never identified themselves as gay and who almost certainly never lived in an Arab or Muslim country, would stand up and decry the lack of gay rights in the Palestinian Territories compared to their view of the enlightened policies of Israel.

Given the frequency of the attacks, it was obvious that they were part of a concerted campaign to demonize Palestinians. Indeed, citing a sensationalized report printed in the pro-Israeli New Republic magazine which suggested that the Palestinian Authority was conducting a vicious campaign against homosexuals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip [1], one pro-Israeli writer stated that as a result hundreds of Palestinians had been forced to flee to Israel, concluding that "if any gay solidarity exists it must be to defend the nations that permit us to live and denounce the regimes that do not," as he then went on ironically to defend the policies of homophobe George W. Bush's vision as "the only hope for freedom in the Middle East [2]."

This year, as World Pride Day (held in Jerusalem in August 2006) edged closer, mainstream North American Zionist Jewish organizations such as United Jewish Communities organized the National LGBT Pride in Israel Mission. Such organizations promised organized all expenses paid "gay tours" for the members of the "gay elite" so that they could witness first-hand Israel's enlightened gay society by touring sites "specifically significant to gays and lesbians [3]."

The presence of such a concerted campaign by many people not normally motivated to speak out on behalf of gay rights is clearly designed to portray Israel as humane and tolerant, while demonstrating that their Arab, specifically their Palestinian, neighbors are not. Like Western arguments used to justify the West's "war on terror", this argument is an obvious attempt to legitimize Israeli racism and war crimes, and to present Israel as a beacon of human rights and democracy when in fact, as this paper will demonstrate, Israel in practice displays as little concern for the rights of gay Palestinians as it does for heterosexual Palestinians. Aside from the ludicrous proposition that Israel has somehow rid itself of homophobia, it is even more absurd to suggest that somehow Palestinian gays and lesbians should willingly bow down and thank the Israeli government for having passing gay rights laws in Israel as they witness the carnage of this summer's grotesquely-named "Summer Rain" campaign in Gaza and applaud as they view relatives and friends killed as "collateral damage" by Israeli Apache helicopters. It is as if Palestinian gays and lesbians should whisper quiet notes of thanks to the benevolent Israeli government as they wait together for hours with their heterosexual brothers and sisters at racist check-points.

Such statements, naturally, are designed to appeal to the worst Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims as a people hopelessly mired in a barbaric past dooming them to intolerance and backwardness. In justifying war crimes by the fact that Israel has granted queers civil rights, Israeli supporters have wrapped the word "queer" in a bright and shiny package shorn of all reference to past queer struggles. Seemingly, it is a package Israel can now export-perhaps along with the arms shipments that make the country the world's third largest arms exporter [4]-to justify Israeli colonialism. As we shall see, the package has serious defects. As the American anti-occupation queer group QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) notes: "The government of Israel is not building a wall around an entire country because it is attempting to create a queer safe space [5]."

The first defect in the argument is that it neglects Israel's own homophobic past. This is important because we should remember that Israel's Jewish holocaust survivors shared a common experience with gays under Hitler's rule. Like Jews, "Aryan" gays were also targeted for deportation and murder; however, we should remember that the oppression of German gay men began earlier than that of any other group. Gay men, who wore a pink triangle, were treated worse than any other group, subjected to castration, torture, and beatings, were subjected to the lowest position in the camp hierarchy, and subjected to abuse by both guards and fellow prisoners. When the camps were liberated, American soldiers often berated gay prisoners for their perversion. Other gay prisoners were liberated only to be thrown back into jail as they were considered dangerous sex offenders, while others were left to perish [6].

As fellow victims of the Nazi Holocaust, gays might have thought that the establishment of the nascent Jewish state would have been sympathetic to gays within the new state. Instead, the newly-created entity enacted its own anti-sodomy law, and because of the influence of religious Judaism, lesbian and gay Jews were denied the right to aliya or the right of Jewish return. Moreover, the decades following the establishment of the Jewish state emphasized family and reproduction to increase the Jewish population and were hardly a paradise for gays and lesbians. This is true especially if one can judge by a paper written on homosexuality on Israeli kibbutzes in which all of the gays interviewed recalled that homosexuality was a topic that was almost never discussed [7]. Instead, gays and lesbians were rendered invisible and subject to societal disapproval.

Israel's anti-sodomy law was only removed in 1988, far after many other western nations had removed theirs [8]. Even then, to pass the law, liberal Knesset members called the vote in the middle of the night when they knew that religious Knesset members would not be present [9]. Many years after the law was passed, Israeli politicians routinely uttered homophobic remarks, most prominently Israeli president Ezer Weizman who denounced homosexuals in 1996 while addressing high-school students stating:

"Homosexuality is abnormal from a social point of viewŠI personally do not accept this business of everyone coming out of the closet. It seems to me to be weird [10]." In 1999, then Health Minister Schlomo Benirzi, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, proclaimed Dana International, the transsexual singer who won the Eurovison song festival, "an abomination" [11]." Most recently, this year an Israeli rabbi, David Basri, has blamed avian flu on election campaigns promoting gay marriage [12], while leaflets advocating "death to Sodomites" have been distributed in Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. Clearly, despite the passage of gay rights laws, there are still many people in Israel who don't like lgbt people.

Given that homosexuality was hardly universally accepted in Israel, and indeed was more likely to be the object of disdain, many academics have posited that instead of demonstrating remarkable tolerance, the granting of gay rights can be explained as Hagai El-Ad, the Executive Director of Jerusalem's lgbt community center The Open House notes, "the closing of the ranks among the Jewish majority in the face of a common Arab enemy [13]." Jewish gay activists gained acceptance by convincing the wider public that they were patriotic citizens. As Ruti Kadih notes, lesbians presented themselves as mothers who have performed their Zionist task, while gay males presented themselves as soldiers who wanted to serve their country like everyone else [14]. Thus, as Joshua Gamson explains: "Gays and lesbians have fast become not-Other by emphasizing not just their similarity to straights but their difference from the ultimate Other [i.e. the Arabs] in Israel [15]."

Indeed, the need for Jewish bodies to defend the Jewish state (for only Druze and Bedouin Arabs are allowed to join the Israeli Offense Forces) cannot be over-emphasized as two studies by Israeli researchers suggest. One states, for example, that "there is no evidence that the long-standing inclusion of homosexuals in the IDF has harmed operational effectiveness, combat readiness, unit cohesion or morale in the Israeli military [16]" while another found "no common adjustment problems relating to these [gay] men's sexual orientation [17]". But, as one paper notes, while the law has been changed to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the Army, the vast majority still choose to hide their sexual orientation from their fellow combatants, and instead adapt to the masculine and heterosexual norms of the Army [18].

Meanwhile, other gay activists, especially from the Israeli group Black Laundry, an lgbt group fighting for equality for Israel's Palestinian citizens and against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza refuses to legitimize Israeli racism and announces that "the oppression of all minorities within Israel is fed by the same racism, chauvinism, and militarism that causes the dispossession of the Palestinian people to continue [19]". Furthermore, as Hagai El-Ad argues, while Israel has passed gay rights laws there is still no government commitment to financing a gay youth shelter in Tel Aviv or opening up high schools across the country to the lecture services of Israel's gay organizations. As El-Ad continues: "Will gays and lesbians choose now to close ranks with the oppressive majority, or will we understand that a future of freedom is possible for us only if it's possible for everyone? [20]"

The argument concerning the granting of gay rights in the face of a common Arab enemy is further buttressed by the May 2006 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court that upheld a controversial law amendment to the Citizenship Law that prevents "family unification" of Palestinians married to Arab citizens of Israel or Arab Jerusamlemites [21]. Thus, while gay rights are granted largely for the benefit of Israel's Jewish citizens, under the tenure of Ariel Sharon as prime minister, new forms of discriminatory legislation were passed for the country's Arab citizens. As usual, the Israeli government claims the law is necessary for "security" reasons, but according to HAKOMED Center for the Defense of the Individual, the real reason is a demographic one, and the organization quotes former Interior Minister, Eli Yishai who stated that non-Jews "threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel [22]." Furthermore, senior officials in the Population Administration contended at the time that family unification effectively constituted the "realization of the right of return in a roundabout way [23]."

Meanwhile, gays who have fled the Palestinian territories will never be granted the rights of refugees because granting such rights to Palestinian gays is also seen as attempting to gain a "creeping right of return." Indeed, while gay men have fled the West Bank and Gaza-and meanwhile, far more gays probably go to Amman, Jordan than to Israel-what is less documented is Israel's own role in creating homophobia in Palestinian society through the blackmailing of gay Palestinians. As with Palestinian children, recruiting Palestinian gays as collaborators is part and parcel of Israel's policy to maintain control over Palestinian territory. The Israeli secret police often exploit gay Palestinians by coercing them into working undercover to gather information about other Palestinians [24]. Those accused of being collaborators are at risk of stigmatization, exclusion, and occasionally retaliation. Gays identified as collaborators stigmatize gay men in general, and collaborators of all stripes are shown little mercy, especially when they are connected to serious incidents leading to the death of other Palestinians. Thus, if gays meet a violent end it is not clear whether they are killed because they are gay or because they are seen as informers.

Unfortunately, while Israeli defenders laud their country's liberal gay rights policies, Israel has done nothing to protect gay runaways. Most runaways came during the period of the Oslo accords, but none have been granted official residence status or asylum. In fact, Israeli police have expelled several dozen gay runaways at West Bank and Gaza checkpoints, and have arrested Palestinian gay runaways and sent them back to the West Bank. Persecution for sexual orientation warrants asylum under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees covenant to which Israel is a signatory, but it has never accepted a gay Palestinian's refugee appeal. Indeed, Israel has never granted refugee asylum to any Palestinian, gay or straight, not even to those who make a credible claim that they will be killed if they are sent back to the West Bank or Gaza. As Kathleen Peratis of Human Rights Watch notes, the only exception for this is for people who "identify with the State of Israel and its goals" and who "performed a material act to advance the security of the state"-in other words, collaborators [25].

The Nationality and Entry into Israel law, the same law which denies the rights of Israeli Arab citizens to marry Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, according to Human Rights Watch, has in fact led to a crackdown on gay Palestinians in Israel. Now, no official status is possible, so most gays who do find their way to Israel soon find themselves objects of police protection and are arrested and summarily expelled. Obviously, in contrast to the claims of pro-Israeli defenders, Palestinian gays are no more welcome or protected in Israel than heterosexual Palestinians. Both are seen as demographic threats to the Jewish population, and all of Israel's high-sounding words about protecting gays are revealed as empty rhetoric.

Furthermore, as Israeli defenders decry their Arab neighbors supposed contempt for gays and women, they never acknowledge the role Israel has played in encouraging both Islamic and Christian religious fundamentalists hostile to gay rights. Just as the United States promoted and funded religious fundamentalist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida, and the Ayotollah Khomeni in Iran while over the years actively helping to overthrow or de-stabilize secular governments in Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, Israel too has played the role of the sorcerer's apprentice in encouraging Islamic fundamentalism, trying to defeat, as former intelligence director for the Defense Intelligence Agency, states, "Arab nationalism using Muslim zealots [26]". As Charles Freeman, a veteran U.S. diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, states: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet [the Israeli domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO [27] (Dreyfuss, p. 191]." Though it would later assassinate Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in 2004, after 1967 Israel saw Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood as valuable allies against the PLO and watched benignly as it created charity organizations and religious endowments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1973, while Shin Bet looked on, Yassin founded the Islamic Center which became the Islamic Association. Manachem Begin formally licensed the Association and the Israeli governor of the Gaza Strip, Yitzhak Segev has admitted to financing the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the Communists [28] (Dreyfuss, p. 197)." Besides promoting Hamas, Israel has also actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood in its campaign against the Bath Party in Syria and shipped arms and provided intelligence information to Iran's fundamentalist mullahs during the Iran-Iraq war.

Nor has the Israeli government shied away from forming ties with virulently homophobic pro-Israeli Christian Zionist fundamentalists, whose hate speech against gays (shorn of its Biblical references) would have found favor with the Nazis. These fundamentalists include such men as Pat Robertson, whom the Zionist Organization of America has honored with its State of Israel Friendship Award, and Jerry Falwell to whom former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin presented the Jabotinsky Centennial medal for his work on behalf of Israel [29]. The Christian Zionist fundamentalists' support stems from their belief in the "end days" which will only happen when the Jews return to Israel and build the Third Temple over the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. When this happens, the final battle, Armageddon, will be fought and all righteous believers will be "raptured" into heaven. Those who don't convert will perish.

Although this scenario theoretically will result in the eradication of the Jewish people, the Israeli government continues to court the evangelists for their economic and political support for Israel, and as the United States, influenced by the Christian fundamentalists' political clout, joins Iran in 2006 in voting against granting two European gay rights groups UN observer status, Israel, supposedly a great friend of gays, remains silent. Meanwhile, the United States' and Israel's support for fundamentalist Islamic groups to the detriment of secular governments has important ramifications for the lives of lgbt people in the region. As Ali Hili, a gay Muslim Iraqi living in exile in Britain has stated, during Saddam Hussein's regime Iraqi gays enjoyed some acceptance, especially in theatre, in entertainment and media. Since the American invasion of Iraq, however, and the subsequent rise to power of Shia fundamentalists such as the Ayatollah al-Sistani (who has issued a death fatwa against gays), death squads have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution. When gay activists go to U.S. authorities in the Green Zone for help, the American officials, who we must remember take their orders from an openly homophobic administration, treat the gays who ask for protection with contempt and derision [30].

Indeed, when the pro-Israeli supporters deride homophobia in the Moslem world, they reveal-often comically-their own racism and obvious ignorance. Certainly, for example, the American actions at Abu Ghraib prison in which American soldiers fixated on simulating homosexual relations among Iraqi male prisoners reveal more about Americans' repressed homosexual desires than they will ever reveal about Arabs or Moslems. Furthermore, a cursory look at the history of same-sex relations in the Muslim world would reveal that until recently, at least, Muslim cultures have demonstrated a far greater tolerance for same-sex relations than their Judeo-Christian counterparts [31]. In contrast to their Christian counterparts there is no similar history of medieval witch-hunts and the burning of homosexuals at the stake. In contrast, as Assad Abu Khalil notes, "the regularity and apparent legitimacy of homosexual relations were seen by Medieval Christians as evidence of the moral decadence of Moslems [32]." The region of the world with the most visible and diverse homosexualities was not Europe, but North Africa and southwestern Asia [33].

Islamic poetry has many examples in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu in which the poet expresses an idealized love of boys while elsewhere in Islamic history one finds the sexual use of young male entertainers, dancers, and military cadets. In societies where male sexual pleasure is seen as positive and where male sexual urges require the release of accumulated semen and where sexes are segregated, and where women are expected to be virgins until they are married, same-sex relations are unsurprisingly common. Although homosexuality often was seen as an act, rather than an identity, with the male who assumed the passive female role seen as inferior, as Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe conclude: "Many of the factors credited with fostering the emergence of modern Western homosexual patterns such as western labeling practices, the popular belief that homosexuality is a character trait, the association of non-masculinity of homosexual desire, and the possibility of urban networks or subcultures were present in historical Islamic societies [34]. The historical pattern continues to the present day, and same-sex relations are likely to be met with a "will not to know" [35] and as long as the relations do not interfere with societal and familial responsibilities, the relations are likely to be overlooked. Naturally, there are problems with this social model, but in contrast to Western societies, much affection is allowed between men in most Moslem cultures. And while the western press (like the New Republic's sensational focus on the treatment of Palestinian gays) typically focuses on news items such as beheadings in Saudi Arabia, as gay journalist Mubarak Dahir notes, "from what I was able to discover while in Saudi Arabia, it seems unlikely that simply being discovered to be gay is sufficient to get you beheaded." He observed that most of the gay men he met were worried about other matters such as how to meet others for sex and companionship rather than being beheaded [36].

In choosing to go ahead with World Pride in Jerusalem, InterPride, the organization which sponsored World Pride, appeared to have closed ranks with the oppressor rather than insisting on freedom and human rights for everyone. While World Pride used the all-embracing theme "Love Without Borders" to express a liberal and tolerant image, in fact, as the group Queers for Palestine noted, the title was truly ironic given the fact that it was chosen as the Israeli government was building its apartheid wall cutting off approximately 200,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem from the West Bank [37]. Indeed, while World Pride celebrated a supposed "Love Without Borders," most Palestinian gays couldn't attend due to the system of checkpoints and closure. Other Middle Eastern lgbt people such as those in the Lebanese group Helem (Dream) weren't able to attend: first, because they were automatically excluded from attending Israel, and second, because their country was being torn apart and destroyed by a horrific Israeli military invasion. In keeping with its western-oriented mandate to spread the international-or should we say western-"gay uniform", InterPride, distributed thousands of DVDs in San Francisco and New York promoting the "great parties" and "beautiful women" in Israel, and focused on the Israeli government allowing openly gay men and women to serve (never discussing the role this force plays in denying the rights of Palestinians). It did, however, condemn the Palestinian Authority for its treatment of lesbian and gay people [38].

As the Latin American queer group Grupo de Trabajo por los Derechos Sexuales en America Latina observed before the event: "The state of Israel is going to make use of the Pride celebration-like the Argentinean junta did during the World Soccer Cup in 1978-to collect revenues and show the world how Israel is a free and tolerant country, in opposition to its "barbaric" neighbors who could benefit from invasion if that is the price to bring the 'joys of civilization' [39]."

Indeed, if groups such as InterPride wished to promote queer rights in the Middle East, surely they could have thought of a better strategy than bringing groups of consumerist lgbt westerners to Israel, while Palestinians, both gay and straight, suffered the humanitarian catastrophe resulting from the "diet" laughingly imposed upon them by an Israeli government punishing them for practicing the democratic rights Israel rhetorically talks about but doesn't practice.

If greater tolerance for lgbt people develops, it won't be a result of the empty pronouncements of Irshad Manji, a lesbian pro-Israeli supporter who celebrates Israel's "diversity" (wouldn't true diversity mean a one-state solution?) while whitewashing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as she supports colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while spreading her message of support for the powerful on the hate-mongering FOX TV [40].

Increased lgbt acceptance in the Middle East will more likely result instead from gay groups in the Middle East working in their traditional cultures, while true solidarity from abroad will be demonstrated by lgbt groups of integrity and honesty such as QUIT, Queers for Palestine, the Grupo de Trabajo por los Derechos Sexuales en America Latina, and the South African group Engender which oppose militarism and colonialism and which realize that in their own countries gays are still murdered purely because of their sexuality, gay teenagers are still expelled from their homes, and as in my home country Canada, citizens are still capable of electing a vehemently homophobic government-a government which must be stressed firmly supports Israeli war crimes-determined to take away queer rights.

If we are truly concerned about lgbt rights, we should recognize that civil rights for lgbt people in one place does not excuse oppression or war crimes in another. In short, it demands that we join with the many brave Jews who oppose and refuse the Israeli government narrative, the refuseniks who refuse to be co-opted by Israeli war machine, and stand up and shout: "Not in our name!"

Endnotes

1. Halevi, Yossi Klein. "Gay Palestinians' plight" in The New Republic, issues 4, 570 and 4, 571, August 19 and 26, 2002, p. 12.

2. Bernstein, David J. "Gay Palestinians suffer under Arafat" in Hillel: the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life: cms.hillel.org, November 27, 2002.

3. "Israel news." Baltimore Jewish Times.com. www.jewishtimes.com, August 25, 2005.

4. "Arms unto the nations" in www.arcuk.org/pages/arms_unto_the_nations.htm

5. Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism. "Apartheid Pride? No Thanks!" BAR Newspaper, May 12, 2005.

6. Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: the Nazi War Against Homosexuals. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1986: p. 181.

7. Ben-Ari, Adital Tirosh. "Experiences of 'not belonging' in collectivistic communities: narratives of gays in kibbutzes," in Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 42, issue 2, 2001: p. 101-125.

8. Walzer, Lee. "Queer in the land of Sodom," in TheGully.com, February 21, 2002. www.thegully.com

9. Ibid.

10. International Lesbian and Gay Association. World Legal Survey. www.ila.info

11. Gamson, Joshua. "The Officer and the Diva" in The Nation, June 28, 1999, p. 21.

12. "Bird flu God's wrath: rabbi" in www.news.com, March 21, 2006.

13. El-Ad, Hagai. "Gay Israel: No Pride in Occupation" in TheGully.com, February 21, 2002. www.thegully.com

14. Gamson, op cit., p. 21

15. Ibid.: p. 22.

16. Belkin, Aron and Melissa Levitt. "Homosexuality and the Israeli Defense Forces: did lifting the gay ban undermine military performance?" in Armed Forces and Society, vol. 27, no. 4, Summer 2001: p. 544.

17. Kaplan, Danny and Eylal Ben-Ari. "Brothers and others in arms: managing gay identity in combat units of the Israeli Army" in Journal of contemporary ethnography, vol. 29, no. 4, August 2000: p. 397.

18. Ibid.: p. 406.

19. www.blacklaudry.org/images/englishflyer.jpg

20. El-Ad, op cit., p. 4

21. "Court narrowly upholds 'family unification ban'" in Ha'aretz, Sunday, May 14, 2006.

22. Stein, Yael. Forbidden families: family unification and child registration in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem: HAKOMED Center for the Defense of the Individual, 2004: p. 17.

23. Ibid.: p. 18.

24. "Palestinian gays flee to Israel," BBC News, October 22, 2003.

25. Peratis, Kathleen. "Only human: for gay Palestinians, Tel Aviv is Mecca," in Forward, February 24, 2006.

26. Dreyfuss, Robert. The Devil's game: how the United States helped unleash fundamentalist Islam. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005: p. 206.

27. Ibid.: p. 191.

28. Ibid.: p. 197.

29. Horowitz, Craig. "Israel's Christian soldiers," in New York magazine, September 29, 2003.

30. Ireland, Doug. "Iran exports anti-gay pogrom to Iraq" in In These Times, May 31, 2006.

31. Dunne, Bruce. "Power and sexuality in the Middle East" in Middle East Report, Spring 1998: p. 8.

32. Abu Khalil, Assad. "Gender boundaries and sexual categories in the Arab world," in Feminist issues, 1997, vol. 15, no. 1-2.

33. Roscoe, Will and Stephen O. Murray. Introduction in Islamic homosexualities: culture, history, and literature. New York: New York University Press, 1997: p. 4.

34. Roscoe, Will and Stephen O. Murray. Conclusion in Islamic homosexualities: culture, history, and literature. New York: New York University Press, 1997: p. 314.

35. Murray, Stephen O. "The will not to know: Islamic accommodations to male homosexuality" in Islamic homosexualities: culture, history, and literature. New York: New York University Press, 1997: p. 14

36. Mubarak, Dahir. "Is beheading really the punishment for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia?"in Sodomy laws, www.sodomylaws.org/world/saudi_arabia/saudinews19.htm

37. Queers for Palestine. "Boycott World Pride in Jerusalem." www.quitpalestine.org

38. Coalition to Boycott World Pride Jerusalem 2006. www.boycottworldpride.org

39. Email distributed by ALITT (Associacion lucha por la identidad travesti y transexual) and MULLABI (Grupo de Trabajo por los derechos sexuales en America Latina), March 16, 2006.

40. Podur, Justin. "A multifaceted fraud: reviewing Irshad Manji's 'The Trouble With Islam', Part 1" in ZNet, December 5, 2003: www.zmag.org

A modified version of this paper was presented at "Crossroads2006", the biennial conference of the Association for Cultural Studies, in Istanbul in July 2006.

Blair Kuntz is the Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Librarian at the University of Toronto Libraries.

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism/Coalition to Boycott World Pride Jerusalem 2006

Call to Boycott World Pride in Jerusalem 2006

Press Release, QUIT!, 18 May 2006

As individuals and groups working for the liberation of all oppressed peoples, we join in the call to boycott travel to World Pride Jerusalem in 2006 as part of the international boycott of Israel. Although the event is named, "Love Without Borders," Israel has illegally occupied Jerusalem for decades, and has functionally annexed the city. Jerusalem is a city with borders that are constantly enforced by the Israeli army. These borders -- including militarized checkpoints and towering concrete walls -- are often impenetrable to Palestinians and other Arab people.

We support the rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other queer-identified (LGBTIQ) people to love and live in freedom, and to demonstrate publicly to demand their/our rights. These rights should not be placed in competition with the long struggle of the Palestinian people, including Palestinian LGBTIQ people, for self-determination, for the right to return to their homes, and the struggle against apartheid and the occupation of their lands.

We urge all people who seek peace and justice to support the travel boycott of World Pride Jerusalem as a part of the boycott of Israeli goods, and the call to divest from Israel. Together we can build a free and fair world for us all.

to endorse or comment on this statement:
http://www.boycottworldpride.org/id2.html

This site is in the process of being created by individuals and groups who are urging a travel boycott to World Pride Jerusalem, which is now scheduled to be held in the summer of 2006. Please read the boycott statement below, and e-mail boycottwp@earthlink.net if you would like more info or want to sign the statement. The boycott was initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) .

An Open Letter to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer Groups and Individuals

We ask you to join us in a boycott of travel to World Pride Jerusalem 2006 as part of the international boycott of Israel and the campaign to divest from Israel.

As you know, many groups have joined the movement to boycott Israeli goods and to divest from Israel in protest of the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands, the construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank, and the destruction of Palestinian olive trees, homes, and villages. We believe that the goal of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) liberation is best served by supporting local community organizing while also supporting the liberation struggles of all oppressed peoples.

We support the work of Jerusalem Open House (the local sponsor of World Pride in Jerusalem) in fighting queer oppression, and we understand and respect that LGBTIQ people and organizations within Israel and Palestine will decide for themselves how to relate to World Pride. However, we ask LGBTIQ people from other countries to boycott travel to Israel and not to attend World Pride 2006 in Jerusalem.

Although Jerusalem was designated as an "international city" by the United Nations, travel to Jerusalem may only be accomplished with the consent of the Israeli government and its military forces. Palestinians and other people of Arab and North African descent have routinely been barred from the City of Jerusalem by the occupying Israeli forces. We are appalled that InterPride chose Jerusalem as the site of the second World Pride event and is encouraging LGBTIQ people from all over the world to ignore the boycott and spend significant funds in Israel, bolstering its tourist economy and its disingenuous claim to be a "free," democratic, state. We are also appalled at the blatant misrepresentation of the event as one that will be open to all LGBTIQ people and the chosen theme "Love Without Borders."

World Pride Jerusalem was originally scheduled to take place in August of 2005. However, Jerusalem Open House and InterPride postponed it because it coincided with the projected date of the Gaza "disengagement." During the period when the world's attention was focused on the dismantlement of Israeli settlements in Gaza, the Israeli government continued its policy of land confiscation and the demolition of homes in the West Bank, and continued construction of the apartheid wall.

The promotion of this event by InterPride has included the distribution of thousands of DVDs at Pride 2004 in San Francisco and New York. The DVD promotes the "great parties" and "beautiful women" in Israel. The DVD also promotes the fact that the Israeli army allows openly lesbian and gay people to serve. It does not discuss the role of the army in oppressing people in the Occupied Territories, but does condemn the Palestinian Authority for its treatment of lesbian and gay people. The only mention of the Intifada (Palestinian resistance struggle) is to say that it makes it more difficult for lesbian and gay Palestinians to come out or to "escape" to Israel.

We understand that some conservative and right-wing people in Israel are opposed to World Pride being held in Jerusalem because they oppose LGBTIQ rights, and that some LGBTIQ people are considering attending the event to oppose these forces and support the local LGBTIQ groups. We certainly understand this impulse, but we believe that after examining all of the many political issues involved it is more important to boycott travel to World Pride 2006 in Jerusalem to send the message to Israel that the civil rights victories gained by some LGBTIQ people within Israel do not justify or excuse the oppression of the Palestinian people or the occupation of their lands.

We hope that you will raise the issues discussed above with your group and others as part of the ongoing dialogue concerning how LGBTIQ people can both promote LGBTIQ liberation and the rights of all oppressed peoples including the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, refugee camps, and in the Diaspora. We will post thoughtful responses to these issues on this website http://www.boycottworldpride.org in order to facilitate dialogue on these issues within the LGBTIQ community.

Please let us know if your group is willing to join us in endorsing or sponsoring the boycott of travel to WorldPride 2006 in Jerusalem.

In Peace and Struggle,

The Coalition to Boycott World Pride Jerusalem 2006

The National Lawyers Guild Condemns the Rulings of New York High Court on Gay Marriage

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, July 10, 2006

 

Contact: Zak Wolfe, 202-265-5965

             Mel Campagna, 415-285-5067

 

The National Lawyers Guild Condemns the Rulings of New York High Court on Gay Marriage

 

New York. The National Lawyers Guild strongly opposes the New York Court of Appeals ruling upholding the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage.  The Guild believes that everyone should be entitled to equal protection under the law, which includes affording the same status, privileges and protections that exist for heterosexual couples to same-sex partnerships.  

 

The judiciary traditionally understands that a fundamental right is one that must be made available to all citizens equally.  It therefore reflected especially dubious reasoning when the Court acknowledged marriage as a fundamental right but then limited that concept to marriages between a man and a woman.  Such a tautology undermines the very essence and value of the concept of fundamental rights. 

 

"The constitutional guarantee for liberty means that any couple should have the right to enjoy the benefits of marriage and the opportunity to raise children within a family if they choose to do so.  The New York court's assumption that current law promotes stability in opposite-sex couples is belied by experience, as reflected in the divorce rate, and its conclusion that 'common sense' suggests that children are necessarily better off with opposite sex parents reflects prejudice rather than reason." said NLG president Michael Avery.

 

The NLG is particularly troubled by the court's willingness to put a judicial imprimatur on bigotry, with its assertion that children raised in same-sex households will be worse off than children raised by a man and a woman-an assertion that has been roundly discredited by every serious study to examine this question. 

 

"It is because of homophobia and intolerance that it is harder for children to grow-up with same-sex parents in this society.  There is no evidence to suggest that a family with male and female parents is an inherently more beneficial experience for children.  There are many people living and loving in this country and constructing their families in 'non-traditional' ways and the government should recognize their experiences." said National Legal Worker VP, Mel Campagna said.