OnLine With Zoe

The Biggest Pulpit in History for One Who Loves Diversity

Today I went to a knitting store in Orange County, my county.  I asked the clerk about a certain yarn, did it have to be doubled.  She showed me her splendid rainbow shoulder bag which looked tie-dyed like something from a Grateful Dead concert.  I jokingly asked if she was on acid at Woodstock when she made it.  She whispered, “some people ask me if I am gay.”  I said, “You should tell them yes, it could be fun.”  Lowering her voice even further, she said it would not be funny as it was a Christian store.  I relied, “It wouldn’t stop me.”

I live in the infamous OC.  Home of St James Anglican Church, which does not allows gays.  Home of Disneyland which offers insurance to gay families.  Home of the Angels, the Mighty Ducks, the Clippers.  Home of Loretta Sanchez and Dana Rohrabacher.  The epicenter of the NO ON 6 Campaign, temporary safe-haven for Anita Bryant, home of Rick Warren’s church in Lake Forest. 

There is no mistake about the world famous OC; it is mega conservative, fundamentalist Christian, republican with great beaches and world-class waves.  If you visit the website of Rick Warren’s church you will find teachings promoting the submission of the wife to the husband.  In addition to classifying gay people with pedophiles and practitioners of incest, he has been very vocal that women who have had abortions are no different than the Nazis and their uterus, he likened to Auschwitz. 

It is nice that Melissa Etheridge wants to have a détente with Pastor Rick.  She thinks that it is important that he meets some gay people who have families and family values.  I hope they have a prosperous exchange.  But here’s the point.  Why not pool your resources, gay and straight, Christian and compassionate and have a Summit of Understanding.  Why not hold a Parliament of Religion like the one in 1923 in Chicago.  Invite people of all faiths to promote understanding and demonstrate the ability to sit and talk and be civil(ized).  Invite some women who have had abortions, some doctors who have done abortions, some gay families, some gay ministers and, even, some of those super conservative Anglicans and super liberal Unitarians. 

That is where all of this should be going.  That is the organic coalition that would truly demonstrate CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.  But you DON’T offer this renown bigot, outspoken hate-monger, homophobic, misogynistic man in the Western world, the biggest pulpit in history and say it is just a gesture of inclusion and goodwill.  We are not that stupid and, frankly, neither are you Mr. Obama.  You know this is an outrage. 

So here’s an idea ~ put together a team for the invocation; three or four people who actually represent and LOVE the diversity of America.  Please do not put forth the worst of us who needs to be educated, explained and apologized for; this man who can validate every family who judges and condemns their gay relatives.  Put forth a face, or set of faces which tell all the world who we are, who we hope to be, who inspires the change we can believe in.  

It will be a Day People Died For

If you read anything I have written, chances are very great that it will be about women.  It usually is some observation about what women need; occasionally it is about what women have accomplished.  Lesbianism found a strong voice in my mind and writing, as women loving women seems to be just an obvious outcome.  And, with a dash of humor, I have to admit men just are not lining up to know more about women with ONE notable exception ~ yes, lesbians are very good at that.

I am compassionate, passionate, empathic, very socially curious and a Black family in the White House is deeply engaging.  The radiant treasure is that there are two young girls who will be using the children’s secret garden and rolling eggs in the Spring.  The next president of the United States is an extraordinary man whose life story is like no other ~ this is no everyman.  My conscience requires me to be enthusiastic about President Obama and his family.

However let us stop and take some inventory about the week of Jan 18 – Jan 25, 2009.  The 19th is Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Day and on that Mall, on August 28th 1963 Dr King dreamt of the day that will be January 20, 2009.  The Mall will finally be that Resurrection City, rising from the miles walked, meals missed, dogs biting, hoses spewing to a Black man taking on the job of Abraham Lincoln at one end – to George Washington at the other.  January 20, 2009 will be a day people died for. 

January 22, there will be millions of Americans demonstrating on both sides of the 1972 court decision of Roe v. Wade.  Pro-choice people will be commemorating the lives of women who bled to death from amateur abortions to doctors who were assassinated for performing safe and legal abortions.  Anti-choice people will be praying, marching and demonstrating on behalf of lives, which they believe are murdered before even breathing air.  Each of these “sides” with full hearts and developed intentions will have their day.

In the midst of all this advancement, networking, demonstrating I am called back to that one issue that drives my life; the unrelenting desire for full equality for men and women under the law, pay equity and equal opportunity.  The presidential cabinet is 5/15 ~ one third is women.  The Senate and House have not made significant strides at all.  The US has slipped to 71st in the world in women in leadership. 

Obama and his economic team are stating that job creation will the center piece for the new economic super-structure.  There is talk of millions of jobs in construction and engineering.   As Linda Hirshman has pointed out in the New York Times, Where are the New Jobs for Women?, women make up 9% of construction workers and 12% of engineers.  Today, on Hardball, she expanded the discussion to include job creation for more women in healthcare, education, libraries and the arts.

But let me go even further, we must also take into account that women must be paid as their lives require.  I am considering that paying women the same as men (instead of the 77 cents for White women and 69 cents for Black and .. and .. and) is not even enough as more and more women are single heads of households.  Many women need paid maternity leave and childcare. 

As we go round and round about who should hold the Senate seat Hillary Clinton is vacating, what of the thousands of women who are out of work, not being considered as a class in the grand scheme of the economic re-structuring?  What happened to the idea that we must seat the first last and the last first?  Women need to work, for wages which meet the needs of their lives.  Women must be fifty one per cent in every sector, working for equal wages and full benefits. 

Set the Table for Everyone

I watched a very interesting movie tonight, Gandhi, My Father.  It is the tragic story of Harilal Gandhi who could not please his father and died a beggar, a drunk, a widower who left his children.  No matter how much we might elevate M.K. Gandhi, he was just a man whose vision operated within the confines of his exquisite lens.  Harilal wanted everything his father had and had the luxury to renounce.  Bapu, the Father of India, was strict, unforgiving and could not let his son drink deeply from life to make his own decisions on what to embrace or renounce.  It was as if Gandiji expected his son to merely adopt his hard-earned lessons; rather than learn them himself.  He seemed to think that since he learned something, Harilal could/should just accept the outcome without learning it himself.

But make no mistake, Harilal wanted father-love, mother-love, wife-love, child-love ~ family.  He wanted family.  I wonder if children of famous people might really find this story maddening ~ not comforting at all.  In the light of the news today I cannot help but make layered parallels with that of the gay son or daughter wanting father-love, mother-love, a lover, children ~ family.  Isn’t that really what all of the prop 8, Rick Warren, gay issue is about? 

There is a group of people who want to just be welcome at the table of humanity.  They want to have a partner, children, dinner, a productive life (could I be so deliberate as to say a “purpose driven life”?).  And there is push back from people whose tables have no room for difference.  Gandhi named the unwanted Indians, the lowest caste, the harijan ~ the children of god.  He inversed their fate of being born as an untouchable, not welcome at any table but their own, by naming them god’s favored. 

Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church is that table which wants no harijan.  Homosexuals may not join.  Does he really think that his god will not invite homosexuals to the heavenly banquet?  If Rick does have some inside line on that, I am certain that lots of people would not want to be at that table by their own choice. 

My own seeking soul has traveled the world through a library card; searched religions, faiths, beliefs, for years and years.  If Barack had asked me, or YOU had asked me, who would be a great choice to offer the invocation at this historic inauguration, I would have answered to chose someone whose table is wide, magnetic, inviting, universal and, most importantly, excludes no one. 

The Tao Te Ching states that beginnings set the pace for all that unfolds in its wake.  Please do not give up asking that Rick Warren be replaced as the international bell ringing in the Obama years.  It could not be more important.

Just when I was feeling a little better. Obama, the centrist. shoulda been a bit more honest with us.

The 12 hours of joy, from the election to the success of Prop 8 was a heck of a ride.  It was not dissimilar to the twenty days between the failure of the Briggs Initiative, NO ON 6 and the assassination of Harvey Milk.  But maybe it is WAY different.  Am I feeling like many of us did when Clinton reneged on gays in the military - but heck, the inauguration hasn't even happened yet.

Rick Warren.  Seriously, Rick Warren.  I thought it was bad enough that the presidential candidates agreed to a debate based on matters of faith.  I pushed myself to "get over it," believing that Obama had no choice but to take on McCain on all fronts ~ even if it was in the infamous OC.  And wasn't it all so civilized?  So polite? 

But today, it is no longer the result of being painted into a tight political corner.  Today it was a singular grotesque choice, made from a sea of appropriate, elegant choices of ministers of color, of gender, of diversity of faith, of international appeal, of intelligence, of real nuance and hailing a new beginning of inclusion.  Today Obama and his inauguration team announced that their minister of choice (quite a term) is Rick Warren.  They are telling the world, it is Rick Warren; not Bishop Tutu, not His Holiness the Dalai Lama or the fantastic women and/or gay and/or diverse American ministers who married the thousands of gay people seeking marriage equality in the US.   

NO ~ instead, they have chosen Rick Warren.  That would be the ANTI-CHOICE, ANTI-GAY ACTIVIST RICK WARREN OF ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.  Don't tell me that the super-conscious Obama, this man of letters, who knows exactly what he says, what he means, who he chooses and all the layers of meaning just let this happen.  Obama is putting forth that this is the person who will pray in front of millions of people around the world, who will inform millions of people around the world what we believe in, what we value, what we want to "invoke."  Imagine what a statement it might have been about human rights if he HAD chosen the Dalai Lama or an American minister who is gay - what a terrible missed opportunity.  Send your outrage to Parag.Mehta@ptt.gov, the LGBT liaison to the Obama Transition team.

If that is bad enough, (more to follow on this soon) let it be really clear that 4 women out of 14 appointees on the cabinet is NOT OKAY.  Clinton appointed 37% women in his first term and it rose to 47%.  Today, as it stands, Obama's cabinet is 22%, the same as "W."  Something really stinks here.  really stinks.  Please sign the petition urging Obama to establish a Commission on the Status of Women.

I know you can get the job but can you do the job.

In one of my all time favorite movies, Joe Versus the Volcano, the suffocating employer repeats incessantly, “I know you can get the job but can you do the job?”  This movie is a fountain of one liners that have stuck with me for over 25 years.  The one cited today is prompted by the staggering difference between the job Barack Obama was nominated for, campaigned for and won the vote to perform. 

Originally the issues were ending our involvement in Iraq, restoring separation and balance of power in the three branches of government and the long, breath-taking list of human rights elucidated in the Democratic Platform.  It is a strong list, a dream of a list for progressives, activists, humanitarians and community organizers around the world.  Obama knew all of that, wanted all of that and I, for one, believe he is capable of the job.  More importantly to me and many I know ~ the point was/is to get these tasks underway ~ with successful completion within reach. 

However somewhere on the way to the store to get some milk, something happened.  The tasks, lets call them, A, B. and C are now J, K and L.  Here is the good news, Obama is already and capably at the wheel.  Here is the bad news, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I are gonna kick our collective asses.  More bad news, we have to go in order of severity.  Sure we can all argue the issue that means the most to us; I do want equality – it is on my A-List but the economy, with all its sprawling variations, is on everyone’s A-List. 

I had fully expected Obama to step into the oval office, whip out several dozen pens and start signing the end of the Bush doctrine, the closing of Gitmo and the end of torture.  I thought he would expand student loans, advance the fair pay act through the House, appoint judges and put together a smart qualified cabinet.  But everything I had on my political wish list on September 15 got entirely over-shadowed by the bailout; the auto industry; the market both local and international; unions; loans; home ownership. 

Possibly I am merely projecting own horror at how things have changed over the last 90 days.  Imagine going through an interview review process for 18 months for a very complex and important job and during the 75 days from being hired to start date, it expands far beyond anyone’s expectation.  Obviously I am even more relieved that McCain did not get the actual job – imagine McCain who admitted publicly that he doesn’t really understand the economy.  JC on a crutch.  Maybe that is why McCain was so relaxed on Letterman last week. 

The volcano lost.  Joe lived to tell his girl friend that he wanted to “stay away from the things of man”  I like a lot of things; stable economy, human rights, equality, fair pay.  I also know that I voted for a man, not a magician.  He is going to do his best and his best is damn good.  Now I have to be patient and trust his ability to prioritize. 

Got MILK?

Its Friday – its the movies.  I sat in the second row center, I moved up an extra row to be really alone.  Good thing as I was weeping audibly.  I always bring a blanket incase it is cold and it was a big hankie today.  How much can you forget?  It changes every day ~ sometimes its a lot and sometimes its nothing at all but today it was just tucked away, waiting to be remembered, filled with emotion, bursting with memories, so much – too much. 

I knew MILK would be spectacular; Sean Penn, gay rights and Gus Van Sant.  Several people wrote me and said it was great.  Unexpectedly the last third of the movie knocked me out.  In 1978, my little bookstore was one of the primary organizing HG’s for the NO ON 6 campaign.  John Briggs was all over the OC and Anita Bryant was so much fun to mock.  We boycotted Florida Orange juice and hotly debated the ethics of “outing.”  We sold the Advocate, sold Holy Near tickets and never considered being closeted.  We were out lesbians in the middle of Newport Beach, Orange County, California.

As the movie portrays, we thought that we were going to lose; particularly in the eye of the OC.  It was a shock that we won.  The queers won.  We were going to be fully accepted, integrated and de-stigmatized.  State by state, county by county, family by family; as we came out, we certified our social membership.  I remember telling people, who had not come out, that they would be supported by those of us who were out.  Coming Out was all it was going to take.  Women and men gathered at The Magic Speller Bookstore.  We all enjoyed the lesbian and gay books, the fantastic bars and believed that the heavy lifting was over. 

Of course, within a few weeks Harvey was shot and the “twinkie defense” was more egregious than “if the glove fits, you must acquit.”  With Simpson, it was one man and a tight circle of people effected but the murder of Milk left thousands of us ignited, incited and in various levels of exposure in work, home and families.  My life was as blessed then as it is now; I was out, my girlfriend was out and we were safe.  I publicly testified at a Newport Beach City Council meeting as an out lesbian and no one in my neighborhood was visibly upset.  The store was never vandalized.  Briggs lost, Bryant lost, queers won. 

Twenty days or so, from the elation of the defeat of the Briggs Initiative and the assassination of Harvey Milk.  Twenty days or so, to dance with joy and come out to one’s self and all whom one loves.  It was brief, reelingly brief.  That shot did not instantly galvanize the movement, that takes time and radiates from progressive places (The Castro) to conservative homes (Montana) at a snail’s pace.  AIDS was the gasoline on that fire in those rosary praying, bible thumping homes.  (and you may recall Mr. Falwell kept that bullshit going right through 9/11 and Katrina). 

So I just wept.  Second row center.  Dec 5, 2008.  It sort of all runs together, like a Jackson Pollack (whom I can’t stand).  No Harvey, thirty years later it is not all done; it seems to just be getting started.  And I heard you say, its not politics, its a movement.  Sure seems slow.  Too slow.