Take Me to Your Leader

Maybe this last week you noticed a call for a single leader in the Queer Civil Rights Movement.  It seemed to come on the heels of McGehee handcuffing Choi & Pietrangelo to the White House Fence.  On the other hand it was also trailing a lot of kvetching about Joe Solomese and demands to resolve ENDA & DOMA & DADT now that HCR is signed.  We all see Facebook posts about high salaries, calls for more donations and, here in California, the encroaching signature deadline for Equality 2010.

I am on board with Dan Choi that we do not need a straight comedienne as some appointed leader.  Kathy Griffin is funny times ten, I never miss her on TV, I am grateful that she “loves her gays,” but leadership is a whole other thing.  A lobbyist?  I keep reading that she was hired as a lobbyist by HRC.  Is that true?  Queers are without jobs, family protections, health insurance, inheritance laws, basic civil rights and we are represented on the hill by a straight comedienne who got fired from CNN’ New Years broadcast for language?  This is who we are throwing in the Kumite with the Catholic Church and Health Point lobbyists?  

There is a call for leadership but is it a call for a romantic memory of “I have a Dream.”  This nostalgia is understandable but, we must note, it is no longer the current paradigm for leadership.  The queer community is as diverse as the envisioned world we are working for.  Though it confounds me, we have the Log Cabin people as well as Stone Wall Dems.  As we quell judgment and offer understanding, people all across the gender spectrum are feeling safer and telling their stories that defy categorization.  We are the Manifestation of Human Diversity.  No one leader is possible nor, in fact, appropriate.

Maybe one voice will rise above the rest but as the world becomes more complex, more connected, just plain more; so will the forms and people that lead.  The identical thing is happening in the Women’s Movement.  Gloria Steinem is the first to say that one leader is not productive, in fact it is counter-productive.  Today it is closer to royalty and the fall out is a lot of talk about who will step into her shoes.  No one.  No one can.  No one should.  

Social Media, instant news, millions of opinions, population and just plain evolution take us to this moment.  We generate our own news, we make things happen locally and electronically.  And even that level of granularity we are discovering and admitting is not enough in the Queer Civil Rights Movement, as real success occurs in one-on-one conversations converting str8s to Allies.   

Today, in all its diversity, the leader is the movement itself.  It happens while shaking hands, over a family dinner, meeting an elected, supporting a business, watching a movie or TV, opening arms to a neighbor, speaking plainly, being an open community.  I have a leader I prefer; chances are you do too.  I have no need to ask you to drop yours and take up mine.  I want them all.  I want Queers and Allies to lobby, to break the law, to march, to build empires on the internet, to not waste one moment trashing any leader or organization – I mean – who’s got the time? 

My leader is Equality.  I take it where I can get it.  I get it where I can take it.  I won’t settle for less.  I use every leader who gets me there, from Steinem to King, from Choi to Tammy Baldwin, from NOW to TRMS, from a blog to the local GSA.  I say, “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.”  You can be sure I mean EQUALITY.