I am a passionate entrepreneur, digital strategist, social scientist and farmhand / vineyard cultivator.
8 Apr
Just received this release for the Miles Grant for Delegate campaign. Couldn’t have said it better myself:
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ARLINGTON, VA (April 8, 2009) – Equal rights have scored a series of victories across the country in the last week, with decisions from the Iowa Supreme Court, Vermont state legislature, and DC Council advancing the cause of marriage rights for all.
Miles Grant, Democratic candidate for House of Delegates in Virginia’s 47th district, said today:
“With each passing day, Virginia’s harsh restrictions on marriage and even simple domestic partnerships are cast in deeper contrast to the steady march of progress we’re seeing across America. We take pride in Virginia’s policies that attract world-class businesses. But the best businesses in the world need the top workers in the world. What message are we sending about Virginia’s values when we tell some of those workers they’re not allowed to commit their lives to the person they love and start a family together?
“It’s time to move our Commonwealth forward by repealing the Marshall-Newman amendment and recognizing full marriage rights for all Virginians. We’re not talking about special protections – these actions would simply ensure that all families receive basic rights, including financial protections, hospital visitation access and ability to adopt and retain custody of their children. As delegate, I’ll make it one of my top priorities to ensure civil liberties for all Virginians.”
Learn more about Miles Grant for Delegate at MilesGrant2009.com.
3 Oct
(UPDATING MY HEADLINE — I will likely tweak it a few more times)
I normally watch each debate (as I did with each convention speech, for that matter) about 3 - 4 times before the night is over when I am working the late shift for C-SPAN.
But, while watching/working the Vice Presidential Debates on Thursday night, something that both candidates — and even the moderator — said caused me to really take pause.
I spun around in my chair.
I dropped what I was doing.
And I sat and listened to this (this whole segment is upsetting on many levels, but it is especially the last line that is most disappointing and I will tell you why):
Catalyzed by the question posed by the moderator (PBS’ Gwen Ifill): “Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?” Sen. Joe Biden answers: “Absolutely….”
Ms. Ifill then tweaks the question for Gov Sarah Palin: “Governor, would you support expanding that beyond Alaska to the rest of the nation?” To which Gov. Palin answers: “Well, not if it gets closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition between one man and one woman; and unfortunately, that’s sometimes where those steps lead.”
PAUSE.
I want to establish these five points before moving on:
UNPAUSE.
So, we have Biden ‘getting out of’ taking on the issue in the first round and Palin using moral language to equate the expansion of same-sex benefits to a “slippery slope” of “vice” (her tone and use of the word “unfortunately” are at once patronizing and revealing). Listen closely to what Palin says. She, in just a few lines, makes it clear that (1) she is “you know, tolerant” and that it is ‘ok’ for gay people to “chose relationships” — not going to problematize the choice/nature argument here, but note that I do take issue with her trivialization here AND (2) is ‘not ok’ to define marriage as anything but that which is “between one man and one woman.”
I ask you Gov. Palin: How is this tolerant? How do your words teach the next generation acceptance when you stop so obviously short of full personhood? It is unacceptable. (FWIW: I have written at length what is at stake in previous posts and unpublished writings.)
And don’t think I am letting you, Sen. Biden, get away so fast. In another previous post, I related that I had not done my homework yet on your stance here. Well, tonight, you sort of made my job easy. You said it all. In fact, you, Sen. Biden, and your running mate, Sen. Barak Obama, are shying away from the opportunity to give real Hope and enact real Change. Those are your monikers and mantras, are they not?
You avoid the real issue of equality in exchange for more moderate political stripes and, ergo, more votes. I get the sense that you might actually support gay marriage on the federal level if you were not under such political pressures (or at least, it is my hope that the supposedly liberal, tolerant and progressive party that is the Democratic Party stands for such equality). Then again, maybe not.
And while Gov. Palin’s morally-charged sentiments that hearken back to the vice-police days bounce around the emptiness that is Sen. Biden’s half-stance, stance I learned all I needed to know about both in these final sentences from all three folks on the stage and many in the audience:
Ms. Ifill: “Do you support gay marriage?”
Sen. Biden: “No, Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. […]”
To Sen. Biden, I say this: The “civil side of things” has been wrong in our legal system and in our cultural landscape before and it is wrong here again. That you do not (1) see that, (2) agree with that and (3) do anything to see that this is righted has me question your intentions, principles and definition of equality.
Ms. Ifill then turns to Gov. Palin: “Is that what you said?”
Gov. Palin: “Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.”
Ms. Ifill: “Wonderful, you agree. On that note, let’s move on to foreign policy.” (Laughter.)
To the candidates: You already know what I think of how you both approach this issue, but to review…
To Ms. Ifill I say this: There is nothing “wonderful” about their agreement. That they both agree about something that keeps a population of people in a second-class rank-and-file in this country is so far from wonderful, I would venture to pull out words like ‘despicable.’
To the audience I say this: You laugh uncomfortably. You laugh like you did in middle school. You laugh becuase you want to get on to the more ‘important’ issues like foreign policy and the economy. And while I do not for a second think these are unimportant, I do want to make a distinction of my use important here: the economy and foreign policy are not important in the way that impacts the very being, the mental/emotional health of an entire population of people.
While it can be argued that financial crises and violence abroad rock the very core/health of millions, it is an external set of issues that come to bear on these individuals.
Who you are, who you love, how you live… those are fundamental, internal and psychological issues. To not address the systemic, systematic, perpetuated and pervasive discrimination in this country on these internal levels as we do in the cases where there are external issues, while instead uncomfortably laugh it off because, as Ms. Ifill noted, it was a “wonderful” thing that both candidates “agree” — well thank God, we can [superficially] move on — is truly sad.
But we can’t move on.
And we shouldn’t.
Separate has not and will never be equal when it comes to legal, civil, moral and cultural laws and/or norms.
I have more thinking to do on this, but had to make sure to post about this before I went to bed. Thank you. -L.
10 Sep
If you thought my last post was personal and well-thought-out (or not), just wait until you read what I have in store below.
It is with great excitement and nervous energy (the good kind, I hope), that I share the following announcement:
I have made the decision to begin to post sections of my BA Thesis, written at the University of Chicago in the Department of Gender Studies and researched in 2003 and 2004. Advised by Dr. Stuart Michaels, I applied a cross section of methodologies, theories and disciplines to research and complete this project. I drew from sociology, women’s studies, gender studies, queer studies, anthropology, political science, history, psychology and even economics.
For as much as I love the thing, I am also proud that the Internet was not consulted on this project; rather, it was 100% field work, course work and source work.
It hits close to home, because my ethnographic work was conducted in a town I called home from 1993 - 2000. I have altered only slightly the names and personal details when my research and personal stories are discussed so as to respect the privacy of those involved.
What I post tonight and ongoing will remain unaltered from its final state; the state it has been in since I officially turned it in, received departmental and University confirmation and awarded honors during the Spring of 2004.
So I begin with the Title and the Preface tonight.
A final note before I hit publish: Here is looking at more — more from my Thesis; more personal and collaborative efforts to investigate and examine the presidential and vice presidential candidates on these and other related topics; and more from me in terms of critical examinations of my project’s relevance, application and viability in the 2008 Elections. It is getting late and I need some sleep, as I have an important morning ahead of me… one that I hope will only further inspire writing in this and other productive veins.
You can feel the urgency in my voice four years ago; it has been far too quiet in more recent years and I hope that this can help catalyze further dialog and action from myself and others in the coming days, weeks and months as we look to elect the 44th president, decide on ballot measures and evaluate a host of representatives at the local and state level across the country.
———–
That We Should All Turn [Out] Healthy?
A critical inquiry into the project of preparing Junction City High School Students for ‘healthy’ lives in the ‘real’ world
Over three decades ago, Gayle Rubin opened her essay “Thinking Sex”—now the sine qua non of sexuality, queer, gender, and women’s studies— by exhorting her reader: The time has come to think about sex.(1) Disengaging herself from the other approaches to the topic of sex, Rubin puts forth the bold and original project of reexamining and questioning the ways that sex, sexuality, and all of their expressions and variations have been understood, interpreted, framed and even regulated over time. She implores that we shift our thinking from the traditional framings of sex in terms of “sin, disease, neurosis, pathology, decadence, pollution, or the declines and fall of empires” to instead understand sex in terms of “social analysis and historical understanding.” The more fruitful categories that she suggests include such phenomena as “populations, neighborhoods, settlement patterns, migration, urban conflict, epidemiology, and police technology.” Finally, Rubin claims that by approaching sex in these novel ways, “a more realistic politics of sex becomes possible.”(2)
Building on Rubin’s pioneering work, this project is based on the belief that the time has come to think about sex education. At this moment in history, the issues of gay marriage, LGBTQ rights in the workplace, and sex education policy and funding are ever-present. Though, at first glance, the first two issues may seem somewhat unrelated to the latter issue of sex education, my project will show that they are in fact complicatedly related to one another. The ways that each of these issues get framed, understood, experienced, and decided all have the same undercurrent running beneath their seemingly placid and partisan surfaces. And just as Rubin had to disengage from the former framings of sex, in order for this project’s importance to be realized, I must also disengage from the terms of sex education as they have come to be used and delve beneath these superficies. In fact, the mere focus on sex education is what is truly keeping at bay the more subtle and perilous project that is going on in classrooms across the country. Although I have confined my investigation to a single high school in a semi-rural town, I am willing to wager that the kind of health education that is present at Junction City High School is in fact the same kind of general education that students countrywide are receiving, which includes, but is not centered on, education about sex.
Also at this moment, the winds of change seem to be suggesting a reality that previous generations could not even conceive of: a gay/queer lifespan. That is, no longer is just the act of gay sex or a queer experience—from cross-dressing to sex reassignment surgery to polyamory or fantasizing about someone of the same sex— the defining or limiting understanding of what it means to exist outside the boundaries of normative heterosexuality. In short, it is more than a single act and it goes beyond a mere experience. This historical moment allows for a most exciting project: cracking open the narrative of healthiness and normalcy as it is presented in sex and health education curricula nationwide. But my project does not bite off this entire potentiality. Rather, it starts small and in the local site of the town in which I went to high school. This microlevel framing and approach adds even further timeliness and urgency to my investigation. One year ago this May (2004), a close high school friend committed suicide. He had graduated early from Junction City High School and spent time at the University of Tennessee and then at the University of Arizona, where he ended his life after 3 semesters. His educational migrations serve to just scratch the surface of what most would say, in retrospect, was a reality of general instability plagued with unhappiness, cynicism and an overall detachment from life that he lived.
But what came to light after his death would both shock and silence a community, and eventually disappear altogether. A few weeks before taking his own life, he disclosed to a few close friends that he was attracted to another male student. He wanted to make it clear, however, that he was still attracted to women and, moreover, did not consider himself gay or living a gay lifestyle. He went so far as to say that he did not want to be thought of as a flaming fag or a fashion designer the way that other gay men were seen by society.
I do not for a minute want to boil his unhappiness or suicide down to some generic and textbook psychological case of “internalized self hate” because of a homosexual desire. What I do want to question is how someone can go through life with only a single view, a single apprehension, and a limited language to understand what it means to have intense feelings for someone of the same sex. Where is this picked up? Taught? Learned?
As Rubin so poignantly notes in her aforementioned essay, in this day and age (hers and ours alike) we would not think of teaching a racial hierarchy or promote a single religion, or endorse only one kind of cuisine. And yet, when it comes to viewing sexuality and gender we have the most monolithic and singular ideas. Thus, when it comes to presenting and teaching about sex, sexuality, gender, and all their related sub-experiences (e.g., coupledom, marriage, child bearing and raising, etc.) the health education program at Junction City high school does just that. They rank. They singly promote. They unilaterally endorse.
There just are no viable presentations of non-heterosexual experiences, identities, life courses, and even a language with which to understand such things anywhere in society, and especially not in the very classes that purport to deal with the issue of sex and sexuality in order to produce a healthy individual. It is no wonder that there is so much tension around the gay marriage debate—our country already has chosen its single expression of life and has since been codifying and propagating it through every avenue possible. Further, it is no wonder that my friend chose to end his life. He truly saw no other options for living.
The time has come to think about the implicit messages being codified, reified, amplified, reinforced, and propagated via the model of heteronormativity promoted in schools. The coupling of our country’s current zeitgeist surrounding LGBTQ issues and my friend’s suicide makes this project real, its implications tangible, and the effects of what is taught and learned realizable. How might our country be addressing the issue of gay marriage differently if there were other viable and respectable models of non-heterosexual personhood available? What would my friend’s life have been like had he experienced a wellness model that included non-heterosexual life narratives? I encourage you, the reader, to keep these questions in the back of your mind as you read through the data, analysis, and conclusion of my project. The time has come. The time is now.
(1) Rubin, Gayle, “Thinking Sex,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Carole S. Vance, ed. (Routeledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 267.
(2) Ibid., p. 277.