These U.S. senators are not our real enemies, writes Fred Hochberg.
To win marriage equality, focus on local battles, not U.S. Sens. Clinton and Schumer, suggests Assembly member Daniel O’Donnell.
Boycotting Manhunt is reacting against
the intolerance of John McCain, whose politics and policies oppose gay equality.
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Friday, June 08, 2007
Nothing Wrong With ‘Censoring’ Transphobic NewFest Film
TO THE EDITORS:
Re: “Gender Offender” (news, June 01)
To characterize Catherine Crouch’s short film “The Gendercator,” screening as part of the NewFest, as “controversial”—and the community reaction to it as a “disagreement”—implies that there is actually a discourse present, or that a legitimate argument is being made. Taking a cue from the right wing, Crouch revives the tired, anti-intellectual tactic of launching an attack, then claiming that the attack is actually a “discussion” and that any refusal to make room for that discussion is “censorship.”
Crouch claims that her “sci-fi” film peeks forward into “one possible scary future.” But there is nothing new in her reactionary portrayal of trans people as anti-feminist, anti-gay, gender-binary tyrannists and Frankensteinian monsters. There’s nothing not hateful (or essentialist and binary, for that matter) about referring to medical treatment for male-identified people as “female body modification.”
There’s nothing futuristic, savvy, or thought-provoking in some of the oldest transphobic rhetoric around, and there is nothing wrong with “censoring” such a film from LGBT film festivals that claim to enhance and support their queer communities. Anti-gay films, organizations and literature are routinely banned from such events, so to argue that a “work of art” clearly assaulting trans identity should be included for reasons of conversation-fostering is not just disingenuous, but transphobic in the extreme.
Yes, there were trans-positive alternatives to simply pulling the film from Newfest, but, organizers seemed as disinterested as Crouch in having any accountability for this film or fostering a community dialogue. If Crouch wanted her film to provoke a thoughtful discussion of why more female-assigned people are transitioning to male these days—a discussion the sophisticated multigendered queer community has on a regular and respectful basis—then that’s the film she would have made.
RAE GREINER, Ph.D
ZAK SZYMANSKI
San Francisco
Editor’s note: The letter writers were part of an effort to stop “The Gendercator” from showing in a San Franciso.
My Overlooked Message: U.S. LGBTers Must Pay Attention to Strife Between Gays, Muslim in Europe
TO THE EDITORS:
Re: “Fanning flames of fear, hatred against Muslims” (op-ed by Faisal Alam, June 01)
Faisal Alam’s personal attack on me for calling anti-gay Muslim bigotry to readers’ attention is all the more wrongheaded and outrageous because I was speaking in favor of preserving his rights to live as an out gay person.
Alam claims that in my world, all Muslims are “fag-hating bigots,” yet in the very article over which Alam attacked me, I acknowledged that Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison supports gay rights. I will not here debunk all of his mendacious libel of me and his numerous misrepresentations of Islam and gays, which are based on a self-deception.
The truth is that Alam wants to delude you into believing that because he wishes he could forge a progressive Islam that embraces gays, none of the rest of us has anything to worry about from Islamic quarters.
My whole point was that we American gays should pay attention to what has been happening in Europe. For instance the increasing presence and influence of religious Muslims in otherwise tolerant Holland has made it unsafe for gay people to hold hands in public.
In Britain, The Muslim Educational Trust has given pamphlets favoring the murder of gay people to schoolchildren. Alam meanwhile used the recent Pew Center study of American Muslims to claim the group is “mainstream”—and many of them could well be—yet 26 percent of the young Muslims interviewed admitted to finding a justification for suicide bombing.
If you don’t acknowledge a problem exists, you have no chance of correcting it. And if you don’t acknowledge that 26 percent of young American Muslims … several hundred thousand people … finding justification for suicide bombings to “defend Islam” is not a very bad omen for the future development of Islam in the United States, you are like an ostrich with its head in the sand.
MICHAEL LUCAS
New York City Religious Conservatives, Not All Muslims, Are Anti-Gay
TO THE EDITORS:
Re: “The Worst Threat to Gays?” (Op-ed by Michael Lucas, May 25)
The issue is not Islam vs. gay rights but rather conservative vs. progressive forces within the three faiths of the Abrahamic Tradition. Fundamentalists (Christian, Islamic or Jewish) can all find verses in scripture (the Bible, the Torah and the Qur’an) to support anti-gay views. The problem stems from taking a literal reading of any holy book without regard to the setting and time period in which it was written. Those who believe in the inerrancy of scripture have always fought against those who believe that any book written by humans cannot be free from error.
One thing that excites me is that progressives can work together. I have noticed that gay Christians, gay Muslims and gay Jews can see that we have all been struggling for full-inclusion and equality.
Progressive people of faith can see that God is still speaking, and as such can recognize the beauty of each other’s faiths. Progressives can recognize that God’s revelation is continuous and that faith is a deeply rooted spiritual longing that is not satisfied with pat answers and tired clichés, but rather many progressive people of faith find more grace in the search for God.
Conservatives, in contrast, believe that their version of faith is the only correct version. For them, revelation has ended and God has spoken once and for all and is final. They fail to recognize that all faith evolves. Therefore, by necessity, they inevitably collide. Islam is not the enemy of gays and lesbians; ignorance is the enemy of full equality.
It was William Penn, Quaker and founder of the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who said it best when he penned these words: “The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here makes them strangers.” After the manner of Friends, I can only say, that Friend speaks my mind.
MICHAEL ADAM REALE
Owensboro KY.
Editor’s note: the Rev. Reale is the former pastor of New Hope United Church of Christ in Owensboro, KY
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