By Kelly Jean Cogswell
It's LGBT Pride. I should get out there, wave the rainbow flag, celebrate. Especially since our New York State legislators are on the verge of legalizing same-sex marriage, and the UN Human Rights Council finally declared lesbians and gay men shouldn't get stoned to death, beaten up, tossed out of our jobs, or hung by the neck until dead.
This is hugely important for queers internationally. Especially for activists like Wamala Dennis who's risking his life as the director of Icebreakers, a group fighting AIDS, and defending LGBT rights in Uganda. For the last couple of years, they've been beating off attempts to make homosexuality punishable by death. That anti-gay campaign is headed by David Bahati, a fundamentalist Christian linked to The Family, a group of U.S. evangelicals with deep pockets.
The UN council vote gives all us activists another tool. And I should be thrilled at these advances, including marriage, but every time I think about a bunch of het politicians or priests or anybody else sitting around discussing whether or not queers like me should have rights equal to theirs, I want to stop by the nearest farm supply store, pick up a couple tons of chemical fertilizer, insert a fuse, and POW! BLAM! KABOOM!
It may be part of the process, but c'mon. It's totally repulsive having people sitting around trying to decide if I'm as good as them, as adult, as human as them. Because that's what this sort of equality blab amounts to. A bunch of hets trying to decide if we're worthy of marriage's privileges and responsibilities. If we're worthy to walk the earth, or should be buried under it, and forgotten.
While I wouldn't mind getting a few of those little amenities hets have enjoyed so long, like immigration and inheritance rights, that come with same-sex marriage. And while I want us all to be safe in the streets and in our homes. I've got news for our hetero friends. We don't need your vote to join the human race, or be declared worthy of anything at all. So when you're slapping yourself on the back for your nice progressive vote, don't count on my applause.
I'm saving that for the real heroes. The LGBT people doing it for themselves, like the song says. Taking to the streets, speaking out. Like Wamala Dennis. And every queer kid brave enough to join the Gay-Straight Alliance and slap on a triangle. Or put on mascara when it's supposed to be a baseball cap, or wear a tux instead of some frilly horrible dress.
In France, my newest heroes are Aline Pascale de Raykeer and Stephanie Daumas who actually did an interview about their civil union (PACS) and desires for same-sex marriage, and let their regional newspaper use not just their names, but their faces. You want to know what a lesbian looks like? Here ya go. They're beauts.
We forget that it's not just violence that keeps queers invisible. It can be the weight of culture as well. The habits of silence. And shame. Until recently, French queers kept to their place, sticking to the usual détente of the closet. There was a kind of unspoken agreement that if you were discrete your sophisticated compatriots wouldn't bother you much, and you could pretend you were morally equal even if legally you were something they scraped off the bottom of their shoes. When queers sued for civil rights, they did it anonymously, as Jane or John Does. We never saw their faces. Never heard their names.
Not any more. French queers aspire to more than tolerance. The slogan for the Pride march in Paris this year: "For equality: in 2011 we march, in 2012 we vote." That's more like it. No beseeching. No excuses. No blab. Demanding directly what they want. Even if it is equality. Aline and Stephanie talked mostly about marriage equality, and wanting kids. But in France, when you use that word, equality, it implies much more. Because the nation itself aspires to liberty, equality, fraternity. It's carved in stone on all the public buildings. You see it a hundred times a day. In France, equality implies a horizon beyond the straitjacket of legal rights. It is social, cultural, political, philosophical.
Not so much in America. Still, I shouldn't rain on anybody's parade. We're creeping forward. Sooner or later we'll win marriage rights across the board. People will get hitched, and when, as I suspect, society doesn't throw roses, we'll wake-up, reconsider our illusions, want more. And queer kids looking from het couples to gay couples may well shake their heads in disbelief and reject them both as prehistoric and gross. They should have that chance to dump it all. Imagine some new way to live their lives. Yeah, I can celebrate that.
Lesbians! Dykes! Gay women. Get your rriot on at the Dyke March, Sat. June 25, 5 p.m. Leaving from 42nd St & 5th Ave, Bryant Park. Guys support from the sidelines.
Showing posts with label uganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uganda. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Gay Enough?
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
On Wednesday, gay activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his home in Uganda. He's been under threat of violence since 2009 when he was one of the few queers to openly denounce legislation proposing to execute homosexuals, instead of just tossing them in jail. Afterwards, a local newspaper published an antigay rant along with David's picture on the front page under the title, "Hang Them."
Nevertheless, just two days after his murder, a young Ugandan lesbian, Brenda Namigadde, was on a plane in London's Heathrow awaiting deportation back to Uganda where the likes of antigay legislator David Bahati have already announced Brenda was only welcome if she repented or reformed.
Luckily, another judge issued an injunction and they pulled Brenda off the plane before it left, though she's still at risk. Not because the Brits don't recognize Uganda's danger for queers, but because Brenda has to prove definitively she's a lesbian. The British judge that rejected her claim for asylum said he wasn't convinced.
To him it was "strange" that her descriptions of gay life in Uganda and the United Kingdom, were "very generalised and quite simply lacking in the kind of detail and information of someone genuinely living that lifestyle. The Appellant claims to have freedom to live a life unconstrained and without prejudice. I find the information as to how she has done so over the lengthy period she has been in the United Kingdom singularly lacking in detail or coherence. The Appellant appears to have taken no interest in forms of media including magazines, books or other information relating to her sexual orientation.”
The problem is that gayness isn't a lifestyle. If push came to shove, probably even I can't prove I'm a dyke as that judge understands it. I write these articles for Gay City News, but instead of checking out queer-themed books I usually go for murder mysteries, or French poetry written by straight (though queerish) men like Blaise Cendrars.
Dykes bars have opened and closed without me darkening the door, except for those few weeks when I waitressed at Crazy Nanny's and went home with phone numbers shoved into my pockets that girls had given me "just in case" I had second thoughts about my girlfriend which I suppose a judge could just declare a roommate unless I had some video footage documenting sex acts.
Let me interrupt this column to see if the words lesbian or dyke are in the titles of any books on my shelf... Yes, "Living as a Lesbian" by Cheryl Clarke is on the shelf next to "Second-Hand Coat," a volume of poems by writer Ruth Stone that I'd also forgotten. She's not a dyke, but a pretty good poet with Virginia roots. If you happen to run across something of hers -- read it. She's great. And reminds me of back home.
Identity is tricky. Like with the books, the music in the house wouldn't convince you of anything either, though there's some Cuba there, and Kentucky, but also funk, blues, classical, the great Lou Reed. Ela Fitzgerald. And good luck if you're looking for clues in our apartment. It tends towards the Spartan. We like light and emptiness. The little bit of art we have is mostly abstract.
What does it say, that blossoming jasmine, the enormous snake plant, and the palm pressing against the ceiling? Only that we like a bit of living green around the place. Or that we feel the need of additional oxygen. The remnants of our lesbian activist lives are mostly tucked away in drawers cabinets. My own articles are filed under "work" on my computer.
Are we lesbians, or not, if all you have is what's in our heads and bodies, and our pre-occupations that a little surveillance might or might not reveal? My girlfriend and I have passed whole weeks talking about nothing but her aging mother, or problems in the building.
There are thousands of ways to be a lesbian, queer woman, dyke, gay. Somebody like Brenda Namigadde, forced to leave Uganda in 2003 when her relationship with a Canadian woman led to threats and violence, might not have had much time afterwards to give her dykeness much thought.
It's not easy being an immigrant and facing the challenges of living in a strange country, understanding the myriad of accents, finding work, making a new life. Maybe she prefers to read poetry or The Economist rather than the Pink News. Maybe when she goes out it's not to a gay bar, but just the corner pub where she just does her best to get drunk and forget the whole thing. Maybe she's even given up girls. Though that won't help her back in Uganda, where perception is enough to get you attacked. And embarrassing the government carries its own price.
On Wednesday, gay activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his home in Uganda. He's been under threat of violence since 2009 when he was one of the few queers to openly denounce legislation proposing to execute homosexuals, instead of just tossing them in jail. Afterwards, a local newspaper published an antigay rant along with David's picture on the front page under the title, "Hang Them."
Nevertheless, just two days after his murder, a young Ugandan lesbian, Brenda Namigadde, was on a plane in London's Heathrow awaiting deportation back to Uganda where the likes of antigay legislator David Bahati have already announced Brenda was only welcome if she repented or reformed.
Luckily, another judge issued an injunction and they pulled Brenda off the plane before it left, though she's still at risk. Not because the Brits don't recognize Uganda's danger for queers, but because Brenda has to prove definitively she's a lesbian. The British judge that rejected her claim for asylum said he wasn't convinced.
To him it was "strange" that her descriptions of gay life in Uganda and the United Kingdom, were "very generalised and quite simply lacking in the kind of detail and information of someone genuinely living that lifestyle. The Appellant claims to have freedom to live a life unconstrained and without prejudice. I find the information as to how she has done so over the lengthy period she has been in the United Kingdom singularly lacking in detail or coherence. The Appellant appears to have taken no interest in forms of media including magazines, books or other information relating to her sexual orientation.”
The problem is that gayness isn't a lifestyle. If push came to shove, probably even I can't prove I'm a dyke as that judge understands it. I write these articles for Gay City News, but instead of checking out queer-themed books I usually go for murder mysteries, or French poetry written by straight (though queerish) men like Blaise Cendrars.
Dykes bars have opened and closed without me darkening the door, except for those few weeks when I waitressed at Crazy Nanny's and went home with phone numbers shoved into my pockets that girls had given me "just in case" I had second thoughts about my girlfriend which I suppose a judge could just declare a roommate unless I had some video footage documenting sex acts.
Let me interrupt this column to see if the words lesbian or dyke are in the titles of any books on my shelf... Yes, "Living as a Lesbian" by Cheryl Clarke is on the shelf next to "Second-Hand Coat," a volume of poems by writer Ruth Stone that I'd also forgotten. She's not a dyke, but a pretty good poet with Virginia roots. If you happen to run across something of hers -- read it. She's great. And reminds me of back home.
Identity is tricky. Like with the books, the music in the house wouldn't convince you of anything either, though there's some Cuba there, and Kentucky, but also funk, blues, classical, the great Lou Reed. Ela Fitzgerald. And good luck if you're looking for clues in our apartment. It tends towards the Spartan. We like light and emptiness. The little bit of art we have is mostly abstract.
What does it say, that blossoming jasmine, the enormous snake plant, and the palm pressing against the ceiling? Only that we like a bit of living green around the place. Or that we feel the need of additional oxygen. The remnants of our lesbian activist lives are mostly tucked away in drawers cabinets. My own articles are filed under "work" on my computer.
Are we lesbians, or not, if all you have is what's in our heads and bodies, and our pre-occupations that a little surveillance might or might not reveal? My girlfriend and I have passed whole weeks talking about nothing but her aging mother, or problems in the building.
There are thousands of ways to be a lesbian, queer woman, dyke, gay. Somebody like Brenda Namigadde, forced to leave Uganda in 2003 when her relationship with a Canadian woman led to threats and violence, might not have had much time afterwards to give her dykeness much thought.
It's not easy being an immigrant and facing the challenges of living in a strange country, understanding the myriad of accents, finding work, making a new life. Maybe she prefers to read poetry or The Economist rather than the Pink News. Maybe when she goes out it's not to a gay bar, but just the corner pub where she just does her best to get drunk and forget the whole thing. Maybe she's even given up girls. Though that won't help her back in Uganda, where perception is enough to get you attacked. And embarrassing the government carries its own price.
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