103. FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS

From the Archives

(June 2005) A group of progressive religious leaders who object to the way Christianists use the Bible to promote inequality formed The Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality and read their declaration aloud at a recent event where some of us queer artists performed or just plain made a ruckus.

We gave these mostly straight religious leaders a standing ovation after they read the following statement:

The most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings. We become most fully human when we love another person. We can grow in our capacity to be human—to be loving—in a family unit. This right to love and form a family is so fundamental that our United States Constitution takes it for granted in its dedication to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Our state constitution likewise affirms the “inalienable rights" of human beings to "life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Throughout history, tyrants have known that by denying the right of oppressed peoples to form and nurture families, they can kill the spirit of those peoples. From the shameful history of slavery in America, the injustice of forbidding people to marry is evident as a denial of a basic human right. The American laws forbidding interracial marriage, now struck down, were clearly discriminatory. Denial of the status of marriage to those who would freely accept its responsibilities creates legal and economic inequities and social injustice. We feel called to protest and oppose this injustice.

As religious people, clergy and lay leaders, we are mandated by faith to stand for justice in our common civic life. We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples. As concerned citizens we affirm the liberty of adults of the same gender to love and marry. We insist that no one, especially the state, is allowed to coerce people into marriage or bar two consenting adults, whether of the same or differing genders, from forming the family unit that lets them be more fully loving, thus more fully human. We respect the fact that debate and discussion continue in many of our religious communities as to the scriptural, theological and liturgical issues involved. However, we draw on our many faith traditions to arrive at a common conviction. We are resolved that the State should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitments of civil marriage.

We affirm freedom of conscience in this matter. We recognize that the state may not require religious groups to officiate at, or bless, same-gender marriages. Likewise, a denial of state civil recognition dishonors the religious convictions of those communities and clergy who officiate at, and bless, same-gender marriages. The state may not favor the convictions of one religious group over another by denying individuals their fundamental right to marry and to have those marriages recognized by civil law.

As faith leaders, we commit ourselves to public action, visibility, education, and mutual support in the service of the right and freedom to marry.

So here’s data from the HRC website:

RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS DENIED SAME-SEX PARTNERS

Because same-sex couples are denied the right to marry, same-sex couples and their families are denied access to the more than 1,138 federal rights, protections and responsibilities automatically granted to married heterosexual couples. Among those are:

• The right to make decisions on a partner's behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship [or be denied the right to see or care for her long-term partner, as happened in a local case].

• The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.

• The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.

• The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, nonbiological or nonadoptive parent’s right to visit a child—or responsibility to provide financial support for that child—in the event of a breakup.

• The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.

• Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.

• The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will [or to inherit retirement accounts without paying up to 75% if it in taxes, since the laws don’t recognize you as a legitimate spouse]

• The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Such inequities impose added costs on these families, such as increased health insurance premiums, higher tax burdens and the absence of pension benefits or Social Security benefits in the event of a partner’s death.

Some same-sex and transgender families consult attorneys to draw up legal documents such as powers of attorney, co-parenting agreements and wills, that will at least permit them to declare who they wish to make health care and financial decisions for them if they become incapacitated; how they wish to share parenting responsibilities or, in the event of a breakup, custody of a child; and what they want to happen to their property when they die. However, these are not a substitute for legal protection under law and cannot provide the broad range of benefits and protections provided by law.

69. COMFORT ZONES

From the Archives

(April 2005) I’ve been thinking about impressions today. Attended a board meeting last night in which we discussed diversity issues.

The minister from a local Imani fellowship told our mostly dyke board that her partner, a gregarious and oustpoken young woman, felt unwelcomed at our social events because she was black in a sea of mostly white faces. A wealthy, high-femme lesbian once said that she felt unwelcomed because some butchies kept staring at her make-up and nails and she knew everyone just assumed she was made of money. The young pierced grrls said that the predominantly middle-age dykes among them made them feel self-conscious and they were convinced that they would never be taken seriously in the mix.

Some straight women never returned because there were just too many lesbians for comfort. (Hey, welcome to the opportunity to surf our everyday experience in the world.) And some working-class women never returned because this mostly professional group sometimes plans outings that include out-of-town excursions or treks to plays or concerts.

I suspect that we fail to adequately welcome new people because, first and foremost, we are the primary social outlet for grrls who wanna have fun and who mostly already know each other. We let our hair down amongst our familiars and act in a manner that maintains this space where we can be ourselves.

This does not always accommodate everyone else’s comfort zones, however.

I wonder if members consider diversifying important ... and, if they do, if they are willing to do the work required to change these perceptions of comfort. We’ll have to do some exploration before we can actually open our arms a little wider.

An ethnographer on the board talked about a conversation she had with an African-American colleague. This ethnographer was stunned to hear that her colleague believes that she had to prove herself to her white cohort and faculty by out-performing everyone else just so that she will appear as equal in their eyes. This never even occurred to the white ethnographer.

That got me thinking.

I almost always assume that non-southerners who comment on my southern accent are making assumptions about my intelligence and perceived family inbreeding. (And could a West Virginia joke be far behind?) But does this really enter into their consciousness or am I just so used to this bias that I assume it whether or not it actually exists?

I spend most of my time with people who grew up in middle- or upper-class households and am extremely self-conscious of the fact that I am Other to them. They talk about their childhood memories of fancy vacations and semesters in Europe and summer lifeguarding jobs down at the country club and the private educations they received, and I can't help but recall the wrong-side-of-the-tracks public-school education I received that seemed designed to churn out millworkers with enough basic skills to fill out a timesheet or keep a bowling score.

If I didn't come from a family of voracious readers and didn't have a father who was curious enough to learn on his own and share his unconventional insights with me, then I would probably be a millworker right now.

I’m not, but do feel uncomfortable in professional settings in which everyone else seems to be speaking a common (except to me) language and assuming that their experiences are universal.

My professional pals who grew up working class describe similar experiences.

We glance over at each other in the same places when people participate in a larger discussion that is particularly classist or exclusive, while the speakers and common conversants go merrily along, seemingly unaware of their privilege that’s on display.

One thing I noticed in our board meeting that I don’t think anyone else noticed is that our president asked the Imani pastor to read her group’s mission statement aloud in front of the group. She didn’t warn her in advance and the minister was uncomfortable doing this. She joked and said I didn’t know I’d have to read all these big words to y’all tonight.

Meanwhile, because I’m an artist, these meanderings morphed into me thinking about these experiences visually, which made me think about impressionism.

Those soft pastel Monet posters aren’t really my style and some of them are garden-club suburban by today’s standards. But we forget that impressionism was radical, that the impressionists insisted on alternative ways of experiencing the world and documenting what they saw—said THIS is how light falls, THIS is how color is broken up; THIS is how the fugitive moment presents itself—to am establishment and public that responded with outrage ('cause everyone knows that leaves are solid green, right?).

Challenging people to see the world in a new way is, well, a challenge. Yet there’s always a reason to open our arms a little wider, to stretch our experiences out into a wider world that includes more than what we already know.

I'm thinking about this wider world in impressionistic term todays.

This change can grant our eyes new privilege and offers us the opportunity to concentrate aspects of our experience that were previously perceived as too disorderly, too freakish, too seemingly accidental in a manner that creates something beautiful that can cause us to see the world in an entirely new way.

How profound is that?

46. ADULT VIDEO (ALL SWIM)

From the Archives

(March 2005) So the obviously hetero DirectVideo & DVD has placed a full-page ad in On Our Backs that includes a photo of two women who do not even remotely resemble any of the dykes photographed throughout the rest of the rag—in fact, they mostly resemble sorostitutes, a term my pal Opera and I use to refer to the halter-wearing belly-button-showing overly made-up trying-to-look-innocent-for-the-boys’-fantasies young sorority girls who invade a bar near Opera’s house with their cell phones at the stroke of midnight.

The following is a list of titles this company is offering for the discerning straight man er lesbian reader:

Old Woman Love Young Chicks
• My Mothers Best Friend
• Hardcore Lesbians
• Office Lesbians
• Young Lesbians
• Girls in Love
• Lesbians in Leather
• My Lesbian Neighbors
• Girls Locker Room
• Jungle Lezzies
• Wives and their Girlfriends
• Black Girls Eating Pussy
• All Girl Toy Party
• All Girl Massage
• Young Girls Who Love Girls
• Lipstick Lesbians
• Girls in Love2
• Woman Kissing Woman
• Anal Lesbians
• No Men Allowed

Other factoids gleaned from this issue of On Our Backs (which I’m really happy to see again):

• There’s a website for folks who want to purchase medical fetish materials: enemas, strait jackets, mummification, sound sets, uniforms and outfits, nurse gallery ... and they have a new color catalog you can buy for just $7.

(What, exactly, is mummification? I mean, I have an idea but discovered when I nearly crawled out of an MRI in a panic attack that I ain’t letting anyone put me in any enclosure voluntarily. That one’s not for me.)

• Greenery Press, who published The Ethical Slut—love that title—now offers Radical Ecstasy, which explores “the state of ecstasy and BDSM as transcendence. Through their discussion of Tantric practices, breathing, spirituality, and their own intimate experiences ... [the authors] invite readers to think about ecstasy as a true state of being and living, while at the same time, sharing how BDSM practitioners are using various extremes to better reach ‘sacred sex.’ ”

• Fireside has published Jen Sincero’s Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks, which includes a section on “how to give it to a chick” with illustrations of various sexual poses done with Barbie dolls. Whee!

• Midori, a OOB columnist who offers “non-scientific conclusions gained from my most recent slutting around,” travels the globe in an attempt to correct the assumption that lesbo sex only ever happens in San Francisco and New York. She writes that London’s organized lezzie sex scene is “Dead. Kaput. Sterile. You’ll see more tits at the National Gallery. ... I have no idea where the rough-n-ready sexed-up dykes were.” Note to self for future travel plans.

And, finally, here’s another reason to like the Pacific NW (as if I needed another reason!):

• If you thought they only had scary mullets and old flannel, you’re stuck in the eighties, grrl! Wake up and smell that strong Seattle java. Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver form the Wild West Pussy Trail.” Seattle, she reports, boasts The Wet Spot “a sex-positive community center run under the best set of rules I’ve come across since Amsterdam. They treat you like an adult able to make your own decision on who to be and how to fuck.

The Wild West Pussy Trail. That’s a good place to end this entry.

28. IN THE ABSENCE

From the Archives

(March 2005) Good poems comfort me, remind me that, in the midst of great change, there is a core me that knows how to survive even if I am temporarily overwhelmed.

I like this poem because it reminds me of my ability to take in a deep breath when life is overwhelming and to stand in that hard wind that will, ultimately, heal me if I listen carefully to myself:

IN THE ABSENCE
by Kathleen Lake

In the absence of Christ, one must become
one’s own hands, moving
one’s self tenderly
through all the shapes that pain takes.
Whatever you thought you knew, your hands
will forget it for you,
remembering only the hollows
and lilts of your lonely body
which quietly holds its own
story, and waits to be heard.
So when you are listening
at last, your hands will be holding
that wordless quality your mother’s had
which changes everything and nothing.
And in this luxury the marrow
of your bones
will finally speak.

So I was warming up my lunch a few minutes ago and thought about all the crappy food I ate before I finally realized that, if I wanted to eat delicious food on an ongoing basis, then I was just going to have to learn how to cook.

I moved out on my own as a teenager and had no clue how to cook because I had very carefully avoided learning how. Why? Because I was sick and tired of family members telling me that I had to know how to cook just because I have a clitor!s. I was also naive enough to believe that cooking is just not what lesbians do.

The downside to this willful ignorance is that, for years, my skill set was limited to frying eggs and making salads and warming up processed food.

And the stuff did not taste good.

(Well, the fried eggs were okay.)

These days, I am a serious cook who can cook up a gourmet meal in a flash. I also make up recipes on a regular basis. (I'm not a good baker though, because I dislike following recipes.)

And all this is making me hungry, so I’ll leave you with a report on the best bumper sticker I’ve seen in a some time: “Jesus was my co-pilot / But we crashed in the mountains / And I had to eat him.”

15. BODY HOLLOWS

From the Archives

(March 2005) Sunday night. I pulled out clay yesterday but never got around to sculpting anything. Have been wanting to shape something with my hands, which is a very different creative process than painting or drawing, less cerebral.

There’s something very satisfying about digging your hands down into your medium, getting them dirty, something very sensuous about molding a human form accurately out of clay.

Shaping it with your hands really makes you think about the hollows and curves of the human body, makes you pay attention. Tactile.

Or maybe this is just sexual frustration....

Guess I won’t get to experience this sensuous pleasure for a couple more weeks though, since I’m off to the lowlands soon and the process is really not very satisfying if you can’t complete at least the basic form in your initial sitting.

A sculpture is like a poem that way. I fine-tune poems to the nth degree after writing them and am always walking around with them in my head, trying to find a more precise word or phrase or image that will make them a little cleaner, a little tighter, that might scan a little better while providing deeper meaning, better music, nuance. Whatever.

I edit them on an ongoing basis, but really have to get the whole poem down on paper in my initial sitting or it’s lost.

Got up at 6 this morning and worked for nearly 7 hours on the second edition of my completely subjective compilation of poems that I think are good. The book is 200+ pages long and there’s at least one beautiful photograph on every spread.

I got the idea for the compilation a couple of Christmases ago after several friends said they would like to read more poetry, but wished I would give them some idea of where to start.

So I pulled poems together quickly, typeset the pages, made 20 or so funky leather covers, and handed the first, homemade books out as holiday gifts.

Like all rush projects, though, my initial edition contains errors (gasp!). I’ve promised books to other pals and some have reminded me that I haven’t yet delivered though, so it is high time that I finish a new edition.

This collection works very well sequentially, although the only real themes I used when compiling it were the moon at the beginning and rain at the end. I do cringe every time I discover another typo though.

Thought I could proof the whole thing and complete the rest of the updates yesterday morning, but I included some of my own poems in the collection and an unexpected result of proofreading was that I stopped proofing and instead reworked three of my own poems.

The changes are minor—just two words in one poem, a new stanza in another, and several new lines and phrases in the third—but improvements nonetheless, and two are already published in their earlier form, but at least I know they’re better now.

Have pondered one of the poems for a long while but couldn’t quite put my finger on what to do to make the meaning so clear that even an editor on the Sinister Wisdom collective would comprehend my meaning.

Now that’s not a very nice thing to say, I know, but the editorial collective of that fine journal rejected the poem and actually returned it to me with a condescending lecture along the lines of um, you probably don’t know this, living in the South as you do, but the word "nigger" is considered offensive in most circles and MLK and other activists worked and died in your region to make you people aware of how offensive you are when you use that term.

Guess it was clearly time they raised my consciousness about these facts since, excuse me, I’ve been living in a holler with all my barefoot and pregnant sisters and rapist brothers drinking moonshine these last forty-some years.

Let me back up here and say that a one-time colleague of mine actually founded Sinister Wisdom (the first lesbian journal in the US) many, many moons ago and she’s the one who suggested that I send this poem there.

The journal is run by a collective these days though, and I suppose those nice urban lesbians saw my southern address, saw that word, and didn’t even bother to determine what the actual poem said.

That’s the only explanation I have for their condescension, since over twenty readers commented on earlier drafts and not one of them had any trouble grasping that the poem actually comments on the damaging pervasiveness of racism and religious bias and poverty in the south.

The poem’s been published elsewhere now, but I guess it’s obvious that their letter still goads me and I pondered long and hard how to beat people over the head with my message without compromising the poetry.

Seemed obvious, once I figured it out.

Derogatory comments about Southerners (or poverty) rarely surprise me anymore, but they do offend me. You can practically watch a non-Southerner register your accent then drop their perception of your IQ score by 30 points.

Once, in the city, I was at a karate party with the great-whatever-granddaughter of—O hell, I’ll just say his name: David Hume—and little Maggie was so condescending to me that, after she said who her great-whatever-grandfather was for about the third time, that I said “O, who’s that?” in a smart-ass voice (to mostly amuse my friends and myself).

She replied “Where did you go to school?” and I told her the name of the southern state university where I completed undergraduate work—one that ranks consistently ranks among the top ten state universities, mind you, but she walked off shaking her Yalie head, satisfied that she’d just verified how backwards the deep South is and I didn’t even bother correcting her.

Now if she’d wanted to discuss the education I received in public schools prior to going to college, then that would have been another story....