Skip to main content

Reply to "Queer SOS! and the American Equality Bill (ongoing)"

October 26, 2010

President Barack H. Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500


Dear President Obama,

Thank you for your service to our country these past two years. I recall the night of November 4, 2008 so clearly. Having voted early with my boyfriend in Manhattan, I opted to spend the winter with friends in northwestern New Mexico, and arrived by Amtrak the night before in Gallup, NM. My friends picked me up at the station, and drove me back, an hour by car, to the high mountain desert landscape where I would spend the next three months. I awoke the next day to find two friends had just returned from casting votes for you; neither had ever cared to participate in the electoral system until you came along (one man was in his mid- to late-sixties).

That night, all seven of us huddled in one of the few buildings on the land to watch election results around a laptop; this was the only structure on the land where we could pick up the wi-fi signal. The temperature dipped down into the 20’s, then the teens, and there was no stove to heat this small structure, so we shivered and froze and wrapped ourselves in blankets, and were happy to do so; we were happy to use the limited bandwidth and the stored solar power to watch you win the presidency, in the way you had won our hearts and minds. With the crisp smell of victory in the cold air, we stumbled off to bed. Upon waking, the land was covered in silver and white, the first snow of the winter. We awoke feeling a new vigor for our lives.

You have asked three things of me, Mr. President. The first was my vote. You were rightfully hungry, and I slavishly leaped tall buildings in a single bound to get not just mine, but as many as I could get to feed you. The second thing you asked of me was patience, and that, too, I have given. Finally, I recall that you asked me to hold your feet to the fire. At this moment in your presidency, and in my struggle for civil rights, I am ready to light the figurative match that may just singe your soles.

I would like for you to take a moment, pull back, and view the world through my eyes. In 2008, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people could get married in the state of California; within months, they were told they could not. Just this month, my lesbian, gay and bisexual (transgendered people are still, apparently, unworthy of serving in the military) brothers and sisters were told they could finally serve openly in the military; days later, they were told they could not. We are all still waiting for repeal of President William J. Clinton’s appalling policy of dishonor under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). We are still waiting for repeal of the reprehensible Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), yet another Clintonian boot to our necks. We are still waiting for passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). At the federal level, the law of land in America permits employers to fire LGBTQI people from their jobs simply because of who they love or how the align their bodies with their spirits; federal law still allows hospitals to deny access to my husband (that is, if I could marry him), and to make life-altering medical decisions oh his behalf that would affect us and our family.

Our children are killing themselves, Mr. President, because the law of the land is, in fact, one that omits LGBTQI people; the law of the land is one that deems me and my brothers and sisters and our children not worthy of the same dignity and respect as you and your family. Our lives are not valued. As hard-working, productive, tax-paying, loving, compassionate citizens of this country, we are glaringly held up to the world as worth less than every other citizen. This is a barbarous truth; it is a truth that you uphold with your inaction. Your lack of movement to deliver full and equal civil rights actively rallies those who target us with violence. This week’s “Comment” in The New Yorker informs readers, “...hate crimes targeting gays have increased in the past two years.”

I anticipate your rebuttal, Mr. President. I have heard it again and again. DADT will end on your watch; the Matthew Shepard Act; AIDS funding (your repeated linking of AIDS to gay rights feeds the very monsters who target us as diseased - when have you linked AIDS to racism?); your “It Gets Better” video message to bullied teens. These are estimable acts, a number of which that no other sitting President has taken. I will not deny you that. You must understand, however, that we are still waiting for FULL EQUALITY under the law. All of the separate measures are merely political ping pong balls. In essence, they are the equivalent of the “Jim Crow” laws that targeted African Americans as separate, though not equal in the last century. Mr. President, I remain seated far in the back of the civil rights bus.

Just a few weeks prior to your third birthday, you were gifted with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a gift called for by President John F. Kennedy, and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. You were granted rights equal to those who targeted you and your family, equal to those who deemed your life worth less than their own. Did passage of that Act eradicate racism? Of course not. You must agree, however, that today the Ku Klux Klan think twice about lynching African Americans. You grew up to become the first African American President of the United States of America. The gift given you from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson (only after decades that saw thousands and thousands of deaths and incidents of violence) made possible the opportunity for you to reach your fullest potential. I demand you give that same gift to my children. Mr. President, I am commanding you to lead. Let us not forget who works for whom. Now is the time. Pay it forward, Mr. President.

As a citizen of New York City, I am represented in the United States Senate by Kirsten Gillibrand. Senator Gillibrand has voiced support for legislation that would meet this end. Just over a year ago, Senator Gillibrand stated, “It’s time to extend every basic right and freedom to every member of America’s LGBT community.” As our advocate in the Senate, she now has the opportunity to introduce the American Equality Bill (AEB), so that it may wend its way to your desk. AEB is a very simple, six-page piece of legislation that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (please see www.aebnow.com). In the tradition of the non-violent civil disobedient acts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I and members of the group QUEER SOS! have been holding a vigil outside of Senator Gillibrand’s campaign office at 15 West 26th Street in Manhattan since September 27 of this year. Our vigil has been ongoing for 24 hours a day since October 11th (National Coming Out Day). We are demanding of our Senator that she act on her words by introducing, or at the very least go on record promising to introduce, the American Equality Bill (please see www.queersos.com). Yes, we are willing to sacrifice to bring to an end your “separate and yet not equal” policy, Mr. President.

More importantly at this hour in the fight for LGBTQI civil rights, however, is that you, Mr. President, are the one person whom we have elected to set the moral and behavioral tone of our country. I would have appreciated your video message to bullied teens much more had you stated exactly what you were doing for these suicidal children so that “It Gets Better” for them. You have that opportunity now. I implore you to address the nation and Congress on national television on what steps you are taking to bring full equality and civil rights to all citizens. You can advocate for these children by calling for AEB.

Understand that I appreciate the enormity, the immensity, the complexity and the gravity of the job you embraced upon your Inauguration. You inherited possibly the most disastrous state of the union imaginable. I get that. But get this - I will no longer watch idly as my children die at the hands of tacit encouragement by your inaction. Anything less than full equality under the law supports more homophobia, more transphobia, and more violence. Anything less merely illuminates the fact that you, Mr. President, have virtually never drunk from a separate water cooler.

Compared to the limitless buffet of possibilities available to your beautiful daughters, Sasha and Malia, my queer children, as of now, are starving on mere crumbs. Sexual orientation and gender identity are as unique to one’s humanity as a footprint. I challenge you, Mr. President, to be the man that your daughters probably already think you are. If you truly want health care for all Americans, you will ensure we are all protected equally under the law. Civil rights is health care. Were he alive today, 13-year-old Asher Brown of Houston,Texas could tell you that.

Call for the American Equality Bill now, Mr. President.

Respectfully,



Joseph L. Birdsong
Office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
15 West 26th Street
Waiting Outside for Civil Rights
New York, NY 10010
×
×
×
×