Do they really care about rape?

Originally published at Socialist Worker.

I AGREE with Lisa Seibert and Russell Pryor ("Defending Wikileaks or Assange?") that the left should not uncritically defend WikiLeaks' Julian Assange from rape or sexual assault charges--several articles from leftists and progressives that tried to demonize Assange's accusers were shocking and disappointing in their sexism.


But there’s more to this question. The reality is that the rape allegations are being used to punish Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, not to challenge sexual assault.

First of all, writers other than left-wingers have treated the allegations similarly. Far-right pundit Glenn Beck went on a sexist rant about the case as well, using pictures of Barbie Dolls to represent Assange's accusers and raising the idea that the charges against Assange are part of an "uber-left" plot to "discredit the establishment." And the right-wing British tabloid The Daily Mail has published several articles undermining the accusers and calling their morality into question.

Nicole Colson is correct to point out that the charges against Assange, which had been dropped only to be brought up again after WikiLeaks' recent release of diplomatic cables, are being used in an attempt to extradite Assange to the U.S. to face manufactured charges here for exposing U.S. wrongdoing in Iraq, Afghanistan and now around the world ("WikiWitchhunt").

However, by formally "taking rape seriously" by going to such great lengths to retrieve Assange for questioning, the Swedish, British, and U.S. governments and Interpol, with the complicity and support of the mainstream media, are in actuality undermining genuine efforts to combat rape and sexual assault.

As Wendy Murphy points out in the San Francisco Sentinel, the attention paid by authorities to Assange's alleged perpetration of sexual assault is an anomaly: "If Assange were any other guy, he would not be sitting in a British jail, and there would have been no international manhunt, no matter how may times his condom broke during sex."

That the charges are being brought to punish and silence Assange and WikiLeaks for their efforts to expose government brutality and corruption--and not because the governments involved are genuinely crusading opponents of sexual assault--belittles the charges and exploits the women who brought them in this case and in any other.

The message is, as Murphy concludes, that "the value of a woman's autonomy is measured by the political benefits of prosecuting the man who took it," not as something that should be protected on principle as a prerequisite for women's equality.

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BEYOND TRIVIALIZING rape and sexual assault by opportunistically using it as a tool for the political repression of Assange and WikiLeaks, press coverage of the scandal is serving the purpose of drawing attention away from the damning revelations brought to light by Wikileaks, which expose institutional crimes on a far grander scale than those for which Assange stands accused.

Among these is a cable that describes the efforts of Afghanistan's interior minister and U.S. diplomats to cover up reports that DynCorp, a military contractor hired by the U.S. government to train Afghan police and protect President Hamid Karzai, among other things, recently provided drugs and young boys for a party involving the boys dancing for and being sold for sex with Afghan police officers.

This is not the first time that DynCorp, a corporation that receives some 95 percent of its funding from the U.S. government, has been implicated for involvement in sex trafficking and child prostitution.

David Isenberg wrote in the Huffington Post that in 1999 DynCorp fired Kathryn Bolkovac, a whistleblower who accused DynCorp employees of "rape and the buying and selling of girls as young as 12.

"DynCorp, hired to perform police duties for the UN and aircraft maintenance for the U.S. Army, were implicated in prostituting the children, whereas the company's Bosnia site supervisor filmed himself raping two women. A number of employees were transferred out of the country, but with no legal consequences for them."

Another whistleblower, Ben Johnston was fired after alleging that these girls were kidnapped by DynCorp and trafficked to Bosnia from various countries across Eastern Europe.

Similarly, Isenberg describes a case in 2004 where DynCorp employees in Colombia "distributed [and sold] a video in which they could be observed sexually violating underage girls from the town of Melgar."

One of the girls shown in the video committed suicide in the aftermath of the video's release.

Despite repeated evidence of DynCorp's engagement in sex trafficking and child prostitution and sex slavery, they have received contracts from the U.S. government continuously since 1951, about $2 billion annually in recent years.

Over the years, the U.S. government has deployed DynCorp contractors everywhere from Bosnia to Angola, from Haiti to Afghanistan and Iraq, and even in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

If the Swedish, British and U.S. governments took sex crimes seriously no matter who the perpetrator, we would expect coordinated international efforts to investigate, expose and prosecute DynCorp for these allegations of engaging in the trafficking of minors for sex slavery on multiple continents.

And U.S. diplomats would be pushing for the U.S. to stop giving DynCorp lucrative multibillion-dollar contracts, rather than being exposed by WikiLeaks for helping to cover up these crimes.

But for the U.S. government and other powers, imperial might is a goal that trumps women's rights any and every day, as evidenced by the crisis levels of rape and sexual assault against women in the U.S. military, routinely covered up.

The astounding hypocrisy and crass opportunism brought to light by comparing the "international manhunt" for Julian Assange to the U.S. government's continued shoveling of billions to DynCorp in the face of their atrocious crimes brings to mind what the socialist Rosa Luxemburg said about capitalist "justice" some 100 years ago: it is "like a net, which allowed the voracious sharks to escape, while the little sardines were caught."

Saddled with student debt

Originally published at Socialist Worker.

C. CRYN Johannsen, an "advocate for the educated indentured servant," wrote recently in the Huffington Post about the disturbing number of e-mails she receives from people whose student loans are so high that they've contemplated suicide as the only way out.

A recent article in the Valley Advocate, "Killer Loans," mentions a journalism graduate who owes $120,000 and anticipates paying as much as $1 million over 30 years, who said they would kill themselves if their cosigner, their mother, wouldn't be burdened with the debt.

As the Advocate points out, unlike many other forms of debt, student loans cannot be canceled by declaring bankruptcy, and lenders can take a cut of borrowers' paychecks or even Social Security checks if they fall behind payments on their loans.

"Delinquent" borrowers can even have their professional licenses revoked if they miss payments, an absurdity that makes it even more difficult for a borrower to pay.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "state budget cuts and declines in philanthropy and endowments helped push the cost of college tuition up much higher than general inflation across the country this year, amounting to an increase of 7.9 percent at public campuses and 4.5 percent at private ones."

Some states have seen even higher tuition hikes for public higher education, with students in Washington and Florida facing increases of well over 10 percent, and those in California facing increases as high as 30 percent.

This comes after decades of tuition hikes outpacing inflation. According to the College Board, in-state tuition at public four-year universities went up 54 percent from 1997-8 to 2007-8, and 49 percent the decade before that.

These increases are making higher education increasingly inaccessible for working-class people, especially people of color, and are saddling those who are able to make it through school with insurmountable debts in a historically poor job market (especially for young people), creating a situation where many recent graduates see suicide as the only way out of what Johannsen rightly refers to as modern-day "indentured servitude."

Instead of pursuing their dreams, graduates are forced to toil away, oftentimes at two or three jobs they hate (if they can even find a job) just so they can make their exorbitant monthly student loan payments.

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MEANWHILE, AS the Advocate points out, lenders are making billions from interest and fees on student loans, profiting off of the misery of those who took on debt in order to finance their education, something that should be a basic human right.

Opponents of debt forgiveness argue that repaying one's student loans is a matter of "personal responsibility."

But why should individual workers be saddled with obscene debts in order to obtain a basic right like higher education, which benefits not just the individual student but all of society, which is enriched by the contributions of an educated populace? And meanwhile, the bankers who couldn't pay the debts they wracked up as a result of speculation, which crashed the economy, get bailed out.

Socialists should demand that all the debts burdening working-class people be erased.

Over the past 30-plus years, the top 1 percent has reaped almost all the gains of economic growth, exploiting the working class and poor at an ever-increasing rate. If anyone owes a debt, it's the rich who swim in more money than they could ever dream of spending, while the majority of people, those who produce that wealth, sink deeper into debt to pay for basic needs like education, housing, health care and food.

The bailouts and low interest rates for financial institutions reveal the capitalists' agenda: privatize profits, socialize the losses.

We should demand the opposite: socialize the wealth to meet the needs of all, and leave the lenders--almost always the wealthy lending us the money they appropriated by exploiting us in the first place--holding the bill.

The week of LGBT betrayals

Published at Socialistworker.org.


THE OBAMA administration sprang into action last week to block LGBT rights--a stark contrast to its snail's pace when it comes to any initiative to promote equality and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.


On October 12, the Justice Department announced it would appeal a decision by a federal judge that declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional because of its denial of benefits to same-sex couples married in Massachusetts.


DOMA was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. It defines marriage as between one man and one woman, denies married same-sex couples over 1,100 federal benefits granted to heterosexual couples, and permits states to ignore same-sex marriages performed in other states.


As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama said he considered DOMA to constitute unjust discrimination and promised to work toward the law's repeal. Yet this isn't even the first time the Obama administration has defended DOMA in federal court.


In June 2009--within days of Obama declaring the first LGBT Pride Month of his presidency--Justice Department lawyers responded to a legal challenge to DOMA by arguing that the law was constitutional and non-discriminatory. As precedents, it cited laws that barred marriage in cases of incest and pedophilia.


Last week, the administration heaped more insult on injury when the Justice Department appealed another court ruling that was positive for LGBT rights--a September 9 decision by federal judge Virginia Phillips of California, who ruled that the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy unconstitutional.


A month after issuing the decision, Phillips ordered the military to end any investigations or discharges related to "don't ask, don't tell." The Justice Department responded with an appeal and a request for Phillips' order to be stayed--in other words, a green light for discharges and inquiries to go ahead.


DADT was also instituted by Bill Clinton and bars LGBT people from serving in the military if they are open about their sexual orientation. More than 13,000 veterans have been discharged under the policy since 1993, most losing their benefits in the process.


The administration's hypocrisy on "don't ask, don't tell" was on full display. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that President Obama "strongly believes that this policy is unjust [and that DADT] should end. We have to figure out an orderly way for it to end...that's consistent with our obligations in fighting two wars."


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IF BARACK Obama and the Democratic Party he leads were truly the champions of LGBT equality they have so often claimed to be, they would have kept their promises and put an end to DOMA and DADT long ago.


But even setting aside the broken promises over the longer term, the Justice Department's actions last week are a slap in the face.


No one is "forcing"--as White House officials implied--the administration to appeal the decisions that declare DOMA and DADT unconstitutional. As columnist Dan Savage pointed out on his blog, the Justice Department under Bill Clinton declined to appeal a 1996 decision that overruled a ban on HIV-positive people from serving in the military.


The Democrats have a 75-seat majority in the House of Representatives, and an 18-seat edge in the Senate--they even had a filibuster-proof 60-seat supermajority in the Senate for most of last year. Plus Obama began his term in office riding a wave of historic enthusiasm and voter turnout, especially from young people and people of color demanding change after eight years of George W. Bush.


But in almost two years, the Democrats have done next to nothing to honor their promises on LGBT rights.


In fact, even in the lead-up to the 2008 election, there were hints of the betrayals and hypocrisy to come. Then-candidate Obama, while opposing California's Proposition 8 to overturn same-sex marriage, insisted that he believed "marriage is between a man and woman and I am not in favor of gay marriage."


Once in office, Obama dragged his feet on repealing DOMA and allowed the Pentagon to continue to discharge gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers under "don't ask, don't tell." On top of that, despite months of promising a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have banned workplace discrimination against LGBT people, Democrats allowed the bill to die in committee yet again.


All this is despite a recent Associated Press-GfK poll showing that a majority of people support the right to same-sex marriage--a first--and numerous polls showing more than 75 percent of people, including large majorities of Republicans, support LGBT people serving openly in the military. Nearly 90 percent of people support ENDA, according to polls--even 77 percent of Republicans oppose employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.


As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Obama could have put an end to discharges under DADT by executive order. Instead, the House voted in May to attach repeal to the 2011 defense spending bill, which spurred a Republican filibuster spearheaded by Sen. John McCain. The defense bill never came to a vote in the Senate.


The language of the House amendment calls for repealing DADT after the end of a Pentagon study supposedly aimed at assessing the impact of dropping the policy. The study is an insult, amounting to an invitation for anti-gay troops to weigh in on a civil rights question that should not be up for debate in the first place. As James Withers pointed out at 365Gay:

The irony is that DADT is still the law of the land, but the very soldiers most severely impacted by the policy have no right [to] talk. No one is keeping gay grunts from speaking up at town hall meetings, but coming out will lead to dismissal. So an up-and-down study of what it means to have out gay troops has no gay troops publicly and honestly talking (unless they want to get booted).

On top of that, the repeal was attached to a bloated military budget at a time when the U.S. is engaged in multiple unjust wars and occupations, while millions suffer unemployment and cuts to the social safety net at home--a cynical attempt to pit the LGBT civil rights movement against antiwar forces.


As SocialistWorker.org columnist Sherry Wolf pointed out on her blog: "We are equal and must start being treated that way legally. While politicians of both parties treat our rights as if they are playthings, we don't need to act as if theirs is a sane strategy."


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ONE MORE sign of how low the Obama administration has sunk: By appealing decisions that would have overturned DOMA and DADT, the Obama administration has been outflanked on LGBT rights by Republicans--such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in September refused to appeal a federal ruling overturning Prop 8, and members of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group whose challenge of DADT in the courts led to Phillips' decision.


Hell, even Dick Cheney now supports same-sex marriage!


With the administration's appeals to block court rulings in favor of LGBT civil rights and with Congress refusing to pass pro-gay legislation, it's clear who's standing in the way of progress toward LGBT equality--Obama and the Democratic-controlled House and Senate.


When Robert Gibbs says that "we have to figure out an orderly way for [DADT] to end," it's obvious that the Obama administration is telling LGBT people to wait for their rights.


We should remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Super-rich and super-angry

Originally published at Socialist Worker.


ANGER IS on the rise in America. People are looking at the policies coming out of Washington, they're fed up--they're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore.


Only the outrage you're most likely to hear about in the mainstream media isn't coming from the people you'd expect: the millions of people facing unemployment, for example, or the victims of racist scapegoating.


Amazingly, it turns out that Wall Street and the richest 1 percent of the U.S. population are just furious.


They're sick and tired of the U.S. government "whackin' them with a stick," as Anthony Scaramucci, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund manager, whined to President Barack Obama at a recent CNBC town hall.


Then there's Stephen Schwarzman, whose $4.1 billion fortune makes him the 69th richest person in the United States, according to Forbes magazine. Schwarzman compared Obama's move to close a tax loophole--one that allows Wall Street investors like Schwarzman to pay only 15 percent in taxes on private equity income, about the same rate as someone making $38,200--to Hitler's invasion of Poland.


And there are those who are complaining about the Democrats' plan to extend Bush-era tax breaks for everyone but those in the top income bracket. Under this measure, taxes on income over $250,000 would go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, affecting approximately the top 2 percent of the U.S. population.


It's important to realize that this higher tax rate would only apply to income above $250,000 in a year. So a household making $260,000 a year wouldn't pay 4.9 percent more on their total income, only on the last $10,000: their tax bill would increase by $460.


Nevertheless, to Todd Henderson, a law professor at the University of Chicago, the proposal to not extend the Bush tax cuts on the super-rich is proof that "the world we are now living in has that familiar Marxian tone." (If only.) Henderson says he and his wife, a doctor, could be "subject to a big tax hike," and he worries that he might have to give up such "necessities" as his gardener and housekeeper.


After decades of tax cuts, the lion's share of which have benefited the wealthy, and in the wake of an economic meltdown that saw the banks get bailed out while the rest of us are left to pick up the tab, the rich have some nerve complaining about a minor tax increase and a few harsh words from the president.


Apparently not content to have their asses saved, they expect them to be kissed as well.


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THERE'S PLENTY to be angry about, but the rich aren't the ones with a reason to complain.


They've enjoyed rising wealth for decades, while working people have compensated for stagnant wages and the rising costs of housing, education and health care by taking on record levels of household debt, and working longer hours for lower wages and fewer benefits.


Income inequality is at an all-time high in the United States. As noted in the Huffington Post's report on a study by Emmanual Saez, in 2007, "The top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000...as of 2007, the top [10%] of American earners...pulled in 49.7 percent [of all income]."


Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer explains how it's possible that median household income increased by only 2 percent since 1989, while total Gross Domestic Product increased 63 percent. Incomes for the top 5 percent went up 75 percent, with gains concentrated at the very top:

The top 1 percent was up over 100 percent. The top 0.01 percent--the 12,000 or so richest households, with incomes averaging $35 million a year--were up 215 percent...almost 30 times the increase of the bottom 90 percent of the population. In other words, an enormous portion of the gains of economic growth have gone to just a few thousand hyper-rich.

The gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm, and it's only getting worse. The latest news, according to Forbes, is that the wealth of the richest 400 Americans increased by 8 percent last year, to a combined $1.37 trillion.


Meanwhile, foreclosures are on the rise, and the most recent Census Bureau data shows poverty at a record high of 43.6 million people.


As David DeGraw points out at Alternet, the federal poverty line ($22,050 for a family of four) and gaps in the statistics grossly understate the real crisis of poverty: they fail to count millions, low-ball what qualifies as "poor," and ignore important factors like household debt. According to DeGraw:

A key metric to judge the overall economic security and hardship level of a country is the percentage of the population living paycheck to paycheck. Anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck can tell you about the stress and psychological impact it has on you when you know your family is one sickness, injury or downsizing away from economic ruin...77 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. This means in our nation of 310 million citizens, 239 million Americans are one setback away from economic ruin...

Tens of millions of Americans are wondering how they are going to pay their bills, while the people who caused this crisis, [the top 1%], are rolling around in $13 trillion. The robber barons have been displaced as America's most despotic and depraved ruling class.


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UNFORTUNATELY, THE Obama administration is paying more attention to the anger emanating from Wall Street than to the crisis of poverty and unemployment faced by the majority of Americans.


Another sign of the White Houses priorities: Obama's top economics adviser Larry Summers is stepping down, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the most likely candidate to replace him is former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy. According to Democracy Now! Mulcahy laid off 30 percent of Xerox workers during her time at the helm of the company, and cut health benefits for retirees.
 While once upon a time, Obama talked tough about Wall Street, calling the executives and investors "fat cats," in office, he continued the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and signed toothless financial reform legislation, while simultaneously doing next to nothing to ease the impact of the crisis on the majority of people.


And now, Obama is softening his rhetoric still further in response to criticism from the wealthy. As he said at the CNBC town hall meeting, "I've constantly said what sets America apart...is we've got the most dynamic free-market economy in the world. And that has to be preserved."


We should be the ones who are angry--that the top 1 percent are sitting on $13 trillion while states cut social services, health care and education just when people need them most because of budget shortfalls and cutbacks we're told are inevitable.


While the anger of the wealthy has been making headlines--and eliciting a response from the politicians in Washington--the truth is that the anger of U.S. workers is very real and is directed at both parties of big business. According to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, support for both parties in Congress is hovering in the 30 percent range, and about six in 10 disapprove of the way both Democrats and Republicans are handling the economy.


The October 2 One Nation march on Washington for Jobs, Justice and Education will provide thousands the opportunity to channel our anger into a demand for a shift in priorities toward policies that put working people first and reject the scapegoating of immigrants, Muslims and people of color.


While the main organizers will be calling for participants to vote for the Democrats, hundreds of socialists and others seeking to build a left alternative will meet at the corner of 12th and Constitution Avenue (NW) at 10 a.m. on October 2 for a feeder march that will send the message that "change can only be brought about as it has been in every period of American history by independent social movements that are active for more than a single march."


Bring your friends, family and co-workers, and don't forget to bring your anger--let's see if we can drown out the whining coming from Wall Street.

The real "monuments to terrorism"

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

THE REPUBLICANS are stirring up outrage against the "Ground Zero mosque" (actually a prayer room in a Muslim community center to be built on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory a couple of blocks away) to gain an edge in the November elections.

The right wing has called the proposed Cordoba Center a "monument to terrorism" on "hallowed ground," implying that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, and therefore do not have the right to worship in lower Manhattan. Clearly, equating Islam (there are over 1 billion Muslims in the world) with terrorist extremists is as absurd as it is disgusting.

Socialistworker.org and others have done a good job explaining why this controversy is nothing but vile bigotry and an attempt to justify the imperial slaughter of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But what about the actual monuments to terrorism in the United States?

For example, the official Mississippi state flag incorporates an image of the Confederate flag, which has long been a symbol of terror against African Americans in Mississippi.

From the days of the Civil War, when it represented the battle to preserve slavery and white supremacy, through the height of lynching and Klan terror, the murder of civil rights activists, the fire-bombing of churches with children inside and integrated buses during the Freedom Rides, and many more murders, beatings and bombings over the years, the Confederate flag has been the flag of racist terrorists.

The fact that it is part of the state flag is a slap in the face to every African American in Mississippi and across the country--on what should be "hallowed ground" in the sense that Mississippi was a reactionary center of one of the worst crimes in human history (American racial slavery) and its bitter legacy of Jim Crow.

For those of you who thought I was going to leave the North off of the hook, take the town of Amherst, Mass., right down the road from where I live.

It (and Amherst College, one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation) is named for Lord Jeffery Amherst, a terrorist who slaughtered Native Americans, pioneering the use of germ warfare. He approved giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans, as well as ordering his troops "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."

So Amherst and Amherst College are "monuments to terrorism" right in the heart of what used to be, before people like Jeffery Amherst came through, Native American land. Should this not also be considered "hallowed ground" in remembrance of the genocide of the Native Americans?

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ACTUALLY, IF you want to find a state-sanctioned monument to terrorism, you don't have to look any further than your wallet. As comedian Dave Chappelle said in For What It's Worth, our money "looks like baseball cards with slave owners on it."

For example, Andrew Jackson's face is on the $20 bill, which honors a slave owner whose policies of "Indian removal" directly lead to the Trail of Tears, the ethnic cleansing that killed over 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children.

Finally, Columbus Day is still a national holiday in honor of a mass murderer and enslaver of Native Americans.

Andrew Jackson, Jeffery Amherst, Christopher Columbus and other perpetrators of slavery and genocide are celebrated by the mainstream media and politicians, while their crimes are glossed over and excused if mentioned at all. Over the years, campaigns to change the name of Amherst, Mass., or to teach the real history about Christopher Columbus receive nowhere near the amount of attention paid by media and oliticians to the "Ground Zero Mosque" hysteria.

That is because a U.S. government responsible in recent years for the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis (and over 500,000 children killed by sanctions in the 1990s) and tens of thousands in Afghanistan, has more in common with the perpetrators of the great crimes of history than with their victims.
 Just as Black slaves and Native Americans were deemed inferior in order to justify their enslavement and extermination, so today are Muslims dehumanized in order to justify the occupation of Muslim nations abroad.

Making a mockery of rape

Originally published at Sex Under Capitalism and in Socialist Worker.

IN LATE July, an Israeli court sentenced a Palestinian man to 18 months in prison for engaging in consensual sex with a Jewish woman who claims to have believed he was a Jew.


The charge? "Rape by deception."

The judge said: "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated...The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price--the sanctity of their bodies and souls."

The level of racism and sexism here is astounding; this case illustrates the colonial, apartheid nature of the state of Israel, where separate laws, roads and other public facilities apply to Jews and Palestinians, and where Palestinians are dehumanized to such an extent that military units make T-shirts promoting the murder of pregnant women and children (to be worn by soldiers sent to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere).

Not only are Palestinians denied self-determination in the Occupied Territories and reduced to second-class status within the state of Israel, but the Israeli courts have deemed Arab men a threat to Jewish women.

As Tsafi Saar wrote in Haaretz, "Alongside 'They'll take our jobs,' the utterance 'They'll sleep with our women' is one of the most emblematic claims of racists."

Richard Seymour breaks this case down well in a post at the Lenin's Tomb Web site called "Racist Patriarchy in Israel." It is worth quoting him at length:

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Are you getting it yet? Sex with an Arab constitutes a violation of the sanctity of body and soul--an "unbearable price." This is not a freakish opinion in Israeli society. For example, half of Israeli Jews believe intermarriage between Arabs and Jews is equivalent to national treason (that "demographic time bomb," you see).

Some are determined to enforce this sexual separation through violence or policy. Gangs of men in a Jerusalem neighborhood roam around, behaving as a de facto vice and virtue squad, to "protect" young Jewish girls from Arabs. One local authority has set up a squad of counselors and psychiatrists to "rescue" Jewish girls who are dating Arabs.

Hostility to inter-marriage and cross-ethnic dating pervades Zionist culture and is reproduced at structural and institutional levels from the cradle to the grave. There has been a raft of legislative measures since 1948 that are designed to frustrate socialization between Jews and Arabs, and the existing structures of segregation in education and housing ensure that intermarriage is already very rare.

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IN A society based on the institutionalized supremacy (legal racism) of one group over another (in this case, Jews over Palestinians), opposition to "inter-marriage" is an odious but inevitable result.

A system based on upholding the "purity" of one group must control and police the sexuality of women within that group, who are tasked with giving birth to and raising the next generation of the dominant group--and "protect" them from men from the oppressed group.

Although the judge and other opponents of Arab/Jew relationships claim to be acting in the interest of Jewish women, their actions are as sexist as they are racist. Marriage (and divorce) laws in Israel are hopelessly reactionary, based on biblical mandates. Jews cannot marry non-Jews within Israel, but must travel abroad to do so. The marriage is only recognized upon the couple's return to Israel.

All marriages in Israel must be performed by official religious institutions (for Jews, this is the Chief Rabbinate of Israel). The same goes for divorce, a fact that underlines that while this ruling claims to be about protecting the "sanctity of their bodies and souls," Israeli law is shockingly sexist.

Divorce is a basic right for women, a gain that had to be fought for and won. It is a step toward women's liberation from the family, an oppressive institution that has historically placed women under the legal control of their husband.

Divorce law in Israel treats men and women differently, with women in an inferior position. For example, a man (in a Jewish marriage) whose wife is committed to a mental hospital as "incurably ill" may remarry if he receives permission from a rabbinical court, while a woman cannot.

Not only are Jewish women reduced to the role of wombs capable of carrying the next generation of Israeli Defense Force soldiers, but they are also denied their right to choose their own partner free of harassment. As one woman said: "I'm not stupid or gullible or looking for trouble. I'm a Jewish girl who happened to meet a guy I like, who happens to be Arab. It's my business."

Such a climate only emboldens those who use violence to enforce this racist morality.

Such policies are not unique to Israel. Prohibitions against "race-mixing," or "miscegenation" were passed in Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow South (and across the U.S.--they weren't ruled unconstitutional until Loving v. Virginia in 1967), and apartheid South Africa.

Also common in these societies, where racism was the law of the land, was propaganda promoting the idea that the oppressed "other" is a predatory threat to women of the dominant group.

We see it in Nazi propaganda. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmet Till was murdered in Mississippi for talking to a white woman. Rabbis in Israel speak of the "seducing" of Jewish girls" as "another form of war" by Arab men.

Israel's credibility has taken a major hit in the wake of its savage assault on Gaza in 2008 (Operation Cast Lead) and the recent massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara "Gaza Freedom Flotilla." The movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people is picking up steam.

In this context, Israel is attempting to clean up its image by portraying itself as an "oasis" of LGBT equality in the Middle East, in addition to the racist caricature of Islam as uniquely sexist.
However, the same marriage laws that require mixed couples to leave Israel to marry apply to same-sex couples, who must marry abroad in order to receive recognition of their union.

Supporters of sexual (and human) liberation should reject and expose Israel's lies, join the growing movement for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in the land that is currently Israel and the Occupied Territories, and demand freedom of association between people of all races and religions.

DOMA overturned in Massachusetts

Originally published at Socialist Worker.


A FEDERAL judge in Massachusetts, ruling in two related cases, declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional on July 8, a victory for supporters of marriage equality.

DOMA, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, defined marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states.

The law denies over 1,100 federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states where gay marriage is legal. These include the right to file joint tax returns (often at a lower rate), share Social Security and food stamps, receive spousal employment benefits (such as health insurance) or sponsor an immigrant spouse for legal residency or citizenship.

In other words, DOMA relegates same-sex couples legally married in states such as Massachusetts to second-class status in the eyes of the federal government.

The first case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, was filed by a federal employee whose lawyers from Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders argued that because the bill prevented her and her same-sex spouse from receiving federal employment benefits, DOMA denied her equal protection under the law--a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

The second case, Commonwealth v. Health and Human Services, was brought by the state of Massachusetts, which argued that DOMA interferes with a state's right to define marriage as it chooses by requiring it to discriminate against same-sex couples or lose millions of dollars of federal money yearly.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro's rulings apply only to same-sex couples married in Massachusetts, and they only declare unconstitutional the part of DOMA that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, so states will still be able to ignore same-sex marriages performed in other states.

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NOW, THE question is whether Barack Obama's Justice Department will appeal the Tauro's decision to a higher court in the federal system.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama repeated again and again that he opposed DOMA. For example, his campaign Web site declared: "I...believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and
 lesbian couples--whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage."

Candidate Obama went so far as to cite his support for a repeal of DOMA as a reason to choose him over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries: "Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)--a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate...Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does."

Obama renewed this commitment as president when he spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner on the eve of the National Equality March in October 2009.

But despite this record, the Obama Justice Department is widely expected to appeal the decision in the Massachusetts' cases to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals--and potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The administration claims that it's up to Congress to repeal DOMA, and in the meanwhile, it has to "uphold existing law." The Gay City News explained the administration's tortured logic in defending a law its chief claims to oppose:

[T]he Obama Justice Department devised the bizarre claim that DOMA was an attempt by Congress to preserve the status quo "pending the resolution of a socially contentious debate taking place in the states over whether to sanction same-sex marriage." The government argued that DOMA was necessary "to ensure consistency in the distribution of federal marriage-based benefits," and to avoid the disruptions from having to deal with different definitions of marriage in different states.

If administration officials do appeal the rulings in Massachusetts, it wouldn't be the first time the Obama Justice Department defended DOMA in federal court. In June 2009--within days of Obama declaring LGBT Pride Month--Justice Department lawyers claimed that DOMA was constitutional and non-discriminatory, citing as precedents laws that barred marriage in cases of incest and pedophilia.

Some left-wing commentators think it would be a good thing for the Justice Department to appeal Tauro's decisions, because if the cases go to the Supreme Court and the Court rules against DOMA, it would strike a blow against the marriage ban at the national level, rather than just Massachusetts.

Jim Burroway, editor of Box Turtle Bulletin Web site, makes the case that a Supreme Court decision against DOMA following an appeal by the Justice Department is more likely to succeed than passage of a Congressional repeal, such as the Respect for Marriage Act introduced in 2009 by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). "With the next Congress likely to be much more hostile to LGBT issues as this Congress," Burroway wrote, "I've got lottery tickets with better odds than Congress repealing DOMA."

But the struggle for marriage equality can't depend on hoping for justice from a federal court system stacked with conservative judges. Nor should we accept a lengthy appeals process that could take years before the Supreme Court rules on DOMA.

Instead, we should use the momentum we have build in the past two years, including the enthusiasm generated by this victory in Massachusetts, to demand full equality now. We should demand that the Obama administration live up to the promises of its president and stop defending DOMA in court, and we should call for Congress to get to work on the job of repealing DOMA once and for all.

Our equality on trial

Originally published at Socialist Worker.


"WE CONCLUDE this trial, Your Honor, where we began. This case is about marriage and equality." So began the closing argument of the lawyer challenging California's Proposition 8, which revoked marriage rights for same-sex couples in California just months after it was made legal.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a lawsuit filed on behalf of two same-sex couples, calls on the federal courts to declare Prop 8 unconstitutional. The case got underway in a federal courtroom in January and has stretched on until now. A decision from Judge Vaughn Walker is expected sometime in the coming days and weeks.

Both pro- and anti-LGBT rights groups are looking forward to the ruling with keen anticipation, but everyone realizes there will almost certainly be an appeal of any decision--and the case could well end up before the Supreme Court years from now.

Speaking to a packed courtroom and an overflow crowd, Theodore Olson--formerly a lawyer for the Bush White House, but now arguing in favor of marriage equality--stated that Prop 8 deprived gays and lesbians in California of the "fundamental constitutional right to marry" in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Responding to the anti-marriage equality claim that marriage should be restricted to "one man, one woman" because that's "tradition," Olson pointed out the landmark Loving v. Virginia that overturned legal bans on interracial marriage in 1967, and the Supreme Court decision in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education overturning racial segregation in schools:

"We've always done it that way"...is the corollary to "Because I say so."...You can't have continued discrimination in public schools because you have always done it that way...You can't have continued discrimination between races on the basis of marriage because you have always done it that way."

Both the Brown and Loving decisions were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which in 1868 overruled the Dred Scott Decision that held that African Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Prop 8 on behalf of the original supporters of the measure, insisted that the same-sex marriage ban should be upheld because "the central purpose of marriage in virtually all societies and at all times has been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring stable unions."

Ironically, Cooper's support for social engineering by the state regarding sexual relationships contrasts with an influential Yes on 8 ad during the 2008 campaign, which quoted San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom saying that same-sex marriage would pass "whether you like it or not"--in other words, an appeal to fears of state interference and arrogance.

Cooper also stated that the purpose of heterosexual marriage is to provide an "enduring and stable family environment for the sake of raising the children so that essentially the society itself...doesn't have to step in and take upon its own shoulders the obligations to help in the raising of those children."

There couldn't be a clearer illustration of the fact that the anti-marriage equality forces don't care about protecting California's children. They want to preserve the traditional nuclear family, where women are responsible for the burden of raising those children.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SOME SUPPORTERS of marriage equality have criticized the strategy of filing suit against Prop 8 because the case, even if successful at a lower level, will probably end up before a Supreme Court stacked with right-wing justices.

But court cases don't take place in a vacuum. It's also critical what happens in the streets--a point underlined by Judge Walker's question to Olson about whether there was a "political tide" in favor of same-sex marriage that would make the Supreme Court more likely to uphold a decision to overturn Prop 8.

In 2008, California became the second state after Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage as a result of a California Supreme Court decision that denying gays and lesbians equal marriage rights violated the state constitution.

The decision came in a lawsuit against the state filed by the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the National Center of Lesbian Rights after the same state Supreme Court forced San Francisco to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a move by Gavin Newsom in defiance of state law.

As soon as the court legalized equal marriage, anti-LGBT forces, with major backing from the Mormon and the Roman Catholic Churches and a variety of right-wing politicians, immediately submitted signatures for a ballot measure to overturn same-sex marriage. The battle in the run-up to the November 2008 elections was hard-fought. More than $83 million was raised by Yes on 8 and No on 8 forces, nearly an even split with some $3 million more for marriage equality.

In the end, Prop 8 passed narrowly by 52-48 percent, a disappointment for many on a day that produced the first African American president.

The passage of Prop 8 stirred anger immediately. Starting on Election Night itself and continuing through the week, people in California and across the country took to the streets in protest, producing a new stage in the movement for equal rights for LGBT people and a new generation of activists, known as "Stonewall 2.0." The upsurge in struggle grew in the aftermath and the election, leading to new grassroots organizations coalescing, like Join the Impact, the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality and One Struggle, One Fight in San Francisco.

On May 26 of last year, tens of thousands protested in California and across the country when the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8. And in October, more than 200,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., at the National Equality March, demanding full federal equality for LGBT people. Since then, activists with Equality Across America have held regional conferences and continued organizing protests, along with other newly formed organizations.

This resurgence of activism is the important political context that makes the success of Perry v. Schwarzenegger a possibility.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IN AUGUST 2009, the newly formed American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) filed a federal lawsuit in California on behalf of two same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses by Alameda and Los Angeles Counties.

The case became Perry v. Schwarzenegger and is being argued by Theodore Olson and David Boies, the attorneys who faced off against each other in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential race. The state of California declined to challenge the lawsuit, and so the defense was taken up by the organizations that Prop 8 in the first place.

From the beginning, the defenders of Prop 8 fought tooth-and-nail to keep details of the Yes on 8 campaign, as well as their arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, away from the public eye, blocking access to campaign documents and preventing video of the trial from being broadcast on YouTube.

The anti-marriage equality forces have something to hide. Behind their claims that Prop 8 is about protecting children and families is something more sinister: bigotry.

In his testimony at the Perry trial, Dr. William Tam, who supervised the language of Prop 8 , testified that he believes "homosexuality is linked to pedophilia...polygamy and incest." During the run-up to the passage of the measure, Tam wrote that if Prop 8 doesn't pass, "they will lose no time pushing the gay agenda," which according to Tam includes "legalizing sex with children."

Tam himself seeks to push his bigoted views on children. He is executive director of the Traditional Family Coalition, which sponsored an essay contest (with a $3,000 scholarship as top prize) inviting high school students "to suggest ways to reduce social problems," followed by a list that puts "homosexuality" on par with "political corruption," the "AIDS epidemic" and "gang violence."

In the face of such ugly hate, it's hard to deny the point made by Dr. Gregory Herek, a University of California Davis professor and expert on sexual orientation, at the trial: "Structural stigma in the form of laws that discriminate against LGBT people directly encourages social stigma, harassment, and violence."

A victory in the Perry case, even if an appeal is assured, will give supporters of marriage equality more confidence to continue the struggle. But whichever way this case goes, the fight will go on.

Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, it took 10 years of mass protest to overturn Jim Crow in the South. Finally winning marriage equality will depend on continued pressure from below.

Marxism and Oppression (Audio)

Here is the audio for a talk I gave on "Marxism and Oppression" at the Socialism 2010 conference in Chicago on June 20, 2010.

Western Mass. Rallies for Immigrant Rights

Originally published in The Rainbow Times.

A diverse crowd of over 150 immigrants and their allies gathered on the steps of the Northampton, Mass. City Hall late May to protest the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, whichaccording to the American Civil Liberties Union “invites the racial profiling of ‘peopleof color.’”

The bill makes it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona, requires documented immigrants carry their papers with them at all times, and mandates state and local law enforcement officers to check immigration status based on “reasonable suspicion” a person is undocumented.

Although Brewer said that enforcement of SB 1070 would not result in racial profiling, rally organizer Natalia Tylim said that “this law has meant in practice that Latinos are being forced into the shadows of society for fear of being the targets of police repression.” Seventy-six percent of undocumented immigrants are Latino, according to the Pew Research Center.

Protesters also spoke out against a recent budget amendment passed by the Massachusetts state Senate, which would make it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to access services such as housing, health care, and education, and would set up a hotline for people to report those they suspect of being undocumented to the state Attorney General’s office. Tylim said this will “create a culture of fear” for immigrants in Massachusetts.

The rally, called by the Coalition for Immigrant and Workers’ Rights, was part of a national day of action against SB 1070, the culmination of a wave of protest against the bill, beginning with activists across Arizona and including boycotts by the cities of Boston and Los Angeles among others, including an artists’ boycott spearheaded by Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine.

Protestors came from across Western Mass., including members of the Alliance to Develop Power, the American Friends Service Committee, the International Socialist Organization, the United Auto Workers and Equality Across America.

Organizers are continuing to meet to build a movement for immigrant rights in Arizona as well as here in Massachusetts. On June 7, local activists celebrated a victory when the Amherst Select Board unanimously voted to join the boycott of Arizona, and plans were underway to spread the boycott to Northampton, Springfield, and Holyoke as this article went to press.

“We will [stop SB 1070] with [the politicians], without them, or in spite of them,” said protestor Sister Elvia Mata.

Rallying to make ENDA inclusive

Published at Socialistworker.org.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Over 70 people rallied here on the steps of City Hall on May 3 to demand the passage of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would bar employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States.

Such discrimination against transgender people is legal in 38 states, including Massachusetts, while employment discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is legal in 29 states.

The rally was called by the Western Massachusetts chapter of Equality Across America (EAA), a grassroots network of LGBT civil rights activists determined to build a movement for full federal equality.

The rally focused on transgender inclusion because although protections for transgender people have been included in the most recent version of the bill, there are reports that the language specific to gender identity has been rewritten, and the updated version has yet to be released.

Organizers stressed the need to reach out to the 89 percent of the population who oppose employment discrimination to pressure Congress to stop stalling and pass ENDA now, and to challenge the right wing's tactic of opposing ENDA by shamelessly scapegoating transgender people.

Bet Power, a long-time transgender rights activist and founder of the East Coast FTM Group, pointed out, "We need to get the language of ENDA so we can be sure we're supporting a trans-inclusive [bill]." Power reminded the crowd of the scandal in 2007, when U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign broke their promise and supported a version of the bill that dropped protections for trans people.

Several other transgender activists spoke at the rally; many shared stories of times when they've been fired, not hired, or passed up for a promotion because of their gender identity.

"I'm the last one hired, the first one fired...I'm 45 years old, have over seven years of higher education, and I've never been promoted at a job. We deserve financial security," Trystan Dean, a lead organizer for the New England Trans United march and rally, said.

Lorelei McLaughlin, the reigning Miss Trans New England, added, "I'd go into a place with a 'help wanted' sign, give them my resume, and they wouldn't even look at it." McLaughlin shared that earlier in life, as a white man, she had no trouble getting jobs she was underqualified for, but more recently, has had to struggle to find work for which she is overqualified.

Power pointed out that he's "been fired for coming out about who I've slept with and for my gender identity...This is a very hard economic time, and we're suffering extreme poverty because of who we are."

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THE OUTRAGE of several speakers was palpable, as was the sense of urgency and a refusal to wait any longer for equal rights.

McLaughlin said, "we need a trans-inclusive ENDA now to secure basic human dignity."

Jessica St.-Claire, who said she is "proudly married to a transsexual," shouted: "It's the 21st century people, wake up...We're not in the Stone Age anymore! If they expect every American to pay taxes, they should get individual identity rights."

Her spouse, Elle St.-Clair, said, "Every day someone commits suicide, someone loses their job, parents are removed from their children, all on the basis of their gender expression. It's time to stop this."

Autumn Sandeen, a transgender Navy veteran who was arrested last month after she and others from GetEQUAL chained themselves to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience to call for a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," sent a solidarity statement from San Diego that was read at the rally:

Now it is not only time to redouble our efforts at lobbying our own Congresspeople into passing a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but it is also time for direct action. It is time for public rallies like this one; it is time for nonviolent civil disobedience.

We need to create a tension that tells our Congresspeople that there is an urgency of now in our push for our employment civil rights on a national level. When it comes to employment protections for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, we must send the message to Congress that we will no longer are willing to wait, nor are we willing to take the tranquilizing drug of incrementalism.

Several participants spoke about the need to fight for full equality and to stand in solidarity with other struggles, especially immigrant rights, in response to the recent attack on immigrants in Arizona, SB 1070.

Chants included "Trans/gay/immigrant/women's rights under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!" and "What do we want? Full equality! When do we want it? Now!"

The need for everyone to stand up for ENDA and equal rights on the job for LGBT people, and to make the connection between that and other struggles against discrimination, was driven home by one of the passersby, who joined the rally. "No one has rights until we all have rights!" they said.

Organizers called on rally participants to join them in Boston on May 22 at a rally at the State House to demand passage of the statewide Transgender Civil Rights bill and full federal equality as part of the national Harvey Milk Week of Action.

Madeline Burrows contributed to this article.

Where we stand with ENDA

Originally published at Socialistworker.org. Also published in Dissident Voice.

AFTER DECADES of waiting for protection for LGBT people from discrimination on the job, a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is likely to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks--but still lacks enough votes to pass both houses of Congress.

This is the time for activists to turn up the heat and press Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration to keep their promise and pass ENDA this spring.

The bill has wide support--there are 199 co-sponsors for the legislation in the House of Representatives, including six Republicans. In the Senate, there are 46 co-sponsors.

But passage in the Senate is expected to be difficult. For one thing, the Republican bigots are escalating their rhetoric against what, disgustingly, they call the "bathroom bill," as Sherry Wolf reported at SocialistWorker.org:

What you can do

Find out more about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and how to get involved in the campaign to pressure Congress at the ENDA Now Web site.

Get involved with local events around the Harvey Milk Day week of action as well as the movement for LGBT equality at the Equality Across America Web site.

While polls show that 89 percent of the population support workplace equality for LGBT people, fear-mongering and transphobic stupidities are being spread and echoed by right-wingers. Now that it is less palatable to openly discriminate against lesbians and gays, transgender people have become the primary targets of the cultural cretins...

One widely circulated form letter to congresspeople on Congress.org states, "The thought of my child or grandchild in a bathroom with a transgender (sic) is repugnant to me." Tellingly, this note doesn't even modify the adjective transgender to refer to an actual person--as if "a transgender" is some alien species and not a human being who deserves respect and equal treatment.

But there's a further problem--16 Democrats in the Senate have yet to sign on to ENDA. The Democrats have enough votes to not only pass the bill, but avoid a filibuster if they get all their senators to support it.

The Democrats have no excuse for not passing ENDA now. Our movement needs to call them out publicly on this and demand that they "put up or shut up."

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LGBT ACTIVISTS are getting organized to push the issue of ENDA into the spotlight.

In April, members of the GetEQUAL group disrupted and were escorted out of a House Committee meeting after they called for action on the legislation. At the May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights, many LGBT grassroots groups organized contingents to march in solidarity with immigrants and their native-born allies and to raise their demand for an all-inclusive ENDA.

Other groups, including Western Mass. Equality Across America, of which I am a member, are planning protests in support of ENDA, as well as organizing for the Harvey Milk Week of Action to demand full federal equality for LGBT people.

Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democratic member of Congress who said that the 200,000-strong National Equality March was a "waste of time at best," called Get EQUAL's ENDA action a "stupid thing to do." He wants activists to stick to formal channels, and call and meet with their representatives, asking them nicely to support the basic civil right to not be fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Politicians are aware of this issue and why it matters to us. Those who don't support ENDA or who drag their feet do so because they calculate the political costs of inaction as less than those of action. It's up to us to change the terms of this equation, and that will take more than phone calls and polite visits. We have to act now before ENDA dies again, as it has every time since it was first proposed in the 1990s.

When you lobby a politician, they can tell you anything they want in private, and it's nearly impossible to hold them accountable unless you're a major donor who can use campaign contributions as leverage. Instead of lobbying in private, we need, through protest and direct action, to call out representatives and senators in public and demand they make a public stand on ENDA.

More than small acts of civil disobedience, we need to build a broad movement that includes the active participation of large numbers of people. That's a real possibility on this issue given the hundreds of people who attended recent Equality Across America conferences in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., not to mention the quarter of a million who marched on DC last October.

Barney Frank and other Democrats say they're "working hard," and Obama claims he's a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. But they need to tell us what they're doing and why ENDA isn't a top priority for Democrats.

What does it mean that Barack Obama is a "fierce advocate"? He has said numerous times that he supports repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"--in his State of the Union address, he said he'd repeal it this year. Yet behind the scenes, he's been less than committed.

To get a sense of what "fierce advocacy" really looks like, consider what Obama did when it came to getting "antiwar" Democrats in the House to vote for funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in June 2009. The war funding bill passed with only 30 of 256 House Democrats voting against--20 "antiwar" Democrats switched sides and voted to fund the wars.

If they were acting as "fierce advocates" for the LGBT community, Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress would do what it takes, and not prioritize war over equality. It's up to us to force their hand and not let them get away with paying lip service to our cause while they drag their feet and toss us crumbs.

Why can't Constance bring her date?

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

OFFICIALS IN Mississippi's Itawamba County School District are calling Constance McMillen a "distraction."

But the real distraction is the policies of a school district that promote homophobia and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

People across the U.S. have been rallying to the 18-year-old's defense since the news emerged that she, with the support of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), had filed a lawsuit against the school district--after the district cancelled the high school prom rather than allow Constance, who is a lesbian, to dress in a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as her date.
In early February, after McMillen spoke with a vice principal about bringing her girlfriend to the prom, a memo was released in the school stating that prom guests "must be of the opposite sex."

In a textbook example of the discrimination that young LGBT people continue to face in many parts of the U.S., according to the Associated Press,

"In the court documents, McMillen said Rick Mitchell, the assistant principal at the school, told her she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend, but they could go with "guys." Superintendent Teresa McNeece told the teen that the girls should attend the prom separately, had to wear dresses, and couldn't slow dance with each other because that could "push people's buttons," according to court documents."

McMillen told the Associated Press that she stood up to the vice principal. "I explained to them that that's really not fair to the people who are gay at this school," she said. On CBS's Early Show, McMillen said she told the vice principal that "you can't pretend like there's not gay people at our school, and if you tell people they can't bring a same-sex date, that is discrimination."

Since district officials cancelled the prom, Constance has gone on the offensive, launching a public campaign for her right, and the right of her classmates, to bring whomever they wish as a date to the prom.

She started a Facebook page titled "Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!" which gained more than 300,000 "fans" in just five days. In a video posted on her page, McMillen, who has proclaimed in several interviews that she is proud to be a lesbian, thanked her supporters and encouraged them to "stand up for you what you believe in, stand up for who you are."

Although school district officials have not explicitly stated that their decision to cancel the prom is a result of McMillen's case, they released a statement saying they cancelled the prom due to "distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

Christine Sun, McMillen's attorney, said on the Early Show that this was "clearly the reason they cancelled the prom...The ACLU sent a letter on Constance's behalf, and one week later, the school cancelled the prom."

McMillen's struggle has garnered national attention, including appearances on the CBS Early Show, MSNBC, and the Wanda Sykes Show, and there has been an outpouring of support from around the country.

Matthew Sheffield of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (MSSC), a group that works to ensure that LGBT students may attend school free of harassment and discrimination, told USA Today that "his office was flooded by people looking to help" with the Second Chance Prom, which will be held in Itawamba County this year as a safe space for LGBT students and the rest of McMillen's classmates.

According to Sheffield, "We've had a definite spike in people signing on and joining our organization," as McMillen's stand has encouraged others to get involved in the struggle against homophobia in schools.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
CONSTANCE McMILLEN is not the only LGBT student to struggle for the right to attend the prom with a same-sex date, or to wear what they want.

Last fall, then-17-year-old high school junior Cynthia Stewart of Tharptown, Ala., stood up for--and won, with the help of the ACLU--her right to bring her girlfriend to the prom after the Tharptown High School Principal Gary Odom initially told her that she would not be allowed to.

Also last fall, a Wesson, Miss., high school senior, Ceara Sturgis, who is openly gay, was not allowed to appear in her yearbook wearing a tuxedo. The ACLU sent a letter to school officials demanding they allow Sturgis to appear in the yearbook wearing a tuxedo, stating "You can't discriminate against somebody because they're not masculine enough or because they're not feminine enough."

Then there is Will Phillips, a 10-year-old boy from Washington County, Ark., who has refused, despite pressure from a teacher, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because, as he told CNN, "There really isn't liberty and justice for all...[G]ays and lesbians can't marry...there's still a lot of racism and sexism in the world."

If individuals feel emboldened to take such stands, one big reason is the explosion in struggle as tens of thousands protested against the passage of Proposition 8, which revoked same-sex marriage in California.

Actions like the Itawamba School District's, however, paint a target on the back on LGBT students. So far, McMillen has faced verbal harassment from some fellow students who blame her for the district's decision to cancel the prom. And Phillips told CNN that he has been verbally attacked by students and called a "gay wad" for taking a stand for same-sex marriage.

As commenter Tom Head wrote on About.com, school administrators such as those in Itawamba County are "bullying [LGBT teens] at state expense," when they should be supporting them. Their discrimination encourages homophobia, transphobia and sexism, and gives others a green light to bully LGBT teens and those who do not conform to gender norms.

Such bullying has had deadly consequences. Although there is limited information available, EDGE Boston reports that a 2005 Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education study found that "gay teens had suicide rates nearly double those of their peers," and "were four times more likely to attempt suicide in the past year."

Last fall, according to Tulsa World, a survey of LGBT youth in Tulsa, Okla., found, "Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported having suicidal thoughts or feelings, and 39 percent said they had attempted suicide." Half of respondents reported facing bullying at school, and few reported seeing a school official intervene.

The bullies in the school administration in Itawamba County, meanwhile, are emboldened by the bullies in the Mississippi state government, which provides no protection for LGBT people from employment discrimination and bans same-sex marriage.

Constance McMillen deserves our full support for taking a courageous stand against institutional discrimination. We should honor her advice to stand up for what we believe in--and get involved in the movement for LGBT equality.

Why we're fighting for ENDA

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

WITH UNEMPLOYMENT and underemployment a devastating reality for millions and millions of people in the U.S., federal protection from job discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is more important than ever.

But the inaction and broken promises of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress shows that winning equality on the job will require more than overwhelming popular sentiment opposed to any form of workplace discrimination. It will require pressure from the grassroots.

Official unemployment was 9.7 percent in January (16.5 percent for Blacks and 12.6 percent for Latinos)--16.5 percent if you count people working part time because they couldn't find full-time employment. Economists estimate that there are approximately six people looking for work for every new job opening.

This bleak jobs landscape amplifies the destruction caused by employment discrimination on the lives of LGBT people.

In 38 states, it's legal to fire or not hire someone because they're transgender, and in 29 states if they're gay, lesbian or bisexual. Every day, millions of LGBT workers face a horrible choice: remain in the closet on the job, or come out and face legal harassment, discrimination or termination.

In 2007, Kenneth Roswell, a gay man working at a Hess gas station in Lee County, Florida, complained after a training manager told him that "gays are sick" and "should all be taken out and shot." He was transferred to a store in a dangerous neighborhood, and eventually fired a few months later, according to the Naples News.

When Roswell went to the Lee County Equal Opportunity Office to file a complaint, he said he was told that "gays are not a protected group"--so that even if Hess had fired him for being gay, there is no law making it illegal. Roswell continued to face harassment from Hess after his termination. "Any place I apply, they give me a bad reference," he told the News. "I'm about to lose my home [and] my car."

Nor are LGBT workers safe from discrimination after they punch out. In 2000, Peter Oiler says he was fired after 20 years on the job as a truck driver for the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain when managers found out that he sometimes cross-dressed when not at work, and identified as transgender.

Sue Kirchofer wasn't allowed to name her partner as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy in 1994, and was "told to remain invisible" about her sexuality by her Seattle employer, she told Newsweek. She was fired months later after her employer found out she had played soccer in the Gay Games in New York City.

Then there's the largest employer in the U.S.--the Department of Defense. The Pentagon discriminates against its LGBT employees with its "don't ask, don't tell" policy--over 13,000 people have been discharged under don't ask, don't tell since 1994, and partners of LGBT people killed or wounded receive no benefits.

Without federal protection from employment discrimination, LGBT people are forced to rely on a shoddy patchwork of state and local laws and company policies against discrimination--and plenty of states, counties, cities and towns where discrimination is perfectly legal.

What protections do exist are easily rolled back. In September, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer eliminated state domestic partner benefits. In Virginia, within his first month of taking office in January, Gov. Bob McDonnell signed an executive order eliminating protection from discrimination for lesbian and gay state employees.

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A 2008 Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of Americans support equal rights for gays and lesbians on the job. Support for workplace equality has been running at 80 percent or higher since 1993, and was at 56 percent as far back as 1977. Public opinion on this issue is far in advance of politicians.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was first introduced in Congress in 1994, but never made it out of committee.

ENDA, which at the time included protection from employment discrimination for gays and lesbians, but not transgender people, represented a narrowing of demands from efforts stretching back to the "Gay Rights Bill" of 1974--which would have added lesbians and gays to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Since then, ENDA has been introduced in every session of Congress but one, only to die in committee, fail to pass or be put off. In 2009, ENDA didn't even come up for a vote--despite the Democrats overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and the promises of Barack Obama as a candidate to be a "fierce advocate" for the LGBT community. In fact, in an open letter published during his campaign, Obama promised that he would "place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of...a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act."

This month, Rep. Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of Congress and a sponsor of ENDA, said that the bill is "on track in the House," but that "some provisions protecting transgender people were hot topics," and that he's "less certain the bill will pass in the Senate."

So ENDA has yet to be passed despite the fact that: (1) The Democrats, who claim to support LGBT civil rights, control Washington; (2) Equal rights on the job have been supported by a majority of Americans for over 30 years; and (3) the working class faces a jobs crisis that greatly amplifies the impact of employment discrimination.

Frank and the mainstream gay rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) took a lot of heat in 2007 when Frank introduced, with HRC support, a version of ENDA that dropped protections for transgender people--just months after they were first added to the bill.
This move was especially disturbing given that transgender people are disproportionately impacted by employment discrimination, poverty and unemployment.

The National Transgender Discrimination Survey, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found that transgender people "experience unemployment [and poverty] at twice the rate of the population as a whole." Some 97 percent faced "harassment or mistreatment on the job," including one in three respondents who reported having to "present in the wrong gender to keep [their] job."

Now, Frank seems to be threatening to drop transgender protections again.

The argument that ENDA would be "easier" to pass without protection for transgender people--and that this should be acceptable to us--boils down to the idea that lawmakers will act based on concessions and moderation from our side, rather than firm demands and pressure, that the road to equality must be slow and gradual, and that if we ask for "too much, too soon," we will only scare people away.

The claim that ENDA is being held up because of trans-inclusion is dubious, since a non-inclusive ENDA failed to pass for 13 years following its introduction in 1994. Secondly, social movements historically have made gains precisely when they have stuck to their principles and confidently confronted those in power from the grassroots.

Labor won the right to organize through militant struggle, including mass strike waves and factory occupations. The African American civil rights movement abolished Jim Crow segregation by firmly rejecting ideas of Black inferiority and by directly taking on structures of white supremacy. Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973, was decided in the context of a militant women's rights movement unapologetically demanding the right to choose.

Our movement, in order to build the unity and solidarity necessary to win full equality, should stick to our principles of equal rights for all and reject any attempt to divide us. We must build grassroots organizations such as Equality Across America to pressure Congress to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA as part of our demand for full LGBT civil rights. And we should offer no apologies and accept no delays: civil rights are not negotiable.

By demanding equal rights now--acting as equal people have the right to act--the LGBT movement will gain confidence, draw in new people looking to struggle for a better world and spur masses of people to question their transphobia and homophobia.

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THE STRUGGLE for LGBT equality on the job is one that impacts all working-class people, not just those in the LGBT community. Whenever one section of the working class is subject to discrimination and oppression, it's a threat to all workers.

Like undocumented immigrants, LGBT workers in states and localities where discrimination is legal can be targeted by employers if they protest abuses at work, try to join or organize a union, or otherwise stand up for the rights of themselves and their co-workers.

In her book Sexuality and Socialism, Sherry Wolf chronicles an inspiring example of solidarity between LGBT activists and the Republic Windows & Doors workers in Chicago, largely immigrant and Latino, who carried out a factory occupation in December 2008 took on their employer and Bank of America to win a severance deal owed to them:

The day before the Republic victory, according to Wolf, hundreds of activists "rallying for equal marriage rights as part of the national Day Without a Gay initiative...linked their march with the Republic protest outside Bank of America."

Soon after, Raúl Flores, representing the Republic workers, attended a gay marriage forum, where he said, "Our victory is yours...now we must join with you in your battle for rights and return the solidarity you showed us."

The connection between the Republic occupation and the upsurge for LGBT civil rights is no coincidence, nor is it anything new, as Wolf points out.

In 1977, Harvey Milk and other gay activists joined the Teamsters in boycotting Coors--and the next year, they had labor support that was key to defeating the Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers and their allies from California schools. Unions such as the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union took on homophobia, racism and red-baiting as far back as the 1930s.

Developing these links and standing in solidarity with one another as we struggle for our shared interests is the key to winning LGBT equality on the job, full civil equality, rights for immigrants, and social and economic justice for all workers.