LGBT Rights: Everywhere

I just saw something very disturbing.

It’s a short clip showing what happened in the streets of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, earlier today, when thousands of people turned out to shout down – and shut down – a modest rally for LGBT rights. Today is International Day Against Homphobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), and what makes today so important is right there for the world to see. See it for yourself here.

All too common
The scene is all too common: a small band of courageous activists, of people refusing to let an ignorant society circumscribe their lives, set upon, surrounded, and endangered by our antagonists. As the recently released annual Department of State Human Rights Report makes all too clear, what we saw today in Georgia could be practically anywhere around the world. Russia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, China, Albania, Belarus, Iran, Fiji, Iraq, Mexico – and scores more.

Or right here in the United States of America.

Time to Give OUT!

I remember that October day so clearly. It was 1987, the day of the second great LGBT march on Washington – and the first time I’d found myself with so many others like me.

Seas of … us.

A quarter century later, the internet has birthed ways of coming together that none of us dreamed of then. Millions of us. Coming together on-line, of course, isn’t the same as being in one place at one time. But the potential is huge.
A new way to give
Now there’s something brand new – and incredibly exciting – that can bring millions of LGBT people together around one of the most important things any of us – or any ally – can do. It’s called Give OUT Day and it’s coming on May 9, 2013.

Give OUT Day is this brilliant idea to have a single day on which LGBT people coast to coast donate to LGBT nonprofit organizations that help, serve, and save hundreds of thousands of LGBT people – every day. Without these groups, the LGBT movement would be pretty much nowhere. Without them, LGBT communities from California to Maine to Louisiana would be unrecognizable. So would many of our own lives.

Where history is made

I hardly need tell you that this is a big week. Not one but two landmark LGBT rights cases being argued before the Supreme Court. Discussion of our rights on every news-related website, in every magazine, on every newscast. All eyes – across the country – on who we are and whether our birthright to the same freedoms granted unquestioningly to others will be recognized and protected by our government.

Memories of Camp

The year, 1973. The place, Camp Makajawan, a Boy Scout camp secreted far up in rural, wooded Wisconsin. In my then 12-year-old eyes, Makajawan meant mosquitoes, uniforms, and stifling, sticky heat – and the general torment of young gay boys like me. At that age, the thought of “being gay” never occurred to me. But while I was lucky to be just athletic enough to escape full-faggot status at school, somehow the Scouts saw right through that.

The other boys in my patrol called me the usual names. Older boys threatened with tales of awful “initiation” rituals. No one wanted to tent with me. I was afraid whom I’d run into on a trail or near the showers or the outhouses.

Not that I’m alone in having had a bad experience at camp, Boy Scout or any other.

“…Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall…”

There it was. Right there in the President’s inaugural address, about three quarters through. “The most evident of truths,” he stated, is “that all of us are created equal,” and that this truth “is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall….”

Seneca Falls. Selma. Stonewall. Sites of events that proclaimed, each so bravely in its day, that women, that African Americans, that LGBT people, stood in the embrace of equality – and moved America closer to its most vaunted and most precious ideals.

Seneca Falls. Selma. Stonewall.

True allies

The French in the American Revolutionary War. Abolitionists in the fight against slavery. Urban consumers boycotting grapes to support farmworkers. Ruth Brinker, a straight woman, founding Project Open Hand in San Francisco early in the AIDS years.

Allies. They’re critical in just about every social movement I can think of, especially social movements that aim at justice for a group that’s unpopular or wields little political power.

The LGBT movement lost a giant ally earlier this week when Jeanne Manford, the founder of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, died at age 92. She started by standing up – 40 years ago – for her gay son, marching in the New York Pride Parade with a sign reading simply “Parents of Gays Unite in Support of Our Children.”

Not just another meeting

Foundations rarely just “meet.” They “convene.” In fact, alongside perennial foundation-world buzzwords like “community” and “partnership,” convening might be the field’s most gratuitously overused word. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with community, partnership, or convening. It’s just that when deployed so relentlessly, the words begin to drain of meaning.

But sometimes “convening” fits the occasion. I write this while flying somewhere over Ohio, heading home after a gathering that does merit the grander moniker. The world’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, brought together 150 or so leaders from LGBT advocacy and foundation worlds. It was an honor to be there.

A Magnificent Evening

I’m about to violate Rule Number One of blogging: Keep those blog posts short! And, generally speaking, it’s an excellent rule to follow. Most people aren’t enamored about reading rivers of words, much less on small screens.

But for every rule (well, most every rule) there’s an exception, and this is one. Just over a week ago, Horizons held its annual gala at the grand Fairmont Hotel here in San Francisco. It was a great evening – a real celebration of community – with terrific honorees (Barney Frank and Kate Kendell), dancing late into the night, a rich mix of people, and a rare and wonderful energy that suffused the goings-on from the first glass of champagne to the last dance.

After dinner, I had the chance to make some remarks. The goal of the remarks was to convey not only a bit about what makes Horizons so important, but also where we all find ourselves today as a movement – and where we are headed, both as a foundation and as a community. We’ve copied them just below.  – and they’re really not that long!

I hope they communicate something of what Horizons is all about and the exciting vision that we have for the future of the LGBT community. Thank you for taking the time to give them a look.

Roger Doughty
Executive Director

An extraordinary ally

Just a couple of days ago, I learned that former President Clinton will be presenting his “Clinton Global Citizen Awards” this evening, September 24. The award ceremony follows a day-long conference on global issues attended by a glittering international array of presidents, corporate CEOs, leaders of large foundations, and high-profile international non-governmental organizations.

Because my invitation appears to have – once again – been lost in the mail, I won’t be there in New York tonight. But I’d like to be. And not just to listen and learn from a stellar gathering of leaders (though that would be a treat).

No, I’d like to be there because among those whom President Clinton will recognize tonight is Bishop Christopher Sengonjo, a retired Anglican bishop – and an extraordinarily brave ally to LGBT people in his native Uganda.

Signs of the Times

Later today, Horizons Foundation’s board of directors will be presented with a slate of recommendations – made largely by a panel of community members – for what we call “Community Issues” grants. It’s a high point of the year, and an annual tradition stretching back to Horizons’ origins 32 years ago.