by Nakhone Keodara

The white LGBT community just don’t get it. They honestly believe that “discrimination is discrimination,” when it comes to, well, discrimination. Let me explain. The other day I went into shock at the horror of having my name plastered underneath the heading Our Own Worst Enemy, of which Queerty was also named as public enemy #1. The post was written by Bilerico.com’s contributor Phil Reese. This was in reference to a press release that I sent out recanting my organization the Gays United Network’s support of the 2010 Campaign and aligning it with the 2012 Campaign.

It was sensationalism from the get-go when Mr. Reese started out his article with “Yesterday, Towleroad unveiled a massive roster of A-list supporters for the National Equality March.” Looking over the “A-List,” we can see that most of the endorsers are white–disappointing but true. And this is proof positive the people of color heterosexual community will see the LGBT community’s fight for its civil rights as, largely, a fight for white people’s benefits.

I went into rage and engaged with Phil in the comments section of that post. Subsequently, one of his friends came to his rescue and wrote, “I cannot even imagine trying to compare who was/is discriminated against more or worse. How does anyone else know that the way they were discriminated against hurt them more than the way I was. Of course there are the big issues out there. The major events that happen. But when we are essentially working towards the same goals how can we waste time fighting with those on our side?”

Now I see it clearly why the people of color LGBTs have thrown in the towel and say, “Fuck it, I quit the movement.” Now I see why the disenfranchised don’t become more involved in the LGBT movement’s fight for our civil rights. We’re frustrated with being shut out, discredited and slandered when we attempt to speak up and represent the interest of the people of color LGBT community. Now I see that it’s fruitless because they just don’t understand that their white privilege has prevented them from having empathy or compassion concerning discrimination the people of color LGBTs have endured even within the LGBT community.

They honestly believe that they understand the pain of discrimination that the people of color endures as a result of the color of their skin because they have suffered the same discrimination as a result of their sexual orientation. They’ve ignored completely the plight of their people of color counterparts that are experiencing a double-whammy concerning their oppression within the LGBT community because of the color of their skin. It’s outrageous for them to simply say, “Well, we’re all fighting the same fight and you people should just understand that it’s for your own good too.” It’s typical for whites to say, “You have a chip on your shoulder,” or “You’re bitter and unprofessional” when we challenge the status quo. That’s what happens to us marginalized and oppressed minorities, especially within the LGBT community, we resort to shouting in order to get through to the thick skulls of the white LGBT population.

Another example of the not-so-subtle racism is from a Facebook user who responded to my post about how unfair it is that charismatic and impassioned Mario Nguyen lost the Equality Idol contest to his heterosexual counterpart Sam Sussman, who is less inspiring. The user said, “Democracy isn’t perfect — can you spell Clay and Reuben — but it’s the best we got. Congrats to Julie and Sam. We love you Toby.” This is the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

As such, I am washing my hands from the LGBT movement because I no longer believe in this fight for equality. I am resigning as director of the Gays United Network and will dissolve the organization if no one steps up to take my place. I am canceling my volunteer vacation to Maine in October. I’m really done!

When I embarked on my journey into activism as a response to Join the Impact founder Amy Balliett’s call-to-action last November, I wanted to affect change. Along the way, I’ve come to find that the thing that needs to be changed the most in this movement is the LGBT community itself.

I am throwing in the towel because I don’t believe I can affect that change within this community. The Anglo LGBT community refuses to listen to any of the concerns of the people of color within this movement and it will do what it pleases regardless of the consequences.

The National Equality March has largely turned out to be about LGBT white people and I can’t and won’t support it. Once again, this is going to be another event where the rest of America will see that it’s all about white people. I predict that the majority of the attendees will be white because they are the ones that can afford to go to this March. I officially am condemning the March as of now. I wish the Anglo LGBT community luck with its fight for equality–alone!

Nakhone Keodara was a former gay rights activist who founded the soon-to-be defunct Gays United Network. He is currently the Founder and Publisher of the SoCal Voice and can be reached at nakhone@socalvoice.net.

Three people, including myself, showed up Friday night to protest Rick Warren’s Saddleback Civil Forum on Reconciliation at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest Friday night. The purpose of the civil forum was to honor Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a ‘Man of Peace.” An odd distinction for a President responsible for the rape of millions of Congolese men, women and children in a military coup to plunder the vast natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R. Congo) and the countless lost lives of these same people in an ethnic cleansing conflict that Kagame is widely reported as having been the mastermind and commander-in-genocide.

Filmmaker, screenwriter and human rights activist Alystar McKenneh and I were 30 minutes late to the protest. There were three to four police cars parked along the Saddleback Parkway and several of the police officers were on a motorized Segway scooter. It was a disappointing sight, to say the least, when we drove up to find that we were the only two people who showed up for the protest. The third protester name Ewanni, who’s email I received later that night when I got home, apparently showed up at 6:20pm and then left prior to our arrival. Regardless, the protest did occur.

In the interest of full disclosure and for the sake of establishing record, I will post my email exchanges with Ewanni below:

from Ewanni
to Nakhone@gmail.com
date Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 7:20 PM
subject The protest at Saddleback Church?
mailed-by yahoo.com

Where were the protesters? I went there and didn’t see one single protester there. I drove around the place and even through the church grounds.
====
from Nakhone Keodara
to Ewanni
date Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 11:47 PM
subject Re: The protest at Saddleback Church?

Hi Ewanni,

What time did you get there? I’m so sorry we were 30 minutes late due to traffic and we got there at 6:30pm. We were there for 3 hours until 9:30pm. We were at the Portola and Saddleback Pkwy entrance by the cops. Thank you so much for coming out and unfortunately it was only two of us there. We would have loved to have a third person there. Again, many apologies for being late.

Yours,
-Nakhone
======
from Ewanni
to Nakhone Keodara
date Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 2:08 AM
subject Re: The protest at Saddleback Church?

That’s okay. I saw the cops when I arrived. I think one of them was on a silly Segway scooter. It was about 6:20pm when I arrived. So when I saw no turnout, I was afraid the cops arrested them and took them all away! Either that or they somehow got into the church to make a display at a service, then protest outside after getting escorted out.

Ewanni
=====

Back to the protest. Alystar and I stood outside for three hours from 6:30pm to 9:30pm bearing signs that read “Kagame is No Man of Peace,” “Stop Rick W.’s Purpose Driven Globalization of LGBT Persecution,” and “Christians Should Not Support a Dictator.” In order to maximize the three signs, Alystar and I alternated in having one of us hold two signs throughout the night.  Our protest was peaceful. We had a lot of people slowing their cars down as they passed us to read the signs. For the most part, people seemed curiously interested in our messages.  However, we had one African-American man yelled “Fuck You,” from his car window on his way into the Church. Another incident was with one older white woman leaving the Church and was at a stop light rolling down her car window and screamed, “He’s not a dictator!” Alyster and I responded promptly. “He’s a criminal,“ yelled Alystar. I chimed in, “He’s a murderer. Yes, he is a dictator. Kagame is no man of peace!” Indignantly, she responded with, “You’re an idiot,” before driving away.

The irony between that lady’s last statement and her ignorance, or, more accurately, her willingness to be led by the nose by Rick Warren to believe that Paul Kagame is a man of peace, is lost on her. If Paul Kagame really wanted peace in the Congo and reconciliation with Congolese, he should have to make restitutions for the Congolese people by resigning as president, pull his militias out of D.R. Congo and turn himself in, for repentance sake, to European authorities so he can be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the countless crimes against humanity that he’s committed. While at it, Kagame would do well to make amends to the LGBT Congolese for the atrocity of sentencing LGBT Congolese who had HIV/AIDS to die without access to treatment medications-denying PEPFAR funds to AIDS service organizations that acknowledged that gay people exist in Rwanda, thereby not abiding by his “Purpose Driven Bigotry.”

Flying to America and putting on a show by pulling a wool over Rick Warren’s “civilized” sheep is disingenuous. Let’s see Kagame attempt to set right the errors of his ways by living up to some of my suggestions above. Then we’ll talk about reconciliation. Otherwise, his hypocritical preaching about forgiveness, reconciliation and peace will ring hollow.

Other than those two incidents, we felt safe having the cops there protecting us. Deputy Richard W. Nelson of the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department was such a kind gentleman that he put us at ease right away. He went out of his way to accommodate us and even left me a voice mail while we were parking that a reporter name Erika Ritchie from the OC Register stopped to see him on her way in to cover the forum and had expressed interest in getting comments from me as one of the organizers of the protest. Alyster and I were elated to hear those news. We figured we would make the most out of the situation and was looking forward to speaking with Ms. Ritchie.  The aim of our protest was to let Rick Warren and Paul Kagame know that we’re watching them.

With that said, I can’t believe my own eyes when I read Ms. Ritchie’s report on the OC Register saying that the protest did not materialize.

She wrote:

Sheriff’s officers who were deployed for a protest were reassigned when the protest didn’t develop, but inside, it was packed.

With this disappointing but not surprising deceit-in-reporting, Ms. Ritchie is less than honest in her false claim that the protest at Saddleback Church didn’t occur on Friday. I’m shocked that she would compromise her journalistic integrity by telling a lie about a protest I help organized on behalf of the Gays United Network, Friends of the Congo, (Rwandan) Survivors International, the San Francisco Green Party, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Annie Garrison of San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper and Queer Nation-San Francisco.

Granted Alyster and I were 30 minutes late due to traffic, Deputy Richard Nelson and I were in constant contact with Ms. Ritchie, who told him that she wanted a comment from me, the organizer, after the civil forum. I also left Ms. Ritchie two voice mails telling her I was outside waiting to speak with her. I even offered her the option of calling me on the phone as we were leaving.

We stood outside on the sidewalk with our signs for 3 hours and left at 9:30 pm when we got word through Deputy Nelson’s radio that the Kagame’s motorcade was leaving. One would only have to confirm these facts with Deputy Nelson, Administrative Deputy/Terrorism Liaison Officer of the OC Sheriff-Coroner Department, to know the truth.

I’m less disappointed and more concerned with this kind of biased reporting from a journalist whose objective is to remain neutral.

Nakhone Keodara is the Campaign Coordinator of A Peaceful Legacy: Petition to Remove Bombs from Laos, and sits on the Advocacy Committee of Legacies of War. He is a community organizer and founder of the Gays United Network and Editor-in-Chief of SoCal Voice based in Los Angeles, California. He can be reached at nakhone@socalvoice.net.

PRESS RELEASE

September  23, 2009

Contacts:

Nakhone Keodara, 323-635-5384
nakhone@gaysunitednetwork.org

Annie Garrison, 415-786-6839
anniegarrison@sfbayview.com

STOP THE WAR ON GAYS AND D.R. CONGO

Gays United Network, Friends of the Congo, (Rwandan) Survivors International, and Queer Nation-San Francisco Protest Reverend Rick Warren and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Los Angeles, California)  On Friday, September 25th, in a “Civic Forum,” at Lake Forest Saddleback Church, Reverend Rick Warren will present Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a man of peace and reconciliation.  Gays United Network, Friends of the Congo, (Rwandan) Survivors International, and Queer Nation-San Francisco have united to protest this radical misrepresentation.

“Rwandan President Paul Kagame is not a man of peace or reconciliation,” said Maurice Carney, Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, a DC-based human rights advocacy group.

“Kagame is, as has been well documented by United Nations and Human Rights Watch reports, a harsh dictator who has brutally repressed his own Rwandan people since seizing power in 1994, and, who has, since 1996, waged covert war on the people of neighboring D.R. Congo, to rob and control their vast natural resources, in U.S. and Allied interest,” added Mr. Carney.  Both French and Spanish courts have issued international arrest warrants for Kagame’s top officials and military officers, for crimes against humanity in both Rwanda and D.R. Congo.  They have not issued arrest warrants for Kagame himself, but only because Kagame is a sitting head of state and arrest warrants for him would therefore be equivalent to declarations of war.

Gay rights and anti-war activist Nakhone Keodara, Founder of a not-for-profit national grassroots organization the Gays United Network, recount that “Rick Warren is well known for campaigning to pass California’s Proposition 8, which denies the LGBT community the right to marry.   Warren has gone on record to compare gay marriage to incest and bestiality.”

Nakhone continues, “He also made Rwanda his first “purpose-driven nation” before moving on to do the same in Rwanda’s northern neighbor Uganda, in collaboration with its similarly harsh dictator, President Yoweri Museveni, who has, like Kagame, waged war on the people of neighboring D.R. Congo, in U.S. and Allied interest.  This is a thinly-veiled scheme of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Globalization of LGBT Persecution.”

Uganda, like Rwanda, persecutes its gay and lesbian communities with Reverend Rick Warren’s encouragement.  In 2008 Reverend Rick Warren encouraged a schism in the global Anglican Communion by supporting Ugandan Bishops who were boycotting the Lambeth Conference in England because openly gay American Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson had been invited.  (The same openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson was also invited to say prayers at Barack Obama’s Inauguration, after the human rights outcry when Reverend Rick Warren was invited to give the Inaugural Invocation.)

“Warren and Kagame, in Rwanda, and Warren and Museveni, in Uganda, collaborate in the persecution of gays and lesbians, who have no right to marry, who are not even acknowledged as gay and lesbian people, and, who are excluded, as such, from HIV/AIDS services funded through the nearly $50 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  Both Rwanda and Uganda are among the 13 “focus countries” receiving most PEPFAR funding,” said Annie Garrison, journalist with the San Francisco Bay View-National Black Newspaper.

Kagame, Museveni, and U.S. HIV/AIDS emissary Reverend Rick Warren, also promote “abstinence-only-until-heterosexual-monogamy” as HIV/AIDS prevention, a strategy which insists that gay and lesbian people never express their sexuality, and, that heterosexuals never express their sexuality outside married monogamy.

This so-called HIV/AIDS prevention inevitably spreads HIV/AIDS, because human beings will express their sexuality, outside the constraints of married heterosexual monogamy, whether or not they have the sex education–and/or condoms—to protect themselves.

Ms. Garrison pointed out that, “The epidemic rape, of both male and female Congolese, by Ugandan and Rwandan militias in Eastern D.R. Congo, under the command of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, also spreads HIV/AIDS as it devastates, dislocates, and disinherits whole communities.”

###

Media Contacts:

Nakone Keodara, Gays United Network, nakhone@gaysunitednetwor.org, 323-635-5384

Ann Garrison, Journalist/San Francisco Bay View-National Black Newspaper, anniegarrison@sfbayview.com, 415-786-6839

Maurice Carney, Executive Director, Friends of the Congo, moe@friendsofthecongo.org, 202-584-6512

For more details on the Protest, see below:

What:

Protest Rick Warren’s “Saddleback Civic Forum” presenting Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a man of peace and reconciliation

When:

Friday, September 25, 2009

Time:

6:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.

Where:

Saddleback Church, Lake Forest campus, 1 Saddleback Parkway,

Lake Forest, CA

And, on Facebook:

Stop the War on Gays and D.R. Congo

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=137095746303&ref=ts

United We Stand. Overcome We Shall.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2009

Contact:
Nakhone Keodara
Gays United Network, Founder
nakhone@gaysunitednetwork.org
(323) 635-5384

Los Angeles, Calif., Thursday, August 27, 2009. The Gays United Network (Gays UN) announced today that it has a change of heart with regard to going back to the ballot in 2010. As such, it is recanting its support of the 2010 Campaign and aligning itself with Prepare to Prevail and EQCA’s Plan and Analysis: Winning Back Marriage Equality in California/Building a State of Equality, effectively declaring its support of a 2012 Campaign to win back marriage equality in California.

“Our community is still too disjointed and the 2010 Contingents are largely made up of a group of detached, self-obsessed, arrogant and privileged white gay men who are unwilling to delay gratification by doing the hard work it will take to really build a community for all of the US’s. This dismissive go it alone attitude at the expense of the most vulnerable of our community is unconscionable. Truth of the matter is white LGBTs are closer to equality than their LGBT people of color counterparts. The belief that passion and momentum outweighs preparation, building alliances and clarifying our messaging is childish at best and selfish at worst,” said Nakhone Keodara, founder of Gays UN.

The impetus that has caused a shift of perception for the Gays UN has been the lack of support from the community. In his resignation letter, former Executive Director, Dennis Veite, wrote “I just don’t have the support that I need to make a go of leadership for this group. People committed to attending [DADT Protest] and even went so far as to volunteer for safety committees to help keep the protest peaceful and simply didn’t show up; no phone calls, no e-mails. They just didn’t show. Forty-four people committed to attending and six were there. We had fifteen police cars, thirty-five SF PD officers, twenty traffic control officers complete with barricades waiting on us when we arrived at the recruiting center on the 30th. We wasted close to five thousand dollars in city materials and manpower for a protest that simply didn’t happen because no one showed up. That’s a month’s worth of medication for my friend Mike who is suffering from HIV. I can’t tell you how it feels having that information in my head.”

“For the Transgender 101, I was attacked and vilified and turned into this monster who hates transgender people because I was trying to reach out and learn and educate myself about a piece of our community that I truly do not understand and at the same time share that information with other members of our community to help others understand as well. Then I was vilified for canceling the meeting because practically the entire damn community was looking forward for taking part in it.”

Equality California recently released its 32-page Plan and Analysis: Wining Back Marriage Equality in California/Building a State of Equality, revealing that “those with the strongest track records winning ballot measures have told us that, to win an affirmative campaign to restore the freedom to marry, we should plan to raise at least 1.5 times to 2 times what our opponents will raise. We estimate an affirmative campaign will cost $30 million on the low end to $50 million on the high end. If we pick the mid-way point of $40 million and we start raising funds in September, that amounts to a total of $2.9 million per month, or $725,000 per week. The biggest challenge with large donors not playing an early lead role is the difficulty in attracting early funding.”

In weighing our decision, we had to take into consideration recent developments as it relates to the impact budget cuts to social services organizations will have on the overall health of the community. With Governor Schwarznegger’s blue-line item cuts to the State Assembly’s July revision bill of $82 million, we can’t go to battle, in good conscience, on the backs of those that are infected and affected by HIV/Aids. The good of the whole must come before the benefits of a few.

The fact that not ALL members of the LGBT community is on board with pushing forward with a campaign that has no clear path to victory is not something that the Gays UN can continue to ignore. Gays UN hopes that the 2010 contingent will reconsider their position and work with us 2012ers in preparing to prevail at the ballot in 2012.

###

Gays UN is a national not-for-profit grassroots organization founded to affect change by uniting and empowering our community both in California and nationally through direct actions, such as: sponsoring fundraising, canvassing, public education and letter writing campaigns, online and offline petition drives, protests, rallies and vigils.

Join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48959723335&ref=ts.
www.gaysunitednetwork.org

by Nakhone Keodara

The gay rights movement is in the midst of a perfect storm. Hurricane Prop 8 has thrown our community into disarray. How we get out of this is the question that is on everybody’s mind. I propose that we start listening to and stop talking past each other as has been the case between the Pro-2010 versus the 2012 camps. As turbulent as it is while in the eye of the storm, we should keep in mind that there’s a rainbow after the rain.

Have we bothered to understand other people’s struggles without slight in the form of a dismissive arrogance of their point of view and minimizing their plight. If we can hold empathy, compassion and compromise in our hearts, we can truly engage and support each other in this Herculean task of winning marriage equality back in California.

At the very least, we must admit that the world does not revolve around the LGBT community, and, specifically, the burden of loss and the pain of having our civil rights stripped away is not the White LGBT community’s to bear alone. One would be hard pressed if one looks at the Pro-2010 contingent with their go it alone at any cost mentality. The sacrificing of the most vulnerable of our communities, people infected and affected with HIV and the POC LGBT communities, is a blind spot for most Caucasian LGBTs and is a demonstration of selfishness and self-centeredness to the extreme.

That, I think, is the root of our problems and a besetting weakness!

We all want and demand change, but CHANGE, in and of itself, is not some Etherial concept floating out there in space. Before we go demanding that people change their convictions, we have to change ourselves. That means that the gay culture has to change. Can we give up our tendency to be insulated and become a part of the larger society?

It’s a give and take! If we want acceptance and respect we have to earn it. If we want to join the larger society, we have to prove that we are worthy of it. Nothing transmits the message of love more than altruistic actions. Otherwise, our demands for change will fall flat on its face because it’s entitlement at best and hypocritical at least.

If there’s any consistency in human behavior, judging from my on the ground experience with regards to the complacency of the gay community during the No on 8 Campaign, gay men specifically, most if not all of us only concern ourselves with our preoccupations with the Dicks, the Dollars, the Drinks and the Drugs. We don’t have room to give a damn about anybody else if it doesn’t concern us and what we want. One would only have to look at the low turn out at Tuesday’s HIV/AIDS Protest at Pershing Square to see the latest example that Peter Pan is still unwilling to leave his ivory tower and come down to earth to join the POCs in the other good fight besides the gay marriage equality fight.

Right now, the Pro-2010ers don’t have much experience and they don’t have a plan. They don’t even know how to collect signatures to qualify for a ballot initiative. It’s scary to think that these newcomers hold they can steamroll the POCs and EQCA without having any kind of strategies or skills to get a ballot language qualified let alone run a successful campaign to win back marriage equality for California.

Prop 8 Protest at the Morman Church in Westwood, California on November 5, 2008

Make no mistake folks, the task before us is nothing less than to demythologize the institutional lies surrounding marriage. What we’re looking to do is flip the foundations of society on its head. That’s what our jobs will be in ‘changing people’s hearts and minds.’ Religious bigotry is much different than racial discrimination. At its heart, a religious conviction is what gives people a compass to guide them on how to live their lives. That we think we can just show up at people’s doors and demand they let us yank the rug from underneath them because we are morally superior is a pipe dream.

The Pro-2010 contingents are afraid that if we go in 2012, due to several developments on the national front, that California will be one of the last states to legalize gay marriage. This, they think, will make California lose its progressive status. And so it is revealed that it’s hurt pride. On that front, I get it. The POCs feel they are being slighted (again) by gay white men. They’re losing face! They too, myself included, will have to get over their pride.

Wake up people, California is a state of haters. The stain that has been left on our Constitution will be forever etched in the pages of history. It hurts, yes! But, it’s not what happens to us that matters, but how we choose to respond. Rushing blindly into battle without a road map for success is a mistake that we cannot afford.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give the Pro-2010ers credit for being up on their history lessons. Yes, the mobilizations of the civil rights movement have produced many gains to the African-American community before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. However, we can’t ignore the four guiding principles that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out before us, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.” The LGBT movement is still in the midst of the negotiation phase. In other words, our movement is not ripe for direct action until we’ve purified ourselves and become an altruistic movement, get off your asses and out of West Hollywood and help other people with their causes. We would do well to remember Harvey Milk’s dog poop story.

The logic that right now marriage equality is the driving force behind the LGBT movement is an excuse.

Until both the Pro-2010ers and the Pro-2012ers can learn to compromise, we won’t be seeing blue birds anywhere over the rainbow. The perfect storm that our community is going through will have been for naught.

Nakhone Keodara is the Campaign Coordinator of A Peaceful Legacy: Petition to Remove Bombs from Laos, and sits on the Advocacy Committee of Legacies of War. He is a community organizer and founder of the Gays United Network and Editor-in-Chief of SoCal Voice based in Los Angeles, California. He can be reached at nakhone@socalvoice.net.

Hundreds gathered at Pershing Square last night for a candle light vigil and a march to mourn and protest Governor Schwarznegger’s line-item cuts from the state Legislature’s July revision bill. The roughly 250 demonstrators that showed up were a stark and disappointing contrast to the expected crowd of 2,000 as per APLA’s estimate.

Although there were some contingents from Gays United Network, Equal Roots Coalition, Jordan Rustin Coalition, Equal Action and Bienestar in attendance, what was missing-in-action were representatives from EQCA, Courage Campaign, Marriage Equality USA, Love Honor Cherish as well as activists from the OUTWest Coalition, the California Coalition for Marriage Equality and API Equality for that matter. For its part, EQCA sent out an email last week urging its members to show up in the thousands to support this protest. Courage Campaign, on the other hand, saw it as sufficient to post the event on their website but neglected to send out a missive to its membership to do the same. Apparently, it was too busy raising funds in preparation of its go it alone 2010 Campaign. This is a travesty!

What was not clear was whether or not the hosting Aids Services Organizations collaborated with the grassroots and well established gay rights organizations to produce an impactful event. Yes, this is a political issue. They are politicizing our lives so we should join forces with all our organizations, political and social services–fear of political backlash aside–and pool our resources to stand up to these heartless funding cuts.

Organized by several Aids Services Organizations, including AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the event was a huge missed opportunity for the LGBT community and its allies to stand in solidarity with the people infected and affected by HIV/Aids.

Although it was a good mixture of faces that represented a cross-section of the races, the crowd was largely made up of POCs with a sprinkle of several Caucasians.

The energy of the crowd was less thunderous then at other HIV/AIDS funding cuts protest that I’d been to. The rally was kicked off with two speakers on stage at Pershing Square. From there, the crowd marched down the deserted 5th Street and then Spring Street down to the Reagan State Office Building where we were treated to a line of speakers that included California State Assemblyman John A. Perez, Al Balesteros of the JWCH Institute, Reverend Alejandro Escoto of the Metropolitan Community Church, an APLA client named Lynnea Garbett, Richard Hamilton, Cathy Olufs of the Center for Health Justice and Michael Weinstein, executive director of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

In other related news, APLA’s sent out a Press Release yesterday detailing how the blue-lined (crossed-out) items will “leave the state’s Office of AIDS with only 20 percent of its funding for programs like HIV education and prevention, HIV counseling and testing, home health and early intervention. These were among more than $485 million in cuts made to the state’s health and human services portfolio.” [emphasis added]

Going one step further, APLA announced “it intends file suit against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the ground that his line-item vetoes of the state Legislature’s July budget revision bill are unconstitutional. The governor “blue penciled” state funding for a range of safety-net programs, including more than $80 million from California’s HIV/AIDS portfolio. Leading international law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP will represent APLA on a pro bono basis.”

I interviewed several speakers and attendees before and during the rally to get their thoughts and reactions. I will update this post with these interview transcripts once it is transcribed.

For years, I spent every day justifying to myself that my lack of action on the part of the community was made up for by the money I donated to various organizations that were in charge of the fight for our civil rights. I lied to myself day in and day out that more experienced people were in charge of the fight and that there was no way I could make a difference. After all, one person can’t change the world, right?

On November 5th, 2008, when I saw that Proposition 8 had passed, I could only describe the feeling as emotional rape. I started looking at every person, wondering if they were one of the ones that voted to strip my rights away, one of the ones that hated my people enough to deny us the right to express our love and protect our families legally. My faith in humanity had been cracked to its very foundation and fear had become my companion. Every turn of life became an opportunity for someone to see me as a gay man and ‘protect children and save the family’ by getting rid of another fag. I lived my life looking over my shoulder and I blamed myself for that fear, for Proposition 8′s passage. If I’d only put up one more sign or bought and donated one more bumper sticker or talked to one more person, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to be afraid of everyone I talked to. Prop 8 haunted my nightmares with abject terror and captivity and loathing; an inanimate, unshaped monstrosity that was always with me in everything that becomes reality in sleep. In my waking hours, it attacked my body and mind and manifested it’s hatred through gut-wrenching, vomit inducing claims of victory and the celebration of millions who had just denied a minority a civil right. Their pleasure had become my pain; living had become an exercise in effort.

As time distanced me from the gash that Prop 8 had left, my family and friends helped pull me away from the fear. I started reading and learning and when information started coming out of the campaign, it became clear to me that those individuals whose ‘more experience’ I had put so much faith and money in had failed me and every other LGBT person in the state of California and across the United States through the campaign abortion that was ‘No on 8′. This happened because our leadership was afraid of us. They were afraid that seeing a gay person or a gay family MIGHT make people uncomfortable. They were afraid to reach out to communities of faith and colour and when those communities reached out to us, their help was turned away. We were told to be silent and let the professionals lead; that we should not talk about this being a ‘gay’ issue because that would frighten people. The fumbles were massive and the failure was great: the Mormons had no such reservations. They paraded Reverends and children and teachers and people of ethnic origins and most of all fear and lies across every television screen in this state. In two months, Prop 8 went from a failing 17 point deficit to victory at the hands of homophobes who didn’t even live in California.

As I learned more, the fear that had pervaded my being bled into anger: at the leadership, at every yes vote, at the media, at California, at being afraid, at being a gay man. But more than that I was angry at myself for misplacing my faith, for not doing something, anything, besides what I did. In that maelstrom, I learned that anger, while a terrible emotion, could also be a powerful ally. It made me realize that I could no longer justify my inaction while discrimination was written into my state Constitution and allowed to run rampant across my country. I realized I had to respond through action instead of faith.

To this day, the anger and fear still ride with me; chained animals incapable of abandonment, impossible to ignore and dangerous to feed. I take courage from them and the knowledge that my humanity is intact and they help me to remember that as a human, my frailties are as great as any other. And today, I’m a different person than I was on November 4, 2008. My determination is unfaltering, my strength is in numbers. I stand with my brothers and sisters for what is right and true and correct and I will fight to the death for this cause. I’ll no longer allow myself to sit silently as people around me are hurt, victimized, terrorized, tortured and killed. Never again will I allow myself to remain silent when the rights of my community are under attack. Never again will I ever sit quietly in the back and expect that ‘someone else’ will fight our fight. Never again will inaction be justified by a call for silence.

In the days leading up to the election, I knew that I was part of the fight. I had always been a part of the fight. On November 5, the fight became a part of me; that was the day I became an activist.

Dennis Veite is the executive director of the Gays United Network (Facebook Page). He is based in San Francisco and lives with his dog Winsor.