A peaceful, inclusive faith

I’m learning to not flinch every time someone says “God” in a public setting because I’m learning that there are ways to talk about faith and religion that are not violent and aggressive, exclusive and painful, but are peaceful, inclusive, and recognize difference and diversity while seeking common ground. President Obama seems to walk that line fairly well (with the exception of the inclusion of Rick Warren at his Inauguration and even there, there are some arguments for such a move although I don’t really “like” those arguments).

His speech at the National Prayer Breakfast is an example of a job well done in my opinion.  What would happen if we all, regardless of our dogma, pursued “progress” as he suggests here:

Yes, there are crimes of conscience that call us to action.  Yes, there are causes that move our hearts and offenses that stir our souls.  But progress doesn’t come when we demonize opponents.  It’s not born in righteous spite.  Progress comes when we open our hearts, when we extend our hands, when we recognize our common humanity.  Progress comes when we look into the eyes of another and see the face of God.  That we might do so — that we will do so all the time, not just some of the time — is my fervent prayer for our nation and the world.

Is that possible?  Or is it only possible for the so-called “liberal” faiths – can conservative, more fundamentalist believers hold their beliefs and still recognize our common humanity?  Do we really all hold similar core values at heart that can be expanded to include all? How do we learn to do that?

HitRECord’s take on No Cameras at the Prop. 8 Trial

This is great – “made collaboratively during the Sundance Film Festival.”

Prop. 8 Trial Re-Enactment

How often are trials dramatized days after they end, in full, and for free download?  Check out MarriageTrial.com for a Hollywood Re-Enactment of Perry V Schwarzenegger.  These folks from Hollywood are donating their time to recreate the trial from the transcripts.

Check it out – if you come across a choice piece post the time-stamp in the comments!

Camp Courage Central Coast Day Two

Day Two has started with a bang, err, a chant.  Each of our wonderful groups came up with a cheer and got us going with creativity and inspiration. Hope Wood tells her story of self – a story of self-realization, action, and personal “work” during necessary downtime.  Now a how-to for building relationships.

Humbled, proud, inspired, determined.

Day One Camp Courage Central Coast

There is something powerful about standing at a table in the entry-way to a campus lunchroom turned Campsite and welcoming person after person.  Some are clearly appearing with a sense of trepidation, others are lit up with excitement.  They haven’t seen the agenda yet, but they’ve come.  They’ve come because they want a change.  And they’ve come because they are motivated to make that change.  The people in this room – they are the change-makers on the Central Coast.  The knowledge of this, as I sit looking at this room at many people who I know and many that I do not, is humbling and inspiring.  This is how it’s done!

Here they are telling their Story of Self, some for the first time, some for the hundredth.

What pissed me off this week aka Social Justice Week in Review

Isn’t it “we the people” not “we the corporations”?  Yes, I stole that from the Facebook group but how else to say it?  I mean, what on earth was SCOTUS thinking when they ruled 5-4 to allow corporations directly fund political campaigns?   I feel like I need to reread C. Wright Mills’  “The Power Elite” as what little I remember from undergrad seems to be right on the money.  He basically said that the ordinary citizen (“mass society”) was at the mercy of the combined interests of the economic elite, military sphere, and political sphere.  It’s pretty incredible to me that this man wrote about this right after World War 2 and yet, the illusion of democracy continued another seventy years.

Also making me rage this week is the fact that somehow Massachusetts became a red state this week.  How on earth did Scott Brown get himself elected to the United States Senate?  And in Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat, too.  Goodbye healthcare – did you know the guy actually signed autographs as #41 because that’s the number the Republicans needed to kill the healthcare bill?  Read the link…..I’m not making that up.

And last but not least:  Some racist white man named Don “the Moose” Lewis, is starting an all-white basketball league because, well because he’s a racist.  Of course, he claims to not be – after all, people of color don’t play fundamentally sound basketball and they get a little rough sometimes on that court!  You can learn all about his racist plans here.

Yeah, it’s not been a good week.  But, there was some good news in the Federal Trial of Prop. 8.

In terms of Perry V Schwarzenegger, on Tuesday, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders testified that he changed his mind about equality for gays and lesbians, deciding to support equality (by vetoing a resolution for Prop.8) because he contribute to the hurting of his lesbian daughter or any other gays and lesbians.  Professor M.V. Lee Badgett, an economics professor (University of Massachusetts Amherst) testified about that banning marriage causes harm to same-sex couples and that letting same-sex couples marry would have no negative economic effects. On Wednesday, over the defenses objections, our side was allowed to play the recorded depositions of two of the defense witnesses who had been withdrawn because they were afraid for their safety (or something dumb like that) if they testified for the defense.  It turns out that their testimony only supported our case – apparently they too found that children aren’t harmed by gay people and that same-sex behavior isn’t really abnormal!  Imagine that! Also on the stand was Ryan Kendall, a gay man who testified about his horrible experiences with conversion therapy.  On the eighth day of the trial, Professor Gary Segura (and Chair of Chicano/a Studies at Stanford), a professor of political science, testified that the ingrained and institutionalized homophobia present does not allow gay people to participate equally in the political arena.  He also talked about the Catholic and Mormon Churches’ extensive influence (financial and otherwise) on the Prop. 8 campaign.  On the final day this week, plaintiff attorneys put Dr. Tam, a very vocal and active proponent of Prop. 8 and a leader in the Chinese evangelical movement, on the stand.  From what I can tell, the point of this was to prove that Dr. Tam was an active, recognized leader of the Yes on 8 movement and that his awful anti-gay rhetoric was condoned by the campaign (this would go to show the level of bias against gays and lesbians).

As I did last week, I’ve been following NCLR’s Shannon Minter on Pam’s House Blend for analysis as well as the tweets of NCLRights.  Several other good sources are in last week’s recap.  I’m not an analyst and am very sharing what I’m learning from others.  I also feel that it’s important to give shout-outs to those scholars and non-scholars alike who are willing to come out for equality.  I continue to be delighted with the good social science being used to argue for LGBT rights as well as the personal stories.  It is those stories that we must tell each other and our less “friendly” neighbors and co-workers to get them to change their minds as did Mayor Sanders.  Even when we get the ruling we want, we still have to do that hard work of tearing down the walls of homophobia in our neighborhoods.  If you’re local, don’t forget to come out to Camp Courage Central Coast this coming weekend – we’ll work on those stories!

Prop. 8 on Trial and more….Social Justice Week in Review

As usual, there’s a lot happening.  Here’s some highlights:

My thoughts and prayers are with Haitians today (and daily).  I don’t even know where to start linking because it’s horrible everywhere.  Everyone has a particular relief organization to plug and as long as your money isn’t going to exorbitant “administration” costs, it probably doesn’t matter.  Also beware that writing a check actually gets more money into the hands of the people we want to help rather than the banks who take their cut in plastic “fees.” Personally, I’m a fan of Drs Without Borders and Direct Relief International.

My twitter feed slowed considerably today as #prop8 tweeters took a much needed and well-deserved rest from  live-blogging from the Federal Courtroom in San Francisco as Prop. 8 went on trial this week in Perry V Schwarzenegger.  Even before opening arguments in this historic case, there was wrangling over cameras in the courtroom.  Apparently the Pro-8 witnesses are afraid if their bigotry testimony is broadcast.  Judge Walker ruled to allow delayed YouTube video but the Supreme Court blocked that ruling. So the tweeters and bloggers are hard at work and we are very grateful.  In particular, I’ve been following Syd Peterson at LGBT POV, NCLR’s Shannon Minter with daily trial analysis at Pam’s House Blend, LiveBlogging and Analysis from Courage Campaign Institute’s Prop8TrialTracker, and @NCLRights on Twitter.

Now that I’ve given all those fabulous links, I feel rather inadequate at doing justice to any sort of summary.  And while I’m beginning to understand the legal arguments, I’m definitely NOT an expert of any sort so I’m going to leave that discussion to those who are (see above).  But as a graduate student sociologist, I’m fascinated by the amazing amount of social science presented and debated in the courtroom – something that makes this social scientist feel like her field is very much worth her education!  So I’ll briefly mention the contributions of these social scientists. Day One of the trial included opening arguments, moving testimony from the plaintiff couples and arguments about the social construction of marriage as an organizing principle of our society, with historian at Harvard, Dr. Nancy Cott, explaining that marriage has never held one constant meaning but has varied with social changes over time.  On Day Two, Dr. George Chauncey, a social historian of Gay and Lesbian History from Yale, spent time talking about the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian people and tying the legacy of hateful stereotypes to the actions and propaganda of the Yes on 8 Campaign.  From what Shannon Minter is saying, a lot of this goes to trying to establish arguments for heightened protection of gays and lesbians as a stigmatized class.  Day Three saw a social psychologist on the stand, Dr. Anne Peplau, who testified that marriage is good for couple’s relationships and that same-sex couples are no different from other-sex couples in terms of their relationships.  An economist began the testimony on Day four.  Edmund Egan, the chief economist in the Office of the Controller for the City of San Francisco testified about the financial harms done to the City because same-sex couples cannot get married. His testimony was followed by that of a Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia, Dr. Ilan Meyer (he’s a social psychologist +).  He testified as to the physical harms suffered by those who are the victims of LGBT discrimination.  Finally for this week, Day Five included testimony from a child and developmental psychologist, Dr. Michael Lamb (Cambridge – all the tweeters and bloggers mention their enjoyment of his accent), who brought it home that children are not harmed by having LGBT parents and that in fact, there’s no difference in their psychological well-being from children of other-sex parents.  The last person on the stand this week was Helen Zia, an Asian-American author and journalist who testified about her life and her struggles against the prejudice that kept her in the closet for a long time and how she and her partner are accepted (differently and better) now that they are legally married.  It’s not being explicitly discussed this way in the analysis that’s coming out but reading between the lines, it seems as if Zia is also speaking to the intersections of race and sexuality as well.

So there we have it.  In this first week we have an historian, a social historian of LGBT history, two social psychologists, an economist, a child and developmental psychologist and a journalist/author on the stand as well as several couples – all testifying to the harms of homophobia and firmly pushing back at the erroneous stereotypes and beliefs about gays and lesbians as the harmers of children and the ones who want to change marriage forever.  I’m very grateful for them all.

I’d be remiss not to mention a couple of other things that have happened this week.  The Justice Department decided to intervene in a case where a father is suing a school district on behalf of his gay son because they failed to protect him from bullying because of his gender presentation. The UN Urged Uganda to lose their proposed hateful and harmful anti-gay legislation. A judge in DC rejected a suit against their new marriage law. A constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage has been introduced (again) in Indiana.

The creation of the healthcare plan continues.  I can’t say as how I understand what’s going on at this point (probably mostly because I gave up when the public option went away) but here’s some articles:  Paying for it is a problem (duh), Democrats are worried about their jobs because their constituents aren’t impressed with the cost and complexity of the bill (duh), and Nebraska tried to get away with no paying their fair share (!!).  So I guess it seems like business as usual.  Can anyone recommend any good blogs on healthcare?

The Immigration Justice Movement is rallying this MLK weekend.  The national media isn’t exactly publicizing actions.  Here’s a blog that lists some of the rallies that have or are occurring.  And Reform Immigration of America is tracking all of the rallies (not to mention has lots of information about immigration justice on the site). I happen to know for a fact that there is an Immigration Justice rally organized by Pueblo happening in Santa Barbara on Monday at 5pm, but damned if I can find  a news article about it!

I think that is about all I have time to sort out for this week.  I’m sure there is a lot of important stuff happening that I’m not catching – please leave me a note and a link in the comments!  As a final note, as an academic and an activist, I’m delighted when scholars manage to effectively cross the “divide” as Drs. Verta Taylor and Katrina Kimport did as their research on the protests to win marriage back 2004 made the national news.  It’s good to have examples to follow!

Don’t forget – Camp Courage Central Coast is coming to Santa Barbara on Jan. 30 and 31.  Reserve your space now as space is limited.  Come help build our community through the power of shared stories.  This training will give you tangible skills for working toward equality and justice through all whether that is in the form of those difficult conversations or whether you want to learn to host house parties! See here for more details.

Camp Courage Central Coast -> You’re Invited!

I’ve been an activist for awhile now.  I have even come to think of myself as having enough experience to say that I’m an organizer – that it is something that I DO.  But sometimes it is still difficult to tell the story about why I care so much – why I care about LGBT rights, why I care about equality and justice for all.  It is difficult because that is such a personal story and personal stories can be hard to tell.

But that is the beauty of Camp Courage – you learn how to tell your story in a safe and welcoming space.  And you learn how to use that powerful story to build community and to persuade others of the value of fairness and equality for all people. It turns out that we can link your powerful story and my powerful story and tell a story of us that is more powerful than any of us individually.  And that is the power that we need to change people’s minds about LGBTQ rights.

Please join me for Camp Courage Central Coast on Jan. 30 and 31st in beautiful Santa Barbara.  Registration is $10 and some meals are provided (details upon registration).  Come help us build community – you’ll leave empowered and with a new story to tell!

Here’s a video of the East LA Camp Courage to get you excited!

Below is more information and the link to register.  Feel free to contact me with questions – or if you want to hear my story!!

Camp Courage Central Coast
January 30-31st
Santa Barbara City College

Register Today!

Camp Courage Central Coast is an opportunity for activists and organizers to come together, recommit our energies and our talents to the LGBT equality movement, and show the nation that we will not rest until all Californians are treated with the equality they deserve.

Inspired by the “Camp Obama” trainings that powered neighbor-to-neighbor organizing across America in 2008, Camp Courage is an intensive two-day training designed to teach empowerment, team building, leadership development, and grassroots organizing skills.

Join Pacific Pride Foundation and the Strategic Alliance for Marriage Equality along with:

CAUSE
COLOR Ventura
Equal Roots
FUND for Santa Barbara
Marriage Equality USA Santa Barbara & San Luis Obispo
McCune Foundation
San Luis Obispo Equality Team
Santa Barbara City College Queer & Ally Club
Stonewall Democrats of Ventura County
UCSB Campus Democrats
UCSB Associated Students Queer Commission
UCSB Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity
Ventura County Rainbow Alliance

NOTE: Sliding scale registration fees and lunch provided.

Register Today!

More info about Camp Courage

Come Phone-bank for Maine!

Help Keep Equality a Reality for LGBT Folks in Maine!

During the critical times last year, many folks from outside of California gave their time to support our efforts to fail Proposition 8. It is our turn now to help! Maine voters will be voting on a measure very similar to Prop. 8 that will take away the right to marriage for LGBT Mainers.

Let’s do our share to help protect our fellow citizens.  Come to a phone bank each Sunday between now and Election Day to call citizens in Maine and ensure that LGBT folks will retain the freedom to marry!

Bring your cell phone (we have a few land lines available as well) and join us at Pacific Pride Foundation (125 E. Haley, Santa Barbara) each Sunday between now and Election Day (Oct. 18, 25, and Nov. 1) between 2 and 5pm.

Questions or to volunteer: call Anna at 518 221 4520.

In the event that you are unable to come to a phone-bank, you can still help. To phone-bank for Maine from home using your computer and telephone, visit http://action.protectmaineequality.org/t/4847/signUp.jsp?key=2499&CFID=32021298&CFTOKEN=30994015

Also, please consider donating! Visit http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/22505 to make a quick and easy online donation.

For those who are interested in being involved in the 2010 ballot initiative campaign

For those who are interested in being involved in the 2010 ballot initiative campaign there is a town hall meeting to elect the delegates to represent the Central Coast.

A Call to Action!

Restore Equality 2010

Central Coast Town Hall Meeting/Campaign Kick-Off

Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009

Location: Santa Barbara City College

Room: Physical Sciences PS101

Time: Noon-2:30PM

Restore Equality 2010 seeks to repeal California Proposition 8 next year.  Proposition 8 was the 2008 ballot initiative that repealed same-sex marriage rights in California. Ballot language has been submitted to the State to overturn this ruling, and we are preparing/mobilizing for the Signature Gathering portion of the Campaign.  One million signatures will need to be gathered across the state for this ballot initiative to pass.

Restore Equality 2010 seeks to elect 2 regional representatives from the Central Coast Region which will cover the Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo Counties.  All attendees will be allowed to submit for one of the two delegate positions, and/or have an equal vote for their given region.

Please come out and be a part of history.  Restore Equality 2010 will be the first true grass-roots campaign in the State of California. This campaign will be run by the people and for the people.

NOTE: S.A.M.E. Santa Barbara is supporting any and all efforts for Marriage Equality but has decided not endorse a 2010 or 2012 return to the ballot at this time (see the official SAME statement here).  Also, the SB Chapter of MEUSA is not endorsing either time at this moment but continues to support all efforts at achieving LGBT rights.