The Republic of T.

Just before I head home, I wanted to leave something uplifting and positive behind.

I made this playlist around the time Parker was born, and I listen to it whenever my spirits need lifting or I’m just in a good mood. I call it my “Wake Up Mix.”

I played it when I was on my way to vote this week, and thus added the “Yes, We Can” song to the end.

Enjoy.

We’re going to have a new president, and one who’s light years more gay friendly than Dubya. OK. It doesn’t take much to be more gay-friendly than Dubya, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, we’re going to have a friend in the White House. Wanna Work for him? The The Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute is looking for people who do.

The Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute is leading a community-wide effort to identify strong LGBT candidates to serve in the Obama administration.  

The Presidential Appointments Project serves as the talent bank for openly LGBT professionals seeking appointed positions in the next presidential administration.  If you’ve ever considered working for the federal government, now is the time to start thinking about whether you have what it takes to work for the president to help change our country.  

While Barack Obama will lay out a broad agenda to move the country forward, his staff will actually undertake the hard work of implementation.  Appointed officials have the power to set or influence the policies of the many federal departments and administrative agencies that make up the executive branch of government. 

The Project will ensure that qualified, committed and talented members of the LGBT community have a fair shot at being appointed to important federal positions.

For more answers to common questions about the Presidential Appointments Project, read our FAQ.

I thought about it, but I’m pretty sure working in the White House or for the administration is rather all-consuming. Especially given the mess that the current administration is leaving behind. (Like drunken frat boys who figured their gonna lose the security deposit anyway and said “Fuck it. Let throw one last kegger!”)

That mess will take at least one term to clean up, and I expect Obama will be a two term president. I’d like to see a bit more of my kids before their in high school and going off to college. So, I’ll take a pass.

But if you apply, and get a job, all I ask is that you get m a tour of the White House, and a couple of minutes to meet the President and/or First Lady.

Sometimes the most pointed — or preposterous — comes from unexpected sources. This time, it’s The Onion providing the former and the Wall Street Journal serving up the latter.

The best satire comes wrapped around a grain of discomforting truth. Daniel De Groot unwrapped one in a headline from The Onion that should give Democrats something to think about. Read his post for more on that.

The jaw-dropper, though, comes from the Wall Street Journal, (hat-tip to Steve Benen at Political Animal) where they’ve apparently learned well (or not so well) something Rick pointed out earler: Conservatism never fails; it is only failed.

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Ed. Note: I plan on writing something about black voters, the passage of proposition 8 in California, and the discussion that has ensued about whether the former failed in part because of the latter. In the meantime, I thought I’d republish some old content that might be relevant to the discussion.

(Originally posted on October 23, 2006.)

I don’t remember when I first became aware of Horace Griffin’s book Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians And Gays in Black Churches. Most likely, it turned up in my recommendations on Amazon.Com. But as soon as I saw the title, I knew I had to read it because it would speak to significant part of my experience as a Black gay man. The truth is, it probably speaks to the experiences of many — if not most — Black LGBT folks, because most of us probably spent some part of our early lives involved in Black churches even if we left our churches and our religion behind in adulthood. And, as I’ve noted before, some of us remain in those churches and the communities built up around them, even as part of who we are is degraded and maligned in those spaces. Sometimes we even participate in our own degradation, because we don’t perceive any other choice.

Griffin’s book probably has the most to say to Black LBGTs who remain in Black churches where they still hear homophobia and heterosexism preached from the pulpit and approved from the pews. But even for someone like myself, there is a gift (perhaps even a blessing?) here simply in the validation that some of us has experience hurt at the hands of our communities and churches, in the name of faith. It also has something to say to the ministers in those same churches. For that reason, if I could, I’d buy multiple copies and deliver them to ministers like Wellington Boone, Willie WIlson, Alfred Owens, Eddie Long, TD Jakes, Gregory Daniels, and many others. But chances are they wouldn’t read it anyway. Still, if it finds its way into the hands of Black LGBT Christians, and to their families and friends, it might just make a difference.

But for my part, having long since left “the Black Church” and the Christian faith, I can only speak about this book as one who faced the same choices Griffin mentions in the book that Black churches offer LGBT members: stay silent and “pass” while absorbing the homophobia in the church, or leave. Both choices exact a significant cost from the LGBT individual.

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Ed. Note: I plan on writing something about black voters, the passage of proposition 8 in California, and the discussion that has ensued about whether the former failed in part because of the latter. In the meantime, I thought I’d republish some old content that might be relevant to the discussion.

(Originally published on October 27, 2006.)

It’s been an strange month to be black and gay in America so far. First there was the gay bashing that killed Michael Sandy in New York, and the disturbing news of Tyrone Garner’s lack of a burial 37 days after his death with the possibility of a pauper’s burial in the end. Those depressing stories were balanced out somewhat yesterday by the news of the New Jersey Supreme Court decision and the fact that a black lesbian couple was among the plaintiffs whose willingness to take a stand yielded that historic moment.

But even that good news was tempered by reading Keith’s post about his speech at Central State University, a historically black college in Wilberforce, Ohio. It was the inspiration for the title of this post. I considered titling it “Hysterically Black Homophobia,” because of the reaction Keith says his speech got. But it felt too serious a topic for snark, though the response of the students as described by Keith does indeed seem hysterical, and the homophobia at its foundation is historical.

I’d have written about it yesterday, but sometimes when they’re angry people say things they either don’t mean or that are said in a manner more inflammatory than constructive. For example, yesterday I probably would have written some things pretty inflammatory things about Black folks and religion. Would have meant them too, as much as the students who heard Keith’s speech meant everything they said in response.

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I wrote in the previous post, echoing a commentater from last night, that Americans just elected president a man whose parents’ marriage would have been illegal 40 years ago.

Upon hearing that California’s anti-gay marriage amendment passed, I guess they will say the same of my sons, if either of them runs for president.

California and two other states voted in Tuesday’s elections to ban same-sex marriage, dealing a blow to gays and lesbians in the left-leaning, trend-setting state months after they won their case in state court.

But in an indication of the complex cultural map drawn by the elections, voters also rejected limits on abortion in South Dakota and Colorado in a loss for social conservatives as the country elected its first black president, Barack Obama, a Democrat.

…California’s Supreme Court had declared same-sex marriage a right in May, unleashing a flood of weddings, but the state’s voters changed the Constitution to rescind the right after one of the most expensive ballot campaigns in history.

Florida and Arizona joined California in Tuesday’s elections, adding to the list of dozens of states banning same-sex marriages with similar laws.

It’s funny, In twenty-four hours I gained new faith in America. And quickly lost it.

In twenty-four hours, everything changed — and nothing changed.

And America still isn’t America, to me.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.) 

O, let my land be a land where
Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

Last night I went to bed feeling like a “real American.” This morning, it turned out nothing had changed.

Last night I went to bed proud to be an American. When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t.

Last night I went to bed ready to take on all the problems that face American, even if they don’t specifically relate to me or that one concern of mine.

This morning I woke up and though, “Why bother? Nothing changed.”

It’s been a long, long time coming
But I know, a change is gonna come.
Oh, yes it will.

Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come”

At 11:01 p.m. last night, after the polls closed in California, I just had to call someone. I’d spent the night at the National Public Radio headquarters with a bunch of other bloggers, live-blogging the election results. I called home and spoke briefly to my husband, then found myself walking aimlessly down a hallway. I stopped in a reception area, looked at the night sky from the second story window, and though how strange it was that the world — my world had changed so dramatically — yet the sky looked just the same.

And I thought about the people who didn’t live to see what happened that night, and the people who never thought they would — but did.

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It’s been a long time coming…

And so the night begins. I’m off to NPR, where I’ll be joining a bunch of other political bloggers to cover the election results into the night.

With any luck it won’t be a long night. The popular vote graphic on their site is encouraging.

I’ll put it this way. If Virgina, Florida and Pennsylvania report for Obama before the Metro stops running, I’m going home. Same if Ohio, Florida, and Virginia report for Obama; or if Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida report for Obama; or some combination of the three.

In the meantime, we wait. I and write two different posts for tomorrow, and wait to see which one I publish.

OK. Not that we didn’t already know this, but they have none.

Leaving no potential avenue of attack unexplored, the Republican National Committee has decided to bash Barack Obama over his October visit to see his ailing grandmother in Hawaii.

Of course the visit itself is not being criticized, but rather the way the campaign paid for the nominee’s unscheduled detour. On Monday afternoon, the RNC blasted out a complaint from the California Republican Party charging that “Obama for America violated federal law by converting its campaign funds to Senator Obama’s personal use” for the trip. That proposed issue for the FEC to investigate is one of five violations alleged by California Republicans in their complaint (which you can read in its entirety here).

“Senator Obama recently traveled to Hawaii to visit his sick grandmother. This was the right thing for any grandson to do — at his own expense — but it was not travel that his campaign may fund,” said California Republican Chairman Ron Nehring in a statement Monday.

And then there’s the question of class…

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I just dare you to watch this and not feel something.

He didn’t say it in so many words, but I’m willing to bet that Charles Alexander has thought to himself at some point, “I never thought I’d live to see the day…”

To understand the reason for his emotions about this election, you have to understand the context.

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