The birth of a movement to take back Kansas

How do you know when you're present at the birth of a movement? Is there a particular day, or an instant, that you can point to and say "here is where it started?" In one sense, that's probably impossible. Movements start in many small ways.

For example, you could say the movement to outlaw discrimination against lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Lawrence, Kansas, started at my kitchen table in 1991. A fellow whose name I don't even remember (many apologies), and I were frantically planning a last-minute appearance before a city committee. We wanted to talk about the issue, but felt that we needed to represent ourselves as being part of an organization.

Thus, the Freedom Coalition was formed. At that point, there were two members and a name and nothing else. Later we created a real Freedom Coalition organization that thrived and formed the Simply Equal campaign. Several years later, Simply Equal finally won the protection from discrimination we were so desperately seeking that first night.

But it would also be a lie to say the gay rights movement in Lawrence started at that table. Four years before that day, two women were so inspired by a gay rights march in Washington DC that they came home to Lawrence and led an unsuccessful campaign to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance. Their efforts made our kitchen table plan thinkable.

But even that wasn't the start. In 1970, some brave souls launched the first gay rights group at the University of Kansas. I suspect there were even folks working toward legal fairness in Lawrence long before that. When Simply Equal finally succeeded, it stood on top of the work of all those unknown and uncelebrated people.

Considering all that, though, I'm beginning to think that it may be possible to pinpoint a moment where something changes. I'm not certain what to call it. Maybe it's nothing more than the instant when a large enough mass of people come together to begin to hope that change can happen.

We feel those moments at a gut level. We may not even be conscious of what's happening. It's like the charge you feel when a thunderstorm is about to break wide open. The air feels different. It can smell different. You may not even know why the hair on your arms is standing up. You may not know why you suddenly feel alive, but you know, deep down, that something has changed.

I felt that last night at a forum organized by the MAINstream Coalition.

Standing in a hot, stuffy, packed room in Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence, Kansas, I felt the hairs on the back of my arms stand up.

It wasn't what anyone said. I don't remember any of the speeches being particularly stirring. It was the fact that we were there. All of us. Men and women with white hair, lined faces and work-roughened hands. Young and middle aged couples sitting with their arms around each other. Well-dressed men and women with expensive clothes sitting packed against scruffy students.

There were so many of us that I had to park blocks away. Running late to the meeting, I joined a stream of people walking up to the church.

An old Statehouse colleague of mine, Dave Ranney, reported on the event for the Lawrence Journal-World. While I think Dave is hands down one of the best journalists (if not THE best) in the state, I think he got it wrong. Dave wrote that the "forum was aimed at rallying support for moderate candidates running for the State Board of Education."

While that was part of the purpose of the evening, that wasn't all of it. We were there because we were and are concerned about the State Board. But the agenda also dealt with stem cell research, children's programs and the far right's wish to take money away from our neighbors who need help and to do that via the so-called Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR). Some of us, like myself and the other people from the Kansas Equality Coalition, were there to seek legal fairness for all our neighbors.

But I think even all of those agendas were beside the point. The REAL agenda, in fact, the real reason the 350 of us gave up an evening at home was that we don't want to live in a theocracy. We don't want to live in a radical, fringe state where our children don't receive a good education. We don't want to live in place where our communities shirk their responsibilities to families and children who need help.

We are mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore. Most importantly, we are finally organizing.

If all of those attending were just from Lawrence, then I doubt if I'd be writing so passionately about this today. After all, Lawrence is the blue dot in a scarlet state.

A show of hands at the meeting and an examination of the addresses collected by meeting planners identified those attending as being from many counties, including Jefferson, Leavenworth and Franklin, said Janet Majure, one of the meeting's organizers. Perhaps as many as a third of those attending were from Johnson County, which has recently elected some of the most conservative legislators in the Statehouse.

Did we truly birth a movement in that packed room? Ask me in 10 years or five. But something happened Thursday night, and this state may well be feeling its impact for many years to come.

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Thoughts From Kansas has photos and a nice report on the event. It was great to meet you there, Josh!

Shooting holes in the claim that separation of church & state is a myth

Over at Talk To Action, a very brave and knowledgeable fellow who calls himself Mainstream Baptist is taking on David Barton, vice chair of the Texas Republican Party. Apparently, Barton likes to claim that the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state is a myth. Mainstream Baptist does a good job of providing resources to show that while the separation of church and state is firmly rooted in American history, the idea that this is a Christian nation is the real myth.

Beloved President names himself king of country and language

In our beloved president’s press conference today, Mr. Beloved noted that he doesn’t embrace the word “circumventing” in describing how he ignored the law in authorizing domestic spying. The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach followed up the press conference by offering to help our poor, befuddled prez.

As a public service, we offer some alternative words that the president might use:
Flouting.
Scorning.
Ignoring.
Evading.
Dodging.
Breaking.

Achenbach also wrote that he thinks he’s uncovered an even grander scheme of the president’s then anointing himself King of the U.S.:

HE NOW HAS POWER OVER LANGUAGE ITSELF. This is the ultimate expansion of presidential authority. (And if he says "Mission Accomplished," then by gosh, it is.)

All I can say is: uh huh. Aren't you Bush voters happy you put him into office?

Musing on the progressive movement and the tactic of framing

Peter Teague from the Nathan Cummings Foundation argues at AlterNet this morning that progressives are hurting themselves by misunderstanding how to effectively re-frame the arguments of conservatives.

Teague maintains that the way the progressive movement is organized is one of the biggest obstacles. Because our organizations are segmented – separate environmental, gay rights, pro-choice, social justice, etc., groups – we can’t frame issues in the holistic way that is needed to capture the hearts and minds of Americans.

I wasn’t certain I even understood his argument until he provided a eye-opening illustration.

For example, we might be less sanguine about leaving the issue of global warming to the environmental experts if, instead of understanding it in terms of too much carbon in the atmosphere, we thought about it in terms of solutions, including:
· The potential for a transition to a clean energy economy.
· The creation of millions of high-skill, high-wage jobs.
· Taking responsibility for our common future.
· Developing and sharing new technologies with the developing world.
· The transformative effects of energy democracy versus energy domination.

Now, that makes sense. And, it does it in a way that is politically viable by giving all segments of our society a reason to pay attention. You don’t care about the environment? OK, but look at how this will help you economically.

The idea of creating a frame around a public debate isn’t new. I first came across it in the early 1990s while researching tactics as a media relations consultant to political groups and non-profits. However, the idea wasn’t popularized until recently when the work of George Lakoff burst onto the scene. Now, I can’t even go to a political meeting in small-town Kansas without hearing someone discuss the importance of framing an issue in a particular way.

If we are truly going to reach people, we have to go beyond the old ways of thinking, even the “old” year-or-so ways of thinking about framing. Teague’s argument makes sense. As a leader of an organization advocating for fairness for LGBT Kansans, I can already see how my organization’s mission can limit how I frame an argument. A hat tip to Teague for seeing what I couldn’t.

Garden City, Kansas, stands up to bigotry

I'm a little late in posting this, but it's still relevant.

The Garden City Telegram had a terrific editorial about hate preacher Fred Phelps and his continued picketing of the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. Called You Failed Mr. Phelps, the newspaper in the town of only 27,312 talked about how Clint Upchurch, the soldier who was being buried was the opposite of Phelps. The editorial made a strong case for the privacy of families to grieve at funerals, but what really caught my eye were the other things the writer in this isolated Kansas town said about Phelps and his crusade.

One problem with your anti-gay crusade - and there are many - is that you continue to assail us with the same, tired message that's so predictable it's almost laughable.

Later, the editorial notes:

Even though we may want to look away, we can't overlook you or other corrupt members of society. You're like a festering wound that mustn't be ignored.

We need to know when evil is in our midst - to observe the wrongdoing, as disgusting as it may be, and be spurred to right that wrong.

Adolf Hitler was a hatemonger, too. Many people chose to ignore his early political rants, and we remember in painful detail what happened after that.

Thank you Editor/Publisher Dena Sattler. Well done.

The attorney general and my screaming fit

Driving home from work yesterday and listening to NPR, I spent a fair amount of time screaming in fury and pounding on my steering wheel. I didn’t bruise my hands, but I certainly came close to doing so.

The traffic was fine.

The weather was OK.

I wasn’t late for an appointment.

The problem was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a radio interview where his defense of George W’s domestic spying program all came down to one concept: trust us.

Sorry, Mr. Attorney General, but I do not trust you, or George W., or the minions he has put in charge of the National Security Agency, which is carrying out the warrantless wiretaps. I don’t trust Gonzales anymore than he would trust me if I were in the position to wiretap him and to do it without getting a judge’s permission.

Asked by All Things Considered what procedure was used to review wiretaps, Gonzales wouldn’t give details. Security concerns, you know. However, he did “helpfully” provide the information over and over and over again that:

"It's not a decision made by someone who is inexperienced or someone who is a political appointee... "It's a decision made by career professionals."

I feel so much better. Did these “career professionals” go to the same spy schools as the Pentagon investigators who have been watching the New York University law school’s LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, while classifying them as “possibly violent?” Or perhaps these folks have the same attitudes of the investigators who have labeled a University of California-Santa Cruz gay kiss-in protest as a “credible threat” of terrorism?

Asked about the criteria used to determine who gets defined as a terrorist or a terror suspect, Gonzales refused to give details and again reassured us that it was OK because those fantastic “career professionals” are making the decisions.

The problem is that no one is looking over their shoulders. No one is checking up. No one even knows who they’re wiretapping.

If the NSA is doing what it’s supposed to doing and listening in on real terrorists and real terror suspects, then I would support their activities as would most Americans.

But why do they refuse to go to a compliant secret FISA court to ask for warrants? The court has almost never turned them down, so why do they hesitate to go to the court now? What’s even more odd is that it appears that the law allows the NSA to immediately launch a wiretap and then wait 72 hours before going to the court for permission.

If this is true, then there is no security reason for NOT going to the court. Except, of course, if the security the White House is worried about is not the security of this country, but the administration’s own political security. How embarrassing would it be if we all learned who these fine “career professionals” are wiretapping?

Note: Findlaw Legal News has a terrific collection of documents on the issue, including the ACLU’s lawsuit, a letter from legal scholars protesting the program and the administration’s documents defending the program.

Crawling up to a tiny red-state approval rating, is NOT a victory for George

I've been a tad slow to report that good old George has climbed up to a whopping 50 percent approval rating in the bull's-eye red state of Kansas. The Jan. 13 poll by Survey USA shows 45 percent of Kansans disapproving of the fellow and 5 percent uncertain. He now has a huge 50 percent approval rating here. Although George is no longer standing in a hole, it can't be good news for him that a state that's supposed to be his biggest supporter can barely stand him. All of which is again why he gave his speech Monday in friendly Manhattan, Kansas. Actually, the White House wanted to guarantee a happy reception so they imported 800 soldiers from neighboring Fort Riley to keep things happy in this supposedly "unplugged" and out-of-the-bubble speech.

The view from the officer's club & where the heck was Nancy Landon Kassebaum?

Blue Girl, Red State, who describes herself as a "former Navy Brat, Air Force wife, and trauma team member," watched George W's speech from an Officer's Club out here in allegedly all-Republican Land.

First, her observations show that not everyone with a military background loves our beloved president and his skewed point of view.

Everyone except the president seems to be painfully aware that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the attacks on America. You could almost hear the audience mentally shouting "Oh Yeah? Where the hell is Osama bin Laden?" when he said we were hunting down the terrorists and fighting them there. Indeed, a chorus of officers shouted just that in the O-club where I was watching and listening.

As interesting... the blogger notes an amazing absence, neither former senators Nancy Landon Kassebaum or Howard Baker, her husband, attended. Both are serious fixtures in the Republican Party and Kassebaum is the daughter of Alf Landon, the namesake of the lecture.

"Hey! Where are Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Howard Baker? She has never missed a Landon Lecture to my knowledge, the series is named after her dad!" Suddenly the O-Club fell silent and everyone looked at me. "Holy Shit Tom, she cut to the chase again. Where the hell are Nancy and Howard?"

Thanks to Thoughts From Kansas for the link and for helping me find this fine blog.

Why George Bush went to Kansas State University

For those of you who don't know Kansas... please note:

There's a simple reason why George W. chose Kansas State and the small town of Manhattan, Kansas, as the place to defend his domestic spying program. If he had given the speech at the University of Kansas in Lawrence where I live, he would have been met by thousands of protesters and booed out of town.

Even in this reddest of red states, there are MANY people who are furious about his presidency and about this latest turn of events. Don't let the media convince you that all of Kansas was sitting happily in the audience yesterday lapping up the president's cute little jokes.

So many things worry me about the current state of affairs, but here's one that's keeping me up at nights: In an effort to cover his rear, our beloved president and administration are now flying around the country CAMPAIGNING on a platform that denies the importance of the Bill of Rights.

In other words, George is working overtime to convince everyone that, in this particular case, law enforcement doesn't need a judge's approval to invade an American's privacy. If he succeeds, will people then become convinced that warrants are never important? What rights will we have left? And why did he think it was impossible to convince a compliant, agreeable court that his wiretaps were legal? Who was he/is he spying on?

Meanwhile, many Americans are as worried as I am. Note the results of a poll reported today in USA Today. The USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows 51 percent of Americans said the administration was wrong to intercept conversations involving a party inside the USA without a warrant and 58 percent said they support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the program.

Sometimes fairness wins: Dying lesbian officer gets pension benefits for her partner

Today's news from Planet Out:

After nearly a year of rejecting a dying police officer's pleas, lawmakers in Ocean County, N.J, abruptly changed course and agreed to allow Lt. Laurel Hester to transfer benefits to her partner, Stacie Andree.

Pam's House Blend and The Big Gay Picture report on the significance of the victory.

Apparently last night, Jackson Township Committeeman Mark A. Seda, a Republican, convinced his colleagues to unanimously vote for their town to extend domestic partner benefits to their employees. New Jersey state law allowed the move, but left it up to each county to decide whether to provide benefits. Seda is quoted as saying:

From what I can see, I'm only one of millions who's been touched in a very big way by Lt. Hester's story. If it weren't for Lt Hester's heart-wrenching story, I would probably not have paid much attention to this issue. Her dignity and the incredible bravery she's displayed at the end of her life in wanting to change the world has inspired me to realize that as an elected official I should be standing by her side.I've been approached by a lot of people in Jackson and elsewhere about this issue.

I was very pleased to learn that the overwhelming majority of them agree with me that this is an important civil rights issue; an issue that as Americans we all have to address. To me, it seems like it's nothing other than a very simple matter of fundamental fairness and Equal Rights for All Americans. If it weren't for Lt Hester's heart-wrenching story, I would probably not have paid much attention to this issue.

Pam has a few words for the "spineless" national Democratic leadership on how to deal with these kinds of issues. I second her comments wholeheartedly!

It's that simple. Admit you didn't understand the complexities, say this is something that needs to be corrected, and move ahead and do it, because it is about fairness.

"What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake?"

Molly Ivins does it again. Talk about knowing how to speak the truth! In explaining why she will not support Sen. Hilary Clinton for president, she writes:

It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

It's a fascinating column. Find it here.

"Darkness cannot put out darkness."

This post is a copy of a reply I posted in a discussion at Talk To Action. The discussion is about my essay "The Lesbian and the Fundamentalists." Since this reply took up all my blogging time today, I'm posting it here.


In a 1967 speech, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about fighting injustice and the meaning of tolerance. He spoke about power and its abuses and about the best way to right wrongs. And he did that by noting one important truth. He said,"Darkness cannot put out darkness."In other words, hatred cannot defeat hatred. Violence cannot defeat violence.

In my essay "The Lesbian and the Fundamentalists," I wasn't writing to ask fundamentalists to like me. I wasn't writing because I expected them to ever accept me. I wasn't writing because I think the only way to deal with our cultural struggle was or is to be so "tolerant" that we let dominationists destroy us or our country.

I was writing because I had noticed something that was quite bizarre to me. I realized that I actually had something in common with these people who hate me so much. I wanted to acknowledge our shared humanity. I wanted to let what may only be a handful of fundamentalists know that I am not their enemy. (That would be the few religious conservatives who can allow themselves to listen to a queer.)

I am not under the delusion that this will make them like me, or that it will make them stop attempting to destroy me or my family. However, I refuse to battle darkness with darkness. I refuse to demonize the opposition for two very important reasons.

The first is that I think demonizing any political opposition simply doesn't work from a practical, political point of view. My perspective comes from my experience in the cold, hard, crass world of politics. I worked for years as a political reporter for a Knight-Ridder newspaper. I was press secretary for a candidate for governor in Kansas. Last year I ran the communications operation for the campaign to defeat the amendment banning same-sex marriage in Kansas. I serve on two political boards, and am currently vice chair of the first statewide organization fighting for equal rights for GLBT Kansans, the Kansas Equality Coalition. I've also worked as a public relations consultant for foundations and companies.

Now I'm not crazy -- or well, maybe I am given that I work in gay rights in Kansas -- but I'm not a political babe in the woods. I KNOW that a political message based on demonizing, or in today's slang: "swift-boating" someone, can work. That message can move votes and actions.

But right now in this discussion, we're not talking about the message we're sending out. We're talking about how we ourselves think about our opposition. The worst thing a campaign can do is to take a simplistic view of the people they have to reach. In order to fight effectively, you have to understand.

One of the political mistakes I think we make is to view religious conservatives as being monolithic andidentical. A 2004 survey of white evangelicals done for PBS' Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly showsthat isn't true. (You can find the survey here.)

One of the results that floors me is that 10 percent of the evangelicals actually approveof same-sex marriage. Yes, I know 10 percent is tiny number, but supporting same-sex marriage has got to be the most radical social position an individual can take today, and yet, here are religious conservatives who agree with me. Interestingly enough, only 42 percent of white evangelicals even approve of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Honestly, I would have thought the numbers on both of those questions would have been 100 percent.

The survey also reports that religious conservatives aren't uniform in their attitudes about their own leaders. While 76 percent rank James Dobson favorably (a rating which does worry me), only 55 percent think favorably of Pat Robertson.)

These numbers don't mean that evangelicals will be rushing out to vote for my rights anytime soon, but they do show that religious conservatives don't all think the same. Therefore, to approach them as if they do is a serious political error.

In watching religious conservatives here in Kansas, even in watching those who want to dominate us, I've noticed that they break down into three main groups.

The first are those who simply want power, and may or may not agree with their own message. However, they can see that this kind of fear-based religion and politics is a way to control people. We will never win these people over.

The second are those who are so psychologically damaged that they feel that they must belong to a group with strict rules, harsh punishments and the certainty that everyone else is going to hell. These folks do not feel safe unless everyone agrees with them. They have an innate need to dominate, and there is nothing we can do to reach them.

The third group, though, are people who just want to have the freedom to worship the way they want. Their leaders have so terrified them that they truly think they're fighting a war for their own survival. Because of that, these folks think they have to dominate us or we will destroy them and take away their Bibles and their churches. These are the people we might well be able to reach. Even convincing a few of them to support the idea of religious freedom and a non-theocratic approach to government can make a huge difference in our culture.

I also believe that demonizing the opposition hurts us with an important constituency: the many middle-of-the-road Americans who simply want to live in peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.

If we fight evil by using evil methods, I believe it will ultimately lead this vast middle to believe that we are no different than the people we fight. If we cannot show that we are differnt than those who seek to impose a theocracy on this nation, then these good people will never support us. Instead, they will turn away in disgust. They won't go to the polls, and we will lose every vote. In part, this is what has happened to the political parties. Many folks label the parties as being equally bad, so they don't vote and, well, we end up with the kind of disastrous government we've got right now.

Finally, I believe that refusing to acknowledge our shared humanity with our opposition does damage to our souls. It makes us shut down part of ourselves. We do to ourselves what soldiers are forced to do. In order to kill, they must turn off their natural ability to feel and to emphathize and deny the humanity of their opponents. I have no intention of doing that to myself.

Psyche, you note, that "we cannot be intimidated or feel guilty: we need to protect ourselves and fight back."

I agree with you completely.

But I think you misunderstand me. Acknowledging my shared humanity with those who would seek to destroy me has nothing to do with feeling intimated or guilty. It doesn't even have anything to do with being tolerant.

I DO have something in common with them, but I refuse to tolerate their actions. I fight by knowing we share much, by knowing many of them are probably just as frightened as I am, but I also fight by speaking MY truth and by organizing.