"Why We Won't Wait: What Are the Next Steps Toward Full Federal Equality?" was the topic of the March 13 evening plenary session at the Equality Across America ( EAA ) Midwest Unite + Fight Conference. Panelists Andy Thayer, Sherry Wolf, Jim Madigan and Lt. Dan Choi shared their views with an enthusiastic and predominately college-age crowd in the Conaway Center of Columbia College Chicago. While the goal was identical: full federal civil rights for LGBT individuals, the panelists espoused a variety of political philosophies, cultural positions and strategic methods.
Thayer, anti-war activist and co-founder of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network, called for a withdrawal of support from Democratic candidates in the 2010 elections if they do not live up to their promises regarding LGBT rights.
"If we want sweeping change, we've got to show the Democratic Party some real pain," he said. "We have to issue a threat, make preparations to carry it out and broadcast it as loud and as wide as possible. And the threat is this: if you do not deliver on your promises, we will sit out the 2010 elections or vote third party. We will show you some real pain."
The failure to hold Obama accountable for breaking his early promise to support full marriage equality resulted in the religious right quoting him during the Prop 8 battle, Thayer explained. "I think frankly, this administration has played us. It's making promises … but by the time they get around to it they won't have the votes and they will blame us because we didn't shill for them in the 2010 elections."
Thayer said that if the right wing gets in it would not be the worst result, noting that most of the "sweeping left wing gains" were made during the Nixon administration "because we were in the streets … making [ our ] own history."
Madigan, an LGBT-rights attorney, University of Chicago law lecturer and Democratic candidate for the 7th District Illinois Senate seat in the recent primary, represented the working-within-the-system voice.
"When I got sandwiched between Andy and Sherry I figured I must be here to be the heavy," opened Madigan, stating that he "doesn't actually disagree that pain is necessary" and that is why he challenged incumbent Heather Stearns.
"The question is how we are going to get it done. … I share Andy's frustration and the impulse to teach the Democrats a lesson [ but ] what is the right way of doing that?
"Americans, the people, yearn to be in the middle," he said. Most do not want to be seen as extremist or bigoted, Madigan explained. "Politicians on the other hand…are desperately afraid of…intense, organized minorities. By that I mean minorities who vote, who are organized and who respond as almost single-issue voters." He added that a politician is more likely to seek to please a 27-percent single-issue constituent group than a majority multi-issue constituency whose members may or may not withhold support due to a politician's actions on one issue.
"We need to be perceived as a group that votes lock step. And you can't fool politicians forever, so that means we have to find a way of becoming an organized voting block. We have to become 20 percent of people who will vote against you if you vote against gay rights … and until we are that people, we are nothing to them. And that's why Andy is right when he criticizes the Democratic Party. They should be better than that, but they are politicians first and we are nothing until we comprise that block that they are afraid of us."
Wolf is a member of the International Socialist Organization, served on the executive committee 2009 National Equality March, is on the interim governing board of EAA and authored Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation ( Haymarketbooks, 2009 ) .
"Five months ago you had more than 200,000 people march on Washington. … It was put together with spit and chewing gum. ... We refused to have corporate sponsorship. ... We were not going to have a demonstration brought to you by Absolut Vodka. Period," Wolf said.
Over the last 16 months, she continued, the movement has "successfully flipped the script on some level in making the demand for full federal equality in all aspects of civil law in all 50 states," a goal that is "given lip service by what I like to refer to as Gay, Inc., the sort of corporate-dominated, Democratic Party-beholden, in my opinion, operations like the Human Rights Campaign.
Wolf added that after the march, that people thought the work was done and expected that Obama's landmark speech meant legislative changes would be delivered. But what we have is a "no-banker-left-behind government," she said, calling out congressman Barney Frank, "a man with the soul of Goldman Sachs and the voice of Elmer Fudd." Wolf said that Frank was "doing nothing but shoveling money toward the banks."
Wolf cited a recent Gallup poll she said revealed 56 percent of people who voted Democrat have a favorable opinion of socialism because "it is something to do with ordinary people not getting fucked over … and that is not a bad starting point for understanding what socialism is: ordinary people actually getting to control some of the wealth of the society … some control over their lives, and not a handful of billionaires." [ Note: According to Gallup.com the statistic was 53 percent of "Democrats/Democratic Leaners" have a "positive view of socialism." ]
"We are still living through a one-sided class war. Their side is fighting. Our side needs to fight [ and ] demand full equality … get back to the politics of solidarity and fight back," Wolf said, calling for national days of protest that would include civil disobedience.
Choi, national activist for repeal of DADT, founding member of KnightsOut/LGBT West Point Graduates and national co-chair of the 2009 equality march spoke about the diversity—and fragmentation—within the LGBT rights movement. The career military officer, who came out on the Rachel Maddow show in February 2009, called DADT "institutionalized shame."
He criticized the competition and territorialism between LGBT rights groups at both the national and international level and challenged the audience to consider what kind of sacrifice they would make in the struggle for full federal equality.
The greatest civil-rights leaders—King, Parks, Gandhi—sacrificed for the cause, he said. "Some sacrificed their lives. … What we are striving for is not another donate button at the end of an e-mail. ... What we are looking for people who can sacrifice, who are saying, 'I will give my life for this cause, for this country'. You have to ask yourself, are you ready to do that? Are you ready to loose a limb, to loose your job, to go to jail, are you ready to be beaten in the face and look ugly so that the next time you're in a gay bar nobody wants to look at you? Until we are ready to do that, we do not deserve a Martin Luther King. ... We have to constantly look at ourselves and see if we are being pure to our ideals."
A Q&A followed with most of the speakers sharing personal anecdotes and commentary. Keeanga Taylor—a Ph.D. student in African-American studies at Northwestern University and a member of the conference host committee—said she did not think that we really need to lose limbs in the fight for federal equality. She reminded the audience that the purpose of the conference was to bring together disparate activists in order to form alliances to develop strategies for winning legal rights.
