Race time
Dear Editor:
I did not expect much when I picked up the July 22 issue of the WCT on the way home from work. Lisa Keen surprised me with your article "Race to Equality." I read with great interest. I am not sure which impressed me more—the style or the content.
Regarding the style, it gave substance to my vague ideas about how to write well. I mean that I quite liked your lead paragraph, "The shocker at the Kentucky Derby..." My first reaction was, "What the heck does the Kentucky Derby have to do with being gay in Chicago?" So I read on, expecting to hear more about the relationship between horse races and litigation. And I was not disappointed.
Regarding the substance, I think we are all tired of hearing about states giving and taking away marriage rights. You had the perspicacity to recognize a new approach when you saw one, namely suing for specific benefits at the federal level. It seems more precise or focused than simply demanding the word "marriage" and thus gaining all the rights in one fell swoop.
So thanks for your example and for the good news.
Sincerely,
Gene Naden
Chicago
Black is, Black ain't
Dear Editor:
In reply to the editorial headlined "Gay is not the new Black" ( in WCT's July 29 issue ) : LZ Granderson made a few valid points regarding the racial divisions within the queer communities. However, there are things I don't agree with. I feel that criticism concerning President Barack Obama's lack of action and backpedaling pertaining to the queer community not only has merit but is strongly legitimate. I think Obama will treat queer social issues similarly to the way President John Kennedy handled the African-American civil rights matters in the early 1960s: with caution, avoidance and expediency. I just think the White House reception for some mainstream LGBT figures is more window-dressing, similar to the days when Kennedy met with civil-rights activists in the '60s, with little substance or action.
Granderson fails to realize that a great number of queers who fought the police at Stonewall were people of color and the working class, contrary to revisionist history of the event. There are African Americans, both straight and queer, who feel Obama has compromised the African-American civil-rights agenda. Contrary to Granderson's belief, the African-American population is not monolithic. He also fails to take the matter of class into consideration when addressing the African-American community, as there are divisions within it based on class, just as in other communities. Some African Americans feel Obama has short-changed the community in such matters as police brutality, the ongoing war in Iraq and education, to name a few examples.
I agree, unfortunately, that African Americans became the scapegoat around the Proposition 8 vote in California, which continued to promote the myth that African-American heterosexuals are more bigoted toward queers than white society is. Unfortunately, some African Americans internalize this myth, and it feeds white racism among white LGBT leadership. I agree that relationships between white queers and queers of color need to be built in order to respect differences in culture and in consciousness. I think it's necessary to hold Obama accountable for the aforementioned issues, even though personally I don't expect much from him and our liberation will not come from him, nor any public official, but from us.
Darrell Gordon
Chicago
To Venezuela
Dear friends:
As a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network ( GLN ) in Chicago, I wish to express my warm thanks to Venezuelan Chicago Consul General Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza and his consular staff for participating in GLN's contingent in our city's recent Gay Pride Parade before over 450,000 people. In doing so, they made many friends for the Venezuelan people.
While the modern movement for LGBT freedom began in the United States decades ago, this fact has yet to see even a single reflection in nationwide LGBT-rights legislation in the United States.
I am therefore especially gratified to learn that Venezuela's proposed "Organic Law for Gender Equity and Equality," which establishes legal cohabitation rights for same-sex couples, is about to go to a second reading in its national assembly. I am hopeful that this law passes with the broadest possible measures for LGBT equality and, in so doing, affirms the courageous Chicago Consul's participation in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade.
Again, I enthusiastically thank your Chicago representatives. They are a credit to your country and deserve the fullest support by believers in human equality everywhere.
Yours sincerely,
Andy Thayer
Chicago
Opera's on
Dear Editor:
You are so far off the beat and track [ in "Patti Lupone's Weill ride" in WCT's Aug. 5, 2009, issue ] that it isn't even funny—poking fun at the only supervisor who had sense. If this were just a little "opera" festival as you so think it is, then L.A. Opera should have total jurisdiction over it. But this festival is not a little L.A. Opera festival. It is the largest "arts" festival L.A. has had since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. The politicians got involved from the get-go. Los Angeles County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina's names were featured prominently at the opening press announcement. Los Angeles County owns the Music Center. This is a "cultural" festival, not an opera festival, and it involves the entire city and county. And as for the token seminars on Wagner's anti-Semitism, there was only one until people protested. And as for "Recovered Voices," that is a wonderful program, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this Wagner festival. One cannot balance out the other. It just doesn't work that way. We do not honor racists in America. It is just that simple.
Carie Delmar
Opera critic, www.OperaOnline.us
Los Angeles, Calif.
