SGL Café

Rainbow Flag Burning: free speech, hate speech, or a teachable moment?

Free speech, when it incites negativity, is worrisome. [Queerty] I'm not quite sure what "appropriate action" means, but Albion College in Michigan insists it took just that after confirming a rainbow flag was burned by students on campus. Apparently desecrating the fag flag yields no punishment. Albion President Donna Randall won't discuss specifics of the case citing privacy laws, but confirmed in a statement Campus Safety officers investigated the incident. And then …? And then told the three students it found responsible they wouldn't face any punishment. While administrators won't discuss the incident further (that includes Campus Safety director Ken Snyder), the students who burned the flag, interestingly, are speaking. The "college doesn’t condone this action, and they know people will be upset but it wasn’t public, it wasn’t targeting one person and no one saw it happen," explains one about why the trio didn't face punishment... Most of the comments on the above article held free speech as the ultimate in this matter. Free speech rules. We know. We get it. But while advocating some tweaking of "free speech" laws to be more along the lines of 'your rights end at the tip of my nose', we understand that its a slippery slope. It's Bill O'Reilly's free speech right to call Dr. George Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer" endlessly on his FOX show. But in our fanatical world, is it so unexpected that someone ultimately took it upon his unhinged self to carry a gun into Dr. Tiller's church and blow his brains out in the name of Jesus? Was the resulting murder of Dr. Tiller a stretch of our collective imaginations? The analogy that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater needs to be updated to reflect our current, cyber-connected information age - what Jon Stewart calls our 24hr news cycle "Conflictonator" - when a lone fanatic exercising free speech can illicit actual real-time violence. Of course, where would it end? Would suddenly calling Maggie Gallagher from the rabidly anti-gay org National Organization for Marriage (whose sole purpose is to oppress gay Americans) "a stupid cow who just needs a little dick in her life" end with one defending the statement in court after some loon actually rapes her? Possibly. Should we be willing to let the courts and juries parse intentions and actual consequences? Certainly. Bill O'Reilly should be facing that same jury right now. Back to the students burning the rainbow during Pride. They shouldn't be kicked out of school, let alone arrested. However, the University should do something that implies they understand the gravity of the situation, the consequences of anti-gay sentiment however innocently expressed. That they understand the possible domino-effect of provocative acts, however unexpected. Maybe hold a student assembly where the offending students debate their actions with a local GSA or some such group. This would be a teachable moment for everybody. Something. Anything that says ACTIONS, even free speech protected ones, sometimes have unseemly and unwanted consequences.

Lil' Kim - and The 'Unofficial' Atlanta Black Gay Pride Safety Rules

Hilarious, insightful, and so, SO black and gay. Let's hope everyone took heed this past weekend and beyond. Click above for some awesome shots of Lil' Kim and others from Atlanta Black Gay Pride ...

Still Standing Strong: Pink Power is alive and well in Jersey City

JCLGO commemorates ten years of PRIDE on Jersey City’s Waterfront [Out IN Jersey Magazine] ~ The first Jersey City PRIDE festival was in late August 2001, the same year that Jersey City Lesbian & Gay Outreach was founded by Paul Mendoza and Miguel Cardenas. This year to mark the festival’s tenth anniversary, JCLGO arranged a march from the steps of City Hall down to its usual festival grounds on the waterfront. Catherine “Cat” Hecht, one of the first members of the fledging JCLGO, recalls that first Pride event. “I remember looking up Montgomery Street around 8am. It was still empty; no vendors were there yet and suddenly having a moment of nerves, thinking, ‘Will anyone come?’” She went on to conclude, “There's an image in my mind of later in the day: the plaza was completely filled with people talking, laughing and dancing while Mike Cruz was playing. The sun was starting to go down, everything had a yellow, gold and orange glow and I remember being filled with so much pride it was euphoric.” Many soul-stirring events have occurred during the first decade of this 21st century; from the scenic backdrop of every Jersey City PRIDE—the view of the NYC skyline which makes it so distinctive from any other Pride in the world—being tragically and forever altered shortly after the euphoria of that first Pride to the historic election of Barack Obama. Rob Dickar, who, like Hecht, has worn many hats during those 10 years, remembers how it began for him. “My memories of the first JC Pride are of the flyer I saw hanging in my Laundromat calling on people to come volunteer for [its] formation. At the pride festival I remember walking through the vendor area (which was only about 1 block long), and the skyline view with the World Trade Center. And I remember thinking how cool it was that there was a gay pride in my neighborhood.” A cursory glance at the cheerful pink, white and gray 2010 JC Pride Guide put together by the production and graphics team of Rob Dickar and Jaden Rogers might illicit an “Ooh, that’s pretty.” While inside we do find a poignant reminder of its humble beginnings (a copy of that original flyer ), upon further inspection of the guide’s cover a testament to the momentous decade for Jersey City’s LGBT community emerges. From the usage of the Roman Numeral “X” against a backdrop of faint past themes—Keeping the Vision Alive!, Power in Pride, Change=Possibility—below which it’s new theme shines boldly, “Standing Strong: Equality For All”, to the lower border displaying a pink silhouetted crowd with hands outstretched in jubilation. A few hands, however, are clenched. Since the days of social and racial unrest in 1960’s America, there has never been a clearer sign of determination or of standing strong against adversity and terror (foreign or domestic) than a fist clenched for battle. Actor and 2009 Out Music Award Winner Athena Reich said that even though Canada has had full marriage equality (with adoption rights and everything) for years now, she remembers growing in a very “queer positive” Toronto where she was involved in a church youth group that had cross-dressing dinners every few months. The “Love is Love” songstress says gayness is “integrated” into Toronto culture whereas as in NYC it’s still a subculture, though she believes it will happen here, she adds “it will take more time because of the Christian right.” Athena performed for the cheering crowd and will also soon be appearing in the soap-opera/comedy TV show that she co-wrote with Stephen Shulman called 16th & 8th. Rapper Shorty Roc also performed and a rather iconic image of his dancers immerged—fists in the air matching the pink one on the stage’s backdrop. The image seemed to say that Pink Power is alive and well in Jersey City, and, for all intents and purposes, America. While the marching band (The Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps) played a rousing rendition of Hey, Big Spender during the festival’s opening march, a member of the Christian right (see video below) followed alongside expressing concern. “Repent!” the order boomed with the aid of a megaphone, “Turn from your wicked ways of being a pervert and turn to Jesus!” While calling marchers “intolerant”—because one doused the man with a cup of glitter while another cheerfully saluted (Bronx style)—the protestor continued, further unmolested, with his religious duty to remind the procession that its true destination was not the waterfront festival, but in fact, the flames of Hell. Darryl Hill, co-chair of JCLGO said that the message they want to send to the world by putting on the march this year and the festival every year is a simple one: “We are no different than you are. We are just people who want to live their lives with their families and have the same equal rights as any other American.” As the yellow, gold and orange glow of last light fell over the festival revelers and as gay youth danced and Vogued to the booming sounds of legendary DJ Fred Pierce, the message and determination to fight for that most American of all ideals was clearer than ever: Standing Strong! Equality for all! Yes. That is Pride. And despite the Right’s amnesia about religious tyranny, that is also America. ~

10 yrs of PRIDE with a view: Jersey City PRIDE Festival 2010

click picture to see album Jersey City's 10th anniversary PRIDE Festival was marked by a march from City Hall to its waterfront festival at Exchange Place. "Pink Power!" That's what these Shorty Roc dancers seem to say in the above picture. There was a time when saying 'Black' Power was a call to arms - it was about demanding, not asking, for equality. That time in at hand again. Pink Power all the way 'til its no longer necessary to say it. Below is the funniest vid of goings on toward the end of the festival. Check out all the other vids from the day on Youtube.com/TaylorSiluwe.

"What I do is my business."

That's what a fifty-ish black man said to me today. The life-long Jersey City resident was expressing why he wouldn't be in Jersey City PRIDE's 10th anniversary march from City Hall to the waterfront festival. People would know, I guess. Ten years the festival has been celebrating diversity, but this is its first march. I gave him a copy of Dancing with the Devil. It's not exactly about being "out and proud", but it does tackle casting off shackles--the ones locked on us as children and the ones we clamp onto ourselves. Having grown up Jehovah's Witness, I know a thing or two about shackles and how difficult they are to break. I hope he reads it. ~ I'll certainly be there. Come out and march for PRIDE, diversity and equality for all. Stop by and say hello to me down by the stage. Mention SGL Cafe and get a Jersey City PRIDE special price for my newest and most whimsical book to date. Cheesy Porn...and other fairytales. Only $5. One day only. And stay tuned for the official release party and the premiere of the DANCING WITH THE DEVIL: The Movie trailer.