GCN: conservative gay institutions vs. progressive queer communities

Gay City News has done a pretty thorough job (in one person's opinion) of documenting the Center's brazen attempt to quash queer dialogue about Palestine and pinkwashing, progressive queer movement, and the Center itself. Now GCN follows up on the bigger picture of how queer movement has been pushed to the right. Messages on marriage, DADT and other issues have come from institutions that took on leadership through big funding (rather than the support of an active LGBT community, on which political groups relied before funding became commonplace.) Those institutions are focused on normalizing gays rather than carving out space not to conform to simplistic norms, and queers who object are silenced.

GCN's argument is that this dumbing down of queer politics is a function of an expanding set of people who identify as LGBT, and who are themselves less radical and more normative. But in the case of the LGBT Center, it looks like the staff and executive board members are far more focused on mainstreaming than the Center's constituency.

The Limits on Discourse

By Duncan Osborne

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/04/13/gay_city_news/news/doc4da5f7209f50a967283017.txt

“I think that the scope of discussions over the past 30 years... has become increasingly limited and diminished in the broader community,” said Michael Bronski, a professor at Dartmouth and Harvard Colleges and the author of “A Queer History of the United States” due to be released on May 10.

...

That narrowing came as the community’s membership grew. In order to include new members, the radical politics that informed some early gay groups were softened and became more centrist.

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Community groups have increasingly relied on the mainstream press to get their messages out. Mainstream outlets have never been interested in the community’s internal debates, nor will they cover sexual politics in the LGBT community

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The Center's fear of controversy strikes again.

Here's Gay City News on the cancelled/moved GLYDSA meeting (link below.) Did the Center push to cancel another event because it was going to be controversial?! Interestingly, Michael Lucas is now calling the Center reps liars, and saying they deliberately went after a vulnerable group. Maybe the Center would be better off making decisions based on principals of community and openness, rather than trying to please a nutty loose cannon of a right-wing funder?

Michael Lucas Says LGBT Center Pressed Jewish Group to Move Meeting

Asked by Gay City News if the Center asked GLYDSA to cancel its meeting, the group wrote, “[W]e were not asked to cancel or move our meeting... Yes, we were pressured to cancel Mr. Lucas. This was in addition to potential unwanted intrusions by outsiders, including the press. We made the decision to move away from any potential disruption for the benefit of our members who trust us to guard their privacy and confidentiality. As long-standing constituents and supporters of the Center, we thought it might also diffuse some of the tension there as well.”

Phyllis Chesler basically says queers against Israeli occupation are mentally ill

Can't post this one without some comment. Now that Jews are so visibly organized against Zionism and Apartheid, and queers are organized to demand the rights of Palestinians and decry Islamophobia, the right is finding it tough to claim that Israel is all that's keeping Jews and Middle Eastern queers (and women, etc.) safe from the ravages of the Arab world.

To keep the right-wing case afloat, Chesler is now arguing that we're "obsessed with our own victimhood" to the point where we support our oppressors (Muslims, presumably.) What will Chesler make of the Palestinian queer movement, and its insistence on the inextricability of occupation with homophobia, whenever she finally notices it?

Here is Chesler's article sparked by the LGBT Center flap: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Palestinization+lesbian+activism/4480785/story.html

And here's a nutty snippet:

I have seen gay and lesbian contingents marching together with leftists and Arabs outside presentations I have given; they have heckled, hooted and tried to silence me in the lecture hall. The loudest chants of "From the River to the Sea -Palestine will be free" are coming, not only from the Muslim student associations or from the Palestinians with loudspeakers; they are coming from the mouths of American Jewish lesbian feminists whose very lives, certainly their political identities, are strangely bound up with Arab territorial claims.

The Jewish lesbians among them are not "self-hating Jews." They are political opportunists obsessed with their own victimhood posturing -even if it means they must sacrifice the cause of both women and homosexuals in the process.

Village Voice: Some info on Michael Lucas, and the Center's initial resistance to kicking out Siegebusters

Village Voice's background on right-wing gay activist Michael Lucas. Maybe most interesting: reporting that the Center rejected his attempts to intimidate them. What made them cave?

Michael Lucas: The Zionist Porn Impresario Waves His Political Muscle in the Left's Face

... By the end of the week, Lucas became known for flexing his political muscle: He intimidated New York's LGBT Center into canceling its hosting of another group's Israeli Apartheid Week event scheduled for next month. And it took him only a few hours of emails and phone calls, plus a little more than $1,000, to do so.

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"At first," he tells the Voice, "they tried to tell me, 'Don't intimidate us.' " He says he was told the Center had an "open-door policy." (Center officials have repeatedly refused to answer the Voice's specific questions on the matter.)
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Within hours, the Center's open-door policy shut down. Lucas says: "[Executive Director] Glennda Testone responded directly to me, writing, 'We are canceling the event. Next time, maybe we can talk more about it before you do all of that.'"

Village Voice: Testone fails to make amends in mtg with Siegebusters

Village Voice's Steven Thrasher covers Siegebusters' meeting with Testone. Outcome: no movement from the Center.

'Party to End Israeli Apartheid!' Still On at Gay Center, Activists Vow, But With Picketing, Not Dancing

The Center's officials, smarting from criticism, have announced a March 13 "Community Forum," saying, "Recent events have led us to build on our process for providing space."
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The Siege Busters folks are not impressed so far. After a week of silent treatment from the Center following their ejection, they say, Testone finally agreed to meet with them, but with tight restrictions on what could even be discussed.
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When they arrived at the Center, Taylor and two others were escorted to meet with Testone and two members of her staff. As Taylor recalls it, "We basically said, 'We're here to help you handle the fact that you've made a terrible mistake. A terrible PR mistake, and a terrible political mistake. We'd like to discuss the way that we can, in a facesaving manner, reinstate this event and allow Siege Busters to meet at the Center again. We don't want to rub your nose in it, we don't want to attack the Center or you personally. The only thing we want is for the Center to rescind the decision.' "

Jewish Voices for Peace decries Center's censorship of discussion of Israeli policy

Jewish Voices for Peace blogs about pinkwashing, and the Center's collaboration with the effort by Lucas and others to depict Israel as gay-friendly, and its opponents as anti-gay. Snippet follows the link.

MuzzleWatch: NY’s famed LGBT Center folds under pressure - bans “Party to End Apartheid!,” Israeli Apartheid Week event and groups

Taking Pinkwashing to a whole new level, one of Israel’s very very good friends– gay male pornographer Michael Lucas– is boasting that he single-handedly got NY’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans Community Center to not only cancel a “Party to End Apartheid” fundraiser to cover costs for Israel Awareness Week, but to ban the group from ever renting there again. How? You know, the usual calls from supporters and threats to withhold major donations (according to Lucas).

Village Voice on GLYDSA/Lucas event cancellation

Village Voice's Steven Thrasher sheds some light on the difference between Lucas' and GLYDSA's versions of why Lucas' speaking event was moved from the Center. Snippet follow the link.

Gay Center's Feud Over Middle Eastern Politics Flares Up Again

Lucas was to speak about his role in lobbying for the cancellation. But at the last minute, the Orthodox Jewish gays decided to call off their own meeting at the center and hold it at another location.
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Members of Siege Busters, and others who supported the anti-Zionist activists' right to meet at the Center, howled, questioning the double standard of allowing a pro-Israel group to host a controversial speaker, while forbidding a pro-Palestine group from doing it own thing at the Center.

But on the eve of yesterday's event, the Orthodox Jewish gay group moved it to another locale.
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Fanning the flames of the feud, Lucas added, "The problem is that the Center got so much involved with anti-Semitic groups that now Jews don't feel safe meeting there any longer."

There's no evidence of that, and the Center's officials — and GYLDSA — deny that there have been any threats or pressure. "We are a small private group with no interest in publicity," a group spokesman tells us. "We received no threats, nor did the Center ask us to 'un-invite' Michael Lucas."