November 25,2005
Volume 26, Number 24
Serving the Carolines For Over 25 Years!
OAKLAND, CA — More than 2£00
' lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
(LGBT) rights advocates convened in
Oakland November 10-13 for foe annu
al Creating Change Conference.
Creating Change is .foe largest annual
meeting of foe national LGBT eommu
„ nity. The conference reflects the breadth
and scope of diversity of the LGBT
community and its supporters.
On Saturday, a full house.erf LGBT
rights activists had foe rare experience
of - 'eavesdropping' on a dialogue
between Urvashi Vaid and John
D Emilio, two of foe LGBT rights
movement's preeminent thinkers. If
there's anybody who knows about cre
ating change, if s this duo, who a>-pre
sented what they described as an ongo
ing conversation in foeir 18-year friend
issues related to the movement: its suc
cesses and failures, aS well as how best
to move forward.
D'Emilio, who teaches at foe
University of Illinois of Chicago, is a
former Task Fence board co-chair and
foe founding director of the Task Force
Policy Institute, which is celebrating its
lOfo anniversary this yeas He has writ
• w
ten or edited more than half a dozen
bodes, including Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities, Intimate Matters: A History
of Sexuality in America; and Lost Prophet,
an award-winning biography of
African-American civil rights leader
Bayard Rustin. From 1986 to 2001, Vaid
'worked for the National Gay and /'
Lesbian Task Force, first as media direc
tor and then as executive director and
finally as director of the Policy Institute.
She has written dozens of articles and
commentaries, as well as the book,
Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of
Gay & Lesbian Liberation. In September
Vaid became executive director of the
Arcus Foundation.
hi their keynote, DHEmilio and Vaid
praised the work of national organiza
tions to build political power; win legal
rulings, and improve the health srftd
well-being of the LGBT community. As
EX Emilio said, "The visibility we nave
achieved is like die air and water peo
ple need to survive."
Both he and Vaid, however warned
against the negatives of institutional
ization and selective visibility. Vaid crit
icized the tendency of large institutions
to lead from the top down rather than
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"Its time to stop running away from the mofat values issue and seize it and
go on the offensive,* N6LTF Executive Director Matt Foreman said to rousing
applause. ‘Let's start by claiming our moral vakies--liberty and personal
freedom for at,'
; J*:.
Visit us on the web at www.
National Gay
.:
‘Neither protest nor politics will end
the oppression of LGBT people. We
must make a cultural shift, a shift
that changes the moral values of pur
society.’ — Urvashi Vakt
***&?&• Vi -.„• - -•* • • —. • :'■••■ I- • -
‘We are up against a global system
that reinforces inequality at all costs?
— John D’Emito
■ *•# ’ ' ,^;;.vv 'r;-,'"".; %' -f•;
the grassroots up, saying, "A move
ment does not consist of organizations,
it consists of people." DTmilio brought
up that many of die most visible LGBT
people are white, and that this misrep
resents the wide diversity of the com
munity.
"Until we shift die colors of our visi
bility," EyEmiho said, "visibility will
remain a double-edged sword."
D'EmiKo and Vaid also discussed die
systemic and pervasive nature of die
opposition to LGBT equality as well as
the inequities found within the LGBT
community. D'Emilio tied racial, genr
dei; sexual and economic oppression to
alarger system of inequality that builds
power for die few rather than the many.
"We are up against a global system
that reinforces inequality at all costs,"
he said. Focusing on the tendency of
' gains in equality in the LGBT commu
nity to benefit the wealthy white and
well-educated, he said, "We are up
against the unequal distribution of die
gains of our movement"
Vaid gave credit to die LGBT move
merit for allowing women to attain
positionsof power, an achievement she
said was not as common in other pro
gressive movements. She stressed,
however that the LGBT movement had
not done enough to build power in
people of color communities and with
other social justice issues, including
poverty.
"Our politics of recognition needs to
be married to a politics of redistribu
tion. The progressive movement for
greater justice is die mainstream of the
LGBT movement, not a fringe group
that has co-opted the queer move
ment"'she said.
Most important D'Emilio and Vaid
encouraged LGBT people to see move
ment building as a long-term process.
D'Emilio brought up die. positives
and negatives of the same-sex marriage
issue, saying that "With same-sex mar
riage, we have found an issue that pen
etrates die homophobia of heterosexu
■' als in our society." (£■'.
~ He lamentect however; that "mar
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