The Truth Behind the Defeat of Houston's HERO Ordinance

On Nov. 3rd, 2015, the LGBTI community nationwide was handed one of the most significant defeats it has suffered in recent years, a setback of such significance that activists and pundits alike are still scratching their heads in confusion.  In a year that has seen progress as diverse as nationwide marriage equality, the full acceptance of transgender military personnel, and the defeat of rogue county clerk Kim Davis, my hometown of Houston, Texas became the epicenter of one of the ugliest examples of backlash in the history of the gay rights movement.  

On Nov. 3rd, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, a set of anti-discrimination laws that had been previously passed by the Houston City Council, and which were already in effect in the city of Houston, were forced to a public referendum and resoundingly defeated by a margin of 70% to 30%.  

The series of missteps that led to this catastrophe are not my focus here, but the context is important.  Immediately upon passage of the ordinance by the city council, a group of far right evangelical ministers began collecting signatures to overturn the ordinance or force it to a referendum.  Our local and statewide equality organizations did nothing.  Our openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, sought to halt that effort by voiding as many signatures as possible, then shot that effort in the foot by subpoenaing sermons of the pastors in question.  In the meantime, the suit to void the invalid signatures was bungled by the County Attorney's Office, and the Texas Supreme Court, always stalwart in their support of LGBTI rights, declared that the ordinance must be repealed or placed on the ballot.  The November 2015 ballot.  An off-OFF year election in which turnout was expected to be only 20% of registered voters.  

No, my focus here is on the failure of the campaign to defend the ordinance, a campaign oddly misnamed "Houston Unites," as the goal of the campaign was never to unite any part of Houston with any other part of Houston, and rightly so.  The goal of the campaign was to turn out progressive, liberal, primarily minority, already predisposed pro-HERO voters to the polls.  This approach is a common-sense one, and one that should have worked.  The campaign set up its infrastructure in August of this year.  It brought in activists from all over the country who have a tremendous amount of expertise in running pro-equality campaigns, including Richard Carlbom, a Minnesotan who successfully ran that state's campaign for marriage equality.  People were here from California, from Washington D.C., from St. Louis, Missouri.  The wonderful organizer that I worked with most closely was a dedicated, energetic young man from Raleigh, North Carolina.  All very smart people.  All people of great talent.  

All people who have very little understanding of Houston.  Or of Texas.

If you are not from a place like Texas, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or South Carolina, and you have never lived in such places, even knowing the reputation that the Deep South has among the rest of the country, it really is impossible for you to understand the depth of the hatred and loathing that many southerners feel for gay people, and particularly for transgender people.  Those here in the South who hate us gay people have always seen us as "the other," a menacing, diseased, perverted coven set upon taking everything that belongs to them, destroying their freedoms and eating their children.  And now, since the advent of marriage equality, that sense of doom is even MORE palpable, as though the minute hand of the "gay nuclear clock" had been pushed forward 5 minutes.  So the anti-HERO forces, unfettered in that they did not have to worry whatsoever about being offensive, political correctness, or people's self-esteem issues, created a campaign of pure hatred.  And it was brilliant in its simplicity.  We will label the entire transgender community as pedophiles and child rapists.  We will tap into the paranoia of those deep-seated haters who vote in EVERY municipal election.  We will create an enormous, bold-faced lie that male sexual predators will be able to use the ordinance as a defense for attacking women and children in bathrooms.  And our ONLY strategy will be to tell that lie, over and over and over again.

And it worked.  

Was there a way to counteract this?  Was there a way to fight against this?  In short, was there a way to win?  Of course there was.  But that strategy would have involved getting right down in the mud with the opposition, fighting each dirty blow with another dirty blow, countering every lie, not with just the truth, but the truth about how voting against the ordinance would actually HURT minority people--gay people, black people, Hispanic people--in a very real and tangible way.  In other words, scare tactics of our own.  "A NO vote is a vote for a restaurant owner to refuse service to a black person."  "A NO vote is a vote to fire someone who marries his or her same sex partner."  "A NO vote is a vote to fire a woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock."  But did Houston Unites employ any of those tactics?  Sadly, no.  There was a tremendous emphasis on the part of the campaign on people feeling good about themselves.  The television and radio commercials had a "pleasant" air to them, as though we were saying "we're nice, and you're nice, and the ordinance is nice, and you should be nice and vote for it."  At meetings, we were encouraged to put the pronouns we wanted to be used to refer to us on our name tags, as though that had anything to do with the battle at hand.  The scripts given to us canvassers did not include the words "lie," or "bigotry," or even "consequence" or "result."  (True confession: I never followed the script.  At every door I told people, especially minority people, the brutal truth:  you can be fired for no reason, and a federal lawsuit is a check for $10,000, and the bathroom LIE--is a LIE.  Not a "misrepresentation."  A LIE.)  One opponent on whose door I knocked said he was voting against the ordinance because he was a Christian.  I had to remind him that "Christian" is a religion, and covered by the ordinance.

I'm not afraid to fight dirty when my rights are at stake, and frankly, I have no patience with activists who are consumed with making people feel good, and worrying about self-esteem, and pulling punches for the sake of appearances.  There are two old sayings.  One is "Always take the high road."  And the other is "Losers take the time to climb all the way up to the high road--winners head straight for the finish line, even if it takes a steamroller to get there."  I hope when all the smart, experienced folks from Houston Unites return next year to fight this battle again, they will come with a steamroller.  Because right now the nation's fourth largest city is the only major municipality in the United States without an equal rights ordinance in effect.  And that's a label that I don't want to wear.

In the interest of fairness, here is the link to the press release from Houston Unites addressing the defeat of the ordinance:  http://houstonunites.org/herorepeal/

Stigma, HIV and the Transgender Community

14 percent?  27 percent?  69 percent?

These are estimates of the percentage of MTF transgender persons in the Houston metropolitan area who are infected with HIV.  These numbers come from a variety of studies done between the years 2008 and 2015.  The studies represent a dizzying variety of methodologies for identifying and tracking transgender people infected with HIV.  And as of now there is no way to be sure that any of them are correct.  

In my capacity as an HIV activist and advocate (and, for that matter, consumer) I spend a lot of time attending meetings, seminars, and symposiums that deal with the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of HIV.  Most of these events are worthwhile, and most provide good information to their attendees.  But I've noticed a trend, or theme, that has started to come up over and over again in these presentations in recent months--a theme that is both startling and disturbing.  And that theme is this: every time the subject of HIV infection among the transgender population of the United States comes up, the message from the podium has been the same:  we don't know how many transgender people are infected with HIV.  It is difficult to identify transgender people with HIV.  It is difficult to get transgender people with HIV into treatment.  We don't know; we don't know; we don't know.

I, for one, am weary of this answer.  I guess you could also say I'm wary of it, as well.  In recent years we have honed the process of tracking HIV infection and treatment to an unbelievable degree.  We have statistical documentation for practically every gender, demographic and racial subgroup you can possibly name.  Here in Houston, for example, we know, almost to a person, the number of new infections among African-American MSM's between the ages of 18 and 35.  We know similar information about Hispanic women, gay men over the age of 40, even the incarcerated.  And this information drives our efforts to provide effective prevention, intervention and treatment for these populations.  

So why has doing the same for the transgender population become "Mission: Impossible"?

I believe that this problem stems from the general stigmatization of transgender people, and that we first must work to END that stigmatization before any progress can be made on matters of health.  The barriers to transgender people in all aspects of dealing with HIV--prevention, identification and treatment--are so pervasive as to seem overwhelming to those of us who are not a part of their community.  High rates of unemployment.  High rates of substance abuse.  Economic disadvantage.  Sex work as a means of survival.  High rates of incarceration.  Homelessness.  Domestic violence.  Loss of family.  The practice of unsafe sex due to either coercion or fear of losing relationships.  And the list goes on and on.

If these stigmas sound familiar, they should.  30 years ago, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, one could have identified all of these stigmas about the gay male population of the United States AT LARGE.  But we fought against these issues.  We fought for the end of stigma.  We fought for acceptance and understanding.  We fought for our health.  And now it's time for us to help our transgender brothers and sisters do the same.  

How do we accomplish this?  An article appearing on the HIV/AIDS informational website Avert.org talks about steps that have been taken in India to prevent stigma against the transgender community from getting in the way of HIV prevention and treatment.  Here is just a sample of the common sense steps that have been taken there:

"In India, HIV services have been targeted at transgender people – reaching an estimated 83% of the transgender population. They have also made marked steps in officially recognizing transgender people, also called Hijras, as a third gender. This means that local authorities need to ensure that they have health and social programs that meet their needs, whilst also giving them the right to vote.  Providing welfare, employment initiatives and housing can address the factors that make transgender people more likely to have risky sex.  

"In Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India, transgender women, or ‘Aravanis,’ have a history that goes back centuries.  However, in the present day they face many of the structural factors that make transgender people at risk of HIV. One study in India found that 46% of transgender women questioned reported being subjected to forced sex. Many Aravanis also consume alcohol excessively, to 'manage rough clients' or 'forget worries.'  In 2008 the state government established a 'Transgender Welfare Board' to address the problems faced by the community. The scheme ensures access to education, providing different forms of income generation such as land, and putting housing and health measures in place.

"Many transgender people have now been issued with official identity cards stating their gender as ‘Aravani,’ addressing the barrier to healthcare faced by transgender people who don’t have official identification. They also run an official ‘Transgender Day,’ promoting the culture, tradition and healthcare of transgender people, and therefore self-esteem.  States in India such as Tamil Nadu that have a history of transgender people organizing groups to advocate for their own rights, tend to also have the highest standards of care and the most community-based organizations meeting transgender people’s needs."

Common sense in India--common sense that is desperately needed here.  We must start including the transgender community in our HIV conversations, while at the same time working to eliminate those stigmas that cause barriers to this community concerning HIV issues.  My goal is never to attend another meeting where HIV statistics among the transgender community are represented as a big "question mark."  It's time for the United States to take the lead on this front.  As the old cliche goes, "If we can put a man on the moon..."  This should not be "Mission; Impossible."

Staring the Tea Party Straight in the Eye

This nice lady is Debbie Riddle.  She is the Congresswoman representing House District 150 in the Texas House of Representatives.  She has held that office since 2002.

She is MY representative in the Texas House.

And she hates transgender people.

I have several personal philosophies that govern my activism.  Very high on the list is this:  never be afraid to go where the battle is.  Marriage equality, anti-discrimination ordinances, anti-bullying policies--these things don't come easily.  They are not achieved by "bench warmers."  So every time I get the chance, I love to seize the opportunity to engage the other side on their home turf.  Such an opportunity presented itself a few days ago.

I was at a monthly luncheon put on by a genuinely fine group to which I belong: the Spring-Klein Chamber of Commerce.  Spring is an old suburb of Houston; neighboring Klein is a somewhat newer area, younger, and with more McMansions.  Like most of Houston, it is a prosperous area; and like most of Texas, it is, on balance, conservative.  Debbie Riddle represents our area with a shotgun in one hand and a "Don't Tread on Me" Tea Party banner in the other.  She was recently dubbed "the 4th most conservative representative in the Texas House," and she has sponsored every type of far right whackadoodle legislation you can possibly imagine, from our new "campus carry" law, designed to turn our state university system into one giant shooting range, to a ridiculously redundant Religious Exemption bill that accomplishes nothing, other than making sure that Ms. Riddle got to deliver one last good, hard slap across the face to same sex couples in Texas.  But the most onerous is a bill that she has been crafting and introducing on the House floor for a while now.  This bill would make it a crime for a transgender person to use the public restroom that matches their sexual identity, with a healthy fine and jail time for anyone caught doing so.  Sort of a statewide "bathroom bill," if you will.  She is, to use a phrase, a "piece of work."

I love belonging to organizations like the Spring-Klein Chamber because, while most of the members are conservative (some very) there is a keen interest in including me and my viewpoints in the name of diversity.  Some of this is a morbid fascination with "the open gay guy," and some of it is a genuine spirit of inclusiveness.  And the respect I have for the group is mutual.  So I will admit to a certain amount of glee when I discovered that Ms. Riddle was to be the speaker at the membership luncheon--with Q & A.

In all fairness, it was Ms. Riddle who brought up the bathroom bill.  In the midst of patting herself on the back for accomplishments such as single-handedly securing the Mexican border and killing public school funding, she said this.  It's not word for word, but it's very close:

"I remember a time when we didn't have to put up with nonsense like who was going to use which bathroom.  Men used men's bathrooms and women used women's bathrooms.  Now we have all these freaky people who might decide that they feel like a woman that day and want to use the women's bathroom.  Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want my 8-year-old granddaughter to see something like THAT in the bathroom.  That's why I'm working on my bathroom bill.  I don't want pedophiles in women's bathrooms, and I'm sure you don't either."

When Q & A began, I made sure she could not avoid my hand.  Courteously, Ms. Riddle came directly to the back of the room where I was sitting, and I stood up.  This is what I said:

"My name is John Lazo, and I am a member of the chamber and one of your constituents.  I should tell you up front that I am also hold a seat on the Houston Ryan White Planning Council, I am a member of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus and I am a volunteer with Houston Unites, which is working for passage of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.  I don't have an issue with the Religious Exemption law.  It is unnecessary and redundant and was clearly intended as a rebuke to marriage equality, but I can live with that.  But please, PLEASE, before you introduce any more "bathroom bills," will you accept my invitation to meet with some of the transgender people that I am working with on the HERO campaign?  They are not freaks, and they are most certainly not pedophiles.  They are decent people who work hard, pay their taxes--and vote.  and they just want to use the restroom that makes common sense."

By this time the entire room had turned around and was staring intently at us--two people who could not be further apart on the political spectrum, eyeball-to-eyeball.  Walking away from me and returning to the front of the room, Ms. Riddle replied:  "This gentleman asks a very sensitive question.  My door is always open.  But the priority for me is and always will be keeping predators out of bathrooms."  And on to the next question she went, which was about open carry.

So to wrap up, let's try to follow the logic.  We don't want pedophiles in public bathrooms.  So the way to accomplish that is to prevent a transgender woman, who has undergone or is undergoing reassignment, and who looks like a woman, from using the woman's bathroom--the bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity.  And if that is the case, then one of two things must be true.  Either A) all transgender people are pedophiles or B) a sexual assault committed in that bathroom is the transgender woman's fault.

The beauty of the American system is that there is a process available to a citizen whose elected representative is in the business of crafting discriminatory legislation.  It's called the election process.  And my next campaign commitment is to volunteer, canvas, and phone-bank as hard as I can for whoever is running against Debbie Riddle.  Only 10,000 people actually voted in the 2014 contest that elected Debbie Riddle.  And a little truth goes a long way.

She's No Martyr: The REAL Legacy of Kim Davis

The 24-hour news cycle has transformed how we know about events, and when we know about them, and blogs, by their very nature, are somewhat like yesterday's newspaper:  interesting, but only as relevant as the immediacy of the message they carry.  That is, unless you are writing about something predictable and unchanging; something that you know from experience is going to be the same today as it was yesterday, or weeks or months ago; something chiseled in stone or embedded in concrete.

Such a thing is Kim Davis, and her refusal to issue marriage licenses.   

I have two dogs in this fight.  The first is my long-time personal advocacy for marriage equality, which I have been writing about, posting about, and marching in support of for many years now.  The Supreme Court ruling in June was, unarguably, the watershed moment in the history of the LGBTI equality movement, one of those historical moments when we define our lives as "before this happened" and "after this happened."  But after I gave myself five minutes to celebrate, I could not escape the feeling that somehow, based on the bureaucracies of local governments and the strong grass-roots resentment against this long awaited triumph, that there would be trouble in the trenches of marriage, that county and/or local officials might in fact find a way to refuse, or at least delay, equal treatment of same sex couples.  My friends, many of whom call me "John the Cynic," told me I needed to see this glass as half full, to see it as the victory that it is, and stop worrying about the minutiae of problems down the road.  So I smiled, while still looking over my shoulder for the other shoe to drop.

In the immediate days after the Supreme Court ruling, there were "rumors of wars" that turned out to be solvable, albeit with a great deal of pain and sacrifice on the part of several gay couples nationwide.  Here in Houston where I live (a city I dearly love, by the way) the Harris County Clerk of Courts, Stan Stanart, initially refused to issue same sex licenses, using the excuse of a "necessary computer software update."  A strong letter from the Harris County Attorney fixed that.  In Hood County, near Ft. Worth, a same sex couple was refused three times before finally filing a lawsuit that forced the clerk to begin issuing licenses immediately, while costing the taxpayers of that county several thousand dollars in legal fees.  Many counties in Alabama and Mississippi were slow to come on board, and Louisiana was downright intransigent, due in large part to pronouncements on the part of bigot-in-chief of that otherwise great state, Bobby Jindal.  But as more couples demanded their rights, and justifiably threatened to sue if they were refused, the problem dwindled to just a few backward pockets of resistance, many of which are rural counties where the prospect of a same sex couple asking for a license is unlikely, as a practical matter.  And the LGBTI equality movement seemed to have found it's mechanism for resolution.  All would be well.

And then, Kim Davis happened.

That brings me to my second dog in the fight, and it is a personal one.  One of the reasons why I have devoted so much time to the issue of county clerk compliance is that I know Kim Davis.  I do not mean that I know her personally, but I grew up in a family of Kim Davises--people who think like her, feel as she does, and sympathize with her positions.  I know how their minds work, what motivates them and makes them tick.  For me, Kim Davis is that "other shoe waiting to drop," and the hell she has created for all the couples of Rowan County who are being refused licenses is that potential "worst nightmare" I was afraid of.  She is someone who, like Bartleby the Scrivener in the famous short story by Herman Melville, simply said "I'd prefer not to."  And from that moment I knew, based on my long experience with the Kim Davises in my life, where we would find ourselves right now.  There are things I have been saying throughout this ordeal I can promise you are true.  She will never issue a marriage license to a same sex couple.  She will never resign.  She does not care about anything that judges or courts have to say.  She does not care if she is fined.  She does not care if she goes to jail.  And she does not care about the couples she has refused to serve, whether they are being denied their rights or not, whether they have recourse against her are not.  She does not care. Period.

So the focus moves back to the couples, and to the marriage equality movement as a whole.  Given these realities, the emphasis must be on a solution to make these couples whole that takes into account the fact that Davis granting licenses or resigning are options that are off the table.  That might take the form of the federal judge who is handling the case in Ashland finding her in contempt, which would result in her being impeached.  Or, if she is sitting in a jail cell, perhaps the case can be made that she is "absent from work" and a clerk who is willing to issue licenses would be then be able to do so.  Or, perhaps she will be fined so deeply and so heavily that she would have no choice but to resign.  (This option is the least likely, given the proclivity of the Far Right to set up crowd funding accounts for bigots, providing them with hundreds of thousands of dollars, a sort of macabre "pay check" for hatred.)  But one thing is for sure: all of these possibilities involve more waiting, more time spent, more legal maneuvering on the part of the couples, whose lives have already been torn to pieces by this woman's ignorance and hatred and cruelty.

And the last question: will Kim Davis be viewed as a "Christian martyr" by the vast majority of Americans?  Based on what I have been seeing and hearing, the answer to that is an emphatic NO.  The Christian Right, and Davis herself, have overplayed their hand this time, and very much misjudged the American people.  The American people have a very strong sense of what is right, just and fair.  For example, I have dozens of conservative friends who were, to one degree or another, against the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling.  But to a man, or woman, every single one of those people have told me that they believe Kim Davis is wrong, and that she needs to do the job that she was elected (and is being paid $80,000 a year) to do.  No, she is no martyr--rather, she will be remembered as a hypocritical bully, someone who tried to use religion to propagate hatred and lost.  And in that regard, Kim Davis is one of the best things that could have ever happened to the LGBTI equality movement.  She is a persecutor posing as the persecuted.  And the American people have little patience with someone who refuses to follow the rules, like they do.  Like we all do.  Every Kim Davis helps galvanize the support of the American people for gay rights, and reminds them that gay people are "just like them"--hard-working, taxpaying, patriotic Americans.

So thank you, Kim Davis.  When your saga is finally over, what will remain is your legacy, and that legacy is clear:  hatred and cruelty and hypocrisy cannot defeat love and fairness and justice.  Thank you for proving the point we have been trying to make all along.

Safeguarding the Progressive Movement in a Trump Presidency

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!"  We are all familiar with this announcement from the Sergeant-at-Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives.  It is the last thing we hear before the leader of the free world enters the House chamber to give the State of the Union speech each January.  When we hear it in January of 2016, it will be the last time that the person who walks down the center aisle of the chamber will be Barack Obama.

Traditionally, a newly inaugurated President does address a joint session of Congress a few weeks after the inauguration, even though it is not considered an official State of the Union speech.  So when we hear those words again in 2017, who will be the person walking down the center aisle?

What if that person is Donald Trump?

There are no limits to the speculation of media pundits as to the possibility of this scenario.  "A ridiculous distraction" has morphed, in succession, into "another meaningless front-runner status"; "nothing more than the groundwork for a third party run"; "a lead in the polls that will soon evaporate"; and finally "a legitimate candidacy with a real chance at victory."  As I write, the most recent CNN/ORC poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump among registered voters by only 6 percentage points, 51% to 45%.  And unfortunately for us Progressives, Secretary Clinton is facing a barrage of political attacks that are weakening her image and viability among "The Great Undecided" center-center-right and narrow issue voters: namely, Benghazi, emails, and an increasingly powerful grass-roots challenge from Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who has given Progressives a legitimate alternative to Clinton.

Counterbalancing this precarious situation is the idea that Trump would stand no chance of becoming the Republican nominee, and that he would (as he, by his own admission during the Fox debate, would be more than happy to do) run as a third-party candidate, effectively handing the White House to the Democrats by splitting the Republican vote between the corporate shills and the whackadoodles.  But in the days since the Fox debate, poll after poll has indicated that Donald Trump's positions are, in fact, the shared views of the majority of the Republican Party, the rank-and-file of which is substantially more conservative than at least 15 of the current 17 candidates.  (Neither of the two exceptions, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, will never be the Republican nominee, for reals.)   So the stage is set for an actual Trump matchup, be it with Clinton, Sanders, or even Vice President Joe Biden, who is still contemplating getting into the race.

And that lands us squarely inside the worst of all possible nightmares: that mental picture of President Trump, walking down the center aisle to deliver his first speech to a Joint Session, one hand on the nuclear button, the other signing deportation orders for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

So, what will we Progressives do for those four years?  What will be our priorities?  In a world where we can no longer count on a presidential veto to prevent regressive, damaging or bigoted legislation, we need to get as much accomplished as possible in these next few months.  These should be our priorities:

• LGBTI rights.  Marriage equality is not the end of our fight--it's the beginning. Our goal for 2016 should be the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  This is the federal law that extends equal employment protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  We need to make sure that every candidate we support would be willing to vote in favor of this legislation, and write/call the Democratic leadership of both the House and the Senate to encourage bringing the law to the floor.  The nation currently has a hodge-podge of state and local ordinances, which means that LGBTI workers who change jobs and move may lose their protection.  Only a federal law can fix this.  

• Black Lives Matter.  The Black Lives Matter agenda, which includes important items such as sensitivity training for officers, deescalation of lethal force and new standards of engagement, should become the standard in every community.  Progressive voters need to make sure that every candidate we support for city councils and elected police department positions are aware of this agenda and support it.  Protests at campaign rallies are valuable, but they should be expanded to include the Republican candidates, who really need to hear the BLM message.  The recent disruption of a Jeb Bush rally was a good start.

• Immigration.  The 2016 House and Senate races will be crucial to this issue.  We must use every means at our disposal to get out the Progressive vote, not only for President, but for Congress as well.  "President Trump" has already made it clear that he fully intends to deport as many immigrants as possible, even children who are legal citizens of the United States under the 14th Amendment.  The only way to effectively oppose this is to have enough leverage in Congress to counteract any potential executive order that would lead to mass round ups and deportations.  This is perhaps the most serious threat of all.  Trump has decided to focus all of his self-loathing on this particular, vulnerable group, and he has persuaded his followers to do likewise.  

Clearly, this is the most important election of the century so far.  We Progressives lost the opportunity to steer the country in the right direction in 2000--we cannot afford to lose that opportunity this time.  The stakes are too high.  A nation can recover from the dithering of a George W. Bush, but the vindictiveness, the cruelty of a Trump presidency could ruin the United States forever.  We cannot let that happen.

Getting HERO Wrong

When it comes to LGBTQ equality, things have certainly been going our way recently on the national front.  The focus on national marriage equality, as well as various prospective approaches to national employment equality, has been all-consuming for LGBTQ activists across the nation and here in Houston.

However, to use an unfortunate analogy, while we here in Houston were celebrating the beautiful, panoramic view of the national landscape, a very large tree standing right next to us fell directly on our heads.  

And the resulting "ouchie" is pretty significant.

In May of 2014, the Houston City Council passed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance by a significant majority.  Almost immediately, a well-organized and well-funded petition drive was organized by several anti-GLBTQ rights activists, in association with a coalition of conservative black ministers, aimed at overturning the ordinance.  On April 17 of this year, State District Judge Robert Schaffer ruled that many of the signatures on the petition were invalid, and that the ordinance should remain in effect.  End of story, right?

Well, apparently, that's what the Houston LGBTQ activist community thought, and I think the best way to explain how wrong the activist community got this is to use my own personal experience.  I am a member of several activist organizations here in Houston.  I am a grass-roots member of these groups: I give what monies I can, but I cannot afford $500 a plate gala tickets; I volunteer as much time as I can given my other obligations to HIV/AIDS activism, children's health, and two chambers of commerce; I show up for meetings and always maintain my credentialing, although I often feel as though my voice is not heard.  I sometimes have to remind myself that our activist groups are, by definition, GAY groups.  That means they are like those "measuring sticks" for children in front of rides at amusement parks:  you must be THIS (physically attractive...wealthy...politically connected) for us to acknowledge you.  

So how does my experience tie into the HERO debacle?  Well, while the Houston activist community was sleeping, a group called the NO UNequal Rights Coalition, lead by anti-GLBTQ activist Dave Welch and anti-GLBTQ attorney Andy Taylor, were busy filing not one, not two, but THREE court appeals on the petition issue, including an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court.  In spite of those filings, for the last four months the leadership of the activist community has been placidly telling the rank-and-file, "Celebrate!  The HERO fight is over!  Don't worry about HERO!  Yeah, sure, there are some appeals, but they're not going anywhere.  We can focus on other things now.  Hooray!"  And instead of questioning leadership, the rank-and-file went blissfully along with this party line, and those of us who WERE aware that these appeals might in fact "go somewhere" were told not to mention the emperor's lack of clothing.

Of course, last week the chickens came home to roost.  The Texas Supreme Court ruled the petitions valid and told the Houston City Council that they had 30 days to repeal HERO or place it on the November ballot.  Now the activist community, instead of being proactive, is forced to play defense, making impassioned pleas at last week's City Council meeting, and trying desperately to organize a get-out-the-vote movement.  Lurking over all of these efforts is the political reality that at best, the vote on HERO will be close, and the awful truth that the ordinance will in all likelihood fail in November.  So far, I have heard no explanations from activist leaders about why they were so negligent about staying on top of the court appeals, or how they managed to get all of this so wrong.

The problem is this:  there are scores, perhaps hundreds, of rank-and-file, grass roots folks just like me who, if leadership would quit marginalizing us, would have been happy to have been organizing, marching, protesting, carrying signs, posting on social media, and generally making a ruckus, both in Houston AND in Austin, to make sure that the court appeals of HERO stayed firmly in both the local and national spotlights.  But too often, we are told by our organizations that "your help is not needed on this" or "we're focusing on this thing over here right now."  Grass roots doesn't work with a single square foot of sod--it requires acres of people fighting EVERY potential equal rights outcome and, unlike our leadership, staying on the horse until it's safely across the finish line.  I absolutely hope that HERO passes in November.  What I don't understand is why the leadership of the Houston GLBTQ activist community helped put us in the position we are in through their complacency, especially when there are so many people, people who constitute an untapped resource, going unused.

House-to-House Combat

The world changed forever on June 26, 2015.  After 50+ years of LGBTQ activism and advocacy, 10 years of state-by-state progress, and months of waiting while the case of Obergefell v. Hodges was brought to and argued before them, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the right to marry the person one loves is a right that applies not only to heterosexual couples, but to same sex couples as well.  In all 50 states.  Forever.  The euphoria was palpable, in print and electronic media, and especially on social media, where the hashtag #LoveWins was used on Twitter more than 5.5 MILLION times in the 24 hours following the announcement of the ruling.  The beautifully written decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy (the swing vote who kept SCOTUS observers guessing until the very last minute) was announced just in time for Pride Weekend celebrations across the nation, and activists everywhere were awash in a sense of triumph, a sense that as treacherous as the road that had led us to this point had been, they could finally pause and catch their breath, if only for a brief moment.

Well, most activists did.  Some of us, however, were aware of a new sense of foreboding.  In the midst of the celebrations, some of us, mostly we activists who live in the Deep South and the central Appalachians, knew that there was still an obstacle that the Supreme Court had not cleared out of the way for same sex couples seeking a marriage license.

That obstacle is the Evangelical Right.  And it's face is the face of the woman whose picture appears above.

Kim Davis has worked in the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk's office for over 30 years, and she has become the poster child for a small, but vocal minority of county clerks across the country who claim that their religious convictions prevent them from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Last week, a two same sex couples and two opposite sex couples in Rowan County filed a lawsuit against Davis demanding that she follow the law of the land, do the job she was elected to do and issue marriage licenses to all eligible applicants.  The judge in the case heard arguments on both sides, including from Ms. Davis herself, who took the stand.  In a statement that might remind the LGBTQ community of the bakery owners in Oregon who refused service to a same sex couple, Ms. Davis said, "If I say they are authorized, I'm saying I agree with it, and I can't."  As with the bakery owners, Ms. Davis has likened the simple act of doing her job to somehow being implicitly involved in the same sex marriage ceremony, as though signing a piece of paper would somehow be akin to forcing her to attend the ceremony in her Sunday best and throw flowers at the couple as they walked down the aisle.  

So it has gone for the first month of marriage equality.  Here in Texas, where I live, things have gone more smoothly than anyone could possibly have imagined.  Our own home grown poster child, equally as vexing but much less courageous than Ms. Davis in Kentucky, was Katie Lang, the clerk of Hood County, just outside of Ft. Worth.  Like Ms. Davis, Ms. Lang initially claimed religious exemption, and put off a same sex couple not once, but twice before the couple filed a lawsuit.  Unlike Ms. Davis, Ms Lang folded like a house of card the minute the lawsuit was filed and immediately began issuing marriage licenses to all couples.  (The couple in question has not withdrawn their lawsuit, both to insure that the Hood County clerk's office continues their compliance, and to recoup their attorney's fees.)  Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are falling in line kicking and screaming, with nine county clerks in Alabama still refusing to issue marriage licenses to ANY couple, gay or straight, rather than follow the law.  (I still say one has to make a tremendous mental leap to fathom THAT level of homophobia.)  And then there is what I call "The Kentucky Problem."

So here are my thoughts and solutions for the refusing clerks.  First of all, I don't buy what Kim Davis is selling.  There are many clerk's offices that have one or two staff members who are claiming religious exemptions from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, but in most cases there is a clerk or clerks who have NO problem issuing such licenses and they are simply doing their jobs.  Ms. Davis has not only refused to issue the licenses HERSELF, but has forbidden anyone ELSE in her office to issue them as well.  That says to me , "This isn't about my religion.  This is about me hating homosexuals."  Second, there should not be any such thing as a religious exemption.  Issuing a marriage license to a same sex couple does not make you a part of their marriage.  The same sex couple does not care about your religious beliefs, any more than YOU should care about THEIR bedroom habits.  The best thing for all concerned would be for those clerks who have religious issues that prevent them from doing their jobs to resign.  Unfortunately, the Earth has shifted underneath you, and now you hold a belief that prevents you from doing your job.  The Earth does that sometimes.  

The bottom line is this:  gay people are not going to accept being treated differently than straight people anymore.  Not anywhere, not anyhow, not under any circumstances.  Not in the public square, and not in private enterprise.  The sooner that the public officials, who are paid with OUR tax money, realize that, the better.