CommuniKate

Three cities in three days! You guessed it I couldn’t use my bike.

Gay Pride week at the University of Louisville this year highlighted the L of LGBTQQ and they asked this old L to be there. Their strong LGBT group organized a fabulous flash mob in the student cafeteria complete with rainbow streamers and queer-eography, a queer women’s health discussion, my presentation, a drag show and rally. It was completely inspiring. From the state that brings us Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – fabulous young LGBT organizers and allies! Watch out!

It looked like Old Homo Week at the Boulder Theater. Nona Gandleman back in action in Boulder as head of Maven Productions brought me to CO with the newly rebranded OUT BOULDER. Their re-energized board has lots of ideas to extend their gang’s progressive reach into Boulder County and beyond. I hydrated properly, went to an OUT BOULDER reception after the show. We all danced to Lady Gaga!

The show at the Marines Memorial Theater in SF also brought out old friends and new faces. The theater is a jewel from 1926 in a building that used to be home to WACS and WAVES from WWII. I swear there were girl ghosts back stage. And I have no idea how it came to pass that that woman from West Virginia ended up wearing my sequined bra but that’s how things go sometimes. I got it back.

Off to AARP in Orlando!

A recent NYT article “When Boys Are Prized, Girls Live the Part” written by Jenny Nordberg, described the Afghani tradition of ‘bacha posh’ which translates as ‘dressed up as a boy.’ Since boys are so valued over girls, families with girls often dress one of their girls in boy’s clothes from an early age until puberty or well after.

They do it for many reasons. Since the family name and treasure pass down through sons, boys are highly valued. A boyless family is pitied by the community. It is believed that the mother can determine the sex of her unborn, so she is blamed if she has daughters. In the strictly sex-segregated society a boy can go places a girl can never go – to market for errands, to school unattended, to a job to earn extra money for the family.

The article highlighted two stories of girls dressed up as boys. One mother, who had herself dressed up as a boy, said that the experience had taught her the ways of men and power which had helped her win a job in the Assembly. Because she only had daughters, she and her husband decided to dress their youngest up as a boy, so that her community would think she was fit to be elected.

Another young girl made the decision on her own. She attended school as a girl, then changed into a black suit with boxy shoulders and wide-legged pants. She plays football, cricket and rides a bike. She does not want to wear women’s clothes or ever be a woman when she reaches puberty, because she has seen how people call women names and abuse them.

Nordberg did a yeoman’s job of uncovering an enduring tradition of masquerade that has been going on for several generations in Afghanistan. In a bloodless reportorial style, she never opined on the fetishization of maleness or the oppression of Afghani women her story represents. It was riveting. I’m sure somewhere someone is already pitching it as a movie of the week.

I have just been sad. For all those dear Afghani girls trapped in their homes and tradition. And certainly, despite the official line that there are no gays in Afghanistan, in some province there is a young lesbian dressed up as a boy enjoying freedom of movement and access. I can only imagine that inevitable sad day when all that changes and she must dress up as a woman.

On the same day marking Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday, news broke that the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman is gay. Much to the chagrin of William Donohue, head of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, the Empire State Building was not bathed in Mother Teresa’s blue and white team colors to mark her centenary. So far no head of any LGBT League has complained that the Empire was unbathed in rainbow colors for Mehlman’s coming out. Actually the news was greeted with a giant ho-hum. And that is what is so maddening.

Let’s dissect that ho-hum.

First, the ho part. Under Mehlman’s leadership of the RNC during the George W. Bush re-election (or first non-selection) campaign, gay marriage was used as a cynical get-out-the-vote tactic. Morning after quarterbacks, can use any numbers they want to prove that the tactic didn’t really get out the conservative vote, but it does not ameliorate gay people’s visceral knowledge that we were the RNC campaign’s wedgie, the butt thong between the cheek of church and the cheek of state

Mehlman, in whatever phase of his own gay self-awareness, did nothing to stop it. He actually advocated a push for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Under the Bush administration’s second term government-sanctioned homophobia anti-gay violence increased, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell continued unabated and many gay rights advances at the state level were rescinded.

Since I try to be fully pro-choice, and because I too struggled to come out, I have to hear Ken Mehlman when he says that only recently has he “become comfortable with this part of my life.” But as the bride-to-be Joan Cusack in the 1997 movie IN &OUT asks Kevin Klein after he tells her he’s gay at the altar, I also have to ask, “Could you possibly have picked a better time to tell me?”

Post-power position endorsements of gay rights – Laura Bush, Dick Cheney on gay marriage – are no consolation. While many remark that the non-reaction to Mehlman’s news is a sign of progress for gay rights, it is more a sign of progress in straight comfort. There is work to be done.

So now, for the hum part. I’m a moderate lesbian. I generally hold a grudge for six generations. But in the spirit of Mother Teresa’s b’day, I might make a conditioned exception for Mehlman. It is ironically fitting that Mehlman, the prodigious RNC fundraiser, has raised a million dollars for the Boies-Olsen efforts in over-turning CA anti-same sex marriage Prop 8. To fight anti-gay legislation, gay people still have to go door-to-door outing ourselves to anti-gay voters, neighbors and family as if trick or treating for our rights. For his penance, Mehlman needs to go door-to-door and speak to anti-gay legislators, former bosses, colleagues and friends to stop anti-gay nuisance propositions before they even begin. For extra-credit penance, he should go have tea and a talk with William Donohue. Wear a rainbow lapel pin.