Dear Editor:

The last time I wrote was well over a year ago, I answer to your cover story on where African-Amercian GBLT citizens were since there seemed to be a lack of visual identity at various functions within the community. Visualization should begin at home; in this case, YOURS.

May I further elaborate on that question:

I have noticed in your media publication alone, there is not a columinst who writes for the African-American GBLT community. I won’t get into the several others that are a-miss on this subject. There is the El Nuevo Latin Link with two full pages of events, nights etc., but no where to be found is anything that could guide the Afro GBLT community members to events that may be of interest to them.

Par instance:

The very soon upcoming Mr. Black San Diego.

Kuumba Fest

Gator by The Bay Festival- A Creole/Cajun Zydeco Festival (yes, there was a tiny mention of this event in the Out & About section, but nary a mention of the local artist Sue Palmer & Her Motel Swing Band, a local GBLT favorite, muchless the huge Louisiana talent flown in to include Sean Ardoin, Guyland Leday, Brian Jack & The Zydeco Gamblers, and the San Diego Cajun Playboys.

The many Afrocentric events of the World Beat Center

Encanto Street Faire

Heritage Parade

These are but a few local events I have never seen mentioned in your publication.

I attend all of these events and constanty see many of the African-American GBLT community there, for some of these events are in our backyard.

I challenge the GLTimes to bring in a columnist to inform the African-American GBLT community as you do the Latin community. The talk of diversity, it just that: talk. It is time for the GBLT community to face the fact that racial bias exists within our own ranks.

I won’t even address the fact that only two bars have nights aimed at the African-American GBLT community, while others shun us. I gues the color of the owner’s wallet does matter and not the color of green.

That would take at least another one column letter.

Taylor M. Murphy

Web only:

Dear Editor:

The Republican Party is an instrument of religious bigots and ultraright hawks whose vote in the federal House to legalize discrimination is reminiscent of the KKK laws enacted after the defeat of Reconstruction. It allows superstition-based groups - folks who fuss over demonic possession - to refuse to hire us and to fire us because our lives ‘offend’ their ridiculous religion. Few were surprised when several Log Cabin financed House members voted yes on this bill, or when Log Cabin Republicans, swallowing their Gay Pride, forgave all to again avoid breaking with ‘their’ Party. When the Democrats then restaged their tired masquerade as our caretakers Stonewall Democrats and HRC followed that with a kowtow for their bold solidarity. That’s the game – Republicans show their fangs, Democrats pretend to be our guardian angels and both parties lapdog groups wag their tails. Infesting government and pulpit, the Republican-christian alliance blocks passage of laws to protect gays and lesbians while their widely broadcast hatred encourages ‘hands on’ violence by thugs. Gay and lesbian youth then pay the price in schools and campuses, the armed forces and in prison. These bigots should be held accountable for the ensuing violence.

The key question is how the wider GLBT community reacts to the Republican-christian attacks. Last November some people fearfully turned to the Democrats, making the error of projecting their personal political hopes onto candidates who don’t share their values. This approach dismisses the vast qualitative differences in power and vested interest separating the hopelessly outgunned supporters of the Democratic Party from its owners.

Questions of political power are settled by clout - party leaders, bosses, the rich and corporations and have plenty of clout. Casual party members and activists from NOW, the ACLU, AARP, the NAACP, NARAL, antiwar groups, GLBT groups, and trade unions don’t have clout. They can speak, donate, volunteer, ‘take meetings’ or ‘strategize’, but if they mistake the smoke and mirrors for power or take themselves seriously they’ll encounter the receiving end of clout. As Malcolm X used to say of a cigar smoking contemporary who imagined he had clout, “Fire on one end and Fool on the other.”

It’s important to sensibly evaluate the Democratic Party’s leaders and owners. Notwithstanding Stonewall Club’s obliviousness, they aren’t our allies – quite the opposite. Like Republicans, what’s key for them is their stock in trade and chief product - votes to sell and trade for money and privilege. It’s about winning elections, brokering influence, and currying favor with the rich and powerful In contrast the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities have a singular agenda - equality. With equality we’ll prevail, without it we’ll spiral into grave vulnerability.

Progress comes when the Democrats and Republicans are forced to make concessions, where popular sentiment, backed by mass mobilizations, directly threatens their rule. The Democrats have been wrong for 200 years and still are. Clinton and the congressional Democrats approved ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, passing the first national anti-gay marriage law. Kerry caved on gay marriage, paving the way for state anti-gay marriage laws. Michigan Democrats betrayed us, stealing union benefits away from gay families. In Montana, Democrats provided the crucial votes to defeat a state anti-discrimination law. In Minnesota, Democrats again insured right wing victory, this time for an anti-gay marriage amendment. Democrats laid the blame for their 2004 defeats on supporting us?! Senator Clinton is busily building ‘bridges’ to the christian right, while hubby Bill says gay marriage is the ‘kiss of death’.

Democrats and Republicans, in lockstep, support the criminal murder of more than a hundred thousand civilians in their illegal Iraqi oil war, where over 1500 GI’s have died and almost 12,000 wounded. They oppose gay marriage. They’re behind the steady attacks on working people’s standards of living. Neither party gives a damn about us, African Americans, immigrants, women, or seniors. For a few million lobbyist dollars they coldly watch us choke on poisoned air and down poisoned food and water and for a few million more, they’ll gut our health insurance or outsource our jobs.

That’s why the Democrats lost the election – not the ‘evangelical vote’, the threat of gay marriage and surely not because they went all-out for gay and lesbian rights. The American people just can’t bring themselves to get all hot and bothered about these dismal frauds and neither should we. For a century and a half, since Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, the American people have looked on elections, candidates and politics in a frustrated, cynical frame of mind, sullenly swinging from one ‘lesser evil’ to the next. As for ourselves, during the long decades when we were in disfavor, without allies or any hope of victory, we stubbornly fought for equality and dignity on the job, in schools, the military, in courts and in street demonstrations. These hard fought battles, over many long decades, and not support for this or that counterfeit candidate are what fueled and defined our movement.

People will want to know what to do on Election Day. For now it means voting for communist, socialist and other independent candidates but above all it means taking a hard look at the emerging Labor Party. Please see either www.thelaborparty.org/ or www.kclabor.org/. It’ll be to our advantage to be in on the ground floor building the party that is the baisis for constructing a powerful, combative counterweight to bigotry. The growing Labor Party movement will unite groups now wasting their energy, creating the basis for substantial progress.

The Stonewall Democrats, HRC, and Log Cabin Republicans are political closets. They can’t lead the battle for equality because they’re hopelessly tied to parties opposing GLBT equality, supporting imperial war, fostering discrimination, opposing unions, and profiting from the cruel abuse of immigrants. Parties that cold-heartedly let malicious bigots triumph over science in the battle against AIDS and jointly passed laws like the Patriot Act and the Defense of Marriage Act, undermining the Constitution. Anyone serious about fighting for equality would have long since rejected that.

We deserve better. We face critical battles to defend what we’ve won and to find ways to protect at risk GLBT children and youth. They’re our future, and as a community and ‘family’ we’re often their only real guardians and can’t idly watch them being abused, beaten, maimed or worse. The war against AIDS is scarcely won, and will probably take a nasty turn without an improved response to this highly mutable killer. Protection against bias remains the unresolved, urgent question for most of us. Getting onboard the Labor Party movement puts us on track.

Sam Adams and Ben Franklin left King and Country behind, leading the First American Revolution in 1776, abolishing colonialism and feudalism. Abraham Lincoln abandoned his political roots and led a Second American Revolution to break the back of slavery and sedition in 1865. We can follow their example, freeing ourselves and making them proud by building a Labor Party in time for the Third.

Bill Perdue