RENWL

As we reported Tuesday in our post Queers Finally Unveil Their DADT Campaign: Get Lost Get Equal, our dear friend radical queer Tony Cochran hurled a molotav cocktail smack dead at Get Equal and friends ripping into the group for their warmongering ways. But apparently that was just appetizers. On Tuesday, the same day we ran the above post, Cochran sent a love letter to both Get Equal’s Kip Williams and Robin McGehee. Read the following:

DADT Discussion: An Open Invitation to Kip Williams & Robin McGehee

Tuesday at 11:03pm

Hello Robin and Kip,

Hope all is well.

I am writing this because, as you probably know, myself and many other Queer people are concerned about the direction of the mainstream LGBT rights movement. In particular, we are disturbed by the intensifying push to militarize our community via the campaign to repeal DADT. We understand the need to end discrimination – that is not the issue. However, the US military is an institution – like slavery – that clearly needs to be abolished. From Afghanistan to Gaza, the US has used it’s muscle to “shock and awe” entire communities. We even have flying robots killing civilians. Are these actions something that we should be trying to gain access to? Is this what you mean by equality?

I invite you to discuss this with us, Queers who oppose the military assimilation of our community. We need to have a real, open and public dialogue.
Sincerely,
Tony Cochran

McGehee, apparently trying to keep the discourse between the two on the hush hush emailed him back instead of publicly responding as Cochran did post the invite to the Get Equal folks on his Facebook profile for all to see. When that didn’t work—–because of course Cochran’s post drew the attention of other radical queer folks who enthusiastically began to unleash their less than flattering thoughts on Get Equal and other repeal supporters, McGehee does the unexpected: she comments on Cochran’s post with the following:

Tony – as I stated in my FB message to you – I feel like this effort is more a personal attack on Kip and I and GE when you do not call out other advocacy groups that demand the same repeal of DADT (HRC, Courage Campaign, SLDN, SU, etc) – I DO NOT want to serve in the military, but I will defend forever Lt. Dan Choi and others right to serve in the military if they so choose. I also support my right, and others, to demonstrate in anti-war protest – which I think people should be organizing to get us out of the Middle East. I will chat with you any time – just let me know when.

Well Cochran wasted no time:

Queer Debate: Where are we headed?

Date:

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Time:

7:30pm – 9:00pm

Location:

TBA, San Diego

Description

Raging in the Queer community is a debate: Should we continue to support the militarization of our community via the campaign to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” Should we assimilate into the institution of marriage? Should we fight to expand and legitimize the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation?
Queer and Straight people, with very different viewpoints, will finally have an opportunity to discuss and debate these existential issues. Perhaps some minds will be changed, perhaps a divide based on a real debate will become evident. In any case, this will be an interesting Queer moment.
While these (below listed) groups are not “official” participants, Queers – radical and otherwise – will be able to present, a moderator will be selected. Everyone will have an opportunity to speak and engage.
Here is a range of people (and the groups they are with) that will present, discuss and have a fabulous conversation:

GetEqual (

http://getequal.org/)
- Robin McGehee
Against Equality (http://againstequality.wordpress.com/)
- Fred Lennox
- Tony Cochran
RENWL (http://renwl.org/)
- Derrick Mathis

Link to Facebook event page: Queer Debate: Where Are We Headed?

Yea, we’ll be there to toss in a query or two but more so to cover the event; it’s gonna be spicy is our guess.

Now here’s our thoughts on this whole development: there’s a reason why McGehee accepted that challenge to a public dual with the radical queers in July. And that’s cause she had to. You see, these kids are a real threat to the anarchist “branding” that Get Equal has employed and enjoyed since the day they announced their existence. For starters, radical queers REALLY ARE anarchists. And at this juncture in the LBGT equality movement, what makes them a particular threat to the gay establishment (which includes Get Equal) is the fact that these radical queer kids are young people—-and mostly young white people at that.  And they’re not interested in co-signing onto the mainstream gay “we’re normal too” agenda. They’re interested in shutting down the war, community building, authentic diversity and defining themselves completely —–as opposed to adopting heterosexual norms as their norm.

They’re also not rich white pearls clutching prunes with vacation homes in Key West like Joe Solmonese and his crew at the Human Rights Campaign. So that makes it a challenge for folks like Get Equal. They’re gonna have to come up with something else besides the gay white male privileged angle they’ve welded so long over the heads of HRC folks and the like. These radicals are just your average queer everyday kids and friends with strong grassroots political principals and living on a paycheck away from disaster just like the rest of us. This debate is going to be quite interesting.

Fact is folks, the radical queer movement has reawakened—and it woke up in the middle of the LGBT equality movement in a bad mood. With the latest Israeli attack on the Palestinian flotilla coupled with the pro-war civil disobedience activities of Get Equal supported by the LGBT majority, the queer radical movement has started to become louder, angrier and more visible.

Which is why you’re not going to see a word about them from online gay National Enquirer type blogs like Americablog, Pam’s House Blend, Towleroad and the like. These blogs are 100% anti-diversity in thought, community, opinion and politics. Radical queers will not be getting any love from these folks. And you need to call these rags out on it.

For those of you not all that familiar with radical queers and their ideology, Yasmin Nair, another outspoken radical queer and regular contributor to the Bilerico Project, write some excellent essays on various topics. She’d be a great beginner’s primer for those who’d like to get a better understanding of queer politics and identity.  Here’s an excerpt from an essay she posted earlier this year on Bilerico titled DADT and the Silence / Silencing of Queer Anti-War Voices:

Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now had Dan Choi on and his rhetoric should make any anti-war protester’s toes curl. Instead, the famously progressive Goodman listened uncritically as Choi repeated a conversation he had with an Iraqi doctor who is supposed to have said to him:

Brother, I know that you’re gay, but you’re still my brother, and you’re my friend. And if your country, that sent you to my country, if America, that sent you to Iraq, will discharge you such that you can’t get medical benefits, you can come to my hospital any day. You can come in, and I will give you treatment. In South Baghdad, you can come, because it’s my duty to pay you back somehow for the sacrifices that you’ve made. It would be my honor.” So I hope that our country can learn from that Iraqi doctor.

It’s unlikely that Goodman would have let any straight soldier get away with this kind of rhetoric, the sort that renders U.S complicity in Iraq’s devastation utterly invisible. Goodman repeated much of the interview’s content in a column on Huffington Post, which you can read here. I could go on with the many problems with Choi’s words, but I think they should be obvious to many. I’ve been uneasy with such moments in the media, and have been wondering:

Where are the queer anti-war voices that also give us a critical perspective on DADT and have a critical analysis of the reasons why a dependence on a war economy is disastrous for our country’s youngest and poorest people of color, the main targets of the military’s current recruiting tactics? Where are the queers carrying on the queer tradition of being anti-war? I’m not talking about wishy-washy power liberals like Urvashi Vaid, who hold up the status quo in the high towers of the mainstream non-profit industrial complex and emerge with bland statements about “the interconnection of all of these battles for justice” without acknowledging that marriage and war are, for many queers, not a part of any social justice project.

I’m talking about down and dirty queers who resist the war machine, who agree that DADT is unfair, but also insist that there can be no queer support of the military machine, and who refute the kind of pro-war miltaristic rhetoric spewed forth by Choi and his compatriots.

Well, as it turns out, they are all around us but their voices have been silenced, either in the din of the hype around DADT or of the war drums that are beaten endlessly by gays and lesbians who go overboard with their rhetoric about how willing they are to kill for their country. More unnerving is the fact that even programs like Goodman’s are going along with this gay conservatism around war and DADT and not questioning the contradictions that they, surely, discern.

More and more, radical queers are loudly questioning this kind of explicit and implicit silencing of anti-war queer voices. In a brilliant radio piece on the gay movement by Women’s Magazine on KPFA-Pacifica, which you can find here, Kenyon Farrow of QEJ is explicitly critical of Goodman’s lack of questioning of gay militarism. More recently, Kate Raphael of LAGAI – Queer Insurrection and QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) posted an open letter to Amy Goodman, and I think it’s worth quoting at length:

You would never have a heterosexual soldier on your show uncritically talking about their work, and not even ask them one question about why they want to be part of an institution whose purpose is to oppress and repress people all over the world and maintain U.S. control over the world’s resources. By having those gay people on air, and not even challenging them, you are treating them – us – as less human than straight people. You are reinforcing the very policy that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is based on – that gay people are less moral, or cannot be held to the same ethical and human rights standards, as straight people.

You can read the rest of Nair’s essay here.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Army Now Has Inbox For Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Comments, Opinions
• DADT Report Highlights Waste, Costs, Damage To Troops
• Even After Repeal The Scars For Some Victims Of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Will Never Go Away
• DADT Survey: Gates Now Begging Troops To Do It
• DADT Tops Itself: Sailor Kicked Out Of Navy For Boyfriend Pix On Cellphone