Reacting to the news that Obama will deliver the keynote to the HRC gala's annual dinner in DC, Sullivan blasts both the organization and Obama for their failure to deliver any meaningful change on LGBT issues:

In some ways, Obama's fealty to the big gay lobby rather than to the real gay community is testimony to why Democratic party politics remain repulsive to me. HRC has achieved nothing substantive for gay equality on a federal level in the twenty years I've been observing them. But they sure know how to milk donors at swanky black tie affairs. They are the Rotary Club for affluent gays, and their prime job is to explain to the gay community why it is never in the Democratic party's interest to do anything for gay people that might actually resemble equality. Oh, yes, we'll get a lovely Obama speech. Like that costs him anything or proves anything.

There is nothing Obama can say at this self-satisfied, well-heeled Rotary Club dinner that he hasn't said before. And the idea that simply showing up is something we should all be ecstatic over and grateful for is another sign of the low self-esteem and lack of self-respect among the leaders of that organization who did all they could to defeat Obama in the primaries last spring. I won't be there and haven't been there for more than a decade. It is not a forum to advance gay rights; it is a fundraising session designed to make people feel better for backing an organization incapable of passing laws supported by overwhelming majorities of the American people. Oh, and fawning over B-list Hollywood celebrities.

If Obama wants to support gay equality, he knows what to do. If Pelosi and Reid want to support gay equality, they know what to do. If HRC believes in gay equality, they also know what to do.

So spare us the schmoozing and the sweet-talking and do it. Until then, Mr president, why don't you have a nice steaming cup of shut-the-fuck-up?

You can almost feel the steam rising from his forehead!

Reacting the news that Battleship, Monopoly, AND Candy Land have all been slated to be turned into major motion pictures (seriously guys, Candy Land?), Andrew Sullivan dug up this gem of a farce from College Humor from 2007 RE: Minesweeper, The Movie! I can't embed it, but it's definitely worth a view!

A very pretty chart. With not so pretty data:

Click it to make it all big. The unemployment rate just ticked up to 9.5%. The US economy lost 467,000 jobs in June. Damn, that's a big number.

Chart via Calculated Risk. Hat tip to Patrick over at Andrew Sullivan's blog.

It's truly amazing flipping through Andrew Sullivan's painstaking documentation via Twitter of the Iranian resistance movement. Activists there have used Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites in ways that were simply unimaginable five years ago. If this isn't more evidence that the way activism works has fundamentally and forever changed, I don't know what is. But this post isn't about social networking -- we've heard all about that already.

No, this short post instead is about the ways in which this revolution must shake Americans' perception of a monolithic Middle East. We've never had much room in our brains for variation in Islam (despite, of course, our ability to laugh at the idea that all Christians believe the same things) -- and politically I think most Americans thought most Iranians were uneducated, regime-loving fundamentalists. If the Iranian people stood by while gay teenagers were publicly executed, then it must be because all Iranians assent to such a practice.

What we are seeing in Iran now is a display of the deep divisions among the Iranian people. This is not a homogeneous people. As Roger Cohen says in a NYTimes editorial, "The Iranian Republic has lost legitimacy. It is fissured. It will not be the same again. It has always played on the ambiguity of its nature, a theocracy where people vote. For a whole new generation, there's no longer room for ambiguity."

If it's true what Cohen says -- that Iran will never be the same again -- then it must also be true that our perception of Iran and the Middle East more generally will also never be the same. Twitter and other similar utilities have given Iran's people a gigantic megaphone that is reaching all corners of the world, glaringly exposing how ridiculous our uninformed perceptions of Iranians had been. Let's hope that their green scarves and tech-savvy resistance movement will help quell stereotypical perceptions of the Middle East and its people that have never been true.

No words.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

From Markos' response to Sullivan:

And none of that will be thanks to the so-called leaders at the establishment gay rights groups. The Human Rights Campaign can continue its star-studded black-tie galas that accomplish shit, while real grassroots activists notch real gains on the ground.

Amen

Yesterday I blogged about Andrew Sullivan's critique of the Human Rights Campaign. Today, Markos (founder of DailyKos) extends Sullivan's critique to talk about the poorly managed "No on Prop 8" campaign in general. He notes that traditional "gatekeepers" of activism will self-destruct in an era of decentralized, grassroots Web 2.0 activism (extending his concept of "Netroots"):

"As a gatekeeper, the Human Rights Campaign sucks. Sullivan calls for the organization to be abandoned and defunded. But something worse is happening -- it is being rendered irrelevant by current events, and with irrelevance, it will shrivel up and die on its own.

He goes on, though, to divert attention away from HRC and refocus it more largely on the "No on 8" campaign in general, and its inability to spark the kind of grassroots mobilization seen in the wake of the amendment's passing. He urges caution, though, in noting that we need more than just the "street protest" as our method of activism:

The anti-Prop 8 campaign was an exercise in frustration. What we're seeing now, straight out of Taking on the System, is brilliant. And the movement is spreading far beyond California's borders.

These nationwide protests are a watershed moment of sorts -- the moment when the gay community realized that it had the power to fight for change on its own, and didn't require any of it's so-called, self-appointed "leaders" to give them permission to engage. This isn't the first time a community has made that realization (and TOS is full of such examples), but it never fails to inspire me.

But what about the tactics -- the use of street protests themselves? It's no secret that I have a general disdain for the street act, but in my book, I don't call for their elimination -- I say they must be "reinvented". And indeed, the chapter "Reinvent the Street Protest" is full of great examples of .... street protests. I focus on the Jenna 6 protests, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, and the pro-immigration protests of a few years ago. The key to an effective protest effort is to have a clear message (no "free Mumia" bullshit), clear, achievable goal, and to make that protest effort part of a broader multimedia campaign. The protest can't be the goal in and of itself, rather, it's a tool in a broader toolbox.

In this case, these protests have served as a wakeup call to equality-minded people all over the country. It is an empowering act. But rather than people feeling they've done their part by marching for a few hours, I'm willing to bet that, just like here in California, the seeds were planted for further organizing all over the country. There is nothing more dangerous for the status quo (the "system") than people suddenly feeling empowered.

Markos is certainly on the cutting edge of using Web 2.0 tactics in organizing political campaigns. The challenge now will be to harness the energy built by the "Join the Impact" protests into a more focused political strategy. How to do this in the wake of clear, centralized message-builders? That's I guess the challenge for the coming months.

By Patrick Moberg via Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan is reporting what many of us feared: The US Government has not complied with legislation passed to lift the ban on travel for HIV-positive people. In fact, he's been told to leave the US for good by March:

The Bush administration has not yet lifted the regulation barring people with HIV from entering the United States, despite the law lifting the ban overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and signed by president Bush last July. Yesterday, they simply reiterated their previous plans to "streamline" the process, which, in fact, does nothing but make it more bureaucratically cumbersome for temporary visitors with HIV to enter the country as tourists or for conferences. They have done nothing to end the ban as the law clearly asked for.

As it currently stands, I will still be required to leave the US for good next March. And many more are in much worse straits. They say they will change the regs. And that it takes time. My guess is that it will take until after the election. But does anyone believe a Palin administration would make life any easier for people with HIV? For people with HIV, the Palin nomination should be terrifying.

He's damn right.

(Via Joe. My. God.)

Over the past few months, there has been an explosion of activity around the possibility of repealing the travel ban that blocks HIV-positive folks from traveling or immigrating to the United States. Britain-born Andrew Sullivan -- whose been openly Poz for many years now -- was one of the more vocal critics of the ban, which blocked him from getting a green card. He posted this celebratory message on his blog:

I'm not usually speechless but I'm ecstatic to report that the Senate just passed PEPFAR without the Sessions amendment, and Senator Biden, who managed the bill, just said they will probably avoid a conference with the House and send the bill forthwith to the president's desk. Barring some unforeseen event, the HIV Travel Ban - a relic of the days when HIV was a source of fear and stigma and terror - is finally over.

Obviously, the bigger achievement in PEPFAR is the funding for continued help for those with HIV and AIDS in the developing world - people whose plight is unimaginably worse than mine or so many others trapped by this HIV law. Bush's legacy in this is one for which he is rightly proud. But for those of us who have long dreamed of becoming Americans, and have been prevented by 1993 law from even being able to enter or leave the US without waivers or fear or humiliation, this is a massive burden lifted.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the happiest days of my whole life. For two and a half decades, I have longed to be a citizen of the country I love and have made my home. I now can. There is no greater feeling.

So the Senate passed it. Let's get it signed into law! Pronto!

It's about time that this country had a serious conversation about our nation's prohibition on HIV-positive people from entering the United States. Andrew Sullivan -- who is British by birth and unable to apply for US residency because he's poz -- just wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post arguing for the repeal of this ban. Sullivan writes:

It seems unthinkable that the country that has been the most generous in helping people with HIV should legally ban all non-Americans who are HIV-positive. But it's true: The leading center of public and private HIV research discriminates against those with HIV.

HIV is the only medical condition permanently designated in law -- in the Immigration and Nationality Act -- as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Even leprosy and tuberculosis are left to the discretion of the secretary of health and human services.

Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for countries with restrictive measures to eliminate these travel restrictions on Poz folks. He said:

Six decades after the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] was adopted, it is shocking that there should still be discrimination against those at high risk, such stigma attached to individuals living with HIV. This not only drives the virus underground, where it can spread in the dark; as important, it is an affront to our common humanity.

One of my most moving experiences as Secretary-General has been my meetings with the UN's own group of HIV-positive staff, UN Plus. They are wonderfully courageous and motivated people. I am determined to make the UN a model workplace in embracing them, and all our staff living with HIV.

In the world as a whole, I call for a change in laws that uphold stigma and discrimination – including restrictions on travel for people living with HIV.

As Sullivan and Greenwald point out, there are only TWELVE countries that prohibit entry to HIV positive folks: Armenia, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sudan, the United States and Yemen. Yes, that's right, we're on a very short list with those bastions of the human rights community, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Time for change, folks! Glenn Greenwald has a nice blog entry linking this ban on poz travelers to the State Department's hypocritical critiques of violations of human rights in Russia and Zimbabwe.

After a bit of channel surfing, I settled in tonight to watching the Molly Ringwald classic, Sixteen Candles. I was struck by how familiar the actor who played Jake looked, and so I hopped on IMDB to find out who played him. Apparently, it was Michael Shoeffling, who also co-starred in Longtime Companion, one of the first films to portray the way gay men were dealing with the epidemic.

Now, I'm not a sappy person. It's just not really in my nature. Anyone who knows me can attest to it. But damned if I don't start tearing up just seeing the title of that film. I can't explain my relationship to these early AIDS films (It's My Party and And the Band Played On also come to mind). I don't just cry - I bawl. I weep. What is it about these stories that makes me such a puddle of mess? Why do I connect to these stories of deep, painful loss - when I never experienced that kind of loss myself? I was born far too late to ever have friends die of AIDS in the way that these films depict - and the way that my older friends talk about. I came out in 1997, just a year after the introduction of protease inhibitors, and the beginning of the end of the AIDS crisis for urban gay men (for more on this deliniation, see my late mentor Eric Rofes' wonderful book, Dry Bones Breathe).

So what's up with my tears? I've been thinking about this a lot over the past three years --particularly after moving to San Francisco and having a dear friend test positive. In San Fran, the disease was much more tangible than it felt in North Carolina. I remember hearing people tell stories about the Castro being an amazing place to find bargains on art and antiques in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of all the garage sales that were constantly going on as more and more men died. I lived in the heart of that history: 17th Street and Noe. The middle of it all.

After having some time to reflect, I think I've narrowed it down to one key issue: I lament and resent the deaths of so many of the men who I wish were around today to mentor me. Where are the 40 to 50-something year old sex-positive gay men? All we seem to have left over are fucktards like Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile. Eric was one of the few radicals who had survived and remained HIV-negative - which makes his death from a heart attack last year all the more tragic. In his book I mentioned above, he speculates that it was his distaste for anal sex that kept him alive. Another mentor of mine similarly speculated that, had he not been abroad researching for his dissertation when AIDS hit, he would probably not have survived either. Both were highly sexually active, after all, and in those crucial early years nobody knew how to protect themselves.

So my theory goes something like this. Eric once mentioned to me before he passed away that he thought about 30% of gay men in San Francisco died from AIDS complications in the "crisis years" (1983 - 1995). While that's a giant chunk of the population, it's not enough to explain the lack of mentorship I feel in my life. But who were the men who were dying? Were they the ones with the more sexually radical politics - who were regulars at the local bathhouses and sex clubs - were they the ones more likely to test positive? Perhaps its a naive way to think, but I can't help but think that, yes, the guys who had my kind of sex politics were almost certainly the guys in the highest risk categories - and thus the ones more likely to test positive.

So this is my question: Did AIDS kill off the most sex-radical elements of my community? Or did the epidemic just make gay men more conservative in general? Because, sometimes - actually, almost all of the time - I wish there were guys out there in their 40s and 50s fighting the good fight. But it seems all we get are Dan Savage, Larry Kramer, Michelangelo Signorile, and Andrew Sullivan. If that isn't depressing, I don't know what is.

I miss Eric. So, so much.