8 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE FEBRUARY 11, 1994

EDITORIAL

And the film played on

There continues to be a media-incited uproar about Joel Hyatt and his handling of the Clarence Cain case. The Chronicle, at this stage of the political season, is not about to choose sides in the Senate race. But we must speak out about the unfair exposure Hyatt is getting, much of it only because Philadelphia is the hot movie of the moment.

We are now over ten years into the AIDS epidemic. Clarence Cain is not the first person to be fired from his job because he has AIDS or is gay. In fact, it is happening all the time, even as we speak. Some people see "the real Philadelphia" as an incident showing Hyatt's lack of character. But Hyatt did nothing less than many other people did in 1987. His character is in showing how he now handles it differently because he has learned from his mistakes.

If this is really such a big issue, where was the outrage in 1987? Where were the editorials, outraged columnists and CNN features then? There were none, because nobody cared then, and to be honest, not enough people care now.

The irony of this whole debate, tearing down Hyatt, and our need to defend him, is that both Democratic candidates are on the same side of this issue. Mary Boyle has

been working on behalf of people with AIDS since 1987. She learned much sooner than Hyatt that people with AIDS are not a threat and need to be afforded the same dignity that all people deserve. Boyle was striving to make sure no one working for Cuyahoga County was fired because they had AIDS at the same time that Hyatt was firing Cain. The lesson is the same; some people learn it later.

As for the Republican candidates, said to be behind the sudden interest in Cain's firing, that party's record on AIDS and gay issues at the time was-and still is-a national shame.

This issue is not a campaign issue and we call on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, to stop using the bodies of our friends to win an election!

If you really want to be outraged about AIDS and homophobia then let's ACT UP about all the gay men who die totally abandoned by their parents for being gay. Let's ACT UP about the government which still won't acknowledge or help the thousands of gay men who die from this disease. Let's ACT UP about the new safer-sex TV spots that feature heterosexuals when the most atrisk group is gay men. Let's ACT UP about

the Cleveland man who was so closeted by his fear of homophobia that he died of "cancer" and his lover of 12 years stood in the back of the church during the funeral.

Those that are so upset about Clarence, should also be upset about Larry, Linus, Mark, Steve, Fred, Charlie, Galen, Michael, Andy, Paul... And what about the survivors? We should be outraged about a generation of 30 and 40 year old people who read the obituaries every day. A group whose every conversation is about who has died recently. A group that has been to more funerals than their parents have. A group that does not even have time to grieve properly for one friend before another dies. Let's talk about what it is like to watch your best friend for signs of illness, worried that your time with him is so limited. Let's really be upset about things that matter now, today.

Joel Hyatt isn't the first person to fire someone for being gay or having AIDS, and he won't be the last. Hopefully whoever our next senator is will work as hard as the incumbent, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, to assure equal rights for all people regardless of disability or sexual orientation, and regardless of what movie Hollywood is currently peddling.

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Volume 9, Issue 16

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Blacks and gays: healing the great divide

by Barbara Smith

Perhaps the most maddening question anyone can ask me is "Which do you put first: being black or being a woman, being black or being gay?” The underlying assumption is that I should prioritize one of my identities because one of them is actually more important than the rest or that I have been forced to choose one of them over the others for the sake of acceptance in one particular community.

I always explain that I refuse to do political work and more importantly live my life in this way. All of the aspects of who I am are essential, indivisible, and pose no inherent conflict. They only seem to be in opposition in this particular time and place, living under U.S. capitalism, a system whose functioning has always required that large groups of people be economically, racially, and sexually oppressed and that these potentially dissident groups be kept divided from each other at all costs.

As a black lesbian feminist I've devoted many years to making the connections between issues and communities and to forging strong working coalitions. Although this work is far from finished, it has met with some success. In 1993, however, two essential aspects of my identity and two communities whose freedom I've always fought for are being publicly defined as being at war with one another.

For the first time, the relationship between the African American and gay communities is being widely debated both within and outside of movement circles. One catalyst for this discussion has been gay leaders cavalierly comparing lifting the military ban with racially desegregating the armed forces following World War II. The NAACP and other black civil rights organizations' decisions to speak out in favor of lesbian and gay rights and to support the March on Washington have met with protests from some sectors of the black community and have also spurred the debate.

Ironically, the group of people who are least often consulted about their perspectives on this great divide are those who are most deeply affected by it: black lesbian and gay activists. Contradictions that we

have been grappling with for years, namely homophobia in the black community, racism in the gay community, and the need for both communities to work together as allies to defeat our real enemies are suddenly on other people's minds. Because black lesbians and gays are not thought of as leaders in either movement, however, this debate has been largely framed by those who have frighteningly little and inaccurate information.

Thanks in part to the white gay community's own public relations campaigns, black Americans view the gay community as uniformly wealthy, highly privileged, and politically powerful, a group that has suffered nothing like the centuries of degradation caused by U.S. racism. Rev. Dennis Kuby, a civil rights activist, states in a letter to the New York Times: "Gays are not subject to water hoses and police dogs, denied access to lunch counters, or prevented from voting." Most blacks have no idea, however, that we are constantly threatened with the loss of employment, of housing, and custody of our children, and are subjected to violence ranging from verbal abuse, to gay bashing, and death at the hands of homophobes. Kuby's statement also does not acknowledge those lesbians and gays who have been subjected to all of the racist abuses he cites, because we are both black and gay.

Because we are rendered invisible in both black and gay contexts, it is that much easier for the black community to oppose gay rights and to express homophobia without recognizing that these attacks and the lack of legal protections affects its own members.

The racism that has pervaded the mainstream gay movement only fuels the perceived divisions between blacks and gays. Single issue politics, unlike gay organizing that is consciously and strategically connected to the overall struggle for social and economic justice, do nothing to convince blacks that gays actually care about eradicating racial oppression. At the very same time that some gays make blanket comparisons between the gay movement and the black civil rights movement, they also assume that black and other people of color

have won all our battles and are in terrific shape in comparison with gays.

In an interview in the Dallas Voice (December, 1992), lesbian publisher Barbara Grier states: "We are the last minority group unfairly legislated against in the U.S." Grier's perception is of course inaccurate. Legislation that negatively affects people of color, immigrants, disabled people, and women occurs every day, especially when court decisions that undermine legal protections are taken into account.

In 1991, well before the relationship between the gay community and the black community was a hot topic, Andrew Sullivan, editor of The New Republic asserted the following in the Advocate:

"The truth is, our position is far worse than that of any ethnic minority or heterosexual women.

"Every fundamental civil right has already been granted to these groups: The issues that they discuss now involve nuances of affirmative action, comparable pay, and racial quotas. Gay people, however, still live constitutionally in the South of the '50s...

"We are not allowed to marry-a right granted to American blacks even under slavery and never denied to heterosexuals. We are not permitted to enroll in the armed services a right granted decades ago to blacks and to heterosexual women.

"Our civil rights agenda, then, should have less to do with the often superfluous minority politics of the 1991 Civil Rights Act and more to do with the vital moral fervor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"A better strategy to bring about a society more tolerant of gay men and women would involve dropping our alliance with the current Rainbow Coalition lobby and recapturing the clarity of the original civil rights movement. The point is to rekindle the cause of Martin Luther King Jr. and not to rescue the career of Jesse Jackson."

Sullivan's cynical distortions ignore that quality of life is determined by much more than legislation. Clearly, he also knows nothing about the institution of slavery. Joblessness, poverty, racist and sexist violence, and the lack of decent housing, health care, and education make the lives of many

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"ethnic minorities" and "heterosexual women" a living hell. But Sullivan doesn't care about these folks. He just wants to make sure he gets what he thinks he deserves as an upper class white male.

Lesbians and gay men of color have been trying to push the gay movement to grasp the necessity of anti-racist practice for nigh onto twenty years. Except in the context of organizing within the women's movement with progressive white lesbian feminists, we haven't made much progress.

I'm particularly struck by the fact that for the most part queer theory and queer politics, which are currently so popular, offer neither substantial anti-racist analysis nor practice. Queer activists' understanding of how to deal with race is usually limited to their including a few lesbians or gay men of color in their ranks, who are expected to carry out the political agenda that the white majority has already determined, or to their sleeping with people of color.

Last October Lesbian Avengers from New York City traveled to several states in the Northeast on what they called a "Freedom Ride." Lesbians of color from Albany, New York, pointed out that the appropriation of this term was offensive because the organization had not demonstrated involvement in anti-racist organizing and had made no links with people of color, including non-lesbians and gays in the communities they planned to visit. Even when we explained that calling themselves "freedom riders" might negatively affect the coalitions we've been working to build with people of color in Albany, the group kept the name and simply made a few token changes in their press release.

These divisions are particularly dangerous at a time when the white right wing has

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