“Let us be on the right side of history”: Secretary Clinton on LGBT Rights

President Obama today, International Human Rights Day, issued a presidential memorandum “directing all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.” In coordination, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a speech today that focused on the human rights of LGBT people—a speech that some LGBT advocates are already calling a “landmark.”

I think it’s well worth listening in full to Clinton’s speech—it’s as strong a statement for LGBT rights as I’ve ever heard, even as she acknowledges, “my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect.” A sample:

Finally, progress comes from being willing to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. We need to ask ourselves, “How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love? How would it feel to be discriminated against for something about myself that I cannot change?” This challenge applies to all of us as we reflect upon deeply held beliefs, as we work to embrace tolerance and respect for the dignity of all persons, and as we engage humbly with those with whom we disagree in the hope of creating greater understanding.

View the video at the State Department site. (It doesn’t seem to want to embed properly here, although it may once they have a YouTube version up.) Transcript (if you prefer to read the whole thing) after the jump. Read the rest of this post »

“Pregnant Butch” Takes a Comic Look at Pregnancy and Gender

You’re probably saying, “What would make this Monday morning just perfect is a new comic about a pregnant butch lesbian.”

What? You’re not? Well, you should be. Go check out A.K. Summers’ new comic/graphic tale, “Pregnant Butch” over at comic collective site Act-i-vate. It’s a funny, insightful, semi-autobiographical look at “a butch dyke enduring that most deeply feminizing of processes—pregnancy.” She’ll be serializing the 100-page comic at the rate of several pages per week, and hopes someday to find a print publisher. (Note: This is a comic of the grown-up variety.)

I had the pleasure of interviewing A.K. for my upcoming Mombian newspaper column, which should be appearing in papers this week. (Here it is in Bay Windows.) I’ll repost it here after the papers have it out. (If your local LGBT (or other) paper isn’t carrying my column, and you’d like them to, drop the editor a note and ask her or him to contact me. Much appreciated!)

In the meantime, go enjoy Pregnant Butch and marvel yet again at all of the many journeys we take to parenthood. (You can also find out more about A.K. at her personal site.)

The Power of Storytelling — and Retelling

At first, I ignored it when I saw a few people posting the Zach Wahls video again over the past few days. The Iowa college student with two moms had shot to viral fame last February when he spoke at an Iowa House hearing about a bill to ban marriage for same-sex couples. I’d posted not just the original video, but also his chat with Ellen and a conversation among him and his moms. I thought his apparent resurgence was really just a few people late to the party. (Heck, I think that old e-mail spam letter about the Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe still makes the rounds now and then.)

But what really happened was that MoveOn.org had reposted his original speech on November 30, with the headline, “Two Lesbians Raised A Baby And This Is What They Got.” The reposting generated over 600,000 Facebook shares, Likes, and comments in less than 24 hours, according to an e-mail they sent to supporters.

It brings to mind an old saying in the advertising business that a consumer needs to see an ad seven times before it will make an impression. Kudos to whoever at MoveOn.org thought to repost it. If nothing else, it should tell us the importance of telling our own stories—on our blogs, Facebook, Twitter, in print, and in person—and retelling them, even when we think they’ve been told before.

Storytelling lies at the heart of the human experience. It is something we expose our children to almost from birth, and cuts across time and cultures. Never underestimate the staying power—or the transformative power—of a good story.

(No political roundup this week. Not too much going on, post-holiday.)

World AIDS Day: Remembering the Children

Today marks World AIDS Day. HIV/AIDS continues to impact many people we know and many communities of which we are part. Since so many other LGBT sites are ably covering how it impacts the LGBT community, I want to do what I have done in previous years, and highlight some recent statistics about HIV/AIDS and children. The numbers, of course, don’t capture the personal stories—the parents who must watch their children die, and the children left orphaned—but the data is devastating in its own way.

According to 2010 UNAIDS estimates (via Avert):

• At the end of 2009, there were 2.5 million children [defined as those under 15 years of age] living with HIV around the world.
• An estimated 390,000 children became newly infected with HIV in 2010. [That's 15 percent less than in 2001, but five percent more than in 2009.]
• Of the 1.8 million people who died of AIDS during 2009, one in seven were children. Every hour, around 30 children die as a result of AIDS.
• There are more than 16 million children under the age of 18 who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
• Most children living with HIV/AIDS—almost 9 in 10—live in sub-Saharan Africa, the region of the world where AIDS has taken its greatest toll.

May today not be the only day we think of those affected, or try to do something to help them.