The vicious campaign of hatred and terrorism against queers continues. In Hawaii, a pair of anti-gay attempted mass murderers were arraigned in May on charges of attempted murder and related offenses. The two men, one 19 and the other 18, from Kauai, attacked a campsite of gay men marked with a rainbow pride flag. They set fire to one tent in which two men were sleeping, poured kerosene on a second tent, and tried to run down several of the campers with their car.

Take action! Write your legislators supporting positive action against anti-gay hate crimes. If you can get out to Atlanta on September 15th, protest anti-gay bigotry by attending demonstrations against Focus on the Family’s homophobic Love Won Out conference.

Now that they no longer have a smiley-faced administration that will jerk their chains while not doing anything, a lot of gay advocate’s groups are finding out that community organizing is, in fact, a good idea [Advocate]. One of the sad things is how much mainstream liberal and left groups have lost the will to grassroots, community organizing. Conservatives, on the other hand, didn’t: throughout the Clinton Presidency they used the "liberal" administration in Washington as a smokescreen while hard Right-wing groups across the country used localized campaigns to push their agenda. A common tactic was to identify a single community facing a particular issue – such as a recently-enacted anti-discrimination bill, or the addition of an abortion clinic – and pour tons of money from all over the country into that one locale. Since local change inspires community activists, and sets precedents, it inevitably trickles up to the national level. It’s about time that more social justice groups started taking it local.

Speaking of which, the upcoming SURGE Conference will focus on developing local actions while maintaining a global perspective. Consider coming! I went last year, and it was a great experience; I plan to be going again this year.

Not content with having the homophobic Defense of Marriage Act enacted at the level of federal legislation, a Religious Right group called the Alliance for Marriage has proposed a strategy to enshrine a ban on gay marriage in the United States Constitution. Not only would the proposed amendment trample on states’ rights to enable gay marriage where they see fit, but it would also destroy all laws which give gay couples the equivalent privileges of marriage, such as Vermont’s Civil Unions law. Although I have deep reservations about the idea of gay marriage and want marriage-privilege abolished rather than extended to lesbian and gay male couples, we cannot stand for this kind of overt homophobia and discrimination being put into the highest law of the land. As long as State-recognized marriages exist, the government should not discriminate on the basis of gender or sexuality as to who can have them.

Take action! Sign a petition urging elected representatives to Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment Petition

For the in a stunning development file: a report from Human Rights Watch has found that harassment, violence, and bullying of gay adolescents in U.S. schools prevents millions of LGBT teenagers from receiving an adequate education. Many of the teens interviewed spend a significant amount of time just trying to figure out how to get to and from school without being harassed or assaulted; many others cut gym class to avoid being beaten up. When trying to get help from teachers or administrators they often were met with indifference or hostility; some even reported that faculty or administrators participated in the abuse.

This is not at all surprising, but it is atrocious. Not only are the direct effects of the abuse horrible, but it also leads to self-loathing and depression, which (among other things) impairs LGBT teens’ ability to learn, and leads to horrendous suicide rates amongst gay youth. Of the LGBT adolescents interviewed, about 36.1% had attempted suicide, versus 9.4% of str8 teens. Yet we know that we can easily reverse this: schools with gay-sensitive HIV training saw the rate of suicide attempts by LGBT students drop to 27.7% – still atrociously high, but a lot better. Schools where students organize Gay/Straight Alliances, where sex ed acknowledges queer sexualities and combats myths about them, and generally where queer youth and supporters of queer youth are visible and welcomed, can drastically change the horrendous environment that gay students go through today. Tragically, this kind of basic support is rarely seen, because school administrators and faculty are likely to be apathetic or hostile, and if they are supportive then they are likely to be bombarded by the Religious Right, which instantly sails in with its bullshit about the Gay Agenda and its neferious recruiting.

For further reading: GT 4/09/2001 anti-queer violence in Pennsylvania, GT 5/5/2001 the Religious Right’s attacks on gay students’ safety

Take Action! You can take action in support of LGBT youth right now at Human Rights Watch’s What You Can Do page and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network Action Center. For more on-the-ground organizing, Youth Resource and GLSEN provide information, resources, and support for organizing gay-supportive youth groups.

Whew! After half a year of hard work, Southern Girls Convention 2001 finally happened this past weekend in Auburn, Alabama. As you may have noticed from my extended absence, it was absolutely exhausting, long, hard work, but it was totally worth it. Over FIVE HUNDRED totally rad feminist women and boys came from all over the country (and Canada too!) for over 60 information-filled workshops, tables with all kinds of information, four music shows (including an outstanding hardcore show at Olde Auburn Ale House), and an amazing chance for community, networking, and meeting lots of rad kids from the South. Although as organizers we were constantly running around exhausted and dealing with crises, everyone told us that they had an amazing time and the positive feedback was more than enough to keep us going on vicarious great experiences.

Auburn hasn’t seen so much diversity or political consciousness in a long time. Queer punk girls were lounging outside of Foy Union, everyone from PIRG to SURGE to Planned Parenthood were hosting tables, and a group of Radical Cheerleaders coordinated a spontaneous march and took over the downtown Taco Bell in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ campaign for tomato pickers.

I can’t write here how challenging, exhausting, uniting, empowering, and wonderful the experience of organizing SGC2001 and carrying it through have been. But it’s been all that and more. I don’t want to organize any more conventions for a long time, but I am super-psyched about going to next year’s SGC and experiencing it from a participant’s-eye-view. I hope, I pray that SGC will be an on-going, transformative presence in the South for a long time to come.