As AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis has reported, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is planning on protesting outside the DNC’s LGBT fund-raising event.
Just today, John reported that Lt. Col. Victor Ferenbach announced on The Rachel Maddow Show that he will be attending the White House event as a guest of SLDN.
Now, John “opines“:
It should be interesting to see which gay leaders the Obama White House blacklists for next Monday’s big gay bash to, ironically, commemorate the kind of gays who, if they were around today, would likely be on that blacklist. (I’ve already heard of three big gay groups reportedly being snubbed).
So, the group that is protesting at the DNC event is being invited to the White House — but there’s a secret “blacklist” out there? If not the active opponents, I’d call it a pretty poorly put-together example of a blacklist.
As my high-school chemistry teacher used to say, “‘Splain, please.”
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
I, for one, am beginning to seriously question Aravosis’ mental health. What “blacklist”? Is the White House really going to invite a bunch of bomb throwers to their celebration? People are good conscience (in the movement) can disagree on timing, tactics, and strategies. All I’m seeing from Americablog and other post-Prop 8 hysterics is division and name-calling. I sincerely hope that this episode will lead people to abandon Americablog as many did following his throwing trans people under the bus in 2007.
Careful Chris. Its beginning to look like you have a vendetta against Aravosis
Wait… what do you mean – Aravosis threw trans people under the bus in 2007? What’s the story there?
Aravosis did not stand with trans people in having gender identity included in ENDA as a prohibited ground for discrimination. This would have been enough to piss off some people, but as we’re seeing is characteristic of him, he decided to go much further and talk about how “the transgender revolution was thrust upon gay people,” which a lot of people took issue with as a misrepresentation of the movement’s history.
Aravosis not only failed to stand up for including gender identity in ENDA; he also made some unpleasant (and possibly inaccurate) statements about how trans people were intruders (”thrust upon) and late-comers to the movement.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/3156/
Aravosis was a strong advocate of excluding trans people from the protections offered by ENDA in 2007. If it was just an honest disagreement about tactics, it would have been unfortunate, but less of a big deal. But Aravosis made his case in unambiguously transphobic terms, essentially claiming that trans people weren’t really part of the larger movement for queer equality, repeating some ugly stereotypes about trans people, and invoking right-wing talking points in the process.
If you want a more recent example of Aravosis’s issues with including the “T” in LGBT, check out this post where he refers to the addition of gender identity as a prohibited ground for discriminating against federal employees as “an important step for the transgender community,” and then goes back to complaining about incest and pedophilia in the same post. Aravosis just doesn’t see transpeople as part of the same movement to stop making sex/gender the be-all and end-all of human existence, even though transpeople are on the front lines of it.
David, look here at this blatantly transphobic piece on Salon by John Aravosis from October 2007.
Here’s the most blatant paragraph in which he argues that he’s got nothing in common with trans people:
I have a sense that over the past decade the trans revolution was imposed on the gay community from outside, or at least above, and thus it never stuck with a large number of gays who weren’t running national organizations, weren’t activists, or weren’t living in liberal gay enclaves like San Francisco and New York. Sure, many of the rest of us accepted de facto that transgendered people were members of the community, but only because our leaders kept telling us it was so. A lot of gays have been scratching their heads for 10 years trying to figure out what they have in common with transsexuals, or at the very least why transgendered people qualify as our siblings rather than our cousins. It’s a fair question, but one we know we dare not ask. It is simply not p.c. in the gay community to question how and why the T got added on to the LGB, let alone ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman. I’m not passing judgment, I respect transgendered people and sympathize with their cause, but I simply don’t get how I am just as closely related to a transsexual (who is often not gay) as I am to a lesbian (who is). Is it wrong for me to simply ask why?
Emphasis mine — that particular phrasing is highly, highly offensive to trans people, and displays huge amounts of cissexism and transphobia.
I don’t know why any trans people would ever listen to Aravosis — he told us to get the fuck out of “his” movement (apparently in AmericaBlogReality, Sylvia Rivera never existed), so I am amazed that intelligent trans people and cis queer allies are listening to this very bigoted man.
Wolf,
Reasoned criticism = vendetta? Let me guess, you’re also a believer that Paul Krugman has Bush Derangement Syndrome?
Many others deserve critisim more than Aravois. Hmmmm Joe Solomese? The HRC? Perhaps. Where Arvois is a reactionary at least he does something unlike the dew I have mentioned.
Where has Joe Solomonese or the HRC engaged in massive misrepresentations to the point that they have misled Congressmen? (As Aravosis’s BS about incest and pedophilia forced Rep. Frank into an embarrassing back-pedaling once he read the Smelt brief for himself.) Moreover, the national gay leadership already gets plenty of criticism from within the movement, whereas prominent liberal gay bloggers mostly are criticized only from outside (and why would I believe anything National Review’s Corner has to say?).
You seem to be judging people based on how worked up they can get, rather than by the accuracy of their statements. I freely admit that Aravosis “does something” about influencing people to believe falsehoods; I just disagree that this is in any way beneficial to achieving equality. Having Aravosis appear in a leadership role, and letting his statements (not just the lies, but also the religious bigotry) go uncriticized, sets the movement up to lose support from those who do not wish to associate with Aravosis’s ilk. Serious, reasonable and well-founded criticism within a movement is a sign of health, not weakness.
Agreed…folks like him will lead us in a hole