Making them do the right thing: Sherry Wolf speaks on the state of the movement

IN THE months since the National Equality March, when more than 200,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in October 2009, the LGBT movement has experienced some disorientation.

Believing that progress was imminent because of President Obama’s speech expressing solidarity with the struggle for civil rights the night before, some assumed their mobilizing work could pause and wait for the results to roll in.

Surely, many felt, at least the costly “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military, which has led to the dismissal of more than 420 gay and lesbian servicepeople in the last year alone, would be repealed amid two wars and occupations.

Of all the reforms around LGBT issues, this one seems like a no-brainer. The last Gallup poll on this issue shows that 69 percent of all Americans approve ditching this butter-churn of a social policy. Even 58 percent of Republicans think gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly while acting in the interests of oil and empire.

Gen. Colin Powell, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who advocated the policy in 1993 under Bill Clinton, has called for its repeal, as have the current Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chair Adm. Michael Mullen.

And yet the best the Obama administration has been able to muster is a new policy against anonymous outings–supposedly a more humane way of implementing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

What gives?

The fact remains that without continued mass pressure from movement activists, we aren’t going to see significant gains for LGBT people. It’s a conclusion that ever-larger numbers of activists are drawing.

In March, nearly 300 activists gathered in Chicago for the first of the regional gatherings for the national grassroots network Equality Across America (EAA). Around 400 more attended a similar conference in Boston, where issues of history, strategy and tactics for LGBT activists and their allies were hammered out.

After the Chicago conference, more than 100 people joined a national EAA conference call to share ideas and plot local actions, including civil disobedience, for the Harvey Milk Day week of actions–beginning with International Day Against Homophobia on May 17 and ending with the anniversary of Milk’s birthday on May 22.

When it was announced in early March that repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” would be put off at least until the end of the year, rather than being a setback for the movement, activists were outraged and remotivated.

Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran who outed himself on the Rachel Maddow show last year, chained himself to the White House fence in protest with two others, and was arrested. On the same day, a handful of activists with GetEqual sat in and were arrested in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, demanding passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

A week after his arrest, Choi was back on Maddow’s show, rightly dismissing the meager tweaks to the military’s policy, designed to cover for the fact that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is still in place. “It misses the point entirely,” Choi said. “It enforces closetedness and shame and lying and deception…The ball is still in his [Obama's] court, and we need to see action…I am somebody and I deserve full equality.” [READ MORE]