Tracy Baim2013-06-20T00:12:31-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=tracy-baimCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Tracy BaimGood old fashioned elbow grease.Obama: Four More Yearstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20096332012-10-26T23:55:00-04:002012-12-26T05:12:01-05:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
While Democrats may not have all the answers, and while they certainly have many of the same conflicts of interest when it comes to regulating industries that donate heavily to their campaigns, the Republican Party has no moral standing when it comes to fiscal issues.
If you are an LGBT person voting for Romney based on his sound economic plans, this is a fallacy in search of a nonexistent savior. The truth is that it's going to take a lot of very smart economic advisors, and some cross-party cooperation, to make true change. And given how beholden Romney will be to his "cut taxes on the 1 percent" base, there won't be compromise coming from him.
Let's set aside red-herring issues that are being used to distract from the true differences between the two main presidential tickets this election. Romney has morphed so many times in this election that whiplash set in long ago, even in the primaries. If someone is voting for Romney based on his policies, they are lying to themselves as much as Romney is lying to the public. He makes a comment one day and takes it back the next, sometimes within hours. As soon as his handlers (donors) text him, he snaps back in line.
What we can base our vote on is someone's actions, and as an LGBT American, I have watched Obama become the most pro-LGBT president in our nation's history, at the same time stopping one war and winding down another, ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden, passing health care reform, and coping with an oil spill, an economy in collapse and a Congress that is filled with obstructionists who put their party (and Grover Norquist) first.
Obama has certainly made mistakes (Guantanamo, Bradley Manning, drones, etc.), and has not yet followed through on some of his 2008 promises. No one occupying the White House will match all our ideals.
But make no mistake: There has never been a president who has been as supportive of LGBT issues. And LGBT issues are not just about our community; these administrative and legislative changes do have a much wider impact on society. And mainstream issues also benefit LGBTs (for example, health care reform helps people with HIV/AIDS and other preexisting conditions).
Focusing just on the larger LGBT issues, Obama has done more for this community than every previous president combined. Some say that's because our community is stronger now, but that is naïve. If John McCain had been elected, "don't ask, don't tell" would still be in place, there would be no federal hate crimes legislation, McCain would still be defending the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts, his Supreme Court picks would have been far different, and he would not have made nearly as many openly LGBT appointments.
Obama's list of changes is impressive and too long to present here. When I wrote my book Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage in 2010, he had already made significant progress on the LGBT agenda. In 2012 there are certainly more things we want (especially the Employment Non-Discrimination Act), but I don't see how any LGBT person, or our allies, could say that Obama does not deserve our support based on his legislative, administrative and even personal progress on LGBT issues. It was great that he came out for marriage equality this year (moving back to his 1996 position he stated to my newspaper), but even prior to that, Obama's first term saw monumental accomplishments for LGBT rights.
LGBT issues are American issues, but we know that they are not the only issues that matter. However, they can be a litmus test for politicians who claim to be for equality but hesitate or step back when it comes to the more difficult decisions. Romney has backed off any remnant of his minimally moderate past. He will have no backbone to stand up to the right wing of his party once elected, as he has proven time and again during the campaign.
So those who are leaning Romney, and those who are still undecided, ask yourself who you want to direct the next four years of your life. Someone who is beholden to Karl Rove and his right-wing billionaires, someone who gets reprimanded in the Oval Office by its true owners if he strays from the party line? Or someone who has handled himself with an amazing consistency these past four years, someone who is calm and purposeful, moving our arc of justice forward, not backward? Someone who is human and fallible -- but consistent, practical and reliable?
While my publication, Windy City Times, does not endorse in any elections (we leave that up to our readers to decide), I personally support Barack Obama for president of the United States. I have studied him since 1996, and I have watched him do what he says, even when the tasks are very hard (eliminating DADT was a herculean effort). He has more to do, and he deserves more time to complete his agenda.
Four more years.
Tracy Baim is co-founder and publisher of Windy City Times. She is the author ofObama and the Gays: A Political Marriageand the upcoming Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America.]]>LGBT 101: Chicago Legacy Project Launchestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19391902012-10-04T12:08:00-04:002012-12-04T05:12:01-05:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
Imagine going through grammar school and high school not learning one thing about the history of your people. Not learning about the scientists, artists, astronauts, politicians, sports legends, and so many others who were just like you.
That happens even in 2012, even in places as progressive as Chicago. For the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, history is a hit-or-miss educational adventure. Sure, we see gay culture splashed across the small screen on a daily basis now. What used to be freak shows on the talk shows has turned into a Modern Family smorgasbord of LGBT lives. While not very diverse (usually they are very white and middle-class), they still represent a major step forward from the recent dark ages of public culture.
But because most LGBTs grow up in families that are not like us, we don't get the LGBT 101 basics we need to more fully understand where we come from, and what our place in the world can be. Television provides the window dressing, but without historical context, one could get the impression that we were all cut from the same cloth: reality-show bimbos, talk-show hosts, and gays jumping to enter the suburban-married-two-parent ideal for some Americans.
We are so much more. The LGBT community is about as diverse as you could imagine. And because we are not learning about the accomplishments of LGBTs in the classroom, at least on any significant scale, the self-esteem of our youth is left damaged.
Thankfully, California has made a big step forward on this topic, adding LGBT issues into the curriculum. Because they are such a large public school system, they can help influence the educational process across the country. But it is going to take a major 50-state effort to make sure no child is left behind when it comes to inclusion of the vast diversity of our lives.
Teaching about these issues has been controversial ever since people started to come out in large numbers in the U.S. Teachers have been targeted for witch hunts, and still many of them fear for their jobs if they even talk about their own relationships in the same way a heterosexual teacher might mention a spouse. Even more difficult for them is integrating LGBT issues naturally into their coursework, for fear of parents protesting.
Teaching about this history is important for LGBT youth, who often have very little support at home. But it would actually be presenting a more accurate history. Right now, by not talking about the full lives of our historical figures, school curricula are actually participating in a lie.
On Oct. 11 in Chicago, The Legacy Project (TLP) is taking one giant step forward to help educate all people, including LGBT youth, about the pioneers who came before them. Some were out in life, others were only discussed as LGBT posthumously. TLP has created The Legacy Walk, a public display of plaques on the North Halsted Street rainbow pylons. In its first dedication, they are presenting 18 plaques honoring a diverse array of national and international people who should be found in any history book. And the fact is, most of them are in the history books -- but not as their complete selves.
The brainchild and passion of gay activist Victor Salvo, his Legacy Project dream has taken years to fulfill. He has met with hundreds of academics, historians, politicians, business groups, and others to create a project that will be the first of its kind in the world. Chicago is used to firsts on LGBT issues: Henry Gerber started the first known U.S. gay organization in 1920s Chicago -- and was promptly fired from his job.
The plaques dedicated on Oct. 11 will be just a start. There are many more people TLP expects to honor over the years. But here are just a few you can see unveiled next week:
There are of course thousands of other pioneers who could be so honored, and plaques are just one way to make sure our histories are not forgotten. But this is one important step toward recognizing the complete personhood of these historical figures.
The Legacy Walk Inaugural Dedication is Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012, National Coming Out Day. There is a VIP reception at 2 p.m. at Sidetrack bar, followed by a tented outdoor ceremony from 3 to 4:15 p.m., the dedication reveal at 4 p.m. and a reception at 4:30 p.m. See legacyprojectchicago.org.
For more details, click here, and for a downloadable map, click here.]]>Chick-fil-A: Losing Chickens, Winning Warstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17474182012-08-06T15:08:52-04:002012-10-06T05:12:17-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/New York Times on December 17, 1963.
We've come a long way, gaybies, and the Chick-fil-A insanity of last week is not going to send us back to the dark ages of human sexuality and gender identity.
In the midst of the chicken slaughter of 2012, I have been plowing through hundreds of pre-Stonewall articles about the "homophile" movement. I'm finishing a book about gay newspaper history, Gay Press, Gay Power. The straight media victimized, criminalized, medicalized and demonized us -- and if we were lucky, they just left us alone.
The positive coverage was so few and far between that generations of LGBTs grew up thinking they were alone, without role models -- except those fired as "perverts" by our federal government, or those arrested in bar raids.
Well, you can't say the media is ignoring us any more. And very few of them demonize us.
The mainstream media coverage of the gay community started to really shift during the early years of the AIDS crisis. Many gays were fed up with the homophobia and AIDSphobia, and fought back in huge protests against the media. Anti-media protests really started in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s the community was much stronger. AIDS was a final straw, and out of that anger many new groups were formed to fight media bias.
By the 1990s, with more journalists coming out of the closet, thanks in part to the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, the mainstream media kept moving along to better coverage.
The media is now produced by a new generation of reporters and talking heads that actually include some openly LGBT people. They know homophobia when they see it, and most of them are on our side. Yes, there are some outliers, those who simply choose to stereotype and present biased views of who gay people are.
What happened last week is our community lost the message because our allies spoke on our behalf (seeking a ban on the restaurants in Chicago and elsewhere). That was a tactical mistake from well-meaning supporters. I can't blame them for this, and it did do some damage. But that damage is offset by our momentum.
What was more disappointing than our allies making a mistake was our lack of leadership on this issue by those paid to "run" the official national gay movement. There was mostly silence from the top, and this created a vacuum to be filled by a wide range of responses, most of them uncoordinated and ineffective. But some responses were deliciously fun, and humor proved to be the best medicine to those of us watching in horror at the lines of homophobia.
The good news is that it doesn't really matter that we have no true leaders. In fact, the lack of leadership in our movement means that we are like "Whack-a-Mole." You can go after one of us, but we are ready with thousands more ready to fight back.
Finally, to my friends who were so depressed at the rare outward display of bigotry -- the pride these anti-gays showed in kill-a-chicken-for-hate-day -- I would say that this is simply the manifestation of the hate we all know exists beneath the surface.
This was a chance for our allies, those who are that silent majority who do not see and experience this hate against us as much as we do, to see it for what it is. It is a chance to put a face to the hate we talk about over Thanksgiving dinner, the hate we allude to when we fear for our homeless LGBT youth, the hate that is so theoretical and unreal to our allies -- until they see it on CNN and MSNBC, manifested in the lines for a chicken sandwich.
It's the same thing I say when Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church klan show up at pride events and funerals. The hate is real, and sometimes it is very helpful to put a face to it, so that our allies will work harder to keep the arc of justice moving in our favor.
Tracy Baim is publisher of Windy City Times and editor of the upcoming book Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America. ]]>Chick-fil-A: The Right to Be Stupid and Offensivetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17084662012-07-27T23:16:00-04:002012-09-26T05:12:33-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
I respect Chicago Ald. Proco Joe Moreno immensely for his courage in trying to fight the bias of Chick-fil-A by stopping them from building in his ward. I also applaud Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino for their comments against the chain. I have a list of other anti-gay companies if you feel like making more public statements about homophobia, and I would also appreciate your lobbying for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in Congress. But it is time we step back and assess what is the correct way to respond to Chick-fil-A's corporate bile.
Imagine if the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter existed in the 1950s and 1960s:
@RosaParks: "These ignorant #racists need to learn manners. I am sitting right here, right now. #BoycotttheMontgomerybuses!"
@Greensboro: "This #Woolworth lunch counter is going to be occupied NOW. Come on down to join in."
Then everyone spread the news on your social networks. Add in a mix of politicians joining each side of the bandwagon, racists throwing sticks and stones, religious groups justifying separate water fountains, and the list goes on.
This may have caused even wonderful, rational people to perhaps go beyond what the legal response would be, just to please their constituents. In order to confront the bigots, they may have stooped to their level. In fact, many people on both sides did resort to dramatic response, and some on the right side of history gave their lives for justice.
But the best answer to the Woolworth company's racism in the U.S. South was to sit-in and protest, not to deny them the right to exist. If a company is racist or sexist in its hiring or service, then the answer is to sue them -- and to picket, boycott, and spread the word.
Windy City Times has been covering the bigotry of Chick-fil-A for more than 12 years. Our first report was Feb. 9, 2000. Our news coverage:
If you're a guy who likes to wear an earring, don't bother applying for work at any of the nation's 850 Chick-fil-A restaurants, the founder and chairman of the company said Jan. 31, reports The Mobile Register. "If a man's got an earring in his ear and he applies to work at one of my restaurants, we won't even talk to him," S. Truett Cathy said after a speech to more than 300 people at the University of Mobile. After the lecture, Cathy was asked if he would hire gay people at his fast-food restaurants. He hesitated, then said, "It depends on the circumstances." That means he would have to consider the applicant's appearance, history and reputation, he said.
There was more where that came from, but somehow the most recent comments by Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy were what set off a firestorm. Cathy told the Baptist Press his goal is to operate the fast-food chain "on Biblical principles." He said the company had an established position against marriage equality.
Let us set aside for now the comments about the Bible that they use as a crutch, despite the really horrible stuff the Bible sanctions (slavery), and despite the fact that the meat lover's paradise is likely not following the Bible's food preparation and serving instructions.
If the company follows the law, they should be allowed to exist. I do have some questions about whether they indeed are operating within the law. For example, does their corporate policy discriminate against potential gay franchise owners? If it does, there should be a lawsuit (not that any gays would want to buy in now). Does the corporate culture result in discrimination in hiring or service? If so, then by all means sue.
Chick-fil-A has the right to follow a Bible that authorizes the killing of children who talk back to their parents. They just can't actually do that. They have a right to oppose same-sex marriage -- and I am really glad that they are boasting about it, because many company leaders feel the same way but hide their positions. That means our gay dollars go to haters and we don't even know it.
We absolutely can't have a religious or moral litmus test for getting a business license. Because in the past (or a potential future), that would mean some LGBT businesses might not qualify.
So go on, Chick-fil-A, act like the sky is falling just because two people want equal access to marriage. But watch out if you step over any legal lines in franchise rights, hiring, or service.
In the meantime, my friends and I will flock to another restaurant.]]>Anderson Cooper and Journalism 101: The Myth of Objectivitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16461262012-07-03T11:44:00-04:002012-09-02T05:12:16-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
The myth of some level of journalist objectivity is quite old-fashioned. In my journalism-school days (1980 to 1984), I knew it was an impossible achievement, and that the main goal was to acknowledge your bias and try to do your best to get all sides of a story. I was an out lesbian back then and did not see much of a future for myself in journalism. I had been warned, nicely, that I likely would not fit into the mainstream media.
Anderson Cooper had many reasons for not officially coming out of the closet as a gay man during his first decades in the news business, but I think one of the most overriding was his fear that he would not be taken seriously as a journalist, nor seen as "objective" when doing reports, if he was a "gay journalist."
This is why it was so important that he come out, not just because it shows that he is not ashamed of being gay, though that is very important, but because of these powerful, and mistaken, myths that a straight person can be more objective than a gay person, a white person can be more objective than a person of color, a man more objective than a woman, and so on. This fallacy has kept down many great journalists. There were reporters who were out of the closet and therefore not allowed to cover gay stories. Is someone who is straight (or closeted) any better able to cover a gay story? Every reporter has a long list of bias points. It is time we shatter this notion that being part of a minority group means you should not be able to cover that group.
As a side note, I also want to comment on a pervasive question: If an LGBT person can hide, should he or she do so? As a wealthy white man, Anderson Cooper had the option, but many others do not. Women and people of color usually can't hide these traits (though some have "passed" as white and/or male, at great emotional expense). It is very important that we as a community not use this ability to "hide," not just for our own community's sake but for our own, personal sake. The closet is damaging to those on both sides.
As a lesbian journalist working in LGBT newspapers since 1984, I have witnessed a tremendous shift in how LGBT people in the media have been welcomed. Back then, working in gay media was almost a death knell to one's journalism career. Now it can be a stepping stone. Back then, the mainstream media looked down on journalists in gay media as biased. Well, they may still do this, but there is more respect and attention, and even awards and associations that welcome the diversity of alternative media.
The myth of objectivity is also not some philosophical debate; it actually can cause damage. Finding the truth of a story does not always mean that the two sides, or all sides, are equal. Wikipedia features an interesting example of the goal of objectivity going too far:
Another example of an objection to objectivity, according to communication scholar David Mindich, was the coverage that the major papers (most notably the New York Times) gave to the lynching of thousands of African Americans during the 1890s. News stories of the period often described with detachment the hanging, immolation and mutilation of people by mobs. Under the regimen of objectivity, news writers often attempted to balance these accounts by recounting the alleged transgressions of the victims that provoked the lynch mobs to fury. Mindich argues that this may have had the effect of normalizing the practice of lynching.
These days I think we can agree that blaming the victim of a lynching would be objectivity gone wild. But there are still examples of the media quoting people with anti-gay views as a way to seem objective on a story about gay marriage. I don't know when the moment came and went, but at some point there was enough acceptance of interracial marriage that the media stopped quoting racists on that issue, with no sense of having failed in the quest for balance.
I understand that a mainstream paper has a different audience than a gay paper, but at some point anti-gay sources, racist sources, sexist sources, and the like present a dilemma for those who seek more than some unattainable "objectivity" but the truth. There will always be someone on the "other side" of most issues, including those who argue that the Earth is flat, that the ozone layer is fine, and that Obama is not an American. But are all these sources equal?
I welcome Anderson Cooper into this new society of openly gay journalists wading through the murky pool of new journalism, where we strive to tell stories with as much skill as we can, knowing that there is no way to please all viewers or readers, but that we can try to do the best stories we can, based on our whole selves.
Tracy Baim is co-founder and publisher ofWindy City Times.]]>Back Story: Obama's 360 on Marriage Equalitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15211832012-05-17T20:07:00-04:002012-07-17T05:12:20-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
I (right) and my partner, Jean Albright, a 20-year Air Force veteran who is director of new media for Windy City Media Group, held a private wedding April 28 in Chicago. We have been together 18 years. We did not register as a civil union in Illinois, out of protest over the unequal treatment of LGBT couples. Mona Noriega, director of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, led the ceremony. Also pictured is David Strzepek, who was among those standing for the ceremony. Photo by Hal Baim.
Barack Obama returned back to his 1996 view on same-sex marriage last week, but this time he did so as president of the United States. In an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, Obama confirmed that he has "evolved" on the issue and personally backs same-sex marriage. While he said the issue is for the states to handle, which disappointed some, the fact is that Obama can't regulate what states do, and it will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal district courts to decide the application of federal laws that force states to recognize other states' contracts, including on marriage.
Obama's revolution back to his 1996 view, stated in a response to an Outlines newspaper candidate questionnaire (Outlines purchased and merged with Windy City Times in 2000), was part personal and part practical. In 1996, when he was first running for the Illinois state senate, Obama said he would support same-sex marriage and fight any efforts to limit it; this was in light of the then-new plans for "defense of marriage" state and federal laws.
At the core, Obama actually never changed his view that same-sex couples should have the same rights and benefits as those given to opposite-sex couples. What changed after 1996 was a slow move away from the word "marriage." In 1998, again surveyed by Outlines, he took no position on the topic of same-sex marriage. In 2004, when he was running for U.S. Senate, Obama told me in an interview for Windy City Times that he supported civil unions and all the benefits and rights of marriage for LGBT couples, but not the use of the word "marriage," because it was a more realistic and practical goal to have. By the general election that year, Obama first injected religion into the argument.
This is pretty much where he has stayed ever since, using a religious excuse as a basis for keeping the word "marriage" out of the debate, while remaining in favor of the rights and benefits. But that practical, academic approach was never going to be enough, because the word "marriage" has very real legal and economic benefits. Setting up an entirely new set of laws for same-sex couples will always be separate and unequal.
Parallel to Obama's own shift on same-sex marriage has been a tremendous shift in public opinion. Some polls show that a slight majority of Americans now favor gay marriage. Even though the right wing still campaigns vigorously on social issues, there is a momentum building in favor of marriage equality. Obama boarded the train mid-trip, but the belief is that his words will play an important role moving forward.
I am the first to state that there should be no government involvement in our relationships, including any benefits given to two people who happen to be married. But while there are more than 1,000 financial benefits of marriage federally, plus many locally, those benefits should be equal. I also see the value of the marriage movement in pulling along, in the jetstream of the marriage fight, so many other LGBT rights issues.
What caused this shift for Obama? He has said in recent months that he was evolving on this issue, but most expected the complete evolution to happen after the November elections. That would have been the practical, cynical thing to do. But the other risk was that his base would continue to see his position as hypocritical and without integrity, and that part of his base would stay home and stop writing campaign checks. This delicate political balance, however, seems to have been only part of the reason for Obama's "coming out" for marriage equality. In the end, his and Michelle's own personal friendships, and the friendships of his daughters with children of gay and lesbian parents, are said to have also fed into this change. He could no longer reconcile his support of "everything but" marriage with his support of equality. He came to realize that civil unions were not the answer. And he made a decision that may hurt him politically but relieve him emotionally.
As he told ABC May 9:
I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed, monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that "don't ask, don't tell" is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.
With those words, Obama made history. No president has done as much as Obama has already doe for LGBT rights and for individual LGBT people's lives (health care, hospital access, etc.). He can't overturn the Defense of Marriage Act without a bill to sign, he can't rule in the courts, and he can't stop states from voting on anti-gay laws, but by speaking out as president for marriage equality, Obama can change hearts and minds. And in the end, the only way we will have long-term success is by changing those hearts and minds. The 1964 Civil Rights Act did not overnight make it easier for African Americans. Had the Equal Rights Amendment passed, it would not have stopped sexism. And the federal hate-crimes law won't stop violence against LGBTs. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia will always exist.
But words do matter. And by speaking out, by giving his own personal view, Obama will make a difference. His taking a stand has ramifications beyond the LGBT movement, because other communities who have felt let down by Obama's differed hopes and dreams may now see that he can get out of a middle ground made of quicksand and take a step on the solid ground of equality.
Tracy Baim is publisher of Windy City Times and author ofObama and the Gays: A Political Marriage. This column also appears inWindy City Timesthis week.]]>To Endorse, Or Not to Endorsetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13389052012-03-12T15:06:36-04:002012-05-12T05:12:01-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
While the Chicago Sun-Times has opted out of the process, the Chicago Tribune has written about continuing their more than 150-year tradition of telling readers who they should vote for.
I don't think there is any correct answer to the question of whether a newspaper should endorse a candidate, but let me tell you why we at Windy City Times do not endorse in any elections, even when there is a gay person running against a homophobe.
First, some background. When I was at GayLife newspaper in 1984, right out of college, that paper did endorse candidates, and its owner, Chuck Renslow, was very active in Democratic politics. While Renslow did not influence our editorial coverage, he did have a say in our endorsements. When we disagreed, we could write our own opinions in the paper about why we backed someone else. And of course people wrote letters to the editor in opposition. The community was even smaller then, and with Renslow being an activist in Democratic politics, it presented a perception of conflict of interest.
When I co-founded Windy City Times, the publisher, Jeff McCourt, wanted to continue the tradition of gay papers endorsing, so we did. But we soon had disagreements, including his backing of a straight aldermanic incumbent (Ald. Bernie Hansen) over a gay challenger (Dr. Ron Sable). He and I ended up doing competing endorsement editorials in 1987.
When I left to start Outlines newspaper a few months later, I felt strongly that we should not endorse candidates, and we began a long trend of this by the late 1980s. When we purchased Windy City Times from McCourt in 2000, we stopped the WCT tradition of endorsements.
Some people were upset that Windy City Times would no longer endorse candidates. But most of those were people who were pitching for their own candidates, and wanted the newspaper to help sway our readers in their favor.
For readers, I have found few who really care what a newspaper tells them to do -- but they have long appreciated our approach of listing out the endorsements and ratings of a range of LGBT and pro-LGBT groups. We also survey the candidates on our own series of LGBT questions (the questions depend in part on what office they are seeking). For more than 20 years, we have then taken all that information and created a chart with the endorsements, rankings and recommendations, something easy to carry into the voting booth.
Would telling readers how to vote make a difference? I don't think so. I have seen some newspapers that pretty much always endorse one party or the other. Some newspapers that are so conservative they are tone deaf to the actual voting patterns of their constituents. And some newspapers who endorse candidates despite the efforts of their own reporting staffs to try to be objective in covering campaigns.
So there are several kinds of voters, and I don't believe that any kind is served by a newspaper endorsing:
Voters who do their own research.
Voters who rely on organizations that reflect their views to recommend candidates.
Voters who just make up their minds in the voting booth.
And voters who don't show up to vote.
Because the LGBT community is a small subset of the mainstream, we also have a secondary burden. A lot of people know one another, and there are potentially a lot of conflicts of interest. Windy City Times has a few dozen shareholders. None of them, except me, have ever been active in running the paper. But some of them do donate money to candidates, gay and non-gay, local and national. I am not even aware of most of their donations, and because we don't endorse candidates, we don't have to worry about those conflicts impacting our selections.
This is likely the case on a larger scale at the major newspapers. The owners and shareholders, and even some staff, likely do back certain candidates, but their readers may never know those conflicts.
We also have a very diverse community, along political, racial, gender, religious and class lines. We barely can agree on any agenda, much less a candidate.
In journalism school, the discussions often centered around whether a reporter should even vote in elections. That just by pulling a lever, a reporter was taking sides, and could not be objective. Interestingly, some of the same newspaper editors who pushed for this non-voting approach for reporters worked for publishers who had no problem telling their readers how to vote.
How were readers to distinguish between what a paper told them to do election day, and an allegedly fair report on the race itself in the news pages? Those lines inevitably blurred in the minds of readers, and in the minds of candidates.
Tracy Baim is publisher and co-founder of Windy City Times. ]]>In Defense of Cynthia Nixon: Why 'Born This Way' Doesn't Mattertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12242412012-01-23T17:05:00-05:002012-03-24T05:12:01-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/The New York Times about whether she "chose" to be gay, or was "born that way." Here is an excerpt of what the Sex and the City star said:
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line "I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better." And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.
This nature-vs.-nurture argument has been debated in the LGBT movement for decades.
I can say that I am pretty much a Kinsey 6 when it comes to measurement scales. But having covered the LGBT community since 1984, and having identified as lesbian since my teen years in the late 1970s, I have always been intrigued by who gravitates to the nature argument, and who to nurture.
To generalize, it seems that more men go with "born this way," while more women see either a combination of nature and nurture, or all "choice." Add in the new field of epigenetics (which posits there are some triggers that do change our inherited genetic code, and which might be a reason sexuality actually could change over a person's lifetime) and we throw an even bigger wrench into the equation.
While some argue that women are more prone to the "nurture" side because of a more fluid sexuality, I don't think it is as simple as that. I think women, starting in the 1970s, took a very political approach to identity politics, and it was empowering to believe we control "our bodies, ourselves." For men, because of the pressure to be masculine and fit a male stereotype, it was easier to place the power elsewhere, with Mother Nature, not mother nurture.
The bottom line is that those who hate us, want to cure us, or even kill us don't really take the time to understand these nuances. Yes, if we were "born this way," that might make some people think it was an immutable characteristic and that therefore there might be no "cure." But honestly, this does not make anyone love us any more. In fact, there are many inherited characteristics upon which people discriminate (physical abilities, for example), or, at the very least, cause people to feel sorry -- or want to cure. That doesn't make these people think they are worthy of civil-rights protections. Ask African Americans if they think being "born that way" helped during the hundreds of years they fought for equal rights, or ask women about being born that way and how that helped get the right to vote or other rights.
And on the opposite side of this debate, religious choice is a protected category, and yet it is not something we are born with. The right-wing understands protecting religious "choice," just not gender or sexuality "choice." If they hate us, they hate us, and how we got this way just doesn't compute in their narrow minds.
Yes, there are some who advocate a "nature made us this way" argument to help us accept ourselves. But others still try to get gays to suppress their sexuality, or transgender people to suppress their gender identity, no matter how they got that way.
I empathize with people who believe that Cynthia Nixon may in fact simply be bisexual, and thus that being with women may represent making a "choice" between the two genders to which she is already attracted. But this identification of our sexuality is rather artificial. Likely, no one is genetically created to love a specific body part. There are probably many things we inherit and also experience once we are created (in the womb and outside of it) that flip our triggers -- it could be gender, but it could also be dozens of other things. Why do we like someone with dark hair, or someone who is short, or tall, or with blue eyes, or male, female, or transgender?
I am not "fluid" in my sexuality, and neither are most of my lesbian friends. But I do know some women and men who identify as gay or lesbian who have changed back and forth in their identity, and sometimes identify as bisexual. Why should it matter what we call ourselves? If the haters don't give a hoot about why or how we got this way, we should never try to limit who gets to fit into our community.
I also do not believe we should base our quest for civil rights on an argument that we "can't help ourselves" because of our genes. This is a very dangerous and slippery slope. There have been fictional books and films made about this topic: if there is a gay gene, should it be eliminated, or a child aborted, if it's found? Science fiction isn't usually very far removed from science.
I welcome the diversity of opinion between Cynthia Nixon and John Aravosis and others on this topic. But I don't think Nixon is wrong to "choose" how she defines her own life. If the right wing does use her words as a way to attack our community, I don't think it will be any more vile than what they already do. They try to "cure" us and deny our civil rights no matter what the basis of our true selves. We have a common enemy here, and it is not Cynthia Nixon, or those like her who come out as proud in their own unique identity.
Yes, some of us may be born this way, and if you believe this, more power to you. But I welcome anyone into our big tent, regardless of their genitals and the genitals they love.]]>Niche Media Survival in the Age of New Mediatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12003422012-01-12T12:32:52-05:002012-03-13T05:12:01-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
Tracy Baim delivering newspapers in the Chicago Pride Parade, 1987.
For all media companies, innovation is key to better serving a sophisticated audience of web-smart early adopters. Alternative or "niche" media, including LGBT newspapers, are not immune to the dual tsunamis of a down economy and changing media landscape.
When I was 10 years old, in 1973, the first newsletters I produced were for family and friends, and they were handwritten. I soon graduated to my mom's IBM Selectric typewriter, and when I was at Lane Tech High School, I used the Linotype hot-lead-based mega-machines, and have the burn scars to prove it. We even learned handset type techniques, which helped me discover fonts truly hands-on, enough to satisfy any typesetting geek.
Tracy Baim (middle) winning a Midwest typesetting award for handset type, circa 1978. Look at all the great 1970s hair.
While I was in school, the age of phototypesetting machines dawned, including the Mergenthaler and Compugraphic models. I also went with my mom to the plant that printed the Chicago Daily Defender newspaper, and helped paste up the layouts.
I have been lucky to have seen pretty much every aspect of the process of making newspapers over the decades. While I always wanted to be a journalist, I found the process of producing the newspapers just as interesting as the writing, photographing and editing. And this helped me cobble together an early professional career both as a typesetter and a journalist, because I knew how to operate these complicated phototypesetting machines. I worked typesetting late at night to help pay for college, and my first jobs after graduation combined writing and typesetting.
Having multiple skill sets and learning new technology as it develops -- these are still the keys to staying ahead of the curve in the changing media landscape. This is true whether you are the mega-giant New York Times, or niche media serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) communities.
The niche media we serve at Windy City Times is LGBT. We started in 1985 in the time of phototypesetting. When I left in 1987 to start Outlines newspaper, we made the leap to the new Macintosh 512K by Apple. We were among the first in the country to use these machines to produce a weekly newspaper -- because we were a new company, it made sense to adopt new technology. We also were among the first papers ever to use QuarkXPress, because they, too, were founded in 1987.
By 2000, when I purchased Windy City Times and merged the publications, we were already five years into our use of the "World Wide Web." We went online with all our content because, as a free print publication, we were never threatened by the free nature of the Internet. In fact, I found it a great enhancement, allowing us to have additional content online, quicker and more comprehensive than print space allowed. And it was searchable for research.
Fast forward to 2012, and many niche and mainstream media are struggling. LGBT print media is not immune, even though we serve a traditionally solid demographic group. So I feel fortunate to be able to still do what I love, and I am excited about the changing ways we reach our readers. Most recently, we launched as one of the first few LGBT print media on the Apple iPad Newsstand.
There are no easy steps to keep a niche media company thriving, and every situation is different. And for sure we have made a lot of mistakes along the way. But here are a few examples of changes and innovations we have made to keep serving our community's media needs:
1) Cut Overhead. In 2008, we went to a virtual office, allowing our employees to work on the road, or from home, with appropriate technology support. You need a strong team, but for a newspaper company, this is an obvious cost savings.
2) Free is Good. There is a trend to try and put content behind paywalls. This may work for massive companies, or ones with a niche no one else can reach. But for most alternative media, a paywall will only separate you from your readers.
3) Get Out There. We do community events to help supplement income and stay in touch with the community, but we do only a few key events a year. Some are free for marketing purposes, others are geared to raise funds. But they have to be natural add-ons to our mission, and be low risk. We also donate a large amount of advertising to non-profits, because it is the right thing to do, not because it is profitable.
4) Technology is Your Friend. The benefit of being a niche media company is that we don't need focus groups or a year of planning to adopt and adapt to changes. We can launch a new design or new product in weeks.
5) Reach Out for Help. Use great outside consultants for technology, legal and accounting. We outsource in key areas, for example to Love Your Website for web development, to keep our focus on our core employee skills. This also gives us consistency because turnover in those areas can cause big problems.
6) Teamwork Works. Some of your competitors are out to kill you, while others actually may share your mission and can work with you in your market. We frequently co-sponsor events with other LGBT media, print and online, and sometimes meet to discuss long-term community issues, partnerships and concerns. Not everyone wants this collaboration -- and you have to be careful who you partner with -- but we have seen a nice synergy with some other media, including ChicagoPride.com and Grab. And we are hoping to work with newer media as well -- but only if they play well in the sandbox.
7) Know it All. Don't be a know-it-all, but know every aspect of the business. This may seem obvious, but it's actually not easy to really understand every part of doing a newspaper without doing it. I have done delivery routes, taken photos at midnight at a leather bar, designed pages, written and edited, done sales, worked the door at our events, traveled to conferences, and whatever else I would expect anyone else to do. Especially by doing delivery, in the snow or rain, at all hours, I can appreciate the hard work of our team.
8) Re-Purpose. We have more than 26 years of content we can use in many ways, not just in print and online, but in collaboration with researchers, students, filmmakers, artists, authors and more. We do ancillary products such as books to enhance our brand. These usually are not money-makers, but they can cement the bond with readers, and show your advertisers you know your niche.
9) Be There. As publisher, I post very frequently on Facebook, both personally and through our WCMG Facebook page and Twitter. This creates a high expectation of inter-activity with readers, but it does pay off. We can track how many people enter our website through social media, and it's a very significant number. I can also learn a lot about what stories are of most interest.
10) Creative Concepts. While our main core business is supported by advertising, we also seek grant funding for special editorial projects. In 2010 we received a Chicago Community Trust Community News Matters Local Reporting Award to supplement a 10-month AIDS @ 30 reporting project. It helped fund writers for the almost 200 advertising-free pages of stories we published in this series.
11) Publish Elsewhere. In 2010, I realized that even though I had written thousands of articles over almost three decades, most were in my own publications. I also saw a dearth of women's voices in mainstream media, and attended a wonderful seminar by the innovative women behind The OpEd Project. They really motivated me to pitch stories to other outlets, and I soon began to blog on Firedoglake and Huffington Post. I don't post all the time, since I do have my own paper to produce, but I find it rewarding to expand the audience for my stories and essays. And it adds to our visibility online.
12) Share. A lot of media are upset at sites that aggregate. That horse left the barn a long time ago. I only fight back against those who steal whole stories and images. Sites like Huffington Post link back to our site after using a small amount of our material. This is a good thing. We seek it out.
Finally, even though I sometimes feel disconnected from the mainstream while working in my niche media batcave in Chicago, I read every day about the publishing and journalism worlds. I am a member of journalism and publishing groups. I feel connected to my journalism colleagues in the mainstream, too, even though their battles are different. I also feel so lucky to control my own destiny, being both a publisher and a journalist. It means dealing with news and business, payroll and delivery, print deadlines and online breaking news. But being Chief Juggler has never felt better.
And I owe most of that to the literal and figurative scars from those hot-lead Linotypes and the wicked chemicals of the Mergenthaler phototypesetters. They helped me pay the bills, and pay my dues.
Tracy Baim is co-founder and publisher of Windy City Times.]]>Cardinal George and the KKK: Religious Extremists Live in the Midwest, Tootag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11681932011-12-28T00:20:00-05:002012-02-26T05:12:01-05:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
In comparing the LGBT community to the Ku Klux Klan -- in his remarks about the potential disruption and inconvenience of the new Pride Parade route and start time -- Cardinal George has gone too far, and he should graciously apologize and step down from his post.
Other religious facilities have long endured the Pride Parade passing their doors on Pride Sunday, with no "anti-religious" problems reported in four decades. In fact, religious groups, including gay Catholics, have been a part of Pride almost since it began. Ironically, the KKK did march against the Pride Parade in its early years, and many spiritual people helped counter their presence.
But Cardinal George could not let the parade pass by his Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Belmont Avenue. He fought back, and did so using a vile comparison to the KKK. The Parade will still pass by the church, just at a later time. The change in time really is not what upset most LGBT people; rather, it was what George said about the KKK. He told FOX News Chicago: "You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism."
At this point, an apology is not enough. George has proven that he is out of touch with the progress of the LGBT movement in this city and country, and he should pass the torch to a new generation of Catholic leadership. Like Joseph Cardinal Bernardin before him, George has tried to use the church's power to keep back civil rights; Bernardin lobbied against Chicago's gay-rights bill in the 1980s, and George has spoken out against gay civil unions and women's rights.
The fact is that while many people seek out religion as a safe haven, where they can do good work to help their neighbors, often church leadership seeks to divide rather than bring people together. Given that this was Christmas season, George's remarks stung particularly hard. Enough is enough, and George should not be allowed to take this hateful approach and still be a leader in his church.
What is most upsetting when religious leaders speak out, and even lobby, against laws that protect LGBT people is that they do so on an uneven playing field. Most are wealthy beyond our imagination, own properties on valuable land, and yet they pay few, if any, taxes. This not only makes it more difficult to fund our schools, police and fire departments, and other public services, but it also places a heavier burden on every other citizen, religious or not. They get to have their free speech cake and not pay taxes, too.
Personally, I feel that if all religious groups paid their fair share of property, income, and other taxes, I wouldn't be as angry when they spoke out against my right to equality. We would be equals stating our own opinions. But when a religious leader like Cardinal George gets to have a large forum to amplify his prejudice, and he does so off all our taxpayer backs, it is an unfair system.
The initial separation of church and state in this country was based on a strong need to eliminate potential harassment and undue influence over religion. But the opposite has happened. Religious groups influence our politics, and they do so with impunity from the law, and from the tax system.]]>Building Gay Self-Esteem Through Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11461872011-12-16T00:31:00-05:002012-02-14T05:12:02-05:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
Recent books about two prominent gay Chicagoans.
When I first started working in gay media at age 21 in 1984, I felt like I was dropped into the middle of a war zone. At the time, there were fewer than 100 diagnosed AIDS cases in Chicago, but that number soon began to grow and grow.
People I worked with and covered as a reporter and editor at GayLife and then Windy City Times would die within days or weeks of finding out they had AIDS. I would take a photo of someone, for example Dr. Ron Sable or Robert Ford of Thing 'zine, knowing it would likely be the last image and the one I would soon use with their obituary. Gaunt and weak, these men (I was mostly covering gay men) continued their activism up until their last breaths.
Later came inspired heroes Danny Sotomayor and Ferd Eggan, and thousands of others. It was an honor to be able to write about them, to make sure their lives were not forgotten.
Covering the community 365 days a year left little time for reflection. My main goal was documenting the LGBT community in every way I could, whether it was through photos at bars, writing about benefits, doing news stories and features, or whatever else it took to write and photograph as much as possible, as it was happening.
A few years ago, after I helped organize the Gay Games in Chicago in 2006, I was pretty burnt out on the community, not just from the hard work, but also from the endless struggles against both external anti-gay forces and internal power and ego struggles common within any movement.
To reboot my passion for LGBT issues and people, I launched the Chicago Gay History Project, interviewing some 200 people, mostly on video, and online now. As a result of that, I also helped advise WTTW TV on their Out & Proud in Chicago film project, and they recommended me for the companion book, published by Surrey Books in 2008, Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community. I also started to scan hundreds of thousands of editorial and photo files from the pre-digital era, to eventually post those online, too.
The last two, co-written with Owen Keehnen, came out this year. They document the lives of two very important gay Chicagoans. Both are controversial -- but who isn't after a few decades of activism? Their stories were not well documented until these books, and there are hundreds of other Chicago LGBTs worthy of such documentation.
Lately, it also seems like we have had a jump in deaths of prominent Chicagoans and national leaders. This is just a perception, because the reality is that we lose important people every day. But these recent deaths, of Chicagoans such as Lois Bates, Renae Ogletree, Paul Varnell, RJ Chaffin, Ifti Nasim, and Christina Santiago, along with national leaders Frank Kameny, Paula Ettelbrick and Barbara Grier, do force us to think about how we remember these people and their impact, in a way that can help and mentor future activists and leaders.
Like previous generations of civil-rights and human-rights activists, we are losing our LGBT heroes, not just to AIDS but to age. We need an LGBT project similar to what Steven Spielberg is doing for Holocaust survivors, making sure their stories are told before they die. Windy City Times continues to cover the news of the day, while also writing about our history. This year we have produced a nine-month series on "AIDS @ 30."
But the LGBT community has a burden that is different from most other communities. That burden is to find a way to share our history with the next generation of LGBTs. Most of us come from heterosexual families, and if we have children, the percentages are going to also be mostly heterosexual. Most LGBT kids these days will be raised in heterosexual homes. Even if they have great parents, they need to also find their community. Most likely, they won't find us through their grammar school, high school and even college textbooks.
I have always believed that one of the biggest problems facing our community is this lack of connection. If you think you are alone, even for a small part of your life (especially the impressionable younger years), your self-esteem can't help but be damaged. This is why we have so many other troubles facing us: substance abuse, risky behavior, suicide, etc. Low self-esteem, a lack of feeling empowered by your own history and place in the world, exacts a high toll on our community.
We need this sense of history, and if the schools won't provide it, we have to find a way to transfer this knowledge through own our courses, and our own online efforts. Our communitywide self-esteem depends on it.
When my mother Joy Darrow died in 1996, the one thing I lost forever was her actual voice. I have silent video and still photos, but I don't have her voice anywhere. Audio, especially accompanied by video, has a more powerful impact than any other medium in transferring our stories and our knowledge. And especially because LGBTs are mostly left out of the history books, we must make sure to tell our stories in a way the next generations will be able to relate to -- and find online.
For information or to help document our history, email editor@windycitymediagroup.com.]]>They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us (Sometimes)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9860272011-10-05T17:08:00-04:002011-12-05T05:12:01-05:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/Jamey Rodemeyer; attacks on our people, including 19-year-old Marcellus Andrews, of Waterloo, Iowa; and sports figures like hockey player Wayne Simmonds who just naturally spew anti-gay hate as a way to attack opponents.
These are "now" events, not "then." Skimming the pages of the gay press from the 1970s to the 1990s, there were many high-profile cases of harassment and murder, suicide and despair. Some of these made mainstream headlines, such as the murder of Charles Howard 27 years ago. Howard was thrown over a bridge into the Kenduskeag Stream in Bangor, Maine on July 7, 1984. Three boys pled guilty to the killing, which allowed them to serve minimal time, because they were teens (15, 16 and 17). Howard was 23 when he was killed, and his case sparked a national outrage.
Flash forward 14 years: in October 1998, Matthew Shepard, 21, was brutally murdered near Laramie, Wyo., causing more national outrage. Spurred by the then-nascent Internet, his crime took on international proportions and still is a basis for educating about hate and violence. There is now a federal hate-crimes statute named for Matthew and fellow hate victim James Byrd, and his family carries on his name through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which has just announced a multi-million-dollar "American Giving Awards" contest.
Now, in 2011, we have seen major successes, such as the removal of DADT. But this progress is overshadowed by continued harassment and even murder. So it's hard to get excited about a new report showing that Americans are moving "dramatically toward acceptance of homosexuality." Some Americans "like us, they really like us," while others would fire us, take away our children, deny us the right to adopt or foster children, ban us from marrying, and, in some cases, kill us.
This newest study, "Public Attitudes Toward Homosexuality," is by NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research organization headquartered in downtown Chicago.
NORC reports: "In addition to a plurality who now approve of same-sex marriage, Americans overwhelmingly support basic civil liberties and freedom of expression for gays and lesbians, in contrast to sharp division on such issues in the 1970s." This shows a "trend toward greater tolerance regarding homosexuality," said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey (GSS) at NORC and author of the NORC report.
The rise in support for same-sex marriage went from 11 percent approval in 1988 to 46 percent in 2010, compared to 40 percent who were opposed, according to NORC, which based its findings of the latest GSS, conducted in 2010 with a cross sample of more than 2,000 people.
NORC added:
In 2010, 26 percent of the people surveyed who were under 30 said they felt same-sex behavior is "always wrong," while 63 percent of the people aged 70 and older held that opinion. ... Although 44 percent of the people surveyed felt that sexual relations between two adults of the same sex is always wrong, another 41 percent thought such relations were "not wrong at all."
And even more depressing to think about is that the following issues are even up for debate, according to NORC:
Support for a gay person's right to speak before a public audience increased from 62 percent in 1972 to 86 percent in 2010; support for allowing gays and lesbians to teach at colleges or universities rose from 48 percent in 1973 to 84 percent in 2010; and approval for having a library keep a book that favors homosexuality rose from 54 percent in 1973 to 78 percent in 2010.
What bothers me most are the questions themselves. If you surveyed most Americans, many would probably think some Latinos, African-Americans or even the president don't have some of those rights. We have to move away from a society that precariously hinges our rights on the whims of popular opinion. That path resulted in the ban on same-sex marriage in California and other states. And it is a path that will never lead to equality.
Tracy Baim is Publisher of Windy City Times.]]>The Many Faces of Rupert Murdoch's Business Empiretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9171102011-08-04T15:56:13-04:002011-10-04T05:12:02-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
In England, Murdoch's media properties are seeing a loss in advertising revenues and readers appalled at accusations that reporters hacked into cell phone accounts, and that police were paid for information. But so far, there has been little call for such an advertiser and reader boycott of Murdoch's U.S. properties.
There has been some general pressure against Fox News Channel, especially against the Glenn Beck Show before it left the network, but overall the pressure has not filtered into Murdoch's other properties, including 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Broadcasting Company.
Perhaps that is because there are just too many companies and programs to keep track of, and also because many progressives are actually employed within the Murdoch empire.
While one tentacle is Fox News, with its conservative, right-wing approach to American politics, another tentacle has aired some of the queerest TV you can imagine, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Nip/Tuck to newer hit Glee. And there are a hundred more tentacles to go with those, from the hack-infested tabloid newspapers to more traditional print publications in the U.S.
This presents quite a dilemma for people who want to do their creative work with any authenticity. Some of the LGBT community's brightest talents are working lining the pockets of a corporation that fights against their rights in its media properties, and gives money to anti-gay politicians.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation released its fifth annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index this week. Fox (with shows like Glee leading the way) and sister network FX (Archer, Sons of Anarchy) were among those networks rated. Fox had 214 LGBT-Inclusive hours (29 percent), which was similar to the last report of 30 percent, but much higher than previous years (11 percent in 2008-09, 4 percent in 2007-08).
The FX network received a 19 percent score for 15.5 hours of LGBT-inclusive programming, a drop from their high of 27 percent in the last report.
Founded in 1986, Fox's sensitivity to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues has frequently been called into question. Melrose Place may be considered a pioneer in early representations of gay men, but in 1994, GLAAD took Fox to task for censoring a kiss between two gay characters on the show. Since then, GLAAD has taken issue with Fox on a number of occasions, and the network received a 'Failing' grade in the first NRI for its mere 6 percent of LGBT-inclusive content. Questioned about that grade, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly told AfterElton.com it was 'disheartening' and that the network 'absolutely' has a responsibility to represent LGBT people. ...
Fox's greatest problems with LGBT representation have typically been during their Sunday animation block, which last year saw terribly transphobic jokes being made on both Family Guy and The Cleveland Show.
And let's not forget all the LGBT writers and actors on Fox and FX network shows. Glee alone has many queer and queer-friendly folks on both sides of the cameras.
The TV network is not their only foray into entertainment. There are films and TV stations, and TV shows that don't run on their own network. Fox Television Studios is behind such hits as The Shield, Saving Grace, Burn Notice, Rescue Me, Sons of Anarchy and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And, believe it or not, they are producing the plushie-like Wilfred TV show this summer. Violence, sex and hardly conservative "family values."
Fox's film divisions produce both mainstream and independent films, including such LGBT-friendly titles as Boys Don't Cry, Kissing Jessica Stein, Imagine Me & You and even Black Swan. They have some of the biggest franchises in film history, including Star Wars, X-Men and The Chronicles of Narnia. They own other TV networks including Big Ten, business, movie and soccer channels.
Short of not reading newspapers, books and magazines, watching TV, sports or movies, looking at billboards, listening to music, or going online, you probably would find it almost impossible to boycott all things Rupert Murdoch. This applies to places around the world, with special concentrations in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia. Murdoch's company even owns part of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.
So while consumers may not be able to string together a successful boycott, I am more perplexed by those who work for Murdoch. I see many of the great minds of my generation propping up his empire. I don't want to call out names, because that's not the point -- they know who they are. But will any of them have the courage to leave, even at risk to their own careers?
Tracy Baim is publisher of Windy City Times.]]>DADT: The End is Neartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9064792011-07-22T12:27:26-04:002011-09-21T05:12:01-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/
Sixty days from the certification, or possibly on Sept. 20, 2011 (it depends on if all parties certify the law today), the full implementation of repeal will be in place.
American Veterans for Equal Rights volunteers carry the American flag in the 2011 Chicago Pride Parade. Photo by Tracy Baim/Windy City Times
It's been a long time since the first military person was kicked out for being gay. Way prior to DADT, in 1778, Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin was discharged from the Continental Army for sodomy. In World War II gays and lesbians were discharged based on psychiatric grounds. In 1982, the gay ban was further reinforced when the Department of Defense stated that being gay was incompatible with military service.
But despite Bill Clinton's plan to eliminate the ban once he was elected president, he came up against fierce opposition from the military and Congress, and he was forced to compromise with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which proved just as disastrous a policy as previous military gay bans.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network reports that more than 14,000 servicemembers have been dismissed under DADT since 1993. These represent lost careers, lost contributions to our country's safety and people hurt who wanted nothing more than to serve our nation. [And it should be noted that the lifting of DADT does not help transgender military personnel, which is the next battle to fight.]
Perhaps it is time for a national tribute to these soldiers, those who served during DADT and previous military gay bans. Chicago hosts its 9th annual Salute to LGBT Veterans Tuesday, July 26, noon, at Daley Plaza. While other cities should follow suit with their own events, more important is a national effort to honor those who were sacrificed in the name of bigotry.
On a personal level, I want to pay tribute to my partner, Jean Albright, who served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. She entered in 1972 under the old gay ban, and retired just before Clinton's compromise of DADT. But in her retirement she did not abandon her troops. She has fought against DADT in the years since leaving her post. She has served on the national board of SLDN, volunteers with Chicago's American Veterans for Equal Rights [AVER] chapter, and has helped to educate thousands of people about the destruction of DADT.
The 2005 City of Chicago tribute to LGBT Veterans. Jean Albright is on the right with other veterans and supporters. Photo by Tracy Baim/Windy City Times
When Jean first got out of the military, she was scared they would pull her back in just to discharge her. She was afraid of what they could still to do her, and her military benefits. Their power reached her in ways I could never understand. As someone who generally is against the military-industrial complex, I learned to love the troops, even if I loathed parts of how our U.S. military operates.
For 17 years I have watched as Jean spoke to groups of five people or 500, quietly telling the story of how she served her country for 20 years, despite her fear of being found out. Her relationships suffered (we did not meet until after she retired), and she lived a double life. The fear was paralyzing at times, and she did not feel safe even coming out to other gay and lesbian servicemembers.
Jean served in the Air Force at several locations, including in Germany and at Great Lakes Naval Base. She would have stayed in longer, but every year she stayed in, she knew she risked it all if they were to find out about her. Often, people closest to retirement were targeted, because if they were kicked out, the military would save on benefits. Some troops were allowed to serve in war time, only to be kicked out when they returned -- if they returned home alive. [This is the subject of my novel The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter.]
Our country has a lot to answer for in how it has treated LGBT troops. It has allowed violence and harassment, discrimination and shameful treatment of honorable men and women. This period in our history may soon be over. But it will not come easy, and the education and training must continue. After all, even though African-Americans and women and more fully integrated into the military of 2011 than they were in past decades, there is still racism and sexism throughout the service.
So we've come a long way, but still have a significant amount of work to be done.
Thank you to my partner Jean for her 20 years of service to the U.S. Air Force. And thank you to the more than 14,000 troops who were the sacrificial lambs of this destructive policy. May you all know that your service was not in vain.
]]>Title IX and the Women's World Cuptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8941422011-07-11T12:23:17-04:002011-09-10T05:12:01-04:00Tracy Baimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/Title IX has been consistently under fire from a wide range of critics.
Like the Equal Rights Amendment, it uses simple language to level the playing field for women and girls:
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance ... "
This meant that schools receiving federal money had to treat female sports the same as male sports. Some schools used this as an excuse to get rid of under-performing men's sports rather than provide more for women. But that's not the fault of women, it is the fault of short-sighted and sometimes sexist school administrators.
Watching the Women's World Cup, and the incredible U.S. quarterfinal win Sunday against Brazil, I am reminded just how important Title IX has been to the women's movement, and for me personally as a woman.
I played Little League with the boys in 1975, just three years after Title IX began, and I didn't have to fight my coach for the right (even though Title IX did not apply to the league). I played softball in high school, and even though we had fewer resources than the boy's sports, we still had the right to play.
I also started playing soccer around 1978, not in high school, but on a private club team through the network of German soccer clubs in Chicago. (As a Jewish girl, that presented its own issues for me.) The "girl's" teams were always junior to the men's and boy's teams, no matter how good we were.
I eventually transferred to the Schwaben club, and it changed by life. Our coach was Julius Roth, who had escaped from East Germany decades earlier as a youth, and now was raising four girls, all who played soccer just as their father had. Mr. Roth and his family (his wife Elsie, daughters Karen, Marion, Lori and Diane) dreamed of going to Germany, and our team set out on two years of fundraising to be able to travel with the Roths and play some serious soccer in West Germany.
We were among the top women's soccer clubs in the Midwest, and had traveled around the region to play, so it was not unusual to think we could travel further. Sports had given us the confidence to think big.
Eight years after Title IX, in 1980, I was 17 years old and playing right half-back for Schwaben as we lived with and played against women's teams in West Germany. (Germany was not reunited as one country until a decade later, in 1990.) It was an amazing journey for our team, and living with the other teams added another dimension to our trip. And it happened 11 years before the Women's World Cup was first played in 1991.
Soon after the Schwaben team went to Germany in 1980, a German team came to Chicago to play. Pictured are the Schwaben and German team members and coaches posing together after a match in the Chicago area, early 1980s.
We played eight games in the West German cities of Hamburg and Hanover, and the German media covered the matches extensively. As we won match after match, the media attention, and focus of German coaches, grew more intense. But even an all-star team Germany put together for the last match was not enough to defeat us; we won all eight of our games that summer of 1980.
My life, and the lives of my teammates (even those who couldn't make the trip) were forever changed by playing women's sports. Our winning in Germany was a highlight of my life, but it was not because we played soccer and just happened to win. It was because sports has a way of building skills you need in life.
Among those skills that Title IX has directly changed in the lives of millions women and girls:
A confidence in your body and your mind.
The ability to come back after losing.
Working hard for a result.
Living a healthy lifestyle through athletics.
And most important, especially in team sports, you are working together as a group, depending on others, helping others, and succeeding in achieving a combined dream.
We may have failed as a country to pass the ERA, but Title IX had its own critical role in the women's movement. This is true even for those women who did not play sports, but saw brave women such as Billie Jean King fight for equality on the tennis courts, among sponsors, and in the media.
Four years ago, as the Women's World Cup was being held, our Schwaben team held a reunion. Looking at some of the players, I knew several of them would have played on the World Cup, if it had just happened a few years earlier.
But I also realized that our games in Germany were played on the historical backs of generations of women who never were allowed to play sports. That we were lucky to be able to play soccer at all, and even more fortunate to travel to another country to play our own mini World Cup.
Title IX is under constant threat by politicians and some men's sports advocates. Sports programs as a whole are increasingly seen as an expense schools can't afford. Except for sports such as football and basketball, some men's sports are also at risk.
If most school sports go away, and if Title IX is gutted, it would have a negative impact on the next generation of girls and women, and on our country as a whole. Women's sports are not just sports, they build skills we need as a culture. It's not about winning, it's about being able to play the game.
See http://www.fifa.com/ for details on the Women's World Cup. The U.S. Women had an incredible come-from-behind win Sunday over Brazil to advance to the semi-finals vs. France Wednesday morning, while Japan plays Sweden later that same day. Unfortunately, host country Germany lost and will not be advancing.
Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor of Windy City Times newspaper.
