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Why “The New Civil Rights”?

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Stonewall, Mattachine, World War II:
Where We Came From

 

 

Editor’s note: I am honored to announce a new addition to The New Civil Rights Movement. Author and editor Dr. William B. Turner, known for his work on “Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy”, among other books, and a regular contributor to the Daily Kos, will be writing occasionally here as well.

William B. Turner is a student of the history of the LGBT Civil Rights Movement.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from Vanderbilt University and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin.  He has written on the statutory exclusion of lesbian/gay aliens from the United States from 1917 to 1990, Wisconsin’s pioneering legislation prohibiting sexual-orientation discrimination, and on lesbian/gay rights issues in the Carter and Reagan presidential administrations in Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, which he co-edited with John D’Emilio and Urvashi Vaid.  He edited the section on the LGBT movement for The Encyclopedia of American Social Movements and wrote the entries on the Defense of Marriage Act, sexuality, and sexual orientation for The Dictionary of American History.  He posts regularly on the Daily Kos web site. He has also published A Genealogy of Queer Theory, as well as various other articles in law reviews on LGBT civil rights and African American civil rights.

I know you’ll enjoy Dr. Turner’s first contribution.


Why “The New Civil Rights”?

The name of this web site is “The New Civil Rights Movement.” The title of the book I’m writing is The New Civil Rights: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Politics and Policy in the United States, 1973-2000. Why do we use the phrase, “new civil rights”? The short answer is that the LGBT movement emerged at the end of a period of dramatic expansion of American civil rights law, and because the LGBT movement is in fact about civil rights issues – equality of opportunity and treatment in all areas of American life – without regard for sexual orientation or gender identity. There is a strategic as well as an empirical component to this choice: the African American civil rights movement has accumulated an enormous fund of moral authority that attaches generally to the concept of civil rights; LGBT activists hope to invoke that moral authority for their own movement by calling it a “civil rights” movement.

As a historian of that movement, I plan to offer a series of short articles on my research into the history of the LGBT civil rights movement. This is the first of those essays. It places the LGBT movement into the larger historical context of the United States.

Virtually everyone points to the Stonewall Riots in June 1969 as the birth point of the modern LGBT civil rights movement. The Stonewall Riots occurred when a group of angry queers fought back against a police raid at a queer bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village. It was a remarkable display of revolt by a group that usually accepted police harassment without much protest. To this day, Pride celebrations around the country and the world commemorate the Stonewall Riots.

As important as Stonewall undoubtedly was, we should not allow it to blind us to the important organizing by LGBT persons that predated the Riots. In his groundbreaking work on the subject, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1945-1970, historian John D’Emilio traces the efforts of “homophile” activists, as they called themselves. Started by a Communist, Harry Hay, in 1952, by 1969 the Mattachine Society was clearly the leading gay rights group in the country, but conservatives had long since taken over the Mattachine Society and pursued a program of trying to work with various authorities, psychiatrists, legal officials, and political leaders to persuade them that discrimination against gay people was morally wrong and a violation of this nation’s founding political and legal principles.

Mattachine eschewed protest politics for the most part, although they did sponsor occasional picketing, against discrimination in federal hiring, for example. They insisted that their picketers wear business clothes to prove their respectability to observers. After the first night of the Stonewall Riots, they posted a sign at the site of the bar calling on queers to reject more rioting.

But Mattachine was behind the times. By 1969, informed Americans knew that various forms of protest could be very effective for civil rights movements. Just as the Mattachine Society called for an end to the Stonewall Riots, so had the NAACP, the leading African American civil rights group at the time, expressed reservations when African American students began conducting sit-in protests against racial segregation in 1960. But the students would not be deterred, and sit-ins worked much better and more quickly than anything the NAACP or anyone else had ever come up with before.

Similarly, the Stonewall Riots produced an amazing outpouring of organizing by and for lesbians and gay men (bisexuals and transgender persons would only become visible parts of the movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, even though many of the participants in the Riots were either bisexual in some important sense, or gender variant, or both). D’Emilio explains that the burst of lesbian/gay organizing in the immediate aftermath of Stonewall was a historical puzzle given the prevailing stereotype at the time of gay people as lonely, isolated individuals who typically did not foster significant communities or relationships. If this stereotype were true, it would have been impossible for such persons to have created the number and variety of lesbian/gay rights groups that emerged almost overnight after Stonewall.

Still, lesbians and gay men had to be educated to see their situation in political terms. D’Emilio means “the making of a homosexual minority” quite literally. He documents the efforts by the Mattachine Society and other homophile organizations to persuade lesbians and gay men to see themselves as an oppressed minority, which many of them did not do automatically. Whatever their significant differences in terms of underlying political beliefs or organizing strategies, the conservatives who took over the Mattachine Society shared one important characteristic with the Communist Harry Hay – the belief that oppression of lesbians and gay men was, at base, a political issue that demanded a political solution.

But the “political solution” has a wide range of meanings, from the low-key lobbying of authority figures that Mattachine leaders preferred to the street riots that erupted from the police raid at the Stonewell Bar. So what were the major historical factors that allowed for the Stonewall Riots themselves to occur, and for them to produce an outpouring of lesbian/gay rights organizing?

Among the most important was World War II. As Allan Berube explains in Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, of course many lesbians and gay men served in the military during World War II. Although official military regulations called for the immediate discharge of any known lesbian or gay man, different commanders had varying approaches to dealing with the lesbians and gay men in their commands. Some immediately pursued discharges on learning of lesbians or gay men, while others appreciated the contributions of lesbians and gay men at a time of acute shortages of person power.

Of course military service during World War II created the ideal circumstances for discovering and acting on same-sex desires. Millions of young people lived away from their immediate families for the first time, usually in sex-segregated environments. After the War ended, many of these former soldiers found themselves discharged in major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, where they could continue to organize their lives around their same-sex attraction in the anonymity of a large city that also contained many others like them. Protest actions such as the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and later, the ACT-UP protests of the late 1980s required a critical mass of pissed-off queers such as only New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles could produce. Thus, it is no surprise that the Riots occurred in New York City, or that the first openly lesbian/gay persons to hold public office in the United States served at the municipal level in Boston and San Francisco.

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Trump’s Fate Could Still Hang on Possible Sentencing in NY Election Interference Case

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New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan is expected to hand down a decision on Tuesday that could ultimately put the president-elect of the United States in jail. Donald Trump, who has yet to be sentenced for his 34-count criminal felony conviction in his New York election subversion case, commonly known as his “hush money” case, will learn if the judge will sentence him or set aside the verdict now that he has been elected President.

“Back on September 6th, Judge Juan Merchan (in Trump’s NY election interference case) ruled that he would issue a decision by tomorrow, November 12th, on Trump’s Motion to Set Aside the jury’s verdict and to Dismiss the indictment, based on SCOTUS’ immunity ruling,” MSNBC legal contributor and commentator Katie Phang reported Monday afternoon.

Judge Merchan on Sept. 6 had written that Trump was attempting “to bolster his application [for adjournment, or dismissal] by repeating a litany of perceived and unsubstantiated grievances from previous filings that do not merit this Court’s attention and will not be addressed in this Decision.”

On September 6, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote at Politico: “As a strictly legal matter, there was no good reason to delay Trump’s sentencing.”

READ MORE: ‘What Illegal Corruption Looks Like’: Trump Blasted for ‘Already Breaking the Law’

“The public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion. The members of this jury served diligently on this case, and their verdict must be respected and addressed in a manner that is not diluted by the enormity of the upcoming presidential election,” Merchan wrote Sept. 6. “Likewise, if one is necessary, thc Defendant has the right to a sentencing hearing that respects and protects his constitutional rights.”

Trump is currently slated to be sentenced on November 26.

Reuters reports it is now “unlikely,” according to legal experts, that Trump will face any jail time.

“Trump faces a sentence of up to four years in prison after being convicted of 34 felony counts. Legal experts have said that while lesser penalties such as fines or probation are more likely, a prison sentence would not be impossible.”

Last week in a guest commentary piece for the Kansas City Star, that paper’s former editor, Bill Dalton, wrote:

“On Nov. 5, the American people did the unthinkable — they elected a convicted felon president. Judge Juan Merchan should now do what was once unthinkable — force a president-elect to take the oath of office in a jail cell.”

Watch Reuters’ report below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post

 

 

 

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‘What Illegal Corruption Looks Like’: Trump Blasted for ‘Already Breaking the Law’

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U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is criticizing President-elect Donald Trump, asserting he is violating a mandatory ethics law regarding presidential transitions and conflicts of interest—provisions which she says she wrote—and that refusal could have impacts on national security preparedness. Trump signed updates to this law during his first term in office.

“Donald Trump and his transition team are already breaking the law,” Senator Warren wrote. “I would know because I wrote the law. Incoming presidents are required to prevent conflicts of interest and sign an ethics agreement. This is what illegal corruption looks like.”

The Massachusetts Democrat pointed to a CNN report that reveals Trump “has not yet submitted a series of transition agreements with the Biden administration, in part because of concerns over the mandatory ethics pledge vowing to avoid conflicts of interest once sworn in to office.”

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“Both Trump’s and his family’s foreign business ties have also come under intense scrutiny throughout his time in office and on the campaign trail,” the report notes. “Trump and his transition team are already behind in accessing key transition briefings from the Biden administration, as they have failed to sign a pair of agreements to unlock critical information before taking over the federal government in 72 days.”

CREW, the federal government watchdog, in a report updated just after Trump left office 2021, reported he had “promised a firewall between his business and his presidency, but he broke that promise and accumulated 3,403 conflicts of interest so far. The conflicts include visits to Trump properties by foreign government officials, taxpayer spending at Trump businesses, and Trump’s own blatant promotions of the businesses. CREW has tracked around two conflicts of interest per day, but that is likely only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Experts are sounding the alarms about impacts to Day 1 national security preparedness,” CNN also reports.

The New York Times notes that the Trump transition team “has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Mr. Trump’s transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025.”

Separately, one researcher pointed to a report on the 9/11 terror attacks.

“The 9/11 Commission found that the delayed transition affected national security for months after the inauguration, which may have contributed to 9/11,” according to E. Rosalie Li, who writes about public health, national security, and public policy. “On the day of the attacks, only 57% of the top 123 Senate-confirmed positions were filled at the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the State Department combined, excluding ambassadors, U.S. marshals, and attorneys.”

Richard Painter, the well-known professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer summed it up: “Here we go again. Vintage 2016. Come on @realDonaldTrump, let’s sign the ethics agreement and get on with it.”

Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Puboci Service outlined some of the agreements the Trump transition is late in signing, if they sign them at all.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post

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Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s child and family separation policy and one of his longest-serving, die-hard loyalists, will become the incoming president’s deputy chief of staff for policy, a top role in the second administration of the Republican nationalist.

Miller, an immigration hardliner who was also responsible for Trump’s Muslim-majority country travel ban, has a history of promoting white nationalist rhetoric. He is responsible for the separation of thousands of young children from their parents, and even from their siblings, as a means to deter other asylum seekers from crossing the southern border into the United States. Under Trump and Miller’s “zero tolerance” policy, there were no plans to reunite the children with their parents.

Despite efforts by the Biden administration, thousands of children have never been placed back into their families. As of May, 1400 children remained separated from their parents.

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“Miller will return with more influence than he had in the first Trump administration, where he served as a senior adviser for policy, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN,” The Daily Beast adds, noting that Miller was also behind Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration address.

CNN reports that “Miller is also a lead architect of the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He has said that a second Trump administration would seek a tenfold increase in the number of deportations to more than 1 million per year. In an interview on Fox News last week, Miller expressed eagerness at the prospect of beginning mass deportations as soon as possible.”

“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” Miller said.

“Confirming the appointment, Vice President-elect JD Vance posted a message of congratulations on Monday to Miller on X and said, ‘This is another fantastic pick by the president.’ The announcement was first reported by CNN,” The Associated Press reports.

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In 2019, The Guardian called Miller “the white nationalist at the heart of Trump’s White House,” amid an “extraordinary email leak” that revealed Miller had “promoted white nationalist articles and books in emails to a writer at Breitbart, who after leaving the hard-right website leaked 900 messages to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).”

Miller also wrote at least part of Trump’s infamous January 6, 2021 speech at the Ellipse, during which he said, “…and we’re going to walk to the Capitol…”

CNN, in a minute-by-minute analysis of the insurrection,  reported that at 9:52 AM, “Trump talks to senior adviser and lead speechwriter Stephen Miller for 26 minutes, according to White House records that were obtained by the committee and released at a public hearing. After Trump’s conversation with Miller, Trump adjusts a draft of his upcoming speech to add more lines about Pence and the joint session of Congress, according to the committee, which reviewed the drafts.”

In February of 2017, just weeks into Trump’s first term, Miller told reporters, “our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial, and will not be questioned.”

Watch the video bel0w or at this link.

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