Words, words, words, there was a time I once believed in them! This was my mantra as I completed my undergraduate degree and found myself living on a farm in Canada where we used horses to plow the fields and to work the wood lots for our winter heat and cooking fuel. Now here I am twenty plus years later writing a weekly column filled with words.

I still repeat this mantra but usually in reference to politicians, especially ones who come to the queer community seeking our money, our support and our votes only to ignore us until the next election cycle. I am of the position that for far too long we have allowed this to happen by simply being content that our support was being sought out.

 
For decades, we have welcomed candidates to court us with the words we seek to hear. They come to our events, festivals and clubs, shaking hands, embracing our causes, telling us exactly what we want to hear in order to garner our support.  They claim to be our friends and promise to fight for our equality--year after year the same individuals whom we have supported offer the same false hopes.  Year after year we fall for the same lines and end up no more equal than the year before.

And we have been excited by this courtship and having a seat at the table where we can express our concerns and needs.  But to what end?  We get excited when out individuals receive political appointments as if this is some major milestone on our road to equality. But I wonder if this is more to quiet us then to advance us?  Perhaps this is just the cynic in me speaking right now.

How many times have we witnessed queer political organizations endorse candidates never to see them again until the next election cycle? How many times have we seen candidates endorsed by us only to question why or how?  Just last year we watched one Philadelphia queer political organization endorse two candidates whose position on transgender rights was seriously questionable.  How is this possible or acceptable?

How do we hold these candidates and organization accountable to our equal rights movement?  How do we distinguish between those who call themselves our friends and those who are our true allies?   How do we weed out the "career politicians" from those who will truly seek to advance our cause?  How do we hold candidates accountable to their words?

It's not an easy task. But now we have a new tool called The Gittings Pledge. The pledge asks candidates publicly to promise their support and action in assuring our full equality while in their first term in office after their election.  Individuals, groups, and organizations are also encouraged to sign the pledge promising not to support any candidate who has not signed The Gittings Pledge.

It seems that only when we make clear what we expect in return for our support of a candidate, and only when we hold them accountable to their expressed promises will we really take charge of our own political future--that future should be ripe with equality.

I encourage each of you, queer and heterosexual alike, to read and to sign The Gittings Pledge!  You can help set a standard to which we expect candidates to be held.  Our support is too needed, our resources too precious, and our political action too essential a tool, not to take control of them in our fight for equality.  Let us use it now with both wisdom and power.

The hometown beauty queen of Memphis, Tennessee, turned Hollywood Star of both the big screen ("The Last Picture Show" and "Taxi Driver") and the small screen ("Moonlighting," "Cybill," "Women are from Venus; Men are from Mars," "Martha [Stewart] Behind Bars," "The L Word" and, more recently, Showtime's "The United States of Tara"), Cybill Shepard has never had a problem saying exactly what was on her mind. In her memoir, "Cybill Disobedience: Cybill Shepard with Aimee Lee Ball" (HarperCollisPublishers, 2000), she is true to her character and personality throughout, never hesitant to mince words. She writes as the outspoken, independent, feminist, rebel, that she ultimately is and always has been about many intimacies about her "sexual" life. Shepard confesses: "The longest, deepest streak of disobedience in my life has been about sex. Although the strictures of southern womanhood were honed to a fine edge in my family and I followed some of them flawlessly, I never observed the sexual canons. I did exactly as I pleased, and what pleased me was sex-early with a man I naively thought would be the love of my life, later with a dispensable succession of partners. Sex became politicized and endorsed by my generation, made safe with the advent of the Pill, even though such behavior was still a moral issue for lots of people, including my parents. I was a very, very bad girl, living out the epiphany of the 1970s for women, that love and sex aren't necessarily the same thing. I don't know if I've accrued more than my fair share of lost loves, but I'm something of a haunted person from the damage. Many times I was confused about the men I slept with, not knowing for sure whether I was genuinely attracted to them, or if the impetus was their attraction to me. I had to be kicked in the head by a few mules, now I've given up riding. In one of life's little full circles, I have become a creature of the sexually retrograde 1990s, just as I was of the sexually voracious 1960s."

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Though it's not the cover story, the headline, "Larry Kramer's Big Gay Book," is sprawled across the top of the current issue of New York (January 4-11, 2010). It immediately catches your eye and I couldn't wait to read what would be offered inside. Queer writer-turned-activist Kramer, author of plays, "The Normal Heart" and "The Destiny of Me"; the novel, "Faggots"; and the screenplay, "Women in Love," not to mention thousands of pieces of journalism about HIV/AIDS to activism, has been busily penning, since 1978, his greatest tome, "The American People." The "screaming" voice of the AIDS movement from its earliest days (yes, he felt that you had to be "in-your-face") hasn't compromising or abandoning a writing career all these years but dedicated to more than 4,000 pages already (and counting) on this queer history. "Ronald Reagan kept making speeches about 'the American people,'" he told journalist Jesse Green, "and it totally pissed me off because his American people didn't include me or us. So that's the name of the book, but it's the gay American people." His inclusion of early historical figures talks about not only Abraham Lincoln (already documented by many historians and scholars) but George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Lewis and Clark (explores and lovers, according to Kramer's research) and many others. Madman or genius?  You'll definitely be hearing more about Kramer's book in the days to come!

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Everyone's favorite newscaster, Anderson Cooper, graces the cover of this month's Sky Delta (January, 2010) in an interview with David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, in which he reveals a lot about his profession but not much about his personal life (you know the gay rumor mill?).  Carr writes: "Cooper is an odd guy in the anchor chair. For one thing, he's 42. While the read on most contemporary anchors is a wise, paternal presence, Cooper is more good son than wizened father. But the boyish mien--with eyes that are so vividly hued that the word "blue" doesn't really do them justice--is topped off by a full head of silver hair. It's a remarkable mix, and you never mistake him for another anchor; his voice never reflects none of the baritone splendors of anchor-speak, which might be why he has achieved so  much at a very young age . .  . His newscast reflects his nature: roving, peripatetic, with a tendency to linger over stories that come and go in a flash on the broadcast network news."  Cooper explains:  "I think it's my job to present facts and kind of look at things and let viewers come to their own conclusions based on facts. I don't think that they need me screaming at them. I think that there's far too much yelling going on in television as it is."