12 | Out in the Mountains |June 2000

——f opinion =

From Isolation

to Justice:
A

Generation

This letter has been signed by over
1000 LGBT youth all over the United
States. Outright Vermont, the
statewide organization working in
support of all LGBTQA youth in
Vermont, is proud to support all of the
young people who signed onto this
important statement. To add your
name to the list of signatories, send an
email with your name, age, town and
state of residence to: lgbtnextgenera-
tion@hotmail.com. The support of
people over 30 is also requested. To
sign on as an ally, send an emai,l
including your age, to the above
address. For those without email,

contact Outright Vermont at 865-9677 ’

to be added to the list. As OIT M went
to press, there were more than 1000
youth signatures collected.

Among our nation’s monuments
for liberty, equality and justice les-
bian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people march on Washington. For
many in the next generation, this is
our first opportunity to experience a
national march. Yet, we are faced with
conflicting emotions. More important
than the experience, this march pro-
vides us with an opportunity to ask
what kind of a movement we are
inheriting.

The LGBT movement does not
belong to today’s leaders alone; it
belongs to tomorrow’s as well. The
next generation of ' LGBT activists
will be left to either sustain or undo
the work done today - work that
affects how LGBT people are thought
of in American society and how we
think of ourselves. Thus, we must be
guided by a vision that continues to
advance our values and enrich our
legacy.

To what degree do today’s LGBT
organizations have a long-terrn view
that anticipates the consequences of
today’s strategies? What are our
movement’s values, beyond the festi-
vals, rainbow “tchotchkes,” fundrais-
ing dinners and concerts?

We, the next generation of LGBT
activists, join hundreds of thousands
of LGBT people who share a commit-
ment to the values and principles of
social justice that are the foundation
of the LGBT movement. These values
have implications beyond sexual ori-
entation and are the basis of civil
rights for all people and inform how
social movements act.

WHAT ARE OUR VALUES?

Each one of us grew up in a homo-
phobic society that taught us to feel
alone and isolated. From this isola-

letter to the LGBT
movement from the Next

tion, we reach
out to each
other to build
c o m m u n i ty
and act togeth-
er to build a
movement. We
are our friends’
found families,
the creators of
new traditions
and ethics. We

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are reinventing
gender. We act
up, and kiss in.
We build com-
munity centers
and other social service programs
everywhere. When the nation was in
homophobic denial, together we
launched an unprecedented response
to the AIDS epidemic and we created
the most poetic monument in the
country, the Quilt.

From these experiences, the core
values of our movement emerge:
compassion, belief and commitment
to the common good, non-discrimina-
tion, political freedom, freedom from
violence and harassment, control over
our own bodies, and equal opportuni-
ty.

These values are part of a larger
legacy that links justice movements
together. Do we believe in these val-
ues as a “Simple Matter of Justice” for
all people? If we truly do, the LGBT
movement must resist isolation and
return wholeheartedly to this nation’s
struggle for justice.

IN ISOLATION

It is clear that the LGBT movement
is succeeding at achieving some gains
on sexual orientation and gender iden-
tity issues. But if LGBT organizations
act in isolation, our values will be
undermined and they will not be real-
ized. .

A single-minded approach that
attempts to isolate sexual orientation
equality from other struggles limits
the movement’s agenda so that some
may move forward while others are
left behind. In our own history, inter-
nal battles were fought to recognize
some of the movement’s most obvi-
ous constituents — bisexual and trans-
gendered people. Acting as if sexual
orientation is the common denomina-
tor — and not justice - makes the move-
ment

irrelevant to those who cannot or
will not act in isolation.

LGBT people are the childless
elderly, yet lack of social nets for the
old is deemed “not a gay issue.” The

nation’s commitment to public educa-
tion — on which LGBT youth and par-
ents depend — is deemed not a gay
issue. LGBT youth disproportionately
represent homeless youth in this coun-
try, yet homelessness is not a gay
issue. Employment discrimination,
for those of us who cannot or will not
pass, casts us into poverty, yet unem-
ployment, welfare and Medicaid poli-
cies are not gay issues. LGBT people
are more likely to abuse drugs and this
nation’s drug policies are increasingly
more criminal than interventionist, yet
the war on drugs is not a gay issue. In
this framework, we wonder who is
“gay?”

If the LGBT movement acts in iso-
lation it is blind to the ways in which
it reinforces inequality. What does it
mean to fight for more severe hate
crimes penalties when we know that
in our current criminal justice system
people of color and people from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds make up
a vastly disproportionate number of
people arrested and incarcerated? In
addition, people 25 and younger are
often the perpetrators. Wouldn’t pre-
vention of hate crimes — and our core
values — be better served if resources
and energy spent passing these laws

were redirected to join education-

strategies that reach the places where
young people learn?

If the LGBT movement acts in iso-
lation it becomes blind to the crisis
eroding the very foundations of civil
rights in this country. Increasingly
there are no rights apart from those
that are bought and secured in the
marketplace. The wielding of private
power and political access based on
wealth undermines democracy for all
people. If this remains the context,
gains made around “sexual orienta-
tion” are meaningless.

OUT OF ISOLATION

We believe the LGBT movement

 

will not move forward without under-
standing the reality of LGBT people’s
lives — which are not isolated or
reducible to a single issue. If the
LGBT movement continues its trend
toward isolation, we will have failed
to understand the nature of justice —
that it serves the common good and
leaves nobody behind.

Thus, the degree to which the
LGBT movement is directed by col-
lective input and an open process of
decision making is the crucial mea-
sure of its commitment to social jus-
tice. The survival of the LGBT move-
ment demands that we refuse to con-
centrate power in any organization,
and instead seek to foster a democrat-
ic ethic of participation among LGBT
people. When this happens, more
organizations will support ways for us
to participate in the movement beyond
appearing at a national march or by
writing a check. No organization, no
matter what their financial resources,
could alone determine the direction of
the movement.

TRUE JUSTICE IS JUSTICE
FOR ALL

The means our leaders employ to
fight for justice inform and redefine
the ends we seek. These means define
not only the movement’s ethics but
also determine who is invested in the
movement, who it speaks to, who
leaves, and ultimately who is left
behind.

LGBT‘people have much to teach
American society. It is our turn to sup-
port this nation’s social justice legacy
by contributing to the model through
which rights are obtained by a com-
munity. If in adding to this model, we
are true to our values in means and
ends, we will have worked towards
the day when this country affords
equality to all of its citizens.

We applaud those organizations

and activists who have built and sup-.
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