This past Monday Diane and I walked out of City Hall after having the great joy of witnessing the Mayor (re)marry Phyllis & Del (engaged 55 years) and we stepped into the cheers of an ecstatic crowd and the rousing music of our community's band.

We were also faced with a few protesters. The most disturbing was a single man, white, maybe in his late 30s, who leaned over the barricade and jabbed his finger at us screaming over and over: "You're evil!"

That was startling...so personal...so rabid. His was the face of a lynch mob. I've seen the historical photographs...people with twisted, vicious faces, self-righteously enjoying the torture and death of a fellow human being. This was a lynch mob in front of our City Hall on Monday held back only by a thin veneer of civilization, the watchful eye of television cameras and our marching band.

We're still going to get married even though he wishes we were dead.

"The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”
Emma Goldman

This was a quote used in the program book for the huge annual celebration given by National Center for Lesbian Rights last weekend. In a room full of Q and non-Q people the victorious plaintiffs (that would be me) and attorneys in the case against the State of California about a thousand people cheered our right to marry. I cheered too, thinking of Emma Goldman's speeches for human rights.

I'm not one of those folks who thinks marriage is for everyone. After all one of the perks has always been living a free and unemcumbered life (no kids, no curfews!) And as a feminist I still have my arguments about it as an institution that has been used to oppress women specifically and people with lower economics means in general.

I do, however, feel like I've said many times before: Black and White Freedom Riders didn't sit in at the counter at Woolworth's in the 1960s because the food was good! It was about the right to choose.

Like with our bodies it's true of ourselves!!! We have to have the right to choose to marry or not. If we don't have that right how can anyone say we are all equal under the law! And marriage is a legal contract first.

Does that discrimination mean someone gets to decide my books should not be published because there are people of color in them? Because there are lesbians in them? Some have tried that before (see the prohibitions against lesbian subject matter on Broadway, see the impounding of queer books by US customs over the past 25 years)!

I think of lesbians as able to look at the bigger picture. As women we have to because society is not always that trustworthy. But we often don't put ourselves at the center of that picture. And we don't see how the treatment of women is an indicator of how healthy the society is. Right now our society should be on life support.

Lesbians will be asked to go out and vote in California along w/the rest of the electorate to decide if the Supreme Court ruling supporting our right to marry should stand. Will we get out and vote? Hard to know. We often take a position and don't think about the major ramifications. We enjoy feeling self-righteously against marriage or think it's irrelevant and there are more important issues. (I know because I've been one of those lesbians on occasion).

There are no more important issues than our lives and being equal before the law because all the issues--global & personal-- connect. We give up one right and others soon follow. Our silence has allowed too many bad things to happen. This should not be another one of those times.

When my partner Diane and I got dressed up for the centennial commemoration of the 1906 earthquake we were proud to be part of the community celebration. For once I felt like I looked almost as good as one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence! We deserve the right to stroll on Market Street along w/everyone else. And we're in San Francisco so we could and have people be excited to see us. That's not true everywhere, nor is it true every day even here. But we did because we can (and because I'm weak for period clothes). In another time we would not have survived that stroll. But people speaking up for our rights changed that.

Emma Goldman got deported for speaking up for women and workers. Would we have been quiet about that?

Let's not be silent about our rights come November!

And the wedding is in October. Send in your votes: should I wear the '06 outfit or go more 1940s/noir?

I just heard that the Frameline LGBT Film Festival will open this year with "Affinity" based on the novel by Sarah Waters! I'm a big fan of Waters' novels and watched the BBC version of her novel, "Tipping the Velvet," so many times I could almost recite the lines w/the correct, working-class, British accent.

I feel so hungry to see real, in depth, complex portrayals of Lesbians on screen I can hear my heart growling.

I know that this culture hates women and is afraid of Lesbians but it's so demoralizing sometimes to see how poorly or erratically we're reflected in the media. Even our own LGBT community is ignorant of our misrepresentation. I've heard many of our other initials claim that Lesbians are too demanding, exacting, exclusive, etc. etc., as if by our endurance we've gained some power. I wish they could tell me where that power is because it certainly isn't in Hollywood.

In the first Lesbian movies I saw Lesbians had to die:
"The Children's Hour" (1961) Lesbian hangs her self so her love object can marry her fiance
"The Fox" (1967) Lesbian is hit by a falling tree and her love object can settle down with the man who caused the trouble

Then there was "The Killing of Sister George" which many conservative women hated. There's no actual dying only the main character's character is killed off in her TV soap opera. But it was sexy and had real and deep characters and a lot of Lesbians live on.

But it's hard to find mainstream Lesbian characters on TV or in the movies now. We can remember some we like clearly and add them to our rental queue:
"November Moon" WWII Lesbians who don't die
"Bound" mobster Lesbians who spill a lot of blood but don't die
"Late Bloomers" middle-aged Lesbians who fall in love and aren't dead yet
"Fire" Indian Lesbians who don't die...just barely!

But what do we make of "Notes on a Scandal" the brilliant turn by Dame Judy Dench (see earlier blog). What Lesbians is it about? Is it about Lesbians at all? I don't know.

Sometimes we do better not to star in the movie but rather be the secondary character: Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne's sister) in "Internal Affairs," or Cher in "Silkwood."

But I prefer a life-sized Lesbian with backstory and depth so I'll keep looking. The Brits seem to do better and if Sarah Waters keeps writing we'll be in good shape. Now if they'd just add a Lesbian to the very queer "Torchwood" series!

The Frameline Festival isn't perfect---it's often short on Lesbian films. But still it's done a good job of finding fabulous Lesbian films and filmmakers to showcase.

And there's Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project Festival June 13-15 at BRAVA Theatre!!! Now there will be Lesbians!!!! On screen and in the audience.

I just watched a remastered (hate that word) print of the magical movie musical from 1961, West Side Story, at the classic Castro Movie Palace in San Francisco. It was the first time I'd seen it on the big screen since it was originally released and probably my 20th viewing. And it holds up. The music (although it barely shows an acquaintanceship with a Puerto Rican musical idiom) is brilliant in that Stephen Sondheim way. Unresolved, poignant melodies that swell without becomeing too Andrew Lloyd Webber-like and they still carry the story forward.

The dancing is exquisite---athletic, sexy, and, like the songs, carry the story in an integrated way. Okay, I know that Natalie Wood didn't have a PR bone in her body, but she did have those big liquid brown eyes and even if her trilled 'r' was over the top...she did still have those big liquid brown eyes! And I know Richard Beymer didn't really sing and George Chakiris was really Greek but they were emoting with enough life for every ethnic group put together.

There was a time when those inconsistencies made me politically unhappy and they still do on my most Virgo days. But the artistry is so magnificent, the story so compelling (yes, it's Romeo & Juliet cliche squared) and most importantly it had a powerful message that we as human being are still failing to heed: horizontal hostility only benefits those w/their feet on our necks. The friction between ethnicities and different classes helps keep us in our 'place'---that's not the place they were singing about.

'There's a Place for Us' the starcrossed "PR" and "Polack" (quoting from the movie not my vocabulary) sang and I've always wanted to believe that. That Tony and Maria could find a way to live together w/out cross cultural fear and hatred. That I could marry my partner Diane without cross cultural fear & hatred. That we could educate children, create art, find decent housing, get jobs, immigrate, etc. w/out cross cultural fear & hatred.

But I worry that this is not a belief or dream many of us share. Sitting several rows behind me in the theatre was a group of what looked to be heterosexual, white couples---about 6-8 people----who laughed every time an 'issue' came up on the screen and especially any time the men did anything 'unmanly' like dance. It was a wierdly ominous sensation to have such a group of cynical, unconscious, racist, sexist people sitting at my back.

I know people giggle when they're uncomfortable...and musicals often make younger people, inexperienced w/the genre feel awkward. I have a dear nephew who was incredulous when I shared my disc of West Side Story...he thought musicals were from Mars. I still love him.

But this group's responses were so specifically about the ethnic and class concerns and the things that the men performed it felt like a huge signal that something in our culture had gone awry. The men snorted and suppressed laughter as if they were in elementary school. It was so disturbing I worred that they might make some childishly inappropriate response at the emotional high point of the film and I'd go berserk and throw my diet coke at them. (They didn't and I was determined to hold my temper. no matter what)

There is, however, good news---This was only a small segment of the audience. There were plenty of other younger, white men (and many of them seemed to be straight) who were having no problem with thinking about the unfairness of immigrant sweat shop conditions or relating to the desparate aspirations of the equally poor members of the Jets and Sharks street gangs or admiring the sheer beauty of male dancing.

So on reflection---maybe there is a place for us, somewhere.