On Friday, a recount confirmed that Gainesville citizens have elected Craig Lowe to be the next mayor of Gainesville. The runoff was tight – ultimately decided by just 42 votes, with a higher turnout than the general election. The student support Lowe cultivated clearly helped make his historic victory possible.

In an impromptu sidewalk press conference on election night, Lowe said negative campaigning, which he studiously tried to avoid, helped his Tea Party-backed opponent, Don Marsh, overcome much of his general election deficit.

“There was definitely homophobia and prejudice injected into the campaign,” he said, calling this the dirtiest race he’d ever seen in Gainesville.

Marsh found himself a handy foil this weekend, when Westboro Baptist Church arrived to tell Gainesville that “God hates fags.” In a blog post, Marsh condemned “The REAL Haters,” who ” rub salt in the wounds of the very people God has commanded us to heal and to whom we should show compassion.”

While the post was clearly intended to make Marsh look a bit more gay-friendly, his language likens homosexuality to a disease that must be cured, which is the basis for the “ex-gay” movement long associated with Pastor Rick Warren. In this line of thinking, God commands us to “heal” members of the LGBTQ community, not to love them as they are.

Like the anti-”big government” Tea Partiers who rely on public assistance, some people prefer to fixate on “healing” the perceived sins of others. As Jesus once said, “Hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves (from Matthew 23:13, King James version).”

Lowe pointed out on election night that a city government can’t run on negativity. He also said Gainesville politics works best when students get involved. Hopefully this town can get past this ugliness and start focusing on the ways we can help the city develop a transportation infrastructure that doesn’t rely on cars, clean up our local Superfund site, care for the homeless, and grapple with budget problems that won’t disappear on their own.

The more students engage with local government, the less say haters or hypocrites will have in the future of this city.

Wayne Sapp, a pastor at DWOC, released the following video on youtube, but it was taken off for violating the website’s terms of use.

Watch it here.

A complaint has been taken up with the IRS by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Upper ranking members of the church have verified that the church indeed put up the sign. AU claims that this act violates the tax-exemption laws, because the church is attempting to influence a governmental election.

Hopefully, their despicable rhetoric will have the opposite of its intended effect, mobilizing Gainesville’s progressive residents to show up to vote for Lowe in the runoff. Turnout in the general election was less than 15 percent.

The community needs to stand up and go out and vote on April 13 in the runoff election- to find out where you can vote enter the number/name of your street and your zip code into this precinct finder. Early voting has already begun, and runs through Saturday at the Alachua County government offices downtown.

According to Jean Kilbourne, one of the main arguments of the video “is that advertising, as perhaps the primary storyteller in American culture, has the capacity to both produce and affirm the very fictions about women’s desires and identity that advertisers themselves often claim to be innocently tapping into and reflecting back at the public”. The film reveals the many differences between the fantasy lives of women in advertising and the actual lives that women lead in reality.

The film is great for understanding queer issues too! Mass marketing has turned to queers as their new market, according to the false believe that gay people magically have more expendable income. The stereotypical images of advertising pervade our culture and lives, and this video will be a great way to understand and learn more about how this happens. If you’re interested in identity politics you will definitely enjoy this film. It addresses issues about obsession with thinness, the idea of “woman vs. woman” (women competing with each other for men), images in advertising used to silence women, and much more. If you’re interested in the film, the website has even more information and a comprehensive study guide  with a lot of excellent discussion questions.

Myself being a member of QAC, I was pretty excited. Aside from the fact that the speakers were broken and we were forced to watch the video on the good old small screen, it went really well. It was even kind of cozy gathering around the TV/VHS combo to watch a Paper Tiger Television video about Queeruption and radical queers. The movie is about the event Queeruption, held in NYC in 1999. The event was a follow up to the first Queeruption which was held in London, and it ran pretty smoothly for such a large gathering. During the day there were about 350-400 people there attending workshops, learning how to bring back new tools to help them in their activism and also in their daily lives. The event also features live music and poetry readings, which were both pretty cool. The film also makes a point of exposing the capitalist agenda behind “gay friendly” companies and products. Sure, it feels nice to see an ad with two women drinkin’ some BudLight and holding hands or whatever, but…. I don’t want to be another consumer market. Not to mention BudLight sucks. A lot.

Tonight, the Civic Media Center (CMC) is hosting a “Radical Rush Social” to kind of celebrate the culmination of the 2010 RadRush. A band called Blair and the Boyfriends will be playing, and the guy Blair is actually a national slam poet champion and has played with the likes of Cat Power and Stevie Wonder. The social is free, and it will be awesome! If anyone sees this before 9, come out to the CMC! Oh, and the social is a potluck, so there will be plenty of food and refreshments.

The week of action began this Sunday, Nov. 1st and lasts for the week, as part of a national effort born from the March on Washington and Equality Across America, to fight for LGBT equality. Members of the Queer Activist Coalition here in Gainesville (QAC) (disclosure: I’m a member of the group) has different things lined up. I’ll try to keep abreast on any developments across the country.

Besides grassroots activities, there’s been a lot of developments since the NEM to suggest that activists weren’t pressuring merely the ground. Firstly, the anti-hate act I discuss in my previous post quickly passed through the legislature, and Obama wasted no time giving it his John Handcock. Then, Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter came out in repeal of DOMA on the Huff Post. In Gainesville, members of QAC marched with the student-farm worker alliance in solidarity of human rights issues. In a recent phone conference with the ISO, who really brought it out for the NEM, I learned about what people are doing all across the U.S. to push for equality.

This march is having a larger and larger impact. The Week of Action will be a rest test of what can be done on a grassroots basis, and I’ve seen nothing about it in the gay-blogosphere.

In other news, last week’s “That’s Gay” segment of Infomania was pretty funny, and got me thinking about the social constructions of sexuality. Those familiar with John D’Emilio’s scholarship will probably tell you that the conversion therapy argument warrants some debate. There’s an extreme difference between gay identity and gay behavior, and gay identity is a strictly modern phenomenon. While “gay desires” cannot be averted, identity is self-proclaimed. So any closeted frat guy with a girlfriend, looking for other “str8 actin” men for a sexual encounter on Criagslist is free to consider themselves straight insofar as their behavior remains private, and they can disassociate it from their identity without psychological repercussions.

Those that can’t, may seek some form of therapy. In a free world, people can repress whatever feelings or desires they like and call themselves what they will. The reason why this stuff scares the hell out of me isn’t just because of how fucked up it is that someone would seek therapy, but how sexual identity is socially constructed. It has a two-fold effect: 1) affirming that homosexuality is an innate desire, but 2) relegating behavior to reshape identity. It depoliticizes the issues of identity and has an effect on sexuality in our society.

This is why issues like DOMA are so important. The government’s laissez-faire approach to sexuality would not only be more accepting, but would open the door for people to publicly take sexuality outside of the gay-straight binary that it has been cast it.

Then I got to thinking about it a little bit more. What’s at the essence of this piece of law? It sends a message that homophobic violence will be met with a more serious consequence. In doing so, we are first making the bare assumption that a greater punishment will be the deterrent of a crime. Aside from the very good points RadicalQueer brings up, this notion tends to bother me a bit. Is legislation the pinnacle of action towards deterring violence? Think of the areas with the highest amount of crime or violence? In your opinion, what are some of the root causes of crimes and violence?

I would be more inclined to think it is social conditions that generate attitudes of both hate and violence. These attitudes are better addressed in public schools, in workplaces and churches and social organizations. Legislation, in this case, seems to be a more descriptive act, representing not only the way we authenticate hate, but what ways are the best for addressing hateful attitudes.

Or am I wrong? Is the base assumption that greater justice must be exacted upon citizens of a civilized society that practice hate and violence? Still, I am not under the assumption that violence in any form is some random phenomena that can carry a justifiably higher punishment. Hate and violence, however irrational or inhumane, are part of systems of oppression that have causes for their effects. By punishing more, we’re only creating the myth that hate is not our problem, its the bigots.

What do you think? New insights? Out of my mind?

It has been a long day and I will deconstruct everything later. And there is a lot to deconstruct. I encourage everyone to comment and add to the discussion in the coming days. It’s essential that we all do.

What I will say is this: I did not expect that at all. It’s a good thing and it doesn’t in any way change what people are doing. Obama’s speech made the role of protest for LGTB issues and coalition building (read human issues) all the more important and relevant than they ever have been. It was a damn-fine speech, frankly, and I was prepared for that.

Here’s a quick and dirty of what you need to know:

- Flashmob protest for Equality was bad-ass. An intern from The Nation says he’s putting up a video on the Web site. We’ll see when it comes up. I have videos of my own to add once I get it up. And lots of pictures.

- HRC had letters info and supplies for you to write a letter to your representative concerning issues. Corrine Brown, expect a letter.

- The other protest for DADT was a straight-up from the post-8 NoH8 playbook. I left after 45 minutes, and they were still asking people to text and call people to come.

- The Cleve Jones and Sherry Wolf liberation talk wasn’t a talk. It was a call to action! The place was packed, and people were gathered outside just to listen. It was inspirational in the least.

- I’m already late for the HRC picket, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it. We’ll see.

March tomorrow!

Gay, Straight, Black White! Same struggle, same fight!

Yet at the same time, the working-class gays and lesbians (a majority of the demographic) have no support for anti-marriage/anti-assimilation strategies. The economic, emotional and personal benefits of marriage are real. They deserve them.

It seems that these two groups, working-class gays and lesbians and queer radicals should have so much of an agenda they can agree on, so much work to do together.

Take Harvey Milk for example. He built a minority coalition that battled homophobia while simultaneously working for labor rights, rights of the elderly and anti-gentrification. The Gay Liberation Front was vehemently anti-war and the Gay and Lesbian Academic Union put gender inequality at the top of their five-point agenda.

And what about today? Sometimes I’m just way too confused, if not totally distraught.

But I digress. On to Washington.

(Addendum: Donna, featured in the socialistworker.org link, is a member of the Gainesville community and recently spoke at a PSU protest last week in Turlington Plaza.)