Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt we had the New Deal; with John F. Kennedy, the New Frontier. Today we are living in the era of the New Vulgarity. The latest in the regime’s litany of profanity, defended by followers either as “speaking his mind” or “I didn’t hear him say it” came when he allegedly referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” But it’s not just about the words.
Vulgarity, in a broad sense, is a form of crude and cruel behavior. In the matter of the White House occupant, it is his blatant distain for dignity that spans the famous “locker room” talk episode to the equivocation of Nazi thugs with good people, and now, yet another reiteration of racism. Joe Biden’s “We’re better than this” response would be reassuring if it were true.
And this happens just two weeks into the New Year. Meanwhile, Wisconsin, too, is already in the national news—and it’s about LGBTQ-relevant stuff, at that!
There was a positive story. The Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) withdrew its Supreme Court appeal and settled with Ash Whitaker, the young trans man who had sued for his right to use the bathroom of his identified gender. It’s a victory that upholds the 7th Circuit Court’s decision based on Title IX and the U.S. Constitution in which the court recognized the documented discriminatory harm to Whitaker while reducing the KUSD argument to speculation.
The other is Wisconsin’s upcoming Senate contest between incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin and a yet-to-be-named Republican opponent. Barely 11 months away, pundits speculate the Wisconsin contest will be the top U.S. Senate race of 2018. If you watch TV, you know it’s in the conservative consciousness—they’ve already spent $4.7 million on campaign ads against Baldwin. It should be in ours and we should already be as engaged as the opposition.
A year ago, some LGBTQs called for “revolution” to ignite a community political awakening. It flopped. Perhaps it was the clarion “Vive la Resistance” that, like Häagen-Dazs, relied on a Euro-chic charm that made it sound more like a Les Mis promo than a serious political agenda. Then there was that LGBTQ community “statement” crafted with great gravitas that never saw the light of day. I’m sure its authors spent hours debating each word and paragraph. I hope they at least emailed a copy to the UW-Milwaukee Library’s LGBT Archive. There was a “Meet and Greet with Elected Officials” held last year at the LGBT Community Center but nothing since. Maybe there’ll be a voter registration booth at PrideFest this summer.
Meanwhile, in light of the whole “shithole” outrage, searching for a response from our community leadership for a reaction would be futile. There has been no public statement that I could find condemning the regime’s most recent vulgar and hateful remarks.
Back in the early days of AIDS, the ACT UP movement slogan “Silence = Death” succeeded in mobilizing the LGBTQ community in the face of the crisis and government complacency. And then there’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
We’d better start talking.
