When The Rainbow Isn't Enuf

Submitted by superadmin on Thu, 01/15/2009 - 12:15pm.
Short Description: 
This piece exemplifies the importance of community organizing and the rich history of community building in Philadelphia.

 

“When The Rainbow Isn’t Enuf”
by Michael Hinson (Founder of the COLOURS Organization, Inc.)
for The Black Gay Men’s Leadership Council
 
 
Like Notozake Shange’s 1974 ground breaking work, “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Wasn’t Enuf”, the black LGBT community, like many other racial and ethnic minority LGBT communities as wells as gender minority communities are asking the question, “where are we in the rainbow agenda?”
 
What is the “rainbow” agenda? Does it include transgender communities or not? Are the issues associated with being poor a part of the agenda? Can people who identify as same gender loving fit into the agenda? And finally whose agenda is it anyway?
 
According to the Healthy People 2010, Companion Document for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health “Gay men and lesbian women are at increased risk for certain cancers (lung, cervical, breast, and anal cancer), due to a higher prevalence of smoking and inadequate risk assessment and screening by providers.” We also know that LGBT individuals are more likely to consume alcohol than their straight counterparts causing us to suffer from alcohol related abnormalities at disparate rates. Just as recent a March 8, 2007, the Centers for Disease Control restated the fact that black gay men make up the clear majority of all AIDS cases reported among males.
 
A recent report entitled Out for Change: Racial and Economic Justice Issues in LGBT communities, funded by the Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues found that 40-50% of the homeless youth living on New York City streets identify as LGBT. 
All too often, our public and private sectors not only discriminate against members of transgender communities, but trans people are often criminally victimized for simply self-identifying with their gender identity and/or expression. The murder of Nizah Morris still haunts members of transgender communities right here in Philadelphia.
 
Given the above issues, it’s easy to “guess-timate” that many in LGBT communities must be left in the wings wondering where am I on the agenda?
 
A read of today’s “rainbow” agenda clearly prescribes “marriage equality” as the top priority for LGBT communities. In our great city alone, some LGBT leaders have suggested, nothing significant has happened in our city since the passing of the City’s Domestic Partnership legislation. Interestingly, this very notion causes pause giving the addition of Gender Identity protections to the City’s Fair Practices Ordinance in 2002. Certainly, members of transgender communities must see the protection as “significant”?
 
This May, members of Philadelphia’s LGBT communities will have an opportunity to elect a Democratic or Republican candidate for Mayor who will either further enhance our lives and our rights or further erode them. Before lining up behind any particular candidate we must first come together, all colors, genders, classes, and political affiliations to assert solid ideas about what we want and need, unapologetically! In doing so, we must acknowledge our painful past, and our distinct differences while embracing all the colors of the rainbow. Together we must ensure that the “rainbow is enuf”.
 
Bayard Rustin said, “we can agitate the right questions by probing at the contradictions”. We certainly have a few contradictions to clarify in our communities.