Showing posts with label Waiting For Barbara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waiting For Barbara. Show all posts

Sunday, March 31, 2013

What's the difference between Christine Quinn and Ken Mehlman ?

Here's a devastating comparison between Christine Quinn and Ken Mehlman being made by Dan Fishback, via Queerty :

Queerty : One of the most interesting themes of the play is “proximity to power,” particularly how homosexuals in those positions – closeted or not – forsake the LGBT community, e.g. Ken Mehlman. Can you speak to that a bit?

Fishback : One of the worst culprits of this kind of betrayal is Christine Quinn. People support her because she’s a lesbian, but her actual policies are terrible for most queer people. She supported turning St. Vincent’s Hospital in the still-gay West Village into a luxury condo high rise, as if gay people need wealthy neighbors more than they need a hospital. She won’t pass paid sick leave, she’s supported our demonic Police Commissioner, the list goes on and on. But the thing is: queer people are everywhere. So when politicians like Quinn attack the poor, they attack the LGBT community. When they attack immigrants, they attack the LGBT community. When they attack people of color, they attack the LGBT community.

It happens over and over again – not just here, but in Western European countries too. When white homosexuals gain access to political power, they consolidate it by joining the white heterosexual elite in oppressing some “other” group – like immigrants, the poor, or people of color. This is being called “homonationalism,” which I think is a really helpful term, because it’s so widespread – the desperateness with which so many white homosexuals shit on whoever is beneath them in order to feel more secure in the power structure that, only a few years ago, would have eaten them alive.

After years of throwing the LGBTQ community under the bus, Ken Mehlman came out of the closet as having been a self-loathing gay man. What does Mr. Mehlman's episode of hate for his own community have to do with Christine Quinn ? For starters, watch how City Council Speaker Christine Quinn does nothing to help LGBTQ New Yorkers stand up to the Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who in practise profiles, uses stop-and-frisk against, harasses, and falsely arrests LGBTQ New Yorkers :

Related : Christine Quinn betrays the LGBT community

Full Queerty story here : http://www.queerty.com/dan-fishback-waiting-for-barbara-20130330/