gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights
December 6th, 2011 | Uncategorized
Holy shit!
I’m listening to Hillary Clinton’s staggering, mind-blowing speech in honor of International Human Rights Day. You can too, right here.
Here’s the transcript. It’s totally worth reading every word.
(Thanks to Rex Wockner for these links!)
31 Responses to “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”
thank you, Secretary of State Clinton! your message was refreshing and it did my heart good to hear it.
this is a watershed event, another milestone in the unfolding of LGBT history . . .
Holy shit indeed!
Yeah, I can barely believe it. It’s her words, the context, and the actions to back it up. It’s that long,long time coming feeling. And, oh, it’s so strange — and also not at all surprising to me — that still, after all these years, I’m this amazed and moved to hear lgbt rights being acknowledged in a way that makes clear that say, me, for instance, a lesbian, should be treated with the full respect due any human being. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
I posted it on my facebook after I saw your link, and it’s spreading really fast through the links.
on one hand i applaud hillary for her speech. i love it, a lot. on the other hand i know that the government that she is still a part of is giving money to another government (israel) so that they can treat citizens of a country they occupy (palestinians) the same way the lgbt community is treated. the palestinians aren’t the only ones. there are innocents at guantanamo bay. there are iraqi’s suffering because of our actions. this is an important speech, a VERY important speech, but as the bumper sticker says “no one is free when anyone is oppressed.” i can’t wait until hillary, or someone from the US, makes a similar speech about EVERYONE, calling EVERYONE out on mistreatment of so many many citizens.
really, sorry to be a downer, but the picture is so big and i just have such mixed reactions. joy and grief. *sigh*
Wow, A.B., that is impressive! And to think, for three whole months earlier this year, Smallville also affirmed that LGBT are people (in April, the new city commission repealed the human rights ordinance passed by the outgoing city commission, and then declared there would be no discussion from the community).
Brooke, you got it right. Also, consider the source. Bill Clinton was responsible for DADT and DOMA. Is she sleeping with the enemy?
@Therry
She’s married to the enemy, no one knows if she’s sleeping with the enemy unless there’s a webcam pointed at their bed. And I’m not sure that Bill is the enemy, anyway. He’s a politician, and we all know what weird bedfellows that can entail.
That said, this harkens back to Hillary’s then-controversial speech in 1995 in Beijing where she declared that women’s rights are human rights.
What a good day.
(… goes back to another grey day in the cube farm, where any bit of sunshine, even metaphoric, is welcomed …)
Great minds think alike – Laura Conaway of The Rachel Maddow Show has posted a nice article (complete with clip) of Hillary Clinton’s 1995 Beijing speech…
AB, thank you. I’ve waited SO long for something like this.
I hope that your country’s acts match Mrs Clinton’s words.
Remind me again why we elected Obama instead of her?
repeal of welfare, effective death penalty act and crime bill, doma, and NAFTA; i’m pretty sure bill *IS* the enemy. and, why didn’t he get leonard peltier out of prison??
and how is it that al gore was vice prez for eight years, but waits until he gets out of office to notice that the planet is dying?
and when is obama gonna close guantanamo, end torture, and end the wars?
i think hillary is a democrat. like bill. like al. like barack.
and i agree with brooke; nothing she says about human rights means shit while the US foreign policy is still to fund the israeli occupation, and two wars.
i’ll never believe that any of them in washington have anyone’s interest in mind but the super rich. but, if they wanted to impress me, they could draft a comprehensive equal rights bill for glbts and heck, maybe women too. then, maybe we could stop talking about whether or not we should be able to “join the army, burn women’s and kids villages” after being a homosexual. and marriage.
sorry to be such a downer…i’d vote for the maxine waters/bernie sanders ticket. but then, after they both proved wishy washy, liberal, and impotent, i’d probably be even MORE cynical.
Truthout just ran a piece, by Anne Elizabeth Moore and Mardou, about DC Comics dropping a significant number of female creators from its monthly series of 52 superhero books. The comic strip at the end of the article references the Bechdel test.
http://www.truth-out.org/how-draw-comics-new-52-way-more-women-fridges/1323181363
Therry and St. Jerome (#10) I was a Hillary delegate to the Riley County Democratic Caucus in ’08, but we were swamped by the Obama turnout. It seems the Obama campaign figured out that states with caucuses were the way to win the nomination, not the states with primaries (which Hillary’s campaign focused on). Hillary, as the Democratic nominee, might have done very well in the general election. She would have received support from some unlikely sources… my elderly aunt in Texas was more favorably impressed by my having been a Hillary delegate than anything else I’ve done in my life.
Pam (12),
What complete and utter bullshit. Worthy of Fox News.
@Dr. E (#14)
Ooooh, them thar’s fightin’ words. Since you are more deeply involved in the world of comics/graphic artists than I am, I would appreciate a more-nuanced explanation than “complete and utter bullshit.” Seriously. What are we outsiders missing in this situation?
(… goes back to her glowing screen in the padded cell zone …)
From the “I Want What He’s Been Smoking” Dept.:
Every now and again, the Wall Street Journal surprises me, and even yields a few belly laughs. The opinion piece linked to below is so dripping with sarcasm and 99%-ism I had to do a double-take to make sure the author was actually an employee of Dow Jones (publisher of the WSJ), not a guest writer. The title alone makes it worth a clickthrough, “The 1% Has Found Its Moses.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577084881175191016.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_markets
Quoting from the article:
—
Despite the nation’s progress toward a balanced, equal society, some minorities are still fighting for justice.
They long to be treated fairly. They yearn for respect and recognition from their peers. They want fellow citizens to know they’re just like them except they have millions and billions of dollars.
They are the 1%, and by definition, they are the minority of minorities.
[…snip…]
Last week, Mr. Cooperman shook off the shackles of oppression and, in an open letter to President Barack Obama, cried the 1%’s version of “Let my people go.”
Mr. Cooperman called on the president to “eschew the polarizing vernacular of political militancy.”
“It’s a good letter,” Mr. Cooperman told me. “I used a dictionary.”
It’s catchy and succinct slogan, not unlike “We shall overcome,” and one that should be put on a sign, though you would have to write really, really small.
[…snip…]
“My story is anything but unique. I know many people who are similarly situated by both humble family history and hard-won accomplishment,” Mr. Cooperman wrote. In his case, he writes, “and a great deal of luck.”
Bad luck obviously. Who among us would want to carry the burden of $19.1 million (the average household wealth of the richest 1% of Americans as defined by the Federal Reserve and Economic Policy Institute) and have to suffer the slights of the president and his “minions?”
Bravo to Mr. Cooperman. He turned “I have a dream” into “I’ve been dreaming.”
—
(… goes back to her own 1% dream which requires a great deal of luck, a winning lottery ticket …)
Thanks for the reference, Alison. Here’s the part I liked best,
“But violence toward women isn’t cultural; it’s criminal. Likewise with slavery, what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.
“In each of these cases, we came to learn that no practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us.”
Dr. Empirical(#14) Speaking of Fox News, today is December 9th, which means it’s time for the Fox News War on the War on Christmas to rev-up into high gear. As has been said elsewhere, it’s a sad day when school children can’t speak openly of Christmas, and can only obliquely refer to an unnamed winter festival that their family will be celebrating at the end of December. And don’t stop there… Rob Cordry, former War on Holidays Chief Correspondent of the Daily Show, has exposed the War on Saint Valentine’s Day. It has become so commercialized these days, says Cordry, when we all know that the true meaning of Valentine’s Day is to commemorate the life and martyrdom of Saint Valentine. And, I would add, let us not forget the War on Halloween! It’s not about trick-or-treating, candy and costumes… it’s about summoning up zombie armies!
I must admit, though… I’m a lot calmer since I’ve started watching more MSNBC and less Fox News Channel.
She’s married to the enemy, no one knows if she’s sleeping with the enemy
*snort*
Without job creation of the mortgage bubble, Mr. Cooperman’s financial industry would have been at a loss this year when it needed to shed 35,000 jobs.
Did he really write that? *neck crack from the cognitive dissonance*
You’re right, hairball, that article being in WSJ is a shocker. Not that I read the WSJ with any regularity, but…wow.
Dr. E, I also wonder what you found so objectionable about that comic. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I really don’t get it. As usual.
And yet … and yet … both Clinton and Obama are opposed to same-sex marriage, “based on their personal beliefs” as Band of Thebes points out. And quite a number of American states are still enforcing their sodomy laws, despite Lawrence v. Texas.
Duncan, did you mean this link?
[…] desde já a Alison Bechdel por ter dado notícias do discurso em seu blog – http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/gay-rights-are-human-rights-and-human-rights-are-gay-rights – sem o que eu não teria ficado sabendo, já que nestas plagas tupiniquins o noticiário da […]
Damnit, Duncan, why ya gotta be that way? Dragging the truth into everything? (I’m going by the link Andrew B posted, though yours was quite interesting as well.)
Buzzkill. (But hey! Elio di Rupo!)
?Que’?
Candace Ginrich discusses her brother’s beliefs about gays and lesbians, from the Huffington Post…
Candace Gingrich. Candace Gingrich-Jones, in fact.
Hairball, did you see Yummy Jonas Kauffman andMarina Poplavskaya in Faust on Saturday? I liked the way they framed the production to be all about Marguerite and less about Faust, but I wasn’t too sure what to do with the “Did I just dream that?” ending. Loved the singing, and Rene made a nice appealing Mephistopheles.
@Therry (#28)
I listened on the radio, but I’m sure I didn’t get the full effect of Faust transplanted to the Atomic Era without the visuals, although Margaret Juntwait and Ira Siff did their best to explain the set and the projections.
Saturday night was fun too… WQXR did a live broadcast from Carnegie Hall of Karita Mattila’s recital.
Lots of Poulenc, with which I am not familiar, so it was a good test of my très mauvais français. Good test, bad student. I flunked. Mattila sang in French, German, English, and Finnish, ending with a comedic Finnish folk/drinking song. Somewhere in the encores she sang “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady and danced around the piano.
Poulenc must be the new “in thing”… I see Susan Graham has a chunk of Poulenc on the program for her 2/1/12 recital at Carnegie. Alas, the recital won’t be broadcast.
(… goes back to an evening of winter-like chill with a full moon beckoning through my window …)
Moo U has just been named one of the most “military-friendly” campuses in the United States. Just as interesting, though, is the relationship between Moo U and the Smallville Christian College across the street. There is a memorandum of agreement between the privately-owned christian college and the state-owned Moo U, but just what agreement is being carried out is unclear, as the Moo U administration claims to have “lost” their copy of the agreement(!)The local human rights group that I serve as Board secretary is going to try to find it. What we do know is that one faculty member at the christian college was fired for coming out as lesbian, the day after she came out. Also, the president of the christian college was one of the leading proponents of the removal of LGBT folk from the Smallville human rights ordinance earlier this year. Moo U includes LGBT in its diversity statement, so I would say that an agreement with the christian college folk may be problematic for us. Stay tuned!
Wow that was awesome! Thanks for posting, AB!