So, Soloway went viral.

The dedicated thespian took her moxie and her madcap to YouTube and created “Secrets,” a series of hilarious two-minute previews of a gay soap opera. The one catch: the soap doesn’t exist, only the sneak peaks.

“I was driving to my summer camp job with my two homo friends… and they were doing the stereotypical fey voices – I think one of them might have said ‘Shteecrets…’ and I added, ‘this week on Theecrets… Bruce and Benjamin escape from the Crystal Palace’.” Soloway says. “I didn’t even know what that meant exactly, but I liked the idea of a heightened all gay environment, told in the straight soap way, only previews. And here was an organic idea that had no stage anywhere near it.”

Rather, Soloway rented a garage just outside Boston proper and set up a dais, brought in some props and assembled her pals from the theater days, then waited for the antics to begin. A twisted, cheeky cast of characters emerge in “The Potluck” (http://bit.ly/fJ48r9)  – the first of three webisodes now online – which introduces a lesbian saboteur who puts meat in baked beans, a closeted lesbian and her “traveling companion” and Raquan, a rakish African-American man who fights with his elder, debonair partner about hanging with his “homies.” Long stares and dissonant keyboard music ensue.

The ridiculous, irreverent merriment continues through episodes two and three (http://bit.ly/gTN1P1, http://bit.ly/e2jZzb), as more lesbian characters struggle with chastened loves, amnesia-inducing accidents and vegetarianism. Meanwhile, Raquan drinks 40-ounce Private Stock Malt Liquor with his pals before a confrontation with his partner, Philip.

“Now the fun, is getting back to it – really writing, creating more until it finds itself,” Soloway says. “There are subtle things, and there are big things, and I’m trying to find the synthesis as we go. And we can do it in a manner that is more lifestyle appropriate.”

Reconciling her talent for comedy and her passion for music is an enterprise on which Soloway has been working since she arrived in Boston more than a decade ago. Following a stint as the music director of Second City in her native Chicago, Soloway and her younger sister, Jill, created “The Real Life Brady Bunch,” a parody of sit-com obsession which toured the country and landed them a movie deal and the promise of fame and fortune in Hollywood.

The film, starring Conan O’Brien sidekick Andy Richter, came and Soloway went. Following love of folk music and a character’s real-life sister, Soloway packed up and moved to Boston in 1994, forming the band Faith Soloway Crisis and laying the groundwork for her “schlock-opera” parodies of self-important theater.

Beginning in 2000, Soloway produced a major stage event every two or so years, then life got in the way.

“Doing theatrical productions became harder as I got older – I couldn’t even bring myself to that table again when thinking about creating something new,” says Soloway, whose day job is director for Urban Improv, an inner-city youth theater program in Boston. “I tried a couple of times, had a couple of different theaters interested to produce with me, but when it came down to actualizing, it became harder to commit to that idea.”

But the turn away from the stage and toward multimedia has brought Soloway in closer contact with her sister, who has worked as an executive producer for such acclaimed shows as “Six Feet Under” and “The United States of Tara.” The pair has collaborated on a television pilot, a book and several other writing projects, with more in the works.

“Jill is also working on a script for Fox studios that has a bow to a lesbian sister in it – kind of exaggerated version of our family,” Soloway says. “My girlfriend and I have been giving her notes from the East Coast. I’m just honored to be a part of that process.”

The majority of the women migrate from South Asia and the Philippines seeking employment as domestic laborers in Qatar – the second richest country in the world – and other Gulf States. Most gain employment via domestic agencies that maintain relationships with the Qatari government; yet these entities rarely educate women about the potential pitfalls of the work: long hours, low pay (if any), domestic enslavement – and in some cases, sexual abuse.

Once one – or more – of these has occurred and the workers escape their mistreatment, neither the agencies nor the government protects their newest arrivals through Ministry of Labor laws, safe houses or even legal recourse, leaving them to face extortion from corrupt local officials and imprisonment. The United States and other Western countries – with lucrative business ties to the country, and ex-pats who hire these workers – have, so far, turned a blind eye to the problem.

“We have been working on this for six or seven years now, but it is massive in scale and largely hidden compared to other human rights abuses,” says Nisha Varia, senior researcher for the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “When we try to bring up this issue in the region, we find that journalists, government agents and even other human rights workers are actually employers (of South Asian women) themselves.” Last month, Human Rights Watch issued the latest of many reports targeting the abuse of migrant workers abroad: “Walls at Every Turn: Abuse of Migrant Domestic Workers through Kuwait’s Sponsorship System,” this time turning its focus to the Middle East. Though the report concentrates on Kuwait, Varia states the problem is endemic to most of the countries of the Arabian Gulf, specifically Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – many of which rank now in the world’s top GDP percentiles, due to their oil-based economies.

BACKGROUND

Qatar, like many other Arabian Gulf states, remains bound to the kafala (sponsorship) system, in which foreigners are “sponsored” by their employer, who hold their passport, control their movements, demand fees to terminate a contract and prevent them from changing jobs. Qatari officials, members of the royal family, ex-pats with close ties to the country and even lawmakers maintain that domestic employers in Qatar treat their employees like “family members,” which, in their eyes, makes legal reforms moot, and effectively separates domestic workers from the laws that govern regular workspaces. Qatar officials have also placed no restrictions on the employment of women, with opportunities determined by market demand and located mainly in service professions.

Once the filial goodwill ends, however, and domestic workers flee, their sponsors report them to the police, who arrest and charge them with absconding. Government officials then immediately cancel the workers’ residency visa and leave them in one-room prisons, where they are subject to the mercy of police guards and administrators, who regulate their living conditions, their meals and even their access to outside help on a whim. Only 20 percent of female inmates ultimately have access to attorneys, while the remaining 80 percent face Islamic courts without a lawyer, many times after waiting months for a hearing in these holding circumstances.

“If these women do make it to an embassy shelter before they are arrested, they are housed among 200 to 600 other women at any given time,” Varia says. “This certainly gives you a sense of how pressing the problem really is.”

ANALYSIS

In many ways, Qatar has emerged as a beacon of the restive and recalcitrant Middle East. The emirate has undergone a period of liberalization and modernization under the current Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, but most importantly under his closest ally, Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, his second wife. Sheika Mozah chairs the progressive Qatar Foundation, sits on the board of Qatar’s Supreme Education Council, and in September, gave a presentation at the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New York.

“Her Highness Sheikha Mozah has a leading role in promoting peaceful dialogue and cross cultural understanding as a means to bring about peaceful resolutions,” reads her official website. “Through her work with UNESCO and the UN Alliance of Civilizations, she helps formulate programs to educate and protect victims of human rights abuses – victims who are usually women, children and youth.”

Despite its espousal of humanitarianism, the government of Qatar has not yet enacted necessary anti-trafficking legislation or shown evidence of prosecuting and punishing trafficking offenders and identifying victims of trafficking. Human Rights Watch has called on the Gulf States to abolish or significantly amend provisions of kafala to prevent forced labor of migrant workers; the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has singled out Qatar. Short of that, UNHCR has asked the Ministry of Labor to increase efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking and apply formal procedures to identify victims among vulnerable groups, such as those arrested for immigration violations or prostitution.

Most of all, Varia says the government, run by the royal family, has the obligation to shift the social attitude toward domestic slavery. “One of the reasons it is so difficult to combat, is that it’s accepted. People think its okay to take her passport, make her work seven days a week, subject her to inhumane conditions,” she says, “We need constant and continuing advocacy.”

Adrian Brune is a freelance writer based in New York and a contributor to Foreign Policy Digest.

A lot – and I mean ample, ample  activity – has happened within gay rights in the United States in the past six months, enough to give even the most removed follower neck strain, and LGBT writers and bloggers whiplash. With every major event – DADT, marriage equality, ENDA, gay immigration, and most recently, the suicides – a corresponding action/march/protest/t-shirt website moves forward. Some of them have been strokes of genius; others, quixotic, at best – misfires that cost us all scorn from the straight majority we, like it or not, need to win over to gain traction in this cultural quagmire. So, for the activists – and other like-minded individuals (keep in mind, that sometimes just putting your foot down is activism enough) – here is a Top-Five list of recent tactical “Dos” and “Absolutely Do Nots” for continuing the fight without making us all look like raving, self-centered, overly dramatic lunatics as we march forward.

5. Issue: Target’s donation of $150,000 to MN Forward, a group that ran ads supporting Republican Tom Emmer, a candidate who opposes gay marriage.

Wrong move: “Target’s Bigot Special”, a video made by activist group Queer Rising in which five or so protestors pulled out a megaphone announcing two-ply toilet paper for sale “Cause when you’re full of shit like Target is, you need something to wipe the shame with.”

Right move: “Target Ain’t People”, a video supported by Moveon.org, in which another group of protesters reworks and stages a Depeche Mode song to highlight Target’s support of a candidate who is anti-marriage as well as the Supreme Court’s decision to allow major corporations to fund political campaigns.

Analysis: While Queer Rising’s video showed up on some influential blogs, such as the Advocate and Towle Road, it came off as a bitter, insipid protest pulled off by cranks. The footage of the managers kicking the protesters out didn’t help. On the other hand “Target Ain’t People” went viral, and drew attention to two important issues: corporate ownership of political candidates AND Target’s lack of support for LGBT rights.

4. Issue: The president’s move to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and then his backpedaling in Congress and finally, challenges to the law’s reversal in the courts.

Wrong move: White House Fence Chainings, which included Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. Jim Pietrangelo handcuffing themselves to the White House fence in March, then April, followed by a group of five other DADT protesters in May. Each and every person wound up in jail, some multiple times. Point taken – once was enough.

Right move: Lt. Dan Choi’s re-enlistment at the Times Square Armed Services Recruiting Station after U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips overturns DADT in Log Cabin Republicans vs. the United States.

Analysis: Instead of recruiting lawyers and fund-raising to bail our activists out of jail over and over for the same tired action, why not use the money to fund some more lawsuits? Obama tuned out the White House actions; he certainly listened when Phillips spoke, inviting the first LGBT blogger to the White House this week. That Dan Choi re-enlisted demonstrated that LGBT people give back to the country when their rights are given to them.

3. Issue: The six LGBT-teen suicides in September sparked by bullying and other repression.

Wrong move #1: Activist Richard Noble’s Hunger Strike in Palm Springs, CA extended to bullying from a previous one over gay marriage, DADT and a litany of other LGBT inequality causes.

Wrong move #2: Comedian Sarah Silverman’s unsteady rant about the reasons gay kids kill themselves, in which she stated “So don’t be fucking shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves because they’re different. They learned it from watching you (Americans).”

Right move #1: The “It Gets Better Project” launched by Dan Savage, especially the video submitted by Tim Gunn

Right move #2: The Homophobia Kills Die-In at Grand Central Station and the Love-In a week later in Times Square

Analysis: Nothing says “pay attention to me” and not the issue at hand more than a hunger strike. When people take a misguided step toward self-sacrifice by actually hurting themselves, the focus gets shifted from the legitimate issue to the well-being of the people making the “sacrifice,” thus turning it into a hollow ploy to gain heroism and notoriety on the back of a wrong that needs righting. On that note, Sarah Silverman’s pledge to not marry herself until gay people can marry is a non-detrimental stand with a purpose, and though she has a lot to say on the issue – and obviously cares very much – she should leave the camera off until she’s sober the next morning. Not a lot of parents in the Midwest are going to stop by YouTube for a bad-parenting insult from Sarah Silverman while she’s loaded.

On the other hand, the videos that kept rolling in to Savage’s “It Gets Better Project” provided some much needed solace to the kids of the YouTube/Facebook/Twitter generation. But it is possible that, instead of sitting in their empty rooms on the computer, these LGBT kids need real hugs and pats on the back – and other activities to get their minds off depression, hopelessness and suicide.

P.S. Who doesn’t love watching the spectacle of people falling to the ground and smooching during a die-in and love-in? Both received some good media attention from all the LGBT blogs and Gothamist.com

2. Issue: The American Equality Bill: New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s effort to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Bill to cover gay rights.

Wrong move: Queer SOS and its 24/7 vigil featuring activists Alan Bounville and Iana DiBona, in which Bounville, DiBona and friends stand, eat, sleep, and otherwise make-merry (chalking the sidewalks and wearing rainbow sashes) outside of Gillibrand’s Re-election Campaign Offices at 15 West 26^th Street.

Right move: Donating to Gillibrand’s re-election campaign, or better yet, voting for her on Tuesday. Outgoing Governor David Paterson’s choice to fill the shoes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supports not only the amendment to ENDA, but also gay marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Analysis: Aside from blocking the sidewalk to passers-by on their way to jobs and commitments, Queer SOS has racked up an arrest and three summons for Disorderly Conduct all for the sake of taking Gillibrand to task for not pushing her ENDA amendments through lickity split. Instead of asking to back Gillibrand’s race against her opponent, former Congressman Joe DioGuardi, Queer SOS has requested donations toward “House cleaning (for Iana’s house. Since we’ve started the vigil there hasn’t been time to keep things tidy at her home) as well as donations of money for food, water (for when fast begins next week) and bills of eaters and fasters.” Oh yeah, Bounville will kick off a hunger fast directed at ENDA next week. In the meantime, Gillibrand has yet to stop by or offer any comment on the vigil.

1.  Issue: Spreading Anger and not Inclusion in the general fight for LGBT rights, i.e. marriage

Wrong move: The FCK H8 video circling on YouTube and Facebook, in which little kids and grandmas, dressed in FCKH8, t-shirts drop all kinds of F-bombs and flip the middle finger while advocating for the end to Proposition 8

Right move: The NOH8 campaign, a silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8” painted on one cheek in protest.

Right move #2: The Burgundy Crescent Volunteers and other LGBT service groups like them. These organizations reach out to gay-friendly underserved communities to be of service to all walks of life, thereby providing some of our best ambassadors, winning over hearts and minds toward our cause.

Analysis: Sure, a big “fuck you” to all the people who put down LGBT people is well-deserved and necessary at times, but isn’t smart, savvy and creative so much better than that standard response to everything? It’s so easy to say, “Fuck you, fuck everyone, for not giving us our rights” and play out that tired song. Catchy, creative, innovative catches the eye of so many more, especially straight people who recoil at five-year-olds using “Fuck” without even knowing what it means. There are better ways to do attitude.

This past week, most LGBT people likely relived their personal coming-out experiences – and the despair they sometimes brought – again as blog after blog informed us of one, then two, then three, then six young men who took their lives as they strugged with the new identity that probably turned their lives upside down, as it had for each of us who have gone before them. Every death was beyond heartbreaking for the families and beyond vexacious for us, for each one reminded us – even up here in the New York bubble – that the culture had still not granted us, or our young successors, true acceptance. The most upsetting suicide, for me, however, was that of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River after discovering his first forays into gay life had been cruelly recorded for the world to see on the Internet. This one reminded me of the true depths of the inhumanity homophobia can take, except the Internet seems to offer new avenues every day – ones even all the LGBT organizations and the online support networks can’t counter.

I came out while riding the first undulations of the gay rights movement and investigating gay life on a black-and-white, dot matrix Power Mac. There was not yet an acronym for school gay/straight alliances; gay marriage was barely a theory; everyone still consumed media on VHS tapes; and social networking meant walking down to Tommy Nevin’s on a Friday night to mingle with my mostly straight friends. It was an incredibly lonely and isolating time in my life, as I wondered how I would break the news to my parents and deal with the stigma attached to homosexuality in Tulsa. I drank a lot; I wanted to kill myself; I generally felt like I had let the whole world down. I didn’t have the benefit of encountering much advanced thinking on LGBT people or rights; nor did I have the Internet to answer my questions, meet people like me or generally offer solace for my condition. A double-edged sword, perhaps, but I eventually found my people and at least I faced only the sticks-and-stones of verbal taunts, and not the visceral, impermeable, ubitquity of the world wide web.

Tyler Clementi had all of the modern tools of communication at his hands, and then he had them used against him. Many gay adolescents do, but these still don’t seem to be solving the problem of internalized homophobia or the suicide it begets – even as Dan Savage launched his “It Gets Better” campaign. The 2006 Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are still up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. And just this past year, the American Association of Pediatrics issued a report stating that gay and bisexual teen suicide attempts occurred among 28% of gay and bisexual teenage boys and 20% of gay and bisexual teenage girls. Translation: Nearly one in four LGBT teenagers attempted suicide, despite the social and technological advances we’ve made.

Luckily, for me, I had one woman in those first years who witnessed my struggle and asked me if I wanted to “talk shop”, as she put it. She took a risk in confronting me, but she saw my confusion and my pain and decided to do something about it. Sadly, I wonder if, had Tyler or any of the other five men who killed themselves this last month, had that – or if they knew where to go to find a physical hug and a pat on the back from a gay person just to let them know, “Hey, it will be okay.” On Sunday night, the gay community took a step in the right direction with a vigil in Washington Square Park to commemorate these deaths and stand in solidarity. Now, we just need to keep the ball rolling. An LGBT Center exists in nearly every community, and in most, shelters for homeless gay teens as well. Volunteer, serve as an LGBT big brother or sister, read between the lines. Tyler changed his Facebook status to, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry” on the day he died. It’s now our electronic signal to change the way we communicate with each other during this tragedy, and as we face the battle ahead.

But Chris Crain, the former executive editor, and Kevin Naff, the former managing editor of the Blade had an even bigger story on the horizon: Outing Ken Mehlman. At the time, his was the dirtiest little secret in the LGBT community – the savvy, obfuscating Harvard lawyer who was running George W. Bush’s re-election campaign on a strong anti-gay platform was gay. Crain, also a Harvard-trained lawyer, had it on good information from many a Harvard colleague that Mehlman was so deep in the closet he was buried under a pile of Brooks Brothers suits.

So we were going to drag him out. Crain and Naff wanted the story as soon as any reporter could get it. Trouble was, we couldn’t. I set about the story first, emailing and calling friends of friends of Crain who knew Mehlman at Harvard. All said, yes, he way gay, and then no, they would not go on deep background, let alone on the record, about it. After exhausting all my leads, I tried to track down ways to get to Mehlman at Bush Campaign Headquarters in Arlington. When I figured out how untouchable Mehlman was, I ditched that plan and went for a phone call: The weekly campaign roundtable for key Bush campaign staffers. In the middle of a talk on Ohio, I straight up asked Mehlman the question: “Mr. Mehlman, with gay marriage being enacted in many states across the country, are you concerned that will be an issue with Ohio swing voters? And oh, are you gay?” My heart pounded. But Mehlman gave it no weight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and moved on.

Before long, so did I, but not before writing the first story about the outing campaign taken on by a pair of gay activists John Aravosis and Mike Rogers, who, literally, outed no fewer than 13 gay Republican legislators and Capitol Hill staffers who supported, or worked for those who supported, the Federal Marriage Amendment. “I’m pretty uninterested in whether a gay staffer’s name appears in a newspaper, or on a website. I am more interested in a reader approaching someone at a bar and asking, ‘What the hell are you doing, working for someone who doesn’t support our issues?’” said Aravosis, a former staff attorney for the late Sen. Ted Stevens, at the time. “An acquaintance of mine, a Southern Republican, worked for a member who was not anti-gay personally, but he signed on to the amendment (banning gay marriage). My friend quit. I’m basically saying, ‘You know what, you have a choice. It’s 2004. You can work for pro-gay Democrats, and now you can work for pro-gay Republicans.”

And now it’s 2010. And Ken Mehlman last week openly admitted that he was gay that he could also work for whomever or whatever he wanted. In fact, he had already done so, very quietly fundraising for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, former U.S. Solicitor Ted Olson’s legal effort to overturn California’s Proposition 8 ban gay marriage.

In the Atlantic blog outing him, Mehlman said he “really wished” he had acknowledged his sexual orientation sooner, so that he “could have worked against (the Federal Marriage Amendment).”

“It’s a legitimate question and one I understand,” Mehlman said of his silence – or to many gays and lesbians, his complicity – in the political smear against gays. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that,” he told Ambinder. “It was very hard, personally.”

But Mehlman WAS in that place years before. Sources spoke off the record of Mehlman’s romantic pursuits in law school and of his clandestine presence in the gay community. Practically everyone in DC – probably even the president – knew where Mehlman stood on the gay continuum. Of course, as everyone else in this country, he had the right to live his life and to do the job of his choosing without being forced to succumb to the wishes of any special interest group, particularly the LGBT lobby. That said, I nonetheless wonder why friends of Mehlman didn’t take him aside in 2004, as Aravosis suggested, and ask the “Why the hell” question. What made them so standoffish, or us equally complicit in the Ken Mehlman charade. Moreover, I question Mehlman’s current penance. “The closet is our worst enemy. Look how Barney (Frank), (Steve) Gunderson and (Jim) Kolbe came into the cause,” Rogers told me in 2004, ultimately hopeful that the people in his crosshairs would see the light. “They were dragged out, but now they’re some of our most vocal advocates.” True. But in this case, Mehlman is not adding anything to the gay community; he is simply trying to pick up the pieces of his own mistakes and probably kick-start his own political career. He had his chance to do the right thing. Sometimes all we – gay or straight – get is one.

These events topped off a week of “Mosque Madness” in which New York columnists and bloggers – when they weren’t reminding the rest of the country of its better-self with its commitment to freedom and tolerance – pointed out repeatedly that a) the “mosque” was indeed, not a mosque, but a Muslim community center with a prayer space and b) the Muslim community center would be going up a good four blocks away from the World Trade Center site. Somehow, those attempts backfired, too, and we have once again returned to the stereotyping, race-baiting, xenophobia demons of America’s dark side. The cover up of those demons on Sunday demonstrated a classic case of U.S. narcissism: “Building the Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious freedom, but of resisting an effort to…establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York,” as stated by conservative blogger Pamela Geller at the protest.

It’s both strange and ironic how the very Americans who say they oppose the idea of religious universalism at Ground Zero because of the threat of “political Islam” are acting in the very same manner as those of whom they are so afraid. If they truly want to separate themselves from the religious repression that many Islamic countries practice, then why are they advocating for religious restrictions and religious intolerance in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

A case study may shed some light on the duplicity.

One of the places Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Mosque’s imam, a “distinguished Muslim Cleric,” according to the U.S. State Department, will visit in the upcoming days is Doha, Qatar, considered to be one of the more U.S.-friendly, tolerant and modernist countries in the Arabian Gulf. In fact, last year, former President Bill Clinton attended the launch ceremony of the Qatar First Investment Bank, a “fully Shar’iah-compliant investment bank,” as its keynote speaker. His Clinton Foundation has received generous contributions from H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who also oversees a serious effort to promote U.S.—Qatar business relations, especially as they pertain to oil.

As progressive as Al-Thani and his government profess to be, however, they have been overshadowed by deep religious repression that has openly allowed the practice of Islam – and only Islam – in the country. Qatar has a total population of about a million people, of whom 75 percent are ex-patriates working on temporary employment contracts. Though many of them come from other Islamic countries including Shia-based – and not the Sunni-leaning (native Qataris are Sunni) – Qatar now hosts 80,000 Roman Catholics, 10,000 Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox, 3,000 Copts and large contingent of Protestants. Yet, traveling there, none would ever know it. While Qatar legally allows open religious services, it asks (read: mandates) that they take place in buildings devoid of any religious symbolism, including concrete crosses, and are not advertised in advance. Furthermore, the state forbids any kind of open-proselytizing, including the distribution of Bibles or any other religious propaganda to its citizens, encoding this act as a violation of the criminal statutes. Individuals caught plugging any kind of organization, society, or foundation for any religion other than Islam face 10 years in a Qatar prison. Anyone who possesses written or recorded materials that promote any kind of missionary activity faces imprisonment for up to two years. Christian enthusiasts are lucky if they are just stripped of their visas and flown home.

And Qatar doesn’t even have, as Geller put it, “a war memorial, a burial ground,” dedicated to the memory of fallen victims to American capitalism or any other American offense in the Middle East.

The last time I checked, the United States started off as a refuge to persecuted Protestants whose own religious leanings were banned in much the same way as Qatar has forbidden any other expression of spiritual devotion. Now, the question centers on whether or not Americans really want to lean toward the oppression their so-called enemies practice or stay the course of freedom of association, assembly and public worship to which our Constitution is dedicated.

However, as it turns out, the government of Qatar may one day surpass its own religious prejudices – and the same prejudices the people of the U.S. seemingly carry, although they deny it.

Realizing the errors of its ways, five years ago the government of Qatar signed an agreement with representatives of Christian churches for a 50-year lease on land near Doha where they intend to construct a mega-campus of six churches, the groundbreaking of which began in April 2006. Furthermore, the government formed a board composed of members of all the Christian churches to liaise directly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding their matters. Church representative can now approach any government agency directly to conduct their religious affairs.

While this mandate isn’t exactly the paragon of religious tolerance, it is certainly a step forward in making Qatar a more cosmopolitan society. Qatar and other Islamic countries are finally coming around to the notion that the acts of a few radical individuals don’t represent the whole. Too bad the United States just took two steps back regarding one of our founding principles.

As soon as the HRC made Target’s pronouncement public yesterday and issued a pledge to spend $150,000 of its own money to elect a “pro-equality” governor, the Tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos started to roll in, including one in which a gay high school marching band takes over a suburban location to sing “Target ain’t people/so why should it be/ allowed to play around with our demo-cra-cy” to the tune of Depeche Mode’s “People are people.” HRC’s president Joe Solmonese had this to say: “If their initial contribution was a slap in the face, their refusal to make it right is a punch in the gut and that’s not something that we will soon forget.”

The people have certainly spoken – in myriad ways. But what about all of those fabulous designers Target has brought to the masses? What do they have to say? One must only spend five minutes of quality Google time to find out that Target is the low-budg home to many a gay designer, including Zac Posen, Jean Paul Gaultier, the late Alexander McQueen and Thomas O’Brien, and gave rise to Todd Oldham and Isaac Mizrahi.

Mostly, it’s not even “no comment.” It’s no statement at all. Not one of these designers has come forward to denounce Target’s new-found political voice, a complete 180-degree-turn from the gay-friendly image it created by supporting gay pride parades, domestic partner benefits and of course, pure chic. If LGBT people stopped purchasing Jean Paul Gaultier and Zac Posen altogether, the two designers might decide to speak up. If the two designers spoke up, Target would be faced with potentially losing two of its biggest money-makers in recent years – Gaultier’s collection nearly sold out last spring and Posen’s recently opened to grand fanfare.

Meanwhile, protests outside Target stores continue.  Fifty protesters descended on a new Chicago store last Saturday in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. And residents of San Francisco mobilized last week to attempt to hold off the opening of two stores in the area. But this is a case in which it might prove more advantageous if fewer people spoke out, over the masses. Until those influential designers end their political silence, however, then gays should aim for them and not completely at Target.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, free of re-election prospects, said of the measure: “This decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider… our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is running for Schwarzenegger’s seat, added, “In striking down Proposition 8, Judge Walker came to the same conclusion I did. Proposition 8 violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution by taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry, without a sufficient governmental interest.”


But perhaps the California politician who potentially said the most on the repeal of Proposition 8, without specifically referring to it – or his past support of measures like it – was State Senator Roy Ashburn, the legislator outed in March after police arrested him for drunk driving following a night at a Sacramento gay club. On July 19, just two weeks before U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s ruling that overturned Proposition 8 (the California Marriage Protection Act), the Constitutional amendment that restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples, Ashburn, a Republican from Bakersfield, wrote a formal apology on gaypolitics.com “for the votes I cast and the actions I took that harmed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.” He added, “Just as important to me, I am sorry for not stepping forward and speaking up as an elected official on behalf of equal treatment for all people.”

Whether you’re a cynical gay or a believer in true redemption, Ashburn’s actions of the past and his recent mea culpa will confound you. It certainly left gay radio personality and former activist, Michelangelo Signorile, confused about how far the outed state senator had come. Signorile initially said Ashburn had “come far, but he had a ways to go.” Then, after interviewing Ashburn for “The Gist,” his Sirius Satellite radio show, Signorile wasn’t sure “he’s come far at all.

“Perhaps he can do some good in the future, trying to change minds in the Republican Party, as he says he desires to do,” Signorile told the Advocate magazine. “But he first needs to dig deep and think further about these issues.”

The outgoing Ashburn, who is serving his last term, seems to desire to enact something – anything – to right his wrongs and change his rep with his gay and lesbian constituents. “Now, from what I have lived and learned, I want to do the best that I can to advance equality and freedom for all people,” Ashburn wrote. “Given the shame and confusion that many feel over their sexual orientation, perhaps my situation can serve as an example of both the harm that can come from denial and fear, and the opportunity to try to make things right.”


So far, Ashburn has remained mum on the repeal of Proposition 8 – and the stay Walker issued on same-sex marriages until the decision reaches the Appeals court – even after he stated “I am no longer willing, nor able to remain silent in the face of unequal and hurtful treatment of my community.” As Ashburn admits, it may have taken him a “strange, incoherent and long path to get here, but this is where I find myself as a gay Republican Senator.” Now it’s time for Ashburn to put his money where his mouth is and speak up for his gay brethren. Confessions – even revolutionary ones – only get politicians so far.

From 2005:

THE SPRINGFIELD Race Riot of 1908 is not an event that this city celebrates, nor is it a part of history that Springfield ignores.

How exactly to commemorate the darkest chapter in Springfield history has long been a vexing and divisive topic. Springfield’s pride over being the hometown of The Great Emancipator adds a layer of conflict that has made the issue even more difficult.

With the centenary of the riot only three years away, devising a fitting commemoration will present a challenge for Springfield and will certainly place the Springfield Race Riot squarely back in the news. While the race riot is part of Springfield’s local history, it also proved to be an event of long-lasting national import in that it was a catalyst in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

SPRINGFIELD’S efforts to properly recognize the race riot have drawn criticism over the years because of their inconclusiveness and slow pace. Last April, the Internet offshoot of the political magazine The Nation carried an article headlined, “The Lincoln Museum and Springfield’s Shame,” that chastised Springfield for celebrating its Lincoln history at the expense of the less tourism- friendly history of the race riot. The article took particular issue with the removal of historical markers that marked significant sites of the Springfield Race Riot and that had been temporarily removed during construction of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

“(S)hortly after ground was broken for the museum, construction workers removed those markers to make way for the new buildings,” wrote Adrian Brune. “A couple of those markers went back up recently, but not the one that once stood where the back corner of the library is today. The city plans to re-install the monument but still hasn’t figured out where to put it.”

WE HATE to rain on the parade of guilt Brune has marched into Springfield, but those historical markers are about to be replaced (one is being rebuilt, the other had been misplaced during storage). More importantly, the director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau is among those forming a group to plan an appropriate commemoration for the race riot’s 100th anniversary in August 2008.

Implicit in the arguments of those who have criticized Springfield for not doing more to recognize the Springfield Race Riot has always been a belief that Springfield wants to ignore and forget this part of its history and focus solely on the more positive and lucrative Lincoln connection. The fact that the race riot does not receive more Lincolnesque treatment, they imply, is evidence of a deeply ingrained racism unique to Springfield.

Such arguments are unfair and uninformed.

THE REAL PROBLEM in Springfield’s handling of the race riot has been logistical. How do you memorialize an event that happened in places that no longer exist? Little Rock, Ark., turned Central High School – site of some of the ugliest, most enduring images of the civil rights movement – into the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. The Springfield Race Riot has no such focal point; no buildings from the two-day riots remain. Efforts to memorialize the Springfield Race Riot also have suffered from lack of any impending deadline. Until now.

The return of the historical markers along the race riot’s route should be viewed as step one in a process that will culminate three years from now on the riot’s 100th anniversary. This no doubt is an anniversary that will not be pleasant to mark. Planning and executing events that will recognize the Springfield Race Riot’s place in local and national history presents a formidable challenge that, after years of delays, this city appears to have embraced.

The Lincoln Museum and Springfield’s Shame

Adrian Brune | April 29, 2005

In Springfield, Illinois, about 15,000 Americans–dozens of them dressed in stovepipe hats and fake beards–gathered on April 19 for the opening of the long-awaited Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. At a cost of $145 million and intended to provide an interactive Lincoln experience (complete with re-creations of Lincoln’s log cabin and life-size Madame Tussaud-esque Lincoln figures), the museum is sure to instill increased wartime patriotism in American visitors. President George W. Bush further encouraged such patriotism when, in his dedication speech, he compared his own efforts to spread liberty around the globe to the Great Emancipator’s nineteenth-century struggle to free the slaves.

“Our deepest values are also served when we take our part in freedom’s advance–when the chains of millions are broken and the captives are set free, because we are honored to serve the cause that gave us birth,” said Bush, who considers Lincoln his favorite President and keeps a bust of him in the Oval Office.

But what Bush almost certainly didn’t know was that almost 100 years ago, in the exact place where the museum stands, a white mob committed gross atrocities against former slaves in the Springfield race riot of August 15-17, 1908–a riot so heinous it inspired the foundation of the NAACP.

The riot might have passed into history unnoticed save for the efforts of William English Walling, a wealthy self-styled journalist and activist from Kentucky, and his wife, Anna Strunsky Walling, who arrived a few weeks later and began looking into what had happened. What they found, according to several history books, is that a white lynch mob–angered over the police protection given to two innocent black men falsely accused of rape and murder–destroyed the entire black neighborhood that had grown up around the Springfield factories where former slaves worked for scab wages. The Wallings tallied more than $200,000 in damage, more than fifty businesses leveled to the ground, seventy people injured, six fatally shot and two black men lynched without justification. They also recorded the flight of more than 2,000 blacks from their homes.

By the time the couple returned to New York, Walling had already contacted friends and colleagues about creating an organization of “fair-minded whites and intelligent blacks.” It took several secret meetings and some racial reconciliation, but on February 12, 1909, the National Negro Conference–whose early members included W.E.B. Du Bois–launched its first official symposium. A year later, the conference changed its name to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and began its ongoing quest for civil rights.

For decades, the citizens of Springfield knew little, if anything, about the riot or its connection to the NAACP. Then in 1993 two sixth graders at a Springfield middle school, Amanda Staab and Lindsay Harney, were assigned to do a project for a history fair. They had heard rumors of the riot circulating through the local black community, and, armed with a mission, they started asking questions. Their final report on the riot–which was brought to the attention of local politicians by their teachers–stunned the white community and launched a campaign to place markers on the various sites where significant riot events had taken place. “Most people I talked to said they lived here all their life and had no idea the riot happened,” Harney told the Chicago Sun-Times on the day of the markers’ dedication. “It’s shocking they don’t know. There are so many other historical markers in Springfield; the riot should be included.”

Three years ago, however, shortly after ground was broken for the museum, construction workers removed those markers to make way for the new buildings. A couple of those markers went back up recently, but not the one that once stood where the back corner of the library is today. The city plans to re-install the monument but still hasn’t figured out where to put it. “It wouldn’t be installed on an outside wall of the museum, of course,” says Sharon Johnson, a spokesperson for the Springfield Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. “The museum does not have a direct connection to the riot, only to Lincoln.” Johnson adds that the bureau does keep a walking tour guidebook for the riot sites, but that significantly more people ask for the one pointing the way to Lincoln’s home, his office, his grave, his statue in front of the Illinois State Capitol and now his museum.

Many have lauded historian Richard Norton Smith for designing the museum in a way that reveals the truth of the period and the complicated life of the man whose name is synonymous with the liberation of black Americans. And for his part, Smith, a former adviser to several presidential libraries, has proposed a temporary exhibit two years from now to commemorate the race riot.

But Amanda Staab, one of the industrious sixth graders, who is now a first-grade teacher in Springfield, says that neither the markers nor the temporary exhibit are enough. “I still believe we should have all of that stuff for Lincoln,” she says. “But I’m a teacher, and as a teacher I believe that children and adults should know about all the different types of history, not just the type that builds up a town.”

On March 19, 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the Hindu-backed BJP parliamentary party was sworn in for the second time as India’s Prime Minister. Though elected on a narrow confidence vote, just six weeks into his tenure the Indian government announced before the surprised nation and the international community that it had conducted three underground nuclear explosions in Pokhran, which would be followed by two more tests two days later.

Amidst ecstatic bravado within the party and country, and many denunciations worldwide, India declared itself a nuclear weapon state, and thus, further kicked dirt on the 1970 UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which it refused to sign. “Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary,” Vajpayee said of the occasion. The rebuke of Vajpayee’s declaration lagged not too far behind: Pakistan followed India’s lead a fortnight later with tests of its own.

Since then, India has come dangerously close to engagement with Pakistan over Kashmir four different times. The country has declared its weapons program “responsible,” despite leading the way for South Asia’s development into a “nuclear flashpoint,” according to P.K. Sundaram, a researcher at the Indian Pugwash Society which studies the conflicts between science and world policy. India brokered a deal with the US two years ago to enable the country to have ’civilian’ nuclear trade – in terms of nuclear fuel, technology, and reactors – primarily with the US, though the country has also invited others to the table. It also managed to skirt inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which applies only to the “civilian” reactors and not the “strategic” (bomb-making) ones. This nuclear option in South Asia has engendered a very real regional push-and-pull, as neighboring powers attempt to respond with their own capabilities, and treaties to balance each other and the U.S..

BACKGROUND

Pakistan countered true to form. Just after May’s UN Review Conferences of the Parties to the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (RevCon) formally requested India, Pakistan and Israel join the NPT, the Chinese government confirmed that the China Nuclear Power Corporation signed an agreement with Pakistan for two new nuclear reactors. The deal essentially violates the oversight of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the body that oversees non-strategic trade – which forbids nuclear transfers to countries that are not NPT signatories.

The Obama administration has chosen to firmly oppose the Sino-Pak deal when it comes before the NSG this week. This puts the U.S. in a difficult position. “China supplying nuclear reactors to Pakistan is more a strategic move than a commercial one, sort of a mirror image of the US move in the context of the nuclear deal with India,” says Sukla Sen of the India-based Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. According to Sen, under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. wanted to build up India as a tactical counter to China and other potential challengers in the region such as Russia or Iran. “Commercial benefits would be an icing on the cake.” India’s nuclear enrichment pact with the U.S. in 2008 evoked strong displeasure from China, however, which views Pakistan an important asset in countering India. According to the Wall Street Journal Asia edition, it induced Beijing to send the message that if Washington played favorites, it would as well. “There is news that Pakistan is improving its weapons and increasing its stockpile. It is also believed that after the deal, India can use its domestic uranium for more bombs, while it uses imported uranium for its civil reactors,” Sundaram says. “So concretely, South Asia is entering deeper into abyss. “Also, the international atmosphere – delegitimization of nuclear weapons as called by President Obama – will have its impact on the region. There has to be a South Asian initiative for a nuclear-weapons-free region, and obviously that also will have to include China. I feel that is what makes it tricky for us.”

ANALYSIS

China’s strategic relationship with Pakistan started in the mid-1950s, but reached serious thrust after the 1962 Sino-Indian war when the two states signed an agreement honoring Chinese control over portions of Kashmir to which India has long laid claim. The ties have run so deep between China and Pakistan that Chinese President Hu Jintao once characterized the alliance as “higher than mountains and deeper than oceans.”

As recorded by Pakistan’s nuclear patriarch, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Sino-Pak nuclear relationship is likely the only case in which a nuclear-weapon state, despite its signing of the NPT, has given weapons-grade atomic material as well as a bomb design to a non-nuclear-weapon state. Once upon a time, Islamabad sought a similar nuclear pact with Washington along the lines of the India deal. However, the Bush administration made it clear that given Pakistan’s unfavorable nuclear proliferation record – and its alliances – it didn’t trust Islamabad to play it straight.

“We have an ambitious agenda with India. Our agenda is practical. It builds on a relationship that has never been better. India is a global leader, as well as a good friend,” said former President George W. Bush upon his visit to India in February 2006 after pandering to Pakistan during the war in Afghanistan. “We’ll work together in practical ways to promote a hopeful future for citizens in both our nations.” Needless to say, both Pakistan and China felt jilted.

“The chickens are coming home to roost,” Sen says of the current situation. After May 18, 1974, when India carried out its “peaceful” nuclear test, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, proclaimed that the country’s citizens would “eat grass if necessary” to make a nuclear bomb. Twenty-four years and ten days later, Pakistan delivered on its own nuclear explosion. Once again, after feeling rebuffed on its demand for the same treatment as India, Pakistan is making its own deals for legitimacy. “For India, the nuclear deal meant a prestigious re-entry in the club of nuclear nations as a de-facto nuclear weapons state,” Sundaram says. “Pakistan’s weapons were seen as a trouble internationally for being prone to sabotage/use by terrorists. Now that Pakistan is also getting a similar deal, that feel-good in India is gone.”

What will make the feel-good return? “Before its own nuclear tests, India used to take a radical peace-disarmament position internationally. It used to call for comprehensive disarmament and to protest the current global order that is divided between nuclear haves and have-nots. But India has drifted from its principled stand and now thinks its own nuclear weapon posture is ‘responsible’ while that of Pakistan, Iran or N. Korea is ‘dangerous’,” Sundaram says. “When we talk of Indian people, there is a strong tradition of Gandhian non-violence and leftist anti-nuclear movements in India, but for these voices to be heard, there has to stability between India and Pakistan; also the politics of nuclear pride and jingoism have to end.”

Adrian Brune is a freelance writer based in New York and a contributor to Foreign Policy Digest.