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Statement of Loraine Hutchins, AMBUSH
at Lambda Community Center Public Forum
July 24, 1993
I was born here in Washington, D.C. and grew up here. It was a privilege to grow up here as a white minority in a majority people of color town. I learned a lot from the experience. One of you spoke just now about "Outreach." I'd just like to caution that the term "outreach" implies an "in" and an "out" group and that, not to pick apart anyone's language, still, we need to think about the terms we use and how others are hearing them. Racism is an insidious and self-perpetuating force in this city, in this society, and most of us who are white do not do enough to counter it. I hope that cannot be said about those organizing the center.
One of the best things about the recent April 25th March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation was that it had 50% gender and racial parity built into its structure. Your region didn't vote unless you could show both. I recommend the center be organized this way from now on, otherwise we are going backward, not forward, from the March.
I'd like to begin by reading you from today's Washington Post, which has printed my Letter to the Editor. . . .
As I said, I grew up here and have been out in this community for over 25 years. I remember the Gay Liberation Front house on S St., the Gay Switchboard at Earthworks on 20th, and the gay community centers on R St. and on 17th.
However, my favorite example of a community center of our sort is the Women's Building in San Francisco. It's a hugh, old multi-level building in the Mission District, somewhat like our District Building downtown (I've always wanted to take over the District Building) but on a smaller scale. Everyone is welcome there, AND it is dedicated to being a safe, supportive, creative space for women. Aerobics and dance classes work out there on the old wooden floors of an ancient auditorium, there is childcare space, a kitchen, a big lobby full of bulletin boards and notices, and many separate meeting rooms, some full of plants and books, some bare and functional, with movable chairs. There is abundant women-only space there, and all-kinds of variations within that. There is also a stated ethic that people of all races, cultures, ages, abilities are welcome there, as long as they respect women and women's needs, as women define them.
The reason this is my model for a DC community center is that I don't want to see or have anything to do with this center:
* if it's a place where women and men of all colors don't feel welcome and in control
* if it's not free of architectural and social barriers to people of differing abilities
* it it's a place where sexual minorities, of any kind, don't feel that there's a place for them here, too.
Of course there has to be a governing board and a method of prioritizing use of space, but if all segments of sexual minorities communities are not ALREADY involved in this planning process, if it hasn't been done equitably from the start, it will do little good to speak of good intentions about its implementation in the future.
I have been assuming that this center will be welcoming to all sexual minorities, all races, all ages -- but let me make this explicitly clear, from the point of view of my own community - the Alliance of Multi-Cultural Bisexuals United to Stop Homophobia, HIV, Homelessness, Harassment, Helms, Heterosexism and anything else beginning with "H" we don't like - AMBUSH for short.
There's a great debate right now being waged in the queer community about whether bisexuals (and transgenders, I might add) are "part of US." The only reason this debate is given any credence at all is because some of us have forgotten our roots, some of us have forgotten that Stonewall was led by transgender people and bisexuals as well as others, that bisexuals have been counted as queer and been with us since the beginning of time, that the Defense Dept. certainly labels bisexuals queer, that the Right Wing hatemongers in Colorado and in other states mounting hate campaigns against us around the country certainly know on which side we stand. So why is it so hard for some lesbians and gay men, to acknowledge these facts? Perhaps because their idea of community is based on some polarized either/or illusion of mirroring the straight world and just being opposite of that.
Well, I'm not interested in mirroring the straight world or in assimiliating into it. I'm interested in changing the entire world so that everyone will be more comfortable and free to be who they really are, to our fullest potential, as each and every one of us deserves to be able to explore and express. As we say in the wicca community, - "Do What Thou Will and Harm None."
There is an awful lot of hate out there, within our community as well as directed against it. It is hateful to say that bisexuals don't exist, it is hateful to say that we're confused, it is hateful to say that bisexuality is just a stage, or that bisexuality is a less evolved version of homosexuality. It can be a stage on one person's path to homosexuality, absolutely. Homosexuality can be a stage on another person's path to bisexuality too. Heterosexuality is definitely a stage, a path, that many of us have had to grow out from, and heterosexuality can be an end point, too.
The reason I speak of this hate, out there and in here, at this forum on organizing a queer community center, is that I see two alternative, competing realities existing simultaneously in this town. The older one, which is descendd from, but has forgotten its gay liberation, broader, inclusive roots -- is the exclusive gayristocracy, a society which says there is only one way to be and we better not be too flamboyant about it and of course queers only come two by twos, not in polyfidelitous varieties. This club usually argues that we're born that way and can't help it and tries to reassure the heterosexuals that they need not worry, we're just like them, just oriented towards our own gender.
The newer, (or is it older, more ancient?), re-emerging, re-surgent point of view says that sexual minorities are many and diverse and beautiful and that we are connected to heterosexuality, not apart from it, but that we have a lot to teach heterosexuals, about themselves, as well as about us. And that transgender people have alot to teach all of us about gender freedom, which is not the same as sexual orientation, and/but is equally important to learn to understand and be able to argue for in any rights struggle.
One reason the gaze-in-the-military debate has seemed so absurd to me, as I'm sure it has to other people in this room, is that it has almost entirely ignored:
* the feelings of women in the military (who are the kicked out for homosexual conduct at a much higher rate than men)
* the feelings of enlisted people, rather than officers
(who are also kicked out at a much higher rate)
* the feelings of people of color, who are treated same as above.
But also, there's another group not mentioned in these. That is the group of people behaving bisexually, and, according to some anecdotal and official sources this is a huge group indeed!
But no. There has been a great silence about bisexuality, almost as if the Armed Services Committee, and most of the gay lobby as well, doesn't want to examine it, because, if we did, we'd find that sexuality isn't as neat and defined and predictable as we thought, and we'd have to have more respect for sexual diversity and sexual freedom, -- and make room for it in our communities too.
I'd like to conclude by drawing your attention to the fact that other communities, just like ours, are struggling with this issue of inclusion, too. I offer for you the example of Philadelphia, which had to decide last year how to name their community center too.
I also want to end by noting, again, that I see no representatives from the DC Coalition of Black Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals, or from the Black Lesbian Support Group or from transgender groups in DC on this list of testifiers, and I would urge you to get their input and to ask for their guidance more.
Thank You.