30 j u s t o u t ' aprii 2. 2004
"Making women have babies
they don't want to have, or not
giving people basic employment
or relationship rights,
about limiting access to power"
Continued from Page 29
National leaders are also advancing the
idea of multi-issue progressive organizing. “We
can learn something from the other side,” says
Tim McFeely, executive director of the Center
for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan public
policy organization that helps state legislators
enact progressive change. A longtime queer
rights activist, McFeely served as director of
the Human Rights Campaign Fund from 1989
to 1995. Conservatives “don’t organize in
silos,” he says.
By teaming up, the queer and choice
movements can leverage support for one
another’s issues. Sen. Brown describes the
cross-pollination this way: “1 don’t want the
government in my womb, and 1 don’t want
the government in my bedroom.”
Brown says protecting abortion rights was
one of the main reasons she went into politics.
“For me, it’s about my very essence of being a
female. 1 see women’s reproductive freedom as
a human rights issue and as a way for women to
achieve a self-determination, not just locally
hut also internationally.”
Schwisow agrees: “Our reproductive free
dom is a fundamental human right, just like
our decision about who to sleep with and to be
involved with.”
Like Brown, Schwisow is bisexual, and
because o f this she has a particularly personal
stake in reproductive freedom and queer liber
ation. However, she is quick to clarify that
not only self-identified bisexual and hetero
sexual women are concerned with pregnancy
and reproductive health.
“I think it’s important to remember there
are lesbian-identified women out there who
— State Sen. Kate Brown
still sleep with men,” she states. “Those folks
still need the services a Planned Parenthood
can provide, such as pregnancy options, coun
seling, pregnancy tests, screening for sexually
transmitted diseases.”
As options increase for lesbians to pursue
parenthood, taking care of sexual health is
doubly important. Comprehensive education
about reproductive health and sexuality is
something Roey Thorpe sees as another area
of overlap for the pro-choice and pro-gay
movements.
“Queers should know that the reproductive
rights movement has been at the forefront of
making information about sexuality available
in schools,” she says.
LONG BEACH LESBIAN S GAY PRIDE, INC.
Thorpe is not the
only leader of a queer
organization to
acknowledge allies in
the feminist movement.
The Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgen
der Community Center
in New York City took
a public pro-choice
stance in the late 1980s
and publicly “recognized
the debt the LG B T lib
eration movement owed
to the feminist movement of the 1970s.”
The center recently published the pamphlet
Causes in Common: Reproductive Rights and Les
bian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Liberation,
which was produced as a position paper as part
of a grant from the Ford Foundation. The com
munity center will distribute the pamphlet at
the upcoming March for Women’s Lives in
Washington, D.C.
It states: “Reproduction and sexuality are
profoundly and intimately related aspects of
human experience. Reproduction is a choice
that evolves out of sexuality, not an unavoid
able consequence of sexuality. Individual
human autonomy in the conduct of our sexual
lives is integral to our liberty.”
PRESENTS
the 2ist annual
PRIDE
festival
loneliness
SUNDAY
Cecilia Noel 8
The W ild Clams
Sheena
Tiffany
FESTIVAI
MAY
22 nd fi 23rd
www.longbeachpride.com. 5 62.987.9191
outside CA: 800.354.PRIDE
SAT & SUN 11am til 10pm
Along M in e Drive? Marinaden
PARADE
SUNDAY § 11:30am
Begns on Ocean § Temple
Participa
Liberty and individual human autonomy
are concepts that seem lost on the Bush
administration. While President Bush is
attempting to foreclose certain rights for
queers from ever existing, he is simultaneously
dismantling reproductive rights that already
exist for women.
The so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Act
he signed into law last year is the first piece of
federal legislation to put limits on Roe vs.
Wade. The law, which bans late-term abor
tions, not only affects heterosexual women, it
impinges upon the reproductive choices of any
woman who has sex with men or any woman
who is raped.
Additionally, the precedent set by the gov
ernment’s efforts to determine when “life”
begins could precede government decisions
about what constitutes gender and, more gen
erally, what individuals are and are not allowed
to do with their bodies.
Alice Cohen, director of the March for
Women’s Lives, says that in terms of attacks on
reproductive and queer rights, “a threat to one
is a direct threat to the other.”
Sometimes that threat is made manifest in a
single human being. In February anti-abortion
extremist Stephen Jordi of Florida plead guilty
to one count of attempted firebombing. Jordi
was charged with plotting to bomb abortion
clinics and gay and lesbian bars.
Gender discrimination
by any other name
T
he anti-choice organization Oregon
Right to Life has filed four initiatives for
2004 that limit women’s access to abor-