SNL’s Weekend Update takes on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell through comedy, playing off stereotypes, double entendres and more. Sometimes we all need to step back and have a laugh. A friend of mine told me recently, “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” Comedy or not, pressure Congress and President Obama to repeal the military’s discriminatory policy. It’s our tax dollars, afterall.

According to printed materials being passed out by picketers, the Hyatt Corporation had profits in the range of $1.3 billion within the last five years, with the CEO being paid $6.7 million last year. Recognizing assumed bias in these numbers, the strong cash stockpile and low debt the company holds, in conjunction with the strong IPO last week, shows that despite rough economic times, the Hyatt Hotel Corporation is fairing alright compared to others in the lodging industry. However, Hyatt has reported losses in the last three quarters of 2009. This may weaken striking workers ability to push for “a fair deal” this year, when the uncertain economic future still looms. Local 2 says, “They don’t need to take away affordable family healthcare from working people in order to ensure the ‘health’ of the company.”

A more troubling aspect of the relationship between labor and the Hyatt Corporation can be seen at a Hyatt property in Boston and what is being called the “HYATT 100.” It has been reported that 98 housekeepers at the Boston property were fired and replaced by contracted workers supplied by Hospitality Staffing Solutions. A large portion of these 98 employees had been working for Hyatt for numerous years, earning $15 an hour. The replacement contractors are working for $8 an hour as “temporary” workers. Hyatt Hotels is not the first company to commit such an act, and it certainly will not be the last. However, one must ask whether he or she will support such acts with their travel dollars, because everyone will end up footing the bill through tax dollars.

Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor at Boston University and author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” discusses the “HYATT 100″ in her piece, “The Race to the Bottom.” She explains that cutting costs through labor wages and benefits eventually hit taxpayers through social programs and services these workers will need to begin relying on to fill the gap. Although it is not necessarily the duty of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation to ensure social stability through their business practices, something must be done to protect dedicated workers from hungry executives at the top. The bust on Wall Street in 2008 seems to have shed some light on this idea of overpaid and irresponsible executive rule in the business world and it continues to worm its way through all industries, not just banking and insurance. As the country debates health care reform, it should be added that these 98 fired employees and their 98 contracted replacements will probably all have to seek government health care assistance.

In the end, not everyone can be an executive. Not everyone wants to be an executive. A hard day’s work cleaning hotel rooms, washing dishes or carrying luggage must not be discounted. The dignity and respect for a hard working employee is something that should be supported by corporations and consumers alike. Some of us start our careers working at the front desks of hotels and move on to a cubicle. Some of us, whether it be due to life circumstance or ability, continue a work path cleaning hotel rooms or serving at a restaurant. These employees deserve a fair deal as it is their sweat that makes a trip to a Hyatt Hotel a luxurious stay.

Support workers’ rights to a fair deal from the Hyatt Hotel Corporation. Boycott Hyatt Hotels. Doug Manchester, owner of the San Diegos’ Grand Manchester Hyatt, supported inequality for gay and lesbians in 2008 through his $125,000 donation supporting Prop 8. A Boston Hyatt unfairly removed almost 100 employees to replace them with labor at almost 50% the cost. How much more is the Hyatt going to do to hurt the lives of Americans?

For more information about Unite Here! go to www.UniteHere.org.

 
We lost Maine’s Prop 1 battle. Yes on Prop 1 won. A revisit of Prop 8 a year later, to the date. This time, anti-equality voters won at a 57% to 43% margin. This gap was slightly larger than Prop 8’s 52-48 vote. This small percentage gap we keep losing by is frustrating, but also gives me a lot of hope. I think this gap will be gone by a mere departure to heaven by the oldest generation. The oldest generation still has this conservative viewpoint on a lot of things in American life. They weren’t teenagers during the sexual liberation of the 60s/70s. They were the ones who built up the conservative 1950s that helped give way to the liberal push in the 60s/70s.

I did some historical math and I see some good things in the near future. Let me give you some hope through historical discourse:
**15th Amendment – Right to vote for all races (women still excluded) – 1870
**19th Amendment – Right to vote for women – 1920
**Civil Rights Act of 1964 – No discrimination based on race, sex or religion, 1964

We have 45-50 years between these civil rights pushes. One leads to the other, but the struggle was always happening before that. Black men got the right to vote, which pushed women to keep their fight for suffrage. These two minorities then pushed together for civil rights equality, which happened 44 years after suffrage. This helped give way to the gay liberation movement with Stonewall in 1969, 40 years ago. Based purely on historical discourse, we are right at the breaking point. You can see this with the signing of the Matthew Shepard Act a couple weeks back, the first major federal gay rights law. Although citizens of states are ripping marriage rights from us, we are gaining some major ground in other facets of daily life and new levels of government not seen in quite some time.

Let this be the history lesson for the day. Get angry, but we must keep faith and hope! Our time is now, but we just have to keep fighting the good fight and remember that we have justice on our side. We did this last year and we will do it this year. We’re on the winning side of history and we must tell ourselves that every day.

The story of Matthew Shepard and the vicious crimes committed against him always resonated with me. A high school student at the time of his death, I remember the fear it instilled in me. I remember coming to terms with the fact that this could happen to me any day and I remember the paranoia I lived with for so many years. Growing stronger than that fear and that paranoia was quite a journey, and in reality, I am still on this journey. Today, I remember Matthew Shepard and his story. Today, I celebrate that he did not die in vain and I thank him for helping me be a stronger member of the gay community.

A lot of people questioned President Obama’s Nobel Peace prize, but my friend pointed out that today’s act is the reason why he received the award. Providing civil rights to the citizens of his own country works towards equality and justice. If an injustice is a threat to justice everywhere, then today, President Obama has reduced the threat to justice and in turn, brought our quest for peace one step closer. We know and he knows that there is far more work to be done at the federal and state level, but for now we celebrate the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act, the LGBT inclusive hate crimes law. Harvey Milk said that “You gotta give them hope” and with the enactment of this legislation, President Obama has given me an even stronger sense of hope.

Kylie has been making pop music for about twenty years, hitting stardom in Europe and Australia in the 80s acting on TV series and then producing great pop hits and albums. She’s always had minimal success in the US, with hits like “Locomotion” and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” More recently, she hit some US headlines with her battle and conquer of breast cancer a few years back.

Worldwide, Kylie has had great success releasing album after album of great pop music. Kylie can sing; she can perform. Kylie is adorable; she is a star. Like a lot of great foreign cultural goods, Americans have yet to fully grasp the greatness that is Kylie. She has a presence like most American women in pop, with more of a Cher like performance quality.

I can see why she has had minimal success in the US. Her music is a lot more “pop” than a lot of the harder sounds I hear in popular American music. Her albums have had less R&B influence and I haven’t heard too much rap artists featured on her albums. Kylie is in my mind quintessential British/Aussie pop (she is Australian for those who don’t know).

If you don’t know Kylie, find her and explore. She has 20 years of consistent and indulgent pop. This should not undervalue what she produces, because lyrically she goes from songs about simply dancing and others explore deeper emotions. Think Madonna, but softer on the edges with less of an ego and need to be considered “an artist.”

Kylie USA 2009 was a brilliant theatrical production. Incorporating performance sets from her previous worldwide tours, about eight dancers accompanied Kylie through performances of hits spanning her entire career. Lasers shot from the stage. Scantily clad dancers hit the stage floor with slick choreography. Kylie’s voice was clean and actually live for those who think women in pop tend to lip sync. Kylie’s no Britney! For the small theatre stage, this tour used every inch magically. The show was intimate and sitting in the audience you could sense she was thrilled to finally be touring America and the audience was even more thrilled to have her here. She even said in her first show in Oakland that she had been waiting twenty years to do it and I have been waiting for almost half that time myself.

It is my sincere hope, now that we have leadership in Washington that looks to reach out to the world, that Americans, as a whole, will reach out more to our foreign reigning princesses of pop. I had to wonder if President Obama bringing in new American ideals about global citizenry helped persuade Kylie to finally bring her concert to American soil. In the end, I don’t care what brought her here; I am just happy she came. From what I have heard, Kylie’s tour has converted quite a bit of people who never knew her contribution to pop music. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a healthy career in the States.

Kylie, thank you for visiting America. It was a lot more convenient for me to cross the Bay Bridge than the Pond to Europe. Come back soon! For those reading and have some curiosity, Kylie’s “Ultimate Kylie” greatest hits collection is a great place to start.

Lady Gaga used her celebrity to get press around the National Equality March. She performed at the HRC Event Saturday night and briefly spoke at the rally on the Capitol on Sunday. She attacks Barney Franks comments about the march and more importantly asks President Obama an important question.

The Constitution has always seemed genius to me, in that, unlike the Bible, it recognizes the need to live, grow and adapt. I have an unaltered faith that the Constitution, and those in power to defend it, will realize the necessity of standing up to social injustice and provide equality to all citizens of this nation. Until this happens, I march. We march. We assemble peaceably to remind the nation of the core principles of this nation, liberty and justice for all. Like Jehovah Witnesses in a suburban neighborhood, we knocked on the White House’s door. We knocked on the Capitol Building’s door. On October 11, 2009, an estimated 200,000 people knocked to say, “Equality across America.”

In September, I got word that an equality march was being planned in Washington, DC to bring attention to gay and lesbian rights, or lack thereof. At that point, my friends and I had marched on San Francisco’s City Hall. We drove to Sacramento to march on our state’s capitol. We decided the time had come to fly to our nation’s capitol to march for what we deserve, our full civil rights. Travel plans were made and off we went to explore the core of our country’s government. Off we went to stand up to social injustice, for ourselves, for those who cannot speak, and for the future.

We did not know what to expect in numbers for the march; the effectiveness of such a march continually ridiculed by many on both sides of the political spectrum. As days neared to the march, news was released that President Obama would speak at the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) event the night before the march. This had to be a sign that the march was going to be something worthy of getting President Obama to speak the night before. In a sense, a victory had been won without anyone actually marching. President Obama speaking at the HRC got the cause of equality in the headlines for the weekend; it got people talking. The conversation fueled once more. It seemed from an outsider’s standpoint that the march we were to embark upon must have helped, even just a tad, in convincing President Obama to speak at this important event. He spoke and it was, more or less, the same rhetoric he used in his campaign, but at least we know he has not forgotten and more importantly, he knows we have not forgotten.

October 11, 2009, National Coming Out Day, our day to march on the nation’s capitol, had arrived. We walked to the gathering point of the march and waited for it to begin. As we waited, we looked up to see a huge rainbow in the sky; an actual rainbow adorning us from above. It had to be a sign that we were doing something special. Thousands of people gathered. We stood waiting for an hour thinking we were held up from marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House and to the Capitol. Unsure of the reason for the wait, we maneuvered through the crowd only to find that the turnout had the streets so filled that it took an hour to get all the marchers down the route to allow us to start moving. It was massive. Rainbow flags everywhere. Massive signs calling for equality and justice. People of all colors, all ages, all sexual orientations. It was a colorful and powerful display. 200,000-250,000 people marched in front of the White House and then stood before the Capitol Building. A spectacular site to be seen. Although, the turnout was smaller than that in marches in 2000, 1993 and the late 80s, something was done and someone heard.

Barney Frank, D-MA, said that the National Equality March was “only putting pressure on the grass” and that such peaceful assemblies do little to persuade Congress into making decisions. He said the march was more of an emotional release for those marching. I certainly agree that participating in the National Equality March was an emotional release, a powerful release of all sorts of emotions. I felt empowered, and knew that the same document that gives me the freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble will one day work to give me the equality I so rightfully am due. We had to bring attention to Maine’s Prop 1, the Prop 8 of Maine. Washington state has pending legislation to remove domestic partnership rights from the state. This was not just about pressuring Congress to act, it was about bringing attention to each piece of social injustice happening in our nation.

None of us marching expect Congress to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in the next couple weeks. Lady Gaga’s speech at the steps of the Capital Building put it perfectly, “President Obama, I know you are listening. ARE YOU LISTENING?” We marched on Sunday, October 11, 2009 to remind Congress, to remind the President and to remind America that we are not done. We marched on Sunday to get one more person to listen and say, “Enough is enough. These people are right.” This march keeps the conversation alive and in our system, the conversation must be kept alive because one day, one or all of the branches in Washington are going to acknowledge, provide and protect equal civil rights for the LGBT community. Until this day happens, I will put “pressure on the grass” for me and for my country, because as FDR said:

We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

Below, artists use movement, color and music to spread their ideas at the National Equality March.

A classic song in West Side Story is “America,” where Puerto Rican immigrants banter back and forth about the good and bad of both the United States and Puerto Rico in the 1950s. New York City and San Juan are the main cities used in the song, as New York City is the setting for the show. The song is a perfect description of American ideology surrounding the American Dream, a dream that natural born citizens grow up with and one that immigrants flock to New York City, and other cities alike, to pursue. New York City is the symbol of the American Dream. Compared to other cities in the West during the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the new kid on the block. It built itself up to become the Financial Capital of the World, symbolic of American influence and power on a world stage, particularly during the 1950s.

Growing up, I always looked to New York City as the dream of what life would become for me; a place where anything was possible and opportunities were bountiful in an environment of grand splendor. Now, I look at the United States and New York City and see the same potential I always have, but a dying breed of ambition and splendor. Cities worldwide are growing at rapid speeds with the glamor and opportunity that New York City once had, but sadly, seems to be falling behind on these days. And like New York City, the United States seems to be doing the same. These two institutions are beginning to look like the old man on the block who cannot compete with the new kids because of an unwillingness to change and adapt.

Western Europe and its cities are far older than that of the US and NYC, and yet, they continue to prosper because of their ability to adapt to the new world stage. Most studies show that London is now the new “Financial Capital of the World,” with other world cities even edging in on that. It seems like the dream that is America continues to slowly dwindle away because of our ability to adapt.

President Obama’s platform of “change” needs to continue its rallying call throughout this country, even if people criticize the President for not “changing” things fast enough. Americans must do it themselves, for we are a nation of the People, for the People and by the People. The idealism presented in West Side Story’s “America” needs to be realized again. New York City, the epicenter of the country, needs to become the forefront of this change. Rather than taking ideas from Europe, like the walking district that Times Square has turned to, or proposed congestion charges like London, New York City needs to lead the pack of what a 21st century city should look like.

The splendor and glamor of America and New York City is dying in the hands of old Republicans through old tactics of fear, and the inability to adapt to new threats in new ways. For heaven’s sake, we are a nation that globe trots preaching freedom and democracy, and yet we still do not allow gays and lesbians to marry or serve in the military. Did we not learn anything from the 1950s/1960s, when we fought communist ideology, yet discriminated against African Americans at home? You cannot preach freedom abroad, when you discriminate at home.

“I want to be in America,” but I want America and our ambassador city, New York City, to realize the potential again and live up to it!

The White House released the following statement about Harvey Milk:

Milk encouraged lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens to live their lives openly and believed coming out was the only way they could change society and achieve social equality.

Gay right activists are pleased with the President’s move, and say it was a smart political move, as President Obama has been receiving much criticism for his lack of action in repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and DOMA. Both of these actions must actually begin within Congress, and with Obama pushing his health care agenda first, these two ideals are bound to take the backseat for some time. With 2010 elections up and coming, it seems unlikely that Congressional leaders will touch DADT or DOMA, as the country continues its recession woes and health care reform. Though a small gesture, the gay community must realize that President Obama’s willingness to extend the Medal of Freedom to Harvey Milk shows that he has not forgotten about the community. President Obama needs the nation to focus on health care and economic reforms, and for once is not using gay issues to distract the nation’s attention.

We must also recognize that Governor Schwarzenegger refused to sign California legislation making Harvey Milk’s birthday a Californian “day of significance.” He suggested that Harvey Milk’s memory should be remembered at the local level and suggested that his influence does not reach far enough outside San Francisco to qualify his work worthy of this Californian honor. The California State Legislature passed this resolution, but Schwarzenegger’s veto shows yet another clear signal that he certainly is not as “socially liberal” as he always insisted. Enough about California villains.

Here’s to the legacy of Harvey Milk. Our generation could use the likes of him right about now, and yet we continue to struggle to find one. A well deserved Medal of Freedom is long overdue, but better late than never, to say the least. As gay and lesbian civil rights continue to sway back and forth, Milk’s push for gay and lesbians to live out and open lives continues to be vital in the move to push public opinion in favor of equality.