From The Top
by - Alex Marbury
HARVEY MILK AND RSOL
I know this heading may alienate some of our supporters, but I am convinced there is an important connection between Harvey Milk's struggle against violent prejudice against people because of sexual orientation, and the RSOL struggle today for sanity and justice in dealing with 'sex offenders'.
RSOL has just held its first face-to-face national conference, at sites in Texas and Massachusetts, linked by video (with major glitches), so that about 130 RSOL signatories and other participants could hear major speakers on sex offender issues, and begin to plan a strategy for the coming year. Though imperfect technically, this was a major achievement - linking sex offender reform activists on both sides of the Mississippi.
Sex offender reform is a movement still in its infancy - created as a humane response to the most virulent and long-lasting sex panic in American history. With many states continuing to add on more and more extreme measures to monitor and contain 'sex offenders', there continues to be little concern for genuine rehabilitation of offenders, for the thousands of falsely accused, or for simple human rights. Most politicians and media ignore the extreme pain felt by millions of family members, and the tragic consequences of laws quickly and poorly crafted. All of this has been done in the name of protecting victims, with virtually no proof that such laws in any way help those victims, and with growing evidence that they positively harm them, along with offenders and families.
Into this maelstrom marched a tiny band of people - civil libertarians, humanists, those with the Christian virtues of forgiveness and reconciliation, and ordinary American citizens who were directly affected in terrible ways by the fallout from these laws and saw up close how wrong and ignorant they were. Among these were groups which have fallen away due to the extreme pressure of advocating such an unpopular cause. In some cases, direct and vindictive smear campaigns silenced their leaders. SOCLEAR and SOHOPEFUL were among the groups that collapsed just as RSOL was starting. But others survive amid all the hype and furor - SOSEN, ETAY, CURE-SORT, and RSOL among them.
Just over two years ago, RSOL was formed by a handful of volunteers who quickly gathered hundreds, then thousands of supporters who knew each other only via the internet. Prominent citizens signed onto the strong statement to reform sex offender laws put forward by RSOL - and new signatories are added almost daily. The signatories demand the abolition of state and federal public sex offender registries, which display the faces, addresses and other information of offenders, including some whose offenses happened decades ago, and many whose offenses were minor. Such registries continue to spawn suicides and murders of those publicly shamed. RSOL also challenged the incredible violation of the U.S. Constitution which built life-time civil commitment camps behind barbed wire for offenders who had completed their sentences, but who were deemed too dangerous to allow their rights, based on a patchwork of often bizarre and ill-conceived criteria.
Immediately slandered by reactionary fanatics and some misguided feminists, RSOL nevertheless survived and grew. The first national twin RSOL conferences were the result of the tireless work of scores of volunteers, in 33 state affiliates and the seven-person Administrative Team. Out of these conferences, there are now plans for a year of increased lobbying at state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, as well as a revved up public education and media campaign. The goal is nothing short of a reversal of these insane laws that help no-one and threaten the rights of all.
I was unable at the last minute to attend the conference, called to the bedside of a very sick friend far away. As I flew thousands of miles, the in-flight film selections included MILK, the recent docu-drama of the gay activist Harvey Milk. I hadn't paid much attention to that film, but I selected it. As I watched, I saw how relevant his story is to what we in RSOL are doing now.
The film chronicles the well-known story of the maturing gay rights movement, centered in San Francisco. It is clear that RSOL itself is divided about whether or not "gay liberation" is an acceptable cause, though RSOL has always insisted that ALL offenders, gay, straight or otherwise, deserve dignity and rights. I ask that all within RSOL reserve judgment about "gay rights", and think for a minute about the parallel prejudices that plagued America back then against Blacks, gays, Communists and others, and those that have arisen these past few years against 'sex offenders'.
As I watched the movie, it dawned on me that RSOL folks are the new 'common decency' activists, reviving some of the original energy and focus of movements in the 1960's and 1970's, including gay rights, civil rights and women's rights. Perhaps most RSOL participants are reluctant activists in such a movement, but they are on the cutting edge today of re-asserting America's commitment to justice for all her people.
While attending the conference in Boston, several of the gay activists who attended, gathered for lunch. One man turned to his four companions and complained, "I've never been to such a middle-American gathering in my life!" One of the others replied, "That's the whole point! This is a new movement for middle-American liberation from the hate-based campaign about sex offenders." It seemed quite appropriate, that afternoon in Boston, when Jane Cantral, the RSOL Maine organizer, proposed handing out pink triangles for RSOL participants to wear. She noted that the pink triangle was a badge demanded by the Nazis to be worn by all who were seen as sexual deviates and sex criminals: In other words, what are now called sex offenders.
In the film, MILK, one sees Harvey on the phone with a depressed gay teenager threatening suicide, telling him to be proud, not ashamed, and to get on the first bus out of his small mid-western town, only to be told that the boy had no legs and couldn't leave! I thought of the email I have received from similarly depressed people - including young teens shamed by inclusion on registries for consensual sex with other teens - some of whom have also threatened suicide. At least twice I have asked other RSOL activists to alert authorities in the state from which the teen wrote, because the threat seemed very serious. A few days after the conference, one of the attendees reported receiving such an email from a seventeen year old who was attracted to younger boys. The email eerily echoed the hopelessness and despair of the teen in the film who called Milk. As RSOL gathered in Boston, a man indicted for non-violent sex with teen-aged boys took his own life, just miles from the conference site, convinced that there was no hope for one accused of such a crime.(See RSOL News Note No. 0149).
In the film, one also sees the hate rallies of Anita Bryant and the anti-gay initiative campaign in California, modeled on successful ones in Topeka and Miami which repealed early gay rights statutes. Immediately, I was reminded of the venom of Perverted Justice, and the TV show linked to those fanatics, "To Catch a Predator", - and of the suicide of a Texas District Attorney caught up in one of their sensational stings. I also recalled the brave wisdom of Texas Voices coordinator, Mary Sue Molnar, when slandered as a "pervert enabler", because she favored sex offender law reform, she faced the media with a simple appeal for American fairness, and swept away such idiocy.
The intense hatred against the emergence of gay liberation in 1960's San Francisco reached its peak when Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor Moscone, who supported Milk on the City Board of Supervisors, were shot dead by a rabidly hateful city politician, whose base was threatened by the growing gay community. The final minutes of the film showed the bittersweet victory of gay and lesbian activists in defeating the anti-gay initiative and in pouring out their love and admiration for Milk and Moscone.
I pray that the parallel between the life and work of Harvey Milk and the work of RSOL today to champion civil liberty and oppose hate and prejudice against all who are called "sex offenders" does not extend all the way to martyrdom for some of our great RSOL heroes and heroines. If it does not go that far, it will not be due to the moderation or humaneness of our opponents. They are out for our blood, but the RSOL conferences showed that we are standing up proud and strong - and will not be frightened by threats and calumny. RSOL today has within it hundreds of Harvey (and Helen) Milks. May they live and prosper to gain the same level of success in the campaign to reassert American values of justice for all people, including 'sex offenders', that gay rights achieved within years of Milk's murder.
Yes, justice will prevail - so long as we demand it!