Giuliani & Transgender Rights: The Untold Story
by Pauline Park
10 July 10 2007
BigQueer.com

As Rudolph William Louis Giuliani pursues his candidacy for for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, the former mayor of New York City is almost invariably described by the mainstream media as “pro-gay rights.” That reputation is largely based on a few high-level appointments to his administration and his signing a domestic partnership bill into law while mayor. But as Giuliani attempts to court the religious right in his drive for the Republican nomination, he seems to be retreating from his support even for such limited measures as domestic partnership. And there is nothing in his record as mayor to suggest that he was or is supportive of transgender rights, despite his now-famous (if not notorious) appearance in drag as ‘La Rudia.’ As members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community evaluate Giuliani’s candidacy they should carefully consider his opposition to Int. No. 24, the transgender rights bill ultimately enacted by the New York City Council as Local Law 3 of 2002 after he left office.

When the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) was working in partnership with the Empire State Pride Agenda on the campaign for that legislation, we faced two formidable obstacles: the mayor and the Speaker of the City Council. Giuliani never made public his opposition to the bill, but behind the scenes, he conspired with then-Speaker Peter Vallone to keep the bill from coming to the floor of the Council for a vote, where we had a majority of Council members pledged to vote for it. We succeeded in pressuring the Speaker to authorize a public hearing on the bill (first introduced by Council Member Bill Perkins as Int. No. 754) in the General Welfare Committee in May 2001, and Vallone needed an excuse for keeping the bill bottled up in committee; Giuliani provided it in the form of a legal opinion from Martha Mann Alfaro (then deputy chief of the division of legal counsel in the office of corporation counsel). The March 1 memorandum advanced the spurious assertion that transgendered and gender-variant people were already protected under City human rights law, flatly contradicting the opinion that the Commission for Human Rights had offered us in April 1999, that only post-operative transsexuals (and possibly transitioning transsexuals) were covered under existing case law. Giuliani’s human rights commissioner, Marta Varela, used the Alfano memo as the basis for her claim that there was no need to make explicit the inclusion of gender identity and gender expression through statute, which she made when testifying against the legislation at the May 4 hearing. Both Giuliani and Vallone continued to insist that legislation was unnecessary, disingenuously hiding behind a memo from a staff attorney who had no expertise on transgender law. It was clear to me that Giuliani simply did not want a transgender rights bill to come to his desk, which would have forced him to choose between signing a bill into law that he did not want to sign and vetoing the bill with the strong risk of alienating his support within the LGBT community, which was not inconsiderable.

Ironically enough, anyone engaging in the kind of on-stage drag antics that Giuliani became famous for could have been fired before enactment of that ordinance, but of course, as mayor of the city of New York, Giuliani (a.k.a., ‘La Rudia’) was not vulnerable to termination of his employment for drag performance or cross-dressing off-the-job, even while transgendered and gender-variant people in this city continued to face discrimination based on gender identity and expression without any form of legal redress for the duration of his term as mayor. It was only when term limits forced Giuliani and Vallone from office in December 2001 and a new mayor and a new speaker came into office that we were able to move the bill forward. In January 2002, Councilmember Perkins re-introduced the bill as Int. No. 24, Speaker Gifford Miller brought it to the floor of the Council for a vote on April 24 — where it passed by a historic margin of 45-5 — and on April 30, the new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, signed the bill into law.

As LGBT people across the country look at Giuliani and his record on LGBT issues, they should consider the fact that, while mayor, Giuliani did everything within his power to block the New York City transgender rights bill, but disingenuously refusing to acknowledge his opposition to that legislation. A careful examination of Giuliani’s two terms will show that his reputation as a ‘pro-gay’ mayor of New York has been considerably exaggerated; only in comparison with the profoundly homophobic core of the national Republican Party would someone like Giuliani look ‘pro-gay.’ Now that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination, Giuliani seems to be running away from even the more positive aspects of his record as mayor, raising serious questions as to whether we would find an ally in a Giuliani White House, let alone a reliable ally.

This analysis originally appeared as a blog post on BigQueer.com on 10 July 2007.

The post Giuliani & Transgender Rights: The Untold Story appeared first on Pauline Park.

Dan Halloran performing a pagan ritual; but are the other heathens registered Republican…?

William James wrote of “The Varieties of Religious Experience” in 1902, long before the movement now known as ‘neo-paganism’ came into its own. While I am not aware of any survey data on the matter, I suspect that most people, if asked, would probably imagine such modern pagans to be on the left of the political spectrum. So it may come as a surprise to the voters in the 19th New York City Council district — one of the two most conservative in Queens, which includes Bayside, Whitestone, Auburndale, Flushing North and other neighborhoods on the northeastern fringe of the borough — to discover that the Republican nominee for City Council in their district identifies as a pagan.

When the Queens Tribune discovered that the candidate who now has the Republican, Conservative, Independence and Libertarian Party lines going into the November general election also styles himself ‘First Atheling’ of a local group of self-identified ‘heathens’ dedicated to the worship of the old Norse gods, the weekly newspaper dubbed Dan Halloran the ‘pagan king.’

Halloran’s campaign website gives one the impression of a boilerplate tax-cutting Republican. There’s certainly nothing to indicate that the Irish American who was raised Catholic is a pagan, much less the lawyer for the New York City Pagan Pride Project. From his responses to questions from the Queens Tribune, the conservative Republican seems slightly embarrassed to have gotten media attention for his paganism, and there’s no link on his campaign website to his profile page on paganspace.net, where he calls himself ‘Dan-O’ (‘O’Halloran’ apparently being the traditional Irish version of his family name). Halloran is certainly the first Republican candidate for public office I’ve ever come across who lists ‘heathenry’ as one of his hobbies or who claims to be the ‘first atheling‘ (leading prince) of a local band of Norse pagans.

Halloran’s belief system — ‘Theodism‘ — is defined by The Witches’ Voice as “a heathen orthodox approach to Germanic reconstruction.” I suppose if one is going to run as a heathen Republican, it is probably best not to stray too far from heathen orthodoxy; if one does, one risks the wrath of people with names like ‘Swain Wodening’ and ‘Gert Thygen McQueen.’ But Halloran’s more recent concern has been less the anger of the Thaet Angelseaxice Ealdriht than the displeasure of the barons and thanes of the Queens County Republican Party  organization. After rumors that Halloran might get the axe — wielded no doubt by the decidedly post-Norse, conventionally religious party boss Phil Ragusa — Halloran’s spokesperson insisted that the candidate would not be offered a judgeship or pushed aside in favor of Paul Vallone (scion of former Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr.), who had just lost the Democratic primary in the 19th to Kevin Kim. So apparently the “GOP is standing by their Theodsman,” as one neo-pagan blogger put it.

“What we [the Queens County Republican Party] have done is stand firmly with Dan Halloran and called on Congressman [Gary] Ackerman and his staffer Kevin Kim to renounce the vile, repugnant attacks on Dan Halloran’s faith and heritage,” Vince Tabone (Queens executive vice-chairman and spokesperson for the Halloran campaign) was quoted as saying. Tabone’s tone of moral indignation might have more credibility if there were any indication on Halloran’s website or in his campaign literature of a commitment to diversity of religious and spiritual expression or any history of the Queens County Republican Party’s commitment to such diversity. Certainly, the national Republican Party has been the instrument of the religious right from 1980 to the present day and its intolerance for any form of religion except Christian fundamentalism of the most bigoted sort has had a profoundly negative impact on this country for more than a generation.

While Dan Halloran would be the first pagan-identified candidate that I am aware of to win elected office in this city or anywhere in the state, the fact is that he was not running as an ‘out and proud’ pagan. Halloran was ‘outed’ by the Tribune and has seemed sheepish in trying to defend himself, saying simply that his religious faith should be kept out of the race — not at all the response one would expect from someone who cites Beowulf as one of his heroes. Perhaps Halloran could more effectively rally the neo-pagan vote in the 19th district if he were more stout in his defense of his Theodic faith. But the 19th is not, as far as I am aware, a hotbed of heathenry; in fact, it is one of the most socially and politically conservative Council districts in New York City and one of the few in which Republican candidates are viable, so Halloran does have a good chance of winning the seat being vacated by Council Member Tony Avella, who on Sept. 15 lost the Democratic primary for mayor to Bill Thompson.

Whichever candidate wins, he will be making history. The high heathen Halloran will face Kevin Kim in the general election in November, as Kim won the hotly contested Democratic primary on  Sept. 15. The deputy director for community affairs for U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-5), Kim has his boss’s support, and if he prevails in November, he would be the first Korean American elected to public office in the borough or the city.  Kim’s candidacy takes on added significance, given the failure of Korean American John Choe — the former chief of staff to outgoing Council Member John Liu — to win the Democratic primary for the seat being vacated by his boss (now the all-but-certain City Comptroller) in the 20th district, centered on Flushing. Choe was the victim of a particularly vicious red-baiting campaign that attempted –without any evidence — to tie him to the totalitarian regime that rules North Korea, simply by virtue of his membership in Nodutdol, a progressive New York-based organization working for the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. Kevin Kim is now the only candidate for City Council of Korean descent, and on November 3, the voters of the 19th district will determine whether a Korean American takes office for the first time in the history of the city or the state.

I live in the 25th Council district in western Queens, which seems a world away from the 19th in ambience and political culture; but if I were a voter in the 19th district, I would certainly vote for Kevin Kim, whose politics are clearly more progressive than Halloran’s warmed-over right-wing Bush Republicanism. Kim is my atheling of choice.

Beowulf? or Thane of Cawdor…?

The post Pagan Republicans and Other Apparent Anomalies appeared first on Pauline Park.