Mending fences. [View All]

[Skinner]

This is not an easy post to write. I've been aware for a long time that some LGBT DUers do not feel completely comfortable here, and I've been thinking about the issue for as long as I have been aware of it. It may or may not surprise you to hear that it actually bothers me very much. But I've felt utterly helpless to do anything about it. And it does not help that I feel hurt and angry by some of the things that have happened these last few years.

When I agreed to open up this discussion, I had no clue what I would say or what was going to happen. I've been doing a lot of soul-searching, by myself and with the other Admins, and that is not a pleasant thing to do. The moderators have been talking about this amongst themselves, too, and on Saturday night one of the LGBT moderators posted a really remarkable message which gently-but-firmly challenged everyone to think about our own behavior and try to figure out if we are somehow contributing to the problem. After I read his post, I immediately called EarlG. He had already read the post, too. And independently, we both had the same reaction, which was something kind of like relief. We knew what we had to do. We had to try to make it right.

The purpose of this post is not to tell you what you did wrong or to tell you what to think. The purpose of this post is not even to present "my side of the story" or explain why I'm not a bigot (which I said I wasn't going to do anyway). The purpose of this post is to try to lay a foundation for reconciliation. And to do that, I am going to try to explain how I feel, try to explain how I think we got here, try to understand how you feel, and own my share of the responsibility. In doing so, it may be necessary for me to explain how I perceived some things that happened over the last three years, but I want everyone to understand that my intention in doing so is not to point fingers. Assigning blame is not important for me any more.

Things have never been perfect here on DU. But I think it is apparent that the problems we're facing really got their start sometime during the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries, and have continued through the transition to a Democratic administration until today. Going into the 2008 primaries, we (the Admins) felt like we knew what to expect because we had been through one presidential primary before, in 2004. Our approach in 2008 was, basically: "get out of the way and wait for it to be over."

But as everyone knows, it turned out to be a much longer and more hard-fought primary than 2004. We thought that we could just wait for a result and then move on, like we did in 2004. But what we did not understand was that the wounds were much more personal this time, especially for LGBT members. We knew that having a Democratic administration would be a big change for DU, but I think we obviously did not understand the enormity of that change, and we especially did not understand how events before and since the 2008 election took such an enormous emotional toll on some of our LGBT members. More than anything else, this is where we failed. We did not see what was happening right before our eyes.

EarlG sent me an email late Sunday night, in which he went back and tried to recreate a very basic sequence of events that happened before and after the election of Barack Obama which fed into the problems on Democratic Underground. I'm going to just copy his email here because I think this is a pretty good summation of what happened and the challenge we face:

... It's common knowledge that LGBTs favor Clinton over Obama during the Dem primaries.

... Two particularly significant events occur during the primaries which help set the stage for a fight between the LGBT community and the AA community. The Donnie McClurkin appearance at a Barack Obama campaign event (October 2007) and Bill Clinton's "Jesse Jackson" comments after Obama won the South Carolina primary (January 2008).

... Clinton loses Dem nomination to Obama. Most LGBT Clinton supporters are rightly wary of Obama but understand the stakes and vote for him in the general election (receiving little credit for doing so).

... Obama wins the presidential election on the same day that gay marriage is struck down in California. After the election disasters of 2000 and 2004, election night 2008 should be a massive celebration for everyone on DU -- but many in the LGBT community are pissed off, or at least have mixed feelings. For them, Prop 8 result is a giant shit sandwich.

... Exit polls reveal that a disproportionate number of AAs voted for Prop 8 leading to a further breakdown of relations between LGBTs and AAs on DU.

... Rick Warren. To many non-LGBT Obama supporters, this is a political move designed to assuage the concerns of independents and ambivalent/persuadable Christians who are still wary of the possibly-Muslim guy with a funny sounding name they'd just elected. In other words we see it as political theater that means nothing. But of course this "political theater that means nothing" is conducted at the expense of LGBTs -- to them Rick Warren is an extra layer of shit piled on top of the shit sandwich.

... Finger pointing on DU, ongoing to some degree since the end of the primaries, ratchets up to extreme levels. Many LGBT members unfairly conflate support for Obama with approval of Donnie McClurkin, Rick Warren, and Prop 8. Many Obama supporters unfairly suggest LGBTs are just acting like crybabies because their candidate was defeated in the primaries.

----

Result: Obama supporters became tarred as gay-hating bigots and LGBTs became tarred as pony-wanting sore-losers who should have been celebrating along with everyone else. Even if the majority of DUers didn't make such extreme characterizations, the people who did are mostly responsible for driving the wedge deeper and deeper. It's impossible to understate how hurtful those types of smears felt to everyone involved, on all sides of the discussion, from active participants to relatively quiet bystanders.

While relations on DU began to sour during the primaries they really blew up the day Obama won the presidency and Prop 8 passed. After looking at profiles of some long-term DUers who were been banned since Obama's election I noticed that many had very few posts deleted in the years before 2009. It was only after Obama's election that they started to break the rules and got their posts removed on a regular basis. (To be clear: not everyone had a squeaky clean record prior to the primaries.)

Bottom line: on election day 2008 I think most of us who were celebrating Obama's victory saw his election as a beginning. Despite the Prop 8 loss, Obama's victory -- a Democrat in the White House -- meant that maybe we could start winning some of these "culture war" battles. And we didn't understand why LGBTs were so pissed off -- wasn't this great news for everyone? In retrospect it seems obvious: The LGBT community had to place their chances for equality in the hands of a religious man who opposed gay marriage and who courted known homophobes during and after his campaign. As far as they were concerned, this was not a promising development.

As I watched events unfold, from the start of the Democratic primaries and through the beginning of the Obama administration, the ferocity of the disagreements seemed utterly nonsensical to me. For me, politics has never been about people or personalities or photo-ops or inauguration speakers. Those were all window dressing -- part of the show. Politicians and campaigns and speeches were merely a means to an end: Changing laws. To me, what mattered was what a candidate said he stood for, and whether he had any chance of actually doing what he said. When I looked at Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, I saw two extremely intelligent and talented politicians whose positions on the issues were virtually identical. On the issue of gay rights, there was no daylight between them. I voted for Hillary Clinton in the DC primary, but I had no qualms about Obama as the eventual Democratic nominee.

Based on my reading of candidate-then-President Obama, I just didn't see any reason for him to NOT keep his promises on gay rights. As I saw it, this was an issue where the morally correct thing and the politically expedient thing were one and the same. The application of emotionally detached, cold rationality pointed to (what seemed to me) the obvious conclusion: He would keep his promises. Of course, being able to make an emotionally detached evaluation of an issue like gay rights is one of the privileges of being a white, heterosexual male (which I am). When the big picture was laid out in EarlG's email, it was easier to understand why some LGBT DUers have been so skeptical of President Obama, and why it might feel like an attack when someone disagrees with your opinion of the President. To be clear, I don't agree with all of the things that are said about him either, but at least I feel like I understand where you're coming from.

I think that these differing perceptions of President Obama are at the core of the problems we face here. It took him two years of his presidency to deliver something concrete on gay rights, and during that time you became increasingly angry and frustrated. Meanwhile, those of us who saw him differently were wondering what the heck you were so angry about. And because this is a discussion forum, some people on both sides were making highly inflammatory and unfair attacks against each other, questioning each other's character and ascribing ugly ulterior motives. It was an enormous drag, with lots of hurt feelings on all sides. We lost lots of great people because of it, some of whom were banned, but many more who decided to leave on their own because it sucked to be here. My few attempts to try to foster a little mutual understanding between the two sides were at best fruitless, at worst unwelcome.

I know that the "gay purge" is often held up as the watershed moment here on DU. If we are honest, I think we know that things had gone off the rails long before then and we were all miserable. But what happened was incredibly sad and tragic. In hindsight, I do believe it could have turned out differently, especially if there had been some line of communication like the Ask the Admins forum. The precipitating event -- a group of people basically ganging up on a moderator -- was something that had never happened before on Democratic Underground. I made the (not unreasonable) decision to step in. But as soon as I told people that they needed to knock it off, or else, we were on the brink. I had no further room to maneuver and left myself no choice but to ban anyone who continued -- and people did continue. I regret that it happened, and I regret my role in it. I believe I could have handled it differently. But like so much else that has happened over these last three years, I did not do it entirely by myself.

...

There are no easy answers. As a human being, I can understand where you are coming from. But as the administrator of an active discussion forum with a wide range of people -- including critics and defenders of the president -- I'm not sure I can promise you much relief, at least not within the confines of Democratic Underground and how we currently run it. Yes, I can keep the forum clear of obvious bigotry -- that's not difficult. And I believe I can provide you with a community in which, when it comes to your civil rights, everyone expresses 100% support for full equality. But people's ideas on how we get to that point will inevitably -- and legitimately -- differ, and when that debate happens all these hurt feelings rise to the surface again and it becomes very difficult to have a conversation.

When that happens, the moderators try very hard to try to keep things on-track and relatively civil. I know that many people believe the moderators are a big part of the problems they perceive on DU, but I do not believe that is the case. First, because it is very difficult for any moderator to take action unilaterally without some other moderator noticing. But more importantly, because moderators are trying to do their job within the confines of the systems, procedures, and instructions that I give them. If it is not working, the responsibility lies squarely with me, not them.

I think this entire situation does illustrate one practical issue that we can agree on: The current approach to rules and enforcement on Democratic Underground is a failure. It worked well enough when we were all united by a common enemy in George W. Bush, but it is not adequate for DU 2011, where we often find ourselves with differing opinions on important and divisive topics. The DU Admins are convinced that we need to try a very different approach if we want this community to thrive for another 10 years and beyond. And we intend to try something new when we move into our new software later this year. I'm not going to go into details because I don't want this discussion to be about software. But I do want you to know that we know there is a problem.

I could write much more, but I think I have covered most of the issues that I wanted to mention. I hope that you will read it in the spirit it is intended. I know that many of you have been looking forward to this discussion, and have many things that you would like to add. For my part, I am going to listen, try to understand, and do my best to respond.