This was the resounding message delivered from podiums andin workshops at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's 18th annual CreatingChange conference, held at the Oakland Marriott last week. The largest nationalgrassroots organizing and skills-building LGBT conference in the country,Creating Change attracted more than 2,500 prominent and emerging activists,advocates, and allies who gathered to network and exchange ideas about theirmovement.

This year's conference emphasized the need to build unitynot just with other minority populations, but within the diverse LGBT communityitself, with a theme of "Building an Anti-Racist Movement" andinstitutes on faith and religion, labor, marriage, youth, transgenders,students, and seniors. Approaches varied, but at the core of everything was theacknowledgment that for far too long, the right wing has controlled thediscussion around LGBT rights, claiming ownership of moral values byvillainizing its ideas around gay sex. And the community can no longer shy wayfrom these topics, said organizers and presenters, if it is to respond toattacks against equality.

"I say it's time to stop running away from the moralvalues issue and seize it," NGLTF Executive Director Matt Foreman said inhis plenary remarks on Friday, November 11.

Foreman decried the church and state attacks against LGBTpeople that they "have the nerve to wrap up in faith," and demandedthat the right wing be called on its own immorality – from the carnage inIraq and policies that abandoned poor people in New Orleans to its ongoingassault against LGBT people. The current trend in placing antigay initiativeson state ballots, he said, also must be condemned as un-democratic.

"Inviting the majority to decide whether they think weare good enough, decent enough or even human enough ... putting the rights of aminority population up for a popular vote is always wrong," he said.

Foreman also called on Democrats to "stop running andducking" on gay issues, noting that even large percentages of evangelicalssupport LGBT protections.

"If Democrats seize these issues they will win. If notwe will know once and for all what's been going on behind closed doors,"he said. The community must build a movement that does not "whitewash orsanitize" its members or leave anyone behind, "not bi people, nottransgender people, not two-spirits, not leather people, no one."

Creating Change included daylong pre-conference institutes,skills building workshops, caucuses, and social gatherings. Like mostconferences, there were areas that fell short, said some community members. Insome workshops about race, for instance, Native Americans were left out of thelong list of populations mentioned, said Miko Thomas of Bay Area NativeAmerican Two-Spirits.

Thomas also praised organizers for recognizing the need forNative American inclusion in other venues and for producing an overall"impressive" event. But other critics weren't so easily swayed.

"How can we build an anti-racist movement at the OaklandMarriott City Center? Marriott is the Mormon-owned global tourism pioneerfamous for building exclusive resorts on impoverished islands to help wealthywhite people to participate in hands-on colonialism one Mai Tai luau at atime," said a zine distributed by the activist group Gay Shame. Thematerial went on to criticize NGLTF's involvement in a variety of activitiesand condemned those who were "salivating over straight privilege"instead of "building radical alternatives."

Often left out of the LGBT movement are people of faith,noted Foreman in his plenary speech, and that has been a mistake. A daylongThursday pre-conference institute highlighted all the ways LGBT people couldcreate change, within their queer, straight, religious, and political circles.

"If we can't say 'God'/'she,' what does that say abouthow we view the feminine?" said the Reverend Penny Nixon of MetropolitanCommunity Church-San Francisco. "The root of homophobia is misogyny. Whydo gay men get beat up? Because they act like girls."

Rabbi Michael Lerner agreed, noting that it's difficult toget the left wing in general to affirm spirituality because it is associatedwith softness and femininity. Right-wing men can safely embrace spirituality,he said, because they use it to beat down and oppress people, behavior associatedwith manhood. The next time someone like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger uses aphrase like "girlie man" as an insult, he said, the community shouldrespond not with defensiveness but with pride.

A Saturday morning workshop entitled "It's About GaySex: Working with a Radical Right Obsessed with Gay Sex Practices"challenged participants to respond to conservative attacks without distancingthemselves from their sexuality. Led by Melinda Chateauvert, director of theWoodhull Freedom Foundation; Jeff Montgomery, executive director of theTriangle Foundation; Richard Lindsay of Creating Change's religious leadershiproundtable; and sex-positive activist and writer Eric Rofes, the workshopmaintained that sexuality is a part of all romantic relationships, and to denythat is to make a weaker case for any and all pro-LGBT efforts.

Several scenarios were given in which participants were toldthey were leaders of gay equality movements; one instance involved a manleading an organization whose BDSM personal ad was exposed by the religiousright, another involved the arrest of dozens of gay men having sex in publicshortly before a nondiscrimination law was about to go for a vote in the sametown.

As the right wing tends to frame negativity in terms ofsexual "accusations," gay activists often find themselves givingknee-jerk responses, denying the sexuality of their community instead ofdenying the negativity associated with the community, said workshop organizers.But regardless of the political cause, "you should always be thinkingabout sex," said panelist Montgomery. He advised responding to the firstattack by affirming the right to privacy, and questioning why, if gay sex wasso bad, the religious right spent so much time researching gay personals. Thepublic responds well to arguments about the separation of private andprofessional life, agreed Rofes, who pointed to the "Clinton blowjobcase" as an example, where President Bill Clinton's job approval ratingremained intact despite his sex scandal.

Montgomery said a response to the second attack should notcondemn the public sex acts, because doing so would simply condemn gay sex,since it is a known fact that heterosexuals have public sex without the sameconsequences. Instead, he advised reframing the issue around why so muchtaxpayer money was going to sting operations in order to entrap gay men. Rofessaid citing area crime reports – such as increased violence – couldhelp to demonstrate the absurdity of paying for "police in the parklooking at guys jerking off."

The worst thing LGBT leaders can do, said panelists, isrespond with shame when it comes to issues of gay sex, issuing messages thatcertain people "are not representative" of the community, forinstance, or even using sex to attack LGBT enemies when they are caught in"scandals" of their own.

"You can guide the conversation back to your ownpolitical message without falling into their trap that 'those are the bad sexpeople,'" said Montgomery. "You can stay on your message withoutaffirming the negative."

Ultimately even the fight for marriage, workplace rights,and gay adoption is about gay sex, and society's discomfort with it, pointedout Chateauvert.

"The movement really is about our right to have sex,and we forget that so quickly," she said, noting that what has become afight for marriage makes sense since the institution has always allowed peopleto have a visible sexuality without having to discuss it.

Chateauvert added that many right wing issues – likeits obsession with who receives public benefits, for instance – are also"disguised sexuality issues." The drug wars, she said, legallypenalize the lovers of drug dealers, attacking and criminalizing people simplyfor their sexual choices. "A lot of those anti-sex messages are covertracist messages as well," she said.

People of all orientations have sex, and the more peopletalk about it, the less of a shock value it has, said Montgomery, advocatingthat gay sex should become normalized within all LGBT movements and all groupsshould always be prepared to respond to it. Media organizations in his hometownof Detroit eventually took his cues and began criticizing police entrapmentoperations rather than baiting gay groups to speak negatively about gay sex.Many funders that had abandoned his group due to his sex-positive leadership,he said, have returned out of respect for consistency.

If funding interferes with what organizations are allowed tosay, many groups could consider becoming more selective about the strings thatcome attached to their money, said Rofes, taking issue with nonprofits whosemissions are to create radical social change but whose funding dictates they maintainthe status quo. For organizations that truly cannot survive otherwise, he said,"what you can't do, but should do, make sure someone else can do,"pointing out that when many AIDS organizations became dependent on mainstreamfunding, they worked in conjunction with ACT UP and counted on that group toget their messages out into the world and "say it loudly."

The main thing is not to let the right wing dictate theconversation around any issue related to sex, because most Americans do supportcore values related to fundamental rights. When approached for a response toissues like polyamory or kinky practices, for instance, LGBT groups can alwaysturn it around and ask questions of their own.

"Ask them, 'Are you saying that in a democracy, weshould be dictating how people organize their sexuality? Is that what you'resaying?' They don't know what to say to that," said Rofes. "It'sabout freedom. Which ... ultimately is about morality."

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