Critical Race Theory: Questions, Answers, Feelings, and more Questions

A few weeks ago Marcus Ranum asked me via a secret backchannel communication conduit (read: email) if I wanted to tag team some CRT education here on FtB. I said sure, but then quickly hit writers’ block. (And also didn’t keep up with the email. Sorry, Marcus! It’s all me, you did nothing wrong!). The biggest reason I’ll get to at the end, but it hugely contributed to the block. My second biggest problem, though, would have been enough on its own even without the biggest: There’s so much to write about! And although I might possibly be the only blogger on this network who has actually studied this stuff in the law school classrooms where it was meant to be taught, that doesn’t mean I’m an expert. Far from it.

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Dee Farmer, this Juneteenth, every Juneteenth, until we learn its lessons

Last summer during the BLM protests a lot of folk wrote in to say that they not only appreciated my work, but some of those were worried that they wouldn’t be able to head into the gas the way I had. It’s not an irrational question. Portland has well over a million people in the metro area and BLM was getting only a thousand people on monday nights, and not always much over 5000 on weekend nights. As far as I know, the crowds never hit 15k at any time when I was there. We’re talking about numbers between one third of a percent and one percent of the metro population coming downtown, with another tenth of one percent showing up for simultaneous actions at Portland Police Bureau’s North Precinct (there were also some protests out at East Precinct, but they weren’t every night and probably no larger than the ones at North). More than 99% of people weren’t coming out on a nightly basis, and it’s likely that more than 95% of people never showed up for even a single night. So, yes, some people sympathetic to BLM weren’t showing up for BLM.

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An Open Letter To My Wonkette Friends Who Are Busy Not Commenting

Okay, I saw the thing about Marcotte and Imma let you finish, but before I do, I’m gonna tell you a story that I told you before but what you did not seem to listen. If you did not see that, it’s about Marcotte using her angry voice about Democrats not doing shit and about other people using their angry voice to tell Marcotte how wrong she is to get angry about Democrats not doing shit.

In the 90s during my wild, Riot Grrl days when I was pro peace, pro titties, anti fascist and committed to a positive revolution of love and generosity (so, like today, but prettier & under 25), I was part of the Lesbian Avengers. We marched. We ate fire. We paired up, fucked each other for a week, then broke up & fucked someone else in the group. It was a whole thing.

Well, at the time there was that first out lesbian in the Oregon state legislature Gail Shibley (I still have her campaign button “Girlfriends for Gail!” on a dresser about 10 feet from me as I type) making waves. (The first out bisexual legislator, an obscure 1990s local politician named “Kate Brown” came out just after Gail, but this story is not about her.)

But things were not all puppies & kittens & oral sex & queer women writing your laws for you. There were also asshats, and they were, frankly, greater in number at the time. The hub of all asshat anti puppies/kittens/oral sex activity was the Oregon Citizens Alliance, but there were others, too. Some of them even in the legislature.

Well, artificial insemination hadn’t been invented that long before and the laws around it were still … interesting (as, frankly, they probably are today). One law that was important at the time said that any child of a legal wife was also the legal responsibility of the husband unless & until evidence came to light that it was not his child. Because of this legal “rebuttable presumption” dads might sometimes have to pay child support for a kid that wasn’t theirs after a divorce, but the law was clear that the interest of the child who had no choice to be born was more important than the interest of a man who at least had the choice of whom he wanted to trust in legal marriage.

But what about test tube babies? It’s obvious that at least sometimes artificial insemination would be used to get around male infertility, so what would it mean if a court found that there was no genetic relationship between a birthmother’s husband and her child? Would that really mean that a guy who supported artificial insemination shouldn’t pay to support the child he nontraditionally helped to create?

The solution in Oregon law was neither to abandon the rebuttable presumption standard which still had its uses nor to require support for all child conceived through ART. Instead the law required that a doctor providing services to a married woman seeking ART help in conceiving a child had to solicit and receive written consent from both the patient and the legal husband. In this way the courts could later feel comfortable imposing child support obligations on future divorcee dads.

But OCA fan, state legislator, and full time asswanker Kevin Mannix ignored the history and context of Won’t Somebody Think of The Children, and instead framed the issue this way:

Married women have to get permission from their husbands before receiving ART services, but single women (read: lesbians) don’t have to ask anybody (read: any man).*

So in keeping with the Republican philosophy of freedom for all, he proposed a law that would require a single woman seeking ART to petition the state for permission before services could begin.

Gail Shibley was having none of it. She went around to everyone she could & tried to kill this stupid bill but the men dominating the Oregon legs were having none of it. Mannix’s bill was going to get its committee hearing and serious consideration and might even become law.

Now Shibley was a privileged lawyer working inside the system. She trusted the Oregon lege to do the right thing, yet there was this obviously badstupid bill that was just embarrassingly sexist as fuck, and no one was listening to her. They were yelling “SHIBLEY IS BIASSS” throughout the statehouse because as a lesbian how could she objectively consider the reasonableness of the state telling women they have no sexual freedom? And not just Republicans, but Democrats, too. She was a total insider, except for that “woman who prefers her oral sex sans penis” thing, and yet she suddenly found herself with no credibility to engage her fellow legislators when she needed it most. As Shibley put it at the time,

They thought I was the far left fringe*

Well, the Lesbian Avengers were ready to do something about that. We gathered in secret at our regularly scheduled, publicly advertised Tuesday night meeting at the bookstore and put it to a vote:

Shall we show those fuckers who owns the “Far Left Fringe” title in this state?**

Answer: We shall! So we organized the fuck out of a protest & went to the statehouse screaming,

2 4 6 8 It’s all right to inseminate
1 3 5 7 FUCK YOU AND YOUR BILL, KEVIN!**

My housemate’s infant daughter was alternately in the stroller & hugging some lesbo’s breast throughout. We were allowed to march around the grounds a little (save little tyke, who was pushed or carried the whole time, the slacker) and then asked to leave, which we did.

But, AND HERE’S THE POINT:

A week or two later the story was out that the bill had been tabled in committee, would not get a hearing & would not become law. Gail Shibley herself told local reporters that no one had been listening to her before the Avengers protest, but after the protest other legislators came to her & told her that they were sorry for treating her like the lunatic fringe, that now that the Lesbian Avengers stormed the capital (legally! politely, even, so long as you weren’t a common Kevin Mannix! With no gallows or guillotine in evidence!) they knew who the lunatic fringe really was and it was not Gail, so they were now willing to listen.

Okay, ready for the big finish?
In the end what defeated Republican asshats wasn’t patient exploitation of the process and using a reasonable voice while paying attention to the context. AND it wasn’t a 7 month old sleeping through angry queer women screaming “FUCK YOU AND YOUR BILL, KEVIN!” It was, and your mind may be blown here, it was both of them together.

Screaming our lesbo chants wouldn’t have worked without someone on the inside making arguments on the inside that the legislative insiders could understand and respect. But making those reasoned arguments wasn’t going anywhere without radical outsiders demanding action.

IT TAKES BOTH, MOTHERWONKERS.

Please can we stop it with the anti Marcotte hatred and hatred for other people who commit other sins like demanding action and being tired of using “hate” as a noun?

And can we please stop it with the the hatred of people who prefer to act nicely middle class and pale and reasoned and logical and contextual and historical and all tolerant of the confident insider patience that appears to people suffering to be indifference to that suffering?

Yes, choosing one tactic over the other is fine. Yes, you can advocate for your preferred tactics over some other tactics. But in the end, my screaming at La Migra’s swat team snatching people off the street with my snatch juice stained lips is neither more nor less necessary than Chuck Schumer’s brunch with some Republican hack.

Argue passionately for what you think will make this world a better place. I certainly do. But don’t ever lose sight of the fact that in this world of very different people, your tactics aren’t the best tactics for every single advocate with different skills or a different audience, and even if they were the very bestest of best tactics you would still need someone wild and crazy like me to make your reason seem all that much more reasonable by contrast. And I will still need the insider to patiently work through the issues of centrist waffletwats.

We absolutely fucking require both Lesbian Avengers and Gail Shibleys in this world if we’re going to drag it kicking & screaming into a better place.

Please, denizens of Wonkette, please: disagree if you like, but never lose sight of the fact that we need each other, and we’re all doing the best we goddamned can.

==========================================
*may be a paraphrase, it’s been 25 years for fuck’s sake

**definitely not a paraphrase. We fucking OWNED left wing crazy in the 1990s, and I will never forget that chant. (Nor will I forget the Christmas Carol we wrote for our lesbian caroling action, “Betsy the bi gal”. That song rocked.)

A taste of tea and fiction: the Leogryff Lord’s Highway

Many hundreds of years ago I actually was paid to publish short stories and poems. Not many, but a few. Oh, how I remember getting that $28 check in the mail for my first published poem, realizing that in the currency of the time I could eat out breakfast, lunch and dinner for a WHOLE DAY on that kind of money, as long as I didn’t splurge on anything crazy like taking a friend or ordering a beverage. Those were the days, when 4 to 6 times a year I could order a pizza above and beyond what my regular salary could afford solely based on the value of my words.

With my blogging income being what it is, I am reminded of those glory days, and have been tempted to essay anew navigation of the world of publishing. Toward that end, I have just begun in the last few weeks, maybe only two, to write stories that I hope will be compelling while also allowing me to explore characters I intend to use in a longer work so that when I begin a full novel in earnest, I’ve my characters and world better conceived and can focus on weaving an interesting plot to which the characters can react.

If you’re interested in the mind of your Right Reverend Feminist Fucktoy and what she might conceive as worthy fiction, feel free to read the sample below. Comments are well appreciated, and the best of the comments will win you the prize of my annoying persistence in tempting you to read future installments and react further, so that I might create something which not only interests me, but also may be salable at some future point.

No good deed, they say.

Without further ado, taste for yourselves, if you dare, what tea and rain have wrought on my keyboard:

 

 

The camp hearth was a comfortable, well built place to rest, with several feet of the ground around raised and bricked to provide a dry place to rest on nights like this, where hard bricks, unyielding but dry, would be preferred over soft mud under hard rain.

“I’ll make the tea,” offered Grace. “Don’t take down the tents. The silk needs the cover more than we do.” She set about poking the coals and placing fresh wood on the fire. Visitors were expected to replace the firewood they burned with fresh, wet wood in a new pile that could dry next to the hearth before it was needed, but this time of year as the weather warmed and the stormblown wood from nearby trees hadn’t yet been fully collected the two woodpiles were each full enough. Judging by the coals in the fire and the wet wood on the top of the pile to be dried it seemed that whoever had lunched there had added a fair number amount anyway. The larger pieces of wood seemed slow to catch, so she took out a large knife and whittled some kindling, thowing it on the coals and pushing around the larger branches before she took a bucket to the well.

“How’s your ankle?” Eltin asked Llough. “Do you want some fruit crust?”

Llough, who sat with her back against one of the large posts, wiggled her bootless toes propped up on the edge of the fire pit. “I think the warm is starting to help. It’s not really bad, you know,” blushing but taking the fruit crust.
“It surprised me when you yelled. You’re normally so graceful, I thought you’d been attacked.”

Her blush darkened, “I might be happier if I’d been attacked.”

“Jumped by the Leogryff Lord is a bit less embarrassing than turning your ankle on some muddy rock.”

“A better story as well.” Llough bit into her crust, then bent it up and down with her hand while holding it in her teeth. It was actual work chewing on the dried crust of fruit chunks, crumbled nuts, sap, flour, and oats. On warmer days the fruit crust naturally softened, but not today.

“I wish I still had some of today’s sausage,” Eltin said as she dropped pieces of crust for herself and Grace into a bowl and set it on the edge of the hearth.

“I just wish I had the patience to warm the crust before eating it,” Llough said after swallowing and wiggled her toes again.

Grace soon came back with the water. She set the kettle to boil while in a big pot Eltin started the rice and in a small pot set a large, dry packed ball of herbs and spices to boil. “The cups?” asked Grace. Both Llough and Eltin lifted their own. “Well aren’t you two the smart ones,” she said before ducking back out into the rain and returning with her own cup and bowl, and the squat, lidded urn used for tea brewing in the area the women called home.

By the time Grace was pouring tea, Eltin had diced some duck, wynroot, mushroom and onion and was using a wooden spoon to break up the spice ball, and two other wagon had stopped, though they weren’t travelling together and their drivers didn’t seem to know each other. Not long after, a single four legged horse came clopping up the arc. With cloak and rain hat it was impossible to tell who was underneath, though whoever it was could not be tall. Still, there was something familiar and in a moment Eltin realized that it wasn’t the figure, but the horse she recognized.

The shapeless figure tethered the redblue horse, removed the tack, and gave it a quick rub before carrying the gear under cover. Though there was plenty of room with an empty hearth side beetween each of the groups of travelers, when the rider spread out saddle, tack, cloak and hat they couldn’t help but end up beside one group or another. The rider chose the sisters.

“Have you no kitchen?” Grace asked. She wasn’t always thoughtful, but she was generous with food. For Grace the worst wrong one person could inflict on another was leaving the other hungry knowing you yourself to be full.

“No, no kitchen,” the woman smiled, tousling her short hair. “But I have food enough.” Dusting off a spot of brick with her hand, she took a small pie, carefully wrapped, and two flakey crusted rolls from her pack and placed them on the clean spot by the fire.

“Would you like some tea, though?” Grace said.

“I’d be happy to trade a share of my pie for a share of your tea, thank you,” the stranger said, “but I have no cup fit for tea.”

“Take mine,” said Llough, gulping her cup empty. “I like my tea hot. I’ll not find the tea drinkable for much longer anyway.” She passed the cup to Grace who refilled it and passed it over her to their guest, who began to sip immediately.

“Thank you. This is very good, and even if it wasn’t, my fingers are happy to wrap themselves around your warm cup.”

“You’re from far away? Past the Leap?” Eltin said loudly, from the far side of her sisters.

“No, I live in Tair’s Leap, actually. City bred.”

“You don’t travel west often then?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I saw you pass the other way as we were parking the wagons. I figured you didn’t know how far it might be to the next town.”

The stranger’s laughter was as warming as the tea, friendly even while communicating Eltin was clearly wrong in her assumption. “Oh, no. It wasn’t the distance to the next town that I misjudged. I was wrong about myself. It turns out I wasn’t as willing to tolerate the rain as I thought. A hundred yards on I was already thinking that a warm fire now sounded better than a king’s bed five miles on. I made it almost half a mile before turning back.”

“Well, since you’re here and staying for dinner, shouldn’t we know each others’ names?”

“I’m Llough,” Eltin’s sister burst in.

“And I’m Eltin.”

“Call me Joy.”

“Joy? That’s a funny name. Is that really a name they use in the city?” Llough said.

Joy laughed, and again it was all warmth. “No, not really. It’s sort of a nickname. My friends call me Joy.”

“My friends call me Grace. And so does everyone else.”

They talked until dinner was ready. The rice was tender, but held its shape. The duck, twice cooked, was good enough for having been boiled. Had they roasted it again it would clearly have been tough and dry. With no milk and no creamnuts the stew was thin, but the broth ball brought spice and fire to what would have been plain camp fare.

Joy lived up to her name, speaking around her stew about places in the city the sisters had never been, and the kinds of people who lived in them. The stew consumed, Llough moved to wash the pots and Grace to check the wagons. Joy went with off with Llough and when the two returned they were sharing a laugh.

“That can’t be true,” Eltin heard her sister say.

“On my sister’s honor!” Joy replied. Llough only laughed louder. “Eltin you should hear her stories about the menageries. The people are funnier than the animals.”

“The menageries?”

“Have you been?” Joy asked, sitting as Llough walked away.

“No. Grace has.”

“Why the two of them, but not you?”

“You can’t keep Llough away from animals. She loves the horses, the dogs. She can gather eggs from the todhens without a squawk. She hasn’t visited often. A crescent is still a lot to us, though maybe not to you, but you can’t keep her away forever.”

“And Grace?”

“What about me?” she said, returning to the fire.

“We were talking about going to the menageries.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve been.” She put their water pot back over the fire, now it was clean of the stew.

“It’s a little late to make more work for yourself. I have some wine in my packs if you still want something to drink,” Joy offered.

Grace thought. They had fed Joy, after all. “Wine then,” she said and took the water pot down to wait for morning. “I hope it’s good,” she added to Eltin after Joy stepped away.

“Have you looked at her boots? Or her buttons?” Joy asked. “She’s rich enough to have better than we do at home.”

“You’d think, but out alone she can’t carry too much. She wouldn’t make it three nights before she was robbed.”

When Joy returned, she was holding a small collection of bags and a bed roll. Setting them down it was only a minute before she produced an elegant flask made from a section of laquered woodgrass, but with a fanciful, selfstopping spout. In her other hand she held four small wooden cups. She poured a measure into each, setting one aside.

“So tell us,” began Eltin, “if you’ve seen so much of the menageries, what have we missed?”

“The monkeys, of course. Monkeys, sloths and squirrels all share a park. Do you like children?” Grace shook her head gently while Eltin nodded. “Well, then you, Eltin, would like the monkeys and squirrels. They are always about mischief. It’s always the same mischief and never the same, if you know what I mean. They’ll surprise you every day, stealing a hat or a cane when you least expect it. They’ll jump up on a shoulder and as soon as you stop laughing they might lick you behind the ear or across your neck. Sometimes you’ll barely peep and they’ll bound away, but others you can grab them or shake them or throw them and they’ll find a way to hang on. But for all their unpredictability, spend enough time with them and someone can tell you a story about their latest outrages and you can only think, ‘Yes, that’s just what they would do.’ A human, well, a human is more predictable, but less understandable.”

“Unless a child.”

“Exactly. Unless a child.”

“The monkeys again?” asked Llough, returning.

“Yes. The monkeys,” said Grace.

“But have some wine before I drink it all,” said Joy.

“I think you’d have to fight Grace for it,” Eltin said as Llough leaned forward for the last cup.

“It’s good wine,” Grace defended herself.

Eltin almost choked and Llough giggled immediately, with Joy finding their laughter too infectious to resist after a few moments. The four talked and laughed for almost an hour, with Grace and Joy taking center stage, but the wine ran dry, and even engaged as she was in the conversation, Grace eventually frowned at her empty cup.

“I have some brandy,” Joy said.

“Brandy, too?” asked Eltin.

“Only a little, but the rain is slacking off, not dying. There’s nowhere else to go to drink it.”

“Well, then, brandy!” a blushing Llough said happily. “I didn’t say it,” added Grace. Everyone laughed again, including a loud snort from one of the forgotten parties across the fire. The women practically rolled off into the mud at that, and it took several minutes before Joy was able to fetch the brandy from her bags. The decanter was lacquered a different color, but otherwise the same as the wine.

“That’s not a little!” said Eltin.

“Don’t complain,” said Grace, while Joy said “It’s not as full.” Full or not, there seemed plenty to go round.

Eltin stared at Joy, her eyes gradually narrowing, until she interrupted another story to ask, “How do you do it?” The women glanced at her, and when her stare made it clear she was speaking to Joy, she said, “Do what?”

“Well, you’re carrying wine and brandy that could only be had for silver, and even if people can’t see those buttons under your cloak, anyone can see those boots are money on your feet. Just the dye for the bootleather would be 30 crescents, and if that’s burrowbone for the plaques, that’s 6 crowns just below your knees. How in the world do you ride the road alone without landing naked in a ditch your first night out?”

“She has a sword,” said Llough. Joy looked at her sideways. “She can’t pull it free while she’s riding, maybe, but it’s tucked through her saddle where no one else can get it either. My eye says there’s probably a way to pull it free as soon as she picks up her weight and swings one leg.”

“That’s a clever eye,” said Joy, appraisingly.

“We’re all clever,” said Llough, “Or we wouldn’t be 3 of us on the road alone with two wagons of silk, even with the highway reeves enforcing Dragon’s law and with the Dragon’s turnouts for camping.” Grace nodded in emphasis. Eltin nodded too, but her gaze never left Joy, and the nod seemed more an accusation.

“Maybe she’s not afraid of road clippers because she’s one herself?” Eltin suggested. Her sisters’ faces seemed shocked at the suggestion and she backed down some. “I mean it may be you wouldn’t steal, but a lady who gambles might pay a debt by telling lesser souls which wagons would be well targeted.”

“That’s a shrewd thought, Eltin, if uncharitable to a woman who has shared you her wine. I have gambled, though I have no debts. And Llough’s right. The odd saddle horn is a hilt, as much good as that sword’s done me. No, I rely on the same as you: sleeping indoors when I can, at the turnouts when I can’t, the honesty of the reeves, a bit of wit, and the Dragon’s law.

“That’s all?” asked Grace. Though late to her suspicions, she had come to agree with her sisters that a few too many things about Joy seemed odd.

“No. I do have a pair of things that you don’t. My horse is faster than a wagon, likely better trained, and a good jumper, too. He’s not a warhorse, but I’ve gotten him to kick like one a time or two. And then there’s this.” Joy reached into her collar and pulled out a pendant. It was large, a silver disk with eight evenly spaced triangles that might have been the tips of an eight pointed star, but another, smaller disk of gold covered up the star’s body, if there was one, and on it was stamped a dragon’s hand. No one who had visited Tair’s Leap could mistake the symbol. All three of the women had seen it embroidered on banners and embossed on the city’s gate doors.

“Felloe’s loom,” swore Grace.

“Besh’s blood, more like,” swore Llough.

“You’re …royal, then?” said Eltin.

Joy could tell Eltin had changed her question at the last moment. “A little. Enough of the blood to serve as envoy, now and again. Together that ranks the Dragon’s token.”

“Well, you have nothing to worry about then!” said Grace. “Anyone with nothing to lose, you can stick with your sword and no highway reeve will ask a second question. Anyone with something to lose, you just show your claw and they’ll want none of the trouble they’ll pay for your things. Ride with us, why don’t you?”

Llough laughed and almost clapped; Joy laughed but it was both happy and sad. “Heard by Irrayah,” she glanced starward. “No, it’s not quite so simple. Even the Dragon’s grandchildren can be robbed by the particularly brave or particularly desperate. Why else do you think I circled back to camp with you?”

“The rain,” Eltin said flatly.

“Well, that too.”

“Have you ever been robbed, then? Did you fight them off with your sword?” Llough’s face, flush warm from the fire and the drink seemed to grow even brighter.

“Hey, now!” said Joy. “Let the story come to you. The reward will be the greater. Now, where should I begin?” She glanced at Llough’s eagerness and Grace’s interest, but lingered on Eltin’s resistance. She held Eltin’s eyes setting her face neither aggressively nor defensively, but with warm invitation. It’s true I own a nimble sword, but aside from drawing out my thumb after a sharpening, it’s never tasted blood. This dagger though?” She brought the blade out from the small of her back. “This dagger has a tale to tell. We can start with that one.”

From Minneapolis to Salem, from 2021 to 1992: An unsettled, unsettling journey

Now THIS is an unpleasant shock. From the Minneapolis StarTribune:

The FBI arrested three more men Friday in connection with the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, two in Minnesota and one in Iowa.

Brian Christopher Mock of Minneapolis was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without authority; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted place; obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, and acts of physical violence on Capitol grounds.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m more or less from Oregon. Certainly I’m more from Oregon than I could be said to be from anyplace else, even Los Angeles, where I was born. I moved away from LA when I was 10 months old (ask me about my experience driving the U Haul, it was hellish without power steering) and landed in Oregon when I was 4. From then on, I grew up in a relentlessly white section of that relentlessly white state about 20 miles from Portland. Not much farther from Portland is the state capital, Salem. I’ve been there many times, both because I’ve had friends live in the area and because of activism I’ve done. This article brings up something that happened in Salem 38 years and 8 months ago that everyone should learn or remember.

In 1992, the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance, a theocratic group originally known for misogynistic attacks on women’s reproductive rights (most obviously in an anti abortion ballot measure which was their first success in placing new state laws before voters) had become better known for hating queers.

For that year’s election they had drafted a ballot measure and collected sufficient signatures to put it on the ballot so that if passed it would be illegal for the state to spend money in any way and on any person’s salary if doing so would contribute to portraying queerness as anything other than “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse”. Conflict was ramping up like crazy around the state. Many people who hadn’t been out, came out that year. Others who had been out retreated to the closet.

This was a defining year for me as I, too, came out of the closet in 1992, and immediately began engaging in activism to fight the OCA. Anxiety was high for queers, but it was also high for the bigots. While in Colorado Amendment 1 was written to have a similar legal effect, it was written in dry prose, without the phrase “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse”. In Colorado the fight was mostly about whether or not the state should “support” queers. (which I guess just means should allow queers to use state services without discrimination?) Amendment 1 passed. In Oregon the hostile language became a reason for moderates to oppose the OCA and their Measure 9. With so much attention focussed on not the legislative effect but the apparent ill will communicated by the OCA’s language, a huge number of people were feeling reflected hostility. While in the past their bigotry would go unchallenged as simply “normal”, now anti queer hatred was (modestly) condemned.

The turn of events shocked the bigots, what with how other people were questioning the morals of the bigots as much as (sometimes more than!) people were questioning the morals of people who liked boobies or occasionally gave a blowjob to someone they loved. Anxiety and anger among the bigots rose as well.

Over the course of that summer, 39 years ago, some young skinheads (ages 19 to 22) living in Salem were engaging in a long running campaign of harassment against two queer roommates a couple doors away. The roommates were one black lesbian in her twenties with a Jewish surname and one white gay man in his early 40s. Perhaps because it was a single theme that allowed them to condemn both roommates at once, their friends made it clear that insults targeting sexual orientation were at the heart of this campaign of harassment. But racism and antisemitism were present too, as you could expect from a group of racist skinhead asshats.

One day in late September, well into the campaign season, there was a physical confrontation between houseguests of the two queers and the racists, heterosexist jackholes. We’re not sure of the details of the confrontation, but the houseguests felt that they were sticking up for their hosts when they heard the skinheads being racist, as racists will do, and the racists felt that the houseguests had invaded their apartment and attacked them (and, hell, maybe they did).

In any case, after a confrontation over racism in the context of this ongoing campaign of heterosexist harassment, the racist, heterosexist bigots decided that the right way to reclaim their power was to fill bottles with gasoline, stuff the ends with rags, light them on fire, and throw these Molotov cocktails into the apartment of the hosts & houseguests.

Because of the layout of the apartment, the houseguests made it out. The hosts burned to death.

The hosts’ names were Hattie Mae Cohen & Brian Mock. They were clear victims of a campaign of racist, heterosexist terror for months and became martyrs to hatred’s white, Oregonian avatars.

While Measure 9 consistently polled badly, the margins were never huge, and there was a great deal of concern that some people would not want to admit to supporting a measure that had become associated with bigotry, but would happily vote yes in a private voting booth. Every queer I knew was tense right up to the day after the election.

I am acutely aware that the coverage of the murders of Cohen & Mock may very well have tipped the vote decisively against Measure 9. My freedom and my employment may have been affected by their deaths. For that reason, I consider it a duty to remember them, and I have ever since. I’ve never forgotten their names, nor am I ever likely too.

That’s why it was so shocking to see the name Brian Christopher Mock in a news story as a man arrested for acting out bigotry and hatred and paranoia. To be honest, it was a relief that they included the middle name, and made me wonder if someone at the Star Tribune was familiar with the events of September 26, 1992 in Salem, Oregon.

If you were not familiar with these murders and the effect they had on queer freedom in Washington, California, and especially Oregon, you can read more, or listen to a podcast about them, here.

In the meantime, I will take this coincidence as another reminder of the capacity of fascists to befoul everything that they touch, and as more motivation to prevent the spread of fascism’s stain.

May we always remember those who came before. May we always consider those who will come after.