In this exclusive audio interview Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ talks with Kate Clinton our favorite political humorist about her annual LGBT year end review and chat about what 2017 may bring our LGBT community. This has been an extremely difficult year for our LGBT community especially with the election of Donald Trump. For the past few weeks we have watched as Trump has been picking the most homophobic, transphobic, racist, xenophobic and misogynistic candidates to fill his White House administration team including unconstitutional attempts to bring family members on his staff. Across the nation, labor, civil rights and faith leaders and others have called on President-elect Donald Trump to unequivocally denounce the hundreds of hate-fueled acts of harassment, vandalism, property destruction and assaults that have happened since his election. We talked to Kate about how she has been coping with the aftermath of the election and her spin on our LGBT issues.
When asked how she sees our LGBT community moving forward in a Trump administration Clinton stated, “Well I think historically the LGBT community has been very creative and there’s a lot going on and this certainly is a challenge. On December 1st, World AIDS Day I went down to The New York City AIDS Memorial and you know you are reminded of the creativity and fierceness that the gay community reacted to AIDS and we really transformed a healthcare system and made sure we got drugs in a timely manner and we took care of each other and there was great art produced and great anger so I think that we have the resilience and we will do it again. We’ve had victories and we’ve had a very short life as a movement. So it’s understandable that we’ll have some setbacks but I believe in the creativity and wonderful things that we come up with. My fear is being used by the Trump administration and I think in passing the federal marriage law we really reached out and it was a great strategy reaching out to republicans like Portman of Ohio who has a gay son and therefore he supported full equality rights for gay people which I always thought like couldn’t you possibly like dreamed it up yourself on your own, you have to have a son? But anyways, so I think that what I worry about now is that we could be used. We could be a wedge issue again, a pink-wash. That the Trump people they’re lovely people, they have a lot of humanity, look how wonderful they are to gay people, which will drive a wedge between us and people of color and it’s a dangerous thing. I think we really have to be careful how we use the Trump administration. I think to say it’s the lesser of two evils, we’ll pick that but it’s still evil. I think we have to rely on a moral compass at this moment.”
Kate Clinton is also very involved with NCLR (The National Center for Lesbian Rights) and LPAC (Lesbian Political Action Committee) conceptualized by her wife Urvashi Vaid to give lesbians a real and meaningful seat at the political table. LPAC is a political action committee (PAC) that builds the political power of LGBTQ women by electing candidates who champion LGBTQ rights, women’s equality and social justice. Currently Kate is working on her new show that she’ll be performing nationally in 2017.
For More Info & Appearances: kateclinton.com
ReplyDeleteI feel better having listened to this interview. Kate put things in perspective that I can use to strengthen myself.