NGLTF's Foreman to Keynote R.U.1.2? Dinner

     R.U.1.2?'s Executive Director Christopher Kaufman has announced that Matt Foreman will be the keynote speaker at the Community Center's annual fundraising dinner on April 11.
     Foreman confirmed his commitment to address the Vermont organization's supporters. "I am honored to be invited to speak in Vermont," he said.
     Foreman, who reportedly always wears cowboy boots, has been the director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force since last May. Before that he directed Empire State Pride Agenda for six years, during which there were significant advances toward legal equality for gay men and lesbians in New York. Foreman also has done a six-year stint with the New York City Anti-Violence Project.
     "NGLTF is a leader in the national queer community working on issues that we care about and that affect our lives. Matt's voice will be very important in the coming year," said Kaufman. "NGLTF has a local organizing focus, and I look forward to seeing what Matt's message is for us, especially regarding how we can support others
around the nation."
     Another area Kaufman hopes Foreman will address is how to mobilize the lgbtq community to vote in the upcoming elections. Kaufman added that there is already an initiative begun by the National Association of LGBT Community Centers called "Promote the Vote."
     Foreman's recent statements have been calls for both caution and increased activism in response to such celebrated legal advances for the lesbian and gay communities as the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision and the ruling on gay marriage in Massachusetts.
     Asked about this trend in a phone interview, Foreman said, "It's a persistent problem of our own movement and the way that non-gay people look at our communities that there's a huge disparity of where we actually are and where they think we are. The vast majority of lgbt people have no rights, much less relationship protections. People tend to over-value symbolism."
     For example, he said, "People completely missed what the Lawrence decision said at its core: that police could not come break down the door to your bedroom and arrest you for having sex. And half of Americans disagreed with the decision."
     Foreman said that with the Lawrence decision and the Massachusetts ruling, the extreme right now has "the best wedge issue" it could have wished for in order to stay in power. Celebrating is fine, he added, as long as we recognize that there's a lot of work to do to implement those decisions. He held up Vermont as a model of grassroots organizing around gay marriage, even though the effort fell short of that goal and resulted in civil unions.
     "The amount of grassroots organizing you did in Vermont, plowing the fields, appearing at county fairs, talking to people, is light years ahead of anything anyone has done in at least 48 other states," Foreman declared. "We are in serious trouble: never, outside of Vermont, have we won a marriage fight."

Information on the R.U.1.2? Community Center fundraising dinner is available from the Center: call 802-860-7812 or check the web site, www.TheCenter@ru12.org.