Post-principle blues.

At a moment in which the interconnection of our struggle for justice with other civil rights struggles could not be clearer, we are degenerating into a movement that is playing politics with some core principles. Matthew Shepard's murder generates massive media attention, grassroots protest, and outrage; it gets more attention in New York City than the murders of the six gay men of color killed in the city since the summer. In the same week I receive an E-mail message from a gay friend who attended the Black Radical Congress, telling me a Kenyan woman in Alabama has possibly been lynched; no major media cover the news. A pro-choice doctor is murdered in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y., and no major gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organization speaks out.

The Human Rights Campaign endorses Right-to-Life Party senator Alfonse D'Amato. The Log Cabin Republicans give an award to Ward Connerly, the architect of California's racially loaded anti-affirmative action initiative. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation accepts a large grant from Coors, whose founding family funds the right wing that GLAAD fights. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which I work for, last year accepted a donation from Nike, whose labor practices are under attack from the labor movement that NGLTF courts.

Is it possible for GLBT politics to exist without an uncompromising commitment to feminism, antiracism, and social justice? Based on recent events, the answer is clearly yes. Will everyone in our very diverse community ever unite behind one set of ideological politics? No, we will not.

But should GLBT progressives just abandon the movement to people who sacrifice principle for politics? No way. We need to speak out more than ever. If we do not create a movement brave enough to stand for basic human rights, then we deserve the movement we have, which harbors a valueless politics that hurts the prospect of equality for GLBT people. Such politics hurts us in the short run because we lose the opportunity to build a broader base of understanding when it is more possible than ever. Such politics hurts us in the long nm because we are engaged in a conflict of values with our opponents. They promote traditionalism, patriarchy, libertarian economics, and theocracy as part of an interconnected package. What principles and ideas do we have to offer?

Having a long-range strategy guided by principles matters a great deal now. Even if we disagree about the specifics, let us agree that standing for nothing will leave us in the same hated position that our president finds himself today. Standing on principle will at least gain us the respect of both friends and opponents.

Surely one principle we can all rally around to defend is the idea of a constitutional form of government, not a religious one. Yet when I turn on my TV set, I am more likely to see GLBT activists making religious arguments than I am to see them defend freedom from religion as an integral part of the First Amendment.

Another principle inviolate for the GLBT future is the concept of sexual and reproductive autonomy. After years of being hounded for our sexual lives and denied the opportunity to exercise our reproductive choices as parents, we understand intimately that government and religion have no business controlling our sexual and reproductive lives.

A third principle involves the urgent need for more education and understanding about human difference in general and about GLBT people in particular. To address racism and homophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism, will require not just lawmaking but culture-shifting strategies.

A fourth principle is that national change emerges from local action. NGLTF and the Federation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Statewide Political Organizations have smartly called for a week of national action to build capacity at the state level: the "Equality Begins at Home" campaign, March 21-27.

A final principle progressives can rally around is the old ACT UP slogan: SILENCE = DEATH. There is no substitute for participation. You and I are not just dinner-chomping check writers or market segments. We are people with morals, values, ideas, dreams, and souls. Let us raise our voices to debate these ideals and to create at least some comer of our movement in which principles do matter and playing politics does not.