Cal Poly Pomona Commencement Address and Thoughts for Lavender Grads Everywhere.

On May 31, I had the honor of addressing Cal Poly Pomona's Lavender Graduation. This is my message to all LGBTIQQ graduates: Embrace the strengths and skills that living queer has given you and use them--employ them not just to survive, nor even to succeed--but to redefine what success can be.

To Queer the American Dream

Thank you for allowing me to be part of this day. Congratulations! I am honored to be speaking in front of you, the Cal Poly Pomona’s Lavender Graduating Class of 2012. I’d like to thank Cal Poly Pomona’s Division of Student Affairs. I’d like to thank the Pride Center. But most of all, I want to thank you, for all your hard work and achievement. You did it! Look at you!

So, I look at all of you, ready to take the next step outward—and wow—we have a world to look forward to—don't we? Hey any of you expecting to get a nice job, protected by your union, with a good health plan, and some overtime? Think you’re gonna work hard at the office in order to raise a family, send them off to college, travel a little in your retirement?

Yeah?  A couple days ago NPR started a whole series called “American Dreams,” which no doubt is timed to come out near graduation. Their first two titles? “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality” and “More Americans Putting The 'Dream' On Hold.” Way to get a generation going, don't you think? To be fair, the data looks grim.  Let’s see… The banking system has collapsed. 11 million people owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. Detroit is in danger of turning off half its lights because it can't pay the electric bill.  In the meantime, Afghanistan is costing us three hundred million dollars. A day.

I have students who are going out into the world, and they’re terrified about not having the things their parents had. They worry that the same opportunity—for a good job a career, a comfy salary, a house—won't be there. And, judging from what the mainstream news (and even NPR) says, they won’t. To be honest, I’m a little worried for them. I mean, I hear even pharmacy school grads are having problems finding jobs. 

But you. I’m not worried. Not one bit! See—'cuz you weren’t mainstream, anyway.

Check it out. Imagine—being straight and white. The entire system is built for you.  Imagine the church has never had a problem with your marriage plans. Imagine you’ve never had a problem with a pronoun, a bathroom, or holding hands with your sweetheart at the mall. You could donate blood, and they would actually use it. The guy in the car commercial looks like you. The Army wanted you. Why would you question your institutions?

These are people for whom the bank was the bank. Church was the church. Business was business. For them, what else was there?  Suddenly they have realized that the institutions they believed in, that for so long affirmed who they were and seemed without question to work for them—have instead been working selfishly, shortsightedly, and dishonestly. If they are still working at all.

Of course they are freaking out.  But I believe you know better. You know a side to this American Dream they never even considered--the Outside. So we can't trust the church to tell us what is good for us? Can't trust to the government to do what is best for us? Can't trust big business to look out for us? Like this is news? As queers, the government invalidated our love and our honor. The church attacked our morality and our connection to God. Big business took our money and gave us what, vodka and cigarettes? To be out literally meant to be out.  Even when a politician said something nice about us, it was only until the next election cycle. When the courts act in our favor—it’s only a matter of time before someone will want to overturn the decision. We never had the illusion of safety or belonging—so when the institutions acts against us, it’s business as usual.

And this reaches beyond our nation. The traditional hetero-normative world has gotten so big and bloated that it’s fighting itself! It’s not simply a few evil people ruining a good thing—there’s something wrong with the model Why else would society’s own motivations be so conflicted? Progress vs. Conservation. Conservation vs. Development.  Development vs Security. Security vs War.  War vs Progress.  And somehow, we’ve decided to think of our corporations as people. This isn't just evil—this is crazy! Concept fail. Hypothesis wrong. Control Alt Delete. Our institutions have become a self-serving, self-defeating organism, leaving most of the world’s population outside, abused, and afraid.

In a sense, most of the world woke up and found itself queer.

Without institutional affirmation, your disenfranchised, disillusioned neighbors and families have no clue how to find themselves. Not only can’t they understand how to live life from the margins—many of them can't even imagine the margins.

And this is why I believe your future will be amazing.

I believe this time, this here, this now is the start of something historic. Even as the world seems to have lost itself, I think your chances of success are better than ever. Not traditional success—but queer success. Because the world needs to learn how to live as queer. And guess who can teach them? Guess who knows the way?

You go into the world with skills and perspectives that others don't have. Each of you possesses a set of gifts that the world needs, even if it doesn't know it yet. 

See, to the straight world, the daily news looks like collapse. Of course it’s scared. And scared makes more scared. (We already know this, don't we? That if we’re scared of being attacked every day, we can't live?) But this feeling is new to many Americans. They thought they were part of a superpower. They were secure. And now it’s like they’ve gone crazy, scurrying and struggling to regain what feel they no longer have. Look at them running around looking for scapegoats in our churches, in our ethnic neighborhoods, our mosques and universities, our TVs and elementary schools.  We have body scanners in airports, searching for terrorists with motives we make no effort to understand. And who, to be fair, are probably aren't trying very hard to understand us.

But what if these are growing pains? What if we can do better? I think we can. And you know how.

Look at how so many cling to old paradigms! They are blaming immigrants, blaming the Tea Party, blaming Obama, blaming the church, blaming, the Wall Street, blaming you. They are looking for new places to drill oil, to stop drilling oil. To find the one percent, the 99 percent.

I think they’re trying to convince themselves that someone, somewhere has this all under control, that’s it’s one big conspiracy, and if they can find out who it is, maybe they can fix it and return it to like it was. 

But you? Dammit—those old paradigms never worked in the first place. Right?

Since many traditional institutions were closed to you, you had to define your own identities, which clued you in to what is possible if you could gain strength, not from an institution, but from your own convictions, your own hard work. Free from off-the rack institutional identities, you understand that someone else’s marriage does not affect your life. You understand that someone else’s religion doesn’t affect how you worship. Someone else’s race or ethnicity does not affect your heritage. So why waste resources on enforcing and regulating and persecuting that stuff?

Queer is not just about rainbows and piercings and touchy-feely drum circles. It’s about sound economics. It’s about using our resources wisely. It’s about finding a better way. Patriarchy isn't just oppressive—it’s inefficient.

Do we really want a return to the American dream, first-world hegemony, if it includes racial segregation, political blacklists, sexism, ableism, and raids on gay establishments? Do we want an America or a world defined by whom we are not? Why would we even want to pay for that?  It’s not just morally reprehensible, it’s wasteful. Add up the legal, institutional, and labor costs of all this hateful nonsense—consider the brilliance and talent lost. Isn't it obvious? Racism and sexism and homophobia cost this society more than health care or social security ever did.

You benefit from deeper, more robust and secure lessons. You have learned that family must be something more than what you were taught, and that you had the capacity to make family. You understand that when all that is holy abandons you, you have power within you to find belief again. And that this is not lack of faith, but rather faith in its most literal form.

See—the world needs your skills. Your way of looking at the world, your perspective. Not the skills you acquired in some classroom despite or when you weren’t being out and queer—but exactly because you are who you are. LGBT rights, queer rights, liberate not just queers, but everyone. And you can be the ones to show them how.

Let this give you the fearlessness to push for true change. Not simply to tear down the system. You’ve read enough queer theory to know that protesting the system without challenging its terms simply reinforces its epistemology. So right now, this is not a time to abandon the world. This is not a time to get even with the world or tear it down. This is a time to lead. For a world to work better for all of of us. The world needs you, in all your queer glory, to help it find its way. 

Own the system. Redefine the system. Guide the system. Whatever system you find yourself in.   What you have worked for can be reapplied in whatever you pursue. Not in spite of being queer, or without thinking of being queer, but because of it.

Anyone here poly? Think about how you redefined love. Why not extend that? Why teach the world to love more than one kind of energy? More than one kind of food crop? More than one kind of America. Why can't we be poly about America?

Did you work for a more inclusive concept of marriage? What about working the same way for more inclusive concepts of wealth, health, or success?

Did you embrace gender rights? Gosh, you’d better, especially with me speaking to you. All that work you do for gender-neutral bathrooms? What about working for gender-neutral boardrooms?

Anyone into leather or bondage? Well, why not make sure that every business, every bank loan, every citizen, has a safe word. Heck, forget money—find a safe word that breast cancer or Alzheimer’s disease can understand.

And those of you who wonder why being LGBT should be such a big deal, that we should just blend in, great! Your graduation shows that you know how to successfully work in the system. Your presence here at Lav Grad shows that you aren't beholding to its outmoded values. You can show the world that shifting identities aren't always as scary or drastic as they might seem.

And making a world safe for LGBT Pride? What about making a world safe for human pride?

I know you can do this. Why? Because you already have. That there is a Lavender Graduation at all shows how an institution can change.

Maybe before, the goal for a queer student who wanted to be out and proud was about finding a safe and healthy existence in a world of tradition. Even recently, the talk was about “It gets better” and finding a place at the table. Equality was something to dream about.  But now, I believe your futures hold so many more options. Having a place at the table? No way!

You can do so much more. You have had to define yourself, find yourself. You faced the challenge not only of being out, and not only of graduating—but doing them simultaneously.  And you succeeded. When you could have been derailed, disowned unfocused, disempowered—you found a way, alone and together—not only to survive, but to excel.

Having a place at the table? Pshaw! Why not hold the party? You can become the teacher. The leader. The game-changer.  As for the others? Look at them with compassion—if not, look at them as opportunity. Who am I to judge? Heck, if you try to help and they still insist on running for cover, sell them covers.  

Take power. Make power. Redefine power. You! You are the ones, the strong ones. The smart ones. The wise ones. The indomitable ones. You can bring fabulous to a whole new level.

That’s my challenge to you, my request to you, my expectations for you. That you go and kick ass. Heck redefine ass. Love ass. Even if you do become a pharmacist. Have courageous, beautiful lives. Fix the broken things, paint this world billion shades of lavender, and show everyone how wonderful it is to be queer.