Proposed Study Action Issues

Brainstorming, Coordination, and Discussion of SAI Proposals

• The Future of Ideas (prompted by the book of the same title by Stanford Law professor Laurence Lessig). See Civil Liberties and Intellectual Monopolies for background, or the more recent book "Free Culture", and the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site.
• I've been somewhat dismayed at the absense of Education System Reform and Native American Rights in the past few years. It seems like they were voted down so often that their supporters have given up. I think both deserve serious consideration and should be proposed again. ♥ Jedi liz 02:07, 18 Apr 2005 (CDT)
• Bisexual Justice (Alan Hamilton 2006/01/15.01:23-07:00): The UUA's commitment to Bisexual Justice seems clear and unambiguous, with nearly every BGLT-related GA resolution since 1970 explicitly using "bisexual" everywhere that it says "gay and lesbian". But Bisexual Erasure in the UUA is still consistent:
  • UUA administrations, including the current one, consistently omit bisexuals. This includes the 2005 September Statement from Rev. William G. Sinkford in Support of Equal Marriage in Massachusetts, which uses language ("equal marriage", "same-sex marriage") that would be construed as bi-inclusive if it weren't in a context that repeatedly uses "gay and lesbian" and never mentions "bisexual".
  • The Welcoming Congregation Handbook, Second edition, ISBN 1-55896-190-9, devotes one half of Workshop 12 to bisexuality. Because many of our churches do not do the full workshop series at one time (some do as few a 4 of the workshops), it is very rare that bisexuality is more than mentioned the first several times that a congregation does the Welcoming Congregation Program. The front matter says that congregations always follow a pattern of working to understand homosexuality, then bisexuality, then transgender; but that most likely reflects the fact that the curriculum was originally designed in that order and has never been changed. It also relegates the "Sexual and Affectional Orientation and Identity Scales" to Workshop 12, instead of putting it at the beginning of the workshop series to give all participants a common framework and vocabulary to think about and talk about the range of sexual identity that they can use throughout the workshop series. Likewise, Living The Welcoming Congregation has only one chapter on bisexuality.
  • There has been one GA workshop (2003 "Bisexuality: Heaven or Hell?") on bisexuality. GA 2005 had "Often Left Out: Bisexual and Transgender". There was a lively and interesting discussion of transgender issues, but it took up almost all the workshop time, so there was very little discussion of bisexuality, except that the UUA has mostly ignored bisexual issues and that bis have to come out to a person an average of 6 times before they "get it" that we do not identify as gay, lesbian, or straight.
  • Providing limited resources to minority communities and pitting them against one another is a "divide and conquer" tactic that has been used over and over again by UUA administrations. It is currently being used to put the transgender and bisexual communities in competition for scarce resources such as workshop slots at General Assembly, column space in the Interweave World and the resources of reduced staff for the UUA Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns (UUA OBGLTC).
• your ideas for other proposals here

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