Please read and share my friend Michael Cavadias’ inspired piece about the upcoming NYC Mayoral Primary:

The other night I attended the LGBT Mayoral forum at Baruch College. The vast magority of attendees were supporters of Christine Quinn of course, but there was a healthy minority of skeptics and supporters of De Blasio and other candidates.

This should be one of the most progressive crowds in the city, yet as we listened to the debate and it was clear that Christine Quinn is the most conservative candidate running in the primary, that seemed to matter not at all to the crowd intoxicated by the idea of a lesbian Mayor. This crowed literally cheered (as many many others booed) Quinn’s incredibly callous non answer trying to explain why she wont even allow the Council to vote on a Paid Sick Leave bill.

The clean cut and fresh faced Quinn supporters seemed annoyed or indifferent to the older, more rough around the edges gay activists from earlier struggles who know all too well that a commitment to justice does not necessarily come with ones sexual orientation. (the amazing drag queen outside passing out anti-Quinn literature was especially encouraging - but also seemed to be little more than an annoyance to the crowd ready to annoint Quinn)

Quinn’s supporters are apparantly willing to leave low income New Yorkers to suffer without paid sick leave, to forgo a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers that could fund pre-K education, to let carriage companies continue to abuse horses, to allow more wealthy developers to turn hospitals into luxury housing, to allow NYU to destroy what is left of the Village, to continue the suburbanization of New York, to keep Police Commisioner Ray Kelly who’s stop and frisk policies have humiliated so many young black and latino men and on and on. Bill De blasio is on the other side of each of these policies from Quinn. Yet the LGBT political establishment, the careerists and the sychpohants are either willfully ignorant of Quinn’s policies or just so excited about the gender and orientation breakthroughs that they somehow rationalize the corporatist policies she endorses.

We have a chance to elect a truly progressive Mayor. Someone who might actually stand up to the real estate barrons who run this town. We could finally begin to adress the economic inequities in this city. Or we could elect a Bloomberg-Lite Democrat who makes upper income LGBT’s feel like they are doing something radical by electing one of their own. The only radical thing they are doing is supporting an economic conservative who hides behind her orientation and gender to obscure policies that favor New York’s monied elites.

I spoke to an old aquaintance at the forum who looked visibly disturbed when I said I was supporting De Blasio, as if it was some type of treason. Well, this stance certainly isn’t going to win many points in the LGBT establisment incorporated, but it seems there are many in our community who know we are not represented by these people anyway. There are LGBT’s who see the struggle for human rights as more than marriage. This struggle includes tougher issues in our city, like whole communities being erased by gentrification, culturally cleansed and homogenized.

It was a profoundly alienating experience to be at that debate and see people who I would imagine want the progressive change De Blasio advocated but will be supporting someone who will make those changes impossible. That said, many brave LGBT New Yorkers are not falling in line. Alan Cumming and Cynthia Nixon have declined to support Quinn (both have endorsed Bill DeBlasio) and Gloria Steinem has threatened to withdraw her endorsement over paid sick leave, saying about Quinn….. “Making life fairer for all women seems more important than breaking a barrier for one woman,”