The Library (of Congress) is open. 📖

Writing on this gorgeous early spring Sunday afternoon from my neighborhood country western gay pub. It is not lost on this Southern queer how delightful it is that such a place exists—and in Brooklyn!

I wasn’t ready to go home before the sunset; I wanted to soak in the blue skies, be surrounded by other queer folks, and put my gay dollars to work. But now, my brain is fidgety, and I’m rethinking the wisdom of writing at the bar.

The truth is, my brain has been fragmented all week. (All month?) There’s a new, growing slice settling into my new job. The section always dedicated to parenting is really a subsection of “all things family (and friends).” That part sits adjacent, ok overlapped, with the sizable portion lit up in the last year by new love. And then, squeezed in all the gaps between obligations, smooshed into the crannies left over from thinking about existential angst, is my artistic, activist, creative soul. That’s where this newsletter lives. And that part? Shattered.

I can’t figure out if I should be looking back or looking forward. I am trying to write about how I got here, how we all got here, and how we might move forward—but I can’t catch a breath long enough to organize my thoughts.

I want to be able to attend an eight-year-old’s Harry Potter-themed birthday party without having to think about the author’s latest round of transphobia. I want to pick up my mail and not be reminded that nearly everyone I know and love—the majority of whom are Jewish and/or queer—is under threat. All of which feels abstract and minor in comparison to the atrocities of war and violence happening as I type in Gaza, in the Ukraine, in Haiti… on and on. I know we are all feeling it.

Bold words.

Overwhelmed by the present and uncertain about the future, I keep looking to the past—if not for answers, then maybe for comfort. And if I’m lucky, for some motivation.

Inspired by seeing the Bayard Rustin biopic a few weeks ago—steps away from the National Mall where he organized the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—I decided to revive my research project on the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi-Equal Rights and Liberation. So I went to the library.

I know, big BOLD move. But not just any library, I went to The Library of Congress. Somehow, in my many decades in and around Washington, D.C., this was my first trip. Damn. Look at what I/we have been missing. (Maybe it’s just me who is late to the party; I hear BookTok is all over the LOC.)

Now that’s an atrium.

Did you know that your American tax dollars allow anyone the opportunity to register for a Library of Congress reader card? Getting a card gives you access to the entire collection—the world’s largest!—and privileges to study in any of the public reading rooms. It also allows you to skip the tourist line and waltz right in there like the tax-paying member you are.

Here’s my big life hack for you: skip the signup process in the main Thomas Jefferson building and head over to the Madison building across the street to get your reader card in a windowless space that’s giving mid-century government bulk purchasing. If you are feeling extra adventurous, take the tunnel there. Growing up, I knew there were tunnels underneath Congress, but never knew about the ones that also connect to the various Library of Congress buildings. On that Saturday morning in February, I only saw two people pass by.

There is something remarkable about walking underneath these massive government buildings, with all their infrastructure exposed. I felt grateful for our flawed government and my ability to walk these halls. I thought about all the people who work within these systems to keep the lights on and the knowledge organized. Nothing should exist without critique, but I’m damn proud it exists at all. And given all of the heated political rhetoric of late, I don’t take my ability to peacefully use the bathroom in the Library of Congress for granted.

The most generic tunnels connect the most spectacular buildings.

If you’ve read Being Alive for a bit, you know I am fond of signing up for government IDs with my chosen name. Here’s my new favorite:

Once becoming a card-carrying, verified Reader, I avoided the tourists lined up to sit in the architectural wonder that is the Main Reading Room rotunda, and opted to post up in the unassuming Performing Arts Reading Room (LM-113). It didn’t matter where I sat; what I wanted was to log into the LOC’s wifi which unlocks access to all of their subscribed research databases. So much has changed since I spent my college years in the basement of the University of Virginia’s Special Collections. There are now multiple dedicated databases for LGBT studies, and The Library of Congress maintains its own LGBTQIA+ Studies Resource Guide.

There are a few dramatic scenes in Rustin that take place around a boardroom table. Text on screen helps the viewer appreciate how many civil rights heavyweights sit together debating strategy: NAACP’s Executive Chairman Roy Wilkins, field secretary Medgar Evers, young John Lewis representing SNCC, union organizer A. Philip Randolph, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It makes me wonder: Who sat at the table when the 1993 March came together? What did they argue about? Where did they compromise? And why, again, was it the march just for LGBs and no Ts?

I spent some time trying to find articles from the early 1990s that would give more context, but even the gay papers weren’t reporting on the inner conversations of the movement. (Why would they? Or if they were, I haven’t found them yet.) Searching for keywords “march” and “washington” wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I started to search for specific people. I knew from a Wikipedia citation that the 1993 March was initially suggested by Urvashi Vaid who was then leading the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. But I also knew that Urvashi wasn’t one of the four lead organizers for the March. Trying to follow the thread led me to this gold: Masha Gessen interviewing Urvashi in The Advocate, August 13, 1992.

There it is. I had forgotten that Urvashi resigned her Executive Director position before the March, before Clinton was elected. The brightest, loudest, most progressive queer voice in the movement took a step back from the organizational machine right before a massive demonstration that she initiated. Why? I remember some of these things happening in real-time. I had already seen Urvashi speak at a conference a couple of years before, but I was also twelve. Too young to understand.

You have to be smart and strategic and know who the enemy is.
—Urvashi Vaid

This week, I started rereading Urvashi’s 1995 book Virtually Equality. I can’t seem to find my original copy, (!!!) so I’m biding my time with the Brooklyn Library’s copy until a new one comes in the mail.

In the preface, she answers at least one of my questions. Urvashi resigned her position first to live a fuller life with her partner, Kate Clinton. And also, because the movement’s push toward mainstream civil rights was stifling her progressive vision. I imagine her in Rustin’s shoes, arguing with the boardroom of movement leaders.

Virtual Equality by Urvashi Vaid

Rereading Urvashi’s words, I realized my fixation on the 1993 March on Washington isn’t just nostalgia or my love of queer histories, my question is much more personal:

Why did I walk away from the movement?

Thirty-one years later, with more wrinkles.

Until next week…

xx Kyle

P.S. Will swing back around to this later, but Andrea Long Chu’s argument for Freedom of Sex is a MUST-read.