Fluid Pride Flag

In 2002, I co-founded UCLA's Fluid, a bi/pan/fluid/queer student group at UCLA. At the time I was unaware of the over 24 different labels that bisexual community members frequently use to describe themselves. I loved fluid for how it fit my particular sensibilities of not having any particular sensibilities when it came to my attractions. I loved fluid for how it described my capacity to be attracted to more than one gender. I love that our community has so many terms to describe itself and in discussion with trans and bi advocate Tara Avery during this year's LA Pride festival we mocked out what a fluid pride flag might look like.

Royal Blue and Lavender stripes acknowledge that fluid community members are proudly part of the bisexual community, the flag of which shares these same stripes. Turquoise is an acknowledgement of the pansexual pride flag as well as the many bisexual, pansexual, fluid and queer people who celebrate the power bisexuality has to set us free from binaries of gender and sexuality.

NEW FOR 2019 - larger size

BiNet USA President Faith Cheltenham Is Bruin Pride

Had some fun recently at UCLA's LGBT Resource Center, shooting a segment for "I am Bruin Pride", a documentary and archival project honoring the words, stories, and contributions of LGBT students, faculty, staff and alumni of UCLA.

  

 Image Copyright Jack Kaden, I Am Bruin Pride Project 2015

About The "I Am Bruin Pride" project:
UCLA's LGBT Campus Resource Center proudly presents the I Am Bruin Pride Project, a documentary and archival project honoring the words, stories, and contributions of LGBT students, faculty, staff and alumni of UCLA.

“I Am Bruin Pride” presents the stories, experiences, and contributions of LGBT students, staff, faculty, and alumni of UCLA in an inclusive and diverse manner. Each interviewee has been picked based on a variety of factors contributing towards a diversity in race, experience, orientation, and identity. Featuring a poster series and an interview, “I Am Bruin Pride” documents the important histories of those within the UCLA LGBT community.

Here's the link to the "I Am Bruin pride" nomination form. Anyone is welcome to nominate themselves or someone else.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hRgkUh3kViavmDuz19w7bdiqKx-qO_Au7YoL5kWl8HQ/viewform

In prep for my interview I put together some bullet points of what I got up to while at UCLA...and what I've been up to recently!

UCLA Accomplishments

1998

Sexual Violence Prevention Program Director, Student Welfare Commission

1999

HRC Campaign College Internship on Gore 2000 campaign

(My reference letter was provided by UCLA LGBT Center Director Ronni Sanlo)

2000

Board member, La Familia

2001-2004

• Co-chair/Co-Founder, UCLA’s BlaQue
• Co-chair/Co-Founder, UCLA’s Fluid
• Co-Founder, UCLA’s Queer x Girl
• Co-chair/Co-Founder of UCLA’s Queer Alliance 
• Managed organization’s budgets (over $67,000) 
• Created annual Queer Student Leadership Retreat in Lake Arrowhead
• Co-created “The Other Side of The Rainbow (TOSTR)” to celebrate LGBT POC
• Established computer lab for Queer Student Center
• Presented at UC-LGBTIA conference, Feb.  2004.  UC San Diego.

2005
Chair – UCLA’s EnigmaCon 2005: A Tsunami Relief Benefit

UCLA AWARDS 

UCLA Women for Change Student Leader Award, 2003 

“Zeke” Weber Award for Excellence in Activism and Education, 2005

Accomplishments at large

• Appearances on 2006 Emmy award-winning FX Networks docu-series show on race in America, “Black. White”.
• Successful corporate launches of web/digital projects for clients like Macmillan’s tor.com, Oprah Winfrey Network’s “Finding Sarah” show, and Warner Bros.’ “Harry Potter Book 7 Part 2” film.
• Writing for Huffington Post, Advocate, South Florida Gay News, and the BiNet USA blog or my personal testimonies on Truth Wins Out, #StillBisexual, I’m From Driftwood and the Center for American Progress.
• Speaking engagements at locations as varied as the California Democrats State Convention, The GLBT History Museum, The United States Senate Hart Building, San Diego Comic Con, UCLA, The White House, HRC’s Time to THRIVE Conference and Yale University.  
• Appointee, University of California LGBT Task Force (2012-2014)
• Co-organizer, 2013 Bisexual Community Issues Roundtable at the White House
• 2014 invitee and stage participant, White House Executive Order signing 
• First president of a bisexual non-profit to meet with a sitting U.S. President alongside other LGBT leaders.
• Parent to a child, “Storm”

Bisexual Is Not Always An Umbrella

I'm leaning away from using bisexual as an umbrella term; umbrellas are supposed to keep the rain off of you, instead of bring it. Bisexual is a political term that the bisexual community fought 40 years to see used with pride.  Just like gay doesn't always mean happy and lesbian doesn't refer just to an island, bisexual does not refer to two; it refers to “more than one”. We are the people with the capacity to be attracted to more than one type, and we have many ways to describe that. Please don't "identity police" and ask us to erase the generations of activism that led us to this point. Words like bisexual can change over time, but what doesn't is the need to respect complex sexualities. If you identity yourself as pansexual, polysexual, multisexual, fluid, queer, and/or non-monosexual, do so with the full knowledge of what the term bisexual has meant politically and how it was also used as a tool to serve transgender communities and re-frame the dialogue about sexual minorities away from gay and lesbian alone. I am proud to stand by bisexual, are you proud enough to stand by me, no matter what the wind and rain may bring?

From the Archives: About the time I met Rosa Parks...

(funny enough, Myspace.com is back open and you can find old treasures from yore like this poem from 2006)

About the time I met Rosa Parks...
By Faith Cheltenham

Sun's rays cowered from smog as Gram and I approached Robinson's May, that great giant of a percent off.

"Don't wanna go inside"
Didn't want to do a lot of things those days, this was when I was about ten.

Gangly and huge at the same time: skin, bones and f^^king boobs.
Standing about 5 foot 6", I didn't want to do a lot of things back then.

Shopping with Gram sure wasn't top of the list.
She'd poke in to see about fits and I'd have to huddle to cover my chest and curl up back into less.
I really didn't want to go into Robinson's May, but grandmother was insistent with a pinched lip and flared nostril, she said, "Yes, this is going to happen".

So I half snarled, with a curled lip in response as I came out of the car. I'd just finished reading The Outsiders, wished I could be smoking a Camel and emulating the lean of James Dean.

But I was to meet Rosa Parks this day!

I hadn't wanted to go inside, even with air conditioning. So in I went, and turned to the right.
I stumbled into an unfinished hall, pics of ROSA PARKS and a replica of the bus seat...what the f^^k?
Oh, the privilege of youth. Of "knowing", what wasn't something that would help you.

Dismissively I walked down that hall. "I've got my own pains and thanks, but what you got that's really gonna get me up? The right to sit? I got to kick it free of charge! You wanna see the scars?

See I was ten, and things at that point didn't matter. I was struggling all the time, and angrily navigating my way through: church brothers in dark parking lots, Best Girl Friends who couldn't watch their hands, abusive parent(s), and errant father(s), not to mention my own real desires. Every sin in the bible...that was me at 10.

So, I continued dismissively down that hall. Grandmother found me and began, RE: Rosa Parks: and where Gram had been when Rosa sat "for all of us". What it had meant for the turning of our race, escaping from the hellhole of never being good enough in the first...I tuned her out.
Oh, the privilege of youth. To know who will always love you, and not think that someone could help you.

And so I met Ms. Parks.

Led by another (slowly, for she was using a walker even then), we ran into each other with the exhibit still unfinished and she's was supposed to come the next day for its opening. "All the way down here for nothing?" complained her caregiver, who had no idea that I had been deeply considering the same thing, especially at age ten.

Gram took me by crook and marched me straight up. "Oh, Hello!  This is my granddaughter Faith. We're so honored to meet you". She was the smallest of women, tiny even but she had held onto her seat, and kept her peace. Looking at her, I realized she'd probably been polite too.

"Stay in school, Educate yourself", was all I remember Rosa Parks saying.

Did I wish for something more tangible from the legendary lady? What for, when such a natural knowledge came upon me as we left that place. My life while hard, could have been much harder, so I can make it less difficult for another, even though the pay won't be great (and there's sure to be many unfinished honors and mixed up dates).

Hey Hobby Lobby, quit trying to get crafty with our reproductive rights!

Will a bisexual journalist be deported for being married to his wife?

You know how folks who’ve been in a relationship for a decade start to look just a little like each other?  Ivo Widlak and his wife Laura have been married for a decade and easily fit the bill of an old married couple.

Ivo Widlak and his wife Laura Zabedra with BiNet USA President Faith Cheltenham, Oct 27th, 2013 in Chicago

However since they are both bisexual their marriage is under fire, and their relationship risks being broken apart after they were reported to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  On December 15th, 2009, Christopher Kurczaba a Polish-American attorney in Chicago wrote to the USCIS saying,

In accordance with my duty to report potential fraud perpetrated on the Service, I have been informed by a very important person in the Polish American Community that they have been informed by several sources that the above referenced applicant for adjustment of status, set to be interviewed on or about 12/17/09 is not in a bona-fide marriage.

In a letter more at home with North Korean reporting tactics than the land of the free and brave, Kurczaba went on to say,

The sources have stated that the above is entering into a false marriage solely to obtain permanent residency. The sources state that the applicant has publicly acknowledged in various Polish language sources that he is gay...

The Letter

The letter shown here was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Ivo’s attorney, Ira Azulay from Immigration Attorneys LLP, after it was found missing from Ivo’s file.  The letter confirms Ivo's suspicions as to why his long-standing battle continues with USCIS (click here for last year's article).  For what Kurczaba neglected to also include in his letter was the recent history of animosity between he and Ivo Widlak, a respected Polish language journalist.  Earlier in 2009, Ivo’s article on the corruption of the Chicago Polish consulate and Kurczaba’a alleged involvement had been widely published.  That Kurczaba waited 6 months after the article to report Widlak to USCIS is no mystery either, since the letter arrived the day prior to Ivo’s interview with USCIS. 

Oh the intrigue! One might think themselves in a tale more likely told on Downton Abbey than in downtown Chicago!  In fact due to the recent changes in USCIC immigration policy IF Ivo was gay and married to a man, there would be no case against him!  However Ivo is bisexual as is his wife, so murkiness abounds. As bisexual legal scholar and advocate Heron Greensmith wrote in 2010,

"Bisexuality is largely de facto invisible in the legal world. When it is acknowledged, it must either be through the self-identification of the individual or through the affirmative statements of another.  Where that affirmative statement occurs, it must be supported by evidence indicating "pure bisexuality"

When you think about it’s pretty easy to see why Ivo feels screwed (and not in a good way). I recently met Laura and him for pizza on a brief stopover in Chicago and he told me in all seriousness,

“What can we do but sexually perform for them before they will believe us?” 

I laughingly cautioned Ivo on that approach but his desperation was palpable and is very real to so many bisexuals. How can we ever PROVE we really love someone when we were born with the ability to love differently than what society expects or is accustomed to?

Ivo and his supporters have a petition up on change.org, so far with almost 1600 signatures.  Their campaign may be working as Ivo and Laura recently received a request from USCIS for an additional interview later this week.  Laura told me she’s nervous beyond belief saying,

I think on the outside I'm trying to stay positive not worry so that Ivo doesn't stress as much. I've been bottling it up deep inside. I am petrified of December coming around. Instead of holiday planning and Christmas shopping and decorations, I will be sick to my stomach. If you were told the one thing you loved more than anything in this world was about to be taken away from you how would you feel? Close your eyes and really picture it. It makes you feel sad, lonely, full of fear, powerless and hate. In the inside I'm a mess. I just went to the ER last week thinking I was having a heart attack. The anxiety from this is overwhelming.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my marriage tested just because someone told someone else something incorrect about how I live and love.  Being bisexual is simply the ability to be attracted to more than one gender, but living openly as a bisexual person is full of complexities often unheard of by gay and straight people.  When I asked Ivo if he was angry his case had been complicated by his orientation he told me,

Yes! Before I met many activists of the bi community I wasn’t aware of the huge problem with discrimination that bisexual people are facing…The problem is that USCIS has no idea what to do with people like me.  They know what to do with heterosexual marriages.  After DOMA was repealed they got directives about what to do with gay marriages.  Unfortunately President Obama did not mention anything about other members of the LGBTQ community. They don’t know what to do with bisexuals, transgender people, and other people who are minorities of sexual orientation/identity because I am not only an alien from different country, for them I am an alien from a different planet.

So it is for too many bisexuals who navigate a legal system unfamiliar with bisexual people and narratives. Ivo and Laura look perfect to me but many folks unfamiliar with the bisexual identity might say "they look kind of gay", not realizing they're just 100 percent bisexual.  Hopefully Ivo's story will help change how the USCIS and other governmental agencies approach bisexual people, bisexual marriages and bisexual families. 

To sign Ivo's petition, visit http://www.change.org/petitions/alejandro-mayorkas-director-of-the-united-states-citizenship-and-immigration-services-uscis-positive-and-immediate-review-of-ivo-widlak-s-immigration-case

Yes, Dan, You Still Hate Bisexuals (I know, I can't believe it either, isn't it 2013?)

Based on the video below I can tell Dan Savage is confused about why he's constantly called biphobic by bisexual advocates and allies.

Dan Savage Responds To Accusations Of Biphobia (06/18/13)
Dan Savage: I'm Not Biphobic from The Dish on Vimeo.


When I was a kid growing up in sunny and seriously hetero-normative San Luis Obispo, CA "Savage Love", Dan's advice column was a lifeline for me.  From him I learned what to look for in a healthy queer self (or a decent vibrator).  On occasion he still provides good advice to young bisexual women, but watch out if you're a bisexual man, a married bisexual in a mixed orientation marriage (M.O.M.), or a bisexual activist!

Top 5 Reasons Dan Savage is the Definition of Biphobia 
(even if he does have bi friends) 

HE USES EXAMPLES OF HIS OWN COWARDICE TO QUESTION OUR RIGHT TO EXIST
Over and over, it's the same sentiment from Dan:

"Many adult gays and lesbians identified as bi for a few shining moments during our adolescences and coming-out processes. (We wanted to let our friends down easy; we didn't want our families to think we'd gone over the dark side entirely.) This can lead adult gays and lesbians—myself included—to doubt the professed sexual identities of bisexual teenagers."

So basically we were SOOOO COOL back in the day that you pretended to be bisexual.  After you decided to be honest about yourself, you blamed our awesomeness for your lies and have since worked quite hard to ensure we have nothing awesome left to share.  

IF WE'RE IN LOVE WITH A STRAIGHT WE DON'T MATTER TO DAN SAVAGE
He routinely dismisses bisexuals in opposite sex relationships, saying "You may be physically attracted to both sexes, but most of you can only fall in love with an opposite-sex partner."  The PEW study just released shows more bi people are in opposite sex relationships, which MAKES SENSE as we can potentially date 100% of people instead of just the rather paltry 3% gays get access to.  Dan rejects mathematical realities that could help the LGBT community, since obviously WE sit at the table more often with straights then they do!

HE CALLS US CLOSETED WHILE GLEEFULLY HOLDING THE DOOR SHUT
When bi men and women come out, Savage routinely mocks them, as he said in 2010:

"...but before any lesbian or bi girls out there get their hopes up: Paquin is engaged to be married to her "True Blood" co-star Stephen Moyer. Which pretty much proves that she's bisexual." 

If you're a self-identified bisexual man, then Dan has suggested gay men avoid you,

“Sorry, but avoiding bi guys is a good rule of thumb for gay men looking for long-term relationships. Outside of San Francisco’s alternate-universe bisexual community, there aren’t many bi guys who want or wind up in long-term, same-sex relationships — monogamous or not.” 

So...basically bi guys should come out of the closet so Dan can kick you in the balls, he can't see so great in the dark.

HE MINIMIZES AND MARGINALIZES OUR NUMBERS

"...both personal experience and science—science!—conspire to support the hypothesis that legitimately bisexual guys are few and far between" he said in 2011.  

Sure, there's more bi women than men statistically speaking, just like there's more white folks than black.  Just because Native Americans account for .08% of the population doesn't mean it's OK to question their continued existence.  


WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXPECT BETTER THAN THIS FROM YOU
Savage created It Gets Better to help LGBT youth being bullied or taking their own lives, but study after study says bisexual AND transgender youth are more likely to be bullied or commit suicide than gay or lesbian youth.  Dan Savage's condemnation of bisexual youth who identify themselves as bisexual is severe and costly; hating isn't the way to save lives, only love can save lives. 

Dan, I hope that clarifies things for you.  If you'd like to debate this in a public forum with a bisexual antagonist who will never "comfortably disappear into presumed heterosexuality" shoot me an email.  

Touching the Third Rail, Bisexual Identity

To emphasize just how confusing and stupid Chris Cristie's stance on “ex-gay therapy” is, John Aravosis recently said,

"Gov. Christie is bi on gays" Americablog Article

"The spokesman declined, however, to say whether Christie would support the legislation banning the phony therapy.  So in other words, Chris Christie is bi.  Or maybe bi-curious, or simply ‘questioning.’  As I noted the other day, the entire notion of “curing” gays is laughable..."- Gov. Christie is bi on gays

Aravosis clearly associates sickness with social intolerance and I would agree, if not for his use of the bisexual orientation to emphasize just how horrible ex-gay conversion is!  Ex-gay therapy has been used on many people with no success, including me.  When I shot a video for Wayne Besen ofTruthWinsOut.org, it was hard for me to talk about being "prayed on" or having "my demons called out".  After growing up in a black Pentecostal church, I was real blessed to reconcile my spirituality with a fundamentalist upbringing.  From Pentecostal fire I jumped raised fist first right into being a radical black lesbian.  Eventually though coming out as bisexual became a necessity, for too long I was a lesbian to my gay friends and a bisexual to my straight ones.   

Like so many bisexuals, I've always been "something kinda queer" but how "out" I was depended on my safety and circumstances.  Being an out bi person in queer spaces was usually hurtful because of the incessant feeling that gay people SHOULD understand me better, instead of writing me off as a the rare half-breeder or regular ol' liar and cheat.  Being out in straight spaces meant immediate offers to discuss my sex life or threesomes, but better that than ridicule!  At least the straight people don’t want me trapped in their closet, so much as tied to their bed.  Recently the wife of a NYC mayoral candidate was outed as having a history of sexual fluidity, and subsequent reporting by gay and straights was gossipy, rude, and overtly biphobic. "Not only was she in interracial marriage but she used to be a LESBIAN!", as if any one person would dare to break so many rules at once.  Have gay and straight people found something to really agree on?  Are bisexuals the third rail in identity politics? 

If like John Aravosis you say, 

"I'm one of the few gay people I know who believes you even exist, and has defended you publicly" 

you can basically piss off because we'd like you to stop pissing in our face.  Stop pretending that believing we exist is the same as believing we matter!  We matter because we created Pride and testified against DADT. We matter because we are the barrier breakers and boundary makers.  And we should matter MORE now that we're dying in a silent epidemic of self-inflicted overdoses, snapped necks and lacks of nets.  

For while the gay and lesbian community tout statistics on the poverty levels of the "LGBT" community they neglect the fact bisexuals are more impoverished than gay and lesbians.  By A LOT.  If you are bisexual, contrary to popular opinion you have LESS privilege than a gay or straight person.  If you identify as bisexual things will shake out worse for you than gays, lesbians OR straights in: health outcomes, sexual assault, rape, stalking, smoking, substance abuse, alcoholism, breast cancer detection, domestic violence, depression and/or anxiety.  But what will really make you want to kill yourself is being told by well-meaning queer folks that YOU’VE  got it BETTER than anyone else.  It's one way to maintain a stigmatizing gaze on us creatures of complexity, for we know the truth: we're the devil that gay people get in bed with, only to use us up and pretend they've got a prayer breakfast in the morning.  Even though we've been part of the rainbow from the beginning these days bi, pan, fluid, and queer folks are being betrayed by the gays who say they love us.  

As gay people keep trying to do math with invisible numbers, we majority of the LGBT community need to rise up! We must insist being bisexual isn’t something we'll ever be cured from!  We must reject attempts to erase and eradicate our lives with jokes, harassment and hate.  As we near a day where gay marrieds are just as smug as straight, bisexual people are still fighting for their lives with $0 in resources.  Try as one might to dismantle our orientation as "binary" (like a lesbian who won't sleep with men would care!) or a "passing phase", we who exist will ALWAYS exist and we will keep shaking our fists!