Opinions
A forever Pride stamp for gay Ambassador James C. Hormel
U.S. Postal Service to consider the idea at upcoming meeting
James C. Hormel, an American philanthropist, LGBT activist, and owner of Hormel Foods, a Fortune 500 multinational corporation, died on Aug. 13, 2021. He was 88 years old.
Hormel was the first openly gay person to serve as a U.S. Ambassador. He served at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, from 1999 to 2001.
Hormel was a courageous person. He faced the hateful, oppressive, and anti-American politics of Washington in the 1990s. I know the viciousness of the era based on my experience with the federal bureaucracy and homophobic Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
As a federal employee, I vocally supported non-discrimination policies and employment equality for LGBT federal employees. After I gave a speech on the subject at an Arlington, Va., conference, Helms tried to have me fired.
On July 19, 1994, Helms said LGBT federal employees and their straight allies like me had our minds in our “crotches.” He said LGBT federal employees and their straight allies like me were “perverts.” He said many more vile things that are preserved for history in The Congressional Record, July 19, 1994, and on C-SPAN.
I survived the Helms assault thanks to staffers for then-Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and GOP contacts in other offices on Capitol Hill. The experience helped me to understand the oppressive and hostile work conditions that my LGBT colleagues faced. This made me a stronger ally.
In the 1990s, Hormel was brave to take on the anti-LGBT politicians in both political parties. In 1994, President Bill Clinton considered Hormel as ambassador to Fiji. After the Fijian government objected to his LGBT advocacy, Clinton reconsidered the Hormel nomination.
In 1997, Clinton nominated Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg. At that time, Helms chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his memoir “Here’s Where I Stand,” Helms did not mention Hormel. He was, perhaps, concerned about his legacy. He may have realized that his homophobia would hurt funding for his Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C., a suburb of Charlotte.
Hormel’s nomination lingered before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two years. The committee never recommended Hormel’s nomination to the Senate for a confirmation vote. If Helms had been the visionary foreign policy leader his supporters claim, he would have advanced Hormel’s nomination.
Hormel said Helms went “easy” on him during the nomination process. Other senators, including Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson, held up the Hormel nomination. In 1999, Clinton used his authority to give Hormel a recess appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg. Hormel served until Clinton left office in 2001.
In 2006, I relocated from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. I lived there for 10 years. I met many cultural and political legends, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, City Lights Bookstore owner/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, former Bay Area Reporter (BAR) editor Paul Lorch, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, and former Ambassador James C. Hormel, among others.
I freelanced on evening assignments for the BAR. These assignments included several events where Hormel was a speaker or an attendee. During LGBT Pride Month, Hormel once spoke at an event for the Commonwealth Club of California (CCC). He spoke about the history of the LGBT rights movement. It was a small group of CCC members. We sat at a long table as Hormel spoke in his soft, yet commanding, voice as an LGBT historian and activist. It was like being in an LGBT history class with Hormel as the instructor. It was a priceless experience.
Among the other attendees was a representative of the Consulate General of Luxembourg’s San Francisco office. It was informative to hear Hormel and the representative of Luxembourg speak about the foreign service, the State Department, U.S. and European LGBT politics, and the Luxembourg people’s respect for Ambassador Hormel. It was clear from the conversation that Hormel had left a positive impression on the government and the people of Luxembourg. If every ambassador had the diplomatic skills of James Hormel, America would likely have better foreign relations and possibly more respect in the world.
In 2011, Hormel with Erin Martin published his memoir “Fit to Serve: Reflections on a Secret Life, Private Struggle, and Public Battle to Become the First Openly Gay U.S. Ambassador.” Venezuelan filmmaker and playwright Moises Kaufman said of Hormel’s book: “Future generations will look at this book and experience their history told honestly and courageously.” Novelist Richard North Patterson called “Fit to Serve”: “Rich, engrossing, and deeply affecting.” Patterson added: “In the truest sense, this is a great American story.”
I attended Hormel’s book discussion and signing at Books, Inc., a San Francisco bookstore in the Castro District. It was one of the largest and proudest LGBT audiences I had seen at a book event for an LGBT author. Though the event was on a chilly November night in San Francisco, LGBT warmth was abundant for Hormel. After the signing, I engaged the former ambassador in a brief conversation about Jesse Helms, who died on July 4, 2008. He regretted the LGBT lives harmed by Helm’s homophobic hate speech.
In 2013, after Rep. Barney Frank left Congress, he gave a well-attended speech for members of the Commonwealth Club of California at the Fairmont Hotel. I covered the event for BAR. Ambassador Hormel and his husband Michael provided quotes for my news story. Hormel agreed with Frank that gays should come out, because people needed “to recognize the presence of gays in our society.”
The last time I spoke with Ambassador Hormel was at a 2014 reception at San Francisco City Hall after the unveiling of the Harvey Milk Forever Stamp. He recalled Milk’s political leadership and public service. He said Congress needed to seriously address gun violence. For me, this event was a rare opportunity to see one gay man of courage, Harvey Milk, honored by another courageous gay man, Ambassador Hormel.
Throughout his life, Hormel enjoyed success. He represented a needed change in our society and U.S. and global diplomacy. His life experience offers lessons in self-acceptance, understanding, and discipline.
In a 2013 story in the San Francisco Chronicle about homophobia, Hormel said: “I was in my 30s when I finally was willing to come out. I had been married [to a woman] for 10 years. I had children. I was hiding. I was pretending. If I [had] led my life like that, how can I expect other people to suddenly just come around.” This was, no doubt, a painful thing for Hormel to say. It may have also been therapeutic for Hormel to share with others.
Hormel’s life experience was personal growth, achievement, and happiness despite the painful memories. He successfully worked through the mental stress that many LGBT people experience. If young LGBT professionals are looking for an LGBT role model, they might consider Hormel.
It is important to keep Hormel’s memory alive so others can learn from his success. I recently wrote the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to request a Forever stamp honoring Ambassador James Hormel.
In a letter of Feb. 16, Shawn Quinn, the USPS manager of Stamp Development, wrote: “I am pleased to inform you that this proposal will be submitted for review and consideration before the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee at their next meeting.” Mr. Hormel is worthy of remembrance in this way. He was an honorable man.
A Forever Pride Stamp for Ambassador James Hormel in 2025? If you agree, please let Shawn Quinn and your members of Congress hear from you. Happy Pride 2024!
James Patterson, a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, is a writer and communications consultant in the D.C. area.
Today nearly 99% of us watch wars on television. We see news reports, and watch bombs exploding and people dying, somewhere else. The only people actually involved are those who volunteered to serve in the military, and the national guard. I am sure most of them didn’t join to fight illegal wars like the one the felon in the White House is waging in Iran. But I respect them, and their willingness to serve our country.
But we are in Iran, and the felon is now asking Congress for $200 billion more for this war. We have been spending over a billion dollars a day. Who is paying for this? Right now, no one. We are simply adding it to the national debt, for our children to worry about. I propose a 5 or 10% surtax on every person, to cover the cost of this illegal war. Just have it added to your tax bill. If Congress passed such a surtax, I am sure we would already be out of Iran, as people would rise up to stop this illegal and unnecessary war very quickly.
I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War, and what we did to try to end it. It took time, but the people spoke. I did not serve, but unlike the felon in the White House, was willing to. I got my draft notice, along with a subway token, and reported to Whitehall street in NYC. It was as the Arlo Guthrie song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” said it would be. I got there at 7 a.m. and at 3 p.m. was told they wouldn’t take me because of my bad knee, sending me home with my 1Y designation. My friends had given me a going away party the night before, and my mom cried. So, it was a little embarrassing when my friends found I was still home. But my mom was happy and cried again.
I had been to anti-war demonstrations in D.C. in front of the DOJ, and got tear gassed. I demonstrated in London, in Russel Square, in front of the American embassy. While so many more were involved in that war because of the draft, we knew then if a 5% surtax had been levied, it would have ended much faster. Seems we never learn.
Today there is no draft, and no surtax. It is taking a while for people to recognize the felon who opposes any help for people to pay for their healthcare, easily asks for the $200 billion in funds for a totally unnecessary war. He closed USAID, which showed the United States in a positive light, helping people around the world, and that agency’s budget was only $25 billion. On top of not asking Americans to pay for this illegal war, he is giving tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations, adding more to the national debt. What is the definition of insanity? Today it is clearly having voted for, and still supporting, the felon in the White House.
To make things worse and give us even less chance to stop his destruction of our democracy, the felon is trying to make it harder to vote. Millions of women who changed their names for marriage will not have a birth certificate with their current name on it, or a passport with their current name, allowing them to vote if the felon has his way. Reality is less than 50% of Americans even have a passport. The fact the Constitution gives states the right to set voting procedures, isn’t deterring the felon and his fascist cohorts, from trying to do it. He is doing it while we are losing American lives, the lives of heroes, who he has fighting a war he would have never signed up to fight himself. He is running it from the gold-leaf painted Oval Office, and from Mar-a-Lago, where he is golfing. He is a racist, sexist, homophobic, POS, working with the war criminal in Israel, causing a renewed spate of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and possibly creating World War III.
If you care about the future of the United States, you must stand up and speak out. We must defeat every Republican sycophant of his in the midterms — it’s the only way to let the felon know that we will not put up with his shit anymore. His grifting, and that of his family and appointees, must end. We the people, must not let him destroy 250 years of democracy, because he thinks he is a king. We fought a king once before and won. We will defeat him too. We will not let the felon implement the rest of Project 2025 and will take his name off everything he illegally plastered it on. He will be relegated to the trash heap of history, where he belongs, and we will reclaim our democracy for the next 250 years.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
SAVE Act could silence millions of trans voters
New administrative barriers pose threat to voting rights
In Washington, debates over voting rights usually arrive loudly — through court rulings, protests, or sweeping legislation that captures national attention.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, now under debate in Congress, may reshape voting access in a quieter way — through paperwork. The bill would require Americans registering to vote in federal elections to present documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate. Supporters argue the measure would strengthen election integrity and restore public confidence in the voting process. But for millions of eligible voters, particularly transgender Americans, the practical consequences could be far more complicated.
According to Gallup, about 1.3% of U.S. adults identify as transgender, representing roughly 3.3 million Americans. Far from disengaged politically, transgender voters participate in elections at high rates. Data released by Advocates for Trans Equality shows 75% of transgender respondents reported voting in the 2020 election, compared with 67% of the general population. Registration rates are also higher.
This is a community that shows up for democracy. Yet the SAVE Act could place new administrative barriers directly in its path. Birth certificates, the document many supporters believe should verify citizenship are among the most difficult identity records for transgender Americans to update. According to data released by The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School and the U.S. Transgender Survey, 44% of transgender adults had updated their name on government identification, but only 18% had successfully updated their birth certificates.
That gap matters.
If birth certificates become a central requirement for voter registration, millions of eligible transgender Americans could face bureaucratic obstacles that other voters rarely encounter.
History offers a warning. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, Kansas implemented a similar proof-of-citizenship law that blocked more than 30,000 eligible voters from registering before the Kansas Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional.
At the same time, evidence suggests voter fraud remains extraordinarily rare. Research cited by the American Immigration Council estimates fraud at roughly 0.0001% of votes cast.
The question before lawmakers is not whether election security matters. It clearly does. The question is whether policies designed to solve a rare problem could intentionally disenfranchise legitimate voters.
The broader cultural debate surrounding gender identity often becomes emotionally charged, particularly when conversations turn to pronouns or language. Yet polling suggests the issue remains unfamiliar to many Americans. A 2022 YouGov poll found only 22% of Americans personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns.
Meanwhile, the problems weighing on everyday Americans are far larger: rising grocery prices, health care costs, housing shortages, and economic struggles in both rural towns and urban neighborhoods. Yet, many conservatives choose to focus unnecessary time, energy, and resources litigating the use of pronouns.
A healthy democracy should be able to debate cultural questions without allowing them to become barriers to the ballot box.
So, what should transgender Americans, and allies, do in this moment? First, stay engaged politically. Contact legislators and explain how identification requirements affect real voters. Personal stories often reach policymakers in ways statistics alone cannot.
Second, document the impact. Write letters to local newspapers, share experiences publicly, and ensure the real-world effects of voting policies are visible.
Third, consider running for office. Local school boards, city councils, and state legislatures shape many of the rules governing elections. Finally, protest with discipline and purpose. The most transformative movements in history — from Mahatma Gandhi to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — were rooted in peaceful persistence and moral clarity.
The SAVE Act may ultimately pass, fail, or change significantly as Congress debates it. But the larger principle at stake should guide the conversation. America’s democracy has always grown stronger when more citizens can participate, not when the path to the ballot becomes harder to navigate. For transgender voters, and for the country as a whole, that principle remains the quiet foundation of the republic.
James Bridgeforth, Ph.D., is a national columnist on the intersection of politics, morality, and civil rights. His work regularly appears in The Chicago Defender and The Black Wall Street Times.
Opinions
The frightening rise of antisemitism, Islamophobia
Trump, Netanyahu to blame for inflaming tensions
We can lay the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia directly at the feet of the felon in the White House, and the criminal at the head of the Israeli government. Both Trump and Netanyahu belong in jail, not leading their governments.
I am a proud Jewish, gay man, and the homophobia and antisemitism the felon in the White House is generating are truly frightening. I am assuming my Muslim friends are feeling the same way about the Islamophobia he is causing to rise. While people have always been racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and antisemitic, Trump has given tacit permission, with his statements, actions, and now his war on Iran, for those feelings to be shouted in the public square, and in the worst-case scenarios, acted on with violent attacks.
We can clearly attribute the rise in antisemitism around the world, to the actions of the right-wing, war criminal, leader of the Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, and what he is doing to destroy Gaza, murdering innocent Palestinians, and now again bombing innocents in Lebanon.
This is all seeping into the politics of our nation. One organization promoting antisemitism and expecting it of the candidates they endorse, is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They went so far as to take away an endorsement at one point, from one of their most ardent supporters, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), because she refused to fully support their anti-Zionist platform and their support of BDS. The DSA took issue with “[Ocasio-Cortez’s] votes, including a vote in favor of H.Res.888, conflating opposition to Israel’s ‘right to exist’ with antisemitism,” and a press release in April she co-signed that “support[s] strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems.” In their 2025 platform DSA called for a single state from the ‘river to the sea’ as the Palestinian right to resist, thereby eliminating the State of Israel. It goes with their support of BDS and anti-Zionist positions. It is fair to see that as antisemitism.
I am a Zionist, in the sense of the term as coined by Theodor Herzl. I am a believer in, and supporter of, the State of Israel. I am also for a Palestinian state. I am opposed to what Israel’s current government, led by a war criminal, is doing. I had hoped he would have abided by what former President Biden said to him immediately after Oct. 7. “Don’t make the same mistake we did after 9/11. Temper your response.” But instead, Netanyahu has murdered Palestinians by the thousands, destroying Gaza. He was rightfully declared a war criminal and should be brought to justice. He has made things worse both for the people of Israel, and Jews around the world. He has been responsible for antisemitism around the world once again rearing its ugly head. Now, two and a half years after Hamas’s attack on Israel, he is still murdering Palestinians, and now again more people in Lebanon and Iran. He still denies the Palestinian people need a home, a state of their own. He promotes settlements on the West Bank that should be part of a Palestinian state and refuses to prosecute settlers who commit crimes against the Palestinian people there.
My parents and relatives had to flee Hitler. Some came to the United States, and some immigrated to Israel. My father’s parents were killed in Auschwitz. I believed it could never happen again. But the felon in the White House, and criminal in Israel, are abusing me of that notion. Their policies of greed and corruption are leading to danger for all the people of the world. They are leading us into a third world war. The felon is attempting to steal, yes steal, billions through his phony ‘Board of Peace’ where he is screwing the Palestinian people out of their homes in Gaza. It is insanity, and we are all suffering for it; Jews, Muslims, and the rest of the world, as we are thrown into war none of us wants.
Now as I wrote, the DSA, tells people all Zionists are the enemy, without a definition of what a Zionist is. They expect their supporters not to recognize the State of Israel. They create antisemitism, and now in D.C. we have a candidate running for mayor, Janeese Lewis George, asking for, and getting their support. They also have in their platform to defund the police. Those things should frighten all the people of D.C. Any candidate who can run on the DSA platform must be deemed unacceptable to anyone who opposes prejudice and discrimination of any kind. One prejudice leads to others and gives rise to people feeling they can be open about not only their antisemitism, but their Islamophobia, racism, and sexism, as well.
We need all the good voters in the District of Columbia to find these DSA positions unacceptable, and reject any candidate who solicits, and takes their endorsement.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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