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Inequality in the Marriage Equality Movement
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In newspapers, churches, and online blogs, passionate discussions are taking place on marriage equality. National queer organizations are redoubling their efforts for same-sex couples. Marriage would be one more step toward normalcy and inclusion for gays and lesbians.
Ironically, though, the marriage movement has hardly been about inclusion or equality in its sabotage of valuable opportunities to build coalitions across communities and its marginalization of more vulnerable queers. As activists, protesters, and volunteers take to the street in their fight for gay marriage, claiming legalization furthers equality and social justice, larger issues of hate, poverty, and who deserves assistance go deliberately untackled.
The most obvious moment of coalition breakdown occurred in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, the ban against same-sex marriage in the California. The media blamed people of color—African Americans, Latinos, and Asians—only to find out later that voters of color did not inordinately support Proposition 8 as initially believed. The phenomena reflected white America’s readiness to blame people of color for failures in equality and also illuminated how white queers had long alienated, not just communities of color, but more pointedly queers of color, who may have more successfully gotten their respective communities on board.
Critics also note that same-sex marriage privileges the priorities of white, middle- to upper-class lesbians and gays. Notably, one study revealed how LGBT Asians in America found concerns over immigration, healthcare, racism, and hate crimes as more critical than obtaining the right to marry. Indeed in this moment of marriage equality, services around life-death issues for more marginalized queers such as sex workers, the homeless, and those who are HIV positive are left simmering if not boiling over on the back burner.
Still, well resourced national organizations are cannonballing into the marriage pool fully clothed without so much as a glance behind them. Even though political scientists and legal analysts are saying that it’s just a matter of time before gay marriage will be legalized at the federal level, queer rights organizations are engaging in the marriage movement as if it’s a matter of life and death. This kind of single issue zeal has a negative effect on other queer concerns. Last year Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community (APIQWTC), an all-volunteer run organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, approached one national queer rights organization for sponsorship for their annual fundraiser. The organization declined. They refused to support any groups not actively working toward marriage equality. Not just to the exclusion of APIQWTC, the campaign for gay marriage is taking unilateral precedence over anything else in the queer community.
Even before the economy plummeted, agencies and organizations providing social services for the most marginalized queers had begun to falter while fundraisers for marriage equality flowed with sparkling wine and chatter about the shame in not being able to bequeath retirement plans to their long-time lovers. Now in the midst of economic catastrophe, commentators have predicted that one-third of agencies providing HIV services in San Francisco will be closing its doors by September. Perhaps it’s not surprising that for years now—as HIV incidence rate among people of color have increased (and incidence rates among whites have decreased)—funding at all levels for HIV research and prevention has decreased. AIDS is supposedly no longer a crisis, even as people of color are literally dying. How many organizations fighting for same-sex marriage will be shutting its doors by September?
The marriage movement’s single-minded determination for “equality for all” has forgotten that many more queers suffer at the hands of more urgent inequalities. These inequalities may seem “special interest” or not relevant for a “larger” community, but this could be nothing further from the truth. The most distant concern inextricably impacts our lives. For example, churches that usually invest their resources into feeding the hungry or other social services may now be putting all of their energy into saving marriage. Their shift would affect the funding of social welfare at the local level. On a grander scale spending billions of dollars on a war that may not have been entirely justified, diverts funds away from pressing domestic issues. Without a doubt problems around pro-war, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, racist, and homo/transphobic movements have always been collective issues. The smallest ripple far out at sea will form a crashing wave on our shore. Our greatest challenge for the future of social justice activism might be in reminding ourselves that all of our struggles are intimately connected and desperately need attention. Marriage may not be the answer to our most pressing social ills.
Amy Sueyoshi is an associate professor with a joint appointment in ethnic studies and human sexuality studies at San Francisco State University. A historian by training, her specialties lie in race, sexuality, Asian America, and twentieth century United States. Her publications on cross-dressing, pornography, and same-sex marriage have appeared in journals such as Frontiers and Amerasia. Currently she is working on a book manuscript on the intimate life of Japanese immigrant poet Yone Noguchi.
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It's the oppressor's job to rank oppressions, not ours
Sorry, but it is just plain divisive and horrible politics to rank oppressions. That's the oppressor's job. It is offensive to say that "The marriage movement’s single-minded determination for 'equality for all' has forgotten that many more queers suffer at the hands of more urgent inequalities" when lgbt people are stopped from seeing their loved ones in the hospital. It is cynical to suggest that the marriage equality struggle is taking an "either/or" approach. This author of this article clearing is not paying attention to the movement that is passing her by. Clearly, the lgbt rights/liberation movement must take up broader demands of sexual liberation, defense of abortion rights, immigrant rights, the struggle against police brutality, and a whole list of other forms of oppression, but we isolate ourselves and undermine those very goals when we say "hey, your oppression isn't as bad as mine and you're bad for fighting for your own liberation." Join the movement and fight for your demands within the movement to broaden it, but don't criticize from afar.
Shouldn't we walk before we can run?
I feel that the has been too much focus on marriage. I myself would love nothing more than to be able to marry my fiancé of 3.5 years. But as a bi-national couple, I would settle for simply being able to remain with him, and continue enjoying the life we have created together.
I do feat that if this marriage battle fails, it will be a major set back for everything were fighting for. I hate DOMA, DADT ect... But we should weaken the foundations by helpping things like uafa pass, and repealing datd.
Then when the time is right, we rage war on the larger issues!
And are the main people who raise this issue academics?
Notice how many academics (generally working for university or colleges that offer same-sex partner benefits) making this negative argument about how marriage equality is not the right goal. It's easier to make that argument when the economic benefits of marriage are not a worry for you.
Our struggle is NOT either/or
Sherry says it best:
http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/21/lgbt-movement
Comment: Sherry Wolf
What should the LGBT movement fight for?
Sherry Wolf analyzes the different political approaches among LGBT activists--and explains what they mean for the future of the fight.
April 21, 2009 | Issue 695 [1]
AS WITH any movement, there are political tensions inside the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights today.
On the one hand, many mainstream LGBT rights groups are attempting to rein in the street heat and radicalism of activists who continue to organize and protest in the wake of the victory of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 referendum last November.
On the other, a far smaller, yet vocal, number of left-wing activists express indifference or even contempt for the same-sex marriage movement and the growth of new groups forming in cities across the country.
How should socialists approach these challenges?
The largest and best-funded organizations in the country such as the Human Rights Campaign and statewide equality groups are looking to "Obamify" the same-sex marriage movement. As the San Francisco Chronicle explains, "Obamification" is:
more than just connecting supporters through social networking sites such as Facebook and building mile-long e-mail lists. It would involve pairing new media technology with old-fashioned, door-to-door outreach--two tactics that were not used well in the unsuccessful opposition to Proposition 8 in November, according to a report by Marriage Equality USA, an Oakland-based organization that supports gay marriage.
The leading advocates of this sort of organizing, such as Torie Osborn and Rick Jacobs, are Democratic Party campaign activists who worked in the Obama and Howard Dean campaigns, respectively. They are critical of the failed conservative methods used in the No on 8 campaign in California, and argue for tactics such as "online, grassroots activism." Yet activism should never be reduced to clicking a mouse.
While they do, in fact, push for LGBT people to tell their own stories in some door-knocking actions--rather than hide behind euphemism-filled ads with straight couples, as the No on 8 campaign did--their use of progressive language to press for lobbying and online networking masks a narrow vision of genuine grassroots activism.
There is an occasional verbal nod toward protest and collective organizing efforts--that is, genuine grassroots organizing. But the focus is primarily on conventional legislative lobbying to appeal to state and national officials.
Currently, attorneys are attempting to repeal Prop 8's reversal of gay marriage rights in the courts. Activists across the country are planning Day of Decision actions--either celebrations or protests, depending on the outcome. These are actions activists should aggressively promote and participate in.
Because President Obama and party leaders continue to define marriage as between one man and one woman, despite their opposition to statewide gay marriage bans, groups that remain inside the Democratic Party are more concerned about not embarrassing politicians than winning rights.
Thus, Equality California is already raising hesitations about attempting a 2010 pro-gay marriage ballot initiative in the event that Prop 8 is upheld--out of fear that LGBT activists would "look bad" or suffer another "defeat, " according to their director Marc Solomon, speaking at an April meeting of the activist group Love Honor Cherish in Los Angeles.
It appears that as with the 2004 elections, when Democrats like gay Congressman Barney Frank told activists not to press for equal marriage, the folks they are really concerned about "looking bad" are the Democrats.
In addition, while newly formed local groups such as Seattle's Queer Allies Coalition, New York's Civil Rights Front and the Chicago chapter of Join the Impact have widened their agendas to include support for employment non-discrimination for LGBT people and active solidarity with labor and immigrant rights organizing, many mainstream groups assert an exclusive focus on statewide gay marriage legislation.
They are tepid or silent about demanding that Obama and Congress repeal the Defense of Marriage Act that denies all federal marriage benefits, even to married LGBT couples in states where their marriages are legal.
But activists such as Harvey Milk's collaborator Cleve Jones argue that broader issues for LGBT rights must be fought for today. At a Camp Courage training weekend in late January--organized by the advocates of Obamafication--Jones enthusiastically called for a national LGBT civil rights movement:
It's got to be not just marriage. It's got to be marriage and housing and public accommodation and adoption and immigration and taxation and Social Security and military service. We want nothing less than full equality in all areas governed by civil law in all 50 states, and eventually in every country of this world. That is what we are fighting for.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
STILL, WHILE thousands are taking to the streets for gay marriage and raising larger questions about LGBT oppression and how to fight it, some on the left are surprisingly dismissive.
One panel discussion at the Left Forum in New York City on April 19--on which I spoke--was typical of this sort of ultra-left approach to the question of equal marriage rights. Called "Gay Marriage: Should the Left Care?" committed activists from Queers for Economic Justice and the LGBT youth group FIERCE attacked the gay marriage movement for making such a conservative demand.
Without acknowledging the evidence to the contrary--and there is quite a bit--they assumed that given the mainstream nature of marriage, marriage activists must not care about racism, economic injustice or taking on the systemic causes of LGBT oppression.
They are both theoretically and factually mistaken.
First, gay marriage is a reform. Like all reforms under capitalism, it leaves the structure of the system intact while alleviating a grievance--in this case, the denial of both material benefits and the desire to have LGBT relationships acknowledged as equal to those of heterosexuals.
Like the demand for unionization, under which the terms of workers' exploitation are renegotiated--with workers gaining higher wages and benefits, but not eliminating the power of bosses--equal marriage would end some discrimination without eliminating oppression altogether.
Second, to challenge the demand for same-sex marriage for not delivering sexual liberation is a bit like disparaging the civil rights sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in the early 1960s for not eliminating racism. It sets up a false expectation for a reformist demand, and then assails it for not delivering revolutionary transformation.
At the Left Forum meeting, one married gay couple with HIV/AIDS hammered home what's really at stake in this struggle.
Vinny Allegrini and Mark de Solla have been living with HIV/AIDS for 20 years, and were married 15 years ago in Canada. In many concrete and emotionally compelling ways, their daily struggle to keep alive and take care of each other--and have medical and state authorities respect their health care wishes--is codified by their marriage license, which they must carry with them everywhere to prove that they are not legal strangers, as they lead lives that are shaped by health care crises.
Socialists and other progressives must engage with the genuine struggle to try and shape a course that is independent of the Democratic Party establishment and inclusive of broader civil rights for all LGBT people.
heterosupremacist theocRAT tyranny
Actually the issues LGBTQ Americans face transcend marriage, and are really about the conditions of equality in America. Should anyone's constitutional rights be based on the approval, acceptance, tolerance or agreement of a tyrannical voting bloc, based on sexuality, gender, age, class or ethnicity?
The real problem LGBTQ Americans face is that our equality is based in the bronze age sun rotates around the flat earth heterosupremacist theocRAT dangerous delusion that constitutional rights are not unconditional, and only the people they approve of should have the same rights as every other American, in marriage, adoption, the right to serve in America's armed forces, where to live, or to work.
Marriage rights is just the tip of the iceberg heterosupremacists tell us we are not entitled to. If it was up to some of them, like Phelps, we would be rounded up like the Nazis did, put in prisons and shot.
Bigotry is not about the targets but about the bigots. Until LGBTQ Americans stand together (as was done during the HIV crisis and during the Stonewall uprising) our full rights as American citizens will never happen, and the more we blame ourselves for the treachery of heterosupremacist theocRATS, the promise of unalienable rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness will never be ours, but will be for the taking by tyrannical voting blocs.
The blindness is overwhelming...
"Many believe marriage can be a gateway for LGBT people, across the board."
Uh, only the monogamously coupled ones. How does this help single people or people with other non-normative family/relationship arrangements, of any gender/sex/sexuality, access those same rights?
Those rights have been made privileges by the existing structure. And they will remain privileges out of reach to many people - LGBTQ and otherwise - regardless of whether "marriage equality" becomes a reality.
If you want healthcare, fight for healthcare, not marriage. Freely substitute any other one of those privileges for "healthcare."
Marriage Equality and MInority Communities
The following is from a 3 volume set of books on marriage equality called "Defending Same Sex Marriage". This information was included inthe chapter written by Robin Tyler and Andy Thayer.
"Two recent National Gay & Lesbian Task Force studies of African American LGBT people, “Black Same-Sex Households in the United States: A Report from the 2000 Census” (2004) and “Say It Loud: I’m Black & I’m Proud” (2002), give the lie to marriage stereotypes within our community. Breaking stereotypes about modern LGBT families, these studies found that African American same sex couples living together are raising kids at far higher rates than white same sex couples:
Black male same-sex couples in the U.S. are almost twice as likely to be living with a biological child as White male same-sex couples in the U.S. Black female same-sex couples in the U.S. are just as likely to be living with an adopted or foster child as Black married opposite-sex couples in the U.S. [our emphasis]
Many of these African American same-sex couples, not unlike their “straight” counterparts with kids, want to get access to marriage so that they can provide a more secure future for their kids. Indeed, the year 2000 survey of Black LGBT people – published well before the marriage issue dominated mainstream press coverage of the LGBT community – directly contradicts the stereotype that only wealthy, white gay males want marriage rights. When asked what are the most important issues facing Black GLBT people, respondents to the survey listed “marriage/domestic partnership” as their #3 top concern.
Page 2, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute and the National Black Justice Coalition, “Black Same-Sex Households in the United States: A Report From the 2000 Census,” 2004. Another NGLTF study, “Hispanic and Latino Same-Sex Couple Households in the United States,” again breaks the anti-assimilationists’ stereotypes about LGBT families. Sixty-eight percent of Latino women living with other Latino women in same sex couple households were raising children under the age of 182, according to the 2000 census, and 58% of Latin men in such couples were raising kids (p. 51).
Given the enduring racism and sexism (not to mention homophobia) which disproportionately shunt such African American LGBT couples into working class occupations, it is fair to say that the above figures on child rearing reflect not only racial realities, but class ones as well. In other words, marriage and the family are much more important to the material security of working class people than they are to wealthier people who, anyway, can more typically afford to hire attorneys to construct the intricate web of legal documents needed to imperfectly mimic the contractual features of heterosexual marriage.
fierce, Fierce, FIERCE!
fierce, Fierce, FIERCE!
No, We Didn't Start This Fight.
Sorry, this fight was started by those couples in Hawaii in 1990 when they filed their lawsuit for a marriage license. For at least three years they complained they were getting no support from the glbt communities or any of the national groups.
Now it has become the 800 pound gorilla in the room that overshadows everything else.
All of the rallies I have attended here in Sacramento are supposed to be about equality but in reality only focus on marriage.
We have many issues which need to be addressed and they are being lost in all of the hullabaloo over marriage.
Our youth need our attention, our seniors need our attention, most of our community centers need help.
The author is absolutely correct when she talks about the issues of poverty in our communities. The myth that we have all of this expendable income needs to be put to rest. We are like everyone else in this matter that the majority of our people are in the low paying service industry jobs and are struggling to get by.
I hope the call for the march on DC will truly be a call for equality not just marriage.
Blaming the victim?
Amy, are you blaming queer people for the fact that churches are spending money to prevent queer people from getting married?
“For example, churches that usually invest their resources into feeding the hungry or other social services may now be putting all of their energy into saving marriage. Their shift would affect the funding of social welfare at the local level.”
Fight We Didn't Pick
Good points, but I'd argue that we didn't pick same sex marriage as the forefront issue. It seems it was thrust upon us by the Right. This issue got where it is not because we were putting marriage equality initiatives forward in state legislatures and the ballot boxes, but because the Right started putting anti-equality measures forward. We could either sit back and focus on the issues mentioned above and get clobbered, or we could try to fight them. It's my impression if we had just let the Right roll over us without any opposition, we'd be much worse off today. And the overall conversation about equality has given us years of constant media conversation and opportunities to talk with people about all the problems that anti LGBT discrimination brings. Immigration reform that includes LGBT partners has been proposed, and the HIV travel ban has been dropped. In the long term, the fight for same sex marriage is a tide that raises all boats.
Agreed, but...
Indeed, there are as many minorities within the LGBT community as there are elsewhere and we all come together from different perspectives. That's a great point and I think, collectively, we need to make it more often.
I think marriage equality is only a focus right now because it's a newer, more blatant form of legislating discrimination (Prop. 8, Amend. 2 in FL, DOMA). One might also say marriage equality is the longest and most complicated form of discrimination we have to combat. Also, recognizing gay marriage means recognizing many other things (like health care benefits, child care benefits, tax relief, etc.) Many believe marriage can be a gateway for LGBT people, across the board.
Anyway, I think writing about the injustices among minorities within the LGBT community is a crucial step! I would love to see the lesser known issues be battled with more attention and fervor, but marriage is symbolic. Imagine how many young people's lives would be different if they thought society accepted who they love (as an equal) -- regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, or financial status. For some, I do think it IS life or death.
one community
Interesting. But don't people realize that there is strength in numbers? If we can get every GLBTQIA person behind marriage equality we can win the battle forever within a few election cycles.
But I do understand that people of color, people closer to the poverty line, and those in the trans community are skeptical about whether or not the whole LGBTQIA community would come together and fight so strongly for their rights.
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