There should be nothing civil about our unions.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Farrago
There should be nothing civil about our unions.

“Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; they are in fact, antagonistic to each other…Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?”
- Emma Goldman

With the recent overturning of civil unions in the ACT the gay marriage debate is on top of the queer activist agenda again. It’s a fiery issue, and not just in the homophobic hyperbole of ninemsn polls and letters to the editor, but also within the ‘queer community’. Amidst battle cries of ‘assimilationist’ and ‘ultra left’ those who can’t wait to say ‘I do’ face off with those who see marriage to be the antithesis of queer liberation.

At its best, the ‘queer community’ has the radical potential to undermine heterosexism and help to overthrow capitalism, but mostly it spends its days as a loose alliance based on the shared oppression of people from incredibly diverse backgrounds and ideologies. There is no dissent within the queer camps to the fact that the legislation and rhetoric from the government [and the opposition] around same-sex marriage or civil unions is blatantly homophobic and should be fought. It is the seemingly knee-jerk call for marriage [or their secular facsimile – civil unions] by gay and lesbian groups in response, rather than recognition of the diversity of queer relationships and a campaign framed around that, that exposes the differences on the issue.

What I want to know is how queer activism got so boring. What happened to gay lib or the radical queer action of the 80s and 90s? Have we given up on liberation and settled for assimilation? The old chants of ‘fuck off breeder scum’ have been replaced with ‘we’re just like you!’ as we beg for a place at the table of heteronormativity. Instead of critiquing a system and an institution that structurally oppresses us as queers we are lining up to be good heterogays and disappear into the suburbs with our superannuation, mortgages and tax cuts.

Thing is, not everyone can do heteronorm, or wants to, and what this marriage thing has the potential to do is further [and legally] marginalise those who don’t fit into the new mould of acceptable queerness. Do we have to create a new ‘other’ in every liberation movement?

It is slightly amusing that the campaign for marriage is being called ‘equal love’. Marriage is an institution necessarily based on inequality between its participants and has traditionally had very little to do with love. It is more to do with the exploitation of wom*n and the extraction of their unpaid labour and it is based on the logic of private property and ownership. It commodifies our most intimate sexual relations and intimacy, tricking us into trading them for economic stability. Marriage also directly benefits the capitalist class, in the US $32 billion a year is spent on the ‘marriage industry’.

Love, on the other hand, is a dangerous and powerful tool that we have, and we should not let it be co-opted by state interference. The only thing civil about my unions is perhaps the concept of civil disobedience, that I see them as a way of building radical communities to nurture and support each other, to give us energy to fight against a system which alienates us from one another, teaches us to compete and exploit and then tries to sell love back to us, overpriced and inoffensive.

To me it is contradictory to fight FOR marriage when the relationships I have are precisely for breaking down the harm that capitalist institutions such as marriage have done to us. The state has no place in my relationships, nor should it in anyone’s. When we let the state sanction our relationships it renders them powerless and dooms them to the safe grey silhouette of love that the state allows.

So why do queers want to get married? The Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby claims on their website that “lower self-esteem, vulnerability, increased risk taking behaviours (including substance abuse) increased levels of all forms of abuse, and poorer mental health” will all be eradicated with same sex relationship recognition. Not only am I pretty sure that people who have access to marriage have all of those issues, but they don’t seem to care about the mental health of anyone who is not in a long term monogamous relationship.

This is hardly surprising, as the very language of the campaign is exclusionary. Although it may just seem like semantics to those it includes, the words ‘same-sex’, ‘couples’, ‘gay and lesbian’ and ‘marriage’ send a clear message to others that they do not belong. People who may be bisexual, queer, trans*, those who reject the gender binary or the biological essentialism of ‘same sex’, queers in non-monogamous or polyamorous relationships, the list of people this campaign does not benefit goes on and on and it begs the question, who is actually wanting to get married?

The other issues that the pro-marriage team raise are the predictable tax cuts, superannuation, property rights, and then if they fail to convince you they bring out the big guns – the emotive issues of visitation rights, immigration, children. But why is it only people who are in long term monogamous relationships who are able to decide things like who gets to visit them when they’re dying? Or move to another country?

An interesting slur directed at the queers against marriage is that we are “as bad as the liberals [NOTE: the author is referring to members (neo)Liberal Party of Australia] ” by not supporting them. It’s interesting because the liberal doctrine of individualism is one that characterises the push for same sex marriage, with blatant disregard for community and the way that it could negatively affect other queers. In fact, in the US the push for gay marriage resulted not in further reform and relationship recognition, but in some areas the repealing of legal rights allowed to non-married heterosexual couples.

The rhetoric of ‘choice’ fails to acknowledge the key flaw in the marriage campaign - that it privileges a certain kind of relationship to the exclusion of all others. Queers that are ‘too queer’ are told to shut up and sit tight, that once we can get married we can destroy the institution of marriage and fight for more inclusive relationship recognition. The logic of this seems similar to trying to argue that having queers in the military would stop war. I am yet to be convinced that having access to an institution which is an integral part of the structural oppression of queers and wom*n is fighting homophobia.

All this said, I will be at the rally on August 13, and I was there last year too, because I hate homophobia even more than I hate marriage. But I will be there not to get symbolically ‘married’ on the steps of parliament, but instead to try and raise awareness with queers and their allies that our freedoms are bound up together, we cannot be free or liberated in isolation from each other.

Let’s fight instead to allow basic rights to everyone, regardless of their relationship status or choice of partner[s], and we are in the perfect position to do it. Historically it is the underdog, the ‘second class citizen’ who enacts social change. Let’s not stop at making just our own lives comfortable and get back to our radical fighting roots and change the world, let’s build a community and a movement that acknowledges the strength and power of our relationships in their diversity and difference to the status quo.

---------------

This is posted in response to a member of the board who is heterosexual, but seems to think they understand the nuances of the 'gay rights' movement, queer sexual politics, the 'movement' and queer identity - that 'gay rights' is what all LGBT people want, or what we should be fighting for, this article exposes the 'gay rights' movements limitations and framing as lliberal middle-upper class movement.

[TC]

Given that this article is about maintaining inequality not about ending it, it isn't appropriate for the discrimination forum.

Opposing the civil liberties of a minority demographic is an opposing ideology.


And in any case, arguing that gay people should be used as some sort of social revolutionary agenda just because they happen to be gay, has nothin to do with social discrimination, putting the onus on gay people for revolutionary change is itself a form of discrimination since it suggests that they ought to accept an additional social burden just based on who they are.


I'll respond in greater detail soon.

[Black Dagger]

Nice way to abuse your power there Clown

Did you read it?

Originally posted by the article+--> (the article)All this said, I will be at the rally on August 13, and I was there last year too, because I hate homophobia even more than I hate marriage.[/b]

The author of the article does not oppose legal equality, they are arguing that the way the debate is being framed is problematic and that 'legal equality' is not enough.

TC

Opposing the civil liberties of a minority demographic is an opposing ideology.

Yeah, particularly when the author of the article is gay

You're politics are such a joke, when anti-capitalist revolutionaries criticise the liberal 'gay rights' movement for being too conformist, pro-capitalist, assimilationist etc. you uncritically side with the liberals and label the revolutionaries as 'OI' material, pathetic.

Since when is critiquing liberalism from a revolutionary perspective an Opposing Ideology?

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Vertigo
Same-sex marriage and ‘gay rights’: a liberal project.

Yarr, so who attended the recent same-sex marriage national day of action?

According to the promotional literature put out by the events organisers, the purpose of the rally was to, "assert the importance that the LGBTIQ community places on relationship recognition" and the event itself was framed as "a celebration of our relationships and a demonstration against the ban placed on same sex marriage this time two years ago".

For me, both of these statements raise some significant issues, and no, its not because I’m some kind of religious fundy, social conservative, or traditionalist - quite the opposite, but what concerns me are the assumptions, the ideas that underscore the whole 'gay rights' phenomenon.

I am member of the LGBTIQ community and contrary to what the promotional snippet above might suggest, I place absolutely no importance on relationship recognition (which in this context essentially means marriage rights) in fact, I would be happy to see the institution of marriage abolished entirely.

Here is my catch22. Legal equality should undoubtedly be the norm, anything less is discrimination and arguably contributes to the stigmatisation of queer peoples and relationships, but fighting against oppression in the language of liberalism does not directly challenge, or even greatly disrupt a capitalist power-structure that at its core is heterosexist and patriarchal.

I don’t want to live in a society where I need legal protections because of my sexuality, rather I want to live in a society liberated from sexual oppression, to see the abolition of rigid gender and sexual binaries, of male vs. female, gay vs. hetero, of false and socially constructed dichotomies.

I am not for legal equality, but the abolition of a society, of a structure that rations out rights to the oppressed, that reforms itself only when it cannot maintain its current level of oppression without precipitating some kind of dangerously radical social change. A structure that encourages the conservative and attempts to co-opt the radical, using both as valves to release social tensions and pressures at its convenience. A society whose rulers use reform as a lever to maintain social stability, 'quick pull it now before the queers, Indigenous peoples, working class peoples - before the oppressed cry, we've had enough!’

What do queers really gain from having the right to marry? How is this challenging our structural oppression? Or even heterosexism on a personal basis? For many heterosexuals it will change nothing at all, a faggot with a wedding ring is still a faggot, queer men will still be too effeminate, queer wom*n too butch, sex between men dirty or repugnant, and sex between wom*n strangely erotic, but when it comes to the crunch it will remain 'immoral' and a wedding ring is not going to change that.

Because what is marriage beyond a legal-religious ceremony?

From an historical point of view, marriage is strongly tied to property relations, traditionally, as the base-unit of bourgeois society (known commonly as western civilization), with wom*n as property to be transferred from father to husband (and this is not feminist hyperbole, the status of wom*n literally as property unto their husbands was in the not too distant past codified in law). Marriage is also deeply linked to hetero-orientated-religious traditions, with the married couple as procreators, in the Semitic tradition, as a reproduction of 'Adam and Eve', the first, the 'natural' couple - a breeding unit, but also the protectors and reproducers of a vague thing called 'family values'.

Why should queers care about fitting into what are essentially historically constructed, hetero-patriarchal social, legal and religious norms? (Damn that was a mouthful&#33 Then again, I might as well ask, why does anyone (queer or not) feel that they need the state to sanction or legally recognize their relationship for it to be truly meaningful to them as individuals?

Getting married is very often to appease other people, to appease society, to fit-in, to conform to social, religious or cultural norms. To get recognition before a god/gods, before the law, or for your family. Same-sex marriage as a demand of the 'gay rights' movement legitimises the idea that people need or should want to get married in the first place because it is 'natural', and even that monogamy is 'natural' and desirable, and the idea that we all just secretly want to tie-the-knot is certainly implied in the NDA's promotional literature, the rally was after all to "assert the importance that the LGBTIQ community places on relationship recognition".

Whilst I certainly place a strong emphasis on my relationships, having the right to marry will not allow me any greater ability to enjoy these publicly; will the people who stare at us, who yell or abuse us, will they care if we've got our wedding rings on? Are they any less likely to think that queer wom*n can be straightened out by a good fuck? Or that a man kissing another man is repulsive? No.

In a link to an article from The Age newspaper hosted by the Community Action Against Homophobia (one of the organizers of the NDA) website, the co-convener of the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, Ron Thiele, states that: "Equal recognition of relationships is good for individuals, good for families, good for society and good for the economy", and I can see the political logic of his argument, but I can also see (or rather, read) the implications of his language.

His argument is an attempt to broaden the appeal of same-sex marriage as much as possible; he is essentially saying that same-sex marriage is the fucking bomb. Individuals love it (hey I'm one of those&#33, families love it (hey, family units rule! They are the building blocks of western civilization donchya know?), society loves it (well they'll learn to), and apparently the economy loves it too (and what’s good for the economy is good for everyone right?).

After all, what is every queers dream if not to splurge out on an expensive wedding ceremony, venue hire, catering, limo hire, flowers, wedding photographers, and hotel accommodation? Then again, not all of course can afford to be that queer. But I'm sure the idea that same-sex marriage is good for economy might persuade a few reluctant conservative senators or something.

The emphasis placed by the 'gay rights' movement on same-sex marriage also further legitimises the idea that 'families' in the nuclear sense (two parents, 2.3 kids) are the natural or preferable unit of human social organization and historically this is an idea that has consistently been used against queers, but now the 'gay rights' movement says we want in on the system.

They say, 'you don’t fit in, you cant produce kids naturally, children need two parents of opposite sexes to develop correctly' - well to that queers have rightly been saying fuck off, not only because that argument is queerphobic, ahistorical, unscientific, illogical non-sense, but because it homogenises human society and human development, they say, 'this is what is good, normal and natural' and now the 'gay rights' movement says, 'well we can fit this model as good as you!' - That's where you lose me.

What do we really gain by accepting this model? It certainly isn’t social acceptance or a challenge to hetero-normativity in any meaningful sense.

So I ask, are 'gay rights', marriage rights, really at the top of our agenda? And are they for everyone?

Historically, liberal movements have tended to gloss over the minority tendencies of any particular struggle. For example, in Australia the non-Indigenous feminists of the 1960s and 1970s often found that Indigenous wom*n prioritized the fight for the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, for land rights, and the struggle against racism above what many non-Indigenous wom*n would deem to be 'their interests' so I ask, whose interests does the 'gay rights' movement really serve?

The movement itself is overwhelmingly white and middle-to-upper class. Beyond, the arguments for equality before the law it offers no real criticism of society, of heterosexism as a social norm, or of how capitalism has commodified human sexuality (or indeed of capitalism itself).

In the recent era we have seen the rise of 'pink dollar' consumerism, a marketing strategy that targets gay people as consumer group, and that by consequence produces an image or brand of 'gayness' itself - usually expensive clothes, haircuts, and accessories, and consequently a process is developed by which those who can afford to be are the most 'gay'.

There is no room to critique this from within the liberal 'gay rights' framework because it is a framework that assumes we are classless. That our interests, our needs and wants are all the same, regardless of our class background (or indeed our ethnicity) because we are all queer - this ghettoisation of so-called queer interests runs counter to the real differences in experience that run through the queer population, some of us have bigger problems than being denied the right to marry, like paying the rent.

For a white middle or upper class queer, racial or class oppression is not really a concern, in fact the struggle against these forms of oppression directly challenges their interests, their privilege yet these are the people who are directing our struggle? That is not acceptable.

Moreover, where too from legal equality? Once people have the right to marry and all the little legal differences are cleaned up (which they will likely be in a matter of decades), where to for queers in society? Will these changes satisfy the liberal 'gay rights' movement?

In the end the practical goal of the movement is to get 'equal rights', 'gay rights', the goal is not to end sexual oppression, it cannot eliminate heterosexism (unless of course you think that granting legal equality, and marriage rights will achieve this), it is not to undermine, challenge or abolish heteropatriarchal norms of sexuality or 'gender', least of all capitalism or the state in which these norms are engrained and by which they are perpetuated; its here that the limits of liberalism become most apparent.

We need to move beyond liberal politics, to point the finger at society itself, at the state, at capitalism, at heteropatrichal norms and assumptions and say why do we even need these 'institutions? Whose interests do they really serve? Why are all these fucked up and outdated ideas still shaping how we view the world and our relationships? Why are we only demanding legal equality? Why aren’t we also attacking structural-social oppression, ideas and prejudice? And why are we listening to a movement whose objectives can only shift legal norms, not liberate us, not end our oppression, as queers, as Indigenous peoples, as wom*n or as working class people?

History has shown us that meaningful equality, meaningful social change cannot be legislated, sure you can shift the social norm a bit to the left or to the right, but you’re really only painting over the cracks in the system, so to the reformists we must say, no re-plastering, the structure is rotten!

Do you want a society where you and your partner can launch joint tax returns, or a society where there is no longer any need to identify as a lesbian or as gay, or bi etc., because who you love, or who you fuck will no longer make you an aberration to the social norm?

A society that moves beyond hetero-normativity, and restrictive notions of 'family'. Or do you secretly crave to fit-in?

Do you dream about that chat with your boss over a game of golf, 'so how are your partner and your kids'?

Or do you dream about a society that is not run by bosses? Politicians? Or the rich?

So the question becomes, should we be striving for legal reform or social revolution?

It is my opinion that legal equality is liberal equality and that this not socially meaningful equality in any sense. Rather, that real, deep-seated and lasting social change cannot occur until we challenge our oppression collectively and on a structural level, until we have addressed and ended all forms of oppression, be they on the basis of sexuality, race, gender, or class.

The struggle against sexual oppression cannot be separated from any of these struggles. In this society we are not oppressed solely on the basis of our sexuality, as queer people we cut across all these categories, legislating same-sex marriage, or anti-discrimination will not change our social reality, though it will enable those who would oppress us to point to the statutes, to the newly married couples and say, 'look how tolerant we are now! What more can we do for you? There are gay CEOs! You are equal!' and they will sleep a little more soundly, knowing that perhaps another social tension has been relieved, even if it is only temporary...

This article critiques the liberal 'gay rights' movement from a revolutionary anti-capitalist position.

[Sentinel]

Great article, by someone who knows what she's talking about. Why on earth should queer people be satisfied with 'rights' within the bourgeois society? It's about smashing said society and it's traditions such as (the traditional form of) marriage.

As to this topic being moved here to OI -- one word: ridiculous. I understand that you have a different opinion here Tragic, but why not try to keep things civil. I mean, OI..? There are (unfortunately) different approaches to issues within the left.

when anti-capitalist revolutionaries criticise the liberal 'gay rights' movement for being too conformist, pro-capitalist, assimilationist etc. you uncritically side with the liberals and label the revolutionaries as 'OI' material, pathetic.

Since when is critiquing liberalism an Opposing Ideology?

My thoughts exactly. But I guess it comes down to the ever ongoing battle within the left: leninists living in the past and defending obsolete shit traditions. The same pattern can be seen in their frenetic defense of superstition.

All because of the 'intellectual vanguard' is afraid to 'alienate' the as they see it sheeplike masses. It's unfortunate since the left really should dare to present an alternative with the taste of future in it.

[The Grinch]

Tragic, is it fair to say you only support gay people speaking out if they keep it "respectable" and don't move beyond bourgeoise demands of reform? And especially not if they dare to question the current favouring of certain types of relationship by capitalist society.

[Quills]

Originally posted by Sentinel@Aug 24 2006, 04:46 PM
Why on earth should queer people be satisfied with 'rights' within the bourgeois society? It's about smashing said society and it's traditions such as (the traditional form of) marriage.

Why should non-queer people be satisfied? Can't straight people want to smash the traditional norms? It's not just a gay thing to want to move away from social 'norms'.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Sentinel@Aug 24 2006, 04:46 PM
There are (unfortunately) different approaches to issues within the left.

You mean fortunately.

Luís Henrique

[SPK]

TC, I think that BD -- and the articles that he is posting -- represent a significant political / ideological tendency within the LGBTIQ communities, perhaps at a certain level the dominant tendency. I think it is inappropriate to declare, ex cathedra, that they are invalid and remove them to the OI. They are a legitimate critique, from the left, of the gay-rights framework and one that many people in the communities have taken up in one form or another. (And, by the way, that doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with them or your postings either.)

I want to respond to his postings in more depth later -- I'm too busy now -- and I don't want this discussion stuck in the OI cesspool, where a reasonable debate would be almost impossible. The essays that both of you have posted should be struggled over in a substantive and political way, not through some bureaucratic maneuver. They are certainly relevant to homophobia and heterosexism, but also to other questions, much farther afield, that don't seem on the surface to have any relation to the oppression of LGBTIQ people.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Quills+Aug 25 2006, 03:23 AM--> (Quills @ Aug 25 2006, 03:23 AM)

Sentinel

@Aug 24 2006, 04:46 PM
Why on earth should queer people be satisfied with 'rights' within the bourgeois society? It's about smashing said society and it's traditions such as (the traditional form of) marriage.

Why should non-queer people be satisfied? Can't straight people want to smash the traditional norms? It's not just a gay thing to want to move away from social 'norms'. [/b]

Of course it is not a gay thing, that is not what Sentinel is suggesting at all, rather that the articles are talking about queers in particular.

[Sentinel]

Why should non-queer people be satisfied? Can't straight people want to smash the traditional norms? It's not just a gay thing to want to move away from social 'norms'.

You are, obviously, right. I just said it that way since we were talking about queers here.

You mean fortunately.

Well, as much as I'd very much prefer that everyone agreed with me, because I'm usually right, you have a point there.

People disagree, and that's why we debate and hopefully all learn something new while doing so.

[The Grinch]

Originally posted by Quills@Aug 24 2006, 05:23 PM
Why should non-queer people be satisfied? Can't straight people want to smash the traditional norms? It's not just a gay thing to want to move away from social 'norms'.

Well, the broadest definations of "queer" include heterosexuals who's sexual practises place them firmly outside the mainstream.

[TC]

moved to politics

[Big Boss]

Originally posted by The Grinch@Aug 24 2006, 01:35 PM
Well, the broadest definations of "queer" include heterosexuals who's sexual practises place them firmly outside the mainstream.

What sexual practices exactly?

[The Grinch]

Originally posted by Big Boss@Aug 24 2006, 06:29 PM
What sexual practices exactly?

This isn't by any means the only examples, but BDSMers, polyamorists etc.

And furries. Though most Queer theorists don't seem to talk about that a lot for some reason. h34r:

[TC]

At its best, the ‘queer community’ has the radical potential to undermine heterosexism and help to overthrow capitalism, but mostly it spends its days as a loose alliance based on the shared oppression of people from incredibly diverse backgrounds and ideologies.

In other words, at its "best", the 'queer community' is basically a political organization, but at its worsed it just fights its own social oppression.

Well, guess what, gay people don't have any special obligation to participate in any politics just cause they're gay, and they shouldn't have to wait for capitalism to be overthrown to enjoy equal rights.

fought. It is the seemingly knee-jerk call for marriage [or their secular facsimile – civil unions] by gay and lesbian groups in response, rather than recognition of the diversity of queer relationships and a campaign framed around that, that exposes the differences on the issue.

And why should gay's and lesbians have to sacrifice social recognition in current society of their long term monogamous relationships, in order to support other people identifying as "queers" with seperate political interests who do not have the same need for marriage?

What I want to know is how queer activism got so boring. What happened to gay lib or the radical queer action of the 80s and 90s? Have we given up on liberation and settled for assimilation?

It is slander to call gay and lesbian rights activists "assimilationist" when fighting for social equality as if their culture and identity required recognition of their marginal, outside status.

Gay rights activists are legitimately working for social integration, while people as a whole wont be liberated until capitalism is overthrown, to reject progress towards social integration is reactionary.

The old chants of ‘fuck off breeder scum’ have been replaced with ‘we’re just like you!’ as we beg for a place at the table of heteronormativity

Gays and lesbians are just as entitled to a "place at the table" of mainstream society as straight people, and insulting gay rights activists for attempting to promote their interests is wrong.

we are lining up to be good heterogays and disappear into the suburbs with our superannuation, mortgages and tax cuts.

Nice, gay people who don't want a marginal existance in current society are "heterogays", that remark really smacks of prejudice against other types of gay people.

Marriage is an institution necessarily based on inequality between its participants and has traditionally had very little to do with love. It is more to do with the exploitation of wom*n and the extraction of their unpaid labour and it is based on the logic of private property and ownership.

A point that obviously has nothing to do with same-sex marriage as they cannot have a traditionalist division of labor by gender.

The only thing civil about my unions is perhaps the concept of civil disobedience, that I see them as a way of building radical communities to nurture and support each other, to give us energy to fight against a system which alienates us from one another,

Thats nice, but maybe most of the gay population, like most of the straight population, have relationships just cause they're in love and as a means 'fight against a system', and it is perfectly legitimate for them to want the same rights to do this.

So why do queers want to get married? The Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby claims on their website that “lower self-esteem, vulnerability, increased risk taking behaviours (including substance abuse) increased levels of all forms of abuse, and poorer mental health” will all be eradicated with same sex relationship recognition. Not only am I pretty sure that people who have access to marriage have all of those issues, but they don’t seem to care about the mental health of anyone who is not in a long term monogamous relationship.

Gays and lesbians in monogamous long term relationships should have the right to look after their own mental health, they aren't under any special obligation to look after polyamourous post-modern sexualities just cause they're gay, so why attack the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby as if its responsible for this, rather than any other unrelated political organization?

Why is it that gays and lesbians who want long term relationships are some how more responsible for making sure that all the post-modern sexualities's self-defined needs are taken care of than straights who want long term relationships?

People should not force additional social responsibility on people just cause they're gay.

This is hardly surprising, as the very language of the campaign is exclusionary. Although it may just seem like semantics to those it includes, the words ‘same-sex’, ‘couples’, ‘gay and lesbian’ and ‘marriage’ send a clear message to others that they do not belong.

More like, it recognizes that people who aren't in couples don't need equal marriage laws, and people who aren't in same-sex couple can already get married.

The notion that a group of people, gays and lesbian couples, fighting for their rights is 'exclusionary' is really just to say that these people do not deserve political self-determination, that their political interests should be subordinate to other agendas.

People who may be bisexual, queer, trans*, those who reject the gender binary or the biological essentialism of ‘same sex’, queers in non-monogamous or polyamorous relationships, the list of people this campaign does not benefit goes on and on

And it doesn't benefit palestinians, starving people in africa, indonesian flood victims, poor straight couples, or any number of other people who aren't gay or lesbian.

What is increadibly fucked up is the belief that just because someone is gay or lesbian they automatically have a special political responsibility to advance the political agendas of people, and this suggests that there is something offensive about gays and lesbians organizing for gay and lesbian rights.

But why is it only people who are in long term monogamous relationships who are able to decide things like who gets to visit them when they’re dying? Or move to another country?

Because things like having the right to bring your family member or spouse over from another country or to visit your family member/spouse in a hospital are aspects of having socially recognized long term relationships, people who have only a passing relationship with someone aren't going to have the same social responsibilities towards them, so its not applicable...Straight people can't bring casual sex partners in from other countries either so why not blame the monogamous straights instead of blaming the monogamous gays?

The fact that straight people's long term, meaningful relationships are recognized as such by society and gay people's are not, is social and legal discrimination, it isn't selfish to want your relationships recognized like anyone elses of the same depth, and to target gay people for wanting this rather than straight people for wanting the same thing is itself discriminatory.

The rhetoric of ‘choice’ fails to acknowledge the key flaw in the marriage campaign - that it privileges a certain kind of relationship to the exclusion of all others.

It would make no sense for people, gay or straight, to have every casual fling thought of in the same manner as multi-year long term exclusive relationships, and targeting monogamous gays for this as if it was some how more their fault than monogamous heterosexual's is ridiculous.

Historically it is the underdog, the ‘second class citizen’ who enacts social change.

Trying to undermine gays' and lesbians' attempt to move up from 'second class citizen' status in order to use them as mere tools to enact social change is the height of political exploitation. It would be as absurd as wanting to make workers work longer hours for lower wages in degrading working conditions under the theory that they'd be more revolutionary that way, without regard for their personal civil liberties and self-determination. Its like opposing the abolishion of slavery under the belief that slaves would make good insurrgents.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)
In other words, at its "best", the 'queer community' is basically a political organization, but at its worsed it just fights its own social oppression.[/b]

No. At its best, the queer community as well as struggling against heterosexism (and for legal equality), can ally itself with other oppressed and exploited peoples, including the working class, to overthrow the system that oppresses us all. At worst, the community uses liberal rhetoric to univeralise the experiences of all queers, arguing that all LGB want is 'equal rights', i.e. marriage rights, ignoring that queers are also exploited as workers, oppressed as Black peoples, wom*n etc.

Originally posted by TC+--> (TC)Well, guess what, gay people don't have any special obligation to participate in any politics just cause they're gay, and they shouldn't have to wait for capitalism to be overthrown to enjoy equal rights.[/b]

You don't seem to understand the point. The author is not suggesting that gay people have any special obligation to be revolutionaries, she is merely criticising members of the gay (and broader queer) community who approach the struggle against their oppression from a liberal perspective.

Nor is she saying that gay people should not have equal rights, but merely that as a demand, 'marriage rights' is problematic (for the reasons she states), and is not liberation.

Originally posted by TC
And why should gay's and lesbians have to sacrifice social recognition in current society of their long term monogamous relationships, in order to support other people identifying as "queers" with seperate political interests who do not have the same need for marriage?

Why should liberals be revolutionaries? Well i dunno

And why are using queers in quotes? The author is talking about LGB people.

The author is arguing that the demands of this movement will marginalise queers who do not want to fit into hetero norms, who do not want to get married etc., that is valid criticism, she is not suggesting that rich gay people should think about working class queers, or become revolutionaries, because she knows they wont - that is one of the main thrusts of the article, she is identifying the different interests at play within the queer community.

Originally posted by TC
It is slander to call gay and lesbian rights activists "assimilationist" when fighting for social equality as if their culture and identity required recognition of their marginal, outside status.

'Gay rights' activists are not fighting for social equality, they are fighting for legal equality, they are not the same thing, that is precisely what the article points out.

And no, it's not slander.

Have you read much 'gay rights' lobby literature?

Dealt with any of these organisations?

Been to any of their events?

I have, and 'assimilationist' is an apt term to describe the majority of said activists.

Originally posted by TC

Gay rights activists are legitimately working for social integration, while people as a whole wont be liberated until capitalism is overthrown, to reject progress towards social integration is reactionary.

The author is not rejecting legal equality, she is critiquing its ability to deal with heterosexism and as an 'end', there's a difference, if not in your mind.

Originally posted by TC
Gays and lesbians are just as entitled to a "place at the table" of mainstream society as straight people,

Of course, but assimilating into heterosexual norms and institutions is not required, and certainly does not challenge the prejudice of mainstream society in any significant way.

Originally posted by TC

and insulting gay rights activists for attempting to promote their interests is wrong.

LOL, the author disagrees that ' their interests' are really serving the interests of the liberation struggle, it is perfectly acceptable to insult liberals and reformists.

Sometimes liberals have the right idea (legal equality), but this does not make liberalism the correct approach to creating social change.

Originally posted by TC
Nice, gay people who don't want a marginal existance in current society are "heterogays", that remark really smacks of prejudice against other types of gay people.

If by prejudice, you mean the author dislikes liberal gay people who only care about tying the knot and filing a 'joint tax return' - rather than the liberation of queers from sexual oppression, and everyone from capitalist exploitation, then yes.

Originally posted by TC
Thats nice, but maybe most of the gay population, like most of the straight population, have relationships just cause they're in love and as a means 'fight against a system', and it is perfectly legitimate for them to want the same rights to do this.

Queer relationships by their nature are subversive because they run counter to the accepted norm of society. And of course gay people can have the same rights to perpetuate stupid institutions, that does not mean they cannot be criticised.

Originally posted by TC
Gays and lesbians in monogamous long term relationships should have the right to look after their own mental health, they aren't under any special obligation to look after polyamourous post-modern sexualities just cause they're gay, so why attack the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby as if its responsible for this, rather than any other unrelated political organization?

Because 'gay rights' organisations nearly universally present queers as a monolithic entity, who are all engaged in monogamous relationships and want to get married, they actively contribute to the marginalisation of the 'other' - that is the point the author is making.

Originally posted by TC
People should not force additional social responsibility on people just cause they're gay.

Stop distorting the arguments presented by the author.

She is not arguing that they have 'addition social responsibility', you made that up, but rather she is criticising them for the role they are playing.

Read this again,

CRITICISING.

That is something you dont seem to understand.

It is perfectly acceptable for more radical gay people to criticise more conservative gay people.

Your response to this criticism is extremely liberal, ignorant and naive.

Originally posted by TC
The notion that a group of people, gays and lesbian couples, fighting for their rights is 'exclusionary' is really just to say that these people do not deserve political self-determination, that their political interests should be subordinate to other agendas.

No, she is arguing that fighting for 'marriage rights' misses the point, and she is arguing for a more revolutionary approach to the struggle against heterosexism.

You are arguing for a more liberal approach, great, but that does not make the authors approach invalid.

Originally posted by TC
And it doesn't benefit palestinians, starving people in africa, indonesian flood victims, poor straight couples, or any number of other people who aren't gay or lesbian.

These analogies are absurd, the authors point is apt because heterosexism and same-sex marriage effects the people she mentioned (to a varying extent) - conversely it has nothing to do with the people you mentioned.

Your analogy is bollocks.

Originally posted by TC
What is increadibly fucked up is the belief that just because someone is gay or lesbian they automatically have a special political responsibility to advance the political agendas of people,

How many times are you going to repeat this fallacy?

The author is not suggesting that gay people 'automatically have a special political responsibility' - YOU HAVE MADE THIS UP AND KEEP REPEATING IT.

But rather she is criticising the approach some gay people have taken in the struggle against heterosexism.

Originally posted by TC

and this suggests that there is something offensive about gays and lesbians organizing for gay and lesbian rights.

No, but that framing the struggle against heterosexism in the 'language of liberalism', as a struggle for 'rights' instead of liberation is reformist, and inadequate.

Originally posted by TC
Because things like having the right to bring your family member or spouse over from another country or to visit your family member/spouse in a hospital are aspects of having socially recognized long term relationships, people who have only a passing relationship with someone aren't going to have the same social responsibilities towards them, so its not applicable...

Although this irrelevant to the debate, what about long-term non-monogamous relationships? The definition of long term can be contested etc. Short or medium term does not equal non-commitment or a lack of importance.

Originally posted by TC

Straight people can't bring casual sex partners in from other countries either so why not blame the monogamous straights instead of blaming the monogamous gays?

Well i don't think she is doing that, but if she is it is probably because the article is a critique of the queer community specifically.

Originally posted by TC
and to target gay people for wanting this rather than straight people for wanting the same thing is itself discriminatory.

So the author of the article, who is gay, is being discriminatory against gay people?

Originally posted by TC
It would make no sense for people, gay or straight, to have every casual fling thought of in the same manner as multi-year long term exclusive relationships,

Except that the author is not talking about 'every casual fling', but rather any non-monogamous, non 'long term' (which in law can mean anything from one year to several years) relationship.

TC

@

and targeting monogamous gays for this as if it was some how more their fault than monogamous heterosexual's is ridiculous.

She is not 'targetting', the article is written as a criticism of the queer community, hence its focus on queer (in this case gay) people.

Trying to undermine gays' and lesbians' attempt to move up from 'second class citizen' status in order to use them as mere tools to enact social change is the height of political exploitation.

Criticising the liberal approach of bourgeous 'gay rights' organisations is not political exploitation.

The author is not suggesting that queer people remain second class citizens, but that the approach taken by these liberal groups in tackling heterosexism is necessarily limited, and inadequate.

TC

It would be as absurd as wanting to make workers work longer hours for lower wages in degrading working conditions under the theory that they'd be more revolutionary that way, without regard for their personal civil liberties and self-determination. Its like opposing the abolishion of slavery under the belief that slaves would make good insurrgents.

Um, that is not the point the author is making AT ALL.

FFS, explaining things to you is getting tiresome...

The author is not suggesting that queers just wait for revolution, or that we should remain with an unequal status so that we get more angry and rebel (as you are suggesting) but that elevating marriage as the key issue, and positioning legal equality as the end, rather than as a step towards liberation, is a flawed approach.

[SPK]

This is the Thread of Long Manifestos. Here is another perspective from a u.s. group called Beyond Marriage. This organization was formed in April, 2006 and is comprised mostly of nonprofit bureaucrats active the national LGBTIQ "movement" (i.e. most of them are with political lobbying groups, social services agencies, universities, and so on). From 2004 until today, nineteen u.s. states have passed either laws or (state) constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage and in many cases also prohibiting other partnership statuses like civil unions. At this point, there are only about 12 states, out of 50, that have no such prohibitions.



BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OUR
FAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS

July 26, 2006

We, the undersigned – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers – seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.

We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.

We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community.

In offering this vision, we declare ourselves to be part of an interdependent, global community. We stand with people of every racial, gender and sexual identity, in the United States and throughout the world, who are working day-to-day – often in harsh political and economic circumstances – to resist the structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression, and to build an unshakeable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge.

Why the LGBT Movement Needs a New Strategic Vision

Household & Family Diversity is Already the Norm

The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template.

All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.

U.S. Census findings tell us that a majority of people, whatever their sexual and gender identities, do not live in traditional nuclear families. Recognizing the diverse households that already are the norm in this country is simply a matter of expanding upon the various forms of legal recognition that already are available. The LGBT movement has played an instrumental role in creating and advocating for domestic partnerships, second parent adoptions, reciprocal beneficiary arrangements, joint tenancy/home-ownership contracts, health care proxies, powers of attorney, and other mechanisms that help provide stability and security for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual individuals and families. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, our communities formed support systems and constructed new kinds of families and partnerships in the face of devastating crisis and heartbreak. Both our communities and our HIV organizations recognized, respected, and fought for the rights of non-traditionally constructed families and non-conventional partnerships. Moreover, the transgender and bisexual movements, so often historically left behind or left out by the larger lesbian and gay movement, have powerfully challenged legal constructions of relationship and fought for social, legal, and economic recognition of partnerships, households, and families, which include members who shatter the narrow confines of gender conformity.

To have our government define as “legitimate families” only those households with couples in conjugal relationships does a tremendous disservice to the many other ways in which people actually construct their families, kinship networks, households, and relationships. For example, who among us seriously will argue that the following kinds of households are less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy?

· Senior citizens living together, serving as each other’s caregivers, partners, and/or constructed families

· Adult children living with and caring for their parents

· Grandparents and other family members raising their children’s (and/or a relative’s) children

· Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner

· Blended families

· Single parent households

· Extended families (especially in particular immigrant populations) living under one roof, whose members care for one another

· Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households

· Close friends and siblings who live together in long-term, committed, non-conjugal relationships, serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers

· Care-giving and partnership relationships that have been developed to provide support systems to those living with HIV/AIDS

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal – for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.

An Increasing Number of Households & Families Face Economic Stress

Our strategies must speak not only to the fears, but also the hopes, of millions of people in this country – LGBT people and others – who are justifiably afraid and anxious about their own economic futures.

Poverty and economic hardship are widespread and increasing. Corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction are producing ever-greater wealth and income gaps between the rich and the poor, in this country and throughout the world. In the United States, more and more individuals and families (disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women) are experiencing the violence of poverty. Millions of people are without health care, decent housing, or enough to eat. We believe an LGBT vision for the future ought to accurately reflect what is happening throughout this country. People are forming unique unions and relationships that allow them to survive and create the communities and partnerships that mirror their circumstances, needs, and hopes. While many in the LGBT community call for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, many others – heterosexual and/or LGBT – are shaping for themselves the relationships, unions, and informal kinship systems that validate and support their daily lives, the lives they are actually living, regardless of what direction the current ideological winds might be blowing.

The Right’s “Marriage Movement” is Much Broader than Same-Sex Marriage

LGBT movement strategies must be sufficiently prophetic, visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right’s powerful and effective use of “wedge” politics – the strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another.

Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.

Moreover, as we all know, the Right has successfully embedded “stealth” language into many anti-LGBT marriage amendments and initiatives, creating a framework for dismantling domestic partner benefit plans and other forms of household recognition (for queers and heterosexual people alike). Movement resources are drained by defensive struggles to address the Right’s issue-by-issue assaults. Our strategies must engage these issues head-on, for the long term, from a position of vision and strength.

“Yes!” to Caring Civil Society and “No!” to the Right’s Push for Privatization

Winning marriage equality in order to access our partners’ benefits makes little sense if the benefits that we seek are being shredded.

At the same time same-sex marriage advocates promote marriage equality as a way for same-sex couples and their families to secure Social Security survivor and other marriage-related benefits, the Right has mounted a long-term strategic battle to dismantle all public service and benefit programs and civic values that were established beginning in the 1930s, initially as a response to widening poverty and the Great Depression. The push to privatize Social Security and many other human needs benefits, programs, and resources that serve as lifelines for many, married or not, is at the center of this attack. In fact, all but the most privileged households and families are in jeopardy as a result of a wholesale right-wing assault on funding for human needs, including Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, HIV-AIDS research and treatment, public education, affordable housing, and more.

This bad news is further complicated by a segment of LGBT movement strategy that focuses on same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. Should this strategy succeed, many individuals and households in LGBT communities will be unable to access benefits and support opportunities that they need because those benefits will only be available through marriage, if they remain available at all. Many transgender, gender queer, and other gender-nonconforming people will be especially vulnerable, as will seniors. For example, an estimated 70-80% of LGBT elders live as single people, yet they need many of the health care, disability, and survivorship benefits now provided through partnerships only when the partners are legally married.

Rather than focus on same-sex marriage rights as the only strategy, we believe the LGBT movement should reinforce the idea that marriage should be one of many avenues through which households, families, partners, and kinship relationships can gain access to the support of a caring civil society.

The Longing for Community and Connectedness

We believe LGBT movement strategies must not only democratize recognition and benefits but also speak to the widespread hunger for authentic and just community.

So many people in our society and throughout the world long for a sense of caring community and connectedness, and for the ability to have a decent standard of living and pursue meaningful lives free from the threat of violence and intimidation. We seek to create a movement that addresses this longing.

So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world. Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance.

We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.

The Principles at the Heart of Our Vision

We, the undersigned, suggest that strategies rooted in the following principles are urgently needed:

Ø Recognition and respect for our chosen relationships, in their many forms

Ø Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households, and families, and for the children in all of those households and families, including same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, second-parent adoptions, and others

Ø The means to care for one another and those we love

Ø The separation of benefits and recognition from marital status, citizenship status, and the requirement that “legitimate” relationships be conjugal

Ø Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households, and families

Ø Access for all to vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor

Ø Freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression

Ø Recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and practical affirmation of the importance of joining with others (who may or may not be LGBT) who also face opposition to their household and family compositions, including old people, immigrant communities, single parents, battered women, prisoners and former prisoners, people with disabilities, and poor people

We must ensure that our strategies do not help create or strengthen the legal framework for gutting domestic partnerships (LGBT and heterosexual) for those who prefer this or another option to marriage, reciprocal beneficiary agreements, and more. LGBT movement strategies must never secure privilege for some while at the same time foreclosing options for many. Our strategies should expand the current terms of debate, not reinforce them.

A Winnable Strategy

No movement thrives without the critical capacity to imagine what is possible.

Our call for an inclusive new civic commitment to the recognition and well-being of diverse households and families is neither utopian nor unrealistic. To those who argue that marriage equality must take strategic precedence over the need for relationship recognition for other kinds of partnerships, households, and families, we note that same-sex marriage (or close approximations thereof) were approved in Canada and other countries only after civic commitments to universal or widely available healthcare and other such benefits. In addition, in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.

A Vision for All Our Families and Relationships is Already Inspiring Positive Change

We offer a few examples of the ways in which an inclusive vision, such as we propose, can promote practical, progressive change and open up new opportunities for strategic bridge-building.

· Canada

Canada has taken significant steps in recent years toward legally recognizing the equal value of the ways in which people construct their families and relationships that fulfill critical social functions (such as parenting, assumption of economic support, provision of support for aging and infirm persons, and more).

o In the 1990s, two constitutional cases heard by that country’s Supreme Court extended specific rights and responsibilities of marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Canada’s federal Modernization of Benefits and Obligation Act (2000) then virtually erased the legal distinction between marital and non-marital conjugal relationships.

o In 2001, in consideration of its mandate to “consider measures that will make the legal system more efficient, economical, accessible, and just,” the Law Commission of Canada released a report, Beyond Conjugality, calling for fundamental revisions in the law to honor and support all caring and interdependent personal adult relationships, regardless of whether or not the relationships are conjugal in nature.

· Arizona

The Arizona Together Coalition (www.aztogether.org) is currently running a broad, multi-constituency campaign that emphasizes how the proposed constitutional amendment to “protect marriage” will affect not just same-sex couples but also seniors, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children and the business community. The Arizona Coalition highlights the probability that the amendment will eliminate domestic partnership recognition, by both government and businesses. They also point out that DOMA supporters are the same forces that wanted to keep cohabitation a crime. As a result of the Coalition’s efforts, support for the constitutional amendment declined sharply in polls (from 49% to 33%) in the course of a few months (May 2005 - September 2005). Accordingly, should the amendment make it onto the November 2006 ballot, Arizona is poised to become the first state to reject a state anti-gay constitutional marriage amendment in the voting booth. We suggest that the LGBT movement pay close attention to the way that activists in Arizona frame their campaign to be about protecting a variety of different family arrangements.

· South Carolina

The South Carolina Equality Coalition (www.scequality.org) is fighting a proposed constitutional amendment with an organizing effort emphasizing “Fairness for All Families.” This coalition is not only focused on LGBT-headed families, but is also intentionally building relationships with a broad multi-constituency base of immigrant communities, elders, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children, families of prisoners, and more. As we write this statement, the Coalition’s efforts to work in this broader way are being further strengthened by emphasis on the message that “Families have no borders. We all belong.”

· Utah

In September 2005, Salt Lake City Mayor Ross Anderson signed an Executive Order enabling city employees to obtain health insurance benefits for their “domestic partners.” A few months later, trumping the executive order, the Salt Lake City Council enacted an ordinance allowing city employees to identify an “adult designee” who would be entitled to health insurance benefits in conjunction with the benefits provided to the employee. The requirements included living with the employee for more than a year, being at least 18 years old, and being economically dependent or interdependent. Benefits extend to children of the adult designee as well. While an employee’s same-sex or opposite-sex partner could qualify, this definition is broad enough to encompass many other household configurations. The ordinance has survived both a veto by the Mayor (who wanted to provide benefits only to “spousal like” relationships) and a lawsuit launched by anti-gay groups. The judge who ruled in the lawsuit wrote that “single employees may have relationships outside of marriage, whether motivated by family feeling, emotional attachment or practical considerations, which draw on their resources to provide the necessaries of life, including health care.” We advocate close attention to such efforts to provide material support for the widest possible range of household formations.

We offer these four examples to show that there are ways of moving forward with a strategic vision that is broader than same-sex marriage, and encompassing of all our families and relationships. Different regions of our country will require different strategies, but we can, and must, keep central to our work the idea that all family forms must be protected – not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the strategic and winnable way to move forward.

A Bold, New Vision Will Speak to Many Who are Not Already With Us

At a time when an ethos of narrow self-interest and exclusion of difference is ascendant, and when the Right asserts a scarcity of human rights and social and economic goods, this new vision holds long-term potential for creating powerful and vibrant new relationships, coalitions, and alliances across constituencies – communities of color, immigrant communities, LGBT and queer communities, senior citizens, single-parent families, the working poor, and more –hit hard by the greed and inhumanity of the Right’s economic and political agendas.

At a time when the conservative movement is generating an agenda of fear, retrenchment, and opposition to the very idea of a caring society, we need to claim the deepest possibilities for interdependent social relationships and human expression. We must dare to dream the world that we need, the world that has room for us all, even as we also do the painstaking work of crafting the practical strategies that will address the realities of our daily lives. The LGBT movement has a history of being diligent and creative in protecting our families. Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.


We invite friends everywhere to join us in ensuring that there is room, recognition, and practical support for us all, as we dream together a new future where all people will truly be free.

[Severian]

All these generalities about why marriage is bad - are kinda beside the point.

You don't smash or especially weaken the patriarchal family by any of this rhetoric. Much of which is simply nonsensical - like "assimilationist", as if gays (or queers or whatever) were a nationality.

Marriage exists, and will continue to for some time. Many social benefits are distributed depending on marriage, and it won't be easy to change that.

Meanwhile, the denial of gay people's right to marriage stigmatizes them as inferior and depraved. You're not good enough, your relationships aren't good enough.

And obviously it denies many people access to many material benefits they are otherwise entitled to.

The last article does have a good point about the tremendous changes in family structure that have taken place. Certainly gay marriage or "civil unions" are far from sufficient to deal with all of that - and the demand that benefits be separated from marriage is does need to be worked out.

Probably a lot more thought is needed in order to put it into a form that's ready for prime time. Obviously you don't want to be seen as trying to take away Social Security benefits that somebody receives based on their late spouse's lifetime income.

[Martin Blank]

Originally posted by Severian@Aug 25 2006, 02:23 AM
Meanwhile, the denial of gay people's right to marriage stigmatizes them as inferior and depraved. You're not good enough, your relationships aren't good enough.

It goes deeper than that. In countries like the U.S., the issuing of marriage licenses and certificates are state services. The very concept of "equal protection under the law", which is part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in the U.S., also means equal access under the law.

(In the U.S., this is why the rightwing reactionaries are pushing for an amendment to the Constitution to restrict marriage to heterosexuals. They know that if it was challenged in federal court, the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would render all state laws and constitutional amendments, and all federal legislation short of a Constitutional amendment, unconstitutional.)

By denying equal access, a second-class citizenship level is codified. Moreover, it sets a precedent that can then be applied by the ruling class when and against whom it chooses (women, racial and national minorities, immigrants, etc.).

By accepting this denial of equal access, even if it is done with a ton of "left" rhetoric, is to enable the reactionaries in their efforts to create a second-class citizenship.

If you don't agree with marriage, then don't get married. But don't let your personal disagreement with the institution allow the reactionaries to institutionalize discrimination and second-class citizenship.

Miles