Bryan of Faggoty-Ass Faggot writes that the gay-rights movement is focusing too much on gay marriage:
If you truly believe that we should just keep doing more of the same – harping on one issue, getting shot down by voter initiative after court decision, believing that some miracle will come along to bring us the all-encompassing victory without winning the incremental fights first, forgetting that only a small percentage of our community will actually benefit from same-sex marriage when all of the community would benefit from employment, housing, education and hate crime laws – then come stand in front of me, nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye, and tell me straight to my face.
There’s some merit in this view. Granted, he doesn’t say that we should stop fighting entirely. But he’s not the only one who’s discouraged by the recent losses. Some wonder if the fight has even hurt us.
However, I urge people to read this paper: The Backlash Thesis and Same-Sex Marriage: Learning from Brown v. Board of Education and its Aftermath, by Carlos Ball. (At the bottom of that page you can download the entire paper.) Particularly the final section beginning on page 33.
Ball argues that the gains from same-sex marriage litigation have outweighed the losses.
One, some gay couples in the U.S. are now married. That, in and of itself, is a gain. Furthermore, the example of Massachusetts will show people that society doesn’t fall apart when gay people are allowed to marry.
Two, look what the gay marriage fight has done: it’s made civil unions the moderate position. Even George Bush has said he supports civil unions! The struggle has opened people’s eyes to why gay couples need at least some sort of legal recognition.
Three, the gay marriage fight has led to progress on other gay rights issues by making some people more willing to support other forms of equality for gay people.
That said, however, at this point there do seem to be diminishing returns from the litigation strategy. We’ll see what the New Jersey Supreme Court decides, probably next month. After that, a strategy shift might be necessary.
One final thing, though. It seems that we’re damned if we do fight for gay marriage and we’re damned if we don’t. The thing is, though, any social movement is going to lead to social disruption. We can’t get anywhere if we don’t fight at all.
In many cases, it is the conservative religious folks pushing the gay marriage issue, not gay people. If we sit around and don’t fight back, how will anything ever change.
it’s very convenient to say that we should focus on employment, education, etc… since they’re not, well, gay issues (unless you mean the military). And I think hate crime laws are terrible ideas – if I’m allowed to hate straight people, they’re allowed to hate me, so I think it’s all even. If the gays as a community get together to make sure other groups of people are better off, we’ll never get anything accomplished.
Just off the top of my head, I’d have to strongly disagree with F-A-F for the following reason: “hate crime” status is nice, but the only reason to call something a hate crime is to send a social message that it’s “officially” no longer acceptable to target someone because of their identity, be it racial or ethnic or religious or gender-based or sexual orientation or whatever. But it was never legal to lynch a black man for being black any more than it has ever been legal to bash a gay man for being gay: murder and assault have always been illegal. It’s just that law enforcement and the government have historically looked the other way.
So if we want to talk about *sending a message* to society that it’s no longer okay to discriminate against certain groups, then no, marriage is exactly the battle to pick, because as long as the government feels free to officially discriminate against us, the message that’s getting sent out is that gays are still bad. In my view, hate crime legislation is much less useful than pushing for marriage, which has resulted in the far-right being forced to show its hand — which is empty. Even if the procreation argument wins in court for today, most people will see the transparency of it.
I fight a lot — a lot. I hate seeing people picked on, abused, dis-respected, or otherwise hurt without need or provocation. I speak-up for strangers all the time, and even have a few scars to prove it. It isn’t always an easy decision, especially when i know my chances are slim-to-none to win. Matter of fact, it’s as hard a public-life as one can choose sometimes, i’m pretty sure of that by now, (examining two twisted digits). But, that all said, i’ve never had a court rule against me, or recommend anger-manegement.
When you don’t fight for something that is right, that is good, and that is just, it means that someone else will in due time (in some future incident, because of your to-easy-“I am turning my cheek now…” policies) either have to fight or be abused themselves — in your stead. A victim escaped is a victim delayed in the savages’ eyes. They’ll just as easily keep hunting, minus an Pavlovian teaching i might offer.
There are people who walk behind us, chronologically, and if you believe in the Truth and Beauty of altruism (and of Life), you’ll fight, too.
Not fighting, in this way, means being complacent to others’ pain that will, truly, follow; And that is a very bad kind of life to write.
rob@egoz.org