One couldn’t help but smile at the hundreds and thousands of people revelling in Pride and the legalization of gay marriage. The positive press about the LGBT community stood in stark contrast to the derogatory condemnations of “faggots and perverts” during the pre-Stonewall era 41 years ago. But there is more to marriage “equality” than meets the eye; and peel away the surface and you find politics, money and the limited expectations of the mainstream gay lobby at play.
Cuomo, Bloomberg and Quinn triumphantly marched down Fifth ave while the bands played and cheering crowds hailed Cuomo as the gay emancipator. What was ignored was that the same weekend that gay rights was beling celebrated, the NYPD raided a gay leather bar. What is also ignored was the police tried to shut down the revellers from the anti-assimilationist drag march from gathering outside the Stonewall Inn. While the press was cheering Bloomberg and his massive giveaway to Republican and Democrat legislators who supported the gay vote, not one reporter or mainstream gay rights activist asked publicly why Bloomberg had a sudden change of heart after using New York City tax dollars to fight gay marriage back in 2005. Cuomo was certainly crowned king of the day, he has secured the gay vote in New York and certainly in the nation. But, a week after the vote came through, Cuomo decided to allow fracking. What good is marriage equality when Cuomo has just given the green light to poison the water supply in New York State?
Lastly, there is the very meaning of marriage itself and the exclusionary nature of marriage legalization.
Like any subset of a population, gays are not a monolithic community.
But, over the past two decades, the largest and wealthiest, gay lobby, the Human Rights Campaign has been dominating gay rights by pushing a conservative, assimilationist and corporate driven agenda under the guise of “equality”. The HRC version of gay rights is a clean cut, well off white gay man and his partner. Well groomed (think Ellen) token Lesbians are included in their marketing. The HRC strives to portray the homosexual community as straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting or a Leave it to Beaver episode but with same sex couples who scream, “Don’t fear us, we want to be like you! Lobby groups like the HRC, and GLAAD are not about fighting for the rights for all members of the community but rather fighting for what is fundable for their organizations. Hence, the 60’s and 70’s cry of liberation has been the lobbyist agenda of equality and the emergence of the lowered expectations for queer rights. The three main goals of big gay are
1) Gay Marriage
2) Gays in the Military
3) Hate crimes.
These sound like laudable goals on the surface but they grossly limit our rights. For example. Gay marriage leaves out the rights of those who never want to get married and marriage equality opens doors for some, but shuts doors for others (this includes straight domestic partners). Domestic partners (straight and now gay) face even more pressure to get married in order to gain access to health plans, power of attorney etc. Already, those companies that do have a domestic partner access are now moving to terminate this option (already priced at a higher rate to consumers) now that marriage has been extended to the gay community.
The second issue, gays in the military, is another example of the politics of lowered expectations. In a time of war, why are so called progressive organizations fighting to allow gay cannon fodder for the military. Why aren’t these groups fighting to end all job descrimination?
The third issue is hate crimes. Again, it sounds good on the surface but we live in a society where 2 million people are incarcerated in the prison-industrial complex. Why not focus on education and prevention rather than after the fact, when a queer person has been brutalized and the perpetrator of that violence is then sent to prison where he can prey on imprisoned queers?
Real liberation, real rights for all queers is about working for not what’s low hanging fruit and what’s most fundable and advantageous for the most assimilated. Rather it is fighting for those in our community who are the most marginalized. It is fighting against continued police brutality and harrassment, it is fighting for the rights of queer homeless, queer prisoners and the transgendered community. It is fighting to for our acceptance with bias, both those who want to assimilate and those who refuse to follow the mainstream. This is sadly still all but ignored save by the radical pockets within the queer community who are still out there fighting hard for real liberation.
Jessica Rechtschaffer lives in New York.
