Check this: http://www.beyondmarriage.org/
What I wonder is, why are we focusing on marriage? Imagine my intrigue when on Facebook, someone else thought the same thought, and decided to create a group called "Why Marriage?????" and citing this website as a resource. However, the premise of this group is to create recognition for all sorts of relationships outside of the traditional definition of marriage.
What I am thinking of, however, is why must the queer community, and the queer activist community focus on the issue of gay marriage. Why is this issue OUR issue? Whose issue is it really? My feeling is that, as a queer person, there are other aspects of our lives where we are oppressed that don't have to do with marriage. Healthcare access, where queer people can receive appropriate and respectful treatment from medical care providers, is pretty important. Police brutality and violence in general is also another concern, as is mental health, including drug abuse and addiction. Finally, queer activists also need to reexamine issues that seem over and done with. If you're coming out and your parents might have a problem with that, you can get a Point Foundation Scholarship, or refer your parents to PFLAG. Yet, these conventional answers might not work so well for my parents, who are traditional Chinese immigrants. Cultural norms would preclude the option of seeking support from a group such as PFLAG where these issues would be discussed among strangers, especially when the fact that their daughter sometimes sees other girls cannot even be known by the grandparents who live with us. Issues that revolve around an ethnic minority cannot be ignored by the LGBT community, because we are also part of this community. Just because a bisexual Chinese-American is not a main character in "The L Word" or an FTM hapa hasn't captured Jack's eye in "Will and Grace" doesn't mean that we leave people of color issues to be dealt with by people of color activists. If we need to unite around the fact that there is very real oppression due to our sexual identities, then we need to be aware of the ease of division: gays versus lesbians, men/women, queer and trans, gender-normative genderfuck, bisexuals, class, ethnicity, ability, and too many other hairline cracks. Without this recognition that some of us have a lot of privileges, and then the action to address these divisions, victory in an area such as marriage may only mean a significant advancement for a white upper-class gay man.
I am only scratching the most superficial surface, because of my own ignorance. What other queer issues deserve more attention??
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I think that the healthcare issue (as well as a slew of others) is part in parcel with the gay marriage issue. Although marriage is superficially about two people being able to express their love in a mutual, eternal bond, the issue goes far beyond that. It extends to the ability for partners to share health coverage and benefits, for partners to have the hospital visitation rights that any other member of the immediate family would be granted, for partners to get the 'discount' on their taxes by filing jointly.
As you said, there are plenty of other LGBTIQ (still annoys me that lesbians get the top of that list...) issues at hand - most having to do with issues of tolerance. And while I fully support any person's right to gender identification and sexuality (or lack thereof - hooray queer theory), I don't think there's a whole lot that can be done in that regard without passing more crimethink (hate crime) legislation. All hate crime legislation does is make people tolerate others. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to go through life knowing that people merely put up with me...
--Mike
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i definitely thought about the healthcare thing in relation to the marriage issue but i mostly wanted to point out that queer issues go beyond what is usually associated with the word marriage.
i guess what i was trying to get across was that queer activists should also be examining their own assumptions about the homogeneity of a very mixed community and recognizing the lack of unity and sometimes blatant racism.
Yes, there are definitely many other issues that are deserving of the attention of the GLBT community. However, the issue of marriage comes wrapped up with a whole package of fundamental rights that, for many couples, are extremely important and urgent.
Yesterday, domestic partnerships were legalized in my state, Washington. (Woo-hoo! Yay! Finally! *cheers*)
The pilgrimage of same-sex couples up interstate-5 to our capitol, Olympia, was a sight to see. Their prospect? Official partnership licenses that grant them hospital visitation rights, insurance coverage, etc.
It was heart-warming to see so many couples, some of them partners for over 50 years, travelling off in their "Just Married" limmos.
So, in the end, of course there are other issues within the GLBT community. But most eminent is couples' struggle to gain fundamental rights, acknowledgement, and liberties. Once these liberties are secured, the community, I'm sure, will move on to higher planes of expression and interest.
Until then, I'm proud to finally see the procession of "married" couples returning from the capitol today--some rights and liberties in hand.
Mosseltoff!
Allison
"Be the change you want to see in the world" ~Mahatma Gandhi
basically, i wanted to explore a point of view that i've heard from some queer people of color (qpoc) activists, that marriage is an upper-class white issue aka one for very privileged people. while gaining marriage rights may go a long way to helping other issues, there are some issues that seem more immediate for some people.
for example, a lot of kids get beat up or harrassed or shunned for being queer. how will marriage rights help these kids at this very moment?
marriage may be the most important issue but maybe it's not framed in a way that is relevant to qpoc and if not, maybe the concept needs to reexamined. what are the assumptions being made? who do these assumptions exclude? what i've heard from other qpoc activists is that the issue of marriage feels like it's an issue for people who have every other privilege and right except marriage.
i'm definitely going to rewrite this entry sometime soon, i was going off a stream of consciousness.
Your original point about marriage not being the only issue is very valid and interesting. I had actually never heard that point brought up before, so it was a refreshing topic.
Maybe an interesting topic for a future blog would be the use of the word "queer" within the gay community. I see a lot of gay people calling themselves "queer," and freely using that term to describe themselves.
I don't know about anyone else, but the word "queer" has a very negative connotation for me. It implies that something's off, something's wierd or strange, or screwed up--even unnatural and disgusting.
Why do you, and qpoc, or "queer people of color" feel comfortable with the word 'queer?'
Just curious.
Allison
"Be the change you want to see in the world" ~Mahatma Gandhi
since i've never had any formal education on queer theory, i don't have the complete story. what i do know is that:
1. the word queer is a kind of reclamation. by proudly calling myself "queer" it means that i take power away from the people who use it as an insult.
2. people identify as a lot of terms such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, bi-curious, fluid, pansexual, downe, asexual, trans, intersex, two-spirit, etc. using an acronym such as "LGBTIQQA" is cumbersome and will never include EVERYONE. using words such as "gay" and "lesbian" also excludes a lot of people who are similarly oppressed. queer is a word that can include more people than just naming the individual labels and can also remind members of the community that we ARE a community (well i hope). i think it basically just tries to unite everyone with a nonnormative sexuality and/or gender identity/presentation.
3. along the lines of "sexuality is fluid" some people feel that words such as "bisexual" are too confining because people that they're attracted to may not identify as "male" and "female." the word "queer" seeks to break the conceptualization of sex, gender and sexuality out of a binary, such as solely homosexual-heterosexual or male-female.
4. also, for a lot of people, sexual preferences change over a lifetime whereas a label such as "lesbian" is usually conceptualized as pretty fixed.
hi allison, i just wrote an entry on some LGBT-related terms. it might be of interest to you.
http://www.progressiveu.org/104751-lgbtiqqabcdefg-what-a-primer-on-a-few...
In the UK, where I live, we've had gay marriage (technically civil partnerships) for a year or two now. As much as I support anyone who wishes to seek this legal recognition, I personally feel a little alienated by it. I am (queer/lesbian) female and my partner is FtM (although still legally female). Therefore we could go for a civil partnership - but we are not a same sex couple. Likewise, in the UK we have gender recognition certificates so my partner could at some point be recognised as male, in that case we could get married - but we are not a heterosexual couple. I feel that gay marriage plus straight marriage leaves a few of us out in the cold.
At the moment I'm thinking I'd love to have a big commitment ceremony without any legal implications. Some things do worry me though, hospital visitation rights for example, especially as my partner's family may turn out to be hostile in such a situation.
As for other queer issues that are important, I think just general recognition would be a start. To most people queer=gay or it sounds offensive as Allison said.
thanks for your reply!
well, since i don't really identify as a member of the queer community i don't really think i can contribute much to this discussion but i do think that a major issue that isn't being addressed is the way the idea of any kind of non-hetero orientation/identity is treated at the high school and college levels. for example, personally i freely identified as bi during our senior year of high school because i felt like i was in an environment that would accept that identity and move on, with no further repercussions. however, once i came to school and encountered a lot of immature, ignorant, fundamentalist and/or plain ol' conservative viewpoints and i no longer felt comfortable letting people know that i was anything other than 100% straight. even people that i otherwise consider to be intelligent, well-read, and pretty enlightened sometimes have backwards views on sexuality, which i can only assume are culturally ingrained. i don't really know what can be done about it, but that's definitely something i see outside of the gay marriage debate.
--stacie
Simple. Marriage (or more precisely the freedom to marry) is a fundamental right of all citizens, and there is strong precedent in our jurisprudence to support the position that preventing us from marrying out chosen spouses is unconstitutional. But beyond that, marriage is an "umbrella" issue, that addresses some of the most basic issues of discrimination that gay people (and gay families) face...insurance and health care, parent/child rights, inheritance and joint property, and many other issues are "wrapped up" in the same package. If we achieve the acknowledgment of our freedom to marry, then many of the other issues can be solved much more easily.
Also, I don't like looking at issues from the point of view of the "queer community." We have rights because we are citizens, and because we are human beings, not because we are gay. When you start to view these questions just in terms of our own community, you actually justify one of the most common arguments used in conservative rhetoric against us, that is that we are seeking "special" rights rather than "equal" rights.
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.
Careful. You say rights when you mean privileges or benefits or treatment. I agree with the point of view, but the word 'rights' always tends to diminish an argument in my eyes because it appeals to an unsupported normative.
--Mike
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When one speaks of the freedom marriage, we are talking about a "right," specifically referred to as such by our Supreme Court. For example, in Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Court said...
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.
And I find that phrasing a little more than weird. Speaking of rights with respect to a man-made institution seems very strange to me. Though, I guess there are voting rights...
--Mike
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thanks for your comment!
ideally, queer issues would be framed in terms of human rights. however, issues need to be examined from individuals of a certain group because issues affect people differently. in my (very limited) experience, people who are outside of the affected group will very rarely care about the affected group. that is the assumption i come in with. while i don't want to be a "representative" for my group (in this case, queer people of color) i do want people to know that i am influenced by my friends who are queer people of color and that i probably mirror their beliefs.
also, a lot of movements have been known by their groups: the chicano movement, the american indian movement, women's suffrage/women's liberation, gay liberation. these groups weren't quite included under the umbrella civil rights movement.
> in my (very limited) experience, people who are
> outside of the affected group will very rarely
> care about the affected group.
I disagree. Discrimination is very much enabled by the apathy of most people, but the simple fact is that minorities (and especially small minorities) really don't have the power to force compliance onto the majority. Discrimination is only defeated when the majority recognizes the common humanity that they share with the oppressed minority. What the minority does have the power to do, however, is to confront the majority, and to stand resolute before it, and force them to witness the results of the discrimination the both enact and enable.
percivale
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"Once we recognize the common parent stock from which we are all sprung, we realize the basic unity of the human family, and there is no room left for enmities and unhealthy competition. ~ MAHATMA GANDHI
"Discrimination is only defeated when the majority recognizes the common humanity that they share with the oppressed minority. What the minority does have the power to do, however, is to confront the majority, and to stand resolute before it, and force them to witness the results of the discrimination the both enact and enable."
i agree with this. my original point was that issues will affect people in different ways based on identity. i think i said that people don't "care" about other people out of my own cynicism, but maybe "people forget about other people" would be a better description.
in my experience with campus organizing, minorities such as queer asians are often forgotten within the asian-american community as well as the queer community. the majority in both of these communities assume that a queer asian person is completely in line with that particular dominant culture. many times, a queer asian person isn't completely in line. in an asian-american setting, i always bring up the fact that there are queer asians, and that queer issues should be examined by this community. in a queer setting, i always bring up the fact that things like coming out and family may be experienced somewhat differently by queer asians, and that cultural issues should be recognized. so in general, what i do is that i remind people that there are minorities within each of these communities as well, so that the majority doesn't ignore them. that is why i talk about issues from a particular perspective, to remind a majority that the community is NOT homogenous.
You know how to end discrimination? Make it a fashion statement. Bracelets, pins, patches - look what it did for Darfur and prostate cancer.
--Mike
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Ok, I was too lazy to read everyone's comments (sorry, but I don't have the patience) but here are my views as someone who considers themself an ally and faghag, but not homosexual:
There are definitely bigger discrimination issues gays should focus on (and I'm sure that some are trying) than gay marriage. But here's a viewpoint I don't think anyone said: Under the law, anyone can get a civil union. You live together, you send in joint taxes, it's a union. But a union is not marriage, and under the law, since equal protection should exist, marriage should be fine too. So it seems to me that once gays started getting marriages, gay marriage became an issue. I think it's almost an issue pursued by heterosexuals that homosexuals have to fight just to maintain territory. Unfortunately, the battle for gay rights is not one-sided.
Does that make any sense to you? I'm about to start a class called "Queer Politics and Community" so I can keep you updated with what I learn.
Love the blog Willa!!!! (you know I just like to argue!)
b-money
"A cactus is the opposite of a chair. In my house you can sit anywhere but there."