First published in Bay Windows, August 3, 2006
On July 26, a few hundred leftist LGBT activists and allies issued a manifesto entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," stating they "hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today." At over 3000 words, the document is far too radical, fails to focus on LGBT rights, is abysmally ill-timed, plays into the hands of the anti-gay right and reflects the old penchant of the gay left for building strategic bridges to nowhere.
The signatories are primarily from the liberationist wing of the LGBT movement. By contrast, those of us on the assimilationist side do not seek a revolution, we simply want equal rights. This dichotomy has existed since Harry Hay was expelled from the Mattachine Society in 1953. By long habit, the liberationists are using recent setbacks to portray us as a community under siege, as if we had not made astonishing progress and the polls were not shifting in our favor.
Some of the signatories, like Paula Ettelbrick, have long opposed the fight for equal marriage rights because they regard marriage as an oppressive patriarchal institution. Contrary to their static viewpoint, marriage and the rights of women have changed greatly over the past half-century, as reflected by landmark Supreme Court decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird and Roe v. Wade.
The manifesto decries "corporate greed" while ignoring the fact that the corporate sector has outstripped the public sector in granting domestic partner benefits. Indeed, the sweeping socialist rhetoric made me want to break into a hearty rendition of "The Internationale." Somehow, the grim and bloody history of utopian schemes does not discourage the True Believers, who seek to liberate us all from the most successful economic system in the history of the world because of its flaws. This reminds me of the Quentin Crisp line, "Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."
To show that their proposal "is neither utopian nor unrealistic," they point out that "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." The radical right does claim that same-sex marriage will lead to an explosion of polygamy and other unorthodox arrangements, but how in the world do we advance the gay-rights cause by letting our enemies frame the discussion?
The manifesto's all-inclusiveness reflects the longstanding liberationist opposition to focusing primarily on LGBT issues, because, they say, all oppressions are linked. No other minority group has been so apologetic about working for its own interests. The same liberationists who make a fetish of diversity (instead of simply dealing with it as many of us have learned to do) also habitually denigrate white men, which suggests they are inspired more by guilt or revenge than by egalitarianism.
The manifesto touts a long list of issues, including health care, housing, Social Security, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance. How is all of this the special province of the gay community? Taking on every non-gay-specific issue only makes us a bigger target for our adversaries. Marriage equality and the incremental steps toward it will pose enough of a challenge for the next couple of decades.
Society is continually changing, though not all at once. Those who regard marriage as oppressive treat it as monolithic and unchanging, which ironically is precisely how our adversaries on the religious right see it.
On the contrary, allowing same-sex couples to marry is just one more reform enhancing a foundational institution of society. The liberationists object to the special status accorded marriage, citing (for example) the needs of poor non-traditional families, which are "disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women." Not only do the manifesto writers show no interest in examining which taxpayer-funded solutions have worked and which have not, they treat the high number of broken homes in the black community as a mere lifestyle choice instead of a tragedy.
Another theme of the document is gender nonconformity. As someone who has worked in practical ways for transgender rights for many years, I see no need to spin all of society around every variation in order to defend diversity. Efforts by Queer Theorists to redefine "sex" and "gender" have obscured more than enlightened. While gender roles vary significantly from culture to culture, the division of the sexes into male and female is a result of biology, not a social construct. The fact that a small number of people fall between the two stools, and deserve protection, does not change this basic duality in our genetic makeup. The notion that tolerance requires abolishing our biologically derived categories is, well, perverse.
Unlike the manifesto writers, I do not consider myself part of a "queer" community, and I have no intention of accepting "gender queer" as a serious category. Mind you, I am a longtime gay rights activist; the average American voter will be even less receptive to the permanent revolution implied by these counterculturists who emphasize differences rather than common values, victimhood rather than inner strength, and entitlement rather than responsibility. Demanding equal legal status for every conceivable type of relationship, including polyamory, is a strategy for permanent outsider status.
The rallying cry about leaving no one behind brings to mind the overcrowded, un-seaworthy boats in which so many Cuban refugees have drowned. Flying the false flag of liberation, the authors of the Beyond Marriage manifesto would have us all climb aboard a ship of fools.