LGBT Struggle is not Diminished by Marriage Equality

We have just begun to fight!

The legalization of marriage, like the acceptance of queers in the military, is not the endpoint of LGBT struggle. It is necessary to have the same rights and opportunities as heterosexual people, even when applied to institutions you may not personally respect.

The right to marry in all fifty states is nothing to sneeze at, especially when it comes to elderly folks and the terminally ill. It is essential to remember that many LGBT individuals still have families who might swoop in and confiscate everything should a partner die.

How feeling good about the victory of same-sex marriage is inherently reactionary is one of the many puzzling, self-defeating stances of some lesbians who consider themselves progressive leftists. It is not an endorsement of the institution of marriage or that of the military to extend the scope of who's allowed to do whatever. It does not diminish other struggles. Those who view marriage as the be all and end all of queer rights are simply short-sighted, not the enemy. I get so tired of lesbians fighting each other. It's just another manifestation of internalized oppression.

What we need now is total constitutional equality that outlaws housing and job discrimination. These issues will not be dealt with more quickly the more that we, like crabs in a barrel, pull each other down. Lighten up anti-marriage crusaders! The longest journey begins with one small step.

Marriage is Not the Answer

With all the rose-colored musings on the wonders of marriage that have arrived with our newly acquired, still limited marriage rights, you’d think that all the problems of the LGBT community had just been solved with one stroke of a Supreme Court Fairy’s pen. But this flurry of excitement, while contagious, obscures the fact that the institution of marriage is woefully inadequate as a panacea to remedy even the challenges of our personal lives, not to mention our political ones.

I remember, in the seventies, being totally perplexed when the boyfriend of politician Harvey Milk committed suicide. Someone who was part of a couple offing themselves? How could that be possible? What does this mean? In my own fantasies the idea of finding a girlfriend would put all my existential angst to rest.

Marriage is part of a canned, lobotomized prescription for” happiness,” and in reality not much more than a massive advertising campaign. Americans tend to worship the philosophy of “rugged individualism.” Within this doctrine, all formulas for a productive life begin and end with you and yours. The acquisition of wealth is but another of these personal solutions. Reproduction is fundamental as well. Babies are just a commodity created by the family.

In this world view, poor, minority, female, queer babies all have their roles to play whether it is as a target for police, cashier for a convenience store, CEO for an internet giant, or doctor for the upper crust. Whatever their future role, babies keep their parents in line financially and help disseminate this “capitalist mystique.”

At my old librarian job, access to system-wide emails was strictly limited. Yet, we all received announcements of a co-workers marriage or birth of a child. Never did we get information about an employee who’d written and produced a play, an art gallery opening featuring someone’s work or a mountain successfully climbed. In fact, those accomplishments were seen as threatening, taking away from our “real” work in the service hierarchy of the library.

Why are we encouraged to retreat into a universe of marriage, babies and private life? The answer seems obvious. Together, questioning, participating, exploring greater community issues is too threatening to the powers that be. We might grow to see and understand things that would make the crumbs they throw us harder to accept, one that could jeopardize their dominance and hegemony.

It is absolutely necessary that queers have the civil right to marry, to adopt children, to join the military and share every single right that heterosexuals possess. But to elevate marriage to the highest, most noble fulfilling goal is to perpetrate a lie. Each of us is a member of a larger community, beyond the nuclear family and its rigid boundaries. We must make political sense of our shared circumstances and rise and fall together

Breathe Easier and Fight Harder!

 Keep on Keepin' On

Today I have been pleasantly surprised by the American people. Not only has the Romney threat been eviscerated but many other positive things transpired. California's Measure 32, the big-buisness attempt to thwart union power has been defeated. Maine and Maryland have voted FOR same-sex marriage rights, this popular vote marking a first in the string of 33 state defeats. And Minnesotans have voted down an amendment to preserve marriage bigotry.

The pro-rape philosophers Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock each lost their races: Todd Akin to Claire McCaskill and Richard Mourdock to Joe Donelly. Ah yes, the lord works in mysterious ways!

Elizabeth Warren defeated incumbent Scott Brown in Massasschussets and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin won to become the first openly gay member of the Senate. Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado and even Virginia all stood up against Romney's war on the 47 percent.

Marijuana has been legalized in Colorado and Washington.

I understand that these results mean that we progressives have our work cut out for us. But now at least we can breathe a bit easier as we push into high gear with our committment to build a more democratic and egalitarian society!

State by State Civil Rights?

Women Worked Long and Hard

Yes, I am glad that our frightened, ultra-cautious, politically pandering president gave a grudging nod to same-sex marriage after a swift one to the behind by butt-kicker, Joe Biden. But I am not happy with the sentence he used to qualify his decision, the one relating to Sasha and Malia friends who have very nice, acceptable queer parents. Civil rights should not be dependent on niceness or acceptability. Even the craziest and nastiest minority members deserve to be treated as human beings.

Same-sex marriage rights, or other civil rights for minorities have and will continue to lose when put up for a vote by the majority. The pitches for these votes repeatedly call upon representing "the will of the people." But exactly who are the people? I have always been deluded into believing that I am one of them.

Women did not win suffrage by a majority vote. It was through prolonged political struggle. Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution pass giving over one half of the population the right to determine their own destinies through the ballot box. The first stirrings of that movement occurred as far back as the 1820's, one-hundred years earlier.

So many of us will not live to see victory for LGBT civil rights. By victory, I mean full federal constitutional protections on every level, from health care, to job discrimination, to immigration, inheritance, tax law, everything that heterosexuals take for granted. These rights extend far beyond the simple concept of marriage. They are the building blocks that could help create a foundation of a fair and equal society, at least on paper.

In My Mind I'm Shunning Carolina

I hate to admit it but my partner and I just missed having summer vacation plans to visit North Carolina. We had heard from many friends that Asheville is an oasis of progressive thought in a vast desert of a mindless, self-righteous brand of hate-mongering Christianity that scares the crap out of me.

Now, with the overwhelming passage of unnecessary and repetitively anti-gay Amendment 1, North Carolina has proven itself to be a place worth avoiding. Because of it, not only will queers be unable to obtain rights connected with marriage or civil unions, unmarried heterosexuals will likewise face discrimination and the inability to be legally recognized in any way whatsoever. A couple of commie-jew-dykes like us have no business spending our precious money and time in this environment.

The last time the state of North Carolina amended its constitution was to ban interracial marriage! So the precedent is as clear as their desired result. I often wonder what this country would be like if only the South had seceded.

As far as summer vacation goes, Deborah and I will be visiting one of our favorite countries, Mexico. Many expatriate Americans of all stripes reside there. Perhaps the new wave of immigration will be in the opposite direction. Anyway, like so many Jews of our generation who are referred to as paranoid and neurotic, we are always on the lookout for a place to go, just in case of exile. I would term this kind of sensibility practical and realistic rather than cynical and far-fetched!

Bending Under the Weight...

A Heavy Burden

Ok, so here's a rundown of news that running us down. The Walmart gender discrimination lawsuit got thrown out by the US Supremes, setting a dangerous precedent for future class action lawsuits that deal with all forms of discrimination.

A 59 year old North Carolina guy robbed a bank, demanding only one dollar because he decided that prison would be the best place to get free health care to have a painful tumor in his chest treated. But because he didn't take much or have a weapon, he might not get the full three years of care that he was counting on.

New York State will vote on same-sex marriage tomorrow and Obama, who will be doing a fundraiser for LGBT folks. The ticket prices for this donation event range from $1,250 to $35,8000. Will he have any words of wisdom, even though his opinion is still "evolving" on the question of full civil rights for queer folks.

Housing prices are dropping, temperatures are rising, storms are brewing, collective bargaining rights are being legislated out of existence, the public sector salaries, benefits and pensions are being raided and drained and we now have a class of permanently unemployed and unemployable ex-workers. Income inequality is becoming an impassable abyss and the U.S. infrastructure is decaying.

The US postal service has stopped paying into retirement for its employees and will no longer have mail delivery on Saturdays. Postal collection boxes have all but disappeared from street corners.

I attended a reading at a local newly opened bookstore. Amazingly, they didn't have any restrooms for the use of those attending. This is the first time I've ever come across an issue like this at a public place in the United States. Even in places like Mexico and Turkey public facilities exist although they might not be all that clean.

Just coming out of the BART station to work this morning all the escalators were out of service and have been all week. I have no idea how disabled patrons are getting to street level.

In the vain hope of finding some solution to these problems, my partner and I went to a moveon.org meeting. We were quickly identified as an enemy element because, along with a few other group members, we were pushing for more concrete, activist solutions, instead of just their standard "house parties." The presenter informed us that to have any kind of a mass mobilization she would have to get permits and insurance very far in advance. I'm old enough to remember organizing situations where LGBT rights were being rescinded state by state and we just showed up and marched. Well mentioning the memory of another type of organizing got us both labeled troublemakers and not "real" Americans. To the moveon leadership."real" Americans don't live in Berkeley and have political sympathies with the "family values" bunch. Nightmares in the face of their attempt to "save the American dream," they even removed our names from their email list.

It's enough to make a sane person throw in the towel.  Americans are depressed, despondent completely resigned to the doom and destruction that awaits us. And our mainstream political parties and organized groups are not helping us out of our deepening rut. Zapata said, "It's better to live on your feet than die on your knees!" I guess that until we can stand up, we'll just keep crawling along.