Anti-marriage voices seek input in fight for gay equality

[kweerwolf]

It was perhaps to be expected from such a large conference with so many diverse voices, but it struck queer activist Joseph DeFilippis, nonetheless. At the plenary session on Saturday, November 12 at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference, John D'Emilio, former director of the task force's Policy Institute and current professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, harshly criticized gay marriage proponents for what he characterized as misplaced priorities and a hijacking of the movement. Following D'Emilio's remarks, said DeFilippis, half the room burst into uproarious applause. The other half of the crowd sat confused, almost as if stunned to be in the company of its own community.

"My feeling about this year's Creating Change was, 'Wow. There really are two different conferences happening,'" said DeFilippis, the executive director of New York's Queers for Economic Justice, and one of several panelists at last Thursday's pre-conference institute dealing with class issues. "There were all these major marriage activists, and all these people who were really sick of it. Some people were sick of it because they felt it diverted energy and funds from other issues. And some people, like myself, are actually scared about what gay marriage is going to do."

DeFilippis and others at last week's conference said they favored domestic partnerships and other ways to legally recognize nontraditional family structures such as the army of ex-lovers that often serves as a caregiving network for queers and polyamorous and extended families of all sexualities. Pushing for things like universal healthcare, they said, would be preferable to pretending that marriage would take care of LGBT people who do not have romantic partners or jobs with benefits. And upholding the notion that only romantically involved people are committed enough to deserve recognition, they said, could have devastating effects on the community.

If conferences like Creating Change are a microcosm of the national LGBT movement, then it is evident that more outreach must be done to bring pro-marriage and anti-marriage forces together in the struggle. This is particularly true in places like California, where the right wing has combined the issues of marriage and domestic partnerships in an effort to discriminate against all relationships – gay and straight – that deviate from the one man-one woman model of economic and legal responsibility.

http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=360

Wow! Someone finally got up and said what I've been thinking: That the marriage issue (although important) has hijacked energy from LGBT issues that are more universal to the entire community.

[Ian David]

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"I think everyone in our movement wants to make sure we don't put into our constitution restrictions and prohibitions against any community. Whether we think the institution of marriage is a good or bad thing, we all should be united to end government discrimination based on gender and sex in any aspect of the law. Until we do that it's going to be very difficult to start broadening recognition of families in other ways."

Both Kors and DeFilippis agree that gay marriage activists need the support of their community members who do not favor marriage, and likewise, queers opposed to gay marriage still have a stake in the fight.

Ultimately, they said, the gay marriage bans nationwide are more about threatening the existence of queers and other marginalized populations, and the efforts to defeat these bans need to call the attacks for what they are.

"The right wing uses these issues to get people to the polls to vote for their candidates. And it uses its successes to go after other issues, from a woman's right to choose to our school curriculums," said Kors. "If we don't stop this here, these initiatives will result in increased attacks against our community. It's important that we're clear that these attacks are not about marriage at all."

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http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=360