Syndicate and Hague

I’m not entirely sure how to start this, so I will start by saying I’m going to obscure some specifics in this to protect someone I care about while still trying to communicate the larger implications/issues in the decision that was handed down.

Megan and I were asked to participate in an interview with a media outlet with a fairly large distribution. The interview was - in general - about relationship decisions and dynamics and whether the choices we made in ours caused us to fight less or made our relationship different from others.

I was surprised, and a little impressed, that they would be willing to interview a married couple about something that had nothing to do with our status as a “same-sex” couple. Of course, it was my friend who was hunting down people for the story, and we came to mind because Megan and I make a big effort to look at the major stumbling blocks of relationships - chores, responsibilities, money - and make explicit, managed decisions about things so that we don’t wind up passive-aggressively damaging the relationship due to resentment/grudges.

Also, we really like being happy.

Anyway, tonight the word came down that we couldn’t be interviewed because they didn’t think that it was “surprising that a same-sex married couple would *insert doing the thing we do here*” and needed a straight married couple for it.

My initial surprise at the wonderful banality of us doing a story that had nothing to do with our genders was misguided. It wasn’t the institution of media that didn’t care, it was our friend who analytically looked at the topic and decided we would be a great couple to speak to it.

And here is where the diatribe comes in:

In this instance, they didn’t want a same sex couple because then they couldn’t play traditional gender roles against the “change” that they perceive is going on. Essentially, the decisions themselves weren’t the story, but the perceived decrease of male authority in the household was the story.

Media is one way we interpret our existence. We consume it, we are influenced by it, and I think we often forget how contrived things are. People in general don’t spend a ton of time thinking about audience and how carefully interview subjects are selected to influence a certain desired perception in the audience. Yes, liberals deconstruct FOX News, but venerated news outlets spin constantly as well.

This is why it drives me crazy when straight people say things like “Well, we don’t have a ’straight’ pride parade, I don’t understand why you have to do that sort of thing.” Heterosexuality is inscribed and reinforced as dominant, and homosexuality is so threatening that - unless a story is specifically constructed around it - it cannot exist. It cannot be banal, it must always be controversial. Decisions are made on a daily basis about what can be spoken to and what cannot be, and without us running around waving flags and making our presence known, we would be swept under the carpet forever.

The media outlet’s decision on this was one part homophobia, one part sexism, and one part reinforcement of the aberration of female equality or power in a heterosexual relationship.

That last one is what really kills me about this. Let’s give the management the benefit of the doubt on the homophobia and say that wasn’t a factor (::ha::). The point of explicitly wanting to frame the discussion around a straight couple making decisions that, for some reason, you wouldn’t expect them to make should force the question: why is this an issue? Usually, it’s about some traditional female role that is being upended:

• she’s making more money now, how does the guy feel?
• the guy decided to stay home with the kids, is he being mocked?
• she has a more advanced degree, does that make him feel inferior?

I’m sure you could add to the list, because you read/watch/hear these stories all the time. And they reinforce to us as a society that we should feel surprised by these showings of female authority/power. That we should be concerned by the lowered status of men in these relationships. It inscribes a very specific kind of spin and serves as a form of societal push-back onto a select group of people who either represent a changing society or people fear are representing a changing society.

It’s messed up.

Anyway. I wish I could actually talk about what we were going to talk about, because it’s interesting, but I wanted to be able to be critical without jeopardizing anyone’s job. It’s crappy times out there, you know?

With the massive amount of twitter activity on the topic, I’m sure you’ve seen that Amazon.com (I won’t link) has gotten some sizable damage from deleting the sales rank of not only LGBT books (academic, erotic, plain old fiction, any and all of it period), but of feminist books and books like “The Joy of Sex.” This means that books sink to the bottom in search results or aren’t displayed at all (Bastard Out of Carolina comes in 5th at Amazon, and in its rightful place of 1st on Barnes and Noble, the new non-fiction book, “Unfriendly Fire,” on military policy and don’t ask don’t tell does not even show up on Amazon’s actual book listing now - only the Kindle version is returned in the search results), and that they don’t show up on the main pages if they’re top sellers.

If you look at the #amazonfail twitter search, you’ll see all the links to more information on what’s going on.

What I want to highlight is that homophobia is not a new phenomenon at Amazon.com. Many years ago - ten years ago, to be exact - Amazon Bookstore here in Minneapolis sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The dot com’s legal strategy? Make Amazon Bookstore out to be a bunch of lesbians selling lesbian books and dismiss the suit that way. Nevermind that Amazon Bookstore had best selling literature on its shelves, and in recent years had an extensive children’s section to serve the population of the South Minneapolis neighborhood it was in - no, “feminist” and “women-owned” meant “lesbian” to Amazon.com and its lawyers and they played that one out to the end.

I don’t need to repeat the excellent article Salon.com wrote back in 1999, but I would like to note that ten years ago questioning people under oath about their personal sexuality was far more intimidating than it would be today. And it’s not like it’s an easy topic now.

I will say this - ten years ago, the Internet wouldn’t have been filled with outraged people on Twitter. Things are really changing. And I’m grateful for tools like Twitter that allow for massive dissemination of information at lightning speed. Amazing.

Amazon has been an #amazonfail for years, you just didn’t know it. Thanks to Twitter and the Internet, now you do. Don’t forget it.

Shop local, folks. You can start at IndieBound if you don’t know your local booksellers.

The common portrayal of gays and lesbians in the media is this: dual income, no kids; highly educated; artistic; relatively affluent; white. It’s been part of the argument some have made about gay marriage - think of all the money gay and lesbian people would bring in with their fancy weddings!

This observation is, of course, somewhat true. The only reason Megan and I are traveling out East for our wedding (along with a few friends, all of us contributing to the Massachusetts economy) is because it’s legal there and not here in Minnesota. Middle class people can travel, upper class people can travel and throw lavish affairs.

This perception was something that ran under some anti-gay sentiment during the arguments over proposition 8, and also reinforces the idea that gays are just rich, white, and privileged.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are poor gay people. It shouldn’t surprise me that gays and lesbians are poorer than our heterosexual counterparts, but it did. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law released the results of a study they did that compiled and analyzed data from the 2000 Census, the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the 2003 and 2005 California Health Interview Surveys. via Echelon

Though poverty is on the rise among all Americans, the authors of the study–entitled Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community–suggest that unique social and political aspects of LGB life play a role in contributing to higher rates of poverty in this community, including vulnerability to employment discrimination, inability to marry and higher numbers of uninsured.

Key findings include:

• After comparing families with similar characteristics, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families;
• In general, lesbian couples have much higher poverty rates than either different-sex couples or gay male couples;
• African-Americans in same-sex couples have poverty rates that are significantly higher than black people in different-sex married couples;
• People in same-sex couples who live in rural areas have poverty rates that are twice as high as same-sex couples who live in large metropolitan areas;
• Employment discrimination, lack of access to marriage, and a greater likelihood of being uninsured exacerbate poverty among LGB people.
• Children of gay couples are living in poverty at a rate that is twice as much as the children of straight married couples. (this one is via Pam’s House Blend)

Also, a note about the the lack of transpeople in this study:

Because no representative data exist for transgender people, the report does not analyze poverty in that community. Previous Williams Institute studies, however, found that large proportions of transgender people report very low incomes, which suggest that poverty is also a major concern for transgender people.

This seems like an important analysis, and sad. It was really amusing to both Megan and me today when we drove behind some bigot’s truck with his “Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman” bumper sticker, pulled in front of them so they would be forced to drive behind my big ol’ rainbow-stickered car.

That is what life is like when you’re comfortable. You live in a big, liberal city and the bigots are out of place driving down 28th street. You don’t feel like the people who dominate this report. You have agency. There are parts of your existence you’re powerless over, but on the whole you’re not powerless. Hell, in my case, your life is filled with people - mostly straight - who go and buy you the stones for your wedding rings because you can’t afford them right now yourself.

I think it is important to recognize that those of us who are gay and comfortable - incomes we can live on, jobs we can be out at, relationships we don’t have to hide - are like refugees who have found the safehouses. It’s not like we’re truly ignorant of our status - people feel free to slap their prejudices on their bumpers, even in Minneapolis - but that we have the privilege to pretend they don’t exist at times.

I think I couldn’t say it better than this: be careful who you hire as your legislative assistant, people.

I wrote a short email (about 3 short paragraphs) to Sen. Koering explaining how tired the phrasing “we have more pressing issues” is in regard to refusal to support the marriage equality bill in MN. I noted that, as a gay man, he should know better. That marriage is about economic security, among other things. That at this economically scary time this is in fact the ideal topic to be discussed because it affects GLBT people’s homes and health care and jobs. I noted that we’re leaving the state to get married in May (yay!) and are happy about it, but that not being able to legally marry here puts parts of our shared lives in jeopardy. With her parents being unsupportive to say the least, I’ll be frank, I’m nervous about what they would do to us in a crisis. I noted that marriage would provide protection for us on a number of levels, and repeated that he should know better. End of email.

This gem is what I got back. (Seriously, at least read the bolded parts. This is from Koering’s legislative assistant. This is professional communication.)

My name is Ken Swecker, Senator Koering’s Legislative Assistant. Senator Koering and I both would like to respond to the e-mails we’ve been receiving regarding his intention to not vote in favor of Senate File 120. I am currently responding to the e-mails to give you the Senator’s home phone number so that you might call him over the weekend and speak with him personally on the matter. This much he asked me to do.

To add to that, as a personal statement, is to say that SF 120 is something that the majority of the People of Senate District 12, the People that he was elected to represent, do not favor this piece of legislation. In case you have forgotten, we are a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. He was not elected serve his personal interests. I personally believe that instead of sending e-mails full of threats and hateful words you should take his example to heart and congratulate him on being a legislator who cares more about what the People of his district want than what he may want personally. You and I both know that this is a rare quality to find, and just because this is contrary to how you wish for him to vote, you must remember and respect he is here to represent the interests of his rural Minnesota constituents who voted him into office. As a constituent of his myself, I am happy to see him take non-personal votes on several issues. After all, I would not want another politician taking another vote that would serve his or her personal interests more so than the People’s, would you?

I can testify all day long about how much Senator Koering cares for the People of Senate District 12. He ran three consecutive times, being defeated the first two, and why did he put himself through so much hard work? Do you think it was because he needed another job? Absolutely not! He did it because he believed he was the best person to serve the People that he calls neighbors, friends, and family. And especially now, in a time like this, we are being bogged down with this completely pointless issue. There are People in Morrison and Crow Wing Counties, and across the State who are losing their jobs, their homes, their insurance, and were you to ask them if this is an issue that should take one second of precedent over these conditions they’re facing every day, do you believe, do you honestly believe that they would say to you, ‘Yes, please, waste the time of the State Legislature with a piece of legislation that will not help, but in fact, overshadow the current situation we’re living in? Please, waste their time with this piece of legislation while I tell my son and daughter that mom and dad aren’t hungry tonight?’

I know very well that you will respond to this e-mail of mine with some probably quirky, snide, and very thoughtless comment that will make me out to be a bad person and threaten the Senator even more just as most of the absolutely tactless and disrespectful e-mails we’ve received have been written, but really, don’t waste your time. We’ll just put your e-mail where it belongs, in the trash.

The Senator’s home number is
xxx-xxx-xxxx

He’s free on the weekends.

Very Sincerely, every word of it,
Ken Swecker

P.S.
I hope you do not believe that this e-mail was written specific to the one that you sent, this is a blanket e-mail, being sent to everyone who has e-mailed us on this issue and I’ve already wasted too much time in responding to you. Good day.

Senator Paul Koering
District 12
131 State Office Building
St. Paul, MN 55155-1206
Phone:651-296-4875

Can I just repeat that the very things Swecker goes positively loony tunes over are the things I addressed to Sen. Koering in my letter? I mean, I know they don’t read those things. But couldn’t they have sorted the letters out and responded to reasonable ones like mine with a less bitchy letter? Ah professionalism…

So there’s going to be a marriage equality bill of some sort weaving its way through the Minnesota legislature this year, and it’s nice and will lay good groundwork for the future, but with Pawlenty in office for the next two years, nothing is going to happen. If anything does happen, I will happily be rendered speechless, but in the meantime…

State Sen. Paul Koering came out a few years ago. He’s a Republican, which is relevant in that his status as gay has not equaled any sort of desire to protect peoples’ civil rights. According to the MN Independent, he said that “he would vote against it because the state faces bigger problems.”

I think that’s the new Republican line. It’s a crisis, we have no time for gay rights! Except that, well, marriage is also a financial structure and when people are losing their jobs…relationships with a little government backing have another layer of security in place. A crisis is actually a very compelling time to right the wrongs that we have entrenched into our laws.

But tonight I’m mentally throwing my hands up in the air. They always have some excuse for not dealing with things - politically and personally. If we have a relationship that’s public, we’re “flaunting our sexuality,” and if we keep things private, we’re lying to them. There’s never the right time, the right place, the right venue to have conversations about our lives.

And, yes, I’m totally talking around something right now. But it isn’t mine to wave around online, in public, so I’m trying to make a roundabout argument and failing. So here’s what I’m going to say:

Get over yourselves.

I’m so sick of bigots acting like seeing gay couples holding hands is the equivalent of having hardcore pornography paraded down the street (*think of the children!!*). I’m sick of bigots moping and whining about how hard it is to have to endure the existence of people whose lives don’t mirror their own. Yes, it must be so freakin hard for you to wake up every morning knowing somewhere two guys got out of bed together and are eating cereal. The agony!

This entire blog post sucks. I’m not eloquent, I’m not crafting a damn thing…I’m just exhausted and pissed off. I’m pissed at the bigots and I’m pissed at people like Koering whose capitulations just encourage them.

In other news, my mom got in a fight with a conservative friend of my dad’s the other night during which time I believe she called W a baboon. Which, if you knew her, would be hilarious. I also got her thinking about calling Pawlenty to yell at him about how her daughter has to leave the state to get married. That would be awesome.

As I mentioned the other day on Twitter, Megan and I are getting married.  I’m delighted, she’s delighted, apparently many of you are delighted (as you should be), and so I’m going to prey on your cheery goodwill for a moment.

This week, instead of talking to me about flowers and places to have the reception (don’t worry, we can talk about those things later), I want you to come up to me when you see me on Thursday or Friday and tell me you want to add your signature to the letter I’m pasting in below.  If you’re not someone who sees me, you can mail this in yourself.  (the instructions are here)

I want to remind you that it’s not just marriage that is at issue here. The military has kicked out 58 Arab linguists for being GLBT (because we totally don’t need them right now, do we?), discrimination is still legal in a variety of states, and the opposition works tirelessly to ensure that we have second-class citizen status.

The letter you will be signing is below.

January 21, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Congratulations on your historic and inspiring victory. Your lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, along with families, friends, and heterosexual allies, would like to welcome you to the White House. We are thrilled to see that true change has come to this country.

During your election campaign you wrote an open letter to us, making it clear that you were committed to gaining ‘full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country.’ In that letter you asked for our vote and promised to:

• Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and ensure that states treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws
• Enact a fully inclusive Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity
• Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
• Enact the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes against our community
• Confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the stigma surrounding it
• Amend the Uniting American Families Act to afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system

We come to you as esteemed citizens of the United States of America in need of equal protections under the law for all families. The LGBT community is part of this diverse country, but do not share the same rights as their heterosexual brothers and sisters. In the spirit of family, respect, and of course, hope, we will work with you to make these promises become a reality.

We paid attention to the statements you made during your campaign, and we voted for you. Now, as you take office, we ask something in return. Please keep your promises to the LGBT community and provide the leadership needed to achieve true equality for all Americans.

Sincerely,
Your Fellow Americans

I’ve had a hard time writing lately. I’d say that it’s due to writing fatigue from school or politics fatigue post-election, but neither really seems correct. It’s more like I’m in a thought-induced writing hibernation.

It’s been a fed up kind of winter. And I’ve been struggling with answers for why things are, in actuality, so different from my perception of them. Much of this is about the fault lines a truly serious relationship has exposed.

When you’re gay, in between the time you first come out and decide someone is going to last long enough/is important enough that you want them to know your family (for better or worse) there are months or years in which people can pretend you’re not gay. They get kind of used to this.

As we know, a lot of us move away from our original homes during those years. We, as Dan Savage said in his podcast today, “find a better family” and create the world that “home” doesn’t necessarily provide. This doesn’t mean we don’t like our families or have relationships with them, but almost every gay person experiences some level of lasting isolation after they come out.

Straight people don’t get it. Even the lefty ones don’t get it completely, and I’m not criticizing you for it. It’s really impossible for someone who is not a part of a marginalized group to know every aspect of what kinds of daily abuses, large and small, we endure. This is true of white people and race, rich people and class, etc. It’s not your fault you can’t know everything, but it’s your responsibility to listen.

And I think it’s our responsibility to speak. Even though it sucks.

I don’t have the kind of relationship with my family to have shared much of my personal life. I forged my own life, with its accompanying confidantes and emotional support structures, so if a girl broke my heart it wasn’t something my family knew…just like they didn’t know about friendships gained and lost, the nitty gritty of emotional struggles. It wasn’t their role. It was the role of my family of choice.

Is, then, my impatience with them fair? Over a decade of being out but the strain of education is upon me yet again. Instead of suggesting I wasn’t finding a job right away out of grad school because people saw some glbt involvement on my resume, it’s that I should also edit my girlfriend out of her role around my grandma. It’s really the same thing - no matter how accepting things look on the surface (and I can’t complain about that, because it is), there’s this lingering concept that this is shameful, this is something that should be hidden at times.

Being who I am, I have no tolerance for that. If a straight person doesn’t have to edit themselves, I sure as hell don’t.

However, it’s not really this simple. Not in practice. Because we can steamroll things, we can say we won’t cooperate, but the fact of the request remains.

It’s not just me, of course. My experience is hardly traumatic compared to others I know. But all the abuses share the same traits. We are embarrassments to our parents. They interpret our status as gay as a testament to their failure. It’s in all the trite comments people hear: why do you have to flaunt it? why are you doing this to me? don’t tell your grandparents. is this because I had a bad relationship with my mother/father? — It’s all about them.

I’m honestly rather excited by the renewed energy the glbt community is showing. I think this could be a good year, though a hard year. I like the fact that we’re collectively losing our patience with the crap that has been foisted on us all these years.

So, what’s in a new year? Endurance, I hope. The willingness to be hurt by people we thought were on our sides and endure, endure, endure without becoming doormats. Enduring means pressing the issue, pushing it, forcing people to confront the homophobia they thought they didn’t have or to question the homophobia they feel justified in. Enduring doesn’t mean infinite patience, it means patience through struggle, and necessitates a core of positivity. We have to feel that we will change the world. Be positive and endure.

Other than that, I end yet another year grateful for my family of choice and the ever-growing constellation of people I’m lucky to call friends. And I am lucky, so ridiculously lucky, to have the love of the most perfect-for-me girl on this planet. Sigh.

Megan and I went to see Milk yesterday. Aside from being a terrific movie in general–moving and sad, of course, but also something of a rallying cry–it’s coalesced what I’ve been pondering lately. Things came together for me.

I’m angry, sad, hopeful, and determined, and I don’t quite know what those things look like together yet.

Those people who thought that Prop 8 would pass and us gay folks would roll over and take it? Please. They obviously don’t know history. I plead with all you straight folks that I know–go watch Milk. Pay special attention to the opening. The old black and white tapes from when the police would go into gay bars and round up the gay men to arrest them because they were congregating in one place (there were points in time when it was illegal for us just to be around each other). Look at the misery–them turning their faces from the cameras, holding their hands in front of their eyes. Their quiet and horrific way the presence of police is hardly unusual. That punishment for their existence is a matter of course. That pain defined many lives.

It is never the “right time” for change. It is easy to remain the oppressor–either because you sincerely believe that being a part of the majority grants you special rights or because you don’t know or acknowledge your own privilege. It is easy to say this is not your battle when it’s not about your own survival.

And this is about survival.

Any time you take a group, marginalize them, and mark parameters around their humanity, you quite literally kill members of that group. Whether that means people kill themselves rather than live in a hostile society or that means people kill members of the marginalized group for whatever reason, it doesn’t really matter.

Being gay is a somewhat unique marginalization. We come from everywhere, so there is no cultural, economic, ethnic, racial, gender experience that ties us together as a whole. That also means we have no inherent support structure. We have what we have built. We have the communities we have built. And the fact that so many of us flee the places we were raised to come to a place where we feel safer is a testament to the success of some of these structures.

We are imperfect and imbued with all the issues that affect the world. People with significant power in the gay community are often white, male, and wealthy. This reflects the world in which we live–where people with significant power are often white, male, and wealthy. This also means that the people with power are scared of change.

I’m not.

And I’m not with my radical friends in saying that marriage is unimportant, and maybe not a priority. I get where they’re coming from, but this is where the coalescing happened.

Without respect for our basic humanity, we have nothing. No rights. If we are second-class citizens, anything we’ve gained can be taken away. Without marriage, we’re second-class. Our relationships are second-class. Our lives are second-class.

By rejecting something the dominant society doesn’t want us to have, we are being neither radical nor activist. We are finding ways to justify capitulating. We are finding ways to reject society before society can reject us.

I’ve been out for 12 years. I come out to people as quickly as possible after I meet them. It’s actually quite easy to do without making a big deal of it. It’s as simple as saying “Oh, you have a cat? My girlfriend and I have two cats. They’re so sweet.” Sometimes it takes more effort. “Oh man, I totally had an ex-girlfriend who was like that.” I make sure people know.

Why? Gay people know why. The more people find gay people unexceptional, the easier our lives are. I worry about holding Megan’s hand the further we get from the city. And I don’t worry what people think. I worry that someone will hurt us or do something to my car or whatever. I worry about violence.

I should not have to worry about violence for holding someone’s hand. But this is a simple fact of life.

Similarly, I should be able to expect–after 12 years of being out myself–that whoever I choose to be with (Megan) is acknowledged fully and unequivocally as my…girlfriend?partner?significantother?lifepartner?domesticpartner?…language is an enemy here. And yet, my mother has a hard time calling her anything other than my “friend,” though she damn well knows who Megan is and invites her to family gatherings. I chastise her fairly substantially every time she does it, but she still hasn’t worked it out yet.

I feel like gay people are often patient to a fault here.

When mom offered that maybe Megan would like to go up to the Range to visit my grandma with me, I was actually a bit surprised. It threw me off so that her following sentence knocked me off my feet. “Now, if she comes, you have to say she’s your roommate.”

I said “I am hanging up the phone now,” set the phone down, and heaved.

And so here is the thing. No straight member of my family would be asked to do that with someone they’d been dating for even the briefest amount of time. And so, yet again, I am reminded of my status as second class. I’ve been asked to pretend that Megan is nothing more than someone I share the bills with. Nevermind that no one drags a roommate several hundred miles to meet a grandmother.

Whether or not we got married, if gay marriage was legal and normal, it becomes that much harder for people to try to force you into a closet, it becomes that much harder for them to try to force your second-class status.

I have paperwork that OutFront was handing out at Pride this year. It’s living will paperwork. I’ve put it off, it’s hard to think about death and what I would want done if I were seriously injured. I also felt like I could put it off, that my parents understood that Megan would get to make decisions for me.

I don’t actually believe that now.

I had become complacent. A lot of us have become complacent. Things now are not so bad as they once were. We know that. And so maybe this was as good as anything was going to get.

But what on earth is that? Gay people still get killed for being gay. The decisions of our “partners” could be overturned with the commitment of litigious parents. “Faggot” and “gay” are still popular insults.

I like that I won’t get fired for being gay. But that’s not enough for me anymore. That shouldn’t be enough for any of us anymore. Full equality. Nothing more, nothing less.

Straight people, I am recruiting you. If you think we deserve rights, get some education and talk about it. I will use every bullhorn I can, but I don’t think we’ll be successful without straight compatriots who aren’t afraid to talk about gay people when talking about gay rights.

In light of my “rah rah gay marriage” posts over the last few months, I thought I’d point you to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which takes up the social justice issues that marriage does not/should not solve and that we have a responsibility to address in our society.

Unlike those who decry advances in gay marriage because it means monogamy (it doesn’t if you don’t want it to) or because we should focus on other things first (nothing would ever happen if we looked at issues that way), the Alternatives to Marriage Project appears to have their collective heads screwed on straight. (Ha. So to speak.)

I’ll disclaim that a friend of mine just joined the board, so there you have that, but my friends are smart people…so…yeah.

From their website:

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is not against marriage. But we believe that unmarried relationships also deserve validation and support. People may be pressured to marry by their families, friends, and communities. They may also face marital status discrimination. We oppose this unfair treatment and advocate for the equal rights of unmarried people.

According to the 2000 Census, there are eleven million unmarried people living with an unmarried partner in the United States today, and this number has grown 72% in the last decade alone. Millions more people are not currently in relationships or do not live with their partner, and have no plans to marry. There are many reasons people choose not to get married. Some people, like same-sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people, are not legally allowed to marry.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is open to everyone, including singles, couples, married people, people in relationships with more than two people, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. We welcome our married supporters, who are among the many friends, relatives, and allies of unmarried people.

Just as I am sick of Tony Perkins and the bile of the Family Research Council that he runs, I am sick of the people on my side of the aisle who castigate the GLBT folks who have been working to win the right to get married because they see it as too normative.

Feministing highlighted an article off of Alternet by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore that just succeeded in irritating the hell out of me. I’m just going to paste the quotes in and dissect as we go. Have fun! If you get bored, check out this week’s Savage Love, in which Dan Savage reams some straight people who plan on getting married but are relationship idiots because Tony Perkins tormented him. (That’s all Perkins knows how to do.) Or you could watch Stephen Colbert undercut Perkins on The Colbert Report from last night. So those are your other options. On to me tormenting fellow lefties!

Sycamore begins by saying that she flat out doesn’t support gay marriage and, to illustrate why, says:

Gay marriage does nothing to address fundamental problems of inequality. What is needed is universal access to basic necessities like housing, health care, food, and the benefits now obtained through citizenship (like the right to stay in this country)…

Nope. It sure doesn’t address those things. When you start with sweeping expectations like that in an essay, it’s pretty impossible to argue. And yet…I continue.

Legalized gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of long-term, monogamous relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be able to access benefits. While marriage could confer inclusion under a spouse’s health-care policy, it does nothing to provide such a policy. Marriage might ensure hospital visitation rights, but not for anyone without a spouse. Marriage may allow for inheritance rights between spouses, but what if there is nothing to inherit?

Now, I hate to be nitpicky (no I don’t), but you don’t actually have to be monogamous–straight or gay–to get married. You just have to pick someone as primary partner. Other than that, there’s nothing Sycamore says here that is inherently wrong, but the inverse argument doesn’t really help. I mean, what if there is something to inherit? What if there is a health policy that can be provided? An argument that bases itself on absence isn’t very meaningful.

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or health care, but this has never been enshrined as “progress.” The majority of queers — single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed — would remain excluded from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

Dude. Marrying straight friends has been what is known as “working the system.” Of course it isn’t progress. It reaffirms the double standard of what relationships are worth. As for the “majority of queers” remaining excluded from marriage benefits…how is she coming up with what constitutes a majority? Who does she consider queer? I’m in no way saying that marriage is a saving grace for the queer community, but let’s stop throwing around vague quantitative terms. Give me numbers, even rounded ones. I’d also argue that jobless and marginally employed folks wouldn’t necessarily not benefit–especially if their spouses were employed…

And let’s not forget the history of marriage as a legal method for keeping property within specific dynasties (property that originally included women and slaves). In fact, marriage still exists as a central venue for spousal and child abuse — there’s a reason divorce is so popular, and suicide attempts among queer teens so prevalent.

Marriage=venue for abuse=queer teen suicide. The leaps in logic here, ignoring the complete lack of data correlating these things…just, wow. Queer teens are harassed, are a part of society where queer relationships are denigrated, and are made to feel alienated by the larger culture. This happens with/without married parents. Show me data that says that queer teen suicide is predominantly taking place in households with married parents and I’ll eat my words. But right now…dumping bad things into a paragraph together doesn’t make an argument.

Also? Bringing up the history of marriage? The Family Research Council does that too. Moving on.

In fact, the push for gay marriage has shifted advocacy away from essential services like HIV education, AIDS health care, drug treatment, domestic violence prevention, and homeless care — all crucial needs for far more queers than marriage could ever be.

Agree/disagree. In the absence of the push for gay marriage, would these things be getting addressed better? I’m not entirely sure I buy that argument.

You know, I have a number of friends who have worked hard over the course of years and years to deal with domestic/sexual violence and the only constant I’ve seen in terms of funding is eternal crisis. There is never enough money, they are always overworked, severely underpaid, and stressed to an extraordinary point. Also, a lot of these things rely on grants in addition to private donation. Grants aren’t on the menu for marriage advocates, so that money isn’t even in the picture.

I can’t say for sure that resources aren’t being diverted, but I question whether a=b.

The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues — like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.

True that. But I’m afraid that arguing that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by drawing attention to ourselves is defeatist. There will always be more “pressing” issues (homelessness, war, etc.) than exclusively queer rights. And I’m talking about more than marriage here. Someone will always be able to argue that something like war trumps civil rights. But just because you can make the argument doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

While many straight people are reaping the benefits of gay liberation and discovering new ways of loving, lusting for and caring for one another, the gay marriage movement is busy fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence “we’re just like you” normalcy. And that’s no reason to celebrate.

Oh, come on! That’s how it ends? The trite “if you want something they have, you’re vanilla and boring and not one of us” line? Ugh.

Look, whether or not marriage is personally something I want or not, I think it’s terribly presumptuous to ask queer/GLBT people to identify as transgressive. There’s nothing wrong with monogamy, there’s nothing wrong with having a primary partner if you sleep with more than one person, and there’s nothing wrong with consenting adults figuring out their relationships however they’d like. My problem is with any of us forcing our values on the others.

Marriage is not the solution, but in a society where the very question of whether or not GLBT people should be allowed into the club sends our entire society into a manic episode, it’s not something to be so easily dismissed.

Back when I had a customer service job and had to interact with random people when I was younger, I found that a fake wedding ring made my life a million times easier. If some idiot hit on me and I said I had a boyfriend, it didn’t even dent his game–if I said I was married, it was usually over. Despite the problems marriage has in our society, it still carries with it a level of respect for the relationship that you just don’t get otherwise. It’s a big deal, culturally, and to pretend that it and all the privilege it gets you are some minor irrelevancy in the face of Big Problems like homelessness, war, etc…well, that’s just naive. Or willfully ignorant.