Syndicate and Hague

You may not know who Jessica Valenti is, but it’s never too late to catch up on a strong, smart feminist voice. I bring her up because of her recent marriage and how well she has spoken about the complicated feelings she’s had about the process and institution, as well as her intentionality about constructing a wedding and a marriage that reflects her philosophies and life.

Back in January, when she announced her engagement on her blog, she accompanied the post titled “Does the personal always have to be political? (And can’t it ever be private?)” with this e-card:

It was around the same time that Megan and I told people about our engagement and dealt with a smaller scale and less vicious set of questions (asked both of each other and by others), so I found myself relating to her in a lot of ways. Why did we want to participate in the institution of marriage? What does a feminist (in Valenti’s case) or queer/feminist (in our case) marriage look like? How do you redefine something that (traditionally and still) is so interlaced with male dominance and religious control?

Thankfully, we didn’t have gossip columns and publications like Playboy weighing in on the merits of our relationship or framing our decision as a “feminist-finally-gets-hitched” story like the NY Times did. (By the way, NYT: seriously?? You could have written about so many more interesting aspects of the marriage/decisions made about it and you chose the easy and kind of anti-feminist route. But I shouldn’t expect more depth from the section that usually profiles rich, ivy leaguers with famous parents.)

Valenti just wrote a new post called Well, I’m damn sure never getting married again and it pains me that she had to write it. She thought into constructing what it meant not only to be married, but to get married, and I think that is what you would expect from someone with a track record of critical thought and political engagement.

And let me tell you, it is hard to deconstruct marriage and the cultural weight embedded in it to reconstruct it to fit your values. As Valenti said:

When I wrote about Andrew and I planning a wedding, I wasn’t doing so to make some grand statement about what feminists should do when they get married. Or to suggest that my wedding was going to be The Most Feminist Wedding Ever. I wrote about it as an individual, as a person, who was trying to negotiate her beliefs with a traditionally sexist institution and the consumerist party-planning that surrounds weddings.

…

We wanted to make the wedding representative of the institution we’d like marriage to be, and I think we did a good job. Does any of this change the fact that marriage is a historically sexist institution or make it okay that millions of people are denied the right to be married? Of course not. But it made the celebration one that made sense to us, one that re-imagined what marriage as an institution should be about - love, equal partnership and community. (And seriously, to the some of the more conservative relatives at our wedding, hearing these sort of things at a wedding absolutely made an impact.)

Love, equal partnership, and community: that is how Megan and I felt about it.

I can’t speak for Valenti or any other feminists/lgbt folks who get married, but - for us - everything was put on the table. We broke down what things signified in general, what they signified to us, and what we really wanted rather than what may be culturally imposed. For instance: the rings. Personally, I have somewhat critical feelings about wedding rings - engagement rings in particular. As engagement rings are traditionally only given to the woman, I find them to be a societal symbol of purchase (our language supports that - an engaged woman is “off the market”) and that is problematic for me. Wedding rings have a similar problem for me as the last thing I want to be is “owned” by anyone else. And as lovely as Megan is, I don’t want to be owned by her (and vice versa).

But rings are pretty. And I wanted one. I was so happy to be marrying Megan (and am so happy to be married to her), and the idea of having something that she gave to me that I would have with me all the time made me happy. So we decided: no engagement rings, but we got really pretty and unique rings made for us that would give us each a symbol of our love and a reflection of how we’re linked that we would carry with us every day. Then, when friends gave us the stones for the rings, they also became a way in which our community supported us.

Does wanting rings without wanting the baggage of ownership - does redefining that part of weddings - make us bad feminists? I don’t think so. And I’m sure if we’d wanted to badly enough that we could have redefined the role of the engagement ring as well. Having the capacity to think critically about institutions and practices doesn’t mean that we have to swear off everything associated with those things. My perspective is that the process of critique and intentionality underlies the core of the philosophy of “the personal is political.” The decisions we make with that kind of reflection are invariably going to be truer to ourselves and our values.

Megan and I had a hard time writing a ceremony in part because every element of it was analyzed - but because of that it was also completely appropriate to us. We wrote it in Provincetown two days before the wedding and it was perfect. It was about love, respect, individuality, change, support, trust, adventure, discovery, and commitment. It was about how she makes me a better person (and vice versa). (She is so awesome.)

What I hope is that Valenti can ignore the haters to an extent and be happy that she and her husband got to put the kind of effort and intentionality into defining their wedding and marriage that they did, and know that the kind of critical thought she expressed in public was not wasted.

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.

Objectively, I know the people around me are awesome. Really, the reason my life is generally amazing is because I have such wonderful people around to have fun with. I know this.

However, sometimes people do things that just floor me.

It’s my birthday next week and there’s nothing I like more than organizing a big outing full of the people who make life interesting and good so that we can go and drink beer and eat bar food - so, birthday happy hour! All I really want is for people to show up and have fun and that plan always seems to work pretty well.

That all went as planned, but…

Before coming to the party tonight, my boss rounded up all my friends who were coming on Facebook and covertly went about organizing a group gift. Which would have been really nice in and of itself. It’s always quite sweet when someone goes and rounds people up to get something for you.

The backstory on this is that Megan and I are having our wedding rings made for us. We’d wanted to have some little diamonds on the rings, but it was just out of our budget. So we compromised and had decided to get just the bands for now and save up for the cost of labor and the small diamonds and do it down the road.

So you should know where this story is going, right? My boss knew that we’d altered the plans for our rings because I’d talked about it at work a couple months ago. He orchestrated all these people together, slyly got the name of my designer from me, and they paid for the labor and diamonds that we’d wanted but couldn’t afford. With money left over, even.

Neither Megan nor I am really processing this right now. It’s incredibly overwhelming to have people do something like this for you. I’m also not very eloquent right now.

I still can’t think of much to say. I’m just fortunate and grateful and if I start forgetting how lucky I am to have this kind of a life with all of you people in it, just smack me upside the head or something.

There’s this really interesting thing that married straight men do when they get together (well, I mean, there are a lot of interesting things they do)…and that is to pretend that they are trapped by their wives/serious girlfriends.

It’s interesting because I know for a fact that guys I know who have participated in this sort of performance do not feel confined by their relationships - but when the group is making jokes like that, they play along anyway. The only other people I’ve encountered this with are butch/femme or trans/femme couples (in which the butch or trans guy plays off being trapped by his or her wife/gf).

It was funny to me because as the “my wife is keeping me down” buddying happened, I said that I really love being in my relationship and that I think being married will be great. I got kind of a blank look and then I realized that I’m a girl, so I’m expected to feel that way. Not everyone there knows I’m gay, and straight women’s feelings about marriage are assumed, so yeah.

Well, anyway. It was just sort of funny. And I thought about it as I drove home, listening to the State of the Union.

The first thing I thought about was Dan Savage, actually. This is going on a tangent from the conversation, but it’s based on what I feel underlies these kinds of conversations - that what this is secretly about is lamenting monogamy. It’s the sense that “she got me” and now I can’t have anyone else. Culturally, I think we tell men that even if they practice monogamy that they should constantly protest it. And that’s where this joke of being trapped comes in.

It’s silly, though. You don’t have to be monogamous to be married, nor do you have to be married to be monogamous. The pretense that you have to do anything is useless. If you want to have someone you’re married to, but want to run around and have sex with other people too, just marry someone who wants that. They do exist. So complaining (even in sort of a vague, culturally required way) about choosing monogamy is sort of boring.

But as much as I make fun of the fundies who run around waving their hands and screaming about teh gayz leading to the downfall of society and lack of morals, I guess being gay has given me some perspective about sexuality period. When you have to reject what society tells you is required (heterosexuality), then you are really open to look critically at all our relationship structures. So it’s entirely possible that for me, monogamy was a choice because I assessed my options and picked the one that works best for me; while for a lot of straight people monogamy was not a choice because they never had to deconstruct their sexuality.

I don’t know. What I do know is that people should be very careful complaining about how hard it is to be married to the old ball and chain. Because some of us don’t have the luxury to do that and have it recognized everywhere. Just sayin.

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…

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

In truly uncharacteristic fashion, I’ve not commented yet on the election at any length. Unlike many recent elections in which I got used to complete and utter depression after the votes were counted, this year left me torn.

When the news outlets called it for Obama, I felt it in my heart. He’s certainly mortal and will make decisions I don’t agree with during his time in office, but I have so much confidence in his ability to do more good than harm. That might sound like a backwards compliment, but it truly is a compliment. Every choice has a downside. But I believe that on the whole the choices Obama makes will be good.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s coming into office with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. We’re going to see a lot of changes. If you’re interested in some of the planning, Obama has a website at change.gov and I can’t tell you how elated I am to see the role of advancing technology in his administration.

But, of course, Obama’s resounding victory was not the only thing that happened on November 4th. The anti-gay ballot initiatives that passed in Florida, California, Arkansas, and Arizona were heartbreaking. (CA and AZ went against gay marriage, FL went against domestic partner benefits, AR outlawed unmarried people from fostering/adopting children).

I’ve been thinking about the way the Internet helps/hurts us as we process information. And I’m going to come out in favor of the Internet on this. In the wake of the passage of Prop 8 in California, a lot of media and vocal gays seized on the exit polling in California that said 70% of African-Americans voted for Prop 8. For about a week, the anger and hurt in some segments of the GLBT population blinded them to the racism that came pouring out because of that statistic.

But here’s the good thing - there are seriously awesome blogs run by people of color, like Pam’s House Blend, that led the online voice in calling BS on that line of thinking. Regardless of whether that statistic is accurate or not, the population of African-Americans in California is not large enough to have caused the proposition to pass or not pass. It’s a red herring.

And I think there is regrouping going on. I’m hopeful that the racism of the reaction of some white gays raises that issue for mainstream organizations like the HRC to what many other GLBT folks have said for a long time though - all these “isms” are gay issues.

What I’ve seen this week is people like Bill O’Reilly trying to entrench the racist narrative, and I think we’re too smart for that. Once O’Reilly’s ilk start exploiting something, I’m hopeful that even the most oblivious among us know to question its truth.

Anyway, while I know there are serious issues other than gay marriage that need to be addressed, I think this election was a wake up call to us as a whole. People still don’t respect us. If I’m being generous, I’ll say that they don’t understand and we’re not making compelling arguments.

Either of those statements make me depressed.

I’ll be at the Prop 8 protest this weekend, and I encourage anyone who cares about their gay family members or gay friends to do the same. Numbers mean something.

12:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Government Center downtown MPLS.

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.