Sorry, No on 8 isn’t really no on hate.
I was waiting for our friend author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to weigh in on the Prop. 8 and she hasn’t disapointed me in the least. Thank you Mattilda and honored to be on the same page as you.
Sorry No on 8 isn’t really no on hate.
I tried my best to ignore Proposition 8, I mean to ignore all the attention around marriage, even as I received a voicemail message featuring a recording of Barack Obama, a message from Barack Obama himself, another announcement coordinated by various gay elected officials, and then was that really Bill Clinton? All urged me, or someone like me, to vote No on 8. $40 million can get you a lot of attention, but I do think it’s now as important as ever to question what exactly all this money pouring into pro-marriage coffers is doing. One thing we can say for sure: it didn’t achieve the desired result in this particular electoral battle.
If we take a look at the failed No on 8 campaign, we can see the usual “we’re just like you” charade, and it seems to me that this whole gay marriage effort already cedes the battlefield to the homophobes. Accept us on your terms, without making any structural changes except for a copyedit in marriage documents, that’s how this argument goes. We want to spend just as much on bridal gowns and tuxedos, diamonds and bachelor parties and showers and honeymoons, we’re ready for the white picket fence and the 2.5 children and the gas-guzzling SUV, we can wave the stars-and-stripes just as feverishly as any other pro-war patriots. In fact, we are so much like you that we are ready to arrest homeless queers for getting in the way of happy hour, to oppose queer youth shelters for interfering with property values, and to endlessly cleanse our gentrifying neighborhoods of undesirables like trans women, sex workers, people of color, disabled people, the elderly, people with AIDS and anyone else who might terrorize the great white American dream. No, we are not men lingering in toilets or alleys for a taste of cock, we are not women teasing with whips or turning tricks on the corner, we are not furious gender deviants or ferocious sexual perverts, we’re just like you — we tuck the children in at night and we wage war inside the home where no one else can see.
And guess what? I know it sounds awfully strange, but somehow this argument doesn’t exactly challenge structural homophobia. In fact, it furthers the violence by declaring that anyone who doesn’t want marriage and all of its centuries of baggage is not worthy of “equal rights” like food or shelter or healthcare or the rights now procured through citizenship — never mind sexual splendor or gender self-determination, remember we just want platinum wedding rings and participatory patriarchy, our space in the kitchen or battering the TV during Super Bowl season. What I’m saying is that all the money and attention and energy going into the fight for gay marriage may be doing just as much to perpetuate homophobia as any religious bigots.
Sure, the messages might be slightly different. Right-wing homophobes say we all deserve to burn in hell, God hates gays, sodomy is evil, and so on. Meanwhile, gay marriage proponents systematically wipe out any representations of queerness other than the straight-friendly, job-holding, America-loving, monogamous, middle-class coupled partnership.
Furthermore, with this single-issue struggle, everything else, including anti-gay, anti-queer, and anti-trans violence gets swept under the beige carpet. Gay marriage proponents appropriate civil rights discourse while saying “it’s the blacks that voted against us.” They promote religious tyranny (marriage is the answer), while pointing the blame at religious bigots (”it’s the Mormons”).
Unfortunately, with all the protests emerging nationwide, no one is asking what on earth happened to that $40 million? Instead, it seems that marriage proponents are anxious to funnel millions and millions more into dead-end “LGBT” institutions? Are we going to continue protesting on the terms of the right-wingers, with signs like “God Supports Gay Marriage?” Could anything be worse?
*To read more of Mattilda scroll down our blog friends and just click on her name.
8 comments
I totally agree with everything you wrote except the very last part. I have seen on the ground at these protests people who have had enough with the gay establishment, queer people who care less about marriage but want to take part in the mobilizing, and organizations like join the impact with no budget and no formal leadership, take back control from the lazy HRC types. Now is a great time for radicals like us to sieze the energy and build the kind of movement we want to see.
As an ally, it's certainly not my place to tell members of the queer community how they should feel about gay marriage, and I do not intend to do so. But some of the discussion about the anti-Prop 8 demonstrations, especially because these mobilizations often involve alliances between LGBT organizations and other organizations in the movement, raises important tactical and political questions that potentially affect all of us in the larger progressive movement.
If you think about it, every political battle is about incomplete and inadequate reforms. The success of a fight to be allowed to eat at a lunch counter is not measured by whether the fight results in the abolition of all forms of racism. The success of a strike to win better safety conditions is not measured by whether it results in workers taking control of the factory.
Also, the terrain on which these battles occur is not one of our choosing. Whether our opposition to the death penalty is that it is a form of legal lynching that is used disproportionately against people of color, or that it is unconditionally immoral, we recognize that opposing the death penalty sometimes means defending the life of someone who has committed horrible crimes. Even if we know that the role of supervisors on the shop floor of a factory is to enforce the boss's discipline, we oppose the racist behavior of companies that refuse to promote people of color or women or LGBT people into those supervisory jobs.
Is the anti-Prop 8 fight any different? No matter what slogans some people choose to put on their protest signs, no matter what narrow single-issue groups decide to take up this fight, no matter how much some people both inside and outside the queer community may misunderstand the real significance of gay marriage, isn't this essentially a democratic reform, a fight to remove an illegitimate barrier between one group of people within our class and another?
When I have written about states recognizing same-sex marriage, I have often invoked the Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia. This is the case that struck down as unconstitutional the laws of several states that prohibited interracial marriages. In the same period that the Loving decision was handed down, there were activists in the Black Power movement in the U.S. who fought for the idea, within the African-American community, that interracial marriage itself was a bad idea for African-Americans. But smashing institutionalized racism and determining the culture and future of the Black community as it related to the question of interracial marriage were not opposite goals, were they? Weren't both of these fights about the self-determination of an oppressed community?
From the critiques of gay marriage that I have heard and read (including some of the very good ones on this blog), I can't help but think that there are strong, creative and militant forces within the queer community whose energy could be decisive in striking down heterosexist legal barriers such as bans on same-sex marriage. I also think that the participation of those forces would help to move the discussion away from a narrow single-issue focus and help to radicalize many of the young people who are coming to anti-Prop 8 rallies and demos so that they can see the larger questions of anti-queer oppression as well as race and class oppression. In light of that, I feel compelled to ask my comrades whether abstention from this fight is really the best path to the kind of renewed liberation movement that you are seeking.
Creating alliances and activism in the now is critically important. I would wholly agree with Mattilda, and add Mark Synder's thoughts that "on the ground at these protests people who have had enough with the gay establishment, queer people who care less about marriage but want to take part in the mobilizing, and organizations like join the impact with no budget and no formal leadership, take back control from the lazy HRC types. Now is a great time for radicals like us to sieze the energy and build the kind of movement we want to see."
The Hotel Workers' Union, UNITE HERE, is building a powerful coalition with this new Stonewall 2.0 movement to build power for workers and expand the voice of the Queer community. As a Queer person in the Labor Movement, I see this as our opportunity to create a power unified front against the forces that oppress us all.
Please come to the joint Queer-Labor Rally this weekend in San Diego!
Saturday Rally @ Manchester Hyatt
NOVEMBER 22th -5:00 p.m.
Doug Manchester is one of the leading funders ($125,000) of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that discriminates against LGBT couples. While Hyatt may officially disavow Manchester's contributions to Proposition 8 as a personal choice, the fact remains that their multi-million dollar LGBT marketing efforts must be seen as little more than sheer hypocrisy when the revenue this marketing attracts is then funneled into efforts that bite the hand which feeds them. In such a situation, we always have the ability to choose not to feed them any longer.
WHERE: 1 Market Place, San Diego, CA 92101
Great Job Tony. QWB has long been involved with SEIU Justice for Janitors in Hartford and some of our members in other union activities. It's good to see others now seeing the light of multi-issue organizing as we are as we say in QWB, Here, There, and Everywhere so all issues are our issues. I after almost 40 years in and out of the LGBT movement can say I hope what all of you are talking about will be fruitful and multiply. I am sure coming from where you are that even if Mr. Doug Manchester hadn't given money to Yes on 8 that the group would still be in the streets in support of the Hotel Workers Union. Right? My question is are the people standing with the lower income workers because of solidarity or because Mr. Manchester is a Prop 8 supporter. Big difference in my book. That is what I am leery of as I have seen it over and over again in all of these years. I want to approach and build coalitions with others not from the point of view of here is my issues but from the point of view that it is just and right to do so as all issues are mine. Big job you all will have holding together this coalition, be careful that the respectables don't creep out from under their rocks and undo all that you do. They are a habit and a way of doing that once the radicals kick open the doors.
I will not get up and out of my chair if the opening of these great coalitions you speak of and many others do also is one of leading out from that one issue bandwagon of marriage. They can no longer in my book have the whole pie. I am too old, tired and pissed off at the G & L movement to do that and as a queer for all of my 60 years don't trust them as far as I can throw an elephant. Sorry.
Peter: I have to really digest your comment before taking it on. I have a very hard time trusting the L & G movement if it comes out only because of and from their own oppression or from a marriage view. I just may be too old and tired to try to change them. I really don't want to even hear the word marriage anymore.
QWB is planning a meeting soon about this matter to discuss our thoughts and what stand we should take. As you know we are a very diverse group with lots of ideas on just about everything.
Richard,
I too agree - for me, marriage is not the issue, but rather the heteronormative system of power that encourages the types of political/sexual economies of the nuclear family and other oppressive institutions. And yes, Manchester's donation is not the only reason for boycotting the hotel. Unite Here!, my labor union, has a very comprehensive boycott program with a proven record of delivering for working-class people, and the Manchester Hyatt's working conditions for housekeepers, lack of job security for its workers, and anti-union management are reason enough to support the rally.
Thank you for your insights. I look forward to continuing the dialogue!
In Unity,
Tony
This is a much needed perspective in our community - which is why I am enjoying this dialogue. However, I feel you may be over simplifying the issue. Though there are definitely queers in the anti h8 movement that fit your description of marriage-obsessed, heteronormative-eyed conformists - to paint the entire movement this way is unfair. (The same is true with regards to the racism in the movement - lets not make the idiots the flagship here). The protests that Tony has been organizing way before the election (and currently) are nothing of the sort. There also seems to be a presupposition that we can only have one issue. I share your frustrations with the popularity and priority for some of this issue, but I'm sure it can be argued that the queer community is not calling all the shots when it comes to priorities. They are being handed to us (which is I think what you're saying, the deeper issue). Allow me to dig theoretically deeper.
As a radical queer gender deconstructionist (feminist) I want to see the oppressive institution of marriage (and monogamy for that matter) obliterated. The fact that queers are obsessed with marriage is a far bigger problem then the fact that they can not marry. That's the obvious. But digging deeper, I think you can argue our culture's obsession with marriage however comes from our cultures methods for the construction of identity. The construction of gender (then race, sexual orientation etc) is at the root of our matrimonious desires and our social oppressions which then justifies our capitalist economic system which further oppresses us.
I do not think you can support the deconstruction of gender without supporting same-sex marriage. Being against same-sex marriage presupposes that gender or sex even exist. It also further presumes that homosexuality even exists. Heteronormativity itself is based on these presuppositions. And conversely, supporting same-sex marriage is a huge step towards deconstructing gender in a very practical way.
I am arguing that sometimes you need a little bit of the poison in order to make the antidote. The Mormon Church isn't freaking out because gays want to assimilate to the dominant culture. They are freaking out because they know that our absorption into their beloved institution can destroy the very existence of the principle that all of their foundation is laid upon. The principle of what a man is, what a woman is and what their roles are. This patriarchal culture is shaking in their boots. And this goes way beyond the Mormon Church. This is a war they are not winning, and they are clinging to this marriage battle because they know it's one of their last big cities. Why do you think they are taking such a big offensive on this? This will lay cracks so big in their foundation, they ultimately not survive it.
I am no on h8 not because I want to get married, but because I do not want to be defined as a "man." This issue actually is extremely important, and in my opinion, from a strategic standpoint quite brilliant. This is part of a cultural war to destroy gender, religion and capitalism. Only the people on the far far left and the far far right know what's really happening here. The 99% in the middle are clueless. I say as radical queers, we do not alienate ourselves from the community now - we need to have a hand in what's going on if we're going to shape our future.
Yes - other issues are important. But for me, getting rid of gender, identity, religion and money so we can evolve to start using the other 90% of our brains is competitive for priority. Just like some of the heteronormative banter you hear at the ralleys - lets not confuse an idea with a tactic. This issue is just one step in a process. Let’s not too critically zero in on the pawn that we are sacrificing on the chess board to the point that we can not see the eventual check mate we are orchestrating.
so, I respectfully disagree. No on 8 is no on H8. but then again, I've always been a dreamer
Tomek
I will only take up a few of your points as others are interested in some of the other points that you have made. I certainly hope that you haven't gotten the idea that I support or am interested in a one issue movement which I take from your statement, "There also seems to be a presupposition that we can only have one issue." From where I stand and from where I always have (glbt) and now Queer multi-issue organizing and coalition building has long been may game since August 1969. Prior to that I came out of a liberationists left background.
I do not know if it is the same all around the country but from what I have heard over the years it is that the mainstream lgbt movement is mostly involved with the marriage issue and when not on that they talk of rescinding Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Here in Connecticut the mainstream GLBT movement is marriage obsessed homo-normative people who only wish to work on that issue. They come out of the school, we are just like you except what we do in bed. Shades of the homophiles all over again! These l & g mainstream groups are not the trannies, the fems, the fats, the queers, the anarchists, the socialists