I am so fucking tired of shit like this:
[Cartoon of gay and straight couple doing normal things like cuddling and shit, with caption "Gay Marriage: Why The FUCK Is It Illegal?" Commentary on side: "Let's queer this shit up. If equality = assimilation count me OUT. I am NOT normal. And I am fucking proud. Rad queer pride. Gay marriage: Why the FUCK is it the priority?"]
[Protest sign that says "Sleeping on the streets or walking down the aisle? It's time to start prioritizing LGBT youth."]
Obviously, I’m not saying that LGBT youth homelessness isn’t a serious issue; it is. So are employment discrimination against LGBT people, violence against LGBT people, access to trans health care, and HIV/AIDS. But there is this bizarre tendency among some people to believe that marriage only matters to rich cis gay men who want to have a giant floofy wedding and be just like everybody else. That being pro-equal-marriage is a “privileged” position and people who are really aware of social justice issues don’t care about it.
Noooooope. Let us review some of the advantages (for Americans; non-Americans will have different advantages) of marriage!
- If your same-gender spouse dies, you can’t get Social Security survivor benefits; if you are not the biological or adoptive parent of your child and the biological parent dies, you don’t get Social Security survivor benefits to take care of the kids. This disproportionately affects poor people, since rich people are less likely to need Social Security benefits to make ends meet.
- The government gives tax breaks to couples who are raising children. If your child isn’t your biological kid or adopted by you (and adoption by an LGBT person can be hell in a lot of states), you don’t get those tax breaks, which means you have less money to take care of your kid. Again, affects the working poor a lot more than it affects the rich.
- Employers are not required to offer family leave to people so they can take care of a sick, injured, or disabled domestic partner or family member of a domestic partner. This disproportionately affects disabled people, since– hey– turns out we need more caretaking than abled people do!
- Spouses of people in the US can immigrate to the US. Your same-gender lover? Doesn’t count as a spouse! Like a lot of immigration issues, this disproportionately affects the poor (who can’t afford lawyers to work through the immigration bureaucracy) and people of color.
- Employers who offer health care for domestic partners get taxed more than those who just offer it for spouses, which makes them less likely to offer health care to domestic partners. They’re also not required to offer former employees continued coverage for domestic partners the way they are for spouses. While you’re pretty privileged if you have employer health care, this still hurts the middle class more than rich people. Not to mention how necessary health care access is for disabled people!
- Turns out you can get a lot of the same rights as a married couple if you hire a lawyer to draw up the contracts. Guess who can’t afford a lawyer? Poor people!
I realize that social justicey people don’t like talking about disability and poverty, because poverty and disability aren’t cool and sexy issues that you get all kinds of cool points for talking about. But they matter. It matters when you run the risk of never seeing your life partner again because neither of you can immigrate and you can’t afford a plane ticket. It matters when you can’t get leave to take care of your partner who’s dying of cancer or just out of the mental hospital. It matters when your partner dies and while mourning them you have to find some way to make ends meet without the Social Security checks you’d been relying on.
It also helps that a lot of the people criticizing “assimilationism” are young. A lot of the benefits of marriage are things like Social Security and parenting and family leave, things that young people usually have no lived experience with. It’s easy to think that marriage is just about “being the same as the breeders” when you’ve never experienced any of the ways it isn’t.
Furthermore, if you talk about the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as a concern of super-privileged queers, and don’t talk about how the military is one of the few options for poor, rural people to make a middle-class income, I will fart the word “intersectionality” in your face.
P. S. First dude! As a polyamorous nonbinary queer sex worker who has a lot of Words to say about the way our culture constructs relationships, very few of them kind, I am probably as “anti-assimilationist” as you. But you know what? I want to get married, I want to help raise children, and even if I didn’t I stand in solidarity with those who do because there is no fucking wrong way to be queer. I refuse to limit other people’s choices so you can feel super-special and revolutionary because of whom you want to bang.
“I refuse to limit other people’s choices so you can feel super-special and revolutionary because of whom you want to bang.”
THIS x 1000
I have a blog called “Repost This Image” on Tumblr. Is it ok if I reblog or link this there? I want to increase the visibility of your post as much as possible, because I’m sick of hearing stupid shit about gay marriage too. I figure any way to “turn up the volume” on this rant is a good one.
FOR SERIOUS, YES.
How un-radical can gay marriage be, when, yo, it’s still illegal most places? The fact that it’s been in the news for a while now and public opinion is slowly shifting doesn’t mean that the issue is all resolved and everyone can go home now.
Also, in general I hate “how can you care about X, when Y is so much worse?” arguments. It is possible to care about more than one thing at a time! It is possible for some people to dedicate themselves to Y while other people devote themselves to other causes! We do not have to solve all the problems in the world in descending order of badness!
No, gay marriage is not the totality of LGBTQ rights, and yeah, I am a little bothered when people imply it is. (I’ve only ever seen straight people do this.) But it’s a damn important right.
I completely agree with your critique of those particular images. But I think there’s something to be said here that isn’t being said enough: why on earth is *marriage* required for many of these rights? Why is this arbitrary institution which is, let’s face it, no guarantor of either commitment to or length of or depth of a relationship the gatekeeper of a whole host of rights?
I don’t want to get married. Why should that automatically mean that, no matter what partners I may have, I will not be able to receive the rights/privileges that people who do want to be married do?
pslaplace: For some of these (the parenting-related ones, immigration, family leave), that’s a really important question that also needs to be talked about– although don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, it is also important for these rights to be extended to people in same-gender relationships *even if* it is ridiculous that they’re limited to marriage. But for others there are pretty good reasons they’re limited to marriage: there’s a reason you can’t buy health insurance from your employer for two hundred of your closest friends.
(Of course, you could argue the solution there is single-payer…)
There is also the matter of social acceptance of being LGBT. Not all, but many people will see the illegality of something as an indicator of it’s inherent “wrongness”. They will say “if it’s so normal, then why is it illegal?”. This in turn affects the experience of LGBT people in society.
What was the anti-assimilation argument, again? I think I missed it.
picklefactory: That there’s an overemphasis on marriage because privileged queers see their inability to marry as the last step before they can fully assimilate into heteronormative goodness. Also, that queers are radical and revolutionary and smashing the gender binary via kinky sex, glitter, and cupcakes.
In addition, some HBTQ people want to marry someone they’re not allowed to marry in the country where they currently live for “traditional” reasons. And that’s ALSO something they should be allowed to do. It makes me cringe when some people suggest that if you’re HBTQ you have some kind of obligation to protest against everything in society. Even if one personally thinks it’s ridiculous to get married because of religious reasons or to celebrate one’s love and the best way to do this is to promise “until death do us part” – everyone should be allowed to do this on the same terms.
I still think assigning motives to other people is almost always a bad idea.
Everything old is new again.
Thanks for the explanation. Sometimes I definitely feel as though I’m walking into the middle of a conversation.
@Picklefactory: The image said “If equality = assimilation, count me out” and “Marriage equality: Why the fuck is it a priority?” If that’s not anti-assimilation, then what is?
About the assigning motives bit: While it’s possible that the individual who made the image has a different argument for why assimilation and marriage are bad, I’ve seen Ozy’s example argument made in fuller form by anti-assimilation people around the internet (five-minute search example here: http://www.salon.com/2011/06/28/gay_marriage_23/ ). Since the post is about anti-assimilation ideas and not the individual who made that image, I don’t really see this as assigning a motive so much as reacting to a previously-stated motive
@EddyNorthwind
I wasn’t arguing that it was anti-assimilation. That much is apparent even to me.
Just wondering what the argument was beyond shouty image macros.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear. I think it’s the folks that want to be married that are having motives assigned to them (“they want to be heteronormative!”). Obviously Ozy was able to list a bunch of other extremely important motives besides (or in addition to) a desire for heteronormativity.
Thanks for the link, I’m poking around looking for other such things as I get time.
There’s an ageist dynamic where old people are setting the agenda for the “LGBTQ Movement” while it’s young people who – yes, do not have a lived experience of social security benefits – are not setting the agenda because they are young. So Gay Marriage is a privileged person’s issue because it is an issue for old people.
There’s also the anti-polyamorous side. Marriage rights make people who want monogamous relationships a privileged class of people. I mean, they already are a privileged class, that’s one reason people get so pissy about “assimilation,” but it solidifies it in law. So Gay Marriage is a privileged person’s issue because it’s an issue for monogamous people.
I understand that you can be a young poly queer and want to get married.You don’t have to be privileged to support gay marriage. Even I, who thinks all marriage is dumb, even I support gay marriage, because Yay Freedom. But it is still all wrapped up in and perpetuating privileges, and all the cancerous immigrant spouses doesn’t change that. Just like all the homeless suicidal children doesn’t erase the plight of the cancerous immigrant spouses.
I’m all in favor of marriage equality, and I think that these practical benefits are a great reason that marriage should be equal. If it were just another status, conferring no social advantage, I think the moral argument for equality would be much weaker.
That said, I really don’t like the trend of arguments for marriage equality stemming from the “normality” of LGBT couples: “Look! They’re monogamous and child-rearing and have a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs and grown-up careers, so they’re deserving of marriage.” President Obama’s announcement of his support for marriage equality comes immediately to mind.
If you’re LGBT and you want the American Dream(tm) of 2.2 children, 2 cats, a dog, a suburban house, and nuptial monogamous bliss, good on you, and you should be allowed to freely choose that and get it. But if you are a childfree LGBT couple living in the city in an open marriage, with a sex dungeon in the basement of your townhouse, and you want to get married, you should *STILL* be allowed to get married! If you’re a pair of dropouts who bounce from squat to couch-surf while pursuing your dream of backpacking the world together, and you want to get married, you should *STILL* be allowed to get married. Marriage shouldn’t be a carrot held out to entice people to be “normal.”
Part of the issue, that you’re missing, is that anti-assimilation radqueers are saying that everyone, regardless of marital status, should be entitled to the privileges that come along with marriage. The problem is that the mainstream gay rights movement is currently painting marriage equality as THE issue, and saying that gay people will be equal when they can get married and serve in the army and adopt children. This doesn’t address the rights of people who don’t want children, don’t want to partner for life, or oppose the military. Rather than trying to fit gay people into an inherently oppressive system that holds up one type of family, one type of life-making, at the expense of all others, we should be spreading those privileges out equally among all people regardless of orientation, gender identity, or life choices. That’s just my cishet reading of the issue, I’d seriously recommend that you check out “That’s Revolting: Queer Stratigies for Resisting Assimilation” if you’re really interested in the issue.
Just now, I’m noticing that neither couple in the comic is actually identified as being monogamous, being vanilla, having/planning children, being traditionally employed, being cis, living in the suburbs, or being middle-class.
All it says is “gay or straight, people still do mostly mundane things and they still love each other.” There’s no white picket fence depicted.
Also also also: intersectionality!
“Assimilation” into a heteronormative culture may be how a person avoids being assimiliated into a very white-American idea of queerness.
Being encouraged to turn their back on the repressive culture they grew up in may be empowering for a white Christian kid–and par-for-the-course racism for a Muslim kid. (Or vice versa, not saying Christians can’t want to keep ties to their roots and Muslims can’t be empowered by leaving. Just that “reject your culture, be a radical queer instead” can be a very ethnocentric sentiment.)
@picklefactory: Gotcha. Sorry about the confusion, lol.
Cliff-
You’re right about the cartoon, perhaps I’m reading too much in to it. When I saw it, I got the message of “Hey, look at these gay people, they’re mostly normal, and therefore good people, and as such they should be allowed to marry.” As I mentioned above, it reminded me of the President’s remarks on his support for marriage equality- “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together… I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” (Obama, ABC News interview, 9 May 2012) Perhaps this wasn’t the cartoon artist’s intent, but I have heard plenty of similar sentiments expressed by large LGBT organizations and mainstream activists of the left-of-center persuasion.
I think that what we should be saying is that, whether or not people are “normal,” they should be allowed to get married. We don’t limit marriage just to incredibly committed monogamous straight couples who are raising kids together. I didn’t intend my comment to be calling for people to be radical, but I meant to say that, if people ARE radical, they deserve marriage rights just as anyone else. Human rights aren’t something you get for being good, they’re something you get for being human.
(I also know that this is a distinctive position from the one stated by whoever added the right half of the cartoon, which is something along the lines of “Marriage is a bourgeois thing that really isn’t important,” and which I don’t agree with for basically the same reasons Ozy pointed out in the OP.)
You’re right in all the ways, Ozy, but goddamn if I didn’t know a bunch of cisheteros who think marriage equality is The Most Important Issue of the gay rights movement and use it as their only claim to being allies. Because intersectional queer politics is hard and scary. Because poor people are scary. Because trans people are scary. Because brown people are scary (and you can’t make n-word jokes around them, so that’s especially lousy).
It wouldn’t be such a hot issue if homeless queer youth and dead queer bodies weren’t constantly being anxiously ignored by… a lot of people. I’ve honestly had a self-proclaimed ally tell me that they think marriage equality was the best way to go about fighting hate crimes and homelessness. Like seriously, who comes up with this shit?
“But it is still all wrapped up in and perpetuating privileges, and all the cancerous immigrant spouses doesn’t change that.”
Speaking as an immigrant functionally-lesbian spouse with multiple disabilities, some of them mental, most of them rendering me completely useless in my home country (where homosexuality is criminalised, btw): fuck you, dude. Seriously, fuck you sideways, with a tree. I hate being reduced to some sort of Haha Totally Not Possible Right? example like I don’t even exist. I’m real. And you know what, if you don’t want to believe it, if you want to talk like you don’t believe it, then fine, don’t; I can’t stop you; I’m just words on the internet to you, after all. But I’m real, damn you. I’m real. And I’m so fucking tired of you and your shitty ilk making me fucking break down over and over on the fucking internet because you can’t have some goddamn empathy.
Ozy, sorry I’m raging as a first comment. I really want to leave you a large block of THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this article.
Should Radicals Be Pro-Gay Marriage? « David Chastity
I’m sorry. I was being curt and rude.
For what it’s worth I never doubted that you and other people in positions like yours are real. And I’m glad you’re benefiting or will benefit from gay marriage becoming legal somewhere.
I only wanted to point out that extending marriage rights benefits couples exclusively. I probably should have been as curt as that.
I have heard many times that marriage equality is “the most important civil rights issue in America/The World” several times. A lot of people may simply be disagreeing with that.
Patrick, apology accepted. And thank you.
Re: codifying monogamy… your comment was “So Gay Marriage is a privileged person’s issue because it’s an issue for monogamous people.” As a non-monogamous married person (kinda poly, kinda open, wavers back and forth), I don’t think it’s an issue that’s only for monogamous people at all. I mean…I marked my marriage with a license and a wedding, not a chastity belt and oaths of Non-Other-Boinkings. I would definitely agree that marriage – all marriage – exalts dyadic relationships, but that’s not the same thing as dismissing gay marriage as “just a thing monogamous people care for” at all.
“Marriage rights benefits couples exclusively.”
Well no shit. But we’re not really talking about poly issues here.
I posted this on tumblr, but realized I could/should? repost in the actual comments.
I wanted to add to this ALREADY EXCELLENT rebuttal of the ‘fuck gay marriage’ argument that it’s totally possible AND AWESOME to have a radical and amazing het relationship. That relationship can even involve some kind of commitment — ‘marriage’, recaptured and transformed into something cool, or just a regular renewed mutual reassurance and agreement to try to stick this out, to be actual partners.
Just because society heaps a bunch of bullshit gender roles and Rules About How Het Dating is supposed to work doesn’t mean that you can’t just give ‘em a giant middle finger and do your own damn thing, with blackjack and freely, enthusiastically consenting additional partners.
also PS I’m pretty sure the most radical of queers still spend time on the internet, go grocery shopping (at the local co-op at least), come home to their loved ones, and snuggle.
Patrick: So Gay Marriage is a privileged person’s issue because it is an issue for old people.
Ah, so fuck the old people, is that it?
Old people have no privilege simply AS old people. I think you refer to *class* privilege, which translates as MONEY, which not every old person has. (Under our current system, one solid bout of serious illness can destroy one economically, you realize? Or maybe you don’t.)
Speaking of which, us old people DO understand illness and hardship and unemployment and insurance … etc… and therefore intimately realize that *you* will also get old (which you seem not to realize, but take my word for it, you will). Thus, we ARE looking out for the GLBTQI youth–do you see?? We are thinking of YOUR future. (Just as feminists my age were once thinking of opportunities for young women who are now my daughter’s age, as well as feminists who are now Ozy’s age.) Maybe you will not understand until you are old and in the ER and your partner/lover is allowed in, all because of our hard work on your behalf? (In advance, let me say: you’re welcome!) Or will you just take your rights for granted without honoring the people who lost friends and got beat up/excommunicated/fired/disowned to secure those rights for you?
Here in the conservative south, taking a position on gay marriage is still pretty radical stuff. (It can also be an accurate barometer of whom to trust and whom to work with politically. Coalitions are crucial for change across a broad population.) This is a very religious area, and marriage is a sacrament. I’ve noticed that plenty of religious people are in favor of EVERY SINGLE RIGHT being extended to gays ACCEPT marriage… because that is, you know, about God officially blessing your union, and they think gay unions ‘defy God’. That is one of the main reasons the liberal churches have gotten so gung ho; it really is about equality on a very deep level. During our recent demo, gay/lesbian couples who applied for marriage licenses here in SC (and were refused) were preached at by an asshole in the marriage-license office “Marriage is one man and one woman, forever!” …and then she instructed us all to read Romans chapter 1.
I could easily see that woman enjoying “Will and Grace” or being nice to a gay cousin or brother… but MARRIAGE? Excuse me, but that exalted state is reserved for HER and the Godly only.
And that reminds me… commercial for the Campaign for Southern Equality: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2013/01/campaign-for-southern-equality.html
Friend em on Facebook please!
Couldn’t one have made all the same, or very similar, objections about interracial marriage? It was still a bloody good idea to get that legal.
Cartoon, regarding priorities in some “communities”…
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2013/01/11/poor2/
>Furthermore, if you talk about the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as a concern of super-privileged queers, and don’t talk about how the military is one of the few options for poor, rural people to make a middle-class income, I will fart the word “intersectionality” in your face.
First of all: lmbo at the idea that serving a standard four year contract in the military will get you “middle class income”. Second, is it okay if I think it’s privileged because they want to participate in imperialist wars of aggression to earn money instead of doing something respectable and not harmful to the community, like growing weed?