I understand the motivation for "A Day Without Gays". I understand why people want to protest the passage of discriminatory, heterosexist bullshit. I get it. I support that desire
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I've said it to my US friends before and I'll say it again,
When Stephen Harper revived marriage for one last go in Parliament, the queer activist organizations groaned. They had hoped they could finally stop spending their hard-earned donations on a drawn-out battle for something not a lot of queer activists cared about personally, and get on to more important issues. At the same time, the same queers knew that a repeal of marriage would undermine the foundations of legitimacy they needed in the public eye to fight for anything else in the future.
So by revisiting same-sex marriage, Harper did a very good job of sapping queer activist money.
I can see it happening in the US now but with more intensity. I wish them well. It's not going to be easy. But I do think that if your country can clear the "marriage hurdle" resolutely, it'll be a lot easier to get down to the next order of business.
I am not sure that it will, in fact, help us move on to more important and more pressing issues. The money being funnelled into the marriage efforts mostly exists from donors who consider this their single-issue battle and then will retreat to being boring, white suburbanites. Similar things happened in Canada and the overall funding of some queer organisations went down by a fair chunk. Lovely.
I also see marriage as a stalling and entrenchment issue. It does nothing to challenge structural homophobia and in fact makes the battles ahead more difficult for anyone who isn't part of the picket-fence and surburban household sector of queer politics.
Marriage is pointless in terms of progress on more endemic queer issues.
Ughh. Right? I don't think anybody should get to get married. If partnership has to be recognized under the law, fine. If you call it marriage, a bunch of assholes will be upset because it's a "religious institution."
Why does this religious institution, then, have anything to do with the government? As far as governmental rights that come with a partnership between two consenting adults are concerned, no one gets married. Get rights with your partner, then if you want to call it marriage, go have a ceremony in your goddamn church. It has nothing to do with the government. It'll be exactly as legitimate without the government recognizing it, and if you say it isn't, then you should probably re-examine the reasons you actually want "marriage" between one man and one woman recognized as such by the government.
And I'm not doing the "day without a gay" thing because I don't have a real job.
My last entry on politics gave a more in-depth perspective on why I don't like or want marriage in general and you and I share some common ground here.
Fuck marriage, really. Fuck it with something hard and sandpapery.
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Classism seems to be the root of all isms.
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When Stephen Harper revived marriage for one last go in Parliament, the queer activist organizations groaned. They had hoped they could finally stop spending their hard-earned donations on a drawn-out battle for something not a lot of queer activists cared about personally, and get on to more important issues. At the same time, the same queers knew that a repeal of marriage would undermine the foundations of legitimacy they needed in the public eye to fight for anything else in the future.
So by revisiting same-sex marriage, Harper did a very good job of sapping queer activist money.
I can see it happening in the US now but with more intensity. I wish them well. It's not going to be easy. But I do think that if your country can clear the "marriage hurdle" resolutely, it'll be a lot easier to get down to the next order of business.
Reply
I also see marriage as a stalling and entrenchment issue. It does nothing to challenge structural homophobia and in fact makes the battles ahead more difficult for anyone who isn't part of the picket-fence and surburban household sector of queer politics.
Marriage is pointless in terms of progress on more endemic queer issues.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has a great comment on this.
http://nobodypasses.blogspot.com/2008/11/sorry-no-on-8-isnt-really-no-on-hate.html
John D'Emilio also remarks well on the topic.
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If partnership has to be recognized under the law, fine. If you call it marriage, a bunch of assholes will be upset because it's a "religious institution."
Why does this religious institution, then, have anything to do with the government? As far as governmental rights that come with a partnership between two consenting adults are concerned, no one gets married. Get rights with your partner, then if you want to call it marriage, go have a ceremony in your goddamn church. It has nothing to do with the government. It'll be exactly as legitimate without the government recognizing it, and if you say it isn't, then you should probably re-examine the reasons you actually want "marriage" between one man and one woman recognized as such by the government.
And I'm not doing the "day without a gay" thing because I don't have a real job.
Reply
Fuck marriage, really. Fuck it with something hard and sandpapery.
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