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With the most recent defeat of marriage equality in the New York Senate, and the preceding defeat in Maine, many gay rights activists are beginning to ask, “Did we bite off more than we could chew?”
The most universally accepted gay rights agenda is an ambitious one ranging from employment discrimination to military service. On the national and state level, gay rights activists have launched several campaigns within the judicial system and in the court of public opinion. There have been many victories along the way, but more prominently commented on by activists and opponents alike are the defeats. After the most recent losses in New York, Maine, and California, many within the movement are beginning to ask themselves if it is time to be more practical rather than idealistic.
The gay rights movement has largely rallied around big-ticket political issues like marriage equality, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Meanwhile, other important issues such as employment discrimination, hate crimes legislation, and housing discrimination have received less attention. Unlike fights to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, employment discrimination does not seem to conjure up the same level of political enthusiasm among many within the movement. Some argue that rather than focus on big-ticket items, the gay rights movement should focus on smaller, less controversial items that would improve the lives of all LGBT people immediately. In the wake of several large defeats, many others are listening to these few voices and rethinking the overall strategy.
The mentality has been that if the gay rights movement takes care of the big-ticket items, like repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, the effect would trickle down and have a direct impact on other issues like employment discrimination. Many now suggest that rather than a top-down approach, the gay-rights movement adopt a bottom-up strategy, where the smaller issues would have the effect of building a larger consensus with the American people.
The response to such a strategy in the past has been met with declarations of “justice delayed is justice denied” and so on. (Even I have given into temptation and uttered the phrase in response to the aforementioned strategy.) However, with so many defeats staring us in the face, shifting strategy to more practical things like jobs, housing, and benefits can be a good way to provide some results while expanding the base of support.
Evidence indicates that heterosexual Americans are by-and-large more open to the less controversial issues. They see many of those issues as simply matters of fairness rather than special treatment, which is how social conservatives have framed issues like marriage equality. Even with a more controversial issue like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, most Americans favor repealing the law. (The problem is within the Democratically-controlled Congress, which is another hurdle all to itself.) Most Americans, including the President, are in favor of civil unions by a much greater margin than those who are in favor of full marriage benefits. Those advocating a more practical, i.e. “winnable”, approach say that if we get civil unions for everyone, which would not be that difficult, it would pave the way toward marriage equality.
For some within the gay rights movement, such talk is, to borrow a conservative talking-point, “defeatism”. Whether or not that’s the case, one certainty is that civil unions do provide many of the same benefits as marriage. We can engage passionately in the “separate is not equal” debate, but many are coming to the conclusion that “separate is not equal, but it is better than nothing at all”.
To a large extent, the defeat in California with the passage of Proposition 8 triggered many to question how accepted and comfortable they feel in their environment. The collective assumption was that Proposition 8 would fail in a state like California, a state that deranged clerics had prophesied that God would burn down because of its tolerance of the homosexual “lifestyle”. The fact that it passed came as a shock to many and caused them to take the streets. In doing so, the struggle for marriage equality became more than a battle for specific legal entitlements. It became representative of a larger struggle, one that died during during the 1990s after peaking in the 1970s, post-Stonewall, and during the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
In the post-Prop 8 era, gay and lesbian Americans from across the spectrum came together and injected into the struggle something above and beyond the act of marrying someone else. Many of those that took the streets, and continue to take the streets, are not seriously thinking about marriage immediately. They participate because the movement is now about more than just marriage.
In this post-Prop 8 world, it is easy for the marriage equality fight to get lost in the midst of populist political activism about ideals like citizenship, equal rights, equal treatment, and respect. If we were winning these battles, there would be no need to make the distinction. The populist activism would satisfy those seeking the specific rights that only marriage can afford. However, that is not the world in which we live.
We have to remember that for many gay and lesbian families, this battle is not about where they fit into the fabric of America. They are not focused on those lofty ideals. They are concerned with the immediacy of being able to visit an ailing loved one in the hospital, or to work without fear of being fired for their sexuality. For many, the noble ideals are a luxury that could come later, if in the interim their most basic needs are met.
All civil rights movements eventually reach this proverbial fork in the road. From abolition, to women’s suffrage, to the Civil Rights era, all have had to make the tough decision of where to place their focus. Do you take the incremental, immediate victories, or do you take the larger risk and go for the big prize? Neither route is perfect, and historically both are a mixed bag of success and failure.
The gay community is seemingly at this crossroad: Do we put the pedal to the metal on the big items, because they are rights we should have had since the day we were born? Or, do we come to grips with the political realities of a divided country, and focus on the areas where we have larger support to build a coalition?
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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"The gay community is seemingly at this crossroad: Do we put the pedal to the metal on the big items, because they are rights we should have had since the day we were born? Or, do we come to grips with the political realities of a divided country, and focus on the areas where we have larger support to build a coalition?"
Nice post Brody. The "fork in the road" that you mention brings Martin Luther King's reply to the letter from 8 southern pastors to mind. They wrote that his methods were too obstreperous. MLK wrote back some very good arguments for keeping up the heat on those who practiced discrimination. I think a lot of those arguments are applicable to the Gay movement at this time. Coalitions are nice, but when people are being hurt, I think it pays to be in the face of the perpetrators demanding equality.
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/letter.html
Max
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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While I think it is well known that I disagree with the strategy for trying to grab the word "Marriage" now is not the time to retreat.
The attack has been made and, in the USA, repulsed. Now is the time to attack again and again and again, in many and various way, with logic, with protest, with appeals to decent people to act with decency.
The bigots will, in the end, be defeated by real, ordinary folk with a conscience.
That I think we should have been fighting a different war is unimportant, this is the war that we are fighting for good or ill, and this is a war that must be won.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Gay Rights: Idealism or Practicality? 
