I love asking straight women who they’d go gay for.

There’s always someone (and usually more than one!).

-butch

Sometimes I get a little irked when I see such a rush for same-sex marriage rights. Sure, it is important. And yes, a lot of rights (and responsibilities) are tied to being able to have your committed relationship legally recognized. But, I feel we are trying to do things a little backward.

Two reasons for this.

First, not every state in the Union has protection set up for the GLB or T communities. We can still be fired from our jobs, kicked out of our homes, thrown out of stores, and have the crap beat out of us without any repercussions. How can we expect to have our relationships recognized when we can’t even be recognized as an individual? If I as a singular person am not safe, and my partner is not safe either, then certainly our relationship is not safe either in any sense - even if it is ignored and treated as nonexistent.

Secondly, marriage itself is a messy issue. Marriage is both a religious and a legal institution - and unfortunately we do not have good words to separate the two. I’d like to call legal marriage a civil union, or just a union. But that means something else, now. It’s become the “separate but equal” option. We draw fire from the religious conservatives who hate us, because they imagine us gay-sexing it up in their churches as we try to get married there. Never mind the fact that the marriage we are seeking as a community is not necessarily the right to get married in their uber-conservative Six-Flags-Over-Jesus church, but the right to have our relationship recognized so that we can write wills, visit our loved one in the hospital, and get needed tax breaks - among other rights endowed with legal marriage.

So not only are we bypassing a critical step, but we are jumping straight into the (“holy”) fire. Again, it isn’t that I think same-sex marriage rights aren’t important. They certainly are. But, I DO think there should be an order.

We must crawl before we walk.

-butch

For those of you who don’t know, Equality Across America is holding a march on October 10th & 11th in Washington, DC for GLBTQ rights. Find more information here.

If you live in the Chicago-land area, a local march is occuring on October 11th in Daley Plaza. More info here and here. If you want to find an event in your area, I would suggest googling or facebooking your city or state with “Equal Rights March” or “Equality March.”

Also, remember that October 11th is offical National Coming Out Day! More information on NCOD here. Google around to find events in your area - best bet would be local universities and colleges.

Have a great Gaytober!

-butch

I often think about the veracity of the idea that movements for equal rights often fail due to dividing and subdividing. Or that the movement really only brings about the rights for a select few, in the end. That someone is always going to draw the short straw. Is it possible to be really all inclusive? Should we be? Where do we draw the boundaries of our community? Do we say, this is US and that is THEM? We wish to maintain the semblance of an organized, united community, but do we allow bleeding borders? What visa do you need to enter the GLBTQA soup? Do we become like a colonized country - divided up by the conquerors without rhyme or reason to simply lead us into destroying ourselves (so they don’t have to)?

An example of this division to gain rights for some and not others occurred around the ERA. Some LGB folks were willing to sacrifice their trans brothers and sisters in order to gain rights for themselves. As many know the Equal Rights Amendment was initially trans-inclusive, but then big money LGB rights groups (mostly the Human Rights Campaign) pushed under the table for the trans section to be removed - thus in theory making the bill more likely to pass. In the end it still didn’t pass, and the HRC’s image was badly tainted. But then, on the other side of this sword, is the idea that the trans-rights movement should be driven from the gender-rights/feminist movement - not really in the GLB movement.

As a community we frequently argue about who is “allowed” to be in the community. Who is “gay enough”? What words to we use to define ourselves? There is even a divide between younger and older generations - those who welcome the all-encompassing language of “queer” and those who still remember how frequently it was shouted at them as a slur from car windows. The poster men and women for the gay community are typically white, urban, middle to upper class - this is clearly problematic. We still argue over allowing bisexuals “in” when they are with someone of the opposite sex. And don’t even get me started on the arguments over the “bisexual trend.” Do we consider the fetishists, the polyamorists, the asexual persons to be a part of the queer community? A part of the gay community?

So I open the question to the floor. Who is a part of the GLBTQ alphabet? What words do we use? Who is in the queer or gay communities? If we fight for the right for same-sex marriage, can we also fight for poly marriage? Do we say, this is us and that is them?

-butch