LH: We’ve got to be asking for more. The legislation that the Democrats aren’t willing to muscle through and that our organizations in Washington are lobbying for – they’re really crappy laws. They don’t do what they’re supposed to do. The first ENDA was fully inclusive with access to credit, health care and accommodations – all kinds of stuff. Now we only have employment – it’s just scratch on the whole ball of wax. I think it’s absolutely embarrassing that we allow the current leadership of the movement, the people that speak for us in Congress, to act like this a huge historic deal when it’s not. The days of people being happy to be invited to somebody’s cocktail party are coming to an end. It’s time for things to start happening and it’s time for us to say it’s time for it to happen, to expect it and to raise the level of discourse.
MF: I think that Lane is right about not playing real politics, not demanding real action and substituting a cocktail party for that. I do think – you look at this surge in this non-discrimination and relationship recognition laws over the New York and local level: that was the work of grassroots movement, but it was also combined with visionaries like Jon Stryker and Tim Gill who have put real dollars and bundled real dollars to defeat ugly anti-gay bigots at the state level and to elect pro-gay people. There is a sense among a lot of donors that it doesn’t make sense to give dollars anymore, because we’re just not getting a bang for it.
AB: Do you guys think that the marriage argument distracts the movement? Derails, maybe?
MF: I think that we as a movement – and I’m right in there taking responsibility for it – when the marriage train started coming down that tunnel in Hawaii, most of us were pretending like it wasn’t coming and we were focussed on things we’re still focussed on, like non-discrimination. Legal folks and strategists got way ahead of our political strategy so that every single legal gain we made, the voters took away from us. The Right Wing saw the situation and they ran with it. And I would have, too. It’s a delicious issue for them to run with – our public education wasn’t what it needed to be, our political strategies weren’t where they need to be and they made hay with us. That said and as depressed as I am about these 29 constitutional amendments. there is no doubt that without the marriage equality fight on the table, we would not have civil unions in New Jersey, in California, in Oregon, in New Hampshire and potential breakthroughs coming right down the road. We had always taken the incremental strategy, but there’s a very good argument to be made that the way you get the most the quickest is to set the bar as high as you possibly can, not to always be negotiating from a position of weakness and say, “Oh, please, sir, give us this little right”.
LH: I agree. Simply talking about marriage does not hamper our movement at all. Here in DC, I’ve been very active in trying to figure out a way to [achieve] marriage equality in the District of Colombia. One of the debates that we’ve seen here in DC – and it’s a debate we’ve had nationally, but you can’t apply it everything – is incrementalism. To some young people, incrementalism means “Wait for our turn.” For some other people, incrementalism represents whether they were able to achieve equality where ever they were at the time. Whether it works or not, you have to look in local communities and you have to look on the national level. It’s been very successful in some states – in New Jersey, for instance. We got civil unions and I think it’s clear to everyone it’s a step to full marriage equality.
What we are not getting on the federal level is in any way shape or form incrementalism. I’d be happy if they were like, “Alright, next year we’ll pass hate crimes and the next year we’ll pass ENDA…” But right now we are not seeing any progress. If you look north to Canada, when the liberal party came up, they set out on a grassroots agenda to provide equality for gays in Canada and they delivered it year after year and it only took them a handful of years to get there. They should be an example to the Democratic party in the United States on how they can return the favor to LGBT America has done for them in providing large amounts of money, time and votes to put them into power.
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Charley
They make a nice argument, but lesbians rule. Popular culture wants to see Brittany lick Paris, Ellen put her dildo in another woman, or any other attractive female.
Gay men are despised, still………
Bottom line, lesbians advance our (LGBT) cause in America.
OK, didn’t it use to be GLBT in the days of Harvey Milk ?
BTW, LGBT is the stock symbol for Planet Out that is facing bankruptsy. Perhaps they would have had better luck with GLBT.
Charley
Can gay men advance the movement ? And we must refer to a movement rather than a community. The only thing really progressing is on the Internet with these blogs. People expressing themselves, telling their stories.
Charley
So how did LGBT activism grow since the 1980’s ? It was because of AIDS and panic from those infected. “I am dying, the government is doing nothing and does not care” Larry Kramer was infected, so he made noise and got others angry as hell, juices flowing. Fast forward 2008 = He now has a new liver and no longer tests for HIV, according to his former lover, now head of the Gill Foundation.
Activism today depends on the impetus of the gay marriage struggle, because middle class America thinks we are worthy enough to be married becaue we are not just one man fucking one woman to produce one baby.
Charley
America thinks we are unworthy citizens.
Steve
What a ridiculous, useless discussion! Matt Foreman, the failed former leader of NLGTF offering up the same spin and lies he used during United ENDA, and Lane Hudson, the failed HRC staffer and self-important gadfly. Both stroking each other while agreeing on just about everything. Some debate!
BTW, Lane should get over his messiah complex. Elected officials in DC have been on board with marriage since he was still in diapers, and he’s done nothing in DC but bleet at people who’ve been aronud much longer and know exactly what they’re doing.
These guys are so thoroughly pickled with left-wing ideological purity, they can’t accomplish anything. They seem to exist to complain bitterly at any hint of pragmatism and do their best to sabotage people who are actually trying to accomplish something that is achievable.
Confronted with another bill in DC to dramatically expand domestic partnership and make them very much like civil unions, all Lane can do is bitch, moan, scream, and throw a tantrum because the bill doesn’t have the m-word in it. Confronted with the prospect that after 30 years Congress might pass ENDA, all Foreman can do is bitch, moan, scream, and throw a tantrum because the bill doesn’t include the brand-new transgender language that is utterly unpassable.
If they so bemoan working pragmatically and realistically through the political process, I look forward to seeing them form their little left-wing queer army to overthrow the government. Yeah, right! All they want to do is bask in self-satisfied ideological purity and sabotage people who are actually trying to work within the system. Grow up or shut up, boys.
Steve
Oh, and this “marriage as opening” bid rhetoric is the newest scam to come out of the ideological purist politburo. People who have enacted relationship-recognition laws around the country have succeeded by downplaying marriage, not storming the legislature screeching about marriage.
Ask Washington State Representative Jamie Pederson, the out legislator leading the charge to enact comprehensive domestic partnerships in his state. His campaign – which has already succeeded in enacting basic relationship-recognition legislation – has studiously steered clear of marriage.
But why would purists try to mislead people and get them to talk about marriage when we know that undermines efforts as passing civil union bills? Because the ideological purists WANT to sabotage civil union bills. They apparently deem them so personally offensive that they’d rather gay couple go without any protections or rights at all during the decades it will take in many places to enact marriage bills. They realized that their “marriage or nothing” mantra was too transparent, so now they’re trying to reach the same result by pretending to support civil unions but hawking a political strategy designed to sabotage attempts to pass civil union legislation.
Fanatics.