Opinions
 

Posted at 10:59 AM ET, 05/10/2012
No celebration for this lesbian
By Lauren Taylor







I’m a progressive, out lesbian, but I’m not doing a happy dance aboutPresident Obama’s support for gay marriage.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think we (the country, the society) should be giving rights, privileges and protections to anyone — gay, straight, bisexual or other — based on their sexual or romantic relationships. I think most of the rights and privileges gay men and lesbians are seeking by pursuing marriage rights should be granted to human beings because they are human beings, whether or not they find one person they want to spend the rest of their lives with.

A few examples:

● Everyone should be able to designate who they want to be able to visit them in the hospital. Everyone should be able to take leave to care for a sick loved one.

● Everyone should have access to health insurance. If you’re self-employed, unemployed or work for a place that doesn’t provide health insurance, you shouldn’t need to have a romantic partner who has a job that provides health benefits to get coverage.

● If a couple with a child splits, married or not, all parents should be eligible for visitation and responsible for child support.

● Everyone who pays into Social Security should be able to list who is financially dependent on them and who should get benefits when they die. Our current system shortchanges any dependent who isn’t married to a wage earner.

What about single people? Are they less deserving of the legal protections couples get? Why should rights, privileges and protections be based on anyone’s ability to find “Mr. /Ms. Right” and maintain a sexual/romantic relationship? Do other kinds of relationships (like parent-child, or adult siblings, or single best friends who live together and rely on each other financially and emotionally) not deserve protection?

I don’t think we have to aspire to some narrow ideal of family/couplehood to deserve rights. We deserve rights because we’re human beings, not because we’re achieving some level of similarity to the heterosexual ideal.

So you might be surprised to hear that I also love the idea of marriage. I love the idea of commitment, of getting community and family support for a relationship, and of the accountability to that community and family. I think anyone who wants to should have a ceremony and make a commitment and throw a big party. But that shouldn’t affect whether they then get health insurance, or get to take time off to take a sick person to the doctor, or are able to sign a permission form for a field trip.

I’m not fighting for access to marriage, and I wish that wasn’t where the gay rights movement was putting most of its effort and resources. (Violence, housing, employment, education, anyone?) But (with apologies to Groucho Marx), if someone is trying to keep me out of this club, I want in. How dare anyone say that I don’t deserve access to marriage and all it brings? How dare they say I, and my relationships, aren’t good enough?

I’d just prefer that LGBTQ people be recognized and accepted for being human beings, period. And that all human beings, regardless of relationship status, are assured their rights. That’s why I’m not celebrating the president’s “evolution.”

Her wish to be recognized as a human being is great; however, there are thousands of LEGAL rights (that one cannot get w/personal contracts etc.)--that are enshrined at both the state and federal level--that are denied based on the inability to marry one's chosen partner.


They are not going to remove those legal and civil protections/rights for opposite sex couples, so marriage equality for all couples is the only answer.

lets just hope that B.O. is sincere ,and not just looking for votes with the election so near. I dont trust any politician..like I always say..time tell's all truth's

i agree wholeheartedly. i'm frustrated for a lot of reasons.

* obama's statement doesn't actually mean anything concrete for queer folks. it's just a statement.
* the only reason he came out and said this now is because it's an election year.
* he's still allowing a civil rights issue to be treated as a states' rights issue, and as we saw in the civil rights movement, that does not work.
* so much of the money and work in our community goes towards this single issue, while we are experiencing violence, bullying, unemployment, incarceration, police brutality, etc. etc. etc.
* the people who will benefit most from passing gay marriage ( for example, upper-class white gays and lesbians who are seeking to be accepted as part of a heteronormative society) are not the most vulnerable people in our community who need our protection (for example, homeless youth, incarcerated trans* women of color, queer sex workers, etc.). and the people who DO need obama to speak out for them will never matter to him - or to any political candidate - because we will never be "normative" enough to be assimilated into mainstream heteronormative society. we can't donate enough money to win them a campaign with the gay voting bloc. we don't make for good poster children.

i love the idea of marriage, too, but i agree with the author that it's frustrating that we've put so much emphasis on gay marriage to the exclusion of getting rights for everyone that should not have to be distributed according to what the church and the state think of our relationships and families and how those institutions define us. and to the exclusion of caring about the other issues, many of them life or death, that are deeply affecting folks in our community.

edited to add: and allowing same-sex couples to marry does not equate to marriage equality for all people. it just equates to marriage equality for most monogamous heterosexual and homosexual people.

He's looking for votes. He's had 3 and a half years to say what he said.

well he was under pressure after Biden said something,,took him 3 1/2 yrs too

I agree mostly with the author. I don't think the drive for marriage equality in the US is particularly healthy or productive as far as gaining equality for all queer people and the diversity of struggles we continue to face globally. In Canada and other nations around the world, same-sex marriage has been legal for some years now. The consequence is that all those who were all "ra-ra gay rights" when marriage equality was by and large the only issue anyone put on the table, all went away once marriage equality had been achieved. These are mostly white, able-bodied, normative well off gays and lesbians who fit/want the picket fence ideal. And so discrimination and violence against queer people of colour, working class or homeless queer people, queer people with disabilities etc. get completely ignored. The movement really has learned very little from the mistakes of second wave feminism and its white middle class-centrism.

So in the context of the US president's support for gay marriage...I think it's a non-issue. If he supports equality for all American citizens, then it should have been assumed that he supports gay marriage. But at the same time, I wouldn't say its out of the blue either. Even before he was elected he had expressed support for same-sex marriage, and throughout his time as the American president he's repealed DADT...so I don't think he's necessarily changing his opinions for election purposes. He seems to be expressing something he's always been fairly open about. So as I said above...seems like a non-issue only made an issue by normative gays who have a very simple perspective of what queer rights mean and who it encompasses, and by religious fundies who freak out and cry Armageddon every time a politician speaks out against homophobia, anti-woman attitudes or racism.

I am glad President Obama said it before the election. I think it will hurt him with religious POC voters in the South especially, so it means more to me that he said it before the election.

Should more be happening for our people? yes!!!

But I never imagined that a sitting President would actually say that during my lifetime!

Cheers President Obama and thank you!

I hate these people as guess what, WE DON'T LIVE IN THAT WORLD THAT YOU WANT!

I really think gay people stamping their feet and insisting that gays don't need marriage are hurting the cause, sorry but I do. It's very carriage-before-the-horse.

Yes it would be ideal to live in that world where gender and wedded bliss don't matter, but until we get there can we focus on something that the mainstream world/ Governments/ Religions/ Allies will understand? Can we just have a chance to be equal to everyone else first, before we start trying to change the society we live in. Surely equality is more important than fantasy right now?
People are dying out there, families are being split up , lovers are losing the right to see their loved ones, but these tossers have so much privilege that they can't be bothered to care about any of that? Fcuk them.

Things that happen when gays are denied marriage

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...rrested-in-nc/
https://www.facebook.com/chirp01

My late partner's family told me I was their family. That is, I was their family right up until the accident in 2003 that took her life. Sharon's family, led by her mother, (the Matriarch of the clan), turned on me so quickly that my head spun. If you've never had to deal with the family of your suddenly dead partner, (not a legal spouse), you should consider yourself lucky.

While their instant hostility, attempts to shut me out of the funeral, as well as their efforts to erase me from Sharon's history were a series of devestating betrayals, the whole mess was also an extremely edifying experience. I asked Sharon's mother point blank why she was doing this. She didn't answer me directly, but she did turn to the rest of the assembled family and said, "Well, they weren't really married. Not really... Well, they weren't!!"

Oh.

Fast forward to 2008 when I had to plan the funeral of my next girlfriend. Caren's family had never valued or respected her. They didn't choose to pay for any of the expenses related to her death, but they were happy to hear about her forgotten insurance policy. No, they didn't offer to pay for any of Caren's expenses out of the policy to which I was not entitled.

Marraige equality would do more in one single pen stroke to combat poverty amongst gay seniors, (surviving partners are currently denied social security benefits of the deceased), gain immigration equality for bi-national couples, secure the rights of children in adoptive and foster care situations, and to reduce violence against lgbt youth as well as adults, than a 100% increase in funding for all the peace and social justice programs put together. And it would do it instantly.

Marraige has meant many things to many cultures over the years, but there is no culture for which recognition of same hasn't been the basis of a great deal of social structure. There's a certain amount of cultural myopia and an annoying level of privilege at play when anyone suggests that this particular battle isn't really important.

(((( cheryl ))))))) grl i'm soo sooo sry ..

Cheers to President Obama. I don't think there is any clear cut political advantage, and it could in fact hurt him.

I am on the Democratic Party's email list and I got an email from President Obama where he not only says he supports same sex marriage but talks about having friends, members of staff and his daughters having friends who have same sex parents. He sounds like a real person who has same sex parents as part of his and his children's lives. That means a lot to me.

I don't think this is political spin and I don't think I am being naive about it. He placed his support in context of people he has around him. Yeah it would have been nice to have had this happen earlier but people do evolve and change. He may have had to get up the guts to take the political risk but the fact that he did it is huge.

It would be great to be treated as a human. We have to fight for equal rights to be treated as such.

Thoughts
 

Your last sentence strikes a chord in me Bulldog, all I want are my civil rights, the same rights that heterinormative couples get when coupled. I may never marry Grant but that doesn't mean my commitment is less valid or that I shouldn't be able to claim him on my taxes.


I'm happy that Obama did what he did because it's a good example for his daughters I bet they are very proud of him.:)

it's not that i don't think that gay marriage IS an issue, it's just that i don't think it should be the ONLY issue. maybe that makes me a privileged tosser.

i've been treated horribly and screwed over when my parents died, which scares the shit out of me when it comes to anything happening to myself or my partner, and it would make both of our lives a lot easier (with health insurance, for starters) if we could get married. it would make me feel safer in the event that something happens to us, given that neither of us are close to our families.

but at the same time...the people i am closest to in my community are dealing with issues like violence, police brutality, being unable to work or go to the bathroom, and homelessness, and i can't ignore the fact that those things have had a bigger and more immediate impact on our lives than whether we are allowed to marry. yet those issues will never get the kind of support that gay marriage does. i respect that those may not be the biggest or most immediate issues for everyone in the lgbtq community, but they are immediate and life-threatening issues for some of us.

and regardless of how anyone feels about gay marriage, obama's statement is a nice gesture but it doesn't have any concrete meaning.

also...we live in a society that is fundamentally unequal.

i respect that gay marriage will help a lot of people in the immediate future, but it does not mean that all people will have marriage equality, and it won't make our fundamentally unequal society that much less unequal. it will make a lot of people's lives easier in the interim, so yeah, i'd be really happy if it were equally applied throughout the u.s. (i.e. not treated as a "separate but unequal" states' rights issue). but imho it should not be treated as the only issue or the endgame if we are really talking about wanting equality.

i am troubled because i frequently am in a position of educating straight people about lgbtq issues, and many of them are completely unaware of other immediate and life-threatening issues besides gay marriage (and maybe bullying of queer youth). i'm worried about the perception in some circles that if gay marriage is passed, we'll be living in a "post-homophobic" society. and i'm worried about how many people we're leaving behind.

I don't see how denying gays equal rights to straights is helping the equality cause?

Surely we want to make being gay as legally safe and as normalised as possible so gays won't be discriminated against simply for being gay (or trans)?

i don't see how it's helping the equality cause either, lol :) that's why i said i'd be very happy for gay marriage to be passed. but i'm not under any illusions that that will make everyone equal.

the problem with being "normalized" is that many of us will never be able to conform to the standards of normalization according to mainstream society. some of us might be able to gain a little bit of acceptance and that's really great. but it's conditional and it can be taken away as easily as it can be given.

i'd love to live in a society where people aren't discriminated against for being gay and trans*, but passing gay marriage laws won't make that happen. it will help some lgbtq folks who want to get married, but as long as we live in a society that holds up a certain idea of normalcy and only confers a little bit of acceptance on those who conform to it, we're going to be second class citizens. the history of every minority in this country bears that out.

that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek for policy changes. policy changes can help a lot of people. but people are confusing changing laws with equality, with actually gaining widespread acceptance and ending discrimination, which are not the same thing. no matter how many laws we change, many of us are still going to face discrimination, hatred, abuse, and violence for decades if not longer. because we still live in a society that privileges the "normal" and many of us will never be "normal," no matter how hard we try. and what little bit of protection we ARE able to get can be taken away from us or denied anytime.

and i'm not saying that because of some place of privilege, i'm saying that because i and people i love belong to groups who will still experience discrimination no matter how many laws are passed. and the rhetoric around gay marriage has created the idea of "good queers" who conform with mainstream heteronormative society and "bad queers" who don't, and honestly, policy changes tend to mainly benefit "good queers" and leave the rest of us behind.

that's why personally, while i'll vote and encourage others to vote for laws, i prefer to put my time into other kinds of activism because those laws really aren't doing much to protect me or folks i love right now.

I totally agree with you Aishah. Marriage equality does not include transpeople either. Not every state allows it. Not every state will let you even change your birth certificate. Even if a state will allow it, the marriage can be challenged. Until it is clear that all human beings have the right to marry each other same sex marriage is not going to cure everything. All human beings should have autonomy over their own bodies., the right to marry whom they choose and the right to procreate or adopt in any way they see fit.

The bolded statement you've written is precisely why many of us do not see same sex marriage as the most important issue that should be at the forefront of queer/trans rights. Over and over again I've spoken as person who currently lives in a country where same sex marriage has been legal for years. Here in Canada "the policy" is there...what does it mean? Little to nothing for anyone who isn't a white middle class or upper class able-bodied cis sexed and wanna be normative gay. You want equality? Marriage rights isn't the most important drive towards equality. There are thousands of queer and trans people who are denied refugee status from nations where they truly are under threat of death or physical violence. Just as many or more who are imprisoned for being trans or queer, who are assaulted at the hands of governing bodies. Just as many who are homeless or live in subsidised housing, who are denied employment. Marriage for these people...it doesn't mean shit as far as being seen as human beings in the eyes of the government or society. Just like in Canada, same sex marriage will be passed in the US...and the white middle and upper classes will rejoice and forget about all other struggles...just like in Canada. Just like with the second wave feminist movement, those with the least social privilege will again be left behind, while the most privileged normative gays will be left to their white picket fence dreams.

That isn't the queer/trans community that is my community or the community I will fight for. I'm not going to sit here and fight for a time where only married couples are able to be united through immigration, or who can visit each other in the hospital or have benefits. You want to fight for the normative normalised dream, go ahead. But don't be surprised when there are so many of us who don't want that and who recognise that as much as certain classes of people will get the benefits, we aren't going to ignore the shit that continues to exist in marginalised communities.

There are always "more urgent issues" to fight for. A 5 minute speech stating his stance on a controversial civil rights issue takes nothing away from other issues. He's the fucking president. I hope he can multitask.

my comments were on the attention given to the gay marriage issue as a whole, not just the president's speech, because i was addressing other issues brought up in the article snow posted. these were my comments specifically about the president's speech, in case you missed them:

if i'm wrong, i wish someone would explain to me how this statement actually makes any meaningful difference in terms of getting gay marriage laws passed. obama still doesn't believe it's a federal issue; he still believes it's a states' rights issue. as we've seen in the civil rights movement, that basically means fuck all for equality. i'm touched that he gives a damn but...his 5 minute statement doesn't make much concrete difference in the current state of gay marriage in this country.

it's sweet but people are seriously acting like he passed gay marriage for everybody himself, based on the responses to it. he didn't actually DO anything. and my point was not that he can't multitask, it's that this is the ONLY relevant issue he's voiced ANY opinion on. fuck cece mcdonald being in jail. fuck trans women of color being murdered. obama will never speak about that because gay marriage is the only relevant political issue for him.

Deep breath. I'm guessing you're much, much younger than I am, and that you have no memories of just how oppressively anti-gay the entire U.S. was just 30 years ago. I'm guessing that you weren't even born yet, so how would you know what it felt like to live in a world where young lesbian and gay people killed themselves, or were killed, with depressing regularity and impunity? When a gay person was sexually assaulted and/or killed, it didn't even make the news. Ever. It happened FAR, far more often than it happens now, but there were no news personalities publicly lamenting the end of a promising young life due to bullying, because NO ONE believed that a gay man or lesbian could have a promising life. No one wore special purple clothes in solidarity, and NO ONE ever even admitted publicly that the reason why a kid might have killed themselves was because they were, (gasp), homosexual. That was because most people, including and especially the families of lgbt kids and adults, were relieved to have lost the shame of having someone who was 'like that' in their families. There were a few unpleasant whispers, and then everyone went about their business. If we were ever portrayed in any movie we were venal, sinister stereotypes. Lesbians in particular either turned to men, or they committed suicide. Every fucking time. There were NO lgbt people on TV. EVER. No one even said the word 'lesbian'. It sounded... dirty.

I remember the huge leap forward when it was no longer an invitation to be fined, boycotted, and/or censored to say the word, and news orgs actually agreed to report that a person was a h-h-homosexual. Except it wasn't much of a leap because a person who came out of the closet was either an 'admitted homosexual', or an 'avowed homosexual'. I remember when the owner of the New York Times declared that the paper of record would NEVER replace 'homosexual' with 'gay or lesbian'. My cousin and his partner have miraculously been together for nearly 40 years. For the first DECADE AND A HALF of their relationship, Bill had to invent an imaginary female partner so that he didn't lose his job. For the first decade of their relationship they both could have been institutionalised had a malicious person said something to the wrong authority. And that was in New York fucking City. It was far, far worse in the rest of the country.

I'm not talking about ancient history. I'm talking about the 19 freaking 80s. Perhaps that seems like ancient history to you, but it's pretty flipping recent to those of us who lived through that shit. I'm about to turn 50, and my friends who are a decade older tell stories that turn my lesbian blood to ice. If you had said 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, that I might see marraige equality in my lifetime I would have hurt myself laughing.

Why am I ranting now? Because the President of the United fucking States just said out loud that he supports marraige equality. Perhaps the office of President isn't very impressive to you, either. Perhaps you haven't noticed that we in the U.S. have ALL the money and ALL the power. For better or worse, we're the 2000 pound gorrilla in the room full of puny little lemurs. Like it or not, the President of the US has at least twice as much real power, (financial, military, diplomatic), than the leaders of all the countries in the E.U., plus all the countries in the Middle East put together. And then some. That person just made a monumental statement about those of us who lived through institutional shit so bad that many still can't talk about it. That statement says, "You are equal, and your relationships are equal". That carries a huge emotional weight as well as real political weight.

In case you never studied civics, the President of the U.S. is in charge of a lot more than just signing bills into law. Among other things, she or he can push legislation through Congress, and can signal Congress about the bills she or he won't sign. That means real power over real legislation. In other words, Obama's word carries more real weight than the word of any other person on earth right now.

Am I pissed off? Obviously. That's partly because the myopia of saying that marraige equality is an issue that only affects middle class and wealthy people is infuriating. How many elder lesbians have to live in extreme poverty before anyone notices that they're poor because they're not entitiled to their late partner's Social Security benefits? WTF? And, by the way, is there something wrong with benefitting middle class people? Are we not supposed to care about the welfare of middle class people as well as people of all other income levels?

I'm going to take another deep breath and stop ranting now, because I feel tempted to say something rude. I will say, if you can't figure out why this was an historic moment, perhaps you should read more history.

Wow Cheryl. I do understand your feelings. I am 46 and I don't consider myself very young. I am aware of history. I am aware of the many times in my own life when I thought I could not go on because of how I thought about my sexual identity. I am aware of all of things i gave up when I came out 4 years ago.

I agree with Aishah. As Ender has mentioned about what has happened in Canada, marriage equality in the US is not going to bring ALL queers forward. There is nothing stupid or ignorant of history in pointing that out. My partner is a Transman. Here in California he can change his birth certificate and marry legally. Some states, while not expressly prohibiting transpeople marrying, rely on court decisions to nullify marriages. Just take a look at Nicki Arraguz and her "legal" marriage that was challenged and nullified in Texas.

Lastly please don't think that marriage gives people inviolable rights in medical or financial decisions. I work in financial services and I can tell you many stories about heterosexual married couples who did not plan properly and families came in and changed things after a spouse died. It happens. Certainly not in the degree that it hapens in gay couples but it does happen.

What is wrong with wanting the president to say that all human beings, regardless of sexual orientation or sex or gender identity have the right to marry? I am not discounting his statement in any way. I am thrilled tha same sex marriage will be legalized. I won't though sit here and woo hoo aren't we all taken care of now. Does not mean I am negative, young, ignorant of history.

^ 5 cheryl .. very WELL said ~~

I'm only 37 and I remember (I was in a different country but we had similar laws) not allowing my gf a motorbike because if she died, I knew her family would lock me out of the hospital room and the funeral. They hated the fact she was gay.

I had friends who got kicked out of rented premises for being gay and others lost their job. I currently know people who are fighting American immigration. In my own country gay marriage is still not allowed and until recently, transpeople had to be 'biologically infertile' in order to change their birth certificate.

People can turn this into a class issue all they want, but it's not. Gay people are second class regardless of class and we need to change that. This means that gay people of all classes and privilege are getting involved. I know closeted lawyers who are sticking their neck out to fight for LGBT asylum seekers. Being privileged does not necessarily mean you don't care, if fact it can mean you can achieve more. Just like Obama has done in the hearts and minds of the American people. He told the people who voted him in that he feels that gay marriage is OK. These people may even listen to Obama, they wanted him to rule the country after all.

i feel like my words are being twisted here. it was a mistake to post in this thread in the first place; this is why i've stayed out of almost all of the marriage threads period. i thought that since it was relevant to the article, maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea to post in here, and i was wrong. being called a privileged tosser who's completely ignorant of history and is setting the movement back has made me feel like shit, so thanks for that.

i understand, cheryl, that it carries emotional weight. what i am saying is that it doesn't seem to carry all that much legal or even political weight. we're still in the same spot we were before he said it - except now my facebook feed is blowing up because people think he's the second coming.

and yes, quintease, we all help out however we can - however, since the mainstream lgbtq rights movement in the united states has turned itself into almost a single-issue movement (gay marriage), those of us who work on other issues don't get heard that often (let alone funded). and the president is not going to make any grand, sweeping statements about issues other than gay marriage. and many straight people think that gay marriage is the only issue.

i still think that's a problem. and i still think that saying that's a problem is relevant to the article that snow posted. but i'm going to shut up now.

Thinkin'
 

If you're not into "marriage" like some of us aren't it's going to feel unequal and people who are and have been coupled minus a piece of paper should still be able to get the same rights as their straight counter parts.

Lots of laws keep the LGBTQI peoples from having the same rights as heterinormative folks do from adoptions to estate taxes...

Until it's Federal and not just in the hands of the States we have a long fight, this time with some acknowledgement from The POTUS.

It's up to us to be visible, vote and not give up.

I wrote a rant on Facebook a while back that really speaks loudly to how I feel about all of the chatter happening around Obama's "Gay is Ok" statements.

My facebook rant came on the heels of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell thing going away where Gays can now openly serve in the military. My first inclination when that was announced was to rejoice.
My Facebook friends feed so began filling up with other Queers posting about how they "could not celebrate because Gay soldiers were still agents of genocide" and other such statements that felt really discrediting to all of the celebratory posts that they were couched between.

Something very similar happened with this news story.

Here's the thing for me, I am going to celebrate the fact that our President said out loud that he thinks it's ok for us to marry.

I get that there are huge issues surrounding the WHY's and the timing of how he did it. I get that some of us Queers don't want to get Gay Married. I get that there are other people out there who want things and that this feels like a shitty alternative to their idea of a "true Utopian Society" where straight folks are buying the Gay spectrum a Coke and teaching them how to sing.

My irritation around the "but, but, but..." is probably highly privileged.
I'll own that fully before I go any further.

Nonetheless, here is my irritation: When are we as GLBTQ people going to stop "but, but, but-ing" and throwing ourselves on the equality sword every time we get a little something-something?

What I mean by this is, it is a HUGE deal to me that DADT was repealed. Sure, Gay soldiers are still agents of genocide but at least they aren't agents of their own erasure anymore. Can't we fucking celebrate that? Can't we stop stomping down our own joy over Gay marriage just for a split second and take in fully what it means for the POTUS to acknowledge us?

I want my Trans brothers and sisters to be acknowledged as well.
I want racism to end.
I want classism to end.
I want the world to be perfect and accepting and balanced for all of us.

I believe in my heart that the steps to get there are sometimes small and quiet and I am going to celebrate every one of them for just a moment before I start finger-waggling about how it "ain't good enough".

I believe that we sometimes have to look at ANY progress for one of us as SOME progress for all of us.

I realize that some small part of this for me is coming from that place of having been marginalized so long that I'll take any friggin' crumb that I'm thrown but I also come from a place of having been an activist for a long, LONG time. That means that my rage at the end of the day is no less there, just more measured.

In short, I am glad that Obama said what he said. I'll probably be pissed later when it boils down to a political ploy but he is the first sitting President to ever acknowledge us this way. I'll take that with gratitude.

What he said did not come without cost. To him or to us.

He will be fighting an uphill battle with some of his more conservative voters. We are going to be plunged into the spotlight in ways that we never have been before and will probably feel the heat of 1000 conservative tongues telling us to "get back in our closet".

Either way, President Obama made me proud. Even if only for a little bit.

Do not shut up or bow out of this conversation! It is so important for our community for all voices to be heard!!! Lady Snow is exactly right that until this is a Federal law it really is meaningless. I do not see this as a state's right issue nor will I be satisfied by the President saying it is. Immigration is controlled on the federal level. State approval of gay marriage does not change that.

in my experience in other movements (especially feminism and disability rights), "trickle-down" equality very rarely actually trickles down. that's made me somewhat jaded and bitter. for that i apologize.

Don't apologize! You speak the truth.

It's fucking HARD to find that balance internally between being thankful for the acknowledgment and still raging about all the ways we have to do better. I struggle.

Aisha, I'm sorry to have hurt your feelings with my strong language. When I get wound up, I speak my mind without couching my ideas in the usual niceties. I have no exposure to facebook, but the places where I do look for information have been full of people saying things similar to you. Some don't understand why this is important any more than you do, and I find that shocking. Your primary objection seems to be that it won't affect you because your relationships aren't structured that way. And because marraige equality supposedly doesn't help trans people.

Many trans people who are able to change their ID, (majority of U.S. states), still want to get married, often to people of the gender to which they've changed their ID. That means they want access to marraige equality. Period. Just like other lgb people. I'm having a problem figuring out why something that greatly benefits many, but not all, lgbt people can't still be thought of as a great benefit, even by those who may have been left out in the first round. All civil rights struggles follow this path. We take the best deal we can manage in the moment, and then we go back and keep working for what we didn't get the first time. It is, indeed, destructive to take the short view when we're working on major civil rights issues.

As for dismissing the signifigance of marraige equality because it doesn't pertain to your personal relationship models, the travails of lgbt soldiers pre-DADT, and then during that miserable time, are well documented. I am now, and in the past was, about as likely to join any branch of the military as I am to shave my armpits and win Miss America. I'm horrified by many things that go on in in the military, in particular how much money we spend on weapons and weapons systems. I have very mixed feelings about all things military in general. That didn't stop me from working to end DADT, and feeling a huge sense of euphoria about its demise.

Why is that? Because every time an lgbt person is told that they're less-than, or that our relationships are less-than, something within the precious spirit of a young queer person gets more bruised, and more twisted. (It doesn't do calloused, old spirits any good, either.) And those who look for victims to assault are given the green light to do so. Because we're less-than. Every time a person of authority maligns us, or even just promotes seperate but allegedly equal treatment, those wounds fester, and those who mean us harm are encouraged to harm us. Every time a person of authority speaks up for us, it salves the wound, and gives the bad guys pause. The person with the greatest authority on earth just applied a huge soothing balm.

I frankly don't care at all whether or not your personal relationships will benefit from marrige equality any more than a lesbian soldier cares whether or not I've ever been a member of the military when I contacted my lawmaker on her behalf. The end of DADT had no immediate effect on my life, but the immediate effect it had on the lives of perhaps hundreds of thousands of lgbt soldiers, past and present, is so huge that the ripple effect has already rocked our society. The U.S. military is our biggest expenditure, and the sheer numbers of Americans who serve or have served is stupefying. I have NO DOUBT that the fact that the military apparatus continued to operate smoothly, and that other soldiers mostly don't give a crap about whether they're in the shower or a trench with a gay person, had a critical effect on the rapidly changing outlook that many Americans have about marraige equality.

Social movements to win civil rights are waged on many fronts. There are those in advocacy orgs who do this for a living, and those for whom this is their primary extra-curricular activity. There are those who write an occasional letter and sign petitions, and those who show up to march and demonstrate. People work on projects that are personally meaningful to us. All your facebook friends are happy about marraige equality because it's meaningful to them. Why do you think that is? And those who worked on this issue up until this point do so because why? The last reason why this is taking up so much room in the lgbt activist world is because we're winning. We're really, actually on the verge of winning this one, and it's going to be a huge win. How do we know we're winning? Because the President of the United States just spoke up about it.

As for real, concrete change- the statement of support Obama made changes no laws. You're right about that. I take issue with the woefully short-sighted assertion that it's not meaningful because the affect isn't immediately felt with a Federal law that grants marraige equality. Going back to Civics 101- if the POTUS were to unilaterally make and sign a new law today, he wouldn't be the POTUS. He would be the dictator of a country where the leader can rule by fiat. This is the first step in a long process. We all know that. I'll wait and see how long full equality takes, but the first step has been taken. That's why your facebook feed lit up. That's why New Yorkers danced in the street when Coumo signed the NY State marraige equality law. Full marraige equality will change the lives of a huge number of our people. I don't care whether or not you're personally interested in getting married. I doubt that I'll ever avail myself of the benefits of marraige. If you believe in equality, you support marraige equality. Period.

This is how I felt. I could honestly give a rats ass about any of them. All government is corrupt in my opinion. I no long support them and try like hell to stay clear of their half ass agendas.

nowhere did i dismiss the significance of marriage equality (though gay marriage does not equal marriage equality) or say that i didn't support gay marriage because my relationship isn't structured that way. in fact in my second post i very distinctly said that i DID support gay marriage. there are some trans people definitely who might benefit from it. my partner could be one of them. you're twisting my words yet again.

i am just tired of gay marriage and don't ask don't tell being the ONLY issues that get mainstream play. i wish obama...or the new york times...or anyone except a few small communities and independent news outlets cared about other issues that deeply affect a lot of us. i am tired of bringing that up and being told i just need to sit down and shut up and wait for the gay marriage equality before any other issues get any mainstream attention. it's exhausting. it fucking hurts. three human beings were killed in the past few weeks for being transgender people of color and the new york times could give a flying fuck about it. obama could care less. the mainstream lgbtq community could care less. because obama endorsed gay marriage so now we're all saved. yay.

You think all queer people are treated just as horribly as each other? If a white middle or upper class gay/lesbian is treated as a second class citizen, then everyone else in the community is third or fourth class citizen. You think that a queer person from the south east Asian community who has to deal with the myriad of racist stereotypes about their community both within their community and outside of it is treated the same way as a white middle class gay men? How about other queer people of colour? I certainly don't think a working class gay black man and a middle class gay white man are getting the same shit end of the stick. A queer person living with a physical disability? There is a huge prejudicial gap, and marriage isn't going to mean shit with regards to basic human rights for many of these people.

You write that "This means that gay people of all classes and privilege are getting involved." That's not a very accurate statement. In fact, it's a pretty visible reality that those arguing for many mainstream gay/lesbian issues are not members of the most marginalised groups. They are by and large not people of colour, people with disabilities, people living below the poverty line or sex workers. Nor are they overwhelmingly poly folks. It's the same as with most popular "rights" movements today, from Occupy to the It Gets Better campaign. And the minute these people get their token law past or their five minutes of fame, they aren't going to give a shit about anything else. Exactly as its happened in Canada.

As far as turning it into an immigration issue, barely means shit for immigration...the system here continues to screw queer immigrants and refugees no matter what the nation's stance is on same-sex marriage. Until those seen as the "bottom of the barrel" are seen as legitimate human beings by society and governing bodies, there are always going to be horror stories about queer and trans people being locked away for months, denied immigration or refugee status, abused horribly. And as aishah said so well, "trick-down equality" is bullshit. As I said before, you want to espouse marriage equality as your primary rights fight, fine, but don't make it out to be a fight for all queer and trans people, because a fuck ton of us haven't (and won't) gained shit from that struggle, and it will be a cold day in hell before we do.

Edit: At this point, at least from the perspective of a Canadian, it becomes clear to me that a lot of policies are superficial and mean very little as far as how a person is going to be treated in day to day life. It means little in actually protecting people with these policies. Policies often act as a means of reinforcing the current liberal "feel good" view point that X policy is in place, everyone is equal. Personally, I think it's about time queer rights movements and feminist movements learn from the past...that this "trickle down" approach that sees certain privileged people as the target population for these policies as simply "opening the door" for others, is just an illusion. Most of the time that isn't what these policies mean at all. It's time to learn that truth and start fighting for rights for those who need them most urgently...and by urgently I mean those whose lives are most immediately in danger. People who are still actively being denied housing and employment. People who are still actively being verbally and physically assaulted on a regular basis and who have no advocates to stand up for them. I mean sex workers, I mean the homeless, I mean prisoners and others who whether because of additional racism, sexist, homophobic or transphobic challenges, or due to the fact that they live with mental illness or were diagnosed with mental illness, or live with physical disabilities, are believed to have no one to stand up for them when authoritative bodies lock them away as incapable of ruling over their own lives. Lock them away simply because they are visible. Lock them away because they believe they're nothing but trash.