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Originally Posted by atomiczombie
Let me throw another iron in the fire here: Marriage rights are important and I support them, but are we allowing that particular issue to over-shadow other (and in my estimation more important) issues? Issues such as equality in housing, the workplace, hiring, healthcare, etc., and the worst one: violence against LGBTs. I think these are at least as pressing, however the whole marriage thing seems to be such a focus that I don't really hear people talking about these other things.
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I think that marriage was an issue that was kind of forced on us. By that I mean that through the mid-to-late nineties the queer movement was, more or less, happy about domestic partner benefits. Marriage was seen as something to be tackled down the line. However, the religious right started lying saying that domestic partnership was just a way to destroy marriage by stealth. At that point, I think what happened is that folks started to think that if we were going to be *accused* of trying to sneak into marriage through the backdoor we might as actually *do* that since it was going to be said about us anyway.
That said, I think that these other issues are equally as important but I also think that they can be solved in other ways. For example--and before anyone jumps down my throat for throwing around privilege, I *recognize* how lucky I am--I am a knowledge worker. I have spent most of my adult life being paid to transfer knowledge in my brain into the brains of other people or to recombine that knowledge in very interesting ways. Of the jobs I've had since 1994, almost *all* of them have offered domestic partner benefits. I was the first gay employee at one start-up I worked at and after I started, they had me wait a few days until they could contact Aetna and change the health insurance plan so that it DID cover domestic partners. They hadn't thought about it until they needed to.
Now, this was all in the Bay Area and so locale contributed but it has been my experience that fields that didn't exist one hundred years ago (computer science, genetics, etc.) are far *more* likely to provide domestic partner benefits and to have explicit non-discrimination language that protects queer people. Housing is probably going to have to be dealt with through a combination of legislative and legal processes.
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Gays and lesbians and trans people are getting beaten and killed all the time. We need more law enforcement crackdowns on bashers, current laws to be enforced more, more hate-crime legislation, campaigns to raise awareness and educate people, etc.
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This is a tough one. I actually support hate crimes laws because I understand the need for them. Every bashing isn't just an immediate attack on the queer person in question but is a message sent to all queers in the area 'next time, it could be you'. The problem is convincing OTHER people of that. If you do not or cannot imagine being attacked because of *what* you are then it looks as if people other than you are being given 'special protection'. We aren't but it *looks* that way to people of a certain mindset. This is an area where I think we may have to give some ground--NOT in the sense that we'll just have to accept a certain level of violence but we may have to accept that the law does not make it *legal* to assault someone for being queer, law enforcement, depending upon locale, may insufficiently investigate the crime because it is a queer bashing. That means we may have to use social pressure or some other way of pressuring local law enforcement to act right. Again, I'm not saying that I oppose hate crimes laws, I do not. It's just not a battle I think is winnable and I think we can use the existing laws to our benefit.
I am also in favor of queer people getting concealed carry permits in locations where that is possible. I think the stakes for any potential bigot need to be raised. It is one thing to attack someone you think is weaker but won't be armed. It is quite another thing to attack someone who *might* be carrying a gun. After a couple of gay bashers are shot while trying to hurt one of us, I think they will have to use a very different calculus. Let them sit in a bar or their home and wish to do violence to us all they wish. I don't care. Let them step up to one of us with violence in mind and I hope that queer person shoots them dead, quite honestly.
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Originally Posted by Hack
When I bring this up, I am practically shouted out of the room as being a radical or something. I've spent my entire life in mainstream politics, and I know the way to get the majority to accept a concept is start small. I've built more campaigns around this simple notion than I care to admit.
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PLEASE continue doing this and going into queer communities and passing on your experience. We need more people with your knowledge who understand that we have to win enough people to on our side so that we have the majority.
Cheers
Aj