[aishah]

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.