[aishah]

i agree with sparkle. and many others.

i don't understand why what i said earlier seems to have been so unclear, but...

* i am not against gay marriage. i am very much for it, as i stated over and over and over again. i think it will help many people.
* yes, it's true all kinds of people get married, not just middle class people. (though in my experience marriage tends to be less of an ideal choice for poor people of color, but that's neither here nor there to what i was saying earlier.)
* i think it's cool obama came out in support of gay marriage. i don't trust him (or any politician), but i voted for him and i probably will again. i suspect it was an election stunt, but honestly that's also neither here nor there.
* the response to what obama has said has been overwhelming, and while his words carry some weight, they don't actually make concrete change for us right now. i'm not sure they ever will. i hope they will. but the fact remains that (as julie and others have pointed out also) he is treating it as a states' rights issue and does not see it as a federal civil rights issue. so despite his support, even he still believes we should be treated as separate and unequal.

here's where i seem to have lost some folks.

* i have a problem with the fact that the mainstream lgbtq rights movement has turned itself into a single issue movement - gay marriage.
* the frustration i most deeply have with this is that every time a politician says something about this issue, or the mainstream media prints something about this issue, i am painfully and deeply reminded that this is almost the only issue that gets any attention in the mainstream. other issues that disproportionately affect working class and poor queers of color, disabled queers, and other marginalized folks get very little attention. passing gay marriage will not fix these other issues. at the same time, most straight folks i know don't even know these issues exist because all that they hear about is gay marriage.
* obama won't ever talk about these other issues, like incarceration and murder of trans* women of color. the nyt isn't about to put it on the front page. because the mainstream lgbtq community barely pays it any attention to begin with, so why should the rest of the world? i'm not frustrated because i disagree with gay marriage, but because i disagree with the way we've made gay marriage the ONLY issue. bulldog asked what i would change...that's something i would change. i wish that the big lgbtq organizations talked deeply and critically about other issues besides gay marriage. i wish that we brought other issues to the attention of the media and politicians.

and here's where i apparently REALLY lost some people...

* gay marriage does not mean equality, and passing gay marriage laws does not mean we will all be "mainstreamed" and "normalized." these laws extend a few more rights to monogamous same-sex couples, but as we've seen with the war on women and many other situations, those rights can easily be ignored and taken away. as can any other legal rights we get. that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek for them, but personally i don't feel that that's the ONLY thing we should focus on because it's so tenuous. often the most marginalized among us are the first ones to have those legal protections violated.
* our society is fundamentally unequal, and as i pointed out in post 49, the attempts to push the idea of a "normalized" gay person has set up the dichotomy of "good queers" (those who are most easily able to conform to a heteronormative society, to the best of their ability, usually but not always middle/upper class white gays and lesbians)/"bad queers" (the rest of us). this is not directly relevant to marriage in and of itself, however it is relevant to the mainstream lgbtq movement's attempts to say "we're just like (middle/upper class white) straight families" and the fact that the rest of us frequently get told we are making queers look bad. because of what i posted in post 49, i don't think being mainstreamed or normalized is a helpful goal - it just reifies the existing oppressive structures in our society.

it boils down to the fact that i believe our movements have the capacity to actually be inclusive of all of us, including the most marginalized, and the issues that disproportionately affect us. and that in the history of civil rights movements, the argument of "just wait til we get x law passed and then we'll care about other issues that affect you" never actually ends up happening. the mainstream movement gets its single issue passed and everyone else is still stuck in the shadows with no funding and no coverage. i think gay marriage is awesome, i think people supporting it is great, but it's not the only or the most immediately pressing issue for many of us.

i don't care if you agree with me, but i'd appreciate it if you at least consider what i am saying without misrepresenting what i am saying. (or just ignore it. whatever floats your boat.) nowhere have i said that i don't agree with gay marriage or don't support what obama said. and people of all ages agree and disagree with what i've said...it is not an age issue.

normally i wouldn't have posted in a gay marriage thread at all, because i can see the backlash coming from a mile away, but i felt some of the issues i brought up were relevant to the article snow posted (which was not unquestioningly applauding obama's announcement). if it had been a "yay obama supports gay marriage" thread i would have walked on by. just as i have walked on by the news about gay marriage and other threads. i thought this thread was to critically discuss the implications of this issue, not to unquestioningly all agree that obama is wonderful and anyone who doesn't think he is is a mean person who's setting the movement back.