Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[SecretAgentMa'am]

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.

I think the reason marriage equality gets so much attention right now is that we're *so close* to winning that fight. There's a sense that we're in the home stretch, so a lot of people want to throw in their lot for a fight that actually has an end in sight. Kind of like how a lot of competitive runners will tell you they get a burst of energy they never would have thought possible when they round that last turn and they can see the finish line. I predict that once we've achieved marriage equality, one of those other issues will take the forefront, and we'll be having the same conversation again, only it will be some other issue that some people think shouldn't be getting all the attention when there's all these other others to work on. As a community, we seem to focus on one thing at a time, and I actually think that's a good thing. I think we can get a lot more done with a lot of people focusing on one thing at a time rather than trying to focus on a few dozen issues at once.