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The
struggle for gay and lesbian rights surged forward last November with
near spontaneous mass mobilizations throughout the United States following the passage of an
anti-gay ballot measure in California. Rather than be deterred by
a California Supreme Court decision on May 26 to uphold Proposition 8,
activists launched organizing efforts to fight back almost immediately.
The
energy generated from these largely youthful marches and rallies culminates
in an Oct. 9-11 weekend of activity in Washington, D.C., including a mass march. A
solidarity march is scheduled for San Francisco on Oct. 11.
The
outpouring into the streets promised by the National Equality March
(NEM) shows the way forward for how to build a movement to effectively
combat the oppression of LGBT people. A similar strategy of mass
mobilization was employed by other movements in the United States and was a decisive factor
in the victorious struggles against racist Jim Crow laws, for an end to
the war against Vietnam, for universal women’s
suffrage, and for a woman’s right to control her own body.
The
National Equality March will take to the streets at a time when LGBT
rights struggles in two states and one city—Washington, Maine, and Kalamazoo, Mich.—will be put before voters
this November. What’s at stake in each individual case is an expansion
of same-sex domestic partnership laws, a reversal of same-sex marriage
previously approved by voters, and a legal prohibition against discrimination
of LGBT people, respectively.
The
NEM’s central demand is “equal protection for
LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Now!”
On
the national level, two efforts have been made this year—first by Massachusetts and then by California—to challenge the
constitutionality of the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). In both cases, the U.S. Department of
Justice (DOJ) defended the law, which defines marriage as a union
between a man and a woman.
In
a June 2009 brief filed by the by the DOJ, their attorneys argued that
the law did not discriminate against gays and lesbians and was a valid
means of saving money that governments would otherwise spend on [same
sex] marital benefits. DoMA bars same-sex
couples—even those married in the 6 states where same-sex marriage is
legal—from enjoying over 1300 federal benefits belonging to
heterosexual married couples. Some of those benefits are Social
Security, veterans’ benefits, health insurance, Medicaid, hospital
visitation, estate taxes, retirement savings, pensions, family leave,
and immigration law.
Obama has since filed a brief saying that the law is
discriminatory and that Congress should repeal it. However, the DOJ is
mandated to continue defending the law, as it is mandated to defend
every other law passed by Congress.
Another
Clinton-era law, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), which for the past 16
years has allowed the military to conduct a witch hunt for homosexuals,
has resulted in the dismissal of 13,000 gay and lesbian service members.
Following consultation with Pentagon officials and the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama said he will
enforce DADT but seeks to “change” it. No details were offered, but
among defenders of LGBT rights, most desire total abolition of DADT. A
CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted in December 2008 indicates
that 81 percent of respondents believe that homosexuals should be
allowed to serve in the U.S. military.
A
scorecard recently published by The Advocate, a major national
monthly LGBT magazine, gave the current administration a C-minus on
DADT and an F on DOMA. Moreover, little has been done on the federal
level to end workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and
gender identification. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which
would prohibit this discrimination, has been introduced in nearly every
Congress since 1994—only to die. Today is no exception, with a version
of ENDA languishing in Congressional committees.
Meanwhile,
30 states still discriminate based on sexual orientation and 38
discriminate based on gender identification. This discrimination has
been grounds for firing gay and trans people in these states. Obama has not urged haste for ENDA’s
passage.
“Change” that we need?
The
“change” that many LGBT people voted for this past November was based
on their hopes, but also their fears.
The
Bush administration and a majority Republican Congress presided over
the passage of same-sex-marriage bans in the vast majority of the 30
states where bans currently exist. Regarding this issue alone, voting
for the “lesser-evil” seemed more appealing than ever.
After
all, the reasoning went, Democrats finally won
a majority in both branches of Congress. Combined with candidate Obama vowing to be the LGBT community’s “fierce
advocate”, the time had finally come to repeal DoMA
and DADT and to achieve full equality, more generally.
After
Obama was elected, many in the LGBT community
refused to acknowledge his open opposition to same-sex marriage as a
harbinger of a Pyrrhic victory.
Unfortunately,
the fact that many of the key leaders of the march are tied to the
Democratic Party has opened the door to strategic compromises with
outright opponents of the LGBT movement.
For
example, David Mixner, one of the NEM’s lead organizers, is a gay former advisor to
President Bill Clinton. And Clinton, for his part, has rudely suggested
what the political orientation of the movement should be. During his
keynote address to a major liberal/Democratic Party event known as Netroots Nation Convention this past August,
someone from the audience interrupted him to ask if he would call for
the repeal of DADT and DOMA. Clinton responded by blaming the
LGBT community themselves for the passage of legislation that he
signed.
“You
want to talk about ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell?’” Clinton lectured. “I’ll tell you
exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support. All most of
you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the
Congress. Now that’s the truth.”
Cleve
Jones, who worked closely alongside Harvey Milk in the late 1970s
during his successful campaign to become San Francisco’s first openly gay member
of the Board of Supervisors, is one of the NEM’s
national spokespersons. Jones has appeared on many radio programs, blogs, in LGBT print and on-line publications, and
on the stages of prestigious forums like the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to publicize the NEM.
Jones
has used the exposure to also expound its political strategy. It is
summed up on the march’s website: “We support community organizing in
all 435 Congressional Districts toward the goal of full federal
equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people.”
From
Obama—“Congress should repeal DOMA”—to
Clinton, to Jones, each one has made it clear that following the NEM,
in order achieve reforms that benefit LGBT people, the movement should
begin campaigning in congressional districts to ensure that Democrats
win contested congressional races in 2010. Their case is bolstered by
the carefully sown illusion that the Democratic Party is a “friend” of
LGBT people.
The
reputation of Democrats as a “progressive” party is ill-gotten, but it
is one that, at least since the FDR administration, has effectively
disoriented mass movements or prevented them from developing at all.
Between the 1969 Stonewall rebellion in New York City—which gave birth
to the modern LGBT movement—and today, Democrats have controlled the
White House for 12 years under one Carter and two Clinton
administrations. For at least six years, Democrats controlled both
Houses of Congress as well. The outcome has been DOMA and DADT; under
Carter, more gays and lesbians were kicked out of the military than
under the previous post war Republican administrations.
On
Oct. 10, the NEM has several workshops scheduled on topics including
how to lobby elected representatives and how to run for office or elect
an “out” candidate. “Change your government from the inside!” reads one
of the workshop titles. Leading the lobbying workshop is a former advisor
to Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Villaraigosa
and a former field organizer for Obama for
America. People with similar backgrounds and viewpoints are leading the
other political strategy workshops.
After
the weekend of events, the organizational options for LGBT activists
will be mostly limited to a number of dominant NGOs and non-profits,
which, with a few exceptions, have an electoral strategy. For example,
the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national LGBT rights
organization, is a powerful multi-million-dollar lobby of over 750,000
members comprising their “grassroots force.” Since 1980 they have
endorsed “fair-minded” candidates, including Bill Clinton and Barak Obama.
Courage
Campaign, based in California, was founded and is
currently directed by the former chair of Howard Dean’s presidential
campaign in California. Some of their clients for
their on-line organizing tools include Obama
for America and the Democratic National Committee. Equality California, the state’s largest LGBT
rights political organization, includes paid staff who led local
organizing drives for Obama and Hillary
Clinton.
Which way forward for LGBT
rights?
The
Democratic Party’s history of selling out the struggle for LGBT rights
speaks for itself. And certainly the absence of any national
organization comprised of genuine grassroots activists that is
politically independent of the twin parties of homophobia leaves the
dominant LGBT organizations to determine the strategy and tactics of
the movement unchallenged.
Therefore,
in the coming period, the LGBT struggles risk being knocked off of a
forward-moving course by the Democrats, who determine politics based on
what might be advantageous for them, vis a vis the Republicans. The greater part of their
political calculation is how they can best balance between concessions
and cutbacks (on rights or social services) without agitating 8.8
million LGBT people in the country to the point that they fight back.
It
should be noted, however, that reactionary laws—against LGBT people,
against Blacks and Latinos, against women, against all working
people—aren’t a product of any one political party or any one
president, but stem from unequal social relations inherent in the
system itself.
These
social inequities are built upon an economic foundation that is
similarly unequal, in which the lion’s share of all wealth is
controlled by a small number of capitalists who control the economy and
rule society. This inequality is enforced by artificial social
constructs that divide people on the basis of sex, gender, race,
ethnicity, and class.
Until
the LGBT movement collectively becomes their own “fierce advocate” and
begins building their own independent, mass organizations and a
movement capable of fighting back, the energy for achieving full LGBT equality
will have a tendency to dissipate into mainstream politics. But, should
a struggle develop to unravel a certain thread—LGBT oppression—of the
larger fabric of inequity, there is potential for the whole system to
come undone. Then a new society can be built upon the tatters of the
old.
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