The Republican-led New York Senate's vote to legalize marriage equality is inarguably a turning point in the civil rights fight of our generation. The LGBT and queer rights movement has come a long way: forty-two years ago in New York we were starting to fight back against the idea that state police can terrorize and intimidate us into avoiding even showing up in public places to associate with each other. This week we've finally gotten the legislature to realize that our relationships are not illegal. It's a real tipping point for our movement. But there's still a long fight ahead if we want to reach real equality.
Right in the midst of this battle, the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg (a supporter of marriage equality), proposed cuts to services for people with HIV/AIDS. He proposed a $5 million reduction in these funds - which were designated for help with housing, meals and health programs for people with HIV. There were protests, but it did not receive the kind of attention that his support for marriage equality (and his promise to give Republican supporters of marriage equality millions of dollars) received.
New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo decided that was also a reasonable path for his budget, and he moved to reduce HIV/AIDS related spending as well.
This is not unique to New York. Seventeen states have decreased this funding and the numbers are increasing. There are thousands of people on waiting lists for antiretroviral drugs and other life-saving medications. Even President Obama's administration is not immune from reducing the supply of much needed money for ADAP funding for these treatments and services. And alongside these cuts, state Medicaid programs and other services are being slowly dismantled as well, making the situation even more dire.
These things are even happening in states with marriage equality and even employment discrimination protections and hate crimes laws. Even when we're in an area where we have the same rights as everyone else, we're still fighting to stay alive. We clearly have a lot of work left to do even in our most liberal areas. Until people realize that cutting funding for life-threatening diseases that affect minority communities dehumanizes all of us, we're not really free. Our lives should no more be a part of a political game than heterosexual, cisgender white men's lives are now. The simple fact that anyone would consider cutting HIV funding a Republican victory for "smaller government" shows that we're not human enough yet.
And in other ways, has the fight really moved on from the things we stood up against at Stonewall? It's clear that law enforcement is so deeply homophobic that there is no simple way to end it. Asking them to stop is a first step, but how do we ensure we can move forward? At least the DOJ is starting to investigate the entrenchment of homophobia and racism in our so-called justice system.
And even now, we're still dealing with pre-Stonewall activities. Our gay bars are still being raided, their customers harassed. Even today in some places (for the most part, red states) this is still happening with the same intensity as pre-Stonewall. In 2009, on the anniversary of Stonewall, a gay bar in Texas was raided.
In all, seven people were arrested for public intoxication and many more detained — one account says police “only arrested men and seemed to be targeting effeminate men.” Adds Raymond Gill, who was at the bar: “I asked him why I was pulled outside. He stated it was because the way I was walking. He said I looked like I was drunk. But as I stated, I got to the bar 30 minutes before they got there. I sat down had not got up before police got there. No one saw me walk.”
In Atlanta, the situation was even more extreme. Patrons were searched, abused, and humiliated:
With officers shouting obscenities and slurs, virtually everyone in the bar -- about 60 people -- was handcuffed that night and ordered to lie on the floor, according to witnesses.
[...]
According to witnesses in the bar, the raiding officers threatened, shoved and intimidated them. At least one man cried while he was prone on the floor. Another said he was not allowed to get up or move even though the floor was covered with spilled beer and broken glass. An employee had to be hospitalized because of the stress of the raid. The manager said a Red Dog officer kicked in a door even after he offered to unlock it.
After everyone had been released, some said, Red Dog officers "celebrated by high-fiving and jumping on top of each other like they were ‘football players that [had] just won a game,' ” the report said.
The police are accused of lying about what occurred during the raid, and a report on the incident glossed over many facts. This is unsurprising in general, but it's even easier to perpetrate these kinds of actions against an oppressed, persecuted minority.
And that's not the only incident. Just last week, on the night of the New York Senate's vote for marriage equality, a New York bar near the Stonewall Inn was raided. Officials claimed that it was just a routine inspection that was planned far in advance and had nothing to do with the marriage celebration, but even so, they knew it would be occurring around the time of the Pride celebration. Says a patron:
Christopher J. Borras, 46, was among those waiting to get in, finally gaining entry about 11:45 p.m., just as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was preparing to sign the marriage measure into law.
“I find interesting the timing,” said Mr. Borras, who had been at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village earlier that night. “I would just like to know from the police: `Why did they do that?’ To me, it is a blatant sign of intimidation and harassment, I mean, 42 years after the Stonewall riots and we still have to live in fear of the police disturbing our quiet enjoyment of life? I just don’t understand. We are very peaceful."
And while the process of debating the marriage vote in New York was going on,hate crimes against LGBTs in the state were being committed.
After awhile it starts to seem like if someone can't win by actually defeating gay rights advocates at the voting booth or in the legislature, they'll just attack and intimidate us and make us fear coming out and fighting for our rights. Shortly after we learned of the bar raid, we learned that Gay Pride floats were vandalized before the parade in Chicago, Illinois. Someone involved with Chicago's Pride parade noted that this type of vandalism had not ever happened to their floats. Yet a day after our victory in New York, it happens.
Then, there was Los Angeles, in the same week. Someone vandalized a business there, spray painting "Kill All Gays Now" on its walls.
And beyond Christian commentators telling Christians to "lock and load' against gay marriage, people commented on a nice New York pro-family group's Facebook page that New York needs another 9/11... because the first one didn't sink in.
And suicide continues to be a big problem for young LGBT people. The media may have stopped noting the suicides of gay teens but they're happening at the same rate, and organizations are needed to help stop them as much as ever. This is especially important in red states where it seems so hopeless for us. Red states are receiving the worst of the budget cuts, the worst of the homophobia, hate crimes and raids, and the least federal action to help us out. We are especially struggling with HIV funding and education, and the myth that HIV is a "big city disease" and we are immune. When we're all so spread apart and lack any kind of support networks, it's difficult to educate everyone on these issues.
We can't simply address LGBT issues state-by-state anymore. My state and other red states will always lag behind. Even if we didn't want to, the fact that rural areas are red and they are also spread so far apart in distance and the fact that people in these areas are so religious - all of those things work against the concept of red states being able to mount the necessary coordination and campaign efforts on behalf of our more marginalized community members.
We have made awesome progress but we have so far to go and we need a national effort to make things better for the states that are the most hostile toward LGBT folks, even LGBT teens. We cannot as a country stand by and assume that state governments will take on these responsibilities, or even assume they're equipped to do so. Equality requires a national effort on all fronts. And I mean true equality, not only marriage.
We've seen these fights end abruptly. We've seen national movements for women's rights and African American Civil Rights start and then seem to fizzle out as time goes by. We've seen the urgency of the national movement die and we've watched states try unsuccessfully to extend the fight without the kind of national backing it takes to win true equality. I don't want to watch our fight end before it even begins.