There is a great line in the recent film Milk. The original quote-"this isn't an issue, it's our lives"--comes at a moment when Dan White is confronting Harvey Milk, giving him a backhanded compliment on his success. He's not successful because of skill or being right or anything else. He's successful because he has "an issue" to pursue, something that voters on board with. White does what far too many people do when it comes to the politics of gay life: they reduce our lives to a political issue.
This phenomenon has been quite pronounced with regard to the politics of marriage. After all, they say, wanting to "protect marriage" doesn't indicate any hostility to gay people. It's just a "personal opinion" on a "political issue." Sure, it's a political issue that determines how secure people's lives will be. And, yes, what marriage is being protected from is our presence. Some people are actually crazy enough to think that actively working to make our lives less secure and to keep us from "polluting" a valued social institution isn't the least bit anti-gay. They are delusional enough think they can value gay people while devaluing our lives. They can't.
Devaluing queer life is exactly what Proposition 8--as well as the amendment campaigns in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida--was about. While the proponents of taking the right to marry away from same-sex couples may have put forth an amendment that did not touch the state's Domestic Partnership program, that was a strategic not a philosophical approach. They will come back to take DPs away. The primary organizations behind this--the LDS Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestant Churches--all believe in and are working toward a world in which gay life is unlivable. Restricting marriage is but one avenue in their broader agenda. In their organizational forms, these groups seek the obliteration of homosexuality. (Here, I'm excluding the loose networks of lay members, but dealing specifically with the hierarchical formal organizations--the laity aren't innocent, but are less monolithic than the formal complex organizations they follow are.)
This is where I'm going to get all sociological (I am doing my PhD in it, so I should probably use it from time to time). One of the biggest transformations in queer life over the past several decades has been a move away from exclusion and repression and toward inclusion and support. Companies that used to fire people for being gay now recruit gay employees and provide them with partnership benefits, inclusion within corporate diversity programs, and the recognition of LGBT employee affinity groups. In other words, they provide support for the living of queer lives. And that is exactly what the anti-gay right is attempting to do away with. The marriage exclusion amendments--and other restrictions on family formation, like the Arkansas amendment--are geared toward either restricting or rescinding institutional support for the living of queer lives. Consider these other areas of activity in which these groups oppose the inclusion of gay people:
- They support the protection of discrimination against sexual minorities in employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit.
- They treat terroristic violence against queer communities as a non-problem
- The oppose the creation of support groups for sexual minorities in high schools and colleges, and support restrictions on the ability of such groups to use public facilities.
- They work to remove any positive images and representations of sexual minorities from mass media texts and artistic productions.
- They attempt to remove any public support for institutions that produce or sponsor queer-inclusive cultural representations.
- They work to keep queer sexuality and relationships out of health and sexuality education materials
- They boycott businesses that support their LGBT employees
These, and the marriage and family restrictions, are about making sure that queer life receives no institutional support. Indeed, they seek to re-impose greater restrictions. Queer life has no value in their worldview. And, as we LGBT people know, that means queer lives have no value in their worldview. And, no, it is not an extreme leap to move from "queer life is valueless" to "queer lives are valueless."
When people say, "I think homosexuality is wrong" they are telling us more than they think. They are telling us that our relationships and families should not exist. They are telling us our communities and cultures should not exist. They are telling us our queer selves and lives should not exist. And they are working to ensure that none of these things exist. Their goal is the elimination of homosexuality from social life. While they may not with our physical death, they do desire the social death of queerness.
The move to "protect marriage" is really a move to destroy homosexuality. Theirs is a movement based in hate, a deep hatred of our queer selves. It really is that straightforward.
This isn't an issue. It's our lives.
[Edited to change title and first sentence]
