"Opiate of the Queers"

A number of Leftist radicals express a degree of hostility to the issue of gay marriage. Rather than see it as the civil rights issue it is, it has been pilloried by some as an "opiate of the queers."

Prominent academics in queer studies like Judith Butler have argued against gays supporting the "heteronormative institution" of marriage, and Bill Dobbs, a former leading figure in New York's militant AIDS activist group ACT-UP, has argued:

"The pursuit of marriage in the name of equality shows how the gay imagination is shriveling."

In the blogosphere and at some right-on gay bars, the response to the California ruling among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) folks vacillates between euphoria and a sense of loss from "assimilation" into the "straight culture."

Conservative vs. Radical Gays

Gay marriage proponents are anxious to discard generations of queer efforts to create new ways of loving, lusting for, and caring for one another, in favor of a 1950s model of white picket fence, “we’re just like you” conformity.

If gay marriage is about protecting citizenship, whose citizenship is being protected? Most people in this country—especially those not born rich, white, straight, and male—are not [enjoying the rights supposedly granted to] full citizens.

The not-so-subtle demand to “protect your citizenship” evokes images of George W. Bush’s screeds against “enemies of freedom.”

Gay assimilationists want to make sure they’re on the winning side in the citizenship wars, and see no need to confront the legacies of systemic and systematic US oppression that prevent most people living in this country (and everywhere else) from exercising their supposed rights.

This willful participation in US imperialism is part of the larger goal of assimilation, as the holy trinity of marriage, military service, and adoption has become the central preoccupation of a gay movement centered more on obtaining straight privilege than challenging power.

Gay assimilationists have created the ultimate genetically modified organism, combining virulent strains of nationalism, patriotism, consumerism, and patriarchy and delivering them in one deadly product: state-sanctioned matrimony.

Gay marriage proponents are anxious to discard those tacky hues of lavender and pink, in favor of the good ol’ stars and stripes.

Literally draping themselves in Old Glory at every pro-marriage demonstration as the US occupies Iraq, overthrows the only democratically elected government in the history of Haiti, funds the Israeli war on the Palestinians, and makes the whole world safe...for multinational corporations to plunder indigenous resources.

A gay elite has hijacked queer struggle and positioned their desires as everyone’s needs—the dominant signs of straight conformity have become the ultimate signs of gay success.

Sure, for white gays with beach condos, country club memberships, and nice stock portfolios with a couple hedge funds that need trimming every now and then (think of Rosie O’Donnell or David Geffen), marriage might just be the last thing standing in the way of full “citizenship,” but what about for everyone else?

Even when the “gay rights” agenda does include real issues, it does it in a way that consistently prioritizes the most privileged while fucking over everyone else.

A gay rights agenda fights for an end to discrimination in housing and employment, but not for the provision of housing or jobs; domestic partner health coverage, but not universal health coverage.

Or, more recently, hospital visitation and inheritance rights for married couples, but not for anyone else.

Even with the most obviously “gay” issue, that of anti-queer violence, a gay rights agenda fights for tougher hate crimes legislation instead of fighting the racism, classism, transphobia (and homophobia) intrinsic to the criminal “justice” system.

The violence of assimilation lies in the ways the borders are policed. For decades, there has been a tension within queer politics and cultures between assimilationists and liberationists, conservatives and radicals.

Never before, however, has the assimilationist/conservative side held such a stranglehold over popular representations of what it means to be queer.

Gay marriage proponents are anxious to discard generations of queer efforts to create new ways of loving, lusting for, and caring for one another, in favor of a 1950s model of white picket fence, “we’re just like you” normalcy.

The ultimate irony of gay liberation is that it has made it possible for straight people to create more fluid gender, sexual, and social identities, while mainstream gay people salivate over state-sanctioned Tiffany wedding bands and participatory patriarchy.

Many straight people know that marriage is outdated, tacky, and oppressive—and any queer who grew up in or around marriage should remember this well.

Marriage still exists as a central site of anti-woman, anti-child, and anti-queer violence, and remains a key institution through which the wealth and property of upper class and/or white families are preserved.

If gay marriage proponents wanted real progress, they’d be fighting for the abolition of marriage (duh), and for universal access to the services that marriage can sometimes help procure: housing, healthcare, citizenship, tax breaks, and inheritance rights.

Instead, gay marriage proponents claim that access to marriage will solve fundamental problems of inequality.

This is not surprising, given that the gay marriage movement is run by groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the Log Cabin Republicans, who have more in common with the National Rifle Association than any sort of left agenda, queer or otherwise.

These are the same gays who routinely instigate police violence against people of color, homeless people, transgender people, sex workers, and other marginalized queers, in their never-ending quest to “clean up” the neighborhoods they’ve gentrified. Their agenda is cultural erasure, and they want the full Monty.

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or healthcare—but this has never been enshrined as progress.

The majority of queers—single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed—remain excluded from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

Furthermore, in order to access any marriage benefits, those not entirely “male” or “female” would need to accept gender tyranny.

As gay marriage continues to dominate the mainstream gay agenda, resources are directed away from HIV prevention, AIDS services, drug treatment, domestic violence services, and other programs desperately needed by less privileged queers.

Instead, millions of dollars are being poured into the marriage coffin.

The fight between pro-marriage and anti-marriage queers is not a disagreement between two segments of a supposed community, but a fight over the fundamental goals of queer struggle.

Gay marriage proponents are anxious to further the media myth that there are only two sides to the gay marriage/assimilation debate:

Foaming-at-the-mouth Christian fundamentalists who think gay marriage marks the death of Western civilization, and rabid gay assimilationists who act as if gay marriage is the best thing since Queer Eye for the Straight Girl.

It is no coincidence that queers who oppose gay marriage are shut out of the picture, since it’s much easier for a gay marriage proponent to win an argument with a crazed homophobe than with an anti-marriage queer.

And every time some well-meaning straight leftist thinks they’re being open-minded by taking the gay marriage side, they need to go back to Feminism 101.

Of course, Christian fundamentalists make no distinction between diesel dykes and Diesel jeans, or, to be more direct—they think all queers are gonna burn in hell, Tiffany or no Tiffany.

Every time gay marriage proponents patiently explain to fundamentalists, “One, two—we’re just like you! Three, four—we bash queers more!” the Christian right gains authority.

But this false polarization serves gay assimilationists as well, by silencing queers who threaten the power that lies behind their sweatshop-produced nylon rainbow flags.

When gay assimilationists cheerfully affirm, over and over again, to lunatics who want them dead, that of course gay identity is not a choice (because who would choose it?), they unwittingly expose the tyranny of simplistic identity politics.

Not only have the dominant signs of straight conformity become the central goals of the gay assimilationist movement, but assimilationists see a threat to Christian fundamentalist security as a threat to their version of progress.

Forget about choosing our gender, sexual, or social identities, forget about building community or family outside of traditional norms, forget about dismantling dominant systems of oppression—let’s just convince the Christian right to accept us on their own terms.

tags: gay  marriage  conformity  conservative  radical  

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