More stuff on marriage

As noted in the quote from the NYT in my previous post, several leading political thinkers, activists, writers and organizers have gotten together to sign a statement, Beyond Same-Sex Marriage, that calls for a push for legal protections for a broader range of human relationships, and an extension of protections for/reduction of restrictions on individual freedoms. This has prompted this post by Joe over at Joe.My.God. As Joe says, the manifesto could have come from the "Department of About Fucking Time". There's some interesting discussion in comments about when marriage became this defining issue, and who is responsible (Ok, yes, I left a comment there too - so go read it and stop rolling your eyes already).

Brian at Faggoty-Ass Faggot (so that's who took that domain name!) also crticizes the drive for same-sex marriage, though not prompted by the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement.

Of course, marriage has had its queer doubters from the beginning, but the old critiques were more on ideological grounds (since it wasn't being pushed for at the time). The new manifesto explicitly declares itself "strategic", perhaps to distance itself from the old debate (ah, our love of the new). However, it may be less strategic and more ethical and visionary than the title lets on:

...many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world. Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance.

We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.

I'm quite glad that this manifesto got written and signed by who signed it. At the very least, it'll be harder to (further) marginalize voices in the queer movement criticizing the drive for same-sex marriage.

If anyone finds other blogs discussing the manifesto, do let me know. I'm interested. As of today, no comment yet from Andrew Sullivan, Queerty, Towleroad or Keith Boykin.

8/1/2006 EDIT: Queerty now has a post on this topic, linking to the NYT Style article, but not to the statement or the gay.com article (both of which I found more informative).

As far as editorials go, Chris Crain of the Washington Blade wrote an editorial critical of the statement. I'm not aware of any others.

Gay.com has an article about the statement and responses to it by a few LGBT orgs. Basically the orgs (Lambda Legal and HRC) are saying "we've never made marriage The Big Gay Issue, so we don't know what all the fuss is about". While I'm willing to believe this about Lambda (or at least, that it has this self-perception), I'm a little more skeptical about the HRC's diversity-washing of its past behavior. Luckily the article does quote Joseph DeFilippis, a co-author of the statement, who politely calls bullshit by its proper name (I'm quoting the article quoting DeFilippis):

I'm glad to hear national organizations saying they agree with us, but speaking for myself, I think some have driven the marriage issue and spent resources that dwarfs what's spent on other important issues such as domestic partnership and universal health care, and it would be disingenuous to say otherwise.