Amendment 1
I am well past the point of caring. I don’t even care. Every few months, another Amendment 1 springs up and another heated debate follows suit. This time, the President of the United States returned a comment. The President of the United States. The head heterosexual Commander and Chief. Do you know what kind of perverse performative transformation not just gays, lesbians, and queers have to go through but that anyone would have to go through in order just to be recognized by the President of the United States? Of course this can’t be the focus. This point is secondary, though.
The main problem, as I see it, is not the simple statement that two same-sex loving individuals ought to be allowed the right to marry one another. The problem is that, for some odd reason, everyone approaches this situation as if it were about love and sex and not about tax status. Maybe for some it is about love and sex, sure. But love and sex make for weak arguments in the eyes of the State. Tax status: this is the only substantial issue here. Fix the problem. Fix the problem. File as an independent. Everyone. That’s how you fix the problem. Keep your finances separate from your emotions. This is not a gay rights issue. This is hardly a rights issue.
In the past 20 or so years, central tenants of the Gay Liberation movement have moved away from radical equality, universal rights, housing, affordability, funding for homeless shelters, funding for halfway houses, HIV/AIDS testing and social programs. Money has been taken away from these issues that actually affect the lives of queers. It’s turned around and pumped into what Mattilda Berstein Sycamore calls the “holy trinity of marriage, military service and adoption.” All of the things that make the queer identity docile, assimilated, a friendly neighbor, a gossip martini after work. The gay rights movement has become obsessed with frames of privilege and victimiage. It has been coopted by rich white American men who seek to boil queerness into comfort in the alembic of Will and Grace consumer culture. This is where the money goes-to Skyy Vodka and Logo and pride parades that celebrate an inherently racist consumer identity. Two years ago, Judith Butler turned down the Christopher Street Day award in Germany because of the white privilege of gay party culture and the conscious exclusion of Arabs and Turks from the conversation at large. Over twenty years ago, Essex Hemphill wrote about how his mind became haunted with the floating white specters of vanilla bodies telling him that black dicks cum AIDS and that white dicks cum gold. Obviously marriage is affordable if you cum gold. Gay is a white mid to upper class thing.
While the gay identity has been playing Leave It to Beaver, queer activists have been going to law school, going to nursing school, becoming doctors, becoming social workers, becoming sex workers, getting fucked by politicians and then outing them, getting fucked by priests and then outing them, getting fucked by the law and then throwing it out-or at least struggling to. But the gays always get in the way. They take the money and change the issues. An ex of mine went before the UN on behalf of queer sex workers with AIDS under the age of 16, a growing population that no one wants to put on television without moralizing. He was called a disgrace. Another ex of mine runs a shelter for homeless teens in LA who were kicked out of their homes for coming out. Last month, the place was almost shut down because the social services were reallocated to endorse campaigns to fight Amendment 1 on the other side of the country. It’s a matter of priority, and the middle class privilege of marriage should be so much farther down the list than it is. There is so much more we can care about than taxes. Why can’t we, instead, work to undo the binding symbolic stroke of making sexuality equivocal to finance? Why can’t we question marriage?
The main problem, as I see it, is not the simple statement that two same-sex loving individuals ought to be allowed the right to marry one another. The problem is that, for some odd reason, everyone approaches this situation as if it were about love and sex and not about tax status. Maybe for some it is about love and sex, sure. But love and sex make for weak arguments in the eyes of the State. Tax status: this is the only substantial issue here. Fix the problem. Fix the problem. File as an independent. Everyone. That’s how you fix the problem. Keep your finances separate from your emotions. This is not a gay rights issue. This is hardly a rights issue.
In the past 20 or so years, central tenants of the Gay Liberation movement have moved away from radical equality, universal rights, housing, affordability, funding for homeless shelters, funding for halfway houses, HIV/AIDS testing and social programs. Money has been taken away from these issues that actually affect the lives of queers. It’s turned around and pumped into what Mattilda Berstein Sycamore calls the “holy trinity of marriage, military service and adoption.” All of the things that make the queer identity docile, assimilated, a friendly neighbor, a gossip martini after work. The gay rights movement has become obsessed with frames of privilege and victimiage. It has been coopted by rich white American men who seek to boil queerness into comfort in the alembic of Will and Grace consumer culture. This is where the money goes-to Skyy Vodka and Logo and pride parades that celebrate an inherently racist consumer identity. Two years ago, Judith Butler turned down the Christopher Street Day award in Germany because of the white privilege of gay party culture and the conscious exclusion of Arabs and Turks from the conversation at large. Over twenty years ago, Essex Hemphill wrote about how his mind became haunted with the floating white specters of vanilla bodies telling him that black dicks cum AIDS and that white dicks cum gold. Obviously marriage is affordable if you cum gold. Gay is a white mid to upper class thing.
While the gay identity has been playing Leave It to Beaver, queer activists have been going to law school, going to nursing school, becoming doctors, becoming social workers, becoming sex workers, getting fucked by politicians and then outing them, getting fucked by priests and then outing them, getting fucked by the law and then throwing it out-or at least struggling to. But the gays always get in the way. They take the money and change the issues. An ex of mine went before the UN on behalf of queer sex workers with AIDS under the age of 16, a growing population that no one wants to put on television without moralizing. He was called a disgrace. Another ex of mine runs a shelter for homeless teens in LA who were kicked out of their homes for coming out. Last month, the place was almost shut down because the social services were reallocated to endorse campaigns to fight Amendment 1 on the other side of the country. It’s a matter of priority, and the middle class privilege of marriage should be so much farther down the list than it is. There is so much more we can care about than taxes. Why can’t we, instead, work to undo the binding symbolic stroke of making sexuality equivocal to finance? Why can’t we question marriage?