I learned that gay marriage became legal in New York state in a hotel room in Detroit while there for the Allied Media Conference. While I am not a huge advocate of marriage in general, acknowledging that I am coming from it privileged as a mostly straight someone who always has had the option of being lawfully wedded, it was the right thing. Equity. My older daughter and I were happy. There maybe were some members of our family (biological & chosen) who would get married now. But I was also disturbed by some of the media coverage and some of the reactions from the lgbt organizations.

Being at the Allied Media Conference and the week before at Netroots Nation and being with and among the queer community of color, I scanned the faces of the people recorded in the gallery of the New York State Senate. There wasn’t alot of color. There wasn’t alot of people who presented as women and did I hear chants of “USA”? I could have sworn I did. Away from my state and my city, I could step away from what I knew was celebration in corners of my hood. Why was everyone acting like that’s it, like the struggle is over?

My mind meant to queer people of color and queer youth of color in New York City and how they have been harassed and brutalized by the police for decades. Earlier this month, the organization FIERCE released a statement ( link will open as PDF) to the press denouncing the continuation of of quality of life initiatives made popular under former Mayor Giuliani.
From the statement:

On Tuesday, May 31, two plainclothes Detectives from the 6th
Precinct stationed themselves in an unmarked car outside of 147 West 24th
Street, the location of FIERCE, the Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic Justice, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project—four community-based organizations working with LGBTQ communities of color, homeless and low-income community members and
youth of color. The Detectives proceeded to stop and question FIERCE youth members. They did not have a warrant, but informed FIERCE staff that they had been ordered to question youth entering and exiting the building.

The release goes on to describe some of the tactics/tools being used by the police including police sweeps, stop-and-frisk practices, checkpoints, subway monitoring, and street floodlights and security towers. Bringing it back to my own hood, these are the same tactics that are being used in the name of creating “safety” without being clear that safety is being defined as for a specific few. I think of where there sweeps and checkpoints are happening where there are large concentrations of queer people of color but no organizations nearby to say, no- this is not right and this is part of a larger problem. Gay marriage isn’t going to stop any of that and doesn’t even begin to address it.

Bringing it to the issue of immigration, a favorite topic around here, Gay marriage in New York State, will not address the needs of same-sex bi-national couples of which there are many in New York. From the New York Times:

“Implications for immigrants are perhaps less extensive than you might think,” said Pauline Park, president of the Queens Pride House, which supports the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. “Same-sex couples cannot get citizenship status the same way that opposite-sex couples can.”

Andrés Duque, a native of Colombia, said gay immigrant life was challenging, no matter where you came from.

“People think this is heaven and you’re going to come here and gay life is amazing,” he said. “The reality, for an immigrant, is different. It’s not the heaven people expect.”

The issue of state/institutional violence against queer communities of color : which comes in the forms of police violence, police inaction when queer poc are targets of violence by individuals and when federal law excludes queer couples from being able to exercise their legal rights when it comes to immigration, doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the problem with the way the gay marriage issue has been framed. From jump – the gay marriage movement has been led by a certain class, color and gender(s), excluding others. The question often raised by marriage equity advocates when challenged on the issue(s) of immigration and access especially for transgender/gender queer people of color is “why should we care about your issue when we have our own shit to worry about”. This denial of the intersections that exist in our realities, this idea of “we’ll get to you after we take care of ourselves” continues a long legacy of politics dictated by profit and non-profit models of safety and artificial definitions of community.

While I fully expect to enjoy going to weddings in my state of New York, because really who doesn’t love a good party and love is a beautiful thing, the real party and the real celebration comes in a wider vision of love where no one gets left behind.