REBELS WITH A CAUSE

Back in the 70s, being gay was all about anti-establishment. Not having to serve in the armed forces; not having to get married, not having to exemplify a heterosexualized stereotype. That is why areas like The Castro and Christopher Street became havens for gays from different areas of the United States, to live, to work, to feel safe with a sense of community. Even Fran Lebowitz commented on this in her HBO documentary.

30+ years later, the gay movement wants to make gays part of the armed forces, marriages and making gay mainstream. There is a group that opposes all of this and they have been around for a couple of years: Against Equality.

From Against Equality's home page: Against Equality is an online archive, publishing, and arts collective focused on critiquing mainstream gay and lesbian politics. As queer thinkers, writers and artists, we are committed to dislodging the centrality of equality rhetoric and challenging the demand for inclusion in the institution of marriage, the US military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. We want to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility.

The group's stance on marriage equality: Gay marriage apes hetero privilege and allows everyone to forget that marriage ought not to be the guarantor of rights like health care. In their constant invoking of the “right” to gay marriage, mainstream gays and lesbians express a confused tangle of wishes and desires. They claim to contest the Right’s conservative ideology yet insist that they are more moral and hence more deserving than sluts like us. They claim that they simply want the famous 1000+ benefits but all of these, like the right to claim protection in cases of domestic violence, can be made available to non-marital relationships.

Nobody should be in the military, according to this group; thus, they are for the repeal of DADT: Is it the uniforms? The always flattering navy blue of a seaman’s uniform? The adventurous khaki of a soldier in the desert? Or might it be the rituals of military life, the sado-masochistic infliction of rules and tortuous drills, which drive today’s gays and lesbians to insist that they ought to be allowed to serve freely and openly in the military?