Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (editor) - Thats Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation

Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

For JoAnne (1974-1995)

For David Wojnarowicz (1955-1992)

n the fall of 2004, Marriage Equality, a brand new brand of "nonprofit," held two amazing benefits, one in New York City and a follow-up in Washington, D.C. Dubbed "Wedrock," these star-studded events featured numerous celebrities, major-label activist rockers from Moby to Sleater-Kinney, Bob Mould to Le Tigre. Just to get people all excited about marriage equality, the promotional e-mail for the events concluded by stating, "Get angry, protect your citizenship."

If gay marriage is about protecting citizenship, whose citizenship is being protected? Most people in this country-especially those not horn rich, white, straight, and male-are not full citizens. Gay assimilationists want to make sure they're on the winning side in the citizenship wars, and thus they see no need to confront the legacies of systemic and systematic U.S. oppression that prevent most people living in this country (and anywhere else) from exercising their supposed "rights."

Willful participation in U.S. imperialism is crucial to 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. And since we're talking about the trinity, let's not forget that all-important issue, the one we've been crossing our fingers and toes for: ordination into the priesthood! 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?

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 measures of gay success. Even when the gay rights agenda does include important issues, it does it in a way that consistently prioritizes the most privileged while fucking over everyone else. I'm using the term "gay rights," instead of the more popular term of the moment, "LGBT rights," because "LGBT" usually means gay, with lesbian in parentheses, throw out the bisexuals, and put trans on for a little windowdressing. Don't even think about queers who don't fit neatly into one of the prevailing categories!

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. Kill those criminals twice, this logic goes, and then there won't be any more violence.

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 all those tacky hues of lavender and pink, in favor of the good of stars and stripes, literally draping themselves in Old Glory at every pro-marriage demonstration as the U.S. 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.

The tyranny of assimilation lies in the way the borders are policed. For decades, there has been strife 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 advocates brush aside 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. If gay assimilationists wanted actual progress, they'd start by fighting for the abolition of marriage (duh), and universal access to the services that marriage can sometimes help procure: housing, healthcare, citizenship, tax breaks, and inheritance rights.

Instead, proponents of assimilation 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 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.

But doesn't the creation of a world where it's safe for gay Republicans, gay realtors, and gay action figures to come out of the closet and live full, healthy, happy lives-doesn't this create more options for all of us? No-it creates more options for gay Republicans (and Democrats!) to support a warmongering, bigoted agenda, more options for gay realtors to sell overpriced property (and advise their clients on how best to evict longterm tenants), and more options for gay action figures to ... drop bombs. (Wait-can action figures drop bombs?)

Speaking of plastic, I remember when I first moved to San Francisco in 1992, just before my 19th birthday, and was completely terrified by the conformity, hyper-masculinity, and blind consumerism of the legendary gay Castro district. I quickly figured out that this could never be my "community," and always assumed that it wasn't anyone else's either. Then one day, just recently, I was walking through the Castro with a friend of mine, whose social group includes a number of gay white men in their fifties, and everywhere guys were smiling at him and reaching out with great big hugs. I realized, then, that the Castro was somebody's community, and this was, for a moment, a revelation.