by Lina Garcia Schmidt, ’15 and Violet Trachtenberg, ’16
The Stanford Symposium on Marriage Equality has been an important time for LGBT+, queer, and allied individuals at Stanford. It has brought students, alumni, and community members together to learn more about the decades-long struggle for marriage equality, and the hard work that has led to victories these past few years.
There are many different perspectives on marriage equality. Should it be the focus of leading LGBT organizations? Will marriage equality help the most marginalized queer communities? How can the push for marriage equality include communities of color, low-income and trans* communities? One thing is very certain: People of all identities gathering at the Symposium care strongly about the rights and well-being of LGBT+ people. It is with this in mind that Stanford Students for Queer Liberation (SSQL) seeks to contribute in some, perhaps small way to a conversation about the different views that people have on the LGBT movement.
Regardless of your opinion on the marriage equality movement, SSQL invites you to imagine more than marriage.
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On Thursday night before the symposium began, SSQL hosted a dinner for the Stanford community featuring a panel of queer students with diverse perspectives on marriage. The event ended with a group-wide conversation about possible future directions for the LGBT+ movement, and how we can create better cross-community dialogues about marriage equality and its pros and cons.
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We have put fliers around the Law School with the phrase “Imagine More than Marriage,” to provoke symposium attendees to think about what beyond gay marriage can benefit LGBT+ populations. These fliers included a link to bit.ly/morethanmarriage, a site with resources to learn more about different queer perspectives on marriage equality.
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We provided pamphlets that list awesome local organizations in the Bay Area which do transformative, intersectional grass-roots work with queer communities.
In other words: Imagine More Than Marriage does not represent a rebuttal to the symposium, but rather a reaffirmation of our collective commitment to inclusivity.
Inclusivity is crucial when we – queer and allied communities – ask “what’s next?” What does inclusivity look like? It looks like recognizing that some queer people want to get married, some queer people don’t, and some queer people don’t think marriage should exist. While marriage rights have both symbolic and material importance in the lives of many individuals, many queer people face exclusions, deprivations, and injustices that cannot be solved simply by marriage equality. Queer and trans* youth suffer from high rates of homelessness. Trans* people were excluded from the 2007 Employee Non-Discrimination Act. Queer people of color of all ages experience racism that impacts happiness, opportunity, and safety. SSQL recognizes that LGBT+ identity cuts across many other identities, and we refuse to believe that the complexity that arises as a result of this is somehow in opposition to campaigns for LGBT+ rights. We must fight so that all queer people, regardless of their relationship, can live lives free of oppression.
What else could we be working towards? How best can we collaborate in creating a world safer for all queers of all levels of social privilege? We can support those queer organizations which amplify the voices of the most marginalized queer communities. We can ask ourselves why many/most leaders of LGBT organizations are not trans* or people of color. We can think about different approaches for pursuing queer justice, not always within a legal or political framework of “pursuing rights.”
The conversation isn’t over. Consider this an invitation from SSQL to keep imagining.
SSQL is a student organization committed to intersectionality: in other words, understanding how pursuing queer justice relates to movements pursuing justice for other systemically marginalized communities. We examine the complexities that arise when queer identities intersect with racial, class, gender, and other identities. We affirm that the right to be different is a fundamental human right, and organize to contest and change social norms which prevent the authentic and secure manifestation of identities.
SSQL meets on Mondays at 7pm in the LGBT-CRC.
