The Equality Agenda
Last week’s National Equality March on Washington not only unified LGBT activists everywhere, it signaled an important victory in the battle to keep the movement inclusive.
By Emily Rutherford
October 20, 2009
Several of the thousands of activists who walked in Washington’s National Equality March. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Thirty years ago, when gay rights activists first marched on Washington, their demands were fairly specific: protections for gays and lesbians comparable to those in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the repeal of laws expressly discriminating against gays and lesbians, enactment of laws establishing gay and lesbian parents’ rights, and protecting gay and lesbian youth from harm. That first march happened long before there was an established LGBT lobby in Washington, D.C., long before sodomy was decriminalized nationwide, and long before marriage equality was even a glimmer in queer activists’ eyes. Now, it is one of their central demands. Early gay rights activism focused on the acknowledgement of gay men and lesbians’ existence.
By contrast, last weekend’s National Equality March had but one demand, though it was a mouthful: “Equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. Now.”
That demand is a sea change from the state of gay rights activism 30 years ago. This new message is one of unity, the incorporation of all people—not just everyone covered by the “LGBT” umbrella, but their straight allies; not just the establishment LGBT lobby in Washington (in the form of groups like the Human Rights Campaign), but grassroots activists from around the country. By avoiding a more specific list of demands, this march was thus able to involve—and, indeed, rely on the organizing skills of—not just the older generation of gay and lesbian activists who organized the marches on Washington over the past three decades, but also the young progressives inspired by Obama and outraged by the passage Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban.
Sure enough, like with almost every activist movement, controversies and infighting surrounded this march for the past five months. During that time, the LGBT activist community (particularly the LGBT blogosphere) was bitterly divided not only over whether it was wise to hold a march on Washington. They also fought over the march’s timing, terminology, issues, and logistics. For instance, not all activists agreed on removing “LGBT” from the name of the march—ultimately dubbed the National Equality March—thereby making it the first LGBT march on Washington in which name the words “gay and lesbian” or “LGBT” did not appear.
No one understands these internal debates better than Amin Ghaziani, author of The Dividends of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington. Ghaziani is an expert on the infighting that, as he says, is “part and parcel of political organizing. Whenever a group decides to stage a national political demonstration such as a Washington march—an event that portrays a public face of the group to America—you’re going to see dissent.”
The dissent surrounding the equality march did not mean failure. As Ghaziani explains, “infighting can sometimes yield unexpected dividends. It can be generative and productive by helping activists to more concretely articulate their otherwise nebulous concerns of identity … and strategy.” To wit, in this march, straight allies played a larger role than in previous LGBT marches, and the rainbow flag replaced the logo of blue and yellow equality sign, a logo of the Human Rights Campaign, that was omnipresent at an LGBT march in 2000.
In fact, it’s becoming increasingly popular in the discourse surrounding this movement to spread a message of “equal rights for all,” regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity. As former HRC director Tim McFeeley said when speaking to an audience at Princeton University the day after the march, “We gain more when the struggle is not about us, but about U.S.,” the country as a whole. McFeeley also suggested that this new “equality agenda” is key in attracting the “Obama generation,” progressive first-time voters participating in LGBT activism since the election.
Noting the involvement of high school and college-age activists in this most recent march, McFeeley, a participant in two LGBT marches on Washington, said a good march can “change the people who attend.” He was right—this was the unequivocal reaction I heard from many of the 70 students from my university with whom I attended the march. Many of them had never undertaken any form of political activism outside of voting, and virtually all came back to campus energized, wanting to know how to translate that energy into political action.
What remains to be seen is whether tens of thousands of people congregating in downtown Washington will convince Congress and the White House to take action on a range of issues, from the Defense of Marriage Act to employment non-discrimination to immigration law. After all, the gay civil rights bill never materialized after the march in 1979, so perhaps focusing on inclusiveness will help
LGBT activists and ordinary Americans unite and prosper in a way they haven’t before. It’s worth a try.
Emily Rutherford is a staff writer for Campus Progress
and a sophomore at Princeton University. Follow her on Twitter.
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