The Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision to require all US states to license and recognize same-sex marriages is a deeply meaningful victory, especially for LGBTQ families who do not live in big cities or blue states.
This decision comes after numerous victories on the state level for gay marriage, civil unions and same-sex adoption rights, but for those of us who live in conservative or rural areas, there is a special power to federal wins: They are often the only ones that include our families.
Today’s ruling on gay rights will enable thousands to experience the culture change of the recognition of their love and families. It will also enable thousands of people and families to access basic rights such as the right to marry, to visit their partners in the hospital, and to legally form chosen families.
However, it will not solve all of the life-or-death issues facing LGBTQ people today – issues that include mass incarceration, poverty, white supremacy, gender oppression and detention conditions for trans women of color. And making rights like health care or migration rights contingent on marriage will not deliver these rights to the many LGBTQ who are not married.
We must remember that today’s victory was made possible not by years of single-issue advocacy on gay marriage but rather by the thousands of LGBTQ people who built a visible and conscious base throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
At the origin point of our movement has been not a request for our dignity as LGBTQ people, but an insistence on it. The organizing that forced mainstream culture’s hand on our very humanity and right to survive did not start out picking issues around our quality of life, or try to make us more palatable or respectable to a mainstream.
Our struggle began as one centered on life-and-death LGBTQ issues: the right to live out loud as we are, the right to gather together in any way we please without being raped or killed for it, and the public and private space to tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves, and to others.
June is Pride season in many parts of the US. It has been more than four decades since the riots at Stonewall that kicked up and kicked off what is seen as the modern-day history of the LGBTQ movement. Today, the need remains great for the kind of organizing that birthed this movement.
The question before us today is: What does the LGBTQ movement do with all we have built? It is time to look inside, and remember where and whom we come from, and it is time to focus a great deal more of our substantial resources on the life-and-death issues our communities face. In doing so, we have the opportunity to celebrate this victory in a way worthy of our communities, and push forward for a future worthy of us as well.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 275 new monthly donors in the next 3 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy