In the early 2000s, I was part of a national queer youth movement, led by trans and gender queer People of the Global Majority, that, among many fights, was trying to get people to understand that marriage equality is not liberation.
For us, the white, cis, specific kind of gay only, wealthy-backed marriage equality was not our priority struggle. Instead, we were fighting for housing for queer and trans youth of color, for gender-affirming universal health care access,
and against adoptee/abductee imperialism. We were combating transphobia against trans Women of the Global Majority, fighting against borders and anti-immigrant sentiment, for abolition, demanding disability justice, and racial and economic justice for everyone.
We were fighting for the rights for every being to be liberated, regardless of whether they were married.
However, the white, wealthy, cis, gay organizations and communities were fighting for assimilation and to be part of white dominant culture. They spent and raised millions of dollars to make a few comfortable at the expense of everyone else. And they were still as racist, classist, transphobic, and ableist as ever.
Marriage equality eventually began, but still even today, these rights are available to only a sliver of people. Those same rights could have been won for everyone, through fighting for Black and Indigenous lives, disability justice, housing, health care, trans and gender dignity, and basic human rights.
So here we are, still fighting for all of those for everyone, still.
So today, I am not at all surprised that those same gay organizations focused only on the rights of some at the expense of everyone else back then, are the very same ones that are complicit about the genocide in Palestine. If the fight had not been for just a few who got married to benefit at the expense of everyone else, then I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that it would not be so easy to take away the rights that are being taken away right now, such as gender-affirming healthcare, DEI in schools, and trans rights.
Fighting for trans justice, that’s for everyone. Disability justice is for everyone.
Housing justice and food justice, those are for everyone. Fighting anti-Blackness is for everyone. Indigenous sovereignty is for everyone.
Only focusing and fighting for Marriage Equality is only focusing and fighting for the rights of some at the expense of everyone else, which is oppression itself.
Until people figure this out, we are going to be doing this over and over and over again.
Remember that there is no such thing as partial liberation.
Liberation isn’t meant for some, but for all.
Liberation is only liberation when it is for everyone.
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