Against Equality misreads movement

Recently on SayAnything you may have seen a video of an interview with a queer liberation activist named Ryan Conrad. Conrad is a co-founder of Against Equality, an organization that opposes the "mainstream" gay rights movement.

Against Equality specifically opposes the reforms in marriage, in the military and in prosecution of hate crimes—reforms that have been central objectives of gay rights activists. Conrad makes many compelling arguments and points out many important ways in which the mainstream gay rights movement is problematic. I agree with just about everything Conrad says, but I strongly disagree with what Conrad assumes, what he insinuates and how he contextualizes the gay rights movement.

Against Equality misreads "equality" as "sameness." They assume that the issue of marriage equality is about actually getting married, that being able to join the military is about actually joining the military, and that having fair prosecution of hate crimes is about putting people in prison. Wrong. Reforming these policies is about abolishing political mechanisms that serve to punish and suppress homosexual behavior.

Conrad assumes that gay rights activists are responsible for making marriage equality a hot-button issue. Wrong. The reason that marriage so dominates our discussion of gay rights is that this country is swarming with people who deeply hate homosexuals and are clinging on to whatever mechanisms of oppression they can use to hurt and dehumanize us. Far-right politicians are still able to designate homosexuals as wrong, as bad, as disgusting. One particularly direct way in which far-right politicians have been able to do this—have been able to officially designate homosexuality as sub-human—is to prohibit homosexuals from marrying each other.

In marriage, the state officially recognizes that two people are in a romantic relationship, so withholding this recognition from same-sex coupes is an excellent way for the state to officially dehumanizing homosexuals. Indeed, the denial of marriage rights is an attempt (like conversion therapy) to prevent homosexuality from existing. Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) served a similar purpose, as does the unfair legal response to hate crimes.

Conrad discusses the gay rights movement in the context of the queer population, rather than the context of society at large. In the former context, it is possible to identify a "mainstream gay" rights movement; in the latter context, "mainstream gay" is an oxymoron. Conrad says that "gay is a classed identity; it's classed as white, it's classed as middle-class."

Actually, it's classed as dirty, it's classed as bestiality, it's classed as pedophilia. It's odd that Conrad and his affiliates seem to have forgotten the profound hatred directed toward queer people; I think about it a lot. Indeed, there are people who are currently (or were recently) running for president who embrace these dehumanizing views of homosexuality.

Conrad downplays homophobia's role (relative to other issues, such as poverty) in a series of suicides among queer adolescents. He says that the inability of these teenagers to marry or join the military probably had little to do with these suicides.

This totally misses the point of gay rights activists; the inability to marry is obviously irrelevant to most queer youth (that is, most of them are not thinking about getting married anytime soon); it is the knowledge of this inability that is so toxic. Policies such as marriage discrimination and DADT are messages from society that say, "We hate you." Suicidal behavior among homosexuals is a response to these messages.

Of course, suicide may also be driven by poverty, abuse, and other factors, but I find it hard to imagine that homophobia might ever be unrelated to a homosexual's self-destructive behavior. No matter how rich, safe, and privileged they are (and no matter how many drugs they do or how often they cut themselves), homosexuals can never escape the knowledge of homophobia and persecution that pervades this world. The gay rights movement is about alleviating this burden; it's about normalizing and legitimizing homosexuality.

Against Equality's stance on the military issue is somewhat understandable for me, given the extreme suffering that the military has inflicted upon innocent people in foreign countries. I have nothing particularly good to say about anyone joining the military.

But I will say that whether or not you are allowed to join the military, whether or not your parents love you, whether or not you are hired for a job—none of these decisions should take sexual orientation into account, and repealing DADT was one important step in making this a universal rule.

The "mainstream" gay rights movement may have the tendency to inappropriately glorify highly problematic institutions, like marriage or the military, and they do implicitly condone these institutions by seeking the right to participate in them. But these institutions happen to be sites where the state continues to persecute and invalidate homosexuality.

What ties the gay rights movement together is an effort to dismantle a system of oppression. Marriage discrimination, DADT and unfair retribution for hate crimes are components of this system and must be abolished. Fortunately, many of these mechanisms of oppression either have been or are in the process of being reformed.

If Against Equality is worried about the possible unintended consequences of the reforms advocated by gay rights movement activists (e.g., more people joining the military) then they should take these issues head-on instead of criticizing the mainstream gay rights activists, as if the "mainstream" activists are somehow responsible for solving unimaginable problems such as war, poverty and the prison industrial complex. To the extent that Against Equality would have these reforms be stopped, it can be argued that they support the political enforcement of heterosexuality.

—Carson Robinson '12 is a psychology major.