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An open letter to James Lileks
Feb. 11th, 2005 10:01 amJames Lileks blogged about identity politics today, and the Castro District's reaction to Lawrence vs. Texas.
James -
You missed the point. I really think you did. That's okay, but I wanted to try to explain it to you.
Until Lawrence vs. Texas, we gayfolk weren't really citizens.
Oh, sure, we had technical US citizenship, and US passports if we wanted them; that's true enough. But we could be made illegal at will. And many states had chosen to do so, in the past, and had refused to reconsider it when asked.
If you're gay, or lesbian - or queer of any sort, really - and even vaguely aware of the state of your nation, you can't not notice that. You can't not be aware of it, all the time.
It doesn't matter that the number of prosecutions per year was low. Compared to the volume of illegal immigration, the number of job-related illegal employment busts per year is low, too. But in both cases, the situation is the same: in many parts of the country, we were made illegal (via the "sodomy laws"), which makes us just as much not citizens as any undocumented worker.
You don't understand that because you've never had to keep a list of states where it may and may not be safe to travel, and you've never had to spend time with lawyers trying to get your partnership wrapped up in some additional legal wrapper that may and may not survive challenge in a state court from a total stranger. You've never had a national religious/political movement which lists legislation and a Constitutional amendment against you as their number one priourity.
We have. We have always been singled out as "separate" and "lesser." In law and action, not just in rhetoric, we are defined, as a group, and excluded, as a group.
And we aren't the ones who started that.
So yes, we practice identity politics. We do it because identity politics has been forced upon us, by the people who would do us the most harm they could, and by the people who wouldn't, but are happy to go along. There have been genuine attempts - exclusively from inside the queer community, as far as I know - to transcend that; it was popular in the late 90s, in the boom, after the mid-90s anti-queer demi-pogroms had come to an end and it was looking like we might not have to fight survival battles every year. It was talked about a lot as the "post-gay" movement, which held that you could move beyond identity.
Lawrence vs. Texas, briefly, gave it a real shot of happening. And then the fundamentalists, and the party they now largely control, began lashing out, and haven't stopped yet.
Fault us for identity politics if you will. But make no mistake: it is become forced upon us. We group, because we are grouped by others. We group, because we must.
( And because this is Livejournal, here; have a quiz )
James -
You missed the point. I really think you did. That's okay, but I wanted to try to explain it to you.
Until Lawrence vs. Texas, we gayfolk weren't really citizens.
Oh, sure, we had technical US citizenship, and US passports if we wanted them; that's true enough. But we could be made illegal at will. And many states had chosen to do so, in the past, and had refused to reconsider it when asked.
If you're gay, or lesbian - or queer of any sort, really - and even vaguely aware of the state of your nation, you can't not notice that. You can't not be aware of it, all the time.
It doesn't matter that the number of prosecutions per year was low. Compared to the volume of illegal immigration, the number of job-related illegal employment busts per year is low, too. But in both cases, the situation is the same: in many parts of the country, we were made illegal (via the "sodomy laws"), which makes us just as much not citizens as any undocumented worker.
You don't understand that because you've never had to keep a list of states where it may and may not be safe to travel, and you've never had to spend time with lawyers trying to get your partnership wrapped up in some additional legal wrapper that may and may not survive challenge in a state court from a total stranger. You've never had a national religious/political movement which lists legislation and a Constitutional amendment against you as their number one priourity.
We have. We have always been singled out as "separate" and "lesser." In law and action, not just in rhetoric, we are defined, as a group, and excluded, as a group.
And we aren't the ones who started that.
So yes, we practice identity politics. We do it because identity politics has been forced upon us, by the people who would do us the most harm they could, and by the people who wouldn't, but are happy to go along. There have been genuine attempts - exclusively from inside the queer community, as far as I know - to transcend that; it was popular in the late 90s, in the boom, after the mid-90s anti-queer demi-pogroms had come to an end and it was looking like we might not have to fight survival battles every year. It was talked about a lot as the "post-gay" movement, which held that you could move beyond identity.
Lawrence vs. Texas, briefly, gave it a real shot of happening. And then the fundamentalists, and the party they now largely control, began lashing out, and haven't stopped yet.
Fault us for identity politics if you will. But make no mistake: it is become forced upon us. We group, because we are grouped by others. We group, because we must.
( And because this is Livejournal, here; have a quiz )
