Equality Is About Much More Than Marriage
Urvashi Vaid, Executive Director, Arcus Foundation
Because LGBT people face a range of obstacles to achieving full human rights and dignity, marriage equality is not a stand-alone issue. It cannot be isolated, for example, from the fact that only 17 states ban discrimination in employment and public accommodation based on sexual orientation and that there is no federal ban on such forms of discrimination. Neither can marriage equality be seen apart from the fact that LGBT people in the United States and around the world are persecuted and victimized by violence on a day-to-day basis.
For LGBT people, marriage inequality is about much more than marriage. It is about denying the humanity and moral equivalency of gay people. It is about excluding LGBT people from the process of adopting and parenting children and saying that our families are somehow not legitimate. It is about the recognition of some people’s rights at the expense of other people’s rights.
Over the past 30 years the gay rights movement has made enormous progress. But the bottom line is that LGBT people are still treated as second-class citizens and forced to hide who they are. It’s not just the political and civil equality of gay people that must be protected and defended, but our moral equality as well.
One of the biggest obstacles we face locally and globally is the characterization of homosexuality as sinful and immoral. Fortunately, a growing movement of progressive people of faith is taking a pro-gay stance on policy issues and in within their own ministries. Pro-LGBT voices striving for a more inclusive theology include clergy, teachers in seminaries, faith-based organizations and networks. It is a vital, relatively new movement and it needs more resources in order to continue to grow. This is a critical time to build up the voices and power of pro-gay allies of faith.
There are many critical opportunities within philanthropy right now to support work to safeguard the human rights of LGBT people. An LGBT component cuts across local and global problems, from torture and political repression, to immigration and education, to the death penalty and violence. For example, hate crimes motivated by bias based on sexual orientation or perceived sexual or gender identity are the third largest category of violent crimes in the United States. Almost 80 countries around the world have laws that criminalize same sex adult consensual behavior; and in seven countries this “crime” carries the death penalty.
In addition to the serious cultural, political and legal barriers that must be taken on, racial divisions—within our own community on the one hand and between the LGBT community and communities of color on the other—pose a significant obstacle to the full acceptance and equality of gay people. One of the ways to overcome these racial barriers is for communities of color and the LGBT community to have opportunities to build coalitions and work together on the same campaigns and projects.
To address some of the challenges and resource limitations facing organizations serving communities of color, the Arcus Foundation launched a racial and economic justice initiative that invests approximately $1 million a year in building the capacity of non-LGBT organizations led by people of color in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We have also supported the public education dimension of efforts to protect affirmative action in Michigan. Some people were surprised that, as an LGBT foundation, Arcus became involved in the issue of affirmative action. But our mission is to achieve social justice that is inclusive of sexual orientation, gender identity and race. So, for us, racial justice work is a priority.
As much as gay people were affected and shocked by the loss on Proposition 8, the California marriage inequality ballot measure, in the fall of 2009, many straight people who consider themselves progressive were stunned as well. The new gay rights movement is taking a synergistic approach. It is not just comprised of LGBT people, but of all those who care about social justice and seek a more open society.
Urvashi Vaid, Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, is an attorney, community organizer and writer whose work in social justice movements spans nearly 30 years. Ms. Vaid has previously served as Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Unit, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and as a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, where she initiated the organization’s work on HIV/AIDS policies in prisons. Vaid is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (Anchor, 1996); co-editor of Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (St. Martin's Press, 2000), an anthology on public policy history; and a former columnist for the national gay and lesbian newsmagazine The Advocate.
For further information about faith-based organizing for marriage equality, see "A Time to Build Up," a report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Religious Leadership Roundtable that summarizes the findings of a convening of experts representing 32 religious communities who gathered to analyze the passage of Proposition 8 in California at http://www.arcusfoundation.org/assets/pdf/ATimeToBuildUp.pdf.