What Do Gays Do After Maine?

One week after gay marriage was defeated in Maine, the LGBT community continues to look for answers.

The loss was particularly bittersweet because all the advantages seemed to be on the side of gay marriage supporters. They had more money, local media and politicians were on their side, and polls indicated that it would pass. Yet the result was the 31st consecutive defeat for gay marriage by voters. It seems obvious that the gay community needs to reassess its strategy.

Should marriage be the highest priority? Marriage has motivated people like no other issue, yet it is the most polarizing issue. According to Gallup, there is more support for employment protections, adoption rights, and military service than marriage. Why continue to push the item that has the least amount of support?

Should we continue to invest in electoral politics? Gay political insider David Mixner estimates that gay people have spent over $100 million in the last two years on ballot initiatives. Are we getting good value for that kind of expense? Could that money have been better utilized investing in community centers and local organizations, or lobbying for ENDA and other more easily attainable policy goals?

The founders of AMERICAblog.com have called for a boycott of Democrats, which is being supported by popular LGBT blogs like Joe.My.God and Pam’s House Blend. This is a good start, but I’m not convinced this will have the desired impact.

2009 has been a fractious one for the LGBT community. Lingering frustration over Prop 8 was supplanted with raids on gay bars in Atlanta and Ft. Worth, President Obama’s apparent backtracking on his campaign promises to be a “fierce advocate” for gays and the inability of Human Rights Campaign to apply sufficient pressure on policymakers, and now Maine. With establishment politics not delivering change fast enough, talk of more drastic measures is being taken more seriously than at any time since the early 1990s.

October’s National Equality March was organized around the cry of “Equality Now” and a sense that LGBTs need to be more confrontational. Challenging the tax-free status of churches, civil disobedience, outing, and community-wide self-defense training are some of the ideas that have been discussed.

What makes progress on gay issues so difficult is the fact that many heterosexuals do not view LGBTs as individuals with rights they are bound to respect. The last two weeks have provided plenty of examples of the second-class status of LGBTs in America.

Superstar preacher Joel Osteen went on national television and proclaimed that in his opinion, gay people are not “God’s best,” although he was at a loss to explain why an otherwise perfect God would make the mistake of creating gay people.

The governor of Rhode Island vetoed legislation that would allow gay couples to make funeral arrangements for their partners.

An Alabama high school threatened to cancel its prom rather than allow a lesbian couple to attend until the ACLU intervened.

Black columnists refuse to see the similarities between homophobia and racism, particularly in the excuses offered for denying gay legal equality.

Even among so-called allies, it is common to hear that “people aren’t ready” for gay rights, politicians have “higher priorities,” and LGBTs need to “respect differences of opinion” and sympathize with homophobes.

All of this is quite absurd and it’s surprising that gays have not violent outbursts as a result of receiving inferior citizenship while paying full taxes.

How presumptuous is it to think you can determine the timeline for someone else’s equality? Women, Jews, and African-Americans all received their rights through federal intervention, not the state-by-state basis people expect gays to be satisfied with.

I am not sure what the next move for the gay community will be, but, more than ever, I believe a federal strategy is necessary.