beyond marriage
Richard Kim writes at The Nation about the ongoing same-sex marriage debate, and links to the BeyondMarrage website. Their full statement, “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships,” does indeed try to broaden the debate while it also contain an obligatory slap at conservative political strategists and their “strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another:”
The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.