Press

By Sue Hyde, Married in Massachusetts

MEDIA CONTACT:
Roberta Sklar, Director of Communications
media@theTaskForce.org
646.358.1465

http://www.TheTaskForce.org

January 11, 2005

As we launch into 2005 are you still reeling from the results of the November 2 elections? Are you watching with morbid fascination the organizational jostling and soul-searching? Are you wondering how to make sense of all the pontificating and punditry and pronouncements about the election and gay marriage, and the election and moral values, and the election and your life? Then, I offer for your consideration, dear reader, six points of reality as seen from the marriage beachhead of Massachusetts.

Reality #1: We have already won marriage equality and we're going to keep it. Here in the great state of Massachusetts, 4200 (and counting) same-sex couples are legally married. Milk hasn't curdled in our cows; the seasons turned through their cycle; and our kids attend schools all over the state, feeling a little bit prouder of their families than they did last fall. But having won it, we're going to keep it and we will do our best to export this new-fangled equality to other states where it will both flourish and become banal.

Reality #2: It sucks to be first. In politics, especially in political matters that are decided at the state level and that provoke much social angst, it sucks to first and alone. The most important state to enact any law or policy signifying social change is the second state because it is the second state's proactive embrace of the first state's innovation that seals the deal.

Here in Massachusetts, we greatly look forward to the second state's embrace of marriage equality. So, come on in New Jersey, or California, or Connecticut, or Oregon. The equality's just fine. When a second state begins to marry same-sex couples, we will see our marriage breakthrough assume its rightful place in history as it is seconded elsewhere.

Reality #3: The raw material for our social change movement emanates directly from the hopes, dreams and aspirations of our LGBT sisters and brothers. We live lives constrained, controlled and proscribed by homophobia and heterosexual supremacy. The marriage breakthrough in Massachusetts has given hope, not despair, to our people around the country and, I am guessing, around the world.

Community and movement institutions and organizations respond to the raw material of LGBT lives by crafting programs, political agendas and strategies, and plans to bring about broad social change. Our community's political leaders must never waver from a fundamental commitment to the hopes, dreams and aspirations of our sisters and brothers who now know well that we want, need and will achieve a choice to marry for all of us in every state in this country.

Reality #4: In the United States, there are 50 separate states with 50 legislatures, 50 state courts, 50 executive administrations, 50 state electorates, each of which has the power to determines its own course of action with respect to family and relationship recognition. Each state will do so in its own way, on its own time, and in response to its own voters.

Further, there are 500,000 elected officials in the United States, but just 537 are elected to Federal office. Almost all the elected officials who make it to the Federal level started out on school boards, city councils, county commissions and state legislatures.

This reality of 50 states/500,000 electeds calls upon us to re-quadruple our efforts to engage in meaningful conversations with our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members, the people whose kids go to school with our kids, and especially our local and state elected officials, no matter where we live. We enhance the value of our lives when we share ourselves with others around us.

Reality #5: The Marriage Miracle of Massachusetts was no miracle. Our achievement of legal marriage for all qualified resident couples stands on 30 years of organizing, community-building, lobbying, litigating, relationship-building, alliance-building, teaching and learning, and just plain world-changing work, one gritty day at a time.

Every state must find its own way to the same goal and every state will. I assert this with confidence because at the recent Creating Change Conference in St. Louis, just following the mostly disastrous election, I listened closely to what the local and state organizers said about their work. I heard them say that Massachusetts and other marriage leader states are models, not pariahs. I heard them say that they are working as hard as they can and with too little help to catch up. I heard them say that they yearn to catch up and I heard them say they, too, will grab and keep the brass ring.

Reality #6: The action is in the states. Nearly every significant public policy matter that affects our lives is decided in the states. Important exceptions are military service, immigration law and tax and entitlement programs. I do not argue that LGBT people forgo representation and advocacy at the Federal level, but it is time to stop starving our state and local organizations. Supporting state/local LGBT political advocacy isn't a luxury; it isn't an option; it isn't a choice. Supporting our work at the state level is a simple necessity, made even more urgent by the right-wing sweep of all three branches of the Federal government.

Back to the basics. Back to the roots. Back to the neighborhoods, the workplaces, the schools, the holiday dinner tables, the city halls, the local public squares. Back to where we really live and where our lives matter most. Back to where folks know us and need to know us better.

Sue Hyde is the Director of the Creating Change Conference convened by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force She also serves as the Task Force New England Field Organizer and lives in Cambridge.

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The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the political power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from the ground up. We do this by training activists, organizing broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and by building the organizational capacity of our movement. Our Policy Institute, the movement’s premier think tank, provides research and policy analysis to support the struggle for complete equality and to counter right-wing lies. As part of a broader social justice movement, we work to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., we also have offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis and Cambridge.