Virtually Normal

          From the previous successes of the Stonewall riots to the traction gained by the contemporary surge—whether it be on Twitter or in the streets—of Trans Lives Matter actions, an outstanding amount of queers and trans people have continually fought back against the forces that systematically thrive off of their death: homophobia, capitalism, patriarchy, the prison-industrial complex, and the medical-industrial complex. However, for the past fifteen years, the desperate longing for social status/capital in a culture that wishes to destroy queerness has caused many queer individuals to fall prey to the degeneracy of assimilation and respectability. A prime example of this desire to conform is manifested in the “fight” for marriage “equality.”

            According to Andrew Sullivan in his book Virtually Normal, “most gay people…want to be seen as normal; and with some achievements in civil rights and the increasing visibility of gay people in the culture, they are almost there” (Warner 53). Consequently, many gays and lesbians seek normalcy and visibility by arguing with the State over their “right” to marry. However, these homophiles fail to understand that by challenging heteronormative marital laws, they are not only “…embracing [a] standard [that] merely throws shame on those who stand farther down the ladder of respectability,” but creating a homosexual bourgeoisie that “…[seeks] to work with government” while acquiring status—in relation to the socially innate privileges that heterosexuals possess—at the expense of “the others” (Warner 60, 62, 66, 71, 82). Furthermore, homophiles’ ironic hopes for visibility are futile, for queers are actually hypervisible due to being portrayed as unrespectable sexual deviants in the media. In fact, on page 128 of her book Materializing Queer Desire, feminist theorist Elisa Glick argues that queers are hypervisible in the form of “…femininity, the figure of the fag/queen, racialized difference, the feminization and degeneration of the Orient (the ruined, conquered exotic), and the excessive visibility of decadence and decay.”

            By embracing respectability politics and seeking validation in a culture that thrives off of queer-bashing, gays and lesbians who are “pro marriage equality” inevitably establish a hierarchy of privilege as well. To incorporate the institution of marriage in LGBT communities and hail it as a main priority for the procurement of queer liberation is to perpetuate white supremacy and class discrimination; idolizing and idealizing marriage denies the dignity of “…gay men, lesbians, and many other unmarried people on the street” and forms accessibility barriers that alienate other individuals who are not “middle-class and [white]” (Warner 60, 84). Recently, these emulations of dominant culture within the LGBT community became boldly obvious when Jennicet Gutierrez—a Latina transgender woman—interrupted Barack Obama’s White House Pride speech—which was given shortly after the legalization of gay marriage—to speak about the horrors that trans Latina immigrants regularly face. As stated by Bea E. Fonseca in her Black Girl Dangerous article “This Is Why Everyone Cheering Gay Marriage Should Stand With the White House ‘Heckler’ Now,” “as a trans latina myself, seeing the way that the mostly white, gay community responded to her was the most painful and outrageous aspect of the event. Trans women of color like Jennicet have been on the front lines of the struggle for queer and trans liberation since the birth of our movement.” 

            Moreover, the prioritization of gay marriage overpowers the fatal realities of larger threats that are posed against the LGBT community, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, homo/transphobic violence, the monetization of lesbian and gay existence, and gentrification. Now that many gays and lesbians are directing their focus towards cultural neoliberalism and the complacency from the “pseudo-dignity” that they have gained by adhering to pressures of regularity, the crucial elements that are vital to queer victory/liberation (e.g., the presence of “…direct action activism…[the presence of] political memory…[the destruction of] of a fat-cat donor base within the movement, [and the rejection] of a ‘place at the table’ [ideology]”) are being forced into a void of apathetic nothingness (Warner 66). Gay marriage will not save the LGBT people who are suffering from AIDS, and it will definitely not save those who are now on the brink of death due to not being able to afford the Daraprim pills that now cost $750.  The recently-acquired ability for someone to marry another person who identifies as the same (cis)gender will not allow the LGBT community to be saved from the looming threats of homonationalism and homocapitalism, either; according to “Against Equality’s” official website (which echoes many of Warner’s sentiments), “[gays’] vision of marriage is the same as that of the Right, and far from creating FULL EQUALITY NOW! as so many insist…gay marriage increases economic inequality by perpetuating a system which deems married beings more worthy of the basics like health care and economic rights.”

            Marriage “equality” was, by far, not the best focus for the LGBTQ movement. By fighting for the “right” to marry and viewing marriage as their end goal for liberation, “pro-equality” gays and lesbians degraded themselves into beggars—empty stomachs, hungry mouths, and all—who plead for homophobes to spare them the crumbs of the spoils reaped by heteronormative privilege.