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What LGBT Communities Can Do

A much more integrated, boldly democratic, pro-LGBT politics of marriage, family, and economic justice is not only possible, but essential. The most important thing we can do is move beyond "either/or" in the marriage debates, reframing the debate to include economic justice and legal recognition for diverse families and households.

LGBT people who want to marry should be able to do so, and the struggle for civil marriage equality need not be abandoned. Yet we must ensure that our strategic approaches to this issue be expanded so that they:

• Do clearly distinguish between religious marriage and state recognition of relationships, households, and families.

• Do recognize diverse kinds of households and families, not only those headed by people who are legally married.

• Do recognize and respect the spiritual and emotional importance that marriage, and the commitment it represents, holds for many people.

• Do protect and expand effective public programs that promote economic stability — such as social security, medicaid, medicare, tanf, and the like — especially for individuals, households, and families that live on limited and/or low incomes.

• Do resist attacks upon social security, medicaid, and other effective programs that promote economic security.

• Do work to secure universal health insurance and affordable health care for all.

• Do address the ways in which too many businesses and corporations do not pay living wages and are ending pension plans, cutting back on health care benefits, outsourcing jobs, and creating greater economic instability for countless households and families.

• Do build bridges with other constituencies working on economic justice and other issues embedded in "marriage politics."

• Do not further stigmatize queer and heterosexual people who are not married and who may not wish to marry by using patronizing language that suggests only married people can have mature and worthy relationships.

• Do not reinforce the idea that people who are married, and their families, are "more worthy" of basic rights, legal recognition, and economic benefits than those who are not married.

• Do not permit marriage to become the sole funnel for legal recognition of households and families, and the economic and social protections that accompany such recognition.

• Do not inadvertently lend support to coercive "marriage promotion" policies.

• Do not lend support to the idea that social welfare benefits should be privatized or placed entirely in the hands of faith-based providers who are free to discriminate against entire groups of people.

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