Gay marriage is not enough Freedom for me

It's the fall of 1998 and I've been newly hired by the Human Rights Campaign, a LGBT civil rights organization. On this day the field department, of which I am a part of as a national field organizer is meeting with a group of allies in the movement. I can't remember his last name but his first name was Evan, he went on to share that he was going to single-handedly make gay marriage the primary gay civil rights issue. I chalked it off as wishful thinking because it made no sense to me and it's been over ten years and it still makes no sense to me. But what I did learn from this experience and it haunts me on a regular basis, especially when I hear another news report about gay marriage, what I learned is that one person can shape and influence a groups agenda. Evan made it his business to put gay marriage on the map as the primary item and years later, we have made little stride but the primary reason why I was in opposition to this agenda item is because when I think about complete and total liberation, when I consider total social justice for myself as a self identifying queer person, I understand that my freedom is not housed in marriage, marriage will not make me free and U'm not convinced it's enough to change the social paradigm and suddenly make straight people more accepting of human rights for LGBT people, I just don't.
This pronouncement of marriage as the main gay issue was a struggle for me but way more of a struggle when I became more involved in my activist work for HRC. I contend as I have always contended that marriage is an institution, founded on sexist principles and has come to be one of the most dysfunctional social human agreements that we know. My problem has been with the constraints of marital unions, the controlling aspects of this arrangement and although historically marriage was viewed with lots of respect, it no longer carries the nostalgia that it once did. Furthermore, the high rates of divorce is an indication that something is wrong with this concept of marriage, something isn't working out right for humans to continue this tradition and more importantly it's laced with the oppressive rhetoric of religiosity, this can't be good for gay people if it isn't good for so called straight people.
To add insult to injury, over time I came to recognize that the majority of LGBT people in this country are mostly self destructive, mentally challenged around their idea of sexual orientation and most LGBT events were hovered in alcohol and drug use at a an abusive level. Of course, now I am sharing dirty laundry which is a no no but I couldn't help but wonder how does a group largely depressed from psychic wounds around their sexual orientation, how do these people become married? More importantly, how do they create meaningful relationships when as a community we haven't sufficiently done the work of healing around historic issues of oppression. I struggled for years trying to imagine us queer people, damaged and barely in recovery, how in the world do we jump from therapy into marriage and equate that with complete and total liberation. Okay, I can marry my girlfriend now (for example, that is if I had a girlfriend), I can marry her but I feel shitty about myself as a queer person, I've done nothing but engaged in severely dysfunctional relationships and when I do come to ap point of marriage, no one in my family will attend but I'll be alright because now I can marry the person I love and this is all the civil rights that I need. Let me be clear this is not cynicism, this is a deep and profound need for my civil right to encompass more than marriage and I refuse to settle for less, forgive me for being greedy or having a more expansive idea of what social justice really is and I know because I'm African-American and no more could interracial marriage provide liberation for black folks, it most certainly doesn't seem like the likely civil rights act to bring equality to LGBT people, I just don't see and can't comprehend the correlation.
I must admit that it's admirable when straight people come out in support of marriage but they come out because it's the only thing that LGBT activist present to them. I'm not sure what it does for humanity or what changes in the mind set of people about gay people, if they are allowed to marry. I might embrace it's potential influence if marriage was a functional and time honored tradition but the notion of marriage in larger society has a bad rap and more and more people are stepping away from it. Nonetheless, I can totally appreciate when people make a commitment to love another person for the long term. I sometimes hope for a partner but I long more for self respect and self love and the ability to clearly identify what equal rights means for me. Slavery was unacceptable, lgbt oppression is unacceptable but I'm not willing to settle for small victories anymore, I want the whole shebang and shabutle. I want everything, I want workplace freedom, I want military freedom, I want reproductive freedom, I want more than anything to be accepted for who I am and that's a very complex thing. I want every part of my life filled with the power and the respect of every other human being in America. I want a progressive agenda that takes into consideration new ideas about gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, marital and non-marital union or polyamorous relationships, I want self-love and limitless and boundless definition of the self. Marriage feels like a box, another conceptual identity that I would need to fit into with my gay self but I'm over boxes, and finite identity tags and I'm tired of feeling like I need to do what others have done in the past, as if they were right. Marriage feels wrong and I'm going to do some research and argue this point but it's not to negate people choosing under healthy and meaningful considerations to unite with another for a long period of time but I support short term arrangements as well because we are human beings who have evolved and in that space and time with the evolutionary process, guess what, we changed. I am no more willing to settle for limited civil rights as a black person and I am certainly not interested or able to contend with some fractionalized, partly realized equal rights. I want it all and I will settle for nothing less. I am worthy and I compel all lgbt people to consider this, you are worthy of complete liberation in the land of the free called the United State of America. I beg of you to not settle for anything that is not complete freedom because what you deserve is greater than marriage, what you deserve is all of it, whatever that all is.
I feel on fire this morning, I feel like a revolution this morning, I feel like I want all of my freedom this morning but this ain't no difference than most mornings. What I aspire to most is healing of our abused lgbt souls, for activist to practice basic respect with one another, for the bickering and the back biting to cease, I need for there to be no tolerance of gay men treating each other like shit, I need for lesbians to stop thinking its acceptable to control their lovers and I need for transgendered people to stop putting yourselves in old gender boxes, you are the representation of the future, you are the new non-gender and you trans people hold the key to turning this world around, helping us to blur the lines of gender thus blurring our understanding of gender boxes which will inevitable tear down the notion of marriage as we know it.
I'm interested in moving forward not backwards and into archaic institutions that don't really serve the people they were created for. I want a new world where there is no such thing as identity just human beings expressing themselves uniquely and where laws are created to support ALL people. We are the sleeping giants, we queer people and I say it's time to rise from our nap. Let's not be stone age about our revolution, let's put some Jetson (this is a reference to an old cartoon that was on tv and indicative of my age) in our progressive plan for futuristic changes, I know we can do it and I know we will.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!