All I Feel Right Now Is Shame: The High Cost of Marriage “Equality”

“Most major legal victories touted as “historic advances” by LGBT leaders and their largely assimilationist non-profits so far this century have come at the expense of the literal and figurative disenfrancisement and dispossesion of others…”

“When the LGBT leaders at the White House refused to stand up for Jennicet Gutierrez and join her call to end immigration detention, they made visible the institutional racism at the center of the same-sex marriage campaign in particular, and mainstream LGBT politics, organizations, and pride events in general. “

Do they boo her because they are strategically afraid that if they don’t, the system will revoke the recent marriage privilege they received? Or do they boo her because of internalized racism or classism?

Yes.

By joining the system in actively shaming and further marginalizing Jennicet Gutierrez, these so-called “social justice leaders” have demonstrated their allegiance to oppression, and the system demonstrates exactly how effectively it “robs Peter to pay Paul.” Divide and conquer.

We must completely abandon, transform or destroy systems of oppression rather than work to include a few more people in the pyramid scheme.

ALTCINEMA

Two days ago, an undocumented Latina transwoman risked her own personal well-being to disrupt a self-congratulatory love fest between so-called LGBT leaders and Barack Obama, an event celebrating the “success” of the inclusion of some lesbian and gays into the fold of US citizenship. Jennicet Gutierrez interrupted Obama’s press conference, calling attention to the abuses of the US immigration detention system, including the disproportionate harms experienced by LGBTQ people caught up in the system. This was the response of Obama and the LGBT leaders in the room:

Obama scolds Gutierrez, saying “shame on you,” and calls security to escort her from the room. The mostly white LGBT leadership in the crowd outright boo and hiss at her, and cheer Obama’s dismissal of Gutierrez and her concerns, chanting over and over: “Obama! Obama! Obama!”

Today, those same LGBT “leaders” are celebrating yet another favorable same-sex marriage decision from the US Supreme…

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