After Marriage Equality

The Future of LGBT Rights

Carlos A. Ball

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781479809059
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In persuading the Supreme Court that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the LGBT rights movement has achieved its most important objective of the last few decades. Throughout its history, the marriage equality movementhas been criticized by those who believe marriage rights were a conservative cause overshadowing a host of more important issues. Now that nationwidemarriage equality is a reality, everyone who cares about LGBT rights must grapple with how best topromote the interests of sexual and gender identity minoritiesin a society that permits same-sex couples to marry.This book brings together 12 original essays by leading scholars of law, politics, and society to address the most important question facing the LGBT movement today: What does marriage equality mean for the future of LGBT rights? After Marriage Equality explores crucial and wide-ranging social, political, and legal issues confronting the LGBT movement, including the impact of marriage equality on political activism and mobilization, antidiscrimination laws, transgender rights, LGBT elders, parenting laws and policies, religious liberty, sexual autonomy, and gender and race differences. The book also looks at how LGBT movements in other nations have responded to the recognition of same-sex marriages, and what we might emulate or adjust in our own advocacy. Aiming to spark discussion and further debate regarding the challenges and possibilities of the LGBT movement’s future, After Marriage Equality will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of sexual equality.

Part I

The American LGBT Movement after Marriage Equality

1

Will Victory Bring Change?

A Mature Social Movement Faces the Future

Gary Mucciaroni

The elimination of the remaining barriers to same-sex marriage offers an appropriate opportunity to contemplate the future of the LGBT rights movement in the United States. Undoubtedly, attaining marriage equality across the entire nation constitutes a striking achievement for the movement, particularly given how quixotic such a goal seemed even a decade ago. For better or worse, marriage in the United States grants spouses an important legal and social status and a bundle of rights and benefits. Marriage elevates the cultural legitimacy of gay and lesbian people and improves the material condition of many of their lives.1 For the movement, the achievement of marriage equality frees up a good many resources—time, money, and organization—that it can devote to other endeavors. It may also provide a measure of political momentum that savvy movement leaders might harness to achieve additional political victories.

The questions that I address in this chapter are as follows: What difference does the attainment of marriage equality make for the future of the LGBT movement? Will it lead the movement to strike out on a different path than the one it has been following? What are the possibilities and the likelihood for major changes in the movement’s mission, goals, and strategies?

The attainment of marriage equality marks the beginning of the end of a decades-long effort to achieve legal equality for gays and lesbians. The attainment of full formal legal equality could theoretically open the possibility for the movement to shift from civil rights as its dominant mission to an alternative. My central point is that we should temper our expectations about the impact of marriage on the future course of the LGBT movement. In “The 18th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte,” Karl Marx famously wrote, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”2 Marx was calling attention specifically to the weight of history upon those who act in the present. Marriage equality will not propel the movement forward or mark a turning point in the way that World War II, the Stonewall rebellion, or the AIDS crisis did. It will not constitute a “critical juncture” in the movement’s history—putting the movement on a new trajectory that it would not follow in its absence. I expect the movement will continue to pursue many of the same goals that it has in the past, but pursue them somewhat differently and with different emphases. It may change its priorities and activities, but the changes will be more or less consistent with the movement’s history rather than a sharp break from it.

This chapter is a cautionary note for movement observers who might see the present time as auspicious for the movement to strike out in dramatic new directions as well as for movement leaders and activists who will face strong incentives to resist fundamental change. Before activists and scholars opine about where the movement should go once it attains marriage equality, we need to be realistic about what magnitude and type of change in goals and strategies are possible. Thinking about what is likely to happen, rather than just what advocates may want to happen, forces us to confront the constraints on the LGBT movement. Some of these constraints are internal and deeply entrenched; others arise out of the broader social and political context in which the movement is embedded and over which it has little control. At the same time, continuing down the same path that the movement has been on entails opportunity costs. Specifically, if movement leaders and activists continue an emphasis on achieving, preserving, and enforcing civil rights, they may neglect education and institutional reform as alternative strategies that may be more effective in improving the lives of LGBT people than the civil rights model. These include educating the public and those who manage and lead business, nonprofit institutions, and other organizations about homophobia and heterosexism and pressing for reforms of organizational cultures and practices.

This chapter proceeds in two parts. The first takes stock of the major constraints that will block or slow down any large-scale transformation of the movement’s goals and strategies. The second discusses five main tasks that I expect will occupy the postmarriage movement: (1) completing the unfinished civil rights agenda that will most likely remain after marriage is achieved, particularly adoption of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) and transgender rights; (2) guarding against a backlash from LGBT-rights opponents who threaten to erode the movement’s victories; (3) increasing the number of openly gay and lesbian public officials; (4) devoting greater attention to the diffusion of LGBT rights across the globe; and (5) enlarging efforts to educate the public and reform the cultures and practices of civil society institutions.

The fifth task is the most distinct from the other four because it offers the chance to more fully embrace a “change-the-culture” model in place of (or in addition to) the established “civil rights model.” The change-the-culture model deemphasizes regulation, litigation, and the coercive powers of the state in favor of education, persuasion, and direct engagement with citizens and those who lead and manage major institutions. Rather than policing individuals and institutions to do the right thing, changing the culture induces institutions to embrace equality as an expected standard of behavior. Enforcement of formal equality gives way to the praxis of normative equality.

It should go without saying that predicting the future evolution and fortunes of a social movement is a hazardous undertaking. The unexpected emergence of same-sex marriage as the dominant issue on the LGBT agenda and the dramatic progress it has made over the past decade attest to the limitation of our powers of prediction. Nevertheless, reason and evidence suggest that some outcomes are more likely to occur than others. We can find some clues about where we may be headed by looking closely at the LGBT movement’s own history, the experiences of other social movements in the United States, and what LGBT movements are doing in nations that have already achieved full legal equality.

The Constraints on Change

One reason for skepticism that the attainment of marriage will open the door to a significant change in the movement’s mission, agenda, or strategies is that attainment of the movement’s other longstanding goals is independent of the attainment of marriage. The issues presently on the movement’s agenda, many having been there a long time, will not suddenly disappear or be resolved. One might think that policymakers who are willing to adopt same-sex marriage would easily agree to laws proscribing employment discrimination for gays, lesbians, and transgender people, but this is not the case. Similarly, marriage should have only a modest impact on how smoothly openly gay servicemen and women integrate into the military or whether rates of bullying and violence toward LGBT youth decline. Political dynamics and institutional venues vary across LGBT issues in ways that influence outcomes.3

Perhaps the greatest constraint on the LGBT movement will be its organizational structure, mission, and level of maturity. Four key features of the movement will shape and limit its future: (1) the diversity and fragmentation of the movement; (2) the movement’s organizational emphasis on professional advocacy over grassroots participation; (3) its identity-based civil rights orientation; and (4) the likely leveling off of its organizational growth as it matures as a movement.

A number of writers have pointed out that the LGBT “movement” is more aptly conceived as several “movements,” each one emerging at different points in its history and having distinctive impulses. LGBT organizations span a spectrum that runs from radical and liberationist to decidedly conservative, with a broad array of organizations built to serve particular constituencies, pursue particular causes and goals, and employ particular strategies and tactics.4 Of course, the movement has had a central political tendency throughout most of its history. Over the long haul, it has always maintained or returned to a left-of-center, assimilationist equilibrium. Yet, even within this liberal mainstream, no single organization or cadre of leaders has exerted continuous control over the movement’s present or future direction.

The movement’s fragmentation and pluralism arise out of the fabric of American society and politics. The United States is a large, socially diverse nation. Diversity guarantees that any LGBT “movement” will consist of a multiplicity of diverse interests and opinions divided along demographic, political, and geographic lines, limiting the capacity for leaders at the top to develop a set of common goals and strategies. Different interests and opinions naturally arise because LGBT individuals experience discrimination and other harms in a variety of institutional and social contexts.

Further, the structure and strategies of the LGBT “movement” mirror the fragmentation and diversity of U.S. political institutions. The different levels and branches of government encourage the development of scores of national, state, and local organizations and chapters as well as strategies geared alternatively toward litigation, lobbying, protest, and electoral activities. Finally, like other social movements, large, established LGBT umbrella organizations often underrepresent and marginalize the viewpoints and interests of minorities. The movement reproduces the class, racial, and gender inequality found throughout American society. Thus, racial and ethnic groups, the transgender population, and LGBT constituencies with particular grievances (e.g., gays and lesbians serving in the military), feeling excluded or underserved, have formed their own organizations out of frustration. While diversity can produce fresh ideas and perspectives and fragmentation means that the different constituency groups under the LGBT umbrella have some representation, it makes co...