Five things a retrofitted gay-lib movement should do
1) Rather than simply the fight for marriage rights, the gay movement should work with a wide array of groups to ensure that all families — married and non-traditional — will have the economic and social support to be healthy and happy. This could mean anything from working on programs that would train at-home parents for gainful employment, to establishing new tax codes that would reflect the reality of non-coupled families and blood relatives who live together.
2) Gay organizations should collaborate with workers’-rights groups on issues such as comprehensive child-friendly work leave; domestic-partnership rights for straight couples, gay couples, and households of people who are not sexually involved; and greater employee participation, profit sharing, and company management.
3) While always insisting on a strict separation of church and state, gay organizations should work with faith-based groups on economic and social issues in which they are both invested. Working with black churches to preserve federal poverty programs or with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to oppose capital punishment would create points of social and political contact on which both could build.
4) The gay movement should form alliances on comprehensive-health-care issues — including access to all forms of birth control, pre- and postnatal care, revamped Medicare and Medicaid, sexual-health education, and functional (i.e., non-abstinence-based) AIDS prevention.
5) It should urge and support gay and lesbian people to become involved in their immediate communities. Openly gay people serving on school committees, zoning boards, urban-planning committees, crime-watch groups, local diversity-training groups, and social programs such as Meals on Wheels will not only ensure a high degree of queer visibility, but will ensure that issues of specific importance to gay men and lesbians are discussed.
