The singular theme of the more limited, rights-based movement was that “gay people were just like everyone else,” by which it meant “heterosexuals.” This was a definitively wrong move, one based on the ridiculous notion that heterosexuals themselves were all alike, with no differences — class, racial, ethnic, sexual — among them. Accordingly, the equal-rights model assumed that all homosexual people were also a single group with no internal differences. The gay-rights movement not only ignored the myriad differences within each group; more important, it ignored the shared similarities — and potential points of connection — that existed between the groups.

As a result, the gay-rights movement became culturally and politically isolated, as liberalism in the ’70s and ’80s gave way to identity politics. By focusing only on legal inequalities — albeit, an important aspect of seeking basic civil rights — the movement never argued, as the African-American civil-rights movement did by the end of Martin Luther King’s life, for a comprehensive vision of social justice.

A clear example of this tunnel vision lies in the movement’s long-time insistence on fighting for the right to sexual and personal privacy. While the aim of the fight for privacy was to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms (a good thing), it also perpetrated the idiotic and incorrect idea that homosexuality was a completely separate aspect of a person’s identity. The “privacy” argument was attractive to mainstream culture because it kept gay people invisible. But the downside was that it also perpetuated the social isolation of gay people, removing them from the public sphere. A “right to privacy” is of no help to the openly queer high-school student who is forbidden by school administrators from forming a gay-straight alliance, or wearing “gay T-shirts” in the hallways. The “right to privacy” is of no use to the gay man who is visibly living with HIV/AIDS, or to the lesbian couple with kids facing discrimination in school or housing.

Perhaps the best, and most recent, example of the fallout from this single-issue, gay-rights mindset can be seen in the fight for same-sex marriage. True, the marriage-equality movement has scored a big win in Massachusetts. But this single win has generated an enormous, national backlash resulting in 17 states passing constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. In eight of those states the amendment language also prohibits civil unions and, in some cases, other legal protections, such as private-sector domestic-partnership programs. These state constitutional amendments will take at least half a century to repeal. And the Bay State win piqued substantial interest in a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage on the federal level.

This didn’t — and doesn’t — have to happen. Queer activists and academics Lisa Duggan and Richard Kim (she is chair of the American Studies Department at New York University, where he is a graduate student) suggest in a July 18, 2005, Nation article, “Beyond Gay Marriage” that “in order to counter conservative Republican strategy . . . gay activists and progressives will have to come together to reframe the marriage debate.” To do so, they must build coalitions with labor activists and economic-justice advocates to promote marriage as one of the many ways individuals and households might access badly needed benefits. Duggan and Kim argue that the gay-rights movement is presently fighting for acceptance and economic security only for those couples who choose to enter into the pre-existing institution of marriage. The movement might have been far more successful, they say, if it worked in coalition with other groups, and argued for a comprehensive system of social and economic protections for all families and household groupings.

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This is political organizing 101 — find people with shared interests and bring them together to enact social change. But in many ways, the gay-rights movement never passed the course. As a result, this sort of coalition building would have to involve a total revamping and re-visioning of how “gay politics” have traditionally been pursued — and that is precisely the point. With its myopic view of what “justice” might mean, the gay rights platform — “equal rights for gay people” — has never seriously grappled with the hard fact that many gay people had rights based on wealth, race, gender, and class status that other gay people didn’t have. But worse than this, it has refused to embrace a grander vision — in religious terms, a moral vision — of how the world might be a better place for everyone.

The gay-rights movement has learned a great deal from the civil-rights movement about how to fight the overwhelming discrimination lesbians and gay men face in jobs and housing. Yet, stunningly, national gay-rights groups never thought of forming political or strategic alliances with the civil-rights groups that pioneered equal-protection legislation. They never sought common ground. When fighting for the rights of gay men and lesbians to adopt and raise children, the gay-rights movement never took a broader stand on children’s rights or children’s health. While it is true that the movement often sought endorsements from groups such as the National Association of Social Workers, claiming that gay people could be fine parents, it never worked closely with these groups on larger issues relating to families or children. Likewise, the movement failed to look at the military in a larger context. It has been so preoccupied with the right to serve in the military that it has been blind to the economic constraints that force many of the working poor into the military, as well as to the growing role of militarism in US foreign policy.