discussing 'beyond marriage' and support for homeless queer youth as a priority for the LGBTQ movement

On the agenda of national LGBT organizations within mainstream politics has been the legalization of gay marriage. A statement from beyondmarriage.org (associated with the radical organization againstequality.org) titled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships" argues that the LGBT movement "has recently focused on marriage equality as a stand-alone issue" and while it "may secure rights and benefits for some LGBT families, it has left us isolated and vulnerable to a virulent backlash." They are calling for radical alliances "across issues and constituencies" whose "strategies must be visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right's powerful and effective use of marriage as a 'wedge' issue that pits one group against another." In his book, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life, Michael Warner critiques the institution of marriage as implicitly privileged:

"Marriage sanctifies some couples at the expense of others. It is selective legitimacy. This is a necessary implication of the institution, and not just the result of bad motives or the high-toned non sequiturs of Henry Hyde. To a couple that gets married, marriage just looks ennobling, as it does to Hyde. Stand outside it for a second and you see the implication: if you don't have it, you and your relations are less worthy. Without the corollary effect, marriage would not be able to endow anybody's life with significance. The ennobling and the demeaning go together. Marriage does one only by virtue of the other. Marriage, in short, discriminates" (Warner 1999:82).

The "politics of shame" that Warner continues to discuss in his book, I think, work to show how a society protective of heteronormativity constructs a sexual hierarchy, while a LGBT movement centered around marriage equality desires a subsumable relationship to that hierarchy. It is important then to ask, as Shannon Moriarty does in the article "Who is Advocating for LGBT Homeless Youth?" why national LGBT organizations are not putting priority on the large numbers of homeless queer youth in the struggle for equality. Moriarty writes,

"Given the estimates that 2-3 percent of the American public identifies as LGBT, it's troubling that this population is so disproportionately represented on streets - and at such a young age. After coming out to their families, many are running away, being kicked out of their homes, or - even worse - being assaulted by a member of their family, according to the NGLTF report. And that's just the beginning. Life on the streets is hard and cruel, particularly for LGBT youth. 'I don't think there is any other situation where so much oppression and persecution and cruelty is happening to people because they're gay,' Carl Siciliano, who runs a shelter for LGBT youth in New York City, told the Indypendent. 'These kids are bearing the brunt of homophobia in our society.'"