{"id":139724,"date":"2021-05-30T07:53:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T15:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=139724"},"modified":"2021-05-30T07:53:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T15:53:01","slug":"when-the-gay-money-comes-pouring-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=139724","title":{"rendered":"When The Gay Money Comes Pouring In"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the New York Times Book Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nHow the Religious Right Made Same-Sex Marriage a Gay Rights Crusade<\/p>\n

THE ENGAGEMENT: America\u2019s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage By Sasha Issenberg<\/p>\n

Money itself, especially the importance of \u201cgay economic might,\u201d also takes center stage in Issenberg\u2019s book. \u201cA galaxy of covert donors orbiting around Denver software millionaire Tim Gill remade the gay-rights movement in their own image,\u201d he writes, \u201cideologically conservative and strategically radical.\u201d Gay marriage activists, modeling themselves on corporate PACs, successfully transformed into a lobbying force one likened to a \u201cGay Pfizer,\u201d using the carrot of political contributions and the stick of funding one\u2019s opponents. The strategy worked: In 2011, three Democrats in the New York Legislature reversed their earlier positions on gay marriage after witnessing gay organizations\u2019 ability to end political careers. In 2012, after President Obama announced his support of gay marriage, according to one campaign staffer, \u201cYou could literally hear the gay money pouring in.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Through Issenberg\u2019s illumination of the donors, activists and attorneys on both sides of the saga, another aspect of the battle for marriage equality becomes starkly clear: its whiteness. Obama plays an important role, certainly, but nearly all of the individuals at the core of the narrative \u2014 dozens of them \u2014 are white. Issenberg doesn\u2019t shy away from examining the role of race in electoral politics (the loss of the Black vote against Proposition 8, he concludes, was merely the symptom of a more widespread messaging problem), but we don\u2019t learn why, exactly, queer Black activists were such a rarity in the upper echelons of the marriage fight.<\/p>\n

They have long told us the reasons: In addition to broader racism and transphobia within the mainstream gay rights movement, marriage was always primarily a white, cisgender issue. \u201cGay marriage? Please,\u201d wrote Jasmyne Cannick, a Los Angeles-based political strategist and journalist, after the passage of Proposition 8. \u201cThe white gay community is banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on it parity with heterosexuals. But the right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both Black gays and Black straights. Does someone who is homeless or suffering from H.I.V. but has no health care, or newly out of prison and unemployed, really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the New York Times Book Review: How the Religious Right Made Same-Sex Marriage a Gay Rights Crusade THE ENGAGEMENT: America\u2019s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage By Sasha Issenberg Money itself, especially the importance of \u201cgay economic might,\u201d also takes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homophobia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t