Now What? Social Justice After Marriage Equality
BY Sarah Neddo ON November 30, 2014
In June SCOTUS ruled not to rule on the issue of same-sex marriage. I know because I watched from afar as my friends and family posted engagement photos, red equal signs, and personal status updates about what this decision meant for their lives in Wisconsin, my home state, where same-sex couples can now get married.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, I read that the Williams Institute estimated the economic boost from the marriages of same-sex couples in Wisconsin to be around $34.3 million. A number that can dismantle any lingering civil and legal debates over if same-sex marriage is bad for Wisconsin.
But how much of that money will I get? How much of that money will any of my recent queer undergraduate and rural high school friends get? What does this number mean for my trans, genderqueer, and gender-non-conforming friends hosting crowdsourcing campaigns to raise money for top surgeries and hormone therapy, so they can lead more authentic lives?
Don’t get me wrong. The community I found in Wisconsin is not tragic. The community I found taught me resilience and gave me courage to lead a more authentic life through their own bold efforts to carve out space for themselves, unfunded and before same-sex marriage was legal. #somanyfeelings.
But we are still struggling. Struggling to find jobs that will embrace or at least tolerate our gender expression. Struggling to fight for reallocation of the $135 million dollars going to a new jail in Dane County. Struggling to change Wisconsin’s image as the worst state for black kids in America.
Now, the philanthropy community is wondering what’s next? Shutdown the movement? Put money towards those issues which were downplayed in favor of a Marriage Equality effort? Focus on multiple issues that come up in the “lived experiences” of queer people? The article does not give any clear answers, except that there will probably be no single issue to dominate funding.
Seeing pictures from recent queer weddings and watching people sigh relief at a sign of how they are now being recognized in their home state makes me happy, but doesn’t make me forgot all the work left to be done by a movement that prioritized a single issue leaving many out.
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