Marriage v. Everyone Else

It is interesting watching my Facebook news feed the past few days to see the spectrum of reactions to the recent SCOTUS hearings on Prop 8 and DOMA. Ending the laws that make love between consenting adults illegal or illegitimate is an important and necessary step on the road to promoting human rights. Moreover, marriage equality is an issue that intersects with so many others, including health care, immigration, poverty, childcare, housing...just to name a few. Again, issues dealing with the denial of basic human rights. Some of the reactions I have seen to the intense energy around these hearings have been extraordinarily critical of the attention that they have been getting, operating under the premise that other (equally important) human rights denials are occurring. Prison privatization. Monsanto. HIV/AIDS quarantines. Drone warfare. Gun violence. People are being accused of jumping on the marriage equality bandwagon, and ignoring all of the other issues that need to be addressed if we are to build a world where all are respected and able to thrive.

Breathe, people. Just breathe.

We are all, in some way or another, oppressed by our current social structures. Whether the impact is physical, social, financial, or psychological, something prevents us from being our fullest and freest selves. That sounds terrifying and dark, but it doesn't have to be. In fact, it should be empowering; we're all in this broken system and most of us want to change it. Yes, let's make sure that the efforts to take apart one piece of the oppression puzzle don't end up replacing it with something new, or cement another piece even further so that others' humanity is further denied. Yes, let's recognize the complexity of each of these allegedly individual issues, so that we can properly point out its relationship to other manifestations of oppression. Taking this puzzle analogy to an uncomfortable stretch, when we remove one piece, we make it easier to remove another. Because these pieces are interlocking; they are intentionally designed to fit one another and keep each other in place. So rather than say that the focus on one issue, for example, marriage equality, is detracting from the energy needed on others, let's try something different. Let's use that focus to dive deeper into the issue at hand, see its many nuances and its interlocking nature. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes a lot of sense. The closer we look at something, the greater our vision becomes. Our awareness increases our intentionality, which in turn increases our effectiveness, which in turn empowers us to new levels. The energy surrounding the movement to end oppression should not be seen as being finite and divided among different issues, but rather, ever-expanding and conscious of their connections to each other and to the same root. Our energy grows when our "individual" movements do not vie for attention, but give it to one another. So Let's lift up each other and the ways in which we are working together to take apart this puzzle. Let's celebrate when our movement successfully removes a piece from its place. We're working for the same goal. Let's help each other get there.