The Queer Movement Today

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4747
Date Written:  2016-09-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21469

A year after marriage equality was legalized nationwide in the United States, and two months since the June 12, 2016 massacre at a gay club in Orlando, the LGBT movement confronts a contradictory future.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

As sexual and gender diversity are becoming the new normal, the ties of solidarity that sustained a marginalized and persecuted community grow looser. Assimilation appears to be weakening the social cohesion of the LGBT community and starving its once-dense network of institutions and resources. Now, with money drying up, many of the smaller organizations and some large ones are shrinking, merging or closing down.

For example, Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), New York State's leading LGBT policy advocacy group for the last 25 years, abruptly closed its doors last December, claiming that it had accomplished its major policy goals. ESPA, which had long been one of the largest and wealthiest LGBT organizations, apparently was facing fundraising difficulties.

Queer activists and even some politicians expressed outrage, pointing out that transgender people still lack statewide anti-discrimination protection in New York, and that much needs to be done to support queer youth and gain legal status for alternative family structures.