BRO campaigns for Measure 36 repeal
Localgay rights organisation, Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) is launching a new ad campaign, which begun by showing ads on TV as recently as last week. (If you have seen them, please comment!) Next to showing ads of long-time monogamous gay couples on TV, their campaign involves hitting the streets, engaging in conversations, and handing out leaflets.
Even though Portland is known as a veritable queer paradise (mudslinging on CraigsList aside), many more rural areas of Oregon are significantly more conservative than urban areas – and BRO is launching a new campaign that will lead to a victory of the repeal of Measure 36 (that banned gay marriage in 2004) as early as 2012 in both city and country.
Despite my conflicted view on the emphasis on marriage as the main focus of the contemporary gay rights movement, I’m excited about the BRO campaign and am hopeful for the measure 36 repeal. As a reminder, here’s a list of the 1,138 benefits married couples receive, including basic immigration and tax rights.
You can read more about BRO’s new campaign here. Volunteer for BRO here.
This is just another step in assimilating into an already flawed hierarchy of power, mounting class and privilege at the forefront of what should be a rights struggle for all. We should not be forced to confine ourselves to a monogamous, state-sanctioned, religiously recognized companionship to receive benefits that should be available to all!
BRO will have millions pouring in for campaigning while queer youth is on the streets, lower class citizens with HIV and AIDS are being killed by the system and our brothers and sisters worldwide are being slaughtered for their gender and sexual identities. This campaign will echo the distribution of wealth and power that creates the oppression that is allegedly being challenged.
In principle I agree, but in the short term I do like having equal, if flawed rights, which include creature comforts that may come with marriage. But yes, I would prefer to work on things like healthcare for all, rather than healthcare for married, be they gay or straight.
This is just another step in assimilating into an already flawed hierarchy of power, mounting class and privilege at the forefront of what should be a rights struggle for all. We should not be forced to confine ourselves to a monogamous, state-sanctioned, religiously recognized companionship to receive benefits that should be available to all!
Didn’t anyone teach you that mixing other politics into equality politics is generally a bad idea? You realize that the sole reason that Measure 36 was passed was because of anti-queer animus by the heterosexual supremacists in the voting population of Oregon?
“We should not be forced to confine ourselves”….No one is confining you. Are heterosexual people who are married required by the laws of the State of Oregon to be monogamous with each other? Are they required to be religiously recognized by certain religions to be valid? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding NO.
For you to frame this issue in the manner that you’re doing is stabbing your fellow queers in the back. The word of any queer person against our equality in law when it comes to protections of ourselves and our families is heard many times louder in the current debate than your average heterosexual supremacist, because it’s a great way for the supremacists who hate us, ALL OF US, to say “See, even some of the f—–ts don’t support “same-sex marriage”.
For you to argue against our equality in law is beyond the pale, and evil. Your “side” in the “Should we embrace marriage and full equality or reject it”, your side decisively lost that battle 15 years ago. Stop stabbing your brothers and sisters in the back by supporting our continued segregation from being full citizens of this country.
BRO will have millions pouring in for campaigning while queer youth is on the streets, lower class citizens with HIV and AIDS are being killed by the system and our brothers and sisters worldwide are being slaughtered for their gender and sexual identities. This campaign will echo the distribution of wealth and power that creates the oppression that is allegedly being challenged.
How is BRO supposed to fix those issues? Their only issue is to gain OUR EQUALITY UNDER THE LAWS AND CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF OREGON. That is their only mission. It isn’t to save the world. Why is it Basic Rights Oregon’s, or any other LGBT equality organization’s responsibility, to somehow fix things in Iran, or Saudi Arabia?