Why the gays fight

I enjoyed Justin Noia's Nov. 1 column about gay pride. It mirrored a good deal of my ignorance about gay culture when I first came out.

Then, last spring, in a casual chat with a professor, I was put on the spot: "Why do you think we are fighting for marriage rights?" I had taken Professor Erwin Chemerinsky's class; I was ready to answer this question. But my legal citations and historical referents were trite. There was a much better answer: "When your friends are dying from a medical condition that the White House won't talk about and the National Institutes of Health won't research, and lovers are denied access to hospital rooms because they aren't-and can't be-legally married, it catalyzes your politics."

Pride (or whatever you want to call this nebulous identity issue) does not come about without substance. Marginalized groups-and Noia admits gays are marginalized, even if he's not personally afraid of us-create identity politics by identifying oppression and then fighting that oppression by taking it public. Jews cite the holocaust, blacks slavery, gays AIDS and the legal prejudices that have survived.

So before pointing out the semantic flimsiness of a "pride movement," remember the movement itself has its own natural progression, as do the individuals involved. Whatever it is labeled today, and however "unnatural" a demand is being made, people taking their identity seriously is not a unique or surprising phenomenon. Furthermore, a reductionist critique-lumping all non-straight couples together as "unnatural"-completely sidesteps the nuanced differences within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community.

The fight for marriage is more than just pride flexing itself, it's a fight for social mobility and tangible benefits. This is not just a philosophical construct, it's a social reality. So why is there pride? Because there is oppression. And oppression gets internalized quite easily. And in a society where we're told daily that we're free, it is hard to tell individuals coming out of silence to hush up and not identify with a greater cause.

Kyle Knight

Trinity '08