Pro-marriage and antigay - last word - closer look at implications of welfare reform - Brief Article

Welfare reform is not an urgent, conscious priority for most gay people I know. Nor has it been a priority for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender political movement. This is a huge mistake. Proposed changes to the 1996 welfare reform law will dramatically hurt GLBT families. The 1996 welfare reform law changed the way federal policy was conducted by giving more authority to state governments through block grants. But its ideological roots lay deep within the antigay, racially bigoted far right.

The law's laudable focus was to help poor people get off welfare rolls and into jobs. But two critical features of the law were the explicit promotion of two-parent, heterosexual families and an effort to reduce out-of-wedlock births. Taken at face value, these goals may not seem objectionable. But gay people must take note that these measures create an environment hostile to same-sex families. We lack the right to marry, same-sex unions and domestic-partnership policies are under attack, restrictions on gay and lesbian adoption exist in four states, and 35 so-called state defense of marriage acts and a federal law have been enacted.

President Bush's new welfare proposals are even more homophobic and sexist. Conservatives want to spend hundreds of millions a year to promote heterosexual marriage while denying any recognition to gay families. They seek to prevent unmarried people from adopting and stop single people from having kids.

The new proposals are backed by powerful Bush administration appointees like Wade Horn at the Department of Health and Human Services, muscular think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution, and networks of self-appointed intellectuals like the blandly named Institute for American Values. This so-called marriage movement even held a national meeting to release its homophobic new report, "Why Marriage Matters," on February 14, two days after GLBT marriage activists held National Freedom to Marry Day.

Two things astonish me about this movement and this moment. The first is the total acquiescence of the liberal and centrist establishment to this profoundly reactionary agenda, and the second is the nearly complete absence of any GLBT voice in these debates. There is clearly a link between the two.

The liberal-right consensus that is Washington simply avoids that with which it is uneasy. GLBT people are not present in any of the research cited as justification for the new policies favoring marriage and frowning on out-of-wedlock births. Searching the Web sites of major liberal think tanks yields little, if any, data on GLBT people. This is intolerable, and we should be agitating, pushing every liberal organization, every libertarian with an open mind, every conservative with a conscience not owned by a corporation to demand that they include GLBT people in their field of vision.

This silence is made more shameful by our own lack of action. We are marginalized just as much by our class and race biases as we are by their homophobia. Only one national GLBT organization works on welfare reform. Just a handful of community-based groups have even taken positions that champion GLBT people in this debate. This personal and political avoidance of poverty issues is nearsighted and unconscionable. Nationwide the statistics are dramatic: In New York City alone, 68% of people with HIV and AIDS get their health care from Medicaid (a welfare program), and a majority of these are gay men. Gay seniors struggle to survive on fixed incomes without the benefit of family support networks. For decades community-based social service organizations--youth groups, housing programs, health clinics--have told us that GLBT communities harbor many people who are in urgent financial need.

Poverty is a GLBT reality, and its alleviation is a matter of justice. Our silence will not protect us, as poet Audre Lorde once reminded us. Neither will our class.

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