I’m a Canadian, so the HRC logo isn’t seen much around here. However, I do have one stuck to the top of my laptop, after it was given to me by a friend while I was visiting San Francisco. I hadn’t been aware of the limitations of the HRC’s focus. I think I’ll scratch it off.

As you probably know, here in Canada homosexuals now have the right to legally marry. Many of my queer friends and acquaintances see this as a positive step. I feel otherwise.

Queer culture is rapidly being de-politicised and less activist in Canada. While I won’t suggest that that isn’t an effect of equal marriage rights exclusively (a greater level of social acceptance in general is also a major factor, along with increasing subservience to capital in all walks of society), I believe it is a very significant factor. Far too many queers who have married have reacted to that right by becoming apathetic about most other social justice issues. Contributions to gay rights causes have plunged significantly since gay marriage came to be. This apathy is also apparent among those who have not married, but I would suggest that they also have been lulled into this apathy by this development.

Gay marriage undoubtedly came about in Canada for various reasons, but the value of the lobbying efforts of those with significant resources to lobby cannot be underestimated as a reason. And really, it’s those with the resources, the economically privileged, who probably most desired the ability to marry. Mostly, though not exclusively, that means gay, white males. (For GWMs feeling under attack by this, let me point out that I am usually seen as one of them, when evaluated superficially).

What I see happening now is that GWMs and their collaborators are retiring to their married enclaves, abandoning all “other” marginalised groups, and contributing fewer and fewer of their resources to queer (or other) rights causes. Queer life here is becoming mundane and “heteronormalised” and, I believe, real queerness is being pushed back underground by the apathy and selfishness of those who now enjoy the benefits that were largely fought for in the streets by those that the privileged HRC types now disdain less discreetly than they did in the past.

A lot of work has gone into securing the relative comfort and security that homosexuals enjoy today, particularly in large urban centres, but we must remember that these changes have all come about in a relatively short period of time, in historical terms. Let’s not forget that those rights could be snatched away again should the politial will change, particularly if there are other major factors such as a large-scale economic collapse that effects the social order that we currently take for granted.

Just because “I’m OK” is no reason to turn my back on those who are not OK.

I leave you with the words of Canadian writer Jane Rule:

“To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship,” she wrote. “With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there.”

Doesn’t that negate the very core of equality?

To be honest that’s why I was so excited to put the sticker on my bumper eventually. After I did I got a lot of people interested in what it meant and who put it out, and I just wasn’t satisfied with what I had been told so I decided to look it up.

It just seemed so simple I never really figured there was a huge political agenda behind such a novel concept. I think I’ll leave it on because I would like to believe it is open to interpretation, but I’ll keep an eye on how it grows as a message in the mainstream.

…except maybe the part where it’s usually mainstream, “palatable”, wealthy white orgs that get more funding, visibility and support?