Indirect discrimination and gay rights in America (non fiction opinion piece)

 

Queer rights are on the agenda for the current federal government, and the plan seems to be to go backwards. Recent executive actions have revoked all federal DEI policies. The government forced everyone to list their gender as their sex on all official documents. They attempted to make it impossible to access affirming care under the age of 18. They have replaced the modern (and correct) acronym “LGBTQIA+” with “LGB,” deliberately and coldly excluding a huge portion of the community. Even the Stonewall website has erased the trans community. All of which is extremely reminiscent of the lavender scare of the 1950s as they tried to remove gay men from government positions.

Not to mention how the local state government has continued to fight back against basic equality with moves like book bans and "Don't Say Gay" bills. I have concerns about how the queer community and the left as a whole is thinking about discrimination and existential threats to human rights.

To look at this, let's conduct a thought experiment focusing specifically on non-heterosexual relationships and individuals. What would we do if we were the Republican Party?

We can't criminalise being gay, apparently, but we can make it much harder. We can start placing more roadblocks for two-income and cohabiting households above the age of 35 (the average age of same-sex marriages), like:

Increasing the paperwork needed to acquire benefits like unemployment, making it confusing and increasing the barrier to entry—all of which we have done in the past to disadvantage Black communities. (The Pew Research Center found that unemployment is almost double for African-American people versus white people, meaning that those barriers, purposeful or not, disproportionately affect Black people.)

Increasing homeowners' taxes.

Adding more barriers to Medicaid through additional bureaucracy.

If we target these specifically at two-income and cohabiting households above the age of 35, they will go relatively unnoticed while we are conducting far more flashy actions.

None of these are anti-queer laws if we frame it the right way.

We don't want welfare to be a “lifestyle,” as we've often said.

We just want to encourage marriage to ensure a healthy home life—our traditional Christian audience will eat this up.

We need to make up a budget deficit; we can blame the past administration, winning extra political points.

Finally, we can say we don't want people to exploit Medicare, as we've been saying since Obama.

None of this is true, but the truth has never stopped us before.

After we have introduced these policies, we can get our Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) and re-criminalize gay marriage. With this one sweeping shift, there will be over 7,000 couples who are cohabiting and dual-income but not married, as their gay marriages are instantly annulled. In one swift movement, we can place ipso facto fines on living together and kissing together as all of these couples will have to face the roadblocks we have placed ahead of time which will cost them time and money.

Now we will have more gay couples facing more life challenges, showing young children that it is not an acceptable or easy way to live. Perhaps some couples, out of desperation, may forge documents or make a mistake we can misrepresent. Then the media, like clockwork, will inflame the people—purposely or not. It will be like Christmas for Fox News. 

It's not about the short-term gains; it's about the long-term culture shift that we can effect. We can ensure that these couples' children live worse lives, and we can blame this on their sexuality. We can all hide behind the veil of barely obscured joy.

This won't happen… probably. My point is that not every attempt to criminalize us or discriminate against us will be so flashy. We need to remember that indirect discrimination is still discrimination—it's just hidden better. We need to stay alert.

A move like this, while dystopian, would not be entirely unprecedented. The government dragged its feet so much on needle exchange programs because it would slow the spread of AIDS, which was famously disproportionately affecting and killing gay people. But they hid it behind the veil of not wanting to help drug addicts (which is another topic altogether).

We can't keep saying that love will win out when they have the federal government on their side. It will win out—I really do believe that. My question is when because we have had some huge setbacks, not just this year. The post-COVID era has been difficult.

We have been left in a position in which we have to prove we are not pedophiles to a government that very nearly elected Matt Gaetz for Attorney General (who stands credibly accused of statutory rape).

We can't get complacent. Marriage equality is still not ensured in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court seems pretty willing to overturn rulings when they feel like it right now. After the roe vs wade verdict in 2022 Clarence Thomas wrote: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” Obergefell, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage.

In recent weeks, the government has shown its hand. It has always been about protecting the children—from drag shows, books and trans people going to the “wrong” toilet. It's all about avoiding delusion, indoctrination, or giving funding where it "doesn’t need to be given." It's all hidden just enough that we can't point it out and say, this is what they're doing to us. This is how they're killing us. But we need to learn how to communicate this because that just might be how they criminalize us. We will win but I don't think any of us want to fight-at least not like we did last time.

We shouldn't be the ones who have to deal with this—the government should. But they are the very ones leading the charge against us. So today, we need to fight.