BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE:

A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OUR

FAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS

July 1, 2006

We, the undersigned – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers – seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families.  In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.

We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.

We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community. 

In offering this vision, we declare ourselves to be part of an interdependent, global community. We stand with people of every racial, gender and sexual identity, in the United States and throughout the world, who are working day-to-day – often in harsh political and economic circumstances – to resist the structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression, and to build an unshakeable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge.

Why the LGBT Movement Needs a New Strategic Vision

Household & Family Diversity is Already the Norm

The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template.

All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.

U.S. Census findings tell us that a majority of people, whatever their sexual and gender identities, do not live in traditional nuclear families.  Recognizing the diverse households that already are the norm in this country is simply a matter of expanding upon the various forms of legal recognition that already are available. The LGBT movement has played an instrumental role in creating and advocating for domestic partnerships, second parent adoptions, reciprocal beneficiary arrangements, joint tenancy/home-ownership contracts, health care proxies, powers of attorney, and other mechanisms that help provide stability and security for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual individuals and families. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, our communities formed support systems and constructed new kinds of families and partnerships in the face of devastating crisis and heartbreak. Both our communities and our HIV organizations recognized, respected, and fought for the rights of non-traditionally constructed families and non-conventional partnerships.  Moreover, the transgender and bisexual movements, so often historically left behind or left out by the larger lesbian and gay movement, have powerfully challenged legal constructions of relationship and fought for social, legal, and economic recognition of partnerships, households, and families, which include members who shatter the narrow confines of gender conformity. 

To have our government define as “legitimate families” only those households with couples in conjugal relationships does a tremendous disservice to the many other ways in which people actually construct their families, kinship networks, households, and relationships. For example, who among us seriously will argue that the following kinds of households are less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy?

·      Senior citizens living together, serving as each other’s caregivers, partners, and/or constructed families

·      Adult children living with and caring for their parents

·      Grandparents and other family members raising their children’s (and/or a relative’s) children

·      Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner

·      Blended families

·      Single parent households

·      Extended families (especially in particular immigrant populations) living under one roof, whose members care for one another

·      Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households

·      Close friends and siblings who live together in long-term, committed, non-conjugal relationships, serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers

·      Care-giving and partnership relationships that have been developed to provide support systems to those living with HIV/AIDS

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal ­– for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.

An Increasing Number of Households & Families Face Economic Stress

Our strategies must speak not only to the fears, but also the hopes, of millions of people in this country – LGBT people and others – who are justifiably afraid and anxious about their own economic futures.

Poverty and economic hardship are widespread and increasing. Corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction are producing ever-greater wealth and income gaps between the rich and the poor, in this country and throughout the world. In the United States, more and more individuals and families (disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women) are experiencing the violence of poverty. Millions of people are without health care, decent housing, or enough to eat. We believe an LGBT vision for the future ought to accurately reflect what is happening throughout this country. People are forming unique unions and relationships that allow them to survive and create the communities and partnerships that mirror their circumstances, needs, and hopes.  While many in the LGBT community call for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, many others – heterosexual and/or LGBT – are shaping for themselves the relationships, unions, and informal kinship systems that validate and support their daily lives, the lives they are actually living, regardless of what direction the current ideological winds might be blowing.

The Right’s “Marriage Movement” is Much Broader than Same-Sex Marriage

LGBT movement strategies must be sufficiently prophetic, visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right’s powerful and effective use of “wedge” politics – the strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another.

Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue.  The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways ­ – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.

Moreover, as we all know, the Right has successfully embedded “stealth” language into many anti-LGBT marriage amendments and initiatives, creating a framework for dismantling domestic partner benefit plans and other forms of household recognition (for queers and heterosexual people alike).  Movement resources are drained by defensive struggles to address the Right’s issue-by-issue assaults.  Our strategies must engage these issues head-on, for the long term, from a position of vision and strength.

 “Yes!” to Caring Civil Society and “No!” to the Right’s Push for Privatization

Winning marriage equality in order to access our partners’ benefits makes little sense if the benefits that we seek are being shredded.  

At the same time same-sex marriage advocates promote marriage equality as a way for same-sex couples and their families to secure Social Security survivor and other marriage-related benefits, the Right has mounted a long-term strategic battle to dismantle all public service and benefit programs and civic values that were established beginning in the 1930s, initially as a response to widening poverty and the Great Depression.  The push to privatize Social Security and many other human needs benefits, programs, and resources that serve as lifelines for many, married or not, is at the center of this attack.  In fact, all but the most privileged households and families are in jeopardy as a result of a wholesale right-wing assault on funding for human needs, including Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, HIV-AIDS research and treatment, public education, affordable housing, and more.

This bad news is further complicated by a segment of LGBT movement strategy that focuses on same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue.  Should this strategy succeed, many individuals and households in LGBT communities will be unable to access benefits and support opportunities that they need because those benefits will only be available through marriage, if they remain available at all.  Many transgender, gender queer, and other gender-nonconforming people will be especially vulnerable, as will seniors. For example, an estimated 70-80% of LGBT elders live as single people, yet they need many of the health care, disability, and survivorship benefits now provided through partnerships only when the partners are legally married. 

Rather than focus on same-sex marriage rights as the only strategy, we believe the LGBT movement should reinforce the idea that marriage should be one of many avenues through which households, families, partners, and kinship relationships can gain access to the support of a caring civil society. 

The Longing for Community and Connectedness

We believe LGBT movement strategies must not only democratize recognition and benefits but also speak to the widespread hunger for authentic and just community. 

 

So many people in our society and throughout the world long for a sense of caring community and connectedness, and for the ability to have a decent standard of living and pursue meaningful lives free from the threat of violence and intimidation.  We seek to create a movement that addresses this longing.

So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world.  Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance. 

We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.

The Principles at the Heart of Our Vision

We, the undersigned, suggest that strategies rooted in the following principles are urgently needed:

Ø  Recognition and respect for our chosen relationships, in their many forms

Ø  Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households, and families, and for the children in all of those households and families, including same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, second-parent adoptions, and others

Ø  The means to care for one another and those we love

Ø  The separation of benefits and recognition from marital status, citizenship status, and the requirement that “legitimate” relationships be conjugal

Ø  Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households, and families

Ø  Access for all to vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor

Ø  Freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression

Ø  Recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and practical affirmation of the importance of joining with others (who may or may not be LGBT) who also face opposition to their household and family compositions, including old people, immigrant communities, single parents, battered women, prisoners and former prisoners, people with disabilities, and poor people

We must ensure that our strategies do not help create or strengthen the legal framework for gutting domestic partnerships (LGBT and heterosexual) for those who prefer this or another option to marriage, reciprocal beneficiary agreements, and more.  LGBT movement strategies must never secure privilege for some while at the same time foreclosing options for many.  Our strategies should expand the current terms of debate, not reinforce them. 

A Winnable Strategy

No movement thrives without the critical capacity to imagine what is possible.

Our call for an inclusive new civic commitment to the recognition and well-being of diverse households and families is neither utopian nor unrealistic. To those who argue that marriage equality must take strategic precedence over the need for relationship recognition for other kinds of partnerships, households, and families, we note that same-sex marriage (or close approximations thereof) were approved in Canada and other countries only after civic commitments to universal or widely available healthcare and other such benefits. In addition, in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.

A Vision for All Our Families and Relationships is Already Inspiring Positive Change

We offer a few examples of the ways in which an inclusive vision, such as we propose, can promote practical, progressive change and open up new opportunities for strategic bridge-building.   

·      Canada

Canada has taken significant steps in recent years toward legally recognizing the equal value of the ways in which people construct their families and relationships that fulfill critical social functions (such as parenting, assumption of economic support, provision of support for aging and infirm persons, and more). 

o   In the 1990s, two constitutional cases heard by that country’s Supreme Court extended specific rights and responsibilities of marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples.  Canada’s federal Modernization of Benefits and Obligation Act (2000) then virtually erased the legal distinction between marital and non-marital conjugal relationships. 

o   In 2001, in consideration of its mandate to “consider measures that will make the legal system more efficient, economical, accessible, and just,” the Law Commission of Canada released a report, Beyond Conjugality, calling for fundamental revisions in the law to honor and support all caring and interdependent personal adult relationships, regardless of whether or not the relationships are conjugal in nature.

·      Arizona

The Arizona Together Coalition (www.aztogether.org) is currently running a broad, multi-constituency campaign that emphasizes how the proposed constitutional amendment to “protect marriage” will affect not just same-sex couples but also seniors, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children and the business community.  The Arizona Coalition highlights the probability that the amendment will eliminate domestic partnership recognition, by both government and businesses. They also point out that DOMA supporters are the same forces that wanted to keep cohabitation a crime. As a result of the Coalition’s efforts, support for the constitutional amendment declined sharply in polls (from 49% to 33%) in the course of a few months (May 2005 - September 2005).  Accordingly, should the amendment make it onto the November 2006 ballot, Arizona is poised to become the first state to reject a state anti-gay constitutional marriage amendment in the voting booth.  We suggest that the LGBT movement pay close attention to the way that activists in Arizona frame their campaign to be about protecting a variety of different family arrangements.

·      South Carolina

The South Carolina Equality Coalition (www.scequality.org) is fighting a proposed constitutional amendment with an organizing effort emphasizing “Fairness for All Families.” This coalition is not only focused on LGBT-headed families, but is also intentionally building relationships with a broad multi-constituency base of immigrant communities, elders, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children, families of prisoners, and more. As we write this statement, the Coalition’s efforts to work in this broader way are being further strengthened by emphasis on the message that “Families have no borders.  We all belong.” 

·         Utah

In September 2005, Salt Lake City Mayor Ross Anderson signed an Executive Order enabling city employees to obtain health insurance benefits for their “domestic partners.”  A few months later, trumping the executive order, the Salt Lake City Council enacted an ordinance allowing city employees to identify an “adult designee” who would be entitled to health insurance benefits in conjunction with the benefits provided to the employee.  The requirements included living with the employee for more than a year, being at least 18 years old, and being economically dependent or interdependent.  Benefits extend to children of the adult designee as well.  While an employee’s same-sex or opposite-sex partner could qualify, this definition is broad enough to encompass many other household configurations.  The ordinance has survived both a veto by the Mayor (who wanted to provide benefits only to “spousal like” relationships) and a lawsuit launched by anti-gay groups.  The judge who ruled in the lawsuit wrote that “single employees may have relationships outside of marriage, whether motivated by family feeling, emotional attachment or practical considerations, which draw on their resources to provide the necessaries of life, including health care.”  We advocate close attention to such efforts to provide material support for the widest possible range of household formations.

We offer these four examples to show that there are ways of moving forward with a strategic vision that is broader than same-sex marriage, and encompassing of all our families and relationships.  Different regions of our country will require different strategies, but we can, and must, keep central to our work the idea that all family forms must be protected – not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the strategic and winnable way to move forward. 

A Bold, New Vision Will Speak to Many Who are Not Already With Us

At a time when an ethos of narrow self-interest and exclusion of difference is ascendant, and when the Right asserts a scarcity of human rights and social and economic goods, this new vision holds long-term potential for creating powerful and vibrant new relationships, coalitions, and alliances across constituencies – communities of color, immigrant communities, LGBT and queer communities, senior citizens, single-parent families, the working poor, and more –hit hard by the greed and inhumanity of the Right’s economic and political agendas.

At a time when the conservative movement is generating an agenda of fear, retrenchment, and opposition to the very idea of a caring society, we need to claim the deepest possibilities for interdependent social relationships and human expression.  We must dare to dream the world that we need, the world that has room for us all, even as we also do the painstaking work of crafting the practical strategies that will address the realities of our daily lives.   The LGBT movement has a history of being diligent and creative in protecting our families.  Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives. 

We invite friends everywhere to join us in ensuring that there is room, recognition, and practical support for us all, as we dream together a new future where all people will truly be free. 

SIGNED BY:

(All organizational affiliations listed for identification purposes only.

Asterisks indicate “BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE” authors.)

2016 Note: 

Hundreds (thousands?) of additional signatures were added after the document was released.  However, when we lost the original website, we lost all signatures that were added after July 23, 2006.  The following are only those signatures that were on the document when it was initially released.

Mimi Abramovitz

Professor of Social Policy, Hunter College School of Social Work and the CUNY Graduate Center

Author, Regulating the Lives of Women

Katherine Acey *

Executive Director, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice

Kimberly D. Acquaviva

Washington, DC

Cathy Albisa

Executive Director, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative

Dorothy Allison

Author, Bastard Out of Carolina, and Cavedweller

Amy Andre

bi activist, and sexuality author/educator and filmmaker

Martha Ackelsberg

Prof of Government and Women's Studies, Smith College
co-author, Why We're Not Getting Married

Nikhil Aziz

Executive Director, Grassroots International

Inelle Bagwell

Coordinating Team Member, Church Within a Church Movement

Marlon M. Bailey

Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Women's Studies,

University of California-Berkeley

Andre Banks,

Director of Media and Public Affairs, Applied Research Center

Rachel Baum

Former National Program Associate Director, The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects

Nancy K. Bereano

Organizer, Tompkins County Working Group on LGBT Aging

Founding publisher and editor, Firebrand Books

Lauren Berlant

George M. Pullman Professor of English, University of Chicago

Editor, Intimacy

Joan E. Biren (JEB)

Filmmaker/photographer

Ricky Blum

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Staff Attorney, Legal Aid Society

Member, Pride At Work

Terry Boggis *

Director, Center Kids, the family program of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center

Co-Chair, Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Marsha C. Botzer

Founder, Ingersoll Gender Center

Candice Boyce

Board Chair, African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change

Laura Briggs

Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of Arizona

Author, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico

Member, No More Deaths

Michael Bronski

Visiting Professor in Women's and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College

Author, The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom

Wendy Brown

Professor of Political Science, University of California-Berkeley

Author, States of Injury

Charlotte Bunch

Executive Director, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Rutgers University

Kent Burbank

Executive Director, Wingspan (South Arizona's LGBT Community Center)

Linda Burnham

Executive Director, Women of Color Resource Center, Oakland

Judith Butler

Maxine Elliot Professor, Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California-Berkeley

Author, Gender Trouble and Antigone’s Claim

Leslie Cagan

National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice

Mandy Carter

Board Member, National Black Justice Coalition

Former Executive Director, Southerners On New Ground

Ellen Carton

Former Executive Director, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation

Virginia Casper

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Bank Street College of Education, New York City

Co-author, Gay Parents/Straight Schools: Building Communication and Trust

Eli Clare

Author, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation

Pat Clark

Former Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Cheryl Clarke

Poet and author, The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry: 1980-2005

E.G. Crichton

Professor of Art, University of California-Santa Cruz

Paisley Currah

Executive Director, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS)

Director, Transgender Law & Policy Institute

Wendy Curry

Vice President, BiNet USA

Ann Cvetkovich

Professor of English, University of Texas, Austin

Author, An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures

Debanuj Dasgupta *

Board of Directors, Queer Immigrant Rights Project

Trishala Deb

Program Coordinator for the Training and Resource Center, Audre Lorde Project

Kathleen DeBold

Executive Director, Mautner Project, the National Lesbian Health Organization

Lara Deeb

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, University of California-Irvine

Founding member, Radical Arab Women's Activist Network

Board member, National Council of Arab Americans Defense of Civil Rights Committee

Joseph N. DeFilippis *

Executive Director, Queers for Economic Justice

Former Director, SAGE/Queens

John D’Emilio

Professor of Gender Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

Founding Director, The Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Co-Editor, Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy and Civil Rights

Lisa Dettmer

Producer, Women’s Magazine KPFA Radio

Caroyln Dinshaw

Founder, The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality

Professor of English and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Founding Co-Editor, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

Bill Dobbs

Betty Dodson, PhD

Sexologist

Author, Sex for One and Orgasms for Two

Heidi Dorow

Activist

Marta Drury

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, 1000 Women for Peace, 2005

Martin Duberman

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, City University of New York

Founder, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY

Author, Stonewall

Aine Duggan

Vice-President, Food Bank for New York City

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Lisa Duggan *

Professor and Director of American Studies, New York University

Author, The End of Marriage: The War Over the Future of State Sponsored Love (forthcoming)

Barbara Ehrenreich

Contributing Writer, New York Times, Harpers, The Progressive and Time Magazine

Author, Bait and Switch and Nickel and Dimed

Rev. Marvin M. Ellison
Willard S. Bass Professor of Christian Ethics, Bangor Theological Seminary

Author, Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ehtical Analysis

Annie Ellman

Co-founder and former Executive Director, Center for Anti-Violence Education

David L. Eng

Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University

Jeffrey Escoffier

Writer/Editor

Author, Sexual Revolution and American Homo: Community and Perversity

Kenyon Farrow *

Co-Editor, Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out

Author, "Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?"

Anne Fausto-Sterling

Professor of Biology and Gender Studies in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Brown University

Author, Sexing the Body

Leslie Feinberg 

Co-Chair, LGBT Caucus of National Writers Union/UAW

Author, Stone Butch Blues

Roderick Ferguson

Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota

Author, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique

Martha Albertson Fineman
Robert W. Woodruff Professor, Emory University - School of Law

Author, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency

Laura Flanders

Host, AirAmerica Radio

Charles Flowers

Executive Director, Lambda Literary Foundation

Katherine M. Franke

Professor of Law, Columbia University in the City of New York

Joyful Freeman

Director, GLTBQ Youth Program (Seattle), American Friends Service Committee

Monroe France

Educational Training Manager, GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Susana T. Fried

Independent Consultant on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights

Former Program Director, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Stephen Eagle Funk

Regional Director, Iraq Veterans Against the War

Coco Fusco

Associate Professor, Columbia University in the City of New York

Robert Galloway

Pastor, MCC Knoxville, Tennessee

Abigail Garner

Author, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is

Nicky Grist  

Executive Director, The Alternatives to Marriage Project

David Goldberg

Professor and Director, Humanities Research Institute, University of California-Irvine

Author, The Racial State

Tami Gold

Filmmaker/Activist

Professor, Hunter College CUNY

Richard Gollance

Los Angeles, CA

Letitia Gomez

Gayatri Gopinath

Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of California-Davis

Author, Impossible Desires: Queer Diaspora and South Asian Public Cultures

Catherine Gund

filmmaker / writer / activist

Ellen Gurzinsky *

Educator/Activist

Former Executive Director, The Funding Exchange

Judith Halberstam

Professor of English, University of Southern California

Director, Center for Feminist Research at USC

Author, Female Masculinity

Eileen Hansen

Jean Hardisty

Consultant

Author, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers

Adam Haslett

Writer

Mary Haviland

Former Co-Director, CONNECT, New York City

Kris Hayashi

Executive Director, Audre Lorde Project

Silvia Henriquez

Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

Robert-John Hinojosa

Field Director, Fairness for all Families Campaign, South Carolina

President, Palmetto Umoja, SC

Co-Director, SONG, North Carolina

Ann Holder

Associate Professor of History, Pratt Institute

Amber Hollibaugh *

Senior Strategist, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Author, My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home

Mary E. Hunt

Catholic feminist theologian

Co-director, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual

Nan Hunter

Professor, Brooklyn Law School

Co-Author, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture

Loraine Hutchins *

Co-Editor, Bi Any Other Name

Advisory Board, BiNet USA

Abbie Illenberger

Assistant Political Director, UNITE HERE!

Janet Jakobsen

Director, Center for Research on Women, Barnard College

Co-Author, Love The Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Tolerance

Amira Jarmakani

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, Georgia State University

Lillian Jiménez

Executive Director, Latino Educational Media Center

Darnell L. Johnson

Organizational Manager, Fairness Campaign

Co-chair, 2004 Kentucky "No on the Amendment" campaign

Founder/past President, Common Ground, University of Louisville

Rebecca O. Johnson

Writer/Activist

Ronald S. Johnson

Former Associate Executive Director, Gay Men’s Health Crisis

Kenneth T. Jones

Research, Community Activist

Board member, In The Life Atlanta

Lani Ka'ahumanu

Co-editor, Bi Any Other Name

Advisory Board, BiNet USA

Caren Kaplan

Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Chair of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group

University of California-Davis

Co-Editor, Between Woman and Nation

Esther Kaplan

Author, With God on Their Side

Host, Beyond the Pale, WBAI

Morris B. Kaplan

Professor of Philosophy, Purchase College, State University of New York

Jonathan Ned Katz

Historian/Independent Scholar

Author, Gay American History

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Author, The Issue is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance

Former Executive Director, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

Bobbi Keppel

co-founder, Unitarian Universalists Bi Network

                                                                                                                   

Hamid Khan

Executive Director, South Asian Network

Surina Khan *

Senior Program Officer, Women's Foundation of California

Former Executive Director, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Richard Kim *

Writer, The Nation

founding Board member, Queers for Economic Justice

Laura Kipnis

Professor of Radio-TV-Film, Northwestern University

Author, Against Love

Cathy Knight

Executive Director, Church Within a Church Movement

Debra Kolodny

Editor, "Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith,"
Exec. Dir., ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal

Kitty Krupat

Associate Director, Joseph S. Murphy Center for Worker Education, City University of New York

Co-editor, Out at Work

Frances Kunreuther

Director, Building Movements Project 

Former Executive Director, The Hetrick Martin Institute

Malachi Larrabee-Garza

Advanced Political Education Coordinator, The School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL)

Board Member, Transgender and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP)

Deke Law

Arthur S. Leonard

Professor of Law, New York Law School

Asha Leong

Campaign Manager, South Carolina Equality Coalition

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Editor, Tikkun Magazine

National Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives

Jenifer Levin

Author, Water Dancer and The Sea of Light

Reverend Jacqueline J. Lewis

Senior Minister in Charge, The Middle Collegiate Church, New York, NY

Yoseñio V. Lewis

Board of Directors, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Writer/Performance Artist

Phoenix Lindsey-Hall

Volunteer Coordinator, The Fairness Campaign, Louisville, KY

Susan Lob

Director, Voices of Women Organizing Project

Kerry Lobel *

Scott Long

Director, LGBT Rights Program, Human Rights Watch

Lisa Lowe

Professor of Literature, University of California-San Diego

Author, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

Craig Lucas

Writer / Director

Samuel Lurie

Director, Transgender Awareness Training

Chris Lymbertos

Oakland, CA

Pat Maher

Co-Director, Haymarket's People Fund

Martin Manalansan

Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana

Author, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora

Rickke Mananzala

Campaign Coordinator, FIERCE!

William Mann

Writer and Historian

Beth Maples-Bays

East Tennessee Bureau Chief, Out and About Newspaper

Co-President, Greater Knoxville LGBTQ Leadership Council

Vice President, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Tennessee Nashville) Chapter

Armistead Maupin

Writer/Producer

Pam McMichael

Director, Highlander Research and Education Center

Founding Co-Director, Southerners on New Ground

Terrence McNally

Writer

Alice M. Miller, JD*

Ass't Professor, Clinical Population and Family Health, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health

Marshall Miller
Co-Founder, The Alternatives to Marriage Project
Co-Author, Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living Together as an Unmarried Couple

Gwendolyn Mink

Co-Coordinator, Women's Committee of 100
Charles N. Clark Professor, Studies in Women and Gender, Smith College

Author, Welfare’s End

Donna Minkowitz

Journalist

Author, Ferocious Romance

Nasreen Mohamed

Writer & Activist, Minneapolis

Jeffrey Montgomery

Executive Director, Triangle Foundation

Board Member, Woodhull Freedom Foundation

Richard W. Morrison

Executive Editor, University of Minnesota Press

José E Muñoz

Associate Professor and Chair of Performance Studies, New York University

Author, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics

Yasmin Nair

Activist, Educator

Member, CLIA (Chicago LGBTQ Immigrants Alliance)

Writer, Windy City Times

Scot Nakagawa

Grants and Program Director, Social Justice Fund Northwest

Holly Near

Singer/Activist

Joan Nestle

Lesbian Herstory Archives

Heba Nimr

Program Coordinator, Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action

Reverend Dr. Penny Nixon

Senior Minister, MCC San Francisco

Robin Nussbaum

Educator/Activist

Former Coordinator, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Queers for Justice Program

Doyin Ola

Welfare Organizer, Queers for Economic Justice

Working Group Member, TransJustice, a project of the Audre Lorde Project

Steering Committee, Uhuru-Wazobia, LGBT Africans

Ana Oliveira *

Executive Director, New York Women’s Foundation

Former Executive Director, Gay Men’s Health Crisis

Nancy Ordover

Author, American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism

Reverend Freeman L. Palmer, Minister

Congregational Life and Development, Middle Collegiate Church, New York, New York

Cori Schmanke Parrish *

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice

Cindy Patton

Professor of Sociology, Simon Fraser University

Author, The Invention of AIDS

Clarence Patton       

Executive Director, The New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project

Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

Poet/Editor

Ann Pellegrini

Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies, New York University

Co-Author, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Tolerance

Denise Penn 

Past President, BiNet USA

Board Member, The American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB)

Rosalind Petchesky

Distinguished Professor, Hunter College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Author, Abortion and Woman’s Choice

Suzanne Pharr *                                                                            

Author, In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation and Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism

Former Director, Highlander Research and Education Center

Judith Plaskow

Professor of Religious Studies, Manhattan College

co-author, Why We're Not Getting Married

Nancy Polikoff * 

Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

Author, Valuing All Families (forthcoming, Beacon Press, 2007)

Elizabeth Povinelli

Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Author, Empire of Love: Toward A Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality

Achebe Betty Powell *

Activist / Educator

Consultant, Betty Powell Associates

Lisa Powell

Attorney and activist

Reverend Cecil Charles Prescod

Director, Public Voice for Peace and Equality Project, Love Makes A Family, Inc.

Jasbir Puar

Assistant Prof. of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University

Christopher Punongbayan

Advocacy Director, Filipinos for Affirmative Action

Susan Raffo

Editor, Queerly Classed: Gay Men and Lesbians Write About Class

Chandan Reddy

Assistant Professor Department of English, University of Washington, Seattle

Betsy Reed

Executive Editor, The Nation

Reno

Performance Artist

Holly Richardson

Out Now

Ignacio Rivera *

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice            

Founder of Poly Patao Productions / performance artist

Colin Robinson

Founder, Caribbean Pride

Former Executive Director, New York State Black Gay Network & Gay Men of African Descent

Ruthann Robson

Professor of Law, City University of New York School of Law

Juana María Rodríguez 

Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies, UC Davis

Author, Queer Latinidad

Loretta J. Ross

National Coordinator, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective

Rev. Nori Rost

Executive Director, Just Spirit: A Center for People of All Faiths

Graciela Isabel Sánchez

Director, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center

Ronni Sanlo ED.D

Director, UCLA LGBT Center
Founding Chair, National Consortium of Directors of LGBT Resources in Higher Education

Ann Schranz

Unitarian Universalist minister

Joan Wallach Scott

Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University

Rinku Sen

Director of the New York Office, Applied Research Center

Publisher, ColorLines Magazine

Mark M. Sexton and W. Kirk Wallace

Svati P. Shah

Member, South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association

Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality,

New York University

Julie Shapiro

Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law

Eveline Shen

Executive Director, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice

Carl Siciliano

Founder/Executive Director, Ali Forney Center

Kathy Skaggs

Writer

Anna Marie Smith

Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University

Author, Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation (forthcoming)

Rita Smith

Executive Director, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Sarah Sohn

Board of Directors, Queers for Economic Justice           

Former Legal Fellow, Immigration Equality

Alisa Solomon

Director, Arts & Culture MA, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Former Executive Director, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY

Dorian Solot

Co-Founder, Alternatives to Marriage Project

Co-Author, Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living

Together as an Unmarried Couple

Dean Spade

Founder, Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Judith Stacey

Professor of Sociology, New York University

Author, Brave New Families

Gloria Steinem

Founder and original publisher, Ms. Magazine

Jessica Stern

Researcher, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program, Human Rights Watch

Board Member, Queers for Economic Justice

Jacquelyn Stevens

Associate Professor, Law and Society Program, University of California-Santa Barbara

Author, Reproducing the State

Julia Sudbury

Professor of Ethnic Studies, Mills College

Founding member, Critical Resistance

Author, Global Lockdown

Ashley Tellis 

Beth Teper

Executive Director, COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere)

Jennifer Terry

Associate Professor and Director of Women's Studies, University of California-Irvine

Author, American Obsession: Science, Medicine and Homosexuality in Modern Society

Kendall Thomas *

Activist

Nash Professor of Law, Columbia University in the City of New York

Juhu Thukral

Director, Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center

Judith Thurman

Writer

Bonnie Tinker

Executive Director, Love Makes a Family, Inc.

Jay Toole

Shelter Organizer, Queers for Economic Justice

Barbara Turk

Former Executive Director, YWCA of Brooklyn

Judith E. Turkel

Turkel Forman & de la Vega LLP, New York

Sharon Ullman

Associate Professor of History, Bryn Mawr College

Author, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America

Paula Vogel

Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Playwright, How I Learned to Drive

KC Wagner, 

Director of Workplace Issues, Cornell-ILR, NYC

Leonie Walker

Philanthropic Activist

Carla Wallace

Fairness Campaign Leadership Council, Louisville, Kentucky

Suzanna Walters

Chair of the Department of Gender Studies, Indiana University

Author, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America

Michael Warner

Professor of English, Rutgers University

Author, The Trouble with Normal

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Author, Eleanor Roosevelt, vols. I & II

Professor, John Jay College & the Graduate Center/CUNY

Denise Wells

Cornel West

Robin West

Professor of Law, Georgetown University Center of Law

Kay Whitlock *

Writer/Organizer

Former National Representative for LGBT Issues, The American Friends Service Committee

                     

Robyn Wiegman

Professor and Margaret Taylor Smith Director of Women's Studies, Duke University

Author, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender

Maya Wiley

Executive Director, Center for Social Inclusion

Penelope Williams

NE Regional Coordinator emeritus, BiNet USA

Co-organizer, People of Color Institutes, Creating Change

Andre A. Wilson

Organizer/Activist, Trans Health Advocate

Co-founder, Transforum of University of Michigan

Member, Pride At Work - Michigan

Joe Wilson

Program Officer for Human Rights, Public Welfare Foundation

Documentary Filmmaker, qWaves Productions

Ellen Willis

Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication

Director, Concentration in Cultural Reporting and Criticism, New York University

JoAnn Wypijewski

Columnist, Mother Jones

Independent Journalist

Jesi Yager

Artist/Activist

Former volunteer, 2004 Kentucky "No on the Amendment" Campaign

Former Director, National Coming Out Day Works on Shirt Project, Louisville, KY

Former Administrative Staff, New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Campaign

Miriam W. Yeung, MPA

Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center

Kenji Yoshino,

Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Rebecca Young

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, Barnard College

Karen Zelermyer 

Executive Director, Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues

Beth Zemsky *

GLBT Studies, University of Minnesota

Former Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force