On Sunday, a gaggle of queer folks will be joining the “People’s Climate March,” a rally in New York City projected to attract more than 100,000 attendees. Unfortunately, those who could help the cause the most are the least likely to show up.
Marching under banners such as “Queers for the Climate,” LGBT climate activists are, first and foremost, agitating for action on climate change. But they are also saying something about what LGBT activism should be about, and saying something quite different from the (current) gay mainstream. The question is whether they can make an impact.
Since the beginning of the contemporary LGBT movement—1969 by most accounts; 1950 if you go back to the founding of the first gay rights organization—activists have roughly divided into two camps. The first is basically liberal and seeks to win incremental victories, gain equal rights, and more or less assimilate into the mainstream of American society. Think same-sex marriage, #loveislove, and other messages that LGBT people are basically just like everyone else and should be treated the same.
The second group is more radical. It doesn’t want to assimilate into the mainstream, it wants to transform it. Think sexual liberation, 1970s groups like the Gay Liberation Front, and slogans like “Smash the church/Smash the state.” Not exactly family values. It’s this second group that sees LGBT liberation as intersecting with other liberation struggles, those based on eradicating racism, classism, sexism—and climate change.
Often the two groups’ agendas overlap, but sometimes they conflict. Mainstream gays support same-sex marriage, but some radical queers oppose it, for example, on the grounds that it wrongly assigns rights based on a narrow type of “acceptable” lifestyle choice. Mainstream gays want Pride parades to play well in Peoria, with large corporate floats and photogenic participants. Radical queers want Pride parades to be about pride in all its forms, including the Dykes on Bikes, Leather men, drag queens, and other folks who tend to terrify your grandma. The result? Each group buries its head in its hands: The queers can’t stand the Prudential float, the assimilationists can’t stand the Daddies in leather.
To a “mainstream gay,” having a group called Queers for the Climate may make little sense. I mean, there’s no harm in it. But other than perhaps getting someone’s phone number at the climate march, there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for it, either.
To a “radical queer,” on the other hand, caring about climate change is an essential part of queer identity. It expresses solidarity with the oppressed—which in this case may include almost everyone—opposition to the one percenters who got us into this mess, and a righteous indignation nourished by decades of LGBT activist experience. Read more via Daily Beast