• Nagarjuna [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I'd also add that the right recognized the importance of tha patriarchal family in maintaining capitalism long before the left did (as a whole. Obvs Marx and Engels approached it, but it didn't get a ton of attention until the 70s). We've been seen as a threat to the nuclear family because we tend to have more partners, lack the resources to settle down, and are more likely to have STDs and do drugs. These are of course not our fault, but public health issues, but they contribute to how straight people imagine us.

      Legalizing gay marriage is a good way to stabilize the crisis of our existence. It concededs a little to us without ever posing a danger to the nuclear family, just genderswapping it. Public health battles are harder, because we're calling for a real redistribution of wealth. That's why the bourgeois gave us marriage but not needle exchanges or health clinics (which we've made ourselves and which operate under varying degrees of legality and funding).