LGBTQ histories didn’t begin with Stonewall and end with Windsor

As I celebrate Pride this month I continue to identify mainstream narratives that situate the LGBTQ movement in the past, treat the expansion of same-sex marriage as a fait accompli, and fail to name the shared struggles for immediate survival, safety, and security that continue to drive many arms of the movement for queer liberation.

In the past several weeks we’ve witnessed a veritable explosion of mainstream discourses on ‘gay identity’ and the LGBTQ movement (broadly construed). The media chronicled the much-hyped HBO release of Larry Kramer’s autobiographical screenplay The Normal Heart. Other pundits clamored to comment on the Department of the Interior’s announcement of a new theme study of the LGBTQ movement a new theme study of the LGBTQ movement staged in front of the Stonewall Inn.

Discussions around how to best communicate queer public histories effectively to the next generation of Americans are no doubt valid and important. Moreover, utilizing the well-known events of Pride to generate interest in LGBTQ organizing is not a bad idea. The danger comes when we allow largely straight, privileged institutions to invoke our histories without sufficiently mapping the evolution and continuation of our fight for the collective liberation of all queer people.

I’d argue that the examples highlighted above represent only two recent cases of limited, decontextualized dealings with queer history that failed to bridge the divide between activism of “then” and the struggle to secure our survival today. After all, when the same bureaucracy affirms the need for a theme study of the LGBTQ movement while turning a blind eye to very real needs of our communities, queer people are forced to ask whether the US government has a working knowledge of the lived reality of queer people.

In compartmentalizing the struggle of LGBTQ people in the past, we risk rendering invisible queer folks’ day-by-day effort to survive – to carve out spaces of meaning for themselves and to build networks of support for their chosen families.

While potentially helpful, LGBTQ people know that wins for the same-sex marriage movement do not translate to queer liberation or assurances of safety for ourselves or our loved ones. Rather, the subjugation of queer folks continues unchecked in so many ways. Yes, our government denies many of us access to the benefits of state-sanctioned monogamy. Yet, at a far more basic level, we lack necessities: the chance to make a living for ourselves; affordable and accessible healthcare services; safety from physical and verbal violence at the hands of strangers and the police; immigration policies that value our humanity.

No matter the force of judicial rulings testifying to our citizenship and humanity, we find ourselves suffering in very real, immediate ways at the hand of a society that is unwilling or unable to embrace our queer family – particularly our queer people of color, trans*, * *gender non-conforming, and undocumented siblings. To name a few of our immediate concerns:

• Marginalization in the labor market: Despite widespread support, queer folks are still not protected from discrimination in the workplace based on their sexual orientation and gender identity at the federal level or in the majority of US states.
• Physical Attacks: At the end of last month the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released chilling statistics on the rates of anti-LGBTQ violence experienced by our community in 2013. According to their data, reports of violence increased in severity over the past twelve-months with a 21% increase in reports of physical hate violence. Moreover, Queer people of color accounted for almost 90% of all homicide victims with the vast majority of those victims identifying as trans*.
• *A 21st-Century Approach to HIV/AIDS: Despite calling Director Ryan Murphy on the phone after watching The Normal Heart, President Obama has yet to take innovative steps to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, remove stigma from seropositive folks, and decriminalize HIV-positive individuals.
• The Right to Stay: Lastly, we know that 267,000 undocumented queer folks are navigating the deportation process and in dire need of our help to remain within the communities in which they’ve contributed so much.

The weight of these concerns cannot be found in the majority of government press releases, media coverage of Pride parades, nor official proclamations of Pride month. Furthermore, queer people of color, trans* * *and gender non-conforming folks, as well as undocuqueers are seldom elevated in the national discourse. Instead, they’re forced to name their experiences again and again in order to amplify some nascent desire on what it means to be a Yet, we as queer people continue to shoulder the burden of these injustices and build our own networks, organizations, and coalitions to form our own narrative of struggle and strife located not in the ever so recent past but in the living histories we write each day.

None of this is to say that our movements ought to avoid historical or archiving work. Rather, intergenerational bonds among queer activists have sustained our movements for decades and nourished our minds, bodies, and souls. What must be reconciled, though, is the increasing distance between the rhetoric of ‘successful’, concluded LGBTQ social movements and the continued oppression of queer bodies.

Indeed, my queer body exists in spite of well-intentioned and nefarious efforts to ‘manage’ my histories and those of my movement family. Our battle to claim power over our lives in the public sphere and to do so without concession is a struggle to survive, to overcome. And it is this spirit of defiance in the face of violence, passivity, or disinterest that breathes life into our movement.

We matter. Our lives matter. Then, this month, forever.