As the U.S. Supreme Court heard two major cases this week on marriage equality, we look at how the issue has divided some in the LGBT movement. Longtime activist and blogger Scot Nakagawa wrote a popular essay this week called, “Why I Support Same Sex Marriage as a Civil Right, But Not As a Strategy to Achieve Structural Change.” The article drew so much traffic that it crashed his server, twice. We speak to Nakagawa and Marc Solomon, National Campaign Director of Freedom to Marry, one of the leading campaigns to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. “The marriage issue, while very important and a step toward greater freedoms, is not the whole ball of wax. There’s much more that we need to fight for. I think we recognize that most people in our society do not live in traditional nuclear family arrangements,” Nakagawa says. “Most of us actually live outside of those arrangements and deserve to also have the protections of our government.” Solomon, who attended Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments, responds, “There is a lot you’re saying that I fully agree with, especially the idea that marriage for our LGBTcommunity is not everything. It is an important milestone. … I think the challenge is to use the power and the momentum that we’re building through the marriage fights to secure other gains.”
Source Article from http://www.nationofchange.org/debate-does-marriage-equality-reinforce-conservative-institution-or-support-social-change-1364484410
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