The DOMA decision

This TTO Guest Post is written by Elyse Lewis, Wesley Thompson, and Kendrick Terrell Evans. They currently serve as TTO’s Interns to the Executive Artistic Director.

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In the lead up to the Supreme Court announcement of the DOMA decision, the three of us were excited about the possibilities that an overturn of the law could create, and the doors it might open. On Wednesday, we celebrated this milestone with our community and thought of the queer people whose lives would be transformed by this decision. At the same time, we didn’t feel directly impacted by the ruling. We want to fully relish the DOMA overturn, but we are uncertain about how the decision affects our current day-to-day lives.

As three young people, we feel disconnected from marriage. With the overturn of DOMA, we’re excited to know that if we do decide to marry same-sex partners in the future, we will be afforded the same rights as heterosexual couples (granted we continue to live in Massachusetts or another state where same-sex marriage is legal). But at the moment, our minds are preoccupied with other rights. Without children to co-parent, without health insurance to share, without property to co-own, we start to wonder how marriage benefits us.

Our experiences as youth and our disconnection with the DOMA decision also point to a larger problem with the representation of people with multi-hyphenate identities by mainstream media. While we rejoiced in the coverage and celebration of the DOMA ruling, we were saddened by the media’s relative dismissal of the strike down of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. As a society, we must realize that while the Supreme Court granted rights to some members of the queer community, it potentially jeopardized the rights of LGBTQ people of color.

As twenty-somethings, we are often led to believe that our generation and the America we are helping to create are post-race. Indeed, in the majority opinion of the VRA case, Chief Justice John Roberts cited increased voter turnout of black and brown people as evidence that racial discrimination is a problem of the past. However, we believe identity politics are always relevant. The three of us worry that the recent Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage might be used as the green light to move onto the “next” civil rights issue. We feel that civil rights are not sequential; they are ongoing and intersecting.

For some queer people, their civil rights struggle begins and ends with marriage. But for others – particularly queer people of color and immigrants and trans* folks – marriage is not an immediate concern. For example, street violence, employment discrimination, and access to trans* health services are just a handful of concerns for groups who suffer from marginalization within the queer community. The issue same-sex marriage is accessible to the mainstream through the predominantly white, middle class voices that represent the movement. However, these voices fail to connect with other issues of queer politics because the people associated with those issues are “otherized” and therefore “unrelatable.”

Our intention is not to begin a game of “Oppression Olympics.” For the three of us, the question isn’t about whose struggle is greater but rather, within ourselves, which struggle takes precedent and in what idiosyncratic and political contexts? As young people coming from various spectrums of identity, background, and experience, we are hard-pressed to find ourselves in the image presented by the mainstream media. Similarly, we often find that the issues of greatest import to us are overlooked or misrepresented. Even though marriage equality is finally becoming a reality, we must continue to fight the battles unseen by the general populace.

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Kendrick Terrell Evans is a rising Senior at Tufts University where he studies Anthropology and Drama. When Kendrick is not working at The Theater Offensive he enjoys either hanging out with friends or laying in bed watching Netflix all day.

Wesley Thompson is a Master of Public Health candidate at Boston University with a focus on Social and Behavioral Sciences. He enjoys reading and writing about politics and popular culture.

Elyse Lewis recently completed her Bachelor of Arts in Drama & Theatre and Women’s Studies at McGill University. She enjoys listening to Barbra Streisand and emulating the fashion choices of her favorite Mad Men characters.