I've been thinking about the question of "Who benefits from marriage equality?" for a while. I recognize that I'm wading into deep water here and I hope it doesn't get over my head. As I've been pondering it, I realize that multiple isms crop up in the discussion - racism, sexism, classism, appearance-ism and heterosexism.
I've heard glbt persons of color comment that the community is very often dominated by the concerns of gay white men. The standard for gay male attractiveness is almost always the fit, white man in his 20s or 30s. Media portrayals of gay men very often show professional and financially successful white men. As I think back to the Showtime series Queer as Folk (2000-2005), I don't recall any characters of color on the show - despite the fact that the show was set in Pittsburgh, a city in which 28% of the population is African-American.
A while back, I came across an article by Janani Balasubramanian in which they described arriving at a "Very White Gay Bar." I realize I live in Utah and Utah is white as wonder bread, but Salt Lake isn't as white as wonder bread, but when I think about the crowd I see at Pride or Equality Utah events, what I see is Janani's "Very White Gay Bar." What they wrote in the article caught my attention and has been nagging at my consciousness so, I did some googling and found other pieces of Janani's art - poetry, spoken word performances and so on. One piece that I should have bookmarked (because it was a nightmare to find again) was a slam poetry performance on marriage with Alok Vaid-Menon and Cam Awkward-Rich that continues to echo in my awareness:
This poem, “Marriage”, also known as “Queer Rage”, is a critique of gay marriage politics as a strategy of liberation. Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage (or anyone else’s) is not where the struggle ends, or even begins, really. In the piece we call for a consideration of race, class, and other systems of control that complicate and intersect with queerness. We also point to the increasing corporatization and overwhelming whiteness of gay marriage politics.