Website—Organizing and Policy Work: Marriage and Civil Disobedience

Community Organizing

Marriage and Civil Disobedience:

Upping the Ante and Creating an Activist Movement

By Eric Rofes

(published in I do, I don't: Queers on Marriage; Greg Wharton and Ian Phillips, editors: San Francisco, Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004)

I joined thousands of people this weekend and defied the laws of my state in a brazen act of civil disobedience. We didn’t chain ourselves to a building, sit down in the middle of a crowded intersection, or occupy a public official’s office until our demands were met.

We simply got married.

Following the vision of our city’s new mayor, my lover and I on Valentine’s Day joined almost 2,000 other couples in a peaceful, collective statement of our refusal to allow this central institution of democracy to continue to be used as if it were an elite private club. More than continuing to lend our voices to the rhetorical debates about marriage, we plunked down our cash, got our marriage license certified by our city clerk, and took vows under the rotunda of our city hall. Some see this as status-quo liberal pandering to “heteronormativity.” I see it as the start of catalyzing an activist movement on behalf of democracy.

For a long time, the drive for same-sex marriage has cried out for an infusion of civil disobedience. Marriage equality is precisely the kind of issue that benefits from peaceful acts of resistance by masses of ordinary people. Not only is same-sex marriage at core about justice, freedom, and the institutions of democracy, but the emotions and symbols surrounding marriage resonate deeply with Americans of diverse political stripes. Acts of civil disobedience are useful tools because they take abstract and highly charged issues and stamp human faces onto them. Yet unlike the media spinning of the marriage issue already underway by national legal and political groups, this new wave of civil disobedience involves masses of ordinary citizens who immediately bring the issue home to their families, coworkers, and neighbors.

Over this past weekend, San Francisco’s produced almost 4,000 of these ordinary citizens who are now public ambassadors on the issue in their day-to-day lives. While it was powerful to see the cover photo on the San Francisco Chronicle, capturing the two gay men getting married while each held one of their infant twins or see the national television coverage of couples traveling swiftly from distant parts of the country to obtain a marriage license, even more powerful will be the work the newly betrothed take on in their home communities. To change the hearts and minds of the mushy middle of the electorate, we need them to feel a personal connection and a personal solidarity with this issue.

We arrived at San Francisco City Hall at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, having turned on the local news a few minutes earlier and seen that several dozen people were already lined up, awaiting the 10:00 a.m. opening of the city clerk’s office. Together with others on the line that soon surrounded City Hall, we took out cell phones and called friends and family from coast-to-coast, getting the word out about our participation in this historic action. We took photos throughout the four-hour process of waiting on line, receiving our marriage certificate, taking our vows, and filing the marriage with state authorities and later that day, sent them out on-line to family and friends, supporters and otherwise. Before we’d been married for 24 hours, our personal experience in this mass action had been shared with dozens and then passed on to hundreds of people in ever-expanding networks.

My lover does the work of public education on this issue with tremendous glee. On returning to work on Monday, he freely shared his ebullience with coworkers at his work site where he builds and maintains airplane engines. He’s shown our marriage certificate to members of his work team—mechanics, engineers, and managers—who have long known he was gay but can now see that the abstract issue they might see on the television news is directly connected to a person with whom they feel some collegiality. He’s phoned his company’s human resources office to change my status from “domestic partner” to “spouse,” and engaged in friendly musings with the personnel officer about whether the company’s legal people have already determined how to handle our new (and perhaps, precarious) status.

Four years ago, I published an essay calling for queers and their allies to augment our legal and legislative efforts with a powerful direct action and civil disobedience strategy. While published in several dozen gay papers throughout the nation, then in the academic journal Social Policy, and finally in an anthology on political activism in the new millennium, I was disappointed that none of the national lesbian and gay political organizations took up the call and mounted a well planned and carefully organized civil disobedience campaign focused on same-sex marriage. Instead, small collections of local activists and other ad hoc organizers have been the only ones moving in this direction. In the wake of San Francisco’s daring leadership this past week, I’m eager to put forward ideas for additional organizing and civil disobedience. Especially, if we end up grappling with a constitutional amendment battle, it is critical for grass roots, activist organizing to be powerfully and strategically deployed.

First, immediate efforts must be put into organizing dozens of other cities, counties, and towns to follow San Francisco’s lead, issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples, and prepare for the legal and political fight when challenged. What has to be done to convince leaders in other California counties—like those including Berkeley, West Hollywood, Laguna Beach, and Palm Springs—that this is an issue worth taking up? Why hasn’t Jerry Brown initiated efforts to pressure Alameda County, including Oakland? Might Santa Cruz officials, so daring on medical marijuana issues, be encouraged to join the same-sex marriage fight? Why haven’t similarly liberal areas around the nation—ranging from Madison, Wisconsin to Key West, Florida; Portland, Oregon to Austin, Texas; Ithaca, New York to Ann Arbor, Michigan—joined in the battle? If renegade county clerks in Boulder, Colorado could issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples in 1975, why haven’t the political leaders of that progressive center taken leadership today? Justice-minded residents throughout the nation and liberal political clubs should immediately pressure public officials to create a bandwagon behind San Francisco and continue to move this issue forward.

Second, the incredible legal and legislative victories in Massachusetts, ground-zero of the marriage fight this year, must be buttressed and infused with creative and strategic approaches once that state begins issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples in May. This will require the kind of sensitive coalition work that has rarely happened in contemporary queer organizing, where local organizers understand that their efforts have tremendous national implications and merit more than a narrow consideration, and national organizers are sensitive to the priorities and investments of Massachusetts activists. Should we organize campaigns to encourage queers throughout the nation to get married in Massachusetts? If Massachusetts is to be home to a statewide vote to change their constitution to keep lesbians and gays from marrying, should we initiate “Freedom Summer” types of efforts to engage in mass face-to-face dialogue all over the state?

Third, efforts must be directed to support people who are central to the marriage process in America who, if organized and supported, might be part of additional strategic interventions in support of same-sex marriage. In particular, strategic efforts might be made to identify and organize independent county, city, and town clerks who are willing to join in an organized effort to stand up for justice. Progressive members of the clergy of all denominations seem poised on the brink of breaking out and participating in additional acts of resistance, if only some group would take on the task of organizing a strategic and adequately resourced effort.

It’s tough to guess which major organization would take up this task and perhaps coordinate with the local and ad hoc activists already initiating direct actions on behalf of same-sex marriage. While liberal and Left organizations wrap themselves and their fundraising letters in nostalgic narratives of bus boycotts, campus sit-ins, and ACT-Up sieges at federal agencies, they’ve ceded most street organizing, confrontational actions, and civil disobedience to ad hoc collections of unaffiliated activists. Hence we find ourselves today on the marriage issue at a moment where public officials seem more willing to be daring and deploy these tactics than organizations who describe themselves as activist. While lobbying, media spins and conferencing remain valuable facets of movement building, if we want to transform same-sex marriage from an issue to a movement, some organization’s got to get us all moving.

Eric Rofes is a long-time organizer and community activist. He is a professor of education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA, where he teaches courses on teaching for social justice, community-organizing skills, and sexuality and schooling. He can be reached at gmhs3@aol.com.