and this from: Taylor Brady


kari,

hear, hear. not much time right now, but was wondering -- in line with the forum at the reading in april, would it help to have a stack of lambda
legal materials there? i wrote the copy for their most recent phone
campaign, and have access to lots and lots of informational brochures,
donation forms, etc. would be good, if, in tandem with the discussion, we
could put together a group donation -- Im usually skeptical of throwing
tax-deductible cash at social struggles, but with this one, since the
courts are going to be one of the primary means that the rightist
coup-leaders use to throw up roadblocks to liberation struggles (for
queers, for people of color, for dissenters -- i agree with you that the
failure of the left, especially its parliamentary liberal wing, to connect
the *defense of marriage* amendments with the myriad of interconnected assaults on civil and human rights is shameful), all the bodies out in the streets are going to need some bodies in counsels chair, if this isnt going to become another mass mobilization dismissed as a *focus group.*

also, wanted to say that, while i understand the serverity of
disappointment and even rage at what's being carried out in massachusetts, potentially in california, and potentially against the constitution -- that theres actually a place for optimisim here. the reason for the sudden reaction-formation on the right is that the tempo of actual peoples struggle has picked up dramatically. the severity of the reaction is, in a way, testimony to the effectiveness of what liberatory political progress has already been made _on the ground, in the streets_, etc. so, not to dismiss the very, VERY real threat posed by the various amendments and the invocation to violence they only barely paper over -- vigilance and struggle are definitely necessary. but simply to recognize that their incoherent frothing is in a way congruent with their desperation. look, for example, at the polls (yeah, i know, unreliable and manipulable -- but theyre looking too, youd better believe) that indicate that for the generation currently under thirty, the whole *issue* of writing gender into the secular marriage contract is simply a non-issue -- in other words, 70% of twenty-year-olds look at the maniacal rush to *save* marriage and say, simply, *what the fuck?*

the right knows this, knows their time is limited in the extreme (at least
when it comes to human and civil rights -- fighting them on the terrain of political economy will take a much longer struggle to counteract the whole *end of history* myth of capitalist triumphalism), and is thus thrashing about wildly trying to put something in place to halt or divert all that momentum. it's true that they're especially dangerous at times like this, but it's also true that the stakes have been raised, and the prospects for a real advance for liberation are materially open before us in a way they havent been in some time.

yrs in solidarity,
t