Saturday afternoon, the MassEquality Board of Directors met to make a final decision about the future goals and mission of MassEquality. This followed a comprehensive and inclusive strategic planning process, including meetings with local and national LGBT leaders, donors, and other stakeholders, a community forum, and a survey of more than 3,000 members.
We know many BMG members have played an active role in the ongoing effort to protect marriage quality, and we wanted to be sure you knew about these exciting new developments at MassEquality!
Our top priority is and will always be protecting marriage equality in Massachusetts. To that end, we’ll be working hard in 2008 to re-elect all of the 151 legislators who voted with us on June 14th and to add to the ranks of our friends in the legislature. We hope you’ll be there in the trenches with us, working to protect and strengthen our pro-equality majority.
In addition, MassEquality will now extend its reach in two critical ways, including sharing its expertise and resources in the region to secure marriage beyond our borders.
– Working with GLAD, national organizations and other marriage equality organizations, MassEquality will support other states in securing equal marriage rights. This work will include consulting as needed on political, field, fundraising, electoral and communications efforts; helping other marriage organizations build their internal capacities; and developing and exporting a “Best Practices” manual developed by our staff.
– MassEquality will begin to advocate for and assist on other issues of LGBT equality in Massachusetts. We’re looking forward to beginning partnerships with LGBT organizations which request our help to advance important and critical work. We will need the help of activists like you around the state to be successful in this undertaking.
Thank you to those of you who weighed in with thoughtful comments and suggestions throughout this process. We’ve received an enormous amount of support for these expanded goals – from other LGBT organizations, from our close allies in the legislature, and, most importantly, from our membership base of over 200,000. We’re thankful for your trust and dedication.
Over the next few weeks, we will be in touch with more details about our new agenda and how you can be involved.
Here at MassEquality, we are all incredibly excited about these next big steps – and we’re ready to get to work! We hope that you are, too, and that you will join us in these important new endeavors.
GLAD says of the new coalition:
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Meanwhile, this post doesn’t even mention DOMA. Is the plan to have GLAD concentrate on DOMA, while MassEquality brings its expertise at lobbying state legislators to other states?
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That’s a good plan, but its not right to have each group pretend that the other group isn’t working along, doing exactly what the other group denies they are doing. It’s easier to repeal DOMA if GLAD denies that they are pushing (forcing?) other states to “do anything”, and it’s easier to rally people to change state marriage laws if one forgets that DOMA exists to render “equality” something lesser than equal.
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It is good that people realize that same-sex couples do not have equal protections right now even if they have married in Massachusetts, and think about plans to achieve meaningful equal protections and security. Will either group be willing to explore the issue of whether pushing for full marriage as opposed to civil unions actually has the effect of hindering the quest for equal protections?
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Will MassEquality continue to endorse their pro-marriage candidates who are anti-choice, anti-immigrant, and pro-war even if the queer community and their “coalition” members oppose said candidates?
And why wouldn’t they? The real question is what they do with someone who voted the right way on marriage but doesn’t go for Trans rights or the repeal of the 1913 law.
The answer is clearly to call them a douchebag as they did to Barney Frank or accuse them of participating in “politics that prioritize the needs of white, upper-middle class gay men” as they are currently doing with people who protest Obama’s relationship with Donnie McClurkin.
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Mark D. Snyder (aka Milo) has been sliming MassEquality since before the marriage equality victory. Take what he says with a grain of salt.
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http://queertoday.bl…
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Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to think about the future of MassEquality if the organization will not first address and begin to heal the wounds they have inflicted upon the queer community.
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The members of MassEquality’s Board of Directors who were present at each of the three group discussions I attended during the forum seemed shocked to hear that their own coalition members and queer community members are upset with the organization.
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They did not know that:
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– women are frustrated because MassEquality actively campaigned against several pro-choice candidates that were endorsed by the National Organization for Women (NOW),
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– immigrants rights advocates are frustrated because the organization endorsed a vehemently anti-immigrant candidate (yet they gathered signatures at immigrant rights rallies),
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– and anti-war activists feel betrayed because the organization endorsed pro-war candidates (yet they gathered signatures at anti-war rallies).
An attack on me, but still no answer to the question.
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I have read that they voted to disband their coalition, so I guess my question should be reworded.
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Hopefully all the LGBT groups in MA can form a new coalition soon and begin to have discussions, and vote on priorities that they would like to speak with one voice on. Just a thought.
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For the record, I don’t call people douchebags, Trevor Wright does. QueerToday is a blog and activist group that has a large team of writers with all sorts of opinions and ways of expressing themselves.
Milo,
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Prior to this weekend, the stated purpose of MassEquality was to preserve marriage equality in Massachusetts. It’s coalition was made up of organizations that, as part of their belief system (for lack of a better phrase) shared that concern. So MassEquality went out and assured that pro-equality candidates won elections so that the anti-marriage amendment could be defeated. However, It’s not part of their mission to make sure that those candidates also support a list of issues outside of GLBT rights that some of their coalition partners may also be concerned about. Even after this weekend’s mission expansion, that’s not part of what they are supposed to be doing.
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MassEquality is a GLBT organization, not a pro-choice organization and not an anti-war organization. Your desire for it to be so assumes that the gay community is a monolithic being that shares your views on all such issues. I’m not one of them, but there are gay people out there who support the war in Iraq and are pro-life. Remeber, in both 2000 and 2004, over 1/4 of all GLBT voters voted for George Bush. I am not sure how one’s sexuality predetermines their views on a host of other issues which are in no way shape or form related to said sexuality.
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I agree that LGBT groups in Massachusetts should work together, as they did on marriage, to help insure that issues important to the LGBT community (trans rights, the Safe Schools initiave, GLBT elder care, domestic abuse, etc) get the attention they deserve. It’s my understanding that MassEquality is trying to serve the electoral/legislative piece of a strategy the community would need to have to be successful in pushing those issues forward. However, given the divergent viewpoints in the GLBT community outside of GLBT-specific issues, I am not sure it’s wise, nor even possible, for any such coalition to speak with “one voice” on issues such as the war in Iraq, abortion, etc. because there is not a single, unified gay voice on those issues.
MassEquality is a GLBT organization, not a pro-choice organization and not an anti-war organization.
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About a decade ago, it was reported in BayWindows that a “GLBT” political organization in the city of Boston made it a requirement for their support for political candidates based on their support for choice, because an L, B or T might someday want to have an abortion, and further a requirement based on their support for welfare benefits, because someday a GLBT person might need welfare benefits. I’m sorry, but that never made any sense to me, and it still doesn’t.
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GLBT orgs should be pressing for equal rights for GLBTs, not for choice or for welfare benefits. There are other organizations that can do that quite nicely, and GLBTs who support those issues can very nicely participate in those organizations. The GLBT organization’s pressing for other issues merely distracts from their targetted mission.
When gay men write up contracts for their conscripted womb provider to carry a baby for them, they usually stipulate that they get all the fee back if the womb-provider chooses to abort the baby. Theres a surprising number of pro-life gay men out there, often the very same men who think that women should give all the money back to them and must take perfect care of themselves while carrying their precious baby from implantation to delivery. So it’s good that MassEquality exists to only serve their rich, self-righteous mysogynistic needs and not support anything that might be burdensome on their absolute freedom.
yes, that’s right. marriage in MA is only available now to rich white misogynistic men. riiiight…
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btw, i am one of the countless women who volunteered or worked for or was a member of MEq. there were lots of men there too. we worked together and were mind-bogglingly successful.
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thanks for your post. i needed a good snortin chuckle while waiting for election results to come in!
…the person to whom you were responding. More than a few of the same sex couples who got married in Massachusetts over the last few years have been female.
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MassEQ and other GLBT equal rights operations have a very long row to hoe to get equal rights for GL, much less Bs & Ts. It would be stupid of them–as organizations–to branch out to other issues, which have advocacy groups of their own that individual GLBTs can feel free to support.
If it’s still on the books, why isn’t this first on MassEquality’s agenda? Having an anti-miscegenation law on the books, even if it no longer has that effect, is a blot on the Commonwealth. The fact that it can be used to prevent marriage in Massachusetts would seem to be tailor made for MassEquality.
I agree the 1913 law should be abolished.
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My main point in asking the question above is that I wish MassEquality would be more like NGLTF and less like HRC.
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NGLTF understands that the rights of immigrants are important to the queer community because some of us are immigrants. And the rights of women are important because some of us are women. We shouldn’t pit people against each other.
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I worry that is what MEQ will do, but I hope that they are making efforts to ensure that won’t be the case.
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It would sadden me to have to begin outright fighting against candidates that MEQ endorses because those candidates are bad for our community as a whole.
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It is unfortunate that MEQ has become the “go to” gay rights organization, because that they are not. They are only a same-sex marriage organization up until now, and no one should be fooled into thinking MEQ fights for the rights of queer youth, trans people, or others.
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Things like health care for all, for example, are just as important if not more important to the lgbt community as marriage because many of us live in chosen families.
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Finally, given MEQ disbanded theirs, I think it is very clear that it is time for a new coalition of LGBT organizations to at least get in the same room a few times a year and discuss what we are all doing, and what our priorities are. It would be relatively easy to create such a coalition and hold regular meetings where perhaps we could even vote on our top priorities and have a unified voice. Just an idea.