The joy and heartache of the Respect for Marriage Act as a polyamorous queer woman.

As I stood with other LGBTQI+ advocates and families on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, cheering President Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, I cheered too—but with a queasy mix of relief and pain. I’ve been in the thick of national advocacy for trans, queer, and intersex rights for over a decade. I know LGBTQI+ families needed RFMA in the face of new threats that could revive old forms of discrimination. But wedged into the new law are provisions designed to further humiliate, and prevent recognition of, families like mine—families who are polyamorous. I hope we can hold both of these complicated truths, and work to ensure all families are respected and protected..

As a queer woman who was married for a decade to another woman, I should be glad about the RFMA passing. And I am—it could really protect some people. But I’m also equally, inescapably sad, because the final bill is designed to prevent future recognition of, and to further stigmatize, polyamorous families like mine. That makes celebrating RFMA’s passage with the slogan “Love is love” ring hollow for me.

I have skin in the game here on both sides of this coin—that is, the two categories of families whose rights were traded off by lawmakers—and I hope we can hold both of these truths. My wonderful former wife and I (hi, Ex-Wifey!) got married in Ohio in 2004, two years after my transition. We got a marriage license only after a humiliating process of showing my old birth certificate and misgendering myself on the form. We were perversely lucky for this “loophole,” but always had to wonder if our marriage would be respected in practice in that state and my home state of Kentucky.

But we both were and are polyamorous as well. Today I live mostly with one beloved partner and part of the time with another beloved partner and her wife. Then and now, the knowledge of having to pick which of our relationships receive legal recognition has shaped my life and choices, and created a low background hum of dread that will be familiar to many queer families. Even in our progressive hometowns and social networks, the stigma toward how we build family can be corrosive. We reinforce that when we re-codify that “Love is love” does not include the love in my chosen family. And as families like ours begin to win some forms of recognition in state and local law, we’ll face all-too-familiar fights over whether RFMA will prohibit corresponding federal or interstate recognition.

I realize that these harms seem abstract to those untouched by them, and likely less immediate than the frightening prospect for currently-married couples that Obergefell and Loving could be overturned. I realize, too, that no state today allows people to marry more than one person they love; that a long-dormant 19th century anti-Mormon law makes multiple marriages or cohabitation a federal crime (so, technically I may be felon); and that some promising paths to protecting polyamorous families may not depend on marriage per se. This is all true—but I’m afraid our trailblazing Senator Tammy Baldwin is wrong when she declares merely “state the facts” and “there’s no harm” in them.

We sorely needed protection for those currently able to marry against future erosion of our rights by hostile courts. Maybe we needed it enough to risk present and future harms to other families who still lack legal protections. What’s most troubling is that we never had that conversation. Apparently, no politician, no advocacy group, and no commentator saw a conversation to have. That’s shameful, it’s humiliating, and it’s wrong.

It’s important to recognize the good RFMA accomplishes—even celebrate it, especially if it could mean more security for your own family. If so, I’m genuinely happy for you. At the same time, I hope the real harm RFRMA does will prompt some who are not affected by that harm to reflect on what they can do, going forward, to fulfill the promise that “Love is love.” There is much work to be done to ensure recognition for all types of families, whether through domestic-partner registries, parentage laws, workplace benefits, and other means. I invite you to join us.

303 Creative v. Elenis at the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently heard argument in another potentially seismic challenge to civil rights laws that could affect nondiscrimination protections across the country, not only for LGBTQI+ people but for everyone.

I was glad to play a tiny, tiny role in providing input on an amicus brief led by the National Women's Law Center. For a recap of the argument, check out Dahlia Lithwick’s excellent Amicus podcast.

Trans Bar Association cohort sworn in at SCOTUS

I was honored to join a cohort of ten trans attorneys in a first-of-its-kind group swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Supreme Court this week, organized by the Trans Bar Association. The ten of us, lawyers from across the country, were jointly admitted to practice at SCOTUS. The collective swearing-in, administered by the Chief Justice, is a routine feature of Supreme Court sessions, and includes both individual attorneys and cohorts organized by bar associations. Still, it was the first time that the Court announced recognized such an organized cohort that was all-trans, and recognized a trans organization as its organizer. It’s a small symbolic step in saying to the Justices, their staff, and the lawyers who practice at and follow the Supreme Court that “We’re here, we’re trans, we’re part of the legal community and we’re not going away.”

It was an honor, if not because the Supreme Court has been hard at work burnishing its legitimacy as public institution. As majestic as the Court’s 1930s neoclassical palace is, it felt extremely complicated to be in a place that has done as more in recent years to undermine democracy and fundamental freedoms than to safeguard them, and where the rapid criminalization of abortion in much of our country was kicked off six months ago. While I can’t escape the fact that the Court, throughout its history, has undermined core principles of human rights - such as those enshrined in the Reconstruction Amendments - as often as it has upheld them, a visit to the Court is always a poignant reminder of those ideals and of the people who have fought for those ideas, including before the Court, throughout our history.

It was an honor to stand, alongside my trans attorney colleagues, where so many others have stood - not because we believe an institution like the Court will save us, but because we believe in dignity, equality, freedom, and justice for ourselves and all our communities and we will not stop standing up, whether on the streets or in the halls of power, for ourselves and each other.

“Toward Queer Climate Justice”

This is the title of a fascinating Political Science dissertation by Jeff Feng at UC-Santa Barbara. Jeff interviewed a few dozen activists across movements (disclosure: I was one) and tells an interesting and, I think, important story. Here’s the abstract:

Addressing the raging climate crisis requires a just transition to a clean energy world; addressing the attacks on trans people requires a transition to a world committed to gender self-determination. These crises rage on, under the presumption that their respective movements do not have anything to contribute to the other. But in Washington D.C., queer climate justice dance parties and shutdowns of the fossil-fuel-supporting Wells Fargo float at Pride suggest otherwise. After the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, queer and trans staffers at climate organization 350.org wrote that if activists’ vision of climate justice did not include “justice on all fronts,” including queer liberation, that vision was not climate justice. How do queer and trans perspectives shape the climate justice movement?

I use a qualitative multi-method approach that draws upon semi-structured interviews and content analysis of secondary sources. I interviewed activists primarily based in Washington D.C. and New York City who worked at the nexus of climate and queer politics (22 interviews) as well as staffers affiliated with four national-level organizations—the Sierra Club, 350.org, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the National Center for Transgender Equality (17 interviews). I also conducted qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles, magazine articles, blog posts, op-eds, publicly available interviews, emails, and Tweets & Facebook events. By triangulating among these data sources, I tell a more nuanced story than each source could reveal on its own. Existing queer and trans studies research analyze how LGBTQ institutions reinforce injustice, and yet, this same attention has not extended to environmental and climate injustice. By contrast, I examine the extent to which queer & trans climate activists contest and reinforce climate injustice. I argue that queer and trans activists and organizers queer the climate justice movement by substantively bridging queer & trans and climate justice strategy and tactics. Relying upon the content analysis, however, I find that two divergent frames are emerging. First, an LGBTQ climate change frame reinforces gender, racial, and class injustice. Second, the queer climate justice frame advances an intersectional framing linking queer liberation to climate justice, in addition to abolition and anti-imperialism.

Zooming into the New York City People’s Climate March in 2014, I argue that intersectional climate justice narratives can exclude queer & trans people. Traveling next to Washington D.C. in 2017, I argue that the queer (of color) climate justice activists tell an intersectional story that disrupts green and rainbow capitalism. Finally, national organizations lingered on symbolic actions connecting queer & climate movements because of a perceived lack of evidence to support the distributional paradigm—that LGBTQ people must be disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis to warrant political resources— and unclear sense of how to substantively plan campaigns at the intersections of queer liberation and climate justice. More subtly, the confluence of neoliberal LGBTQ and environmental politics created an ecohomonormative politics that also threatens liberatory movement building. In summary, queer & trans perspectives bring new insights to the climate justice movement, in what I call queer climate justice, but several barriers stand in the way of its practice.

Three new key reports SOGISC data collection

Check out these two new reports on the state of, and best practices for, collecting data on sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations ins characteristics (SOGISC:)

In March 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a landmark report on “Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation.” Requested by the National Institutes of Health, it summarizes the current science on how to collect data on SOGISC data in surveys and statistical systems, and identifies current recommendations and methods considerations, as well as areas for continuing study to improve these measures.

This month, the Center for American Progress published "Collecting Data About LGBTQI+ and Other Sexual and Gender-Diverse Communities Best Practices and Key Considerations." It builds on the NASEM report, providing a great translation for non-data nerds of the NASEM study as well lays out practical recommendations for where and how to collect this data right now, including in federal surveys.

Also this month, GLSEN published “LGBTQ+ Data Inclusion in K-12 Education Systems.” It also uses the NASEM study as a jumping off point to outline how SOGISC data can be collected to advance equity efforts through school climate surveys, staff and family surveys, and federal surveys and data collections overseen by the Departments of Education and HHS.

Kudos to the NASEM Expert Panel, to CAP authors Caroline Medina and Lindsay Mahowald, and to GLSEN authors Bonnie Washick, Aaron Ridings, and Tessa Juste. I was glad to be one of the passel of experts asked for input in one way or another for all three reports.