Abstract

Excerpted From: Marc Spindelman, The New Intersectional and Anti-Racist LGBTQIA+ Politics: Some Thoughts on the Path Ahead, 15 ConLawNOW 1 (2023) (54 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Something remarkable has been happening lately inside LGBTQIA+ communities and movements. It involves the widespread stirring and shifting of individual and collective political consciousness in directions and to a scale not seen before.

These changes to LGBTQIA+ consciousness--and the politics they are producing-- would not be happening without the great works of multiple generations of queer ancestors and elders, many of them trans and people of color. Recalling these forbearers in no way overlooks the efforts of newer generations of activists and organizers, both in the movements for Black lives and among queer Black and trans people and collectives, all variously insisting that LGBTQIA+ communities must respect and center Black lives, and Black queer and trans lives, in ways that they never have.

One result of these consciousness shifts is the increasing number of LGBTQIA+-identified people and organizations reconstituting themselves, their identities, and their politics around pro-Black, anti-racist positions, and doing so as foundational elements of their LGBTQIA+ liberation work.

At the same time as these developments are unfolding, however, they are on a collision course with emergent social conservative positions and obstacles. These obstacles include developments at a Supreme Court that is increasingly regularly flying a conservative constitutional originalist banner.

Here, I collect and expose some logics and possibilities of new and impending conservative originalist constitutional developments. Doing so will begin to show how the Court's conservative originalism may confound--and perhaps, unravel--the consolidations and potential gains of pro-Black, anti-racist LGBTQIA+ political consciousness and action.

Tracing these logics and possibilities additionally suggests that--wherever you start in your thinking on pro-Black, anti-racist LGBTQIA+ politics--it is vital for everyone inside LGBTQIA+ communities to rally and join cause with them. Doing so may prove necessary to hold open the legal and political space for preserving established LGBTQ rights and for making future gains possible. Some threats to LGBTQIA+ rights are well-known after the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, like the prospect of established constitutional rights to intimacy, marriage, and family life being eliminated and returned to politics. Other possibilities, no less significant, but operating differently, have yet to receive similar attention.

These other possibilities are at least logically suggested by recent and impending constitutional developments, and they feature how the Court's conservative originalist march may soon begin locking down LGBTQIA+ politics in their new formations in ways that may structurally and politically lock them out.

At a time when the Court is moving generally against race-conscious, race-equity political projects, it may be tempting for some LGBTQIA+ people to suggest pursuing a different collective strategy for preserving established rights. But this is a mistake. The prospects of the Court moving to lock down LGBTQIA+ politics may now hold even if LGBTQIA+ people and institutions were to abandon what, for some, are newfound anti-racist and pro-Black equity commitments.\

[. . .]

Given what has already happened at the Court and what is likely to transpire next, and what could transpire after that, LGBTQIA+ communities, with others, must be preparing for how to operate in a newly emerging constitutional, legal, and political landscape, one that bears resemblances to those from the lived past.

This is the inevitably intersectional situation and struggle that LGBTQIA+ communities are enmeshed in. How can we preserve the new forms of LGBTQIA+ politics that have taken us back, so powerfully, to the remarkable dreams of freedom, equality, liberation, and to the new ways of being, living, and loving that our queer ancestors and elders did so much to achieve? Theirs is the legacy we may and perhaps must now build on, even as we come to terms with how we have not all benefitted from that legacy equitably in our lives.

The work ahead is weighty. How weighty it is too soon to say. Given what we are talking about is the roll-back of individual and collective liberty and equality and freedom in a wide sense, it is understandable to anticipate that the days ahead may be filled with pessimism, gloom, and even, at times, a sense of hopeless impossibility.

Here, too, the new LGBTQIA+ politics, meaningfully driven by the work of queer Black and trans people, have resources to offer, grounded in individual and community-based practices of solidarity, hope, joy, and love, developed amidst ongoing political situations that have broadly opposed, and nowhere come close to affirming, queer Black and trans peoples' rights to liberty, equality, and flourishing. As practices, and as politics, the queer work of solidarity, hope, joy, and love can at times be more arduous than they may initially sound, if also distinctively important as life-defining, life-sustaining, and world-changing undertakings, as their successes in helping transform LGBTQIA+ politics at scale begin to suggest.

In these directions, I close with jay dodd's “Imprecatory Prayer to the Transcestors.” The prayer honors the lives and knowledges of people many of us do not yet know about, but should, as part of our shared and ongoing telling of, and naming the names of, queer history. dodd's prayer invites reflection on the worlds and the dreams of trans ancestors and elders who have guided us here, and where, individually and collectively, we--a new and different “we” than has long defined the public face of LGBTQIA+ life--may choose to go next.

The prayer:

Trans Ancestors & Elders who have guided us here: We honor your legacy with new celebrations.

May our bodies persist, let them shine whole & well. May our minds calibrate to the call of the universe.

Let our protest songs transfigure to peace hymns. Let our cultural knowledge produce nourishment.

May our homes bustle warm with abundant love. May our communities flourish despite borders.

Let our love quake open any lingering shackle. Let our joy obliterate any festering contempt.

As we bind each other closer, we manifest futures more possible.

Amen.

Marc Spindelman. These remarks are the edited version of an address presented at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, on April 30, 2023, both as part of the Midwest LGBTQ+ Rights Conference and the Washington University Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series.