Cultural Change for the We the People Amendment
[sixth in the series]
The modern LGBTQ+ movement is dated to the Stonewall Riots, a spontaneous rebellion led by queer patrons – many of them people of color and transgender – against police harassment at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969.
The struggle for the dignity and rights of LGTBQs+ individuals and “against a system that criminalized their love lives and outward expression” dates to the 1950’s. The dominant religious and social narrative labeled them as perverse, sinful or mentally ill. They were victims of discrimination and violence. Being outed could mean imprisonment, loss of employment, or institutionalization. Criminalized love lives and outward expression.
Stonewall represented a collective resistance to be silent and shamed, but as human beings who sought not merely to be tolerated but who demanded liberation.
Personal transformation connected to Stonewall sparked the birth of a mass movement composed of political and cultural elements.
The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) Queens Liberation Front (QLF) and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), founded by trans icons Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were major militant organizations following Stonewall. These groups emphasized solidarity with other radical movements – Black liberation, feminism, anti-imperialism – and saw LGBTQ+ liberation as inseparable from broader struggles for justice. Organizations like Lambda Legal, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and GLAAD challenged discrimination in courts and media. Local and national coalitions formed to fight employment discrimination, push for HIV/AIDS funding, and secure legal protections.
Music, literature, fashion, visual art and communal rituals have played a central role in affirming the self worth of those in the LGBTQ+ movement. Queer nightlife and performance spaces were both entertainment venues and safe spaces for identity and where people could organize. Discos, drag shows, theater troupes, underground newspapers, zines, and films were examples of culture being a force of resistance, a refuge from trauma and a means for mass education and visibility.
Spirituality and religion were important cultural elements that were reclaimed by LGBTQ+ people who formed inclusive faith communities like the Metropolitan Community Churches, centering divine love over condemnation.
Education became a tool for empowerment through “acknowledging queer history, understanding intersectionality, recognizing unique hurdles, and collectively contributing to positive societal change.” Public education and storytelling of queer realities of job, housing, retail and education discrimination; bullying; church burnings; police brutality; and killings drew sympathy and support.
The evolution of language was critical to reflect diverse identities, understandings and experiences. The LGTBQ+ movement has arguably been the most successful of any in U.S. history in influencing the larger society in the adoption of respectful and accurate words and terms that emphasize a person's identity rather than focusing solely on their sexuality or gender.
Annual Pride parades and festivals, part of Pride Month in June, are public joyful celebrations of LGTBQ+ identities and gatherings to display solidarity, community, activism and justice.. However, co-optation of Pride by corporations and political elites so-called “pink washing” typifies how once-radical symbols and messages can be diluted for public consumption.
The AIDS epidemic devastated LGBTQ+ communities in the 1980s and '90 and exposed the cruelty of the government. Over 100,000 Americans had died from AIDS at the end of the Reagan administration. Its slow and inadequate response to the epidemic also exacerbated social stigma and discrimination against gay people, especially people of color. But it also propelled powerful activist responses like ACT UP and Queer Nation.
Key to the LGBTQ+ movement’s resilience and victories was its organizational diversity and the range of its targets and tactics. It employed everything from grassroots mutual aid networks and public civil disobedience die-ins to courtroom battles and lobbying efforts. ACT UP participants were famous for channeling their anger through nonviolent disobedience concerning the “criminal neglect of AIDS from government, Big Pharma and hospitals.”
Organizing expanded through legal and political avenues as well, culminating in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The victory was due to the combination of personal storytelling and other cultural elements, legal strategy, electoral pressure, public awareness and education, and massive grassroots mobilization over many years.
Some activists criticized the movement’s strategic focus on marriage as a diversion from more urgent issues: homelessness among LGBTQ+ youth, trans violence, economic inequality, and incarceration. The campaign also once again created tension within the movement between trans individuals and gays and lesbians who wished to suppress the radical roots of the movement by normalizing queerness to make it more socially acceptable to mainstream society. This has been reflected in recurring efforts to mainstream everything from Pride parades and festivals, to activism, television shows, films, and other forms of media.
Trans individuals were further culturally and politically marginalized, making them more vulnerable to increasing attacks on multiple fronts over the last few years and most recently since Trump regained the Presidency. The attacks have been physical, including fatalities, disproportionately against transgender women. Restrictions or bans on gender affirming care, identification documents, and bathroom use have increased, while trans employees have been removed from federal agencies and the military. Hostile political rhetoric has further stigmatized the community. Rising discrimination has increased barriers toward accessing healthcare, housing and employment.
Some in the trans community assert that the root source of the attack on their community is as much a public diversion from the failures of capitalism to meet people’s basic needs while expanding inequality and privatization as it is a social or cultural attack on the lives, morals and lifestyles of trans individuals. The attack on trans people has become an particularly effective wedge issue to distract and disempower the public across political ideologies who increasingly oppose the current slash and burn policies of the Trump administration.
Lessons for Move to Amend
The LGBTQ+ movement offers multiple lessons for Move to Amend and its campaign to pass the We the People Amendment, which would affirm that corporations are not people and money is not speech as a stepping stone toward creating real democracy.
1. Affirming self-worth. LGBTQ+ individuals involved in the movement for change overcame the dominant narrative of society that they were inferior to heterosexual people. They gained strength from the community and by expressing their humanity through culture and activism that challenged ignorance, discrimination and hatred. Personal transformation in overcoming efforts to dehumanize, intimidate and terrorize by the power elite was also a critically important initial factor in the Abolition, Women’s Rights, and Worker’s Rights movements.
For Move to Amend supporters, the challenge is to overcome the dominant narrative that we are unqualified to comment on or organize for constitutional issues, which should be left to constitutional experts and politicians. Additionally, we’re told it’s impossible to amend the U.S. Constitution, that corporate rule is invincible and that the corruption of money in elections is inevitable, so don’t bother to try. The assertion is made with virtually the same tone of certainty as the earth circling the sun every 24 hours. This narrative ignores both history and the increasing awareness that systemic problems (I.e. political, economic, social, and environmental) we face can only be resolved by the systemic solution of constitutional amendments. The massive opposition to corporate power and the flood of money in elections makes the prospect of a constitutional amendment much more legitimate and realistic.
2. Culture builds solidarity and power. The LGBTQ+ movement thrived not just through political protest but through shared culture, which was and is as potent as any in the movements explored in this series to date. Queer art, music and performances provided spaces for joy, safety, and connection. Storytelling was an incredibly effective means used to humanize gay and lesbian people to gain support for marriage equality.
Movements for democracy like Move to Amend need basic cultural expressions that touch hearts and souls and are joyful celebrations of our cause and efforts. We’ve begun assembling examples of Creative Resistance songs, poems, literature, plays, and music for our supporters to use.
3. Never stop coalition building. LGBTQ+ legal and constitutional rights were won by linking to other movements and liberation struggles — civil rights, feminist, anti-war, and more. Move to Amend must do the same by continuing to work to build bridges with labor, racial justice, environmental, anti-war/peace, feminist, and immigrant rights groups.
4. Constitutional change is more permanent than legal changes. The LGTBQ+ movement understood that educating and lobbying for laws to address discrimination, while important, are vulnerable to repeal. Many of those laws are now under attack. More permanent is constitutional change. Over a decade of dedicated organizing yielded the Obergefell decision.
Move to Amend’s focus has always been on constitutional change over legal change — not only because laws addressing corporate power and money in politics can be later overturned, but also due to the fact that laws are very limited since they can’t actually end or abolish corporate constitutional rights or the constitutional doctrine that money equals free speech. Only a constitutional amendment can achieve that. Given the current make up of the Supreme Court, organizing to bring a case before the Supreme Court is not practical.
5. Beware of cooptation. Pride parades, festivals and events have over time in many, if not most communities, lost their edge and radical roots cultural and political roots. Corporate sponsorship has resulted in the commercialization, or “pink washing” of the events that have watered down the events. The same has happened with the “black washing” of Black History month commemorations.
Democracy groups have their own form of “red, white and blue washing” around celebrations around Independence Day and Constitution Day events that ignore how our political system has never been authentically democratic and that democratic activism should, for the most part, begin and end with voting. The temptation to make demands more "acceptable" to elites can weaken a movement’s radical edge. Move to Amend has always felt that authentic democracy requires confronting power, not accommodating it.
6. Moderating a message and strategy has a price. The decisions within the LGTBQ+ movement to normalize queerness to gain acceptance in mainstream society and to prioritize focusing on constitutionalizing marriage equality over more pressing immediate problems has caused division within the community and has left its members — trans people, in particular — legally, politically, and economically vulnerable.
Move to Amend has withstood the calls by some to limit its message and focus on campaign finance reform — simply overturn Citizens United or, at best, only focus on ending “money as free speech.” We have always felt, however, that while more modest and moderate messaging and strategizing would yield more support, it would be limited in its overall effectiveness by ignoring the threats to self-governance by corporations wielding constitutional rights.
7. Center the marginalized. The tensions in the LGBTQ+ movement underline that no struggle for democracy or justice is immune from internal inequality. Move to Amend must continue to commit to center those most harmed by corporate power – Black and Brown communities, poor and working-class people, and those excluded from traditional politics – and ensure leadership is diverse, inclusive, and intersectional.
8. Education is never ending. Internal and external education were vital for movement participants to better understand themselves and help others understand the realities of LGTBQ+ individuals. Storytelling helped humanize. Move to Amend has its own collection of Examples of Corporate Rule, which invites any individual to share their personal reflection on how one or more corporate entities adversely affects their lives, families and/or communities. We need to centralize this part of our work, which humanizes the reasons for working to abolish corporate constitutional rights.
9. Finally, words and terms matter in accurately understanding reality. Language has been and remains a critical step in the accurate definitions of identities, understandings and experiences of LGTBQ+ individuals. Terms are also vitally important within Move to Amend when advocating for the We the People Amendment. “Corporate constitutional rights” is used rather than “corporate rights” since there are certain corporate statutory or legal “rights” (e.g., the right to form contracts or the right to sue or be sued) that we don’t oppose.
“A corporation is not a person” is preferred over “corporate personhood” to clearly delineate the fact that the corporate entity is an artificial legal entity created by the state through a charter or license. It also preemptively counters the argument that corporations should have constitutional rights since they are made up of human beings or persons. “Corporate rule” is used rather than “corporate power” since it more accurately defines the ability of corporations to govern.
Finally, we consciously avoid the term “democracy” when describing our current political system or that the We the People Amendment seeks in any way to “re” democracy (e.g. reclaim, recreate, reestablish, etc.) since the U.S. political system has never been an authentic or legitimate democracy or even democratic republic since We the People have never legitimately included all the people – including LGTBQ+ individuals.
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The LGBTQ+ movement is not just a history of identity affirmation, which is ongoing, but a path for fundamental democratic change. Personal transformation fueled structural change – including constitutional change, albeit limited – and how inclusive, creative, and assertive movements can win against the odds. This history offers many lessons for Move to Amend in organizing against tremendous political and cultural odds – some of them internal – in our quest to build an authentic democracy for the very first time, beginning with enacting the We the People Amendment.
In solidarity
Greg Coleridge
National Co-Director
