I’ve been thinking a lot about coalitions lately. Coalitions and communities, about how those two concepts overlap and how they are very different creatures with very different functions, and different needs.

Some of these musings were sparked by a conversation with a friend of mine, who mentioned how he had spoken up in an LGBTQIQ support group about his experience as a transgender person and gotten nothing but an an awkward silence back from the other members. This led to a discussion of the limitations of the LGBTQIQ (etc) umbrella, and how the word “community,” so commonly applied to the LGBTQIQ movement, is often a misnomer. The issues faced by lesbian and gay people are not the same as issues faced by bisexual people are very much not the same as issues faced by transpeople are not identical to issues faced by intersex people. The issues faced by queer people of color are not the same as those faced by queer White people. The issues preoccupying affluent and middle class queer folks may be completely irrelevant to queer people living in poverty. And all too often the umbrella doesn’t cover everyone the way it’s supposed to or assumed to.

It seems to me that this problem arises when people within the so-called community assume that because it is a “community,” everyone encompassed by it does have the same needs, the same interests, and the same or similar experiences. It’s that mindset–an expectation of automatic clarity and easy understanding, an inability to engage with difference–that my friend met in what was supposed to be a safe space. In fact, the LGBTQIQ movement is much more like a coalition than a community, an alliance of groups with vastly different–and sometimes conflicting–interests, concerns, and unifying experiences. And coalitions are not–cannot be, should not be–safe spaces. Effective coalitions require us to step outside our comfort zones, to work through and with differences of opinion, to expect that understanding won’t always or often be intuitive or simple.

The other thing which has me thinking about coalitions is the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which–as Amanda pointed out in her last post–is most certainly a reproductive justice issue. I believed, and still believe, that it was time for marriage discrimination to be ended in my state. The initiative passed by only a few percentage points–and is a hallmark of coalition failure, a failure of coalition-building.

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Although many ballot initiatives that would threaten reproductive rights were defeated Tuesday night across the nation, we cannot consider last night a victory for the reproductive justice community.

But let’s start with the good news. In California, voters for the third time voted against a constitutional amendment that would require parental notification and a mandatory waiting period for a minor seeking an abortion. This time around, the proponents of the constitutional amendment purported to provide pregnant minors with another option: that of telling an adult relative (other than the parent) about the pregnancy, but having to simultaneously report her parents as abusive to authorities. Proposition 4 was defeated 52 to 47.

Voters in Colorado overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have defined a fertilized egg as a legal human being. By providing legal protections for fertilized eggs, this measure would have had particularly devastating consequences, had it passed, as it would have called into question the legality of hormonal contraception, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research in Colorado. Voters in South Dakota also rejected a second attempt to ban abortion in the state (this time with “exceptions” for rape, incest, and the health of the pregnant woman). And, in Michigan a measure was passed that would expand embryonic stem cell research in the state.

However, reproductive justice cannot be achieved until all people are treated equally and all people’s decisions about their reproductive and sexual self-determination are treated with dignity. In Florida, voters narrowly approved an amendment banning gay marriage. The Florida constitution will now define marriage as between one man and one woman. Voters in California similarly approved Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to marry announced by the California Supreme Court in May of this year. Voters in Arizona supported a similar constitutional amendment.

And, in a stunning display of contempt for same-sex couples and committed unmarried heterosexual couples, 57% of voters in Arkansas voted to pass a proposal that disqualify all potential adoptive parents except for married couples. The measure also prohibits unmarried couples living together from fostering children.

Why anyone would want to make it even harder for a loving couple to adopt a child in the context of an already-broken adoption system is beyond me. Apparently, the goal is to “publicly affirm the gold standard of rearing children whenever we can”–not to match disadvantaged children with stable and caring parents. (In case you were wondering, the “gold standard” is “married mom and dad homes.”  The priority, then, is deciding whose lifestyle qualifies under a discriminatory and outdated definition of what a family is, not placing needy children in loving homes–to advance a “moral” agenda at the expense of kids without homes.

It’s curious that after reporting that this measure passed in Arkansas, the next sentence in this article is the following: “Tuesday was a relief for supporters of reproductive rights.” Adoption rights are reproductive rights. The rights of same-sex couples to marry and the rights of adults to become parents are reproductive rights. I don’t know about you, but after hearing about the measures that passed in California, Arizona, and Arkansas, the last emotion I feel is relief.

-Amanda Allen

(Caption: Huckabee loves babies. The women who give birth to them? Not so much.)

Feministing’s Jessica Valenti has snagged a guest-blogger gig at the Nation, and she’s making the most of it in her first post, taking on Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s views on women and abortion. She writes:

Papa Huckabee is on one heck of a sexist roll.

Just this past weekend Huckabee said, “I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that’s why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor…I think you don’t punish the woman, first of all, because it’s not about … I consider her a victim, not a criminal.”

Now, you have to love that Huckabee assumes abortion providers are men (I suppose that makes it easier to paint them as taking advantage of poor widdle women), but even worse is the assumption that women don’t realize that when they get an abortion, they’re getting an abortion” (emphasis in original).

Paternalism like this from the men in positions of power in the U.S. is nothing new. But it kills me that the more Huckabee says stuff like this, the higher he polls in Iowa and other places. He is ascendant even as he is increasingly public with his antiquated and evangelically-motivated views of women (and gay people, and people who are HIV-positive). All this despite the fact that it turns out that Huckabee has accepted over $50,000 in speaking fees from groups that support stem-cell research and increased access to emergency contraception.

This tactic of blaming the doctor and excusing the woman as not accountable for her own actions is old hat for the anti-woman anti-abortion brigade. It’s a hypocrisy they don’t often address. So perhaps we should give Huckabee props for coming out and saying what his fellow misogynists think: the reason we shouldn’t punish women for seeking abortions but should punish their doctors is that women are not sound moral actors while doctors are. Shocking and saddening that in the year 2008 this notion still gets so much traction…but it does.

All that said, the Iowa caucuses tonight and the primaries that follow over the next month or so will be at least in part a measure of what’s more important to Republican America: culture-war type misogyny and closed-mindedness or real-world credentials and plans to deal with the mess of a situation the Bush Administration has left. I don’t want any of the GOP candidates as my President, but I’d certainly be more disgusted and less hopeful about the coming years to see Huckabee’s name on the ballot than some of the others.

[Note: the political opinions discussed in this post and on this blog are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of LSRJ, which is a non-partisan nonprofit organization].