Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights ( NCLR ) , spoke May 5 at Northwestern University about the current state of affairs for queer families in the U.S. The longtime LGBT activist and successful lawyer was a guest of the school's Gender Studies Undergraduate Board.
Sitting cross-legged on the stage and speaking without a microphone, Kendell opened the evening with a brief history of LGBT family rights over the past three decades. A mother of three, she interwove personal anecdotes with stories from her work at NCLR to illustrate how adoption laws, custody battles and civil partnerships have improved over the years, but are still far from perfect.
"The law recognizes only two relationships: marriage or blood relationships," Kendell said bluntly. "And that's not who we are to each other, so we've got to find ways to protect ourselves." She urged same-sex couples to draft wills and explore other legal protections such as civil unions, but recognize the limits of each.
Kendell ended her speech with recent positive advances. She called the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act ( DOMA ) "groundbreaking," insisted the federal challenge to Prop 8 will be "a game-changing moment," and applauded the Department of Justice for its decision to scrutinize laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation.
"What the administration is saying," Kendell said, "is that if you discriminate against queer people and you don't have a really, really good reason for doing it—and it can't just be 'oh, well we don't like them'—then that law is going to be history. No president ever has done anything even remotely close to this for LGBT people."
During the Q&A session that followed Kendell's presentation, some audience members questioned whether there should be such an emphasis on same-sex marriage rights. "There is some controversy in the community," Veronica Drantz said. "There are some gay organizations that are very frustrated over all the emphasis on marriage and think our priorities are out of whack."
Kendell agreed but said, "It's not a zero-sum game. Marriage should be available as an option for people who choose to marry. We want to create a whole panoply of rights." She said the NCLR is pushing for the right to sue for wrongful death, to inherit and to recognize healthcare benefits.
Despite considerable deterrents to equality—the litany of DOMA laws in individual states, prohibitive adoption guidelines and the fact that ENDA failed—Kendell is hopeful. She claims queer-friendly pop culture items such as Glee and Lady Gaga are making LGBT people feel safer. "These things are not unimportant in a culture that cares so much about popular culture and who's on TV and who's popular," she said.
Kendell also looks to her 14-year-old son, who is active in his schools' gay-straight alliance. She said that within a generation, attitudes toward the LGBT community will change drastically, but that activists shouldn't take that change for granted.
"We have all this formal legal stuff happening and that's important," Kendell said. "But the cultural change, the sort of heart-and-mind change… That's the change that's going to take the rest of this stuff to the finish line."
