The Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage this summer has more activists wondering what's next rather than where to settle down.
According to genderqueer advocate and speaker Jacob Tobia,"...the next big thing is nondiscrimination."
Trends show that large LGBT organizations are seeking to broaden their focus while maintaining funding streams. LGBT Americans certainly need equal access in a variety of public spaces; focusing only on nondiscrimination, however, wouldn't come without downsides. "For one, a movement-wide focus on this won't empower the fringes of the community," Jacob says. "Even if ENDA is passed next, it'll mostly help upper class gay men with access to lawyers and the money to sue."
Equality Delaware board member Sarah McBride has similar thoughts: "Advocacy organizations are increasingly going to need to focus intersectionally, rather than just single-issue, to win on issues that matter to LGBT folks now that same-sex marriage is legal."
Looking at the discrimination that many LGBT Americans face at the intersections of race, gender, and sexual orientation, Tobia and McBride are right. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, of the 20 anti-LGBTQ and HIV-affected homicides that occurred last year (compared to 18 in 2013), 55 percent of victims were transgender women, and more than 50 percent of homicide victims were transgender women of color.
Yet, according to former Garden State Equality Executive Director Andrea Bowen, philanthropic organizations like "...the Arcus Foundation, Third Wave Fund, and the Ford Foundation have been funding intersectional work for the last few years, and the two national trans* organizations, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Transgender Law Center, have been great at combating transphobia and transphobic laws." So why has progress on issues outside of marriage been so slow?
Follow the money: according to Funders for LGBTQ Issues, for every 100 dollars awarded by U.S.-based foundations in general, only 24 cents per every 100 dollars go to LGBTQ issues. For transgender-specific work, that number drops to a penny per every 100 dollars. For bisexual-specific work, that number drops further to 1/24th of a penny per every 100 dollars, or 0.0024 percent. These trends mean that even though many LGBT organizations want to do more work, a relative scarcity in funding makes it hard for all but the largest to work on a lot at one time.
There have recently been a few positive shifts in funding on the local level. Yet, says Tobia, when funds are given, "funders so often proscribe for activists what to do with [that] money," which detracts from the authentic nature of the money for the demographic the funds are intended to help. When funds do donate, "[they] need to learn to donate to organizations and activists in ways that empower local advocates to use them as they see fit."
McBride's optimistic, however, when it comes to the future of the movement. "Focusing on nondiscrimination has allowed my colleagues and I at LGBT Progress to do a lot more than focus just on one demographic. We pushed for and helped drive the enactment of the Federal Contractor Nondiscrimination Executive Order for LGBT contractors. We're doing the same thing for the Equality Act. Now that marriage is won, more organizations are going to follow suit on more broad-based advocacy."
Former Garden State Equality Executive Director Andy Bowen shares this optimism. "Staying relevant will mean working on broader social justice issues--including intersectional advocacy--which successful organizations, like Basic Rights Oregon, have already been doing for years. This work is only going to continue building critical mass as time goes on," she told me.
Barbra Siperstein, the DNC Executive Committee's first openly transgender member, shows how realistic this optimism is. "Jersey City just expanded health benefits for transgender workers in September. The LGBT movement is doing more than gaining legislative and judicial wins--it's changing American culture. Foundations are starting to realize that you can still be fired in the majority of states just because you're LGBT, and this is going to drive even broader-based giving in the near future."
Nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage is a historic step towards full
LGBT equality, but there's still much to be done. Intersectional advocacy isn't a prime focus of leading organizations yet; there are few organizations that focus only on serving transgender or bisexual Americans, and funding for LGBT advocacy at all levels is not completely equitable.
Yet, the overall optimism activists and movement leaders have for the future of the movement points to a growing likelihood that greater progress is imminent--and signals, perhaps, that greater equality is right around the corner.