Speak, Poet.

More recently, Bloomberg destroyed the Advantage program, which helped people in NYC shelters pay for subsidized apartments. It was, according to Kate Barnhart of New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth, “pretty much the only path to housing for many of the LGBT youth in city shelters, since it’s impossible to save up enough to pay market rents with a minimum wage job.” Swanning around Albany and making a big speech at Cooper Union may have been good for Bloomberg’s ego, but did nothing, ultimately, to sway legislators.

Finally, there’s Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ended up doing a lot these past few weeks, despite not having bothered to even show up for the Empire State Pride Agenda’s big lobbying day last month. Yet his state budget spared the wealthy the pain of paying their fair share of taxes while slashing homeless youth shelter beds by a third. It certainly didn’t seem to bother him that all youth, but disproportionately the queer youth who make up 40 percent of the homeless youth population, would pay heavily for his cuts. To say nothing of his part in the whole “religious exemptions” debacle.

Here’s hoping that passage of this bill will send a message to our eternally equivocating president that maybe, just maybe, he can finally muster the political will to get behind something that a majority of Americans already support. When that day comes, don’t expect me to hand him a Profile in Courage award. I’ve never sent anyone a thanks-for-finally-getting-it-together-to-support-my-basic-human-rights card, and I’m not going to start now.

—

Not Exactly a Profile in Courage: New York Finally Passes Gay Marriage | The Nation

I love Nancy. I hate Bloomberg and Cuomo and every pseudo-liberal shit who thinks that passing marriage equality gives them a pass for the things they do that ruin the lives of working-class queers (or working-class hetero folks, or ANYONE).

Nancy makes a lot of great points. I think it was a bit too little & late from Bloomberg, and it seemed extremely politically motivated, and rather obvious, to make a call for marriage equality while you’re the mayor of New York City.

On the other hand, I think Cuomo is a different story. While there is no excusing him for the budget cuts that hurt queer youth (and hetero, and non-youth, and all other combinations thereof) homeless, he did make a point of marriage equality being forefront in his mind, throughout his campaign, and then within his first year in office. I’m with Nancy that we shouldn’t be handing out the badge of courage necessarily, but I feel like vilifying him for his other missteps, to the extent that we look at his advocacy for same-sex marriage as a cover-up is a little bit of a stretch.

Really, my issue is nuance. Can’t we praise Cuomo for marriage equality while simultaneously taking issue with the budget cuts?

(via champagnecandy)