From the comments, and I wish it had been sourced, although I found one referencing
site ....
"Activist Paula Ettelbrick, once policy director for the National Center for L e s b i a n Rights, formerly legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (formerly the Lambda Legal Defense Fund), is tactically "for" same-s e x "marriage," but shares these caveats:
"Being q u e e r is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so....Being q u e e r means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society....
As a l e s b i a n, I am fundamentally different from non-l e s b i a n women....In arguing for the right to legal marriage, l e s b i a n s and g a y men would be forced to claim that we are just like h e t e r o s e x u a l couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly....We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality."
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Both the National Center for L e s b i a n Rights and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund are considered, not "fringe," but "mainstream" g a y activist groups. Former Lambda Legal Defense Fund president Thomas Stoddard also expresses lukewarm support for same-s e x "marriages":
"I must confess at the outset that I am no fan of the "institution" of marriage as currently constructed and practiced....Why give it such prominence? Why devote resources to such a distant goal? Because marriage is, I believe, the political issue that most fully tests the dedication of people who are not g a y to full equality for g a y people, and also the issue most likely to lead ultimately to a world free of discrimination against l e s b i a n s and g a y men."
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Activist Donna Minkowitz says:
"We [g a y and l e s b i a n activists] have been on the defensive too long. It's time to affirm that the Right is correct in some of its pronouncements about our movement. Pat Buchanan said there was a "cultural war" going on "for the soul of America" and that g a y and l e s b i a n rights were the principal battleground. He was right. Similarly, [h o m o]'phobes like Pat Robertson are right when they say that we threaten the family, male domination, and the Calvinist ethic of work and grimness that has paralyzed most Americans' search for pleasure.
Indeed, instead of proclaiming our innocuousness, we ought to advertise our potential to change straight society in radical, beneficial ways. Het[ero s e x u a l]s have much to learn from us: first and foremost, the fact that pleasure is possible (and desirable) beyond the sanction of the state. Another fact gleaned from g a y experience-that gender is for all intents and purposes a fiction-also has the potential to revolutionize straight lives."
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Writing in Out magazine, regular contributor Michelangelo Signorile (quoted supra) has described a strategy in which h o m o s e x u a l s
"fight for same-s e x marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely...to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution....The most subversive action lesbians and g a y s can undertake-and one that would perhaps benefit all of society-is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely.""
