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We, the undersigned—lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers—seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships, and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.
We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.
We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community.
In offering this vision, we declare ourselves to be part of an interdependent, global community. We stand with people of every racial, gender, and sexual identity, in the United States and throughout the
world, who are working day-to-day—often in harsh political and economic circumstances—to resist the structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression and to build an unshakable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge.
The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template.
All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be help