Freedom to Marry, a national organization working to full marriage equality for LGBT couples, is rolling out their new Students for Marriage campaign.

Andrew Blumenfeld, the groups Summer 2010 New Media intern, has put out the call for more youth involvement in the nationwide movement for marriage, but admits it's an issue on which many youth find difficulty in identifying.

He writes on Freedom to Marry's blog:

As a student- in high school, in college- it may not always be easy to see why the freedom to marry is something to which we should devote a whole lot of time or thought. We’ve seen our friends, family members, and neighbors find and commit to that special someone later in life than most of our grandparents would have ever considered typical. So when it comes to marriage equality and “winning the freedom to marry,” it can be difficult- at least initially- for the younger amongst us to summon a whole lot of interest.

Blumenfeld says, "I think that’s a big mistake."

Blumenfeld is working with Freedom to Marry to launch their Students for Marriage initiative, a campaign, he writes, "to effectively inform and mobilize young Americans around a new goal in the marriage equality movement: never having to wait for justice."

The group is initially organizing the youth campaign on Facebook: www.facebook.com/StudentsForMarriage.

Blumenfeld explains why marriage is a youth issue:

It’s not uncommon for marriage campaigns to utilize the images of elderly same-sex couples who have been together for decades to convince voters that these individuals deserve the right to marry one another. Jen and Megan have been together for 30 years now—shouldn’t they share in this wonderful thing we call marriage?

Now, it’s easy to see why the marriage issue, after seeing a message like this one, might become very salient to a crowd engaged in their own years-long relationships. But if we as young people don’t see the direct plea to our demographic in that message, then we’ve just missed the whole point.

Of course marriage equality ought to be what we can offer to Jen and Megan and every other committed couple holding their relationships together for years just waiting for their government to recognize them. But marriage equality truly is a youth issue. It is a fight for the freedom from ever having to appear in one of those campaigns, sitting next to the one you love and have devoted a life to, pleading with our communities to acknowledge it.

It’s not often that the progress worth fighting for can be realistically expected in its entirety in any one lifetime or generation. As the young people of this generation, we are primed to see this issue come to a resolution in a timeframe that might mean we enter full adulthood with one less struggle, one less fragment of institutionalized intolerance that weighs on us as individuals and as a community.

The opportunity to realize this potential- to create a society in which our children might never know what a world with marriage discrimination looks like- is real. And not unlike many issues of the past- where a rising generation expected a little better than what the previous generation was planning on leaving behind- this issue will require great effort on the part of the youth, of students.

I have something to admit: I have been addicted to following the Prop 8 trial in California, formally called Perry v. Schwarzenegger. For those of you out of the loop, after Proposition 8 passed in California, two same-sex couples and a team of lawyers (including conservative lawyer Ted Olsen who argued and won in Bush v. Gore) decided to take the state to court (hence the Schwarzenegger in Perry v. Schwarzenegger). They're arguing that Prop 8 is contrary to the U. S. Constitution, and very well, I might add.

You should really check it out the Courage Campaign's excellent Prop 8 Trial Tracker. The trial tracker reads like a transcript with some commentary thrown in. If you don't have time to read the entire transcript (and trust me, once you start, it's hard to stop), KQED also has solid coverage that is easier to take in doses that won't make you feel like you can't do anything else until you finish reading every single post. As of right now, all of the testimony has already happened, and they're waiting for the judge to review stuff before making closing arguments. There's at least a month before the closing arguments happen, so you have plenty of time to catch up on the testimony. It's fascinating to see how the lawyers are building the case. A lot of expert witnesses are professors, and reading along is like a series of lessons on the history of marriage, the history of queers, and sociology. I have learned so much from reading this trial, and I think it can't help but think it'll be a powerful read for anyone.

With the Federal Court in San Francisco now hearing an appeal against Prop 8, I wanted to share this piece from Newsweek by one of the lawyers who is trying to convince the court to strike down Prop 8. It is a great piece that reminds us that support for queer issues can come from the most unlikely places.

The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

I know, everyone has been talking about it already, but I just have a few things I want to say about Maine. First, the good news. We know that 52% of Maine’s general population voted to overturn the law allowing same-sex marriage. But, if you take a look at this story from The Maine Campus, the University of Maine’s student newspaper, you will see a stark contrast and a glimmer of hope for America’s future. Students voted overwhelmingly in support of marriage equality – a full 81% of students voted no on 1. So even though we’ve lost the battle, the war is still ours for the taking if we have patience. While the hate-mongering and lies of the religious right may convince the Baby Boomers, the younger generations aren’t having any of it, and it’s only a matter of time until we have the majority.

This entry title may confuse some of you who know me and some of you who read this blog (a presumptuous statement perhaps, considering about 5 people probably actually read my witty banter on here). But let me clarify. I have been, and continue to be, against marriage as an institution, be it gay or straight. I believe marriage is an assimilationist, heteronormative, antiquated institution that should be done away with. But I think we can all agree that that is not going to happen anytime soon in our society, so that point is neither here nor there for the purposes of this entry. My basic belief about marriage is that if straights can do it, queers should be able to, as well, if we want to.

So the point I want to make is just as the title suggests: queer youth should support same-sex marriage. I know this issue is not at the top of many queer youth activists’ lists of priorities, but perhaps it should be. I see/hear many queers writing/saying that the marriage fight has drained resources from other areas of activism and that we should not even be worrying about marriage. Some cite the founders of the gay rights movement as examples of reasons we should not support gay marriage. They point out that the movement started as a means of gaining acceptance of the queer community as is, not to gain the right to be more like the straight folk. This is true, and I believe these points are valid. I, for one, take pride in being queer (read “different”). I mean, in how many cultures can you see a six-foot drag queen in platform thigh-high boots and a butch in cover-alls in the same place? (Pardon my reduction to stereotypes, but we all know there’s truth in that statement). I think that’s pretty great.

We all know that Kathy Griffin loves the gay community, but if there was any question about that, it was answered on last night’s episode of My Life on the D-List. Kathy decided that in order to fulfill her quest to make it to the A-List, she needed to become an activist, and what better way to do that than to protest Prop 8? Well, we can debate that, but her heart is in the right place. In any event, there were a few segments during the episode that resonated with me, so I wanted to discuss them here. (btw, I realize the reference may be a bit dated for this audience, but this entry title and Kathy's sign are references to the 1979 movie Norma Rae starring Sally Field).

First, and perhaps least insightful of my observations (though I don’t necessarily claim that any are particularly sage), I was surprised to hear one woman with whom Kathy spoke while she was canvassing against Prop 8 say something along the lines of, “I have no problem with gay relationships. They can have unions, which gives them the same rights as marriage.” Right? WRONG. Kathy, fortunately, was armed with the famous factoid that marriage provides over 1,000 federal benefits that civil unions do not. This made me wonder, though, how many people have this sort of misinformation? And if they had the correct information, would it have changed their votes? What a lovely illustration of the need to educate the public, no?