The Unfinished Queer Agenda After Marriage Equality

While legal recognition of marriage has met the needs of a segment of the LGBTQ population, many still face daily struggles with issues around housing, education, healthcare, policing and incarceration, and immigration. These are issues that were largely eclipsed in national arenas by the fight for marriage equality. In reaction to this, The Unfinished Queer Agenda After Marriage Equality examines the institutional failings and overlapping systems of injustice that continue to dehumanize queer and trans people and deprive them of basic human rights.

Building on a major conference held in 2016 entitled, "After Marriage: The Future of LGBTQ Politics and Scholarship," the editors have collected academic papers, edited transcripts of selected conference sessions, and interviews with activists using a range of critical and intersectional perspectives. Drawing from this source material, the book argues that any queer agenda should be informed by an understanding that issues facing queer and trans people come from the combined influence of neo-liberal capitalism, global white supremacy, and heterosexism. The authors argue that these modes of oppression continue to be especially damaging for poor people, undocumented people, people of color, non-binary, trans, and queer people.

By taking an in-depth look at the myriad social issues that continue to affect LGBTQ communities, and by exposing systemic prejudices and inequality as the root cause, this title is an important intervention for students and researchers engaged with queer and trans activism, beyond the fight for marriage equality.

Angela Jones is Associate Professor of Sociology at Farmingdale State College, SUNY, USA. Her research interests include: African American political thought and protest, gender, and sexuality. Jones is the author of four books and numerous scholarly articles, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Joseph Nicholas DeFilippis is the founder and former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice, and worked as an activist for over two decades. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Seattle University, USA and has written about queer social movements, poverty, and marriage politics.

Michael W. Yarbrough is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose work explores the intersection of law, culture, and family. He is an Assistant Professor of Law & Society in the Political Science Department of John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) USA, and a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.