…We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin…

— from the “statement on haiti” from the adoptees of color roundtable. full statement here [via&via]

Capitalism depends on labor to create value, and the source of this labor is the individual. By privileging marriage and the family, capital is essentially purchasing the production of its most valuable raw material: workers… One innate aspect of capitalism is that it reduces organic social relationships to relationships based on economics, based on the creation and exchange of goods and resources.

— Pink and Black Attack #2 - FUCK THEIR MARRIAGE or, some thoughts on the counter-revolutionary nature of assimilationist politics and practice.

I think it is a mistake to presume that the social/economic ‘usefulness’ of marriage is something which is only (or even predominately) true under capitalism. while the idea of relationships built entirely on love/comradery/sexual attraction is attractive, i think it ignores the fact that human associations generally always have some sort of economic or social function. Can you even have an ‘organic social relationship’ unaffected by the larger society around you? I don’t think so, and kinship/relationships never exist in a vacuum.

Not to, you know, sound like a functionalist. also not to make it appear that I don’t think this critique is legitimate, because I do.

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent. A good way to discourage marriage, on the other hand, is to tarnish it as discriminatory in the minds of millions of young Americans. Conservatives who object to redefining marriage risk redefining it themselves, as a civil-rights violation.

— Gay Marriage Is Good For America [via]