Imagine this: a group of white Southern women forms in the early 1800s to protest for equal rights in holding slaves and owning plantations.

Their economic argument is firm: when widowed, they are often left to penury, and lack the independence of their male brethren. Their idealistic argument is weighty as well: having the same faculties as men, they deserve the same rights under the law.

The trouble with their cause, as I’m sure any reader is wise enough to point out, is that ultimately they are fighting to be included in a system that is fundamentally unjust, rather than seeking justice as an ideal in itself.

The comparison is extreme, but it demonstrates a principle: it is always better to fight against an unjust system than to simply demand that your particular group be given proper privilege within it.

The feminist theorist Marylin Frye has criticized the values of many gay activists, saying that their arguments essentially distill to “Hey! I’m a white, upper middle class man – I deserve the privileges of any other person of my class!” rather than evaluating inequality as a larger problem.

As the mainstream gay activist community focuses on marriage, adoption and military service as our prime values and cuts support for transvestites, AIDS research and overall social justice issues, Frye’s ideas have grown more relevant.

Rather than analyze whether our society has over-privileged marriage and the family as the most important social institution, we fight to be included in a system that is traditionally about making women into property.

Rather than question our nation’s growing militarism and the power of the military-industrial complex, we fight for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so that we may participate in that militarism ourselves.

Rather than wonder at the power of corporatism in our government and our daily lives, we find ourselves scrambling for big business sponsors, regardless of their ethical issues here and abroad.

Those who have been thrust outside society’s norms are granted the opportunity to truly examine the worth of those values. Most of you reading this are probably not queer; but marginalized as young people and students, we ought not be fighting for inclusion in unjust systems – rather, it is time we examine the systems themselves.

It is time that we stop buying into the notion of what we ought to be fighting for; it is time that we stop assuming that the systems in place are worthwhile, and that all we need is to excel in them.

To achieve justice, we must question the systems that exist, rather than fight for our part in them.

The early pioneers of the civil rights movement understood that social justice was not a single cause. We must fight racial discrimination, gender inequalities and economic injustice with equal aplomb. When we begin to take our own privileges for granted, and fight only those causes relevant to our inclusion in larger systems of privilege, we neglect the grander cause of justice for all.

And as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

- Phillip Brettschneider is a junior from Marietta majoring in anthropology.