ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of the radical flank described by Herbert Haines in 1995, challenging the widespread assumption that militant and radical organizations damage the credibility of the mainstream. To the contrary, Haines argues that radical flanks may have positive effects by rendering the more conservative activists more reasonable; they also push the movement toward critical conclusions. In this chapter, I take up the example of the mainstream marriage equality movement to show how it was productively flanked by the more militant group GetEQUAL. In a study of GetEQUAL’s actions and website, I show how their version of “equality” stretched the concept and provided the mainstream Human Rights Campaign the push necessary to win marriage equality in 2015. The organization’s work, initially focused on entrance into the military and the institution of the family, pressed it to embrace intersectional critique, which then necessitated the expansion of its political program to a challenge to oppression and exploitation as constitutive of a systemic whole. The chapter also introduces a two-axis model of social movement rhetoric, separating out tactical militancy from ideological radicalism.
