There are some thoughts which, when they find their way into
your head, bring you no end of delight.
One such thought for me is that somewhere in the D.C. area there are a
couple of lesbian moms or gay dads who must be busting with pride these days
over the role they played in adding dignity to the lives of their fellow gay
and lesbian Americans.
Imagine the dinner table conversation at the home of Adam and Steve (not
of Garden of Eden fame, but modern-day descendants) – or Joan and Linda – when
they realize their kids go to school with Sasha and Malia Obama, and when they make the connection to the statement by the
President of the United States that he was helped in making his decision to
speak out in support of same-sex marriage by the fact his kids went to school
with the children of same-sex parents. And then add to that thought the thought that
Sasha and Malia at another dinner table conversation or two, this time in the
White House, had to have mentioned to their dad that their friends with two moms
or two dads seemed to have a pretty good home, and wouldn’t it make sense for
their daddy to say so?
When good things happen, thoughts like this ripple out and
you take heart that this long drawn-out process of extending civil rights to
American citizens is still moving in the right direction, ultimately. God damned awful slow at times, but
moving in the right direction.
The progress is not only slow. It’s sometimes two steps forward, one step back. North Carolina, already an anti-gay
state, has added a redundant amendment to its constitution not merely
prohibiting same-sex marriage, but demonstrating serious hostility by
prohibiting civil unions as well.
There is nothing – absolutely nothing – to be gained by this move,
except to impose the views of the narrowest minds of alleged Christians in the
country on the rest of us. Since
there is no government interest in this move, it will undoubtedly be declared
unconstitutional at some point and all they will have done in the end is
squander tax payer money.
The talk surrounding these events is more of the same
uninformed discourse that goes on in politics generally. “The will of the people should prevail
over the will of non-elected judges.”
Now there’s a thought that chills – not just the mind – but the whole
body.
The excellent “alternate news” website “News Corpse” has
posted a list of conservatives complaining of “judicial activism,” all of whom display an ignorance of how
our government of checks and balances is constructed. At the top of the list is Mitt Romney, who said about the overturn of Prop. 8 in California,
“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who
voted to protect traditional marriage.”
No, they didn’t “cast aside the will of the people.” They decided that the majority of
people at any given moment in time could not pass laws removing constitutional
rights. And the authority to
determine those rights is given to the judicial branch of government –
specifically the Supreme Court.
Maybe when Romney was in high school if he had focused less on “pranks” and
more on civics…
But Romney is speaking as a politician whose utterances showing a disregard
for truth and accuracy are legion.
He’s not so much wrong-headed as self-serving. For the seriously wrong-headed you need to look to the likes
of New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie, who made the statement the other day
that there had been no need for the courts to decide the civil rights of black
Americans, that they could have been granted by popular vote. It’s not only participants in beauty contests
whose ignorance of the world can stagger your imagination.
Speaking of staggering, consider this new low in chutzpah –
the statement by Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, that Obama’s support of
same-sex marriage is all wrong because “we know that in general kids do better
growing up in a mother/father home.” Come on, Bristol, is that all you've learned from having a kid out of wedlock (such a lovely word, wedlock)? You didn't learn that some kids have rotten mother/father homes, and some kids raised by two moms, two dads, by grandparents, aunts and uncles, and single parents, prosper? Because it's not the status of their caretakers that counts but the ability of those caretakers to provide love and emotional security. Bristol, your lips and tongue are
moving, but you ain’t saying much.
And while we’re focusing on “steps backward,” we have to
remember that in “evolving” on the rights of gays and lesbians, Obama
nonetheless threw a bone to the right wing. It’s still, he thinks, a question that should be worked out
state by state.
I know what he’s getting at. He’s making a strong argument, that you need hearts and
minds to effect change. Simply
imposing the law on people wins short-term, but long-term people have to
support their laws with conviction.
And as gay rights are acknowledged slowly but surely, state by state,
one at a time, we approach a point of no return. But Obama’s pragmatism, politically savvy as it may be,
delays justice, and it’s becoming harder and harder to do that. Legal discrimination on the basis of
sex went out when women began voting in the United States in 1920. Discrimination on the basis of skin
color took another generation, forty-four years until the Civil Rights Act of
1964. With the fall of DOMA and
universal recognition of same-sex marriages, the end of legal discrimination
against LGBT people begun with the Stonewall Riot in 1969, will be just about
complete. That’s one great leap
for human rights per generation, more or less. Considering the two and a half centuries it took from the introduction of slaves into British North America to the Emancipation Proclamation, that's lightning speed.
Now there’s another thought that warms the cockels of my
heart as well as my mind. At the
rate we’re going these days, this recognition of the dignity of gay and lesbian
people could actually come in my lifetime. I think I’ll think on that for a spell.
photo credit: New Yorker cartoon by William Haefili, published May 2, 2011.
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