Jim Crow and Adam & Steve
Excerpt from an editorial in USA Today:
"The first is that most people, even in relatively liberal California,
aren't yet ready to push the envelope all the way to same-sex
marriage. The bans won 52% of the vote in California, 56% in Arizona
and 62% in Florida.
The second lesson is that the better way to harness growing public
acceptance of homosexuality is to push harder for the kind of civil
unions and domestic partnerships still recognized in California and
seven other states. This lesson is particularly pertinent for the
states, including New York and New Jersey, that are considering ways
to expand recognition of same-sex couples.
What happened in California reflects the kind of backlash that can
occur when the courts get too far out ahead of public opinion on an
issue, particularly one fraught with cultural and religious
connotations. In May, the state Supreme Court opened the door to
same-sex marriage. Last Tuesday, California voters approved a
constitutional amendment (Proposition 8) slamming it shut."
I understand the call for society to apply the brakes, to hesitate on
this. Afterall, most Americans aren't ready to accept this so why
cram it down their throats?
If Proposition 8 were something more mundane, like funding for
regional transit in the greater Los Angeles area, maybe. Maybe then
let's apply the brakes and wait for the rest of the people to catch up.
But this is about something so much bigger than mundane politics.
This is about the effective creation of a caste of people in this
country. It is a modern day Jim Crow law. Unable to participate in
self determination in how they express their love and how to live
their lives, every gay person in California has been turned into a
contemporary Dredd Scott with the passage of this law.
We look back on the firehoses in Birmingham and the beatings in
Montgomery and reel in how unreal those scenes seem in our modern
world of broken down racial walls. What would the modern world be
like if Martin Luther King had preached to hold up, to hesitate and
let everyone catch up. What if he had preached to continue enduring
the drinking fountains, the dilapidated schools, and the lynchings?
The time must be now, not because I want there to be violence, not
because I want to upset people, but because it is the right thing to
do. Damn the consequences, damn the entrenched bigots and damn even
those who just want things to stay the same so they don't have to be
inconvenienced with a challenge to their ideas.
To say we are a free people while some can't visit someone they love
in a hospital because they aren't recognized as a legal spouse, to not
gain health benefits, to be barred from what is rightfully theirs in a
will because they aren't "family", to preach to the world that our
freedom is for all while this is happening in our own nation to our
own friends and neighbors is intolerable. And to say we should just
hold off on changing this for even one more day, for one more minute
is utterly unconscionable.
"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not
free." -- John F. Kennedy
"The first is that most people, even in relatively liberal California,
aren't yet ready to push the envelope all the way to same-sex
marriage. The bans won 52% of the vote in California, 56% in Arizona
and 62% in Florida.
The second lesson is that the better way to harness growing public
acceptance of homosexuality is to push harder for the kind of civil
unions and domestic partnerships still recognized in California and
seven other states. This lesson is particularly pertinent for the
states, including New York and New Jersey, that are considering ways
to expand recognition of same-sex couples.
What happened in California reflects the kind of backlash that can
occur when the courts get too far out ahead of public opinion on an
issue, particularly one fraught with cultural and religious
connotations. In May, the state Supreme Court opened the door to
same-sex marriage. Last Tuesday, California voters approved a
constitutional amendment (Proposition 8) slamming it shut."
I understand the call for society to apply the brakes, to hesitate on
this. Afterall, most Americans aren't ready to accept this so why
cram it down their throats?
If Proposition 8 were something more mundane, like funding for
regional transit in the greater Los Angeles area, maybe. Maybe then
let's apply the brakes and wait for the rest of the people to catch up.
But this is about something so much bigger than mundane politics.
This is about the effective creation of a caste of people in this
country. It is a modern day Jim Crow law. Unable to participate in
self determination in how they express their love and how to live
their lives, every gay person in California has been turned into a
contemporary Dredd Scott with the passage of this law.
We look back on the firehoses in Birmingham and the beatings in
Montgomery and reel in how unreal those scenes seem in our modern
world of broken down racial walls. What would the modern world be
like if Martin Luther King had preached to hold up, to hesitate and
let everyone catch up. What if he had preached to continue enduring
the drinking fountains, the dilapidated schools, and the lynchings?
The time must be now, not because I want there to be violence, not
because I want to upset people, but because it is the right thing to
do. Damn the consequences, damn the entrenched bigots and damn even
those who just want things to stay the same so they don't have to be
inconvenienced with a challenge to their ideas.
To say we are a free people while some can't visit someone they love
in a hospital because they aren't recognized as a legal spouse, to not
gain health benefits, to be barred from what is rightfully theirs in a
will because they aren't "family", to preach to the world that our
freedom is for all while this is happening in our own nation to our
own friends and neighbors is intolerable. And to say we should just
hold off on changing this for even one more day, for one more minute
is utterly unconscionable.
"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not
free." -- John F. Kennedy
