He’s especially right with this: “Gays are going to be fully accepted by society. You can either slow that process in a desperate attempt to keep the world safely the same, or you can help expedite that change and get to see what the future will be like.”
It’s gonna happen, My Dear Fellow Californians Who Are Older and More Resistant to Change Than I Am: We will get the same rights you have, whether it’s today, or twenty years from now, and whether you are — or I am — alive to see it.
Wouldn’t you like to be on the right side of history when it happens?
Or do you want your grandchildren to remember you the way you remember George Wallace?
C’mon, senior citizens, vote for same-sex marriage — it’s the future.
Dear old people,
… [T]his November, your vote on a proposed California constitutional amendment will determine whether the state again bans gay people from getting married. That’s because, according to a Field poll released Tuesday, while the majority of Californians under 50 support same-sex marriage, only 36% of senior citizens do. So your vote could very well overturn the wishes of everyone else…
I get that gay people make you uncomfortable. You didn’t have gay people when you were growing up. Instead, your straight selves and your straight friends enjoyed straight nights out at Gilbert and Sullivan operettas before coming home to put on Liberace albums and watch game shows starring Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde. If my life were as dominated by gay culture as much as yours was, I wouldn’t like them either.
I know that picturing gay people having sex skeeves you out. But if that were a test for being married, we’d have a constitutional amendment pulling your marriage license at age 60. In fact, you and the gays have more in common than any other demographic groups. You both like watching old movies, cleaning your house, playing with other people’s kids and cutting your hair too short. You could start a successful chain of gay-old boring day-care centers.
Despite all your discomfort, I’m asking you to take a leap of faith and trust the younger generations on this one. …
Remember how your parents felt about desegregation? And how their parents objected to women’s suffrage? And their parents felt about indoor fire? This may seem different, but it isn’t. Gays are going to be fully accepted by society. You can either slow that process in a desperate attempt to keep the world safely the same, or you can help expedite that change and get to see what the future will be like.
Look, no one blames you. The reason you’re uncomfortable with same-sex marriage is simply that gays were closeted when you were under 45. A study done 10 years ago by Stanford neuroscientist and MacArthur Fellowship genius grant recipient Robert Sapolsky found that by middle age, people reject new things. He found that if a new genre of music emerges after you’re 35 — like rap — the odds are greater than 95% that you’re going to hate it. …
So I’m asking you to vote against all your wisdom and experience. I’m asking you to trust that the history of social change is full of uncomfortable lurches toward improvement through inclusion and equality. I’m asking you, at least while you’re in the voting booth in November for those five minutes — or in some of your cases, 10 to 15 minutes with the help of a volunteer — to pretend you’re cool with gays. …
So maybe I jumped the gun on the impact of Eliot Spitzer’s resignation. Sometimes, I’m very, very glad to be wrong. Long may David Paterson reign!
Task Force Applauds New York Gov. David Paterson’s Leadership in Honoring and Recognizing Same-Sex Marriages
WASHINGTON, DC — May 29 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund applauds New York Gov. David Paterson’s May 14 directive to state agencies instructing them to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples that are legally performed out of state as fully valid in New York.
During the Task Force’s New York Leadership Awards on April 7, the governor spoke via video about his unwavering support for marriage equality. Paterson vowed “to push on until we bring full marriage equality to New York state” and urged “New York’s civil rights leaders to recognize that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities deserve equal rights as well.” He concluded with a call to “change the face of New York which will be a catalyst for change in national policy.” Watch the video here.
Statement by Rea Carey, Acting Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund
“Governor Paterson vowed he would ‘push on until we bring full marriage equality to New York state,’ and his directive to state agencies shows he is a man of his word and a true leader when it comes to standing up for all New Yorkers and standing up for full equality.
“We applaud Governor Paterson’s actions and look forward to the day when same-sex couples in New York can obtain marriage licenses within their own borders. To that end, we urge the state Senate to step up and pass a marriage equality bill — something the Assembly has already done — and something the governor says he will sign into law.”
Well, I don’t say that to the people of Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah (although there are bigots a-puh-lenty in every state in the union) — just to the Attorneys General of these states, all of whom filed court papers Friday asking California to put its same-sex marriage ruling on hold until after the November election, ’cause we don’t have a residency requirement here, and outta-staters (the ones who jam our freeways in the summer in Alamo Rent-A-Cars, but whom we love anyway, ’cause they pour a buttload of tourist dollars into The Golden State Whose Coffers Ain’t So Golden Since Der Gropenator Pert’-Near Sent Us All Into the Poorhouse) could get married here, go home, and challenge their own states’ rabidly bigoted anti-gay laws…
Whew! What’s my record for a run-on sentence? Anybody know?
OK, so here’s the thing: The Assoholics General of all of the abovementioned states are trying to derail my state right to marry Buffy, because they’re afraid that their citizens are going to come to California, get married, go home to Bumfart, Utah, and demand that their California marriage be OK’d.
The dispute over whether the California Supreme Court should put its ruling legalizing same-sex marriages on hold until voters consider the issue in November was joined Friday by attorneys general from 10 states, who say a postponement might save them from legal headaches over whether to recognize California marriages.
In papers filed with the court, the attorneys general — all Republicans — said that if the ruling is implemented as scheduled June 17, it would subject their states to a profusion of lawsuits involving gay and lesbian residents traveling to California to get married.
Each of the states has a law barring recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. However, unlike Massachusetts — the only other state to legalize same-sex marriages — California allows residents of other states to wed here even if the marriage would not be permitted in their home state.
“An inevitable result of such ‘marriage tourism’ will be a steep increase in litigation” over whether the couple’s home state must recognize their marriage, said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, author of the brief.
He said a court might have to decide, for example, whether the couple could file a joint state tax return, whether one spouse could refuse to testify against another, or whether one could sue over the other’s wrongful death.
Oh, heaven forbid a committed spouse of a homo receive death benefits! Especially if the deceased lost his or her life serving this country to keep your ass safe! Hey, dipstick— er, Shurtleff, are you familiar with the name Sheila Hein?
The situation will become murkier, Shurtleff said, if California voters approve a constitutional amendment Nov. 3 that would overturn the state high court’s ruling and declare that only opposite-sex marriage is valid or recognized in the state. Courts in other states, as well as California, would then have to decide whether same-sex marriages performed before Nov. 3 were valid. …
Delaying implementation of the ruling until after the election would spare the states from “premature, unnecessary, unnecessarily difficult, and therefore unduly burdensome litigation in our courts,” Shurtleff said. He was joined by the attorneys general of Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and South Dakota. …
The plaintiffs were joined Thursday by state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office defended the same-sex marriage ban in court but who said postponing implementation would withhold rights from couples who are now entitled to them.
Note: Don’t hate Jerry Brown. He’s our AG, and this is what he has to do. “Governor Moonbeam” was the best damned guv California’s had since his old man held the office, and I’d give my eyeteeth to see Jerry back in the governor’s mansion again.
(I reserve the right to retract my high praise of Jerry should he really go into full-bore opposition to my marriage — in which case, I will curse him in the name of whichever patron saint is suitable. Hey, I may not be a Catholic anymore, but Jerry sure is.)
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera criticized the 10 states’ request for a delay Friday and said he would submit opposing arguments next week.
“To further delay constitutional rights to gay and lesbian partners based on political conjecture as to whether or not an amendment will pass — or even qualify for the ballot — would be both unprecedented and inhumane,” Herrera said in a statement.
You GO, Dennis! (I’ve always liked you, dude.)
So… Guh-aw-leee! What’s this uproar remind you of? Oh, come on, you know it: Loving v. Virginia.
Wikipedia sums it up better than anyplace else, in terms of simple brevity:
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)[1], was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924″, unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
I betcha those ten AGs (again, Republicans all) would have been right up there on the schoolhouse steps with George Wallace in ‘63.
Well, you know what? Screw you bigots. You want to circumvent out-of-state marriage challenges to your bass-ackward states? Go pass a Proposition 22 of your own, like California did in 2000.
That’ll work for about eight years… like it did here.
Oh, one more message to the AGs — which is the same message I send to the outta-state punks pushing the November initiative: You stay the hell OUT of my state. You bitch and moan about “states’ rights” (code for “We’re still bitter ’cause we lost the Civil War! We want our slaves back!”), and then you attempt to force your will on my state.
GET OUT. We don’t want you here. Go home and inflict your rabid hatred on your own people — who, God willing, will find the means to get out from under your Nazi jackboots and find refuge in a safe haven of peace and liberty.
Or do I have to go digging into your sordid past(s) to shame you into silence — and into your very own spot on Conservative Babylon?
The estranged wife of New Jersey’s gay ex-governor says she agreed to live in the governor’s mansion to please her new husband, even though their condo was an hour closer to her job.
Dina Matos McGreevey says Gov. James McGreevey wanted a working spouse to “enhance his image.”
She portrayed herself as a dutiful spouse and dedicated political ally who went so far as to pay for their $30,000 wedding and to add his political cronies to the guest list. …
Matos McGreevey, 41, wants compensation for losing out on the perks of his job — state police transportation and a 24/7 security detail, a household staff and use of two beach houses — because he resigned 13 months shy of completing his first term.
McGreevey maintains that perks of the governor’s office are not a marital asset. …
Matos McGreevey said she paid for her own car, insurance and clothes out of her salary as a hospital executive, estimated at $55,000 a year. She said being on the arm of a politician sometimes required three changes of clothes a day.
Matos McGreevey’s accountant, Kalman Barson, placed the value of their so-called gubernatorial lifestyle at $51,000 a month… McGreevey’s accountant puts the value of maintaining that lifestyle at a far more modest $16,000 a month. …
Besides finances, the other unresolved issue is whether McGreevey committed fraud by marrying Matos McGreevey.
She claims she was duped into marrying a gay man who needed the cover of a wife to advance his political career. He said she knew their union was “a contrivance on both our parts.”
No personal chef! Tough times for Dina Matos McGreevey, she protests at trial
New Jersey’s former first lady says she lives frugally since leaving the governor’s mansion four years ago.
Dina Matos ended direct examination by her lawyer saying she can no longer afford expensive clothes or vacations.
Like her husband, Matos testified about a lifestyle funded by taxpayers, contributors, lobbyists and other benefactors.
She says she and daughter now make due in her $430,000 home without a personal chef, state car or state police security — all perks of the governor’s office.
So, Washington University extended its middle finger to everyone who believes that women are, like, actual human beings (maybe even as good as men!), and awarded an honorary doctorate to Phyllis Schlafly, radical right-wing founder of the anti-feminist Eagle Forum, anti-gay crusader of the first order, singlehanded murderer of the Equal Rights Amendment, suppressor of safe and sane sex education, and militant nationalist whose xenophobia puts Adolf Hitler’s to shame, whose bitter, twisted hatred oozes through her facade of “morality” in a perpetually pinched visage, utterly criminal fashion sense, and helmet hair that can’t possibly be on purpose.
Yeah, there was a protest (and we applaud the students and faculty who participated):
Wearing white armbands, Washington University students and faculty staged a silent protest as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly received an honorary degree at Friday’s commencement.
Hundreds got up from their seats, turned their backs to the stage, and stood silently as the 83-year-old Schlafly was bestowed an honorary doctorate of humane letters. …
Schlafly, who earlier in the week had called the protesters “a bunch of losers,” told The Associated Press on Friday that her proudest accomplishment was defeating the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. “Nixon, Carter, Hollywood, were for it,” she said. “We took them all on.”
She called university women’s studies departments “feminist propaganda masquerading as academics.” …
…but, despite the protesters’ best efforts, this is a stain on Washington University — and Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton’s justification for honoring this anti-freedom Nazi is laughable in its lameness:
… Our long-standing process for awarding the honorary degree was followed: Mrs. Schlafly was nominated by a member of the community and was reviewed by the Board’s Honorary Degree Committee. The Committee included faculty, students, trustees and administrators. After two meetings, Mrs. Schlafly and other nominees were recommended unanimously for consideration at the full Board meeting. The full Board voted to award the honorary degree at the May 2007 meeting.
Following the public announcement of the honorary degrees, many in the University community have called for the University to rescind that offer, stating that Mrs. Schlafly is associated with some views, opinions and statements that are inconsistent with the tolerant and inclusive values of the Washington University community. Personally, I do not endorse her views or opinions, and in many instances, I strongly disagree with them.
However, after further consultation with members of the University’s Board of Trustees, the University has concluded that it will fulfill its commitment to award the degree to Mrs. Schlafly. I apologize for the anguish this decision has caused to many members of our community.
That “apology” is just another way of saying: “I’m sorry if you were offended.” Not “I’m sorry we did it,” but “I’m sorry you didn’t like what we did.”
In bestowing this degree, the University is not endorsing Mrs. Schlafly’s views or opinions; rather, it is recognizing an alumna of the University whose life and work have had a broad impact on American life and have sparked widespread debate and controversies that in many cases have helped people better formulate and articulate their own views about the values they hold.
Oh, well, then, that’s different. Since a “life and work [that] have had a broad impact on American life and have sparked widespread debate and controversies that in many cases have helped people better formulate and articulate their own views about the values they hold” is all there is to your criteria for bestowing honorary degrees, you may as well honor Don Black.
And, Mark, you can save the malarkey that “the University is not endorsing Mrs. Schlafly’s views or opinions.” Giving a degree to anybody (think of your own undergrads) is the university’s confirmation that the honoree has fulfilled followed the university’s curriculum and met the university’s requirements for graduation. And the honoree will forever represent the values of the university.
At Commencement, Trustee Emerita Margaret Bush Wilson has volunteered to read the citation to award the degree to Mrs. Schlafly. As the first woman of color to serve as the national chair of the NAACP, the second woman of color admitted to practice law in Missouri, and as a prominent St. Louis civil rights attorney for more than 40 years, she provides a strong voice for the importance of tolerance and discourse as hallmarks of the Washington University community.
Like bringing up Margaret Bush Wilson — a female African-American — is supposed to soften the blow? Geez, Mark, could you be any more obvious in your tokenism? You sound like the kind of guy who would argue against gay rights by citing Andrew Sullivan as if he represented all gay people.
Being black and/or female and/or a civil rights activist doesn’t automatically make one wise.
In the midst of this controversy, I want to affirm my personal and the University’s institutional commitment to strengthening diversity and inclusiveness and to improving gender balance.
Additionally, I have made a commitment that the University will review the process for awarding honorary degrees and will propose appropriate changes.
Such as?
Washington University is home to students and faculty from all walks of life, from most systems of religious belief and political thought, and from all corners of the world. Yet we do not require these widely diverse individuals to agree with one another. We are stronger because disagreement allows us the opportunity to speak as individuals and as advocates for sometimes widely divergent agendas. …
Mark, there is right and there is wrong. Washington University was clearly wrong — and all you’re doing here is dragging out that tired old plea for tolerance of intolerance. Are you familiar with Karl Popper?
There’s more of Wrighton’s non-apology at the link. More of the same, that is — it’s nothing more or less than we expected.
As for post-game reactions, this one — by some clueless bot called Bob Ellis — is typical of the Radical Religious Right; notice the wild hyperbole, equating the Washington U. protesters with international terrorists:
Some applauded while Schlafly was hooded. But about a third of the graduating students draped in the school’s green and black robes turned their backs to her, along with some faculty members sitting on the stage behind her. Many family members in the audience also took part.
Three faculty members made the extra point of walking off the stage and then turning their backs from the audience.
A reaction like this might be appropriate if a university had invited or honored someone like, say Saddam Hussein, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong-Il or the leader of some terrorist group. Yet somehow I doubt that there would be the slightest bit of angst over such a guest at this school.
Of course, this writer is the typical idiot who believes everyone to the left of Genghis Khan is “anti-American” and “vehemently hate[s] our country,” and fears the Endtimes of America.
But here’s the best part:
I had the honor of meeting Schlafly last October in Washington D.C. She is such a nice lady…
Yeah, and George W. Bush is such a good Christian. (And I hear Hitler loved his dog, too.)
Now for a word from the reality-based community, per Bobbie Francis, chair of the ERA Task Force of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO):
WU alumna Schlafly (1944 A.B., 1978 J.D.) has made a name and probably a fair bit of money for herself by writing, speaking, and organizing against a spectrum of issues she condemns as feminist or liberal — the ERA, Title IX (prohibiting sex discrimination in education), reproductive rights, comprehensive sex education, the right of gays and lesbians to adopt children or teach in public schools, the United Nations, and the teaching of evolution, to name a few. …
It is unlikely that the nation’s most visible anti-feminist in the second half of the 20th century remained barefoot while pregnant and raising six children, since during those same years, beginning in the early 1950s, she was also running unsuccessfully for Congress (1952, 1970), presiding (as she still does) over the conservative Eagle Forum she founded four decades ago, writing The Phyllis Schlafly Report and a syndicated column, and broadcasting commentaries on hundreds of radio stations.
She has traveled the country organizing, strategizing, writing, and speaking in opposition to women’s rights and many other issues, but she admits to no contradiction or hypocrisy in telling other women they should not have families and careers at the same time.
Her arguments against the ERA demonstrate the degree to which she is no friend of the truth.
The ERA, she says, would require the denial of Social Security benefits to housewives and widows. As a lawyer, she must know it simply means that such benefits would be conferred in sex-neutral terms (”homemaker,” “surviving spouse”).
The ERA, she says, means “abortion on demand.” She must know that the ERAs or equal rights guarantees currently in 21 state constitutions have never been used for that purpose.
The ERA, she says, would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages. She must know that the ERA simply says constitutional rights shall be held equally by citizens without regard to sex, and states with ERAs in their constitutions have been able to declare marriage a contract between a man and a woman.
The ERA, she says, would make women eligible for the draft. She must know that Congress already has the power to draft women and was considering the possibility of drafting nurses as the Vietnam conflict ended.
At age 83, Schlafly is still preaching her threadbare anti-equality gospel on campuses, at legislative hearings, and elsewhere. If she went on about race the way she does about gender, it would be obvious that her prejudiced views are often the equivalent of Holocaust denial or hate speech. …
Feminism, she told a Bates College audience, “is incompatible with marriage and motherhood” and is “teaching women to be victims.” She denies a married woman’s legal right to claim sexual assault by her husband: “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”
Women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier, or construction worker, she says, because of their “inherent physical inferiority.” …
Of course Washington University has the right to bestow an honorary degree on anyone it chooses. But recipients should be people who have contributed to making the world better in a professionally acceptable way, according to at least minimal standards of intellectual honesty.
Judging by the negative reaction to Schlafly’s selection, including an online protest site on Facebook, it is appropriate that Washington University will derive more guilt than benefit by association with this choice. Only by withholding the degree and publicly acknowledging its error could the university have salvaged even a shred of academic integrity out of the situation.
The Board insisted on proceeding today, however, they really should have made their presentation as follows:
“And so, Phyllis Schlafly, in acknowledgment but not in honor of your numerous activities over six decades in the misrepresentation of facts about and the organized obstruction of progress in social and political justice, equality of opportunity, and the guarantee of full citizenship status to over one-half of the nation’s population, Washington University mistakenly awards you the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.”
We’re guessing Patricia Todd, Alabama’s first out lesbian state legislator (whose 2006 win was hard-fought against the forces of identity politics; the problem wasn’t that Todd was gay, but that she was white) had something to do with getting some common sense to seep through Larry’s armor-like turtle shell of stubborn bigotry. Per AL.com, the good news came from Todd, and not from Langford’s office:
A gay pride parade planned for next month on Southside will go on as planned, according state Rep. Patricia Todd. Todd said she spoke to Mayor Larry Langford on Saturday morning and he assured her a parade permit would be granted from the city. …
Todd said the mayor has also agreed to meet with leaders of the gay community next week. Langford said on Friday that he would not sign a proclamation for the event, allow banners on city property or sign a parade permit. Langford had said he turned down the requests because it was inappropriate for government to endorse a lifestyle.
Wow, she even got him to agree to meet with leaders of the gay community? Good! And amazing.
Meanwhile, my dear friend Jerry reminded me of the “layers of irony” in this story:
Why is this beyond crazy? Do you remember Dr. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”? Of course you do. Did you know King was arrested for parading without a permit?
I sure do, Jer — and I’m slapping my forehead for not thinking of it.
As Larry’s own memory obviously needs jogging, let’s give him a refresher course — and, with any luck, humiliate him with a well-deserved dose of shame:
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, composed by Martin Luther King, Jr., from his cell in the Birmingham City Jail and dated April 16, 1963, was a seminal document that established the moral foundations for the non-violent civil rights demonstrations of the Birmingham campaign.
King was arrested along with Ralph Abernathy on Good Friday, April 12, 1963, by Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor for parading without a permit at the outset of the Birmingham campaign.
This is the letter Dr. King wrote:
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails so express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; selfpurification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gain saying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham that in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants — for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliation?” “are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economicwithdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and halftruths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person that Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hoped that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral that individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
We have waited for more that 340 years for our constitutional and Godgiven rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored” when your first name becomes “Nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when your are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of Harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus is it that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in it’s application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. ‘Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all it ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light injustice must be exposed with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relations to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in the generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergyman would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously closed on advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do-nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble-rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in blacknationalist ideologies — a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides — and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus and extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like am ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvery’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime &mdsah; the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some &mdsah; such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden, and Sarah Patton Boyle — have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.
But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi, and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips for Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful — in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey Gad rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent — and often even vocal — sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion to inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America if freedom. Abuse and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation — and yet out of bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we not face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrations. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end or racial injustice. As T.S. Eliot has said, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and when her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Recently a woman reported that she was brutally raped at her home in Charlotte [NC]. Now an anti-gay marriage amendment has been introduced in the state Senate. You may wonder what the two have to do with each other. I believe they are directly related. You see, the woman, who chose not to disclose her identity to the one local TV station, WBTV, that covered the crime, said she was a lesbian, and that while brutalizing her, her attacker made it clear that he was raping her because she was a lesbian.
… [In North Carolina] crimes committed on account of a victim’s sexual orientation are not classified as “hate crimes” under state law. But make no mistake, gay people are targets. The violence is real and it is systematic.
Efforts to amend the state constitution to preclude forever a same-sex couple from marrying are but one component of that system of violence. Such efforts, regardless of their sponsors’ intention, have the effect of branding gay North Carolinians as the “other,” as something less than equal.
Imagine systematically denigrating a segment of the population and then believing that the consequences stop with the law on the books, without any real-world ramifications. When proponents of a marriage amendment brand certain North Carolinians as targets for special disadvantage, other people believe them, and gay people, like the woman in Charlotte, are raped — or worse.
Last semester, I taught the close friend of a young man named Sean Kennedy. … Sean is dead. In May 2007, he was assaulted in Greenville, S.C., by a young man who called him “faggot” while punching him so hard that he broke every bone in Sean’s face. Sean fell to the pavement; the impact caused his brain to separate from his brain stem.
Shortly after driving away, Sean’s killer left a message on the cell phone of one of Sean’s friends: “Tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.”
Or consider Scotty Joe Weaver… Or there is the case of Danny Overstreet…
Studies show that in states, particularly in our neighboring Southern states, where anti-gay marriage amendments are in place, violence against gay people, and especially gay youth, is escalating at alarming rates. …
The [North Carolina] anti-marriage amendment was introduced on May 14 by Sen. Jim Forrester, R-Gaston, whose wife recently wrote that gay people in North Carolina are “seeking to … rob our children of their innocence.”
Reading those words, I thought of my friend, shot at on the streets of Roanoke, who has now been with his partner for 13 years; neither of them is interested in robbing anyone of his innocence. I thought of Sean Kennedy, Gwen Araujo, Michael Sandy, Brandon Teena. Doesn’t anybody care about their innocence? …
Some in our state Senate recently opposed a bill passed in the House that would protect gay youth and youth perceived to be gay from bullying and harassment on that account. I can only assume that the opponents believe these youths deserve to be beaten, cut, urinated on and set on fire as gay youth I have known and counseled have been. Do these kids also deserve death?
It’s a hard truth, but when you recognize that marriage amendments, and the dehumanizing culture of which they are a part, break not only hearts but also bones, you understand what really is at stake. …
What can I say? My heart swells with gratitude — while my anger swells at the disgusting, revisionist lies of Holocaust deniers (like Scott Lively) that are allowed to spread.
But no anger now. Just gratitude, and admiration for a country with the courage and humility to acknowledge the starkest genocide of the twentieth century — and to recognize the slaughter of and atrocities inflicted upon the homosexual “undesirables”:
BERLIN (Reuters) — Germany unveiled a monument to the tens of thousands of homosexuals persecuted under the Nazis, whose laws were used to prosecute gay men for a generation after World War Two.
Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, who is openly gay, hailed the grey, concrete memorial as a long overdue acknowledgement of the repression of homosexuals, 50,000 of whom were convicted by Nazi courts during Adolf Hitler’s 12-year dictatorship.
“The monument consecrated today is a reminder to us of the horrors of the past and draws our attention to the degree of discrimination that currently exists,” Wowereit said.
“Great efforts will still need to be undertaken before the sight of two men or women kissing here or in Moscow or elsewhere on the planet is accepted by society in general.” …
Nazi authorities ordered the castration of some gay men, and sent thousands more to concentration camps, many of whom were murdered or died from hunger and disease.
Until 1969, when the centre-left Social Democrats headed a government for the first time since the Weimar Republic, Nazi laws continued to be applied to prosecute homosexuals. …
Signaling a generational shift in attitudes, a new Field Poll on Tuesday said California voters now support legal marriage between same-sex couples and oppose a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
By 51 to 42 percent, state voters believe gay couples have the right to marry, according to a May 17-26 poll of 1,052 registered voters.
However, the same poll revealed a California electorate that remains sharply divided over gay marriage — split by age, political affiliation, religion and the regions where they live.
The poll was taken after the May 15 California Supreme Court decision overturning a state ban on same-sex marriages. The results marked the first time in more than 30 years of state polling that a majority of Field Poll respondents favored making gay marriage legal.
In 2000, more than 61 percent of voters approved Proposition 22, a statute declaring that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California. …
Based on the Field Poll, the ultimate outcome of the gay marriage issue in California could hinge on the age of the electorate.
Reflecting stark differences in generational attitudes, 68 percent of voters between 18 and 29 years old said they favored allowing same-sex couples to marry. Fifty-eight percent of voters 30 to 39 and 51 percent of voters 40-49 favored gay marriage. That compared with 47 percent of voters 50-64 and 36 percent of those over 65 who supported the idea.
“As young people are replacing older people, voters are more supportive,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll. “The trend line itself is historic. The lines are crossing. This is a major sociological event in California.” …
The Field Poll asked two groups of voters differently worded questions on whether they would support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. …
Gay marriage was strongly opposed by inland California residents. Central Valley voters disapproved of same-sex marriage 55 to 38 percent.
Support surged on the coast, with Bay Area voters supporting gay marriage by 68 to 24 percent, and Los Angeles County voters supporting it by 55 to 38 percent.
While Democrats overwhelmingly supported gay marriage and Republicans overwhelmingly opposed it, there was also a significant religious split. …
No big surprises here, but worth the read.
My first thought: I hope I outlive my enemies.
Isn’t that a terrible way for a liberal to think?
OTOH, the older I get (I’ve been waiting nearly half a century to be treated like a real person), the more I understand that some people (like the militant homophobes pushing to permanently “constitutionalize” me out of existence) are beyond hope — and the rest, well, you just gotta wait ‘em out; either they’ll come around, or they’ll die.
I wish they’d just come around. I don’t like going to bed — or to my grave — mad.
That, or I wish we’d annex off the Central Valley (and most of Orange County) to Utah, or Idaho, or some other beyond-hope place where the anti-gay crusaders could froth at the mouth all they like among their own element, and leave us queers and our allies to live in peace.
P.S. Hey, ‘phobes: We’re really not hurting anybody, you know. But you are hurting us. And your Jesus would not approve.
With her overwhelming victory in Kentucky on May 20, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has completed her sweep of the crucial primary states adjoining the Ohio River — and the fight for the Democratic nomination has entered its final phases. Having picked up a net gain of nearly 140,000 votes between Kentucky and Oregon, Clinton is now well poised to win the Puerto Rico primary on June 1 — and clinch a majority in this year’s popular vote, even if the disputed returns from Michigan are discounted. Under those pressures, the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of “change” — nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.
Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party’s inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom “progressive” pundits and bloggers disdain variously as “Nascar man,” “uneducated,” “low information” whites, “rubes, fools, and hate-mongers” who live in the nation’s “shitholes.”
By the way, I detest NASCAR, my perceived lack of education led to a $110,000-a-year in I.T., I’m a “high-information” white news junkie who is neither a “rube,” nor a “fool,” nor a “hate-monger,” and, as far as “shitholes” go, I live in the 19th most affluent Zip code in the nation. (I’m also queer as a three-dollar bill, and happily agnostic.)
And Obamanation has alienated me as much as it has any Middle Atlantic “rural dweller.”
The point? Don’t assume that everyone who abhors the idea of a “President Obama” can be pigeonholed and dismissed so easily.
I wish someone would do a study of genuine liberals (like me) for whom the thought of voting for Obama is stomach-turning.
Having attempted, with the aid of a complicit news media, to brand Hillary Clinton as a racist — by flinging charges that, as the historian Michael Lind has shown, belong “in black helicopter/grassy knoll territory,” Obama’s supporters now fiercely claim that Clinton’s white working class following is also essentially racist. Favoring the buzzword language of the academic left, tinged by persistent, discredited New Left and black nationalist theories about working-class “white skin privilege,” a vote against Obama has become, according to his fervent followers, “a vote for whiteness.”
Talk about transformative post-racial politics.
And talk about straw men. If those “fervent followers” knew the first thing about real racists, they’d know what “a vote for whiteness” really looks like.
In fact, all of the evidence demonstrates that white racism has not been a principal or even secondary motivation in any of this year’s Democratic primaries. Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters — and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama’s campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker — and that Clinton’s positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama’s campaign. Out with the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, F.D.R., Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, and in with the bright, shiny party of Obama - or what the formally “undeclared” Donna Brazile, a member of the Democratic National Committee and of the party’s rules committee, has hailed as a “new Democratic coalition” swelled by affluent white leftists and liberals, college students, and African-Americans.
Again, I am a white liberal — but somehow I’m always conveniently ignored, and assumed to be some sort of right-of-center Reagan Democrat. Or something. Oh, well, one of these days, somebody will recognize us genuine lefties, who are opposed to Obama because we recognize that he is no liberal, by any stretch of the imagination.
OK, OK, I’ll quit harping on that point (for the moment). Back to the Dem core Obama is losing:
The Democratic Party, as a modern political party, dates back to 1828, when Andrew Jackson crushed John Quincy Adams to win the presidency. Yet without the votes of workers and small farmers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as a strong Democratic turnout in New York City, Jackson would have lost the Electoral College in a landslide. Over the 180 years since then, only one Democrat has gained the presidency without winning either Ohio or Pennsylvania, with their large white working-class vote. …
… As the caricature of “Reagan Democrats” as racist militarists hardened among “new politics” advocates, they strove to make up the difference by creating an expanded base among African-Americans, college-age, and college educated voters. The result was yet another humiliating defeat for the Democrats in 1988.
Bill Clinton’s shift to a centrist liberalism stressing lunch-pail issues — “Putting People First” — won back a large number of Reagan Democrats in 1992, enough so that, by the time Clinton won his second term in 1996, Democrats could claim parity with Republicans by winning a slim plurality among non-college educated working class white voters. But the perceived elitists Al Gore and John Kerry lost what Clinton had gained, as George W. Bush carried the white working-class vote by a margin of 17 percent in 2000 and a whopping 23 percent in 2004.
This year’s primary results show no sign that Obama will reverse this trend should he win the nomination. …
Given that Obama’s vote in the primaries, apart from African-Americans, has generally come from affluent white suburbs and university towns, the Gallup figures presage a Democratic disaster among working-class white voters in November should Obama be the nominee.
Yet Obama’s handlers profess indifference — and, at times, even pride — about these trends. …
Apart from its basic inaccuracy about Clinton’s blue-collar support in 1992 and 1996, Axelrod’s statement was a virtual reprise of the Democratic doomed strategy from the 1972 McGovern campaign that the party revamped in 1988. The main difference between now and then is the openness of the condescension with which many of Obama’s supporters — and, apparently, the candidate himself — hold the crude “low information” types whom they believe dominate the white working class. The sympathetic media coverage of Obama’s efforts to explain away his remarks in San Francisco about “bitter,” economically-strapped voters who, clinging to their guns, religion, and racism, misdirect their rage and do not see the light, only reinforced his campaign’s dismissive attitude. Obama’s efforts at rectification were reluctant and half-hearted at best — and he undercut them completely a few days later when he referred derisively, on the stump in Indiana, to a sudden “political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true.” …
Obama must assume that the demographics of American politics have changed dramatically in recent years so that the electorate as a whole is little more than a larger version of the combined Democratic primary constituencies of Oregon and South Carolina. …
Keep reading… (and skim the comments; the Obamaites arrive right on cue, and serve only to prove Wilentz’s point about them. They’re so predictable. So very, very predictable.)
Easy as pie — I just did it myself, and you should too, whether you live in California or not. I can’t imagine there’s any reason our out-of-California allies couldn’t do the same, so please do! After all, the creeps trying to deny us our civil rights in California are out-of-state agitators. (And, remember, as California goes, so goes the nation — our victory is your victory!)
Contacting the Governor re: CA gay marriage decision Posted by: “Peggy —” —@—.com Sat May 24, 2008 4:01 pm (PDT)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting lots of reaction to the recent gay marriage ruling. It couldn’t be easier to tell the gov what you think… It will take about 10 seconds to do it! Call to record your reaction.
To respond in support of the California Supreme Court’s recent decision on gay marriage:
Damn it! As long as Mike Gravel was still in the race, I had somebody I could feel good about voting for:
Libertarian Party selects Bob Barr as 2008 presidential nominee
Former Congressman plans to take the White House as Libertarian candidate
Denver — The Libertarian Party has nominated former Congressman Bob Barr as its candidate for president for the 2008 election.
“I’m sure will we emerge here with the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party,” Barr stated in his victory speech shortly after being selected as the Party’s nominee. “I want everybody to remember that we only have 163 days to win this election. We cannot waste one single day.”
More than 650 Libertarian delegates met in Denver from May 22 till the 26 for the 2008 Libertarian National Convention. After six rounds of voting Sunday afternoon, Barr was selected as the Party’s presidential nominee.
“We’re proud to present to the American voters Bob Barr as our presidential nominee,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis. “While Republicans and Democrats will fight for their own power in November, Libertarians will fight for Americans. Bob Barr is one of the strongest candidates in the Party’s 37-year history, and we look for him to have an enormous impact in the 2008 race. Republicans and Democrats have good reason to fear a candidate like Barr, who refuses to accept the ‘business-as-usual’ attitude of the current political establishment. Americans want and need another choice, and that choice is Bob Barr.”
The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
For more information, or to arrange a media interview, please call Andrew Davis at (202) 333-0008 during normal business hours, or at (202) 731-0002 during any other time. For an interview with the Barr campaign, please contact Audrey Mullen at (703) 548-1160.
“More freedom,” my gay ass. As if Bob Barr even remotely resembles a “Libertarian.” Libertarians are supposed to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals — and Barr (who was, is, and always will be a Republican) WROTE the “Defense of Marriage Act”! (Yeah, the same Bob Barr about whom Frank Rich once wrote: “[The] principal House sponsor [of the federal anti-gay-marriage law, ‘The Defense of Marriage Act’], Bob Barr of Georgia, his district office confirms, has been married three times — which raises the question of why the act doesn’t contain a three-strikes-and-you’re-out provision.”
I’m in the midst of some heavy housecleaning today (we’re moving soon, and I’m disposing of tons of stuff, like ninth-grade love letters, when I’d rather be blogging), so I can’t devote the time I’d like to the latest insanity on my radar during a ten-minute cold-coffee and leg-cramp break. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you must have skipped reading the Hillary Hate blogs and forums this weekend, in which case consider yourself fortunate.
I may or may not offer my thoughts on Hillary’s RFK remark later; for now I’ll just observe: The O-bots have really gone ’round the bend on this one, screaming maniacally at anyone who hasn’t already fled earshot range that it was a silent dog whistle from Hillary to take Obama out.
Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. And I’m saying they’re NUTS.
But I’m not surprised; they’ve been waiting to pounce on anything that might lend credibility to their paranoid delusions of Hillary herself whacking Teh Precious. Remember what I wrote less than two weeks ago re “Food Tasters for Obama“? (Hit the link to see screencaps of just two examples of “Hillary Wants to Murder Obama!” lunacy.)
And that’s all I’ll say about that for now. In the meantime, I invite you to read a few savvy observers (there are more than a few writing about this today, but these are just the first I hit; I’ll find more later, no doubt). First, the always-readable riverdaughter:
It will be played up to monumental proportions and people will be screaming for her to leave. But let us recognize their reaction for what it is. It’s not genuine offense over the death of an admirable man. It is their excuse to finally get rid of her.
If that is the case, I can’t decide who is demonstrating the most lack of taste.
Update: The reaction of the Obamasphere and the media is totally indefensible. The HuffingtonPost is taking a very matter-of-fact discussion of primary history and twisting it into a vile insinuation that Hillary can’t wait until someone takes Obama out. It is time they stopped behaving like the Orwellians during a two minutes hate.
And, in the post “Obama takes his talking points from Drudge,” garychapelhill notices that the mass hysteria from the O camp came right on the heels of faux outrage stirred up by Chez Drudge:
Apparently it took the creative mind of Drudge to inspire the Obama campaign to tastelessly exploit the death of an American icon for political gain, in the very same week his sole surviving brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor… very classy. Now this is the kind of thing we expect from Drudge, but from a Democratic presidential candidate, and the left blogosphere? It appears that is the path they are choosing. But they still have some lessons to learn from the pros. See, this isn’t the first time Clinton has made this comparison, as the Fox article goes on to say:
But Clinton has made a similar “long primaries are fine” argument before — once with a more oblique reference to the Kennedy assassination. “If you look at successful presidential campaigns, my husband didn’t get the nomination until June of 1992. I remember, tragically, Senator Kennedy won California near the end of that process,” she said at a DC fundraiser on May 7th. “It has often gone on. And we have a lot to work out here. Because we have to figure out who would be the stronger candidate.”
Where was the outrage then? Where was “Special” K’s spittle ridden rant when she said it on May 7th? Obviously neither Olbermann, the Obama campaign, nor anyone at CNN, MSNBC, etc, was as creative as our friend Mr. Drudge. We all know that the MSM salivates at his every blackberry message, but Democrats? Obama has become just another cog in the right wing, bottom feeding, tabloid rumor-mill machine of which Drudge is commander-in-chief. I noticed that the Obama campaign started to back away from this story almost as soon as they started to push the “it has no place” message that they used in SC. I imagine someone in the Kennedy family told them to stop using RFK to score points and suppress votes. We know that telling Drudge “shame on you” is an exercise in futility. Well maybe some of the OFB still have some semblance of a conscience. If they do, this ones for them. Shame on you!!
Anyone, with a functioning brain not demented by Clinton Derangement Syndrome, can see that she is making a matter of fact statement: some primaries go all the way to June. Could she have put it better? Yes, probably. But it does not matter for the media and the so-called progressive blogosphere. Both have decided to engage in character assassination (I am using this expression on purpose) and to distort beyond recognition everything that Senator Clinton will say. We might as well get used to it. …
There is no question that a line was crossed yesterday, by the media and the so-called progressive blogosphere. Personally, it has put me on the fence: if Senator Obama becomes the nominee, do I take a break from politics until November or do I actively campaign against him?
And I would also include in this hall of shame the Democratic National Committee who has had its collective thumb on the scale for Senator Obama, as well as anyone involved in the Democratic party leadership. They are actively complicit in the character assassination and blatant misogyny and race-baiting used against Senator Clinton. …
Senator Obama, the DNC, the Obama Fan Base have alienated more and more of the Clinton voters, who happen to be the core of the Democratic voting block.
Senator Obama has benefited from the free help from the media, the so-called progressive blogs and all levels of the Democratic party
But these advantages are not enough: Senator Obama cannot have competition, so, Why Won’t the Stupid Bitch Quit already and not behave like the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction? Because Senator Obama has never faced a competitive campaign. He and his teams always managed to get rid of competitors one way or the other BEFORE having to compete. And as for his senatorial race, he faced demented carpetbagging Alan Keyes… a hamster would have won that Senate seat.
Oh, and let’s look at one of the lamest excuses ever: with Senator Clinton still in the race, Senator Obama cannot focus on Senator McCain and therefore, Senator Clinton is damaging him. Because, apparently, Senator Obama cannot multi-task… but that’s ok, multi-tasking is not something potential presidents of the United States need. …
The so-called progressive blogosphere has shown its true colors and they ain’t pretty: misogyny, mob behavior, mass hysteria, character assassination, disloyalty to progressive and liberal principles and I am being kind.
The new democratic party that Senator Obama wants to own and control quasi-exclusively is one with a very narrow and exclusive base, after the abuse, insult and ultimate rejection of the core Democratic base. Core Democratic voters and supporters have now to find a new political structure for themselves because if Senator Obama has his way, this is no longer a party where women, working class folks, and generally anyone unprivileged are welcome. …
The only legitimate and viable candidate at this point is Senator Clinton and her supporters and voters are no longer in the mood for consolation prize (VP slot) and have seen the Unity shtick for what it is: a shtick, like everything else Obama, it’s all style and no substance. …
Yesterday, you (and we all know who “you” are) crossed a line. But every time you stoop lower than we thought you ever could, you just strengthen our resolve. …
And don’t bother guilt-tripping us. You made that bed, you now lie in it.
Oh, one more link, which doesn’t have to do with the assassination hysteria directly, but dovetails nicely with the “Unity schtick”; I want to direct your attention to it before I forget. From the inimitable (and highly addictive) Anglachelg, “Legitimacy, Not Unity“:
The continued calls for “unity” in this campaign have bothered me for some time. As I alluded to in an earlier post, unity means something very different in politics than being in agreement. It would mean that contestation for the resources and social goods of the nation had been set aside. …
In a democratic political system, the consent of the minority to the majority’s power is the measure of legitimacy. The majority, after all, has what it wants. How dissenters are treated and the degree to which they assent to the majority’s possession of power while retaining the ability to dissent from the majority’s policies and objectives shows how much the majority is trusted, respected, and considered within the bounds of acceptable political behavior. One of the markers of the Bush regime is the degree to which it has no legitimacy with most of the citizens. They are still trammeled by the institutions of government, but have continuously sought to dissolve these boundaries and rule through sheer force.
The increasing rejection of Obama by voters is a measure of his declining legitimacy. People who once thought they would gladly vote for him, like me, are now implacably opposed to him. He is no longer legitimate in our eyes. … Participating in and profiting from the media hatred of the Clintons, throwing out accusations of racism to try to forestall criticism and inflate AA vote counts, encouraging people to be “Obamacans” not Democrats, the “Democrat for a Day” strategy, engaging in intimidation and threats to extract caucus votes, aggressively trying to monopolize money specifically to silence alternative voices, and treating voters who do not choose him first with contempt.
Lack of legitimacy means relying on force to win. If you have to bully people to make them be quiet, you have lost legitimacy. If you have to remove votes from the contest in order to win, you have lost legitimacy. … Insisting on unity as a substitute for legitimacy corrodes the institutions meant to defend democracy. Insisting on unity in order to avoid dealing with dissent is self defeating. …
You gain legitimacy by being willing to risk power. This is the root cause of Obama’s failure to be a unifying figure even as he preaches Unity. …
Unity is power to quell dissent, legitimacy is power under conditions of dissent.
Make sure to click the link for the full read (and learn stuff about Rousseau and Machiavelli, in an easily-digestible way, that you slept through in college).
Saturday, May 24, 2008 — Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford won’t sign a proclamation for an annual gay pride celebration or allow banners on city property, and said he will not grant the sponsoring group a parade permit.
Langford said he turned down the requests this week from Central Alabama Pride because it is inappropriate for government to endorse a lifestyle. Pride Week is next month and often includes a parade on Southside and other events.
“My policy is don’t ask because it’s not my business, and don’t put me in the position to make it my business,” Langford said Friday. “I don’t condone it, but I also am not sitting in judgment on anyone.” …
“It doesn’t hurt my feelings, because we’re not politically on the same page. I’m offended more so,” said Ronald Simoneau, a participant in the parade since 1989. “It’s a slap in the face to the gay community, to just shrug us off like we’re not important.” …
Simoneau, also known as “Libertee Belle,” said past mayors have signed the proclamation and allowed the parade. Refusing such an innocuous request sends a message of intolerance to a significant population of the city, he said. …
Langford cited his support for increased funding for AIDS outreach programs and a nondiscriminatory hiring policy as evidence of his fair treatment of all people.
“I don’t think I’m intolerant, I just don’t condone the lifestyle,” he said. “Your personal lifestyle should be nobody’s issue but yours. It’s not a civil rights issue, it’s a personal choice issue.”
In addition, Langford said anyone familiar with his personality and religious views should not be surprised by the denial. …
Yep, it always comes back to religion.
And, Larry? To hell with your lame offering of “increased funding for AIDS outreach programs” — AIDS is not a gay issue, (any more than being gay is a “lifestyle” or a “choice” — religion is a choice — but I don’t feel like wasting my Saturday pointing out every warped, stupid, hateful thing you said in a futile effort to educate a religion-blinded homophobe like you).
One in a series of videos illustrating the crap women had to put up with before those pushy Women’s Libber types came along, especially for those who missed it the first time around.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — May 22 — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for the United States yesterday overturned a district court decision in Witt v. United States Air Force, a case challenging the constitutionality of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans from military service. The decision marks the first time a federal appellate court has found that the military must meet a heightened standard when infringing on a gay service member’s right to privacy. The case has been remanded to the district court for further action.
“The Circuit Court’s ruling is a tremendous victory for Major Witt and her legal team. They deserve to be congratulated for their resolve in fighting for honesty in service. We are very pleased to see the court recognize the important role private lives and private relationships play in the lives of all of our men and women in uniform,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which filed an amicus brief in support of Major Witt’s right to continue serving, specifically calling into question the Air Force’s arguments about the necessity for such a ban.
In the majority decision written by Justice Ronald M. Gould, the Ninth Circuit held, “that Lawrence (v. Texas) requires something more than traditional rational basis review…” and also cited a decision by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruling that Lawrence v. Texas applies to the military and requires a “searching constitutional inquiry” when the military attempts to interfere in a service member’s intimate private life.
Major Margaret Witt was discharged from the Air Force in 2003 after her commanders discovered she is a lesbian. Her separation from the Air Force came two years shy of her retirement and brought an end to her 18 year career as an operating room and flight nurse. Witt was honored by President Bush in 2003 with the Air Medal for her Middle East deployment and that same year received the Air Force Commendation Medal for saving the life of a Defense Department worker.
“We are heartened by the court’s decision in Witt and hope the First Circuit Court of Appeals responds similarly in our case, Cook v. Gates, currently pending before that court” said Sarvis. “Just like Major Witt, the Cook plaintiffs have asked for an opportunity to show that their private lives are not incompatible with military service. We hope that, at a minimum, the First Circuit decides that our case deserves to be reviewed under heightened scrutiny and the Cook plaintiffs’ are granted an opportunity to present their arguments at trial.”
For more information on Witt v. United States Air Force or Cook v. Gates, including biographies of the Cook plaintiffs, visit www.sldn.org.
EU Should Insist on Reforms to Counter Persisting Inequality and Abuses
ISTANBUL — May 22 — Turkey should urgently change law and policy to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from extensive harassment and brutality on the streets, in homes, and in state-run institutions, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch also called on the European Union to make Turkey’s membership aspirations contingent on ending endemic abuses and guaranteeing equal rights and protection for LGBT people.
The 123-page report, “‘We Need a Law for Liberation’: Gender, Sexuality, and Human Rights in a Changing Turkey,” documents a long and continuing history of violence and abuse based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Human Rights Watch conducted more than 70 interviews over a three-year period, documenting how gay men and transgender people face beatings, robberies, police harassment, and the threat of murder. The interviews also exposed the physical and psychological violence lesbian and bisexual women and girls confront within their families. Human Rights Watch found that, in most cases, the response by the authorities is inadequate if not nonexistent.
“Democracy means defending all people’s basic rights against the dictatorship of custom and the tyranny of hate,” said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “Where lives are at stake, Turkey needs to take concrete action and pass comprehensive legislation to protect them.”
In recent years, Turkish authorities have repeatedly harassed human rights defenders and civil society groups working on issues of gender and sexuality. Most recently, on April 7, 2008, police raided the offices of Lambda Istanbul, a nongovernmental organization that has advocated for LGBT people’s rights for over 10 years. The police justified the incursion by claiming the organization “encourages” and “facilitates” prostitution. The Istanbul Governor’s Office has also filed a lawsuit trying to close down Lambda, arguing its name and objectives are “against the law and morality.” Lambda will once again have to defend its right to exist before the Beyoðlu 3rd Civil Court of First Instance on May 29, 2008.
The report examines a wide range of human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Several transgender people told Human Rights Watch how police tortured and raped them. One gay man recounted how another man stabbed him 17 times in an attempted murder that still remains unsolved. A lesbian couple described how their parents used violence to try to separate them; when they turned to a prosecutor for help, he refused, questioning them instead about their sex life. Human Rights Watch also found that, in a flagrant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Turkish military continues to bar gay men from serving in its forces. At the same time, Turkey withholds any recognition of conscientious objection to military service. Some objectors must instead identify themselves as “sick” — and are forced to undergo humiliating and degrading examinations to “prove” their homosexuality.
The report acknowledges that there have been some positive changes in Turkish law and policy as the country attempts to join the European Union. However, it also calls on the EU to insist on respect for LGBT people’s basic rights as a barometer of Turkey’s human rights progress.
Turkish law offers no express protections for LGBT people’s universal human rights. In 2005, Turkey reviewed some of its laws to bar discrimination, a move meant to show Turkey’s commitment to European Union standards. However, Turkey has yet to adopt a comprehensive antidiscrimination law that conforms to EU standards.
“In the complex path toward European Union accession, this report points to an area where little or nothing has changed,” said Long. “The EU must fully incorporate issues of sexual orientation and gender identity when considering Turkey’s application for membership.”
WASHINGTON, DC — May 21 — In a 4-3 decision the California State Supreme Court last Thursday ruled that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as heterosexual couples under the California State Constitution. The court’s ruling strikes down Proposition 22, a voter initiative passed in 2000 which sought to limit marriage to only between a man and woman. Servicememebers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a national, non-profit legal services, watchdog and policy organization dedicated to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” cautioned members of the military that despite the court’s ruling, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law prohibits service members from legally recognizing same-sex relationships.
“The California Supreme Court should be applauded for its decision extending rights to same-sex families. It is heartening to see further recognition of our fundamental right to enter into legal relationships. Unfortunately, our celebration is tempered by the reality that lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel cannot take advantage of these opportunities without risking their careers,” said SLDN executive director Aubrey Sarvis. “’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ jeopardizes the livelihood of any service member who seeks to enter into a civil union, domestic partnership or marriage.”
While California and Massachusetts are the only two states where same-sex marriages are permitted, several other states and the District of Columbia provide other types of recognition for same-sex relationships, conferring legal rights and benefits similar to marriage. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” however, prohibits service personnel from entering into “marriage or attempted marriage,” and service members who do so face dismissal under the law.
“Before my husband and I decided marry in Massachusetts, I had to sit down and ask myself which is more important, love and marriage or my career in the U.S. Army,” said retired Army Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Schmalz. “So I left the Army, and took with me my twenty-five years of experience, so that I could get married and start a family. It is a choice I never thought I would have to make and a choice that no American patriot should ever have to make.”
While the California Supreme court ruling asserts, “an individual’s sexual orientation — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights,” the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” law states that a service member “shall be separated from the armed forces” if “the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex.”
“The marriage decision in California highlights the cruel choice placed before gay service members: service to country or recognition of family,” continued Sarvis. “Congress must repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ because no American who wears the uniform should have to make that choice.”
To learn more about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and same-sex marriage please visit www.sldn.org.
WASHINGTON, DC — May 21 — U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) left Massachusetts General Hospital this morning, a day after physicians announced that the longtime lawmaker had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Kennedy, 76, was hospitalized over the weekend after suffering a seizure at his family’s compound in Hyannisport, Mass. Kennedy has served in the U.S. Senate since 1962.
Kennedy was the original sponsor of hate crimes prevention legislation in 1997. Since then he has fought tirelessly to secure repeated successful votes on the legislation, including passage this year of a version that included both sexual orientation and gender identity. Kennedy voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, led opposition to a federal marriage amendment and opposed an anti-marriage measure in Massachusetts. He has fought to end funding of abstinence-only education programs. Kennedy is the Senate lead on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and has been an outspoken supporter for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and increased funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
“We are deeply saddened and shocked by the news of Senator Kennedy’s diagnosis. The senator is a hero to people across the country and around the world. He has spent his life fighting for justice for working people, children, women, LGBT people, immigrants, the disabled, people living with HIV/AIDS and so many others who have looked to his leadership and vision for a more just society. Our thoughts, prayers and hopes are with him and his family at this difficult time. Senator Kennedy has been a courageous advocate on behalf of so many and will no doubt bring this same fighting spirit to this latest challenge.”
One in a series of videos illustrating the crap women had to put up with before those pushy Women’s Libber types came along, especially for those who missed it the first time around.
Speaking of sexism (and we were), Carolyn Lochhead blogs at SFGate:
The following email leaked to us from a prominent supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton shows us firsthand the anger among the older women who are the mainstays of her campaign, and a necessary ingredient of a victory for rival Sen. Barack Obama in November:
“There are millions of voters who feel as you do, that the Democratic primary campaign uncovered the pervasive and insidious sexism that runs rampant through our country. That Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate, and that she is being cheated out of the nomination by the good old boys network, the DNC and the Mainstream Media. You are angry. You are in a rage. I am too.
“Underneath that rage is sadness, sadness that women are second-class citizens in a country where they are the majority. What’s especially disquieting to me is that many young women are blind to the sexist nature of the world in which we live. It’s our job, each and every one of us, to educate them. Economically, women earn 77 cents on the dollar for the same work compared to men. Women are in significantly fewer managerial positions, are less likely to own a business and more likely to live in poverty. Politically, women comprise 52 percent of the population and an even larger share of the voting public yet only 16 of the current 100 U.S. senators are women….only 16 percent of the current members of the House…There is only one female Supreme Court Justice…and most remarkably America has never had a female president or presidential nominee. Women did not get the right to vote in the United States until 1920…
“We need to be counted. We need to stand up and let the DNC know we will not get in line…the DNC thinks we will vote for Obama because like abused women we have no where else to go.
“I will not vote for Barack Obama. I will not stay home. I will go to the polls and proudly write on my ballot, HILLARY CLINTON. I want the DNC to count my vote as a protest vote. I want them to know I am tired of being a second-class citizen in my own country. This isn’t about Barack Obama or John McCain. This isn’t about Iraq or Iran. This is about a war, a war for our voice, our dignity, and our selves…I hope you will join me.” …
Maybe this comes as a revelation to readers of SFGate, but not to anyone who’s been paying attention. So, why do I mention it? Because the juxtaposition of reader comments is hilarious (pathetic, but hilarious).
Of course, you’ve got the expected threat about Roe v. Wade, right on cue.
But the rest of it… Sheesh! F’rinstance, check out this alleged female Baby Boomer…
Being a 57 yo woman, I know what it was like during my time - but times have changed. While there is not complete parity, we continue to move forward. What disgusts me about this email is that while Clinton is certainly qualified, it makes no concession that both candidates are qualified. And, it appears the people have spoken. Many of my female friends are supporters of Hillary. None have disowned their connection with me because of my support of Obama. Voting for a President, does not mean that your vote should be made for the color of ones skin or their gender. It is about making the choice from your own heart for that person you believe will be the better President. That said, had Hillary (at times I was so disgusted with her campaign tatics, I would not have) become the nominee, I would have voted for her. The stakes are too high for our nation to do anything less than vote for the person representing the Democratic Party.
…who, if she didn’t notice the following comment posted seven minutes before her own, must agree with it by her silence:
The best thing about the end of Hillary’s political career is that is marks the end of boomer feminism. Thank God. Giving women the vote was a tragic mistake, because they are natural socialists, and because they are comfortable being slaves to government they have no difficulty enslaving the rest of us along with them. Just look how screwed up things have gotten with women in charge over the last few centuries. Women whine about a glass ceiling - men have to deal with glass carpet. Hillary - please stop running and make me a sandwich!
Then, of course, you’ve got the usual “Hillary’s campaign has made me ashamed to be a woman for the first time in my life” in the very same breath as “Feminist -I’ve never considered myself one, whatever that word means to my generation. I have to confess, to me, it means a bunch of women who are pissed off, because they couldn’t stand up to a man or men earlier, during the course of their lifetime.”
Bill Authored by Assemblymember Leno, and Sponsored by EQCA, Would Honor the Gay Civil Rights Pioneer on May 22 Each Year
SACRAMENTO, CA — May 19 — Civil rights activist Harvey Milk would be commemorated with an official day honoring his leadership under a bill approved today by the California Assembly.
Assemblymembers passed Assembly Bill 2567, which would establish May 22 as Harvey Milk Day in California, with a 45-23 vote. The legislation is authored by authored by Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and sponsored by Equality California. If the measure is passed in the Senate and signed by the governor, California would become the first state in the nation to designate a day commemorating a leader of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
“This historic vote in the Assembly recognizes the unforgettable leadership of Harvey Milk, the former San Francisco Supervisor who knowingly risked his life because he believed that equality would be achieved by living openly and honestly,” said EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors. “Milk was a courageous leader who inspired an entire community to stand up for fairness and justice. The Assembly acknowledged today what our history books have long ignored – that Milk’s achievements and vision deserve wide recognition.”
Milk was one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials. He was assassinated in 1978, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, by a fellow Supervisor who was homophobic. AB 2567 would proclaim May 22, the leader’s birthday, as Harvey Milk Day. The bill would encourage public schools and educational institutions to conduct activities teaching students about the LGBT leader. It would not impact the state budget because it does not increase the number of paid holidays for state employees or suspend public functions.
“Harvey would be proud to know that his legacy continues to teach us to believe in ourselves and our dreams,” said Assemblymember Leno. “Given the alarming rates of suicide, depression, substance abuse, bullying and violence against LGBT youth in our schools, the bill aims to give LGBT and straight students alike a positive representative of who LGBT people are that inspires pride and self-esteem rather than fear and shame. That is what Harvey was all about,” he said.
During the 1970s, Milk worked to pass an LGBT civil rights ordinance in San Francisco and helped defeat an initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools.
California law commemorates the contributions of important historical figures and groups including Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, American Indians and Japanese Americans.
Founded in 1998, Equality California celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2008, commemorating a decade of building a state of equality in California. EQCA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots-based, statewide advocacy organization whose mission is to achieve equality and civil rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Californians. www.eqca.org
My initial reply to Will, by email, was that, in short:
It will be used against Democrats by the Republicans, and against all LGBTs by the same Democrats who have blamed us for every electoral loss since 2000 — no matter whether a Democrat wins the WH, or how many congressional seats Dems pick up in November.
A lot of Dems who claim to be pro-equality are already hitting us with the cry, “Why NOW?! You’re going to kill us in November!” — as if we ever have anything to do with the timing of any court decision. (This one took four years, btw.)
Happens every election cycle. You can set your watch by it.
When asked if the decision could “hurt” the Democratic Party in November, this is what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had to say:
I’m fed up with tactics. I’m fed up with being a member of the Democratic Party that cares more about winning than what it is we’re supposed to do once we win.
If we can’t stand up on the principle of supporting gay and lesbian rights, then how dare we claim to support civil rights, or human rights, or women’s rights? That’s the basis of the foundation of our party.
And so, for me, with all due respect, those that are playing tactical games, that are concerned about the politics today or tomorrow, there’ll never be a good time to do this. It wasn’t good two years ago during the congressional mid-term elections. It wasn’t good enough four years ago because of the presidential election, it’s not good enough today, it won’t be good enough two years … from now, for the governor’s race. It’s never the right time, and that’s why it is the right time. We have an obligation, a moral and ethical one.
And I’m just proud to be part of it, a small part, and I couldn’t be more proud of the State of California for taking the leadership yet again, entwining ourselves with the good work Massachusetts did a year or two ago.
Amen.
There will be (and always is) the same rending of garments and gnashing of teeth as there was immediately after the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in November, 2003, which got much worse once Mass actually started issuing marriage licenses in May, 2004 — not even six months prior to the last chance we had to throw George W. Bush out of office.
Comments at Democratic Underground
From 2003:
“I am not anti-gay rights but…. I don’t think this is a good time for the gay-marriage issue.”
“Oh God! The Gay Marriage Ruling Is Likely To Help Bush in ‘04.”
“Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not gay, but I’m not homophobic either. I’m just thinking that this decision is bad, bad timing politically. How many assholes will seize on this to boost Bush? In other words, for all the trouble in Iraq, the economy etc, a lot of people will think this is more important. I have no problem with the decision. I just wish it had occurred after the ‘04 election. Now the democratic hopefuls will be asked to give an opinion on the decision. Woe is us.
“And this is not to say that the court should have ruled the other way because of the timing of it. I’m just lamenting the fact that we (the democratic) party are going to get an awful backlash from this one. Especially when you consider the other rulings lately about the ten commandments, etc.”
“It is too soon for gay marriage”
“Why not advance the idea of civil unions first. Let people get use to that idea and then push for marriage.”
“This isn’t the time. Our number one priority has to be getting bush the hell out of office. This won’t help that cause.”
“it hurts Democrats.”
“I’ve never met anyone, liberal or not who didn’t express utter disgust at the idea of gay marriage. This includes people I know who are otherwise open-minded and liberal on most every other issue.
“Some form of gay rights such as a civil union of some sort would be more acceptable. But for 99% of the people out there the very idea of gay marriage is just repulsive with capitial R. The gay marrige issue would severely cripple any democratic candidate’s to beat Bush if they support it. Let’s not go down that road.
“There are people dying in Iraq and people losing their jobs here at home. These are much more pressing issues then whether a gay person should be allowed to marry. I’m not homophobic, but I feel that gays ought to think about the well-being of others much less fortunate than themselves.”
“How should we handle wedge issues? Like gay marriage, flag burning & abortion… I say we dismiss them completely. Firmly say that it’s manufactured to divide us & leave it at that. When pressed, just say you won’t take the bait. If someone feels so strongly about it, they can join a special interest group.”
From 2004:
“The gay marriage issue hijacked our party. I think the gay and lesbian community decided to make this a visible issue on state ballots because they thought they could ride on the coattails of the Mass. court decision and Kerry. They ended up hurting him. They could have waited until an off Presidential election year to go ballistic. This issue ended up being identified directly with Kerry on the Ohio ballot and ten other states. Many Democratic Christians who would have normally voted for Kerry went with their family and moral values. I’m not homophobic…”
“You DO need to get over it! You are a citizen of the United States before you are gay. You owe a responsibility to your country FIRST!! Yeah, you’re gay, many people are, we cannot allow the you know who’s to use gays as the new ‘blacks’ to divide our country with the gay marriage issue.”
“This Becomes an Issue: (IE the Democratic Party takes a position in support of gay marriage), and the Democrats go down in flames in November. The constitutional amendment–which Sen. Frist is going to force Kerry to vote on–will easily pass. In fact, the worse of the two amendments will pass. Even if that doesn’t pass–but believe me it will– Bush will get to appoint up to 6 Supreme Court Justices.”
“I think the Democratic Party should not even come close to this issue. The farther away the better. If this becomes a major issue with leading Democrats crusading for gay marriage, George McGovern will end up looking like a successful candidate.”
“my gay friends, delay marriage … Just delay till December. Why hand Republicans 5 percent more of the vote, when you can stay quietly on the sidelines and deny them this issue?”
“this is not the time to deal with this issue and the right just is using it as a scare tactic.”
“I Am Outraged By Gay People … Well, not really. But I am kinda annoyed by their (meaning those forcing the issue, not all gays) impeccably bad sense of timing. … By pushing this into an unpopular culture war during an election year, these gay activists are screwing up their own agenda. If they demonstrated a few months of patience, it would serve them well.”
“The gay marriage issue is a disaster waiting to happen. We will lose on this issue if we allow it to become an entrenched part of the debate. So here’s the question: will the gay community, and those who heavily support gay rights, keep quiet during the primaries and the election? Will they trust the Democratic party to do the right thing once they are in office? In essence, will they take a play out of the conservative movement and allow a wink, wink throughout the campaign?”
“I know these social issues are what hurt us. I know because I live in a sea of right wingers who say they wouldnt vote for us because of the gay and abortion issues. The country is not ready for this yet. Maybe in a decade, not now.
“Suit yourselves though. I have no problems with these issues but I do know its why we are losing our asses.”
“IMO these should be personal issues. They would get MORE support by not being associated with either party.”
“Keep believing that the gay marriage issue didnt cost us Ohio, when it clearly did. Since Ohio cost us the race well what else can I say. … The turnout in southern Ohio was beyond the wildest dreams of Karl Rove and they all turned out for the gay marriage ban.”
“Homos will just need to have a little patience and trust us in the long run.”
From 2005:
“You [gay people] are impatient.”
“It’s political suicide to come out in favor of gay marriage.”
“Everyone just needs to shut up about their ‘own issue’ and stand behind the party.”
“Get a grip on reality! This is not a winning issue right now.”
From 2006:
“This issue is going to lose us elections right now and we should lay off until a good chunk of the old farts who oppose it die off. In about 10 or 15 years the Nation will be ready for this fight but right now it’s too early.”
“Why not take what you can get with bills like Howard Deans for the meantime and hopefully in two years you will get someone like Dean or Gore as President, who will change the law and give you all the same rights Married people have without changing the name and pissing off all the fundies?”
“Goddamn it…gays I love ya’, but couldn’t you have waited. WTF. Why is it that the gay marriage issues always crops up right before the election. I fully support homosexual rights, but this ruling by the NJ Supreme Court just energized the Christofascist vote and will likely result in an erosion of Dem wins in Nov. Next time, can we just table the homosexual marriage thing until mid-election cycle?”
“[T]his victory is likely to cost us control of Congress or the Senate. What good is this victory when it just sets us all back and puts more anti-gay politicans in office? Make NO MISTAKE there will be push-back on this…just like in 2004.”
“THis is really going to be a problem and the righties are going to exploit it ASAP. It really may turn the tide. We are struggling as it is just to keep the momentum going and the ROve machine is just moving into second gear as witnessed in Tennesee. WE may be fucked now.”
“Politically speaking this victory just handed Rove a MAJOR campaign issue.”
“[T]he Christian fundamentalists are sure to turn out in droves because of this decision now. They were the ones who might have helped us win the election, by staying home. So I wouldn’t be surprised in the next week or so that it becomes widely accepted we are going to lose. Worst fucking time for this, you have to wonder why this happened right before the election and not after the election.”
“It’s a slippery slope. Since if this causes us to lose elections in other states, we may never make progress in those states due to the loss of influence and election. Even with the original civil rights movement, they didn’t need a hammer to break an egg. The timing of this is conspicuous.”
“The timing of this ruling SUCKS politically. I know it is a correct decision, but it will hurt our chances in taking back Congress.”
“You will see. I would say this decision has put a Democratic win in the House in Jeapordy.”
“Just watch how the GOP base and our worthless media react to this story. It’ll bump Iraq from the public debate. And it will get the fundie base to the polls just like it did in 2004.”
“There’s an election in two weeks, and pretending that the GOP isn’t supported by a vast mob of semi-literate homophobes won’t make the problem go away.”
“The Civil Rights Act cost the Democrats the South for a generation.”
“Right now, the priorities are different in this country, and if gay marriage can detract from other, more pressing issues, yeah, the Democrats are going to eat it yet again in November, because the diversion will have worked. And gay marriage can kiss its own ass goodby for another decade or two.”
“Timing is all, and now is not the time.”
“Why couldn’t the court in New Jersey contemplate the case until mid-November?”
“Yep. Bad timing. Fundies will be voting in force.”
“All the special interest issues on the ballots like gay marriage helped keep bu$h close enough that swapping a few thousand votes made it harder to prove it was stolen.”
“It was those gay marriage amendments that brought out the funide vote”
“How many of those people wouldn’t have even come out to vote if those initiatives weren’t on the ballot? Besides, they see the Democrats as the party of the queers anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether or not Kerry was against it. He’s guilty by association.”
When the New Jersey civil-unions decision came down just two weeks before the November, 2006, mid-term elections, the howls of doom became deafening. The timing was somehow our fault, and it was our fault the Dems were going to lose the mid-terms, big-time. (As I told some hysterical naysayer at the time: “If only we queers had as much power as you credit us with, we’d rule the world. What do you think we did, influence a state supreme court by mass telepathy?”)
Contrary to all the Criswell-like predictions, Democrats swept the 2006 mid-terms, picking up 31 seats in the House (putting Republicans in the minority for the first time in twelve years), the largest gain for the Dems since 1974.
Meanwhile, Democrats replaced Republicans in five open gubernatorial races, and booted the Repub incumbent, Robert Ehrlich, out of Maryland’s governor’s mansion.
Not a single Democratic incumbent in Congress, or in any gubernatorial race, lost his or her seat.
We’re still waiting for an apology from all those Democrats who opened with the usual disclaimer, “I’m not homophobic / Some of my best friends are gay / I think you deserve equal rights, but…,” and then went on to blame us uppity gays for what was sure to be a huge loss for the Dems.
We’re not holding our collective breath.
Now, you could surmise (and you’d be right) that the good people of the United States were just so fed up with Republicans, nothing would have stopped them from 86ing the bums. You could also guess (and you’d be right) that the 2006 mid-terms were in no small part a backlash against George W. Bush himself, two years after voters (and that resounding failure known as John Kerry1, whose election it was to lose) missed the opportunity to make the 2004 presidential election a referendum on Bush’s colossal cock-up of a first term.
Or you could say that marriage equality just wasn’t that big an issue in 2006, because Republicans didn’t make it an issue. And you’d be right about that, too.
A fact that always gets lost amidst all the finger-pointing after a Dem loss is this: We queers did not turn same-sex marriage into the divisive issue it is today — the Republicans (specifically, evil genius Karl Rove) did.
As I wrote to someone who questioned “the big [marriage] movement at that particular point in time” in 2006, which served only to strip gay and lesbian Americans of rights we never had in the first place:
You have to understand something.
There was no “big movement” from the LGBT side; we were quite aware that full equality was a process of baby steps. The “big movement” was a [right-wing] attack tactic, and once they dropped it in our laps, what were we supposed to say? “Thanks, but no, we don’t want to get married” - ?
I feel quite confident in stating that most of us would have been quite happy with “just” equal rights in housing, employment, hospital visitation, inheritance, and (my personal issue) immigration, et al., and then, ultimately, civil unions. To be honest, I never thought we’d get full-fledged marriage in the U.S. (and now, I know we never will, at least not in my lifetime), and I for one wasn’t pushing for it when the whole anti-marriage movement came crashing down on our heads.
It wasn’t strange timing at all. It was perfectly timed, by the anti-gay brigades.
I stand by that, and I’ve repeated it countless times: There was no concerted effort on the gay side to win marriage equality; we were just trying to make inroads in the areas of basic protections, when the Rove Machine came up with the bright idea of making marriage the issue to whip the radical religionists into a frenzy. And now that the marriage war has been foisted upon us, we can’t very well sit back and not fight.
In any case, by 2006, the Republicans had overplayed the anti-gay card — they downright wore the damned thing out. It’s not that the country suddenly came to its collective senses and stopped passing anti-gay legislation (although there has been some progress in making John Q. Public understand that “gay” does not equate to “Baby-Jesus-hating child molester and sworn enemy of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet”) — it’s that we’ve been legislated into permanent second-class citizenship in so many states, there just aren’t that many left where wholesale persecution of gay and lesbian Americans is going to fly with the general public. About the only thing left is to put us on the trains and send us to the camps. (Nah, don’t worry; I’m not giving the haters any new ideas — there are plenty who already propose doing just that.)
In 2004, the Radical Right managed to get same-sex marriage bans written into the constitutions of twelve states (Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, and Utah). In 2006, another seven states (Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin) jumped on the bigotry bandwagon. (As of today, a total of 25 states have constitutional marriage bans. Twelve prohibit recognition of any form of same-sex unions, and 20 more have statutory DOMAs. Put them all together, and 37 states have some form of prohibition on marriage equality; that’s just one less state that would be needed to ratify a federal constitutional ban.)
But a curious thing happened in 2006: voters in Arizona defeated a constitutional ban — albeit narrowly (51.4% to 48.6%). Proponents (and their far-right cohorts) blamed the loss on the fact that in addition to banning same-sex marriage, Proposition 107 would have also denied all unmarried couples any legal status whatsoever (similar to Virginia’s draconian amendment, which prohibits recognition of any legal contracts between “unmarried individuals” conferring benefits that could be interpreted as “marriage-like”).
In other words, explained the disappointed righties, heterosexual Arizonans realized the amendment would invalidate their relationships, so the straights voted it down in their own best interest, and not out of any solidarity with, or even compassion for, their gay and lesbian neighbors.
That may be true, but if it is, it doesn’t explain why heterosexual Virginians didn’t vote down their amendment. Oh, you can debate the reasons if you like, but at some point, the argument is going to come down to one of two things: Either 1) Arizonans are better informed than Virginians, or 2) Virginians are more mean-spirited than Arizonans.
Or is it all about religion… as usual? Anybody who knows Arizona knows that while the Grand Canyon State fits like a puzzle piece into California’s southernmost nether regions, the only thing the two states have in common is a whole lot of empty, hot desert.2 (If proximity to California had any influence on a state’s level of tolerance for diversity, Oregon wouldn’t be filled with wild-eyed fundy radicals. In terms of the state’s climate for queers, Oregon is nothing more than Colorado with an ocean view.) Arizona is chock-full of Mormons; last time I checked, Arizona (23rd in population out of the 50 states) hovers around the number-four or number-five spot among states with the highest number (close to 200,000 in 1990) and percentage (over 5%) of Latter-Day Saints. And, as we all know (or should), Mormons are among the most actively anti-gay religious factions in the nation.
Yet, in 2006, Arizona became the first state in the union to reject a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the meantime, and in the wake of victories both large and small (such as the passage of civil unions in Connecticut, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s order for the city to recognize out-of-state and out-of-country same-sex marriages) both in the U.S. and elsewhere (e.g., all-encompassing legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada and South Africa, passage of the U.K.’s Civil Partnership Act), New Jersey passed its “near-beer” civil unions, causing nary a ripple in the results of the 2006 mid-terms.
The optimistic view is that straight society has finally figured out that acknowledging our right to be just as happily (or miserably) wed as everybody else does not result in legions of heterosexuals suddenly waking up and deciding they want one-a them homer-sex-shul weddings too, ’cause, goldurnit, it’s just so much easier to be a queer. And they’ve had four years to observe that the Bay State has not been consumed by God’s wrath and disappeared into the Atlantic.
That doesn’t mean that certain factions of the Democratic Party aren’t still predicting doom and gloom for the 2008 presidential election. You’d think, what with the Iraq War now in its sixth non-stop year and the U.S. economy in the toilet, Americans might find another whipping boy besides us uppity homos — like the Republicans, maybe. You know, the people who started the war, and murdered the economy.
Of course, if your side loses, you can be brutally honest and examine where you went wrong: Has the party been dragged too far to the right, alienating the center-left (and further cementing the likelihood of never winning back the far left)? Did we nominate the wrong candidate? Did the supporters of the nominee alienate (and humiliate) the supporters of the opposing nominee so badly that, human nature being what it is, the latter dug in and simply refused to vote for your party’s candidate? (I’m not naming any names; I’m just looking in the direction of the Obama camp and waving.)
But brutal self-examination is just too humbling — the obliteration of one’s own cognitive dissonance is just too much for most people to stand without a near-psychotic break. So you’ve got to make sure you have (to mix metaphors) all your scapegoats in a row, pre-game.
That said, if the Dems lose the White House (and if Obama is the nominee, we’re likely looking at President McCain for the next four years), the “my party, right or wrong” types will disburse the blame, like the world’s largest lawn sprinkler, far and wide.
After they wear out the obligatory meme “The Republicans stole the election!”3 they’ll turn to a number of other tried-and-tried defenses.
First up will be to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton and her supporters. It’s entirely possible that enough HRC supporters refusing to vote for Obama will indeed cost the Dems the White House; whether that will be the “fault” of Hillary supporters for refusing to jump on the bandwagon, or Obama’s fault for failing to win over the HRC supporters, or his supporters’ fault for doing everything in their power to alienate HRC supporters — well, I’ve written about all this extensively, so you know what I think: Obama’s loss will be the result of all three factors, albeit with the first caused directly by the second and third. (In other words, I will fault both Obama and his supporters.)
But I’m certain that we queers will not escape the wrath of (some as-yet-unknown number of) Dems looking for someone else to blame for any Democratic loss.
Predictably, some have already begun to line up the scapegoats. Here’s a sampling of doom-and-gloom predictions from Democratic Underground, culled from the first three days after the California Supreme Court ruling on May 15th:
Handing a huge wedge issue to the GOP … let’s see how the gay community feels knowing they helped put McCain in the White House this November. they will be lucky to have civil unions, much less gay marriage, when that happens.
This is 2004 all over again. Talk about history repeating itself. WOW. Kerry had his Massachusetts. Obama will have his California. I knew this was going to happen. Well, it was a nice dream anyway.
MA did not help in 2004 … Facts are facts.
I’m All For Gay Rights, Women’s Rights And Getting Our Privacy rights back but I think it would be better to wait till after the election to push these issues.
If we lose the election, none of the rights will come to pass and we will lose even more. Grow up and have some patience. What the hell is another 6 months when you’ve waited this long already?
Perhaps, you [gay] guys should calm down, quit putting down your supporters, shut up and lay the necessary ground work to make gay marriage a reality.
After we win, we can press Obama and the Congress to do what is right and long over due.
“Personally I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.” –Barack Obama
I think he speaks for most of us. I have nothing against gay rights, but marriage is something that should be reserved for man and woman. But to press for it during an election in this country is the best way to lose it, both the election and not just gay rights, but EVERYONE’S civil rights. It is political suicide. You have to be an imbicile to not see that. At least Obama and Hillary are much more supportive of gay rights. But if you want to inflame the social conservatives by making gay marraige an issue this election season and help McCrazy get elected in the WH, then you won’t have any gay rights left to speak of, never mind gay marriage.
Obama supports states rights in regard to gay marriage. McCain and the republicans want a constitutional amendment to ban it. Therefore, your priority should be to get a Democrat in the WH first. THEN make gay marriage an issue. Self-righteous indignation accomplishes nothing for gay rights except handing the GOP a massive divisive wedge issue that will almost guarantee another democratic defeat in November.
And the Democratic Party just possbily lost California in November
Can We Just Win First
Then we can take on all the civil rights issues. Why throw fodder for the GOP in before the election?
And my favorite:
The gay community is fucking it up for everybody else.
I think that answers your question, Will: The ruling will fuel the fire of Democrats who were never our allies in the first place, looking for a scapegoat in a loss that hasn’t happened yet.
As to whether it will actually affect the outcome of the presidential election, I think the 2006 Dem sweep of Congress is a fair indication that any impact will be negligible.
The real concern is how the presidential election will impact the California ruling. As I’m sure you know, the radical gay-haters are in the process of getting a constitutional amendment on the state ballot in November; if this were only a mid-term election and not a major general election, its chances of passing would be much less than they already are. As presidential elections bring more voters to the polls, there will be more voters deciding whether or not we deserve the same rights they already have.
I’ll tell you something that’s very disheartening, ‘though: I’ve already seen certain Obama supporters using the November referendum as blackmail fodder against gay Hillary supporters.
I don’t think I’m reading too much into this recent comment:
you should hope that [we Obama supprters will] be out in force in November, too…
That’s when the referendum that threatens to overturn this ruling will come up for a vote.
That sure sounds like a veiled threat to me. But then, I’m naturally far more attuned to this sort of thing — and in light of the Obamaites’ constant citation of Roe v. Wade in an attempt to scare female voters into voting for Obama, I don’t think I’m reading too much into comments like that at all.
Well, all I can do is hope that the Obama supporters — even those who stoop to the level of suggesting, oh-so-subtly, that they might turn against California LGBTs out of revenge for not supporting Obama — will live up to their own standards of doing what they think is the right thing, and voting down the marriage ban.
Otherwise, that would be like me taking out my anger on women who support Obama by actively trying to get Roe v. Wade overturned (which I wouldn’t do, no matter how much the Obamanauts piss me off).
But whether the Obama people do the right thing or not, you have to ask if the November ballot measure can have any effect on last week’s marriage ruling.
I’m no lawyer, but I’ve read the ruling from beginning to end, and it appears to my layperson’s eyes that the court did a damned good job of pre-empting any attempt to invalidate the decision.
In short: How can you enact, by any means, a constitutional amendment in a state where any such amendment has already been ruled a violation of that state’s constitution?
Green Greenwald has written one of the most reasoned opinions on the ruling I’ve seen so far, addressing both the extent of the ruling itself, and the potential for overturning it by referendum:
Given the controversial nature of this ruling, there are certain to be all sorts of myths being spouted by pundits and various advocates who object to the outcome here. Thus, it is vital to note:
(1) No rational person can criticize the Court’s decision here without having at least a basic understanding of the governing California precedents. Anyone who condemns this ruling without having that understanding will be demonstrating a profound ignorance of — and contempt for — how the law works.
As the Court made clear, whether someone believes that “marriage” should include same-sex couples is completely irrelevant. It is equally irrelevant whether one believes that the U.S. Constitution can be read to require same-sex marriages. There is one issue, and only one issue, that matters here: are the provisions of the California State Constitution, in light of how they have been interpreted by that state’s Supreme Court in prior decisions, violated by the exclusion of same-sex couples from the legal institution of “marriage”?
To be able to answer that question, one must have read and understood the key cases on which the Court relied, such as Perez v. Sharp (1948), Brown v. Merlo (1973) and numerous others. For reasons I’ve written about before, anyone who criticizes the Court’s decision without reference to California constitutional law is engaged in rank sophistry or, to use a more familiar term, pure “judicial activism” (i.e., judging a constitutional question based on one’s preferred outcome rather than the requirements of binding constitutional law). Put another way, those who criticize the Court here of “judicial activism” without bothering to familiarize themselves with relevant California constitutional law are themselves engaged in the purest, and lowest, form of “judicial activism.”
(2) Equally misinformed will be anyone arguing that this is some sort of an example of judges “overriding” the democratic will of the people. The people of California, through their representatives in the State legislature, twice approved a bill to provide for the inclusion of same-sex couples in their “marriage” laws, but both times, the bill was vetoed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said when he vetoed it that he believed “it is up to the state Supreme Court” to decide the issue. …
(5) Each time there is a court decision recognizing the constitutional rights of gay couples, all sorts of hysterical political commentary ensues. In October, 2006 — right before the midterm elections — the New Jersey State Supreme Court unanimously ruled that its Constitution requires same-sex couples to be given the same set of marital rights and privileges granted to opposite-sex married couples (though it ruled, by a 4-3 vote, that it need not be called “marriage”).
As I noted at the time, all sorts of pundits and right-wing hacks shrilly predicted that the New Jersey gay rights ruling would lead to a major voter backlash that would mobilize social conservatives and destroy the Democrats’ chances for victory in the midterm elections. Needless to say, for reasons I pointed to at the time, nothing of the sort happened. Our national elections are simply not determined by a decision by the state of California — or New Jersey, Vermont or Massachusetts — to extend equal rights to their gay citizens. …
Just to underscore how exaggerated is the significance of gay marriage as a political weapon, here is a 2006 fear-mongering ad run in Arizona — featuring John McCain — urging Arizonans to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriage…
Despite scare-mongering ads of that sort, conservative/libertarian Arizona voters became the first to reject a state-wide ban on same-sex marriage, reflecting the fact that exploitation of this issue is far less politically potent than it once was. And, of course, the 2006 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling weeks before the midterm elections did nothing to help the GOP stave off crushing defeat.
Can the court’s decision be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court?
No. The decision was based on the California Constitution, and the California Supreme Court has the final say in cases brought under the California Constitution. …
Will the federal government recognize marriages of same-sex couples who marry in California?
No. Under current federal law, the federal government does not recognize marriages of same-sex couples. This means that married same-sex couples currently do not have any of the rights, benefits, or protections that federal law gives to married heterosexual couples, such as the ability to file joint federal income taxes or receive federal spousal benefits through social security or other federal programs.
However:
Could right-wing forces take away the freedom to marry at the ballot box in California?
Yes. Because the court based its decision on rights guaranteed by the California Constitution, right-wing groups are trying to amend our state Constitution to eliminate these fundamental constitutional protections and take away the basis for the decision.
These groups, which have received significant funding from out-of-state right-wing organizations, are placing an initiative on the November 2008 ballot that will ask voters to amend the California Constitution to reverse the court’s decision and deny gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry.
Already, many state leaders are expressing their opposition to this proposed constitutional amendment. For example, in a public statement on April 11, 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that an initiative to amend the California Constitution to ban gay and lesbian couples from marriage was “a waste of time,” adding “I will always be there to fight against that. It will never happen.”
We agree with Governor Schwarzenegger that these outsiders are wasting their time and money trying to turn California into a state that would use its Constitution to take away civil rights and hurt families. But it will take every one of us to stop this antifamily initiative. For more information about how to get involved, contact Equality For All at www.EqualityForAll.com.
What can we do to help preserve the freedom to marry we have just won?
We urge you to get involved today! For more information about how you can help, please contact Equality For All at www.EqualityForAll.com. Now that we have won this victory, all residents of California are better off, because strengthening any group of families makes stronger communities for everyone. All people who value families and fairness have a stake in preserving the freedom to marry for lesbian and gay couples. We cannot afford to wait, please act now.
For more information about the court’s ruling, legal information for couples, and action steps to help protect the freedom to marry, please contact:
Since 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down archaic sex laws and the Massachusetts high court ruled that gay couples had a right to marry, we’ve heard right-wing activists and politicians, including President, Bush denouncing “activist judges” and “judicial tyranny.” But even when a state court allows the legislature to decide whether or not to call family protections for gay couples “marriage” — as was the case in Vermont seven years ago and is the case in New Jersey now — right wing leaders cynically complain.
The Christian right’s reaction to the New Jersey court ruling on marriage for same-sex couples proves that no matter how our governmental institutions address this issue, right-wing leaders will attack these institutions and scapegoat gay people.
When the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples deserved equal benefits, leading to the creation of civil unions in 2000, former Family Research Council director and then-presidential candidate Gary Bauer called the decision “worse than terrorism.” When Republican Governor Jane Swift offered Massachusetts state workers domestic partner health insurance in 2001, the Bay State Republican Council denounced these limited benefits as “special privileges” for “homosexuals.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage have argued for years that it is the legislatures, not courts, that should decide how and whether to recognize same-sex couple families. But when the California legislature passed a bill legalizing marriage for gay couples in 2005, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it, saying — without the slightest sense of irony — that the issue should be left up to the courts. …
One of the biggest election stories of 2006 was the non-story of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to offer the equivalent of Civil Unions to gay couples. What was most striking about the ruling was the lack of shock value compared to the tidal wave of raw emotion that gripped the nation when Vermont’s high court mandated a similar judicial remedy in 1999.
The news broke at 3PM, so I expected major coverage that evening on the network news. However, the story did not air on NBC until the broadcast was more than two-thirds finished. And, when the topic was finally addressed, it was a short reader from anchor Brian Williams. If you quickly pranced off to the bathroom or momentarily zoned out, you might have missed the story altogether.
Meanwhile, the mess in Mesopotamia dominated the first two blocks of that same newscast, with October’s death toll of American troops surpassing one hundred. This is a nightmare for a Republican party desperate to make hay out of all things gay by focusing obsessively on New Jersey. But things are now so bad in Baghdad that even Karl Rove, the master of homophobic campaigns, is having a difficult time averting the nation’s gaze to focus on the gays.
The laughable line that conservative pundits are now pushing is that the Garden State ruling will mobilize previously depressed social conservative voters. The conventional wisdom is that this was a shot in the arm that will jumpstart the Pat Robertson crowd to vote in force.
This expectation is as irrational as it is unreasonable. Why would a weak and politically safe New Jersey civil unions ruling provide motivation to vote if 8,000 real marriage licenses already issued in Massachusetts weren’t doing the trick? Sure, it did put the issue back in the headlines, but it was merely an ephemeral two day story that likely had no lasting impact. I’m not saying that the timing of the ruling was helpful, but it is turning out to be more of a wedgie than a wedge issue — a minor annoyance, but certainly not a divisive debate that could determine the outcome of a crucial election.
If anything, the New Jersey decision weakened the religious right’s overplayed hand on this issue. It is hard to make the case that Kansas is in danger of honeymooning homos when the GLBT community can’t even win full marriage rights from one of the most liberal courts in the nation.
The dust is nearly settled and it appears that the path to marriage rights will run through state capitals. In the next fifteen years we are likely to hear less about marriage, while we see the enactment of Civil Unions or domestic partnership laws.
This is because the GLBT community has finally convinced mainstream Americans that they are worthy of similar relationship benefits, such as hospital visitation and inheritance rights. However, we have not cleared the tall hurdle of persuading a majority that we can share the M-Word without wrecking the institution more than they already have.
Of course, we will eventually win this battle. But it is increasingly apparent that GLBT people will be forced to run the requisite minority obstacle course until the masses finally understand that creating a system of different laws for different people is inherently unfair and discriminatory. …
As you can see, there’s a running suggestion here that LGBT folks need to be patient and to wait, lest there be a backlash of some sort in two years if we push too hard for pro-gay legislation that has languished under Republican rule. This, of course, was after [Howard Dean] mentioned more than once during his speech that no Dems who took a position against the federal marriage amendment lost — a real disconnect, huh?
I hate to say it, but the room was also full of too much backslapping during Dean’s speech over the Dem takeover of the House and Senate; I couldn’t believe it when Chairman Dean positively glowed over the fact that a third of evangelicals crossed over to vote Dem in this election. I hate to break it to him, but in the states with amendments on the ballot, those evangelicals, even as they crossed over because they were digusted with the GOP, still chose to vote for a marriage amendment. Is he ok with that? While that crossover might bring on cheers in another venue and encourage the party to further court The Base, for LGBT folks that’s not exactly comforting.
What we can celebrate is that the changeover in Washington and many state houses means no active legislation further eroding our rights, but whether we will see actual gay-positive legislation passed is another matter with the historically gun-shy, spineless Democratic Party that has run from serious discussion of gay issues as fast as it can in the past. As we’ve said before here on the Blend, Dems at the national level will only advocate once the coast is clear, having had their fingers in the wind to see which way it’s blowing. Leading isn’t a strong suit in this area; they’ve been content to take our money and do zero as amendment after amendment has passed.
Dean cited the Arizona amendment as a victory for the community, not mentioning of course that the organizations responsible at the grassroots level for successfully defeating the ballot measure, almost immediately released a statement saying it received no help from national organizations. It’s hard to take credit for a “win” when they had to work in isolation.
The big national gay organizations have been notably absent there, and the campaigns have been smart about attracting voters from both conservative Phoenix and liberal Tucson with targeted messages and tactics. “We did this with no national help,” says [Cindy Jordan, chair of No on 107], “this grassroot’s effort was local.”
The amendment failed because of a couple of factors, which I mentioned while at the conference: 1) the voters were targeted about how the amendment would affect unmarried seniors and heterosexuals, and almost completely ignored the “fairness” argument, avoiding the use gay couples in promotional materials, and 2) Arizona has a libertarian, government-out-of-my-business streak that further eroded support for the amendment. The latter is one of the reasons that the amendment nearly failed in South Dakota.
The fairness argument was used extensively in Wisconsin; gay families were prominently featured by Fair Wisconsin, and the anti-amendment forces were well-funded and organized, yet the measure easily passed. The difference? — people vote their self-interest. Sad, but true, fairness really isn’t enough of an argument unless you have a critical mass of het allies who are well-informed and motivated to do the right thing — our movement, desperately needs to educate our allies; way too many straight folks simply don’t have equality issues on their radar even in states like Wisconsin, where people thought there was a chance to defeat an amendment.
Which brings me to the other matter that Dean didn’t talk about — the party’s “endorsement” of putting the civil rights of gays and lesbians on the ballot — Howard Dean giddily mentioned how “the voters have spoken” in tossing out the GOP control of the Hill. Unfortunately, the voters have also spoken on our rights because both the Democrats and the Republicans at the national level have no problem with “leaving it to the states.”
This is morally wrong, and the responsibility for the strategic political decision to punt on the civil rights of gays and lesbians by allowing candidates to hide behind a position of “leave it to the states” lies at the Democratic Party’s door. We have 27 states that now have marriage amendments in place, many that precluding any civil unions or domestic partnerships. Those measures profoundly affect the lives of everyday, working class gay families who don’t have any political power aside from their vote — and they are in the minority.
The overarching view from the establishment perspective is that the patchwork of rights granted will end up in SCOTUS and eventually be resolved there, which is true OK, then what do you say to gays in Tennessee, for example — its amendment passed with 80% of the vote? Move? “I’m sorry, but it’s too damn bad?”
Now that eight more states have gay-marriage bans written into their constitutions — 45 states ban it through amendment or statute — are we done playing politics with gay people’s lives? Is the public done being duped to vote for those measures because they think two women committing to each other for life before the law somehow threatens their own marriage or commands their churches to reinterpret their Bible? …
“One man, one woman: let the people vote!” chant those in Massachusetts who want to reverse the right gays and lesbians have had for more than two years to marry. Yes, yes, our civil rights should always be subject to the personal prejudices of the masses — that’s democracy. But for the decision of some “activist judges,” blacks might still be legally considered two-thirds of a person. …
To paraphrase what an openly gay state senator from Massachusetts, Jarrett Barrios, said recently in a debate that, I hope, finally, ended their gay-marriage debate: You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to live next to me, but I have every right to enjoy the same rights that you have enjoyed for time immemorial.
I am done with those who hold that only in the case of gays and lesbians can separate be equal. If it’s not called marriage, it’s not recognized across state lines and not by the federal government. That means my marital status depends on which state I’m standing in, I cannot file a joint tax return with my wife, I would not be able to receive her Social Security benefits if she dies, and I would not automatically be considered the legal parent to our child if my wife is the one who gives birth. Take your pick — there are 1,138 rights that the federal government confers upon married, not civil-unioned (is that even a word yet?) people.
Do you still think civil unions are plenty good enough for gay folks? I challenge any married heterosexual person to trade in his or her marriage certificate for a civil union certificate. Would you do it? When you got engaged, would you have squealed with delight at telling your family and friends, “We’re getting civil unioned!” …
1 Yes, John Kerry was a resounding failure of a candidate. His campaign was laughable: He let himself be swiftboated with nary a peep, his duck-hunting photo-op was his Dukakis-in-a-tank moment, and — this is absolutely unforgivable — after promising that every vote would count, he conceded the race to Bush without a fight, and then disappeared. He abandoned the Democrats who worked so hard for him — as well as those of us who voted for him solely because we would have given anything to get Bush out of the White House. See, folks, Kerry is what you get when you let the DLC-controlled DNC pick your candidate for you: an unelectable figurehead with no backbone. But more about Barack Obama later.
2 Mind you, I love all that empty, hot desert, and so does Buffy. Thanks to a near-lifetime of four-wheeling and ghost town hunting, I doubt there’s a single square mile of Nevada I haven’t explored. As for Buffy, on our cross-country trip to move her and her car out west, I had to keep distracting her with singalongs and car games every time we passed another Native American outpost, all the way from Oklahoma to the Mojave Desert, or it would have taken us another week to get home. Yes, I’m lying about distracting her, just because I know she’ll be reading this, and I feel like being a brat — but she really does love the Southwest, and all that Southwestern arty stuff that goes with it. Which is fine with me; I think we can work out a rather nice decor scheme by blending Kokopelli in with the Mission and Stickley furniture I’d love to buy (but can’t afford yet).
3 Election theft is, of course, a very valid complaint, when it’s very likely true. I don’t doubt for one second that the 2000 presidential election was rigged, and the results of the 2004 election were highly questionable. Bottom line is, however, that if an election so close that it could be tipped by nefarious means, then it was too close to begin with — i.e., the Democratic Party did not do its job, whether by running the wrong candidate, failing to sell the right candidate in the best way, or any number of other reasons — and in the end, the Democratic campaign just wasn’t good enough to win by such a wide enough margin that no amount of chicanery could negate that win.
In my experience, it’s only been within the past year or so that you could opine online, without getting flamed alive, that John Kerry is a good Senator but a lousy choice for President, and that his campaign “strategy” was flawed from the outset. After you finish railing against the swiftboating and the Ohio results, you have to admit that in the wake of the first term of the Bush regime, Kerry should have won by a landslide. Bottom line is, he just didn’t convince enough voters that his way was the right way, and he lost. (Yes, I’ve said the same of Al Gore; while he did indeed win the popular vote, and while SCOTUS handed Bush the presidency on a silver platter, Gore’s win should not have hinged on a mere couple-hundred thousand votes in Florida.)
A lot of Dems will call me a traitor for saying that, but I’ve grown so accustomed to being labeled a “traitor to the Democratic Party” lately — smiling and waving at the Obamanauts) — I really don’t care.
…let us pause to reflect on the consequences of the importance of “tradition” as defined by relgious fundamentalism — and the revolting oxymoron, “honor killing“:
NEW DELHI: In what could be a case of honour killing, the bodies of two persons, one male and the other female, both in their early twenties, were found in two gunny sacks in the Najafgarh drain near Kakrola. The bodies were reportedly decomposed, suggesting they had died at least two days ago. The girl’s relatives have been booked in the killing.
The bodies were later identified as Rajkumar and Geeta, both residents of Najafgarh. Reportedly, the two were in love with each other and wanted to get married. Geeta’s family, however, was opposed to it as Rajkumar apparently did not come from a very respectable background and had no family. He wasn’t working either and was reportedly not from the same caste.
The girl’s family allegedly tried to dissuade the two from meeting and tried to get her married elsewhere. When nothing worked, they allegedly got them both killed.
Geeta’s father, Murari Lal, was reportedly detained for questioning after the two bodies were identified.
A senior police official stated that during investigations it was revealed that Murari Lal’s younger brother, Dhirendra, who lived in the same house as Geeta and her family, was the one who actually murdered the two lovers. …
He’s especially right with this: “Gays are going to be fully accepted by society. You can either slow that process in a desperate attempt to keep the world safely the same, or you can help expedite that change and get to see what the future will be like.”
Tweet This Post! 
