This week Maine voters threw out the state’s new and not yet enacted law legalizing gay marriage. after both sides poured lots of money into outreach and ads and voter mobilization. And, not surprisingly, people are upset, sad, and angry.
It makes me angry too; this endless series of referenda, in which our neighbors go out an vote on whether gay and lesbian people should be treated equally by our government, isn’t just a political battle; it’s humiliation. Most Americans would agree that the residents of a town shouldn’t get to vote on whether black people should be allowed to live there, or on whether Jews should be allowed to build temples in their states. If we left these questions up to popular votes, we’d have had slavery into the 20th century and the deed restrictions in my neighborhood would probably still prevent me from selling my home to a non-white person.
Add to that the major source of funding for anti-marriage groups in Maine: the National Organization for Marriage, a group that has been declining to obey campaign finance rules in several states, and which many of us suspect is basically a money laundering operation to allow churches – primarily the Catholic and Mormon churches – to spend money on political activities without endangering their tax-free status – and the whole thing looks less than an exercise in direct democracy and more like a sham. (NOM could put an end to those suspicions by simply obeying disclosure laws in the states where they have been active; they have declined to do so. Reasonable people may draw their own conclusions from that.)
And so after election day, I am left with two questions for gay people. First, how angry are we, really. And second, why do we participate in this sham?
We are, as far as I can tell, angry enough to tweet and comment on blogs and make Facebook groups. We’re even angry enough to go to Washington and book hotel rooms and march around and then go to parties at night.
What most of us are apparently not angry enough to do is what others have done in the past: actual civil disobedience. Mainers: your neighbors just announced that you are not equal. You are not really citizens of your state. You ran a well-executed campaign, and still lost; the unfortunate fact is that there’s always a sad, embarrassing aspect to these things. We drag out our most clean cut faces and basically beg the people around us: Please don’t declare our families nonexistent.
Are you really angry? Are you angry enough to do what hundreds did after the Supreme Court upheld laws that made your sex life illegal in 1987, and to try to walk into the Court and get arrested in the process? Are you angry enough to file joint tax returns next year and wait for the IRS and your state government to come after you? Are you angry enough to show up en masse to the town clerk’s office and refuse to leave until you are given a marriage license?
(Imagine if every same sex couple in America sent off a joint tax return next year with the “married” box checked. How long would it take the IRS to even get through the pile of rejected returns? I suspect it would be like the foreclosure situation now, where people live in houses for over a year without paying a mortgage because the bank just hasn’t gotten to their foreclosure yet.)
Back in the earlier days of the AIDS epidemic, when people were far more desperate (no good antivirals) and the government and medical establishment far less active in fighting the disease, ACT UP was the result. And we saw ACT UP members shutting down Wall Street and blocking bridges in San Francisco.
So forgive me if I see lots of gay people who are angry enough to tweet about it, but that’s all.
Which leads me to the second question: why participate in this nonsense? The next time someone tries to launch a “Gay people: OK?” referendum, the right response is to go to court and block it, because the right to equal treatment under the law is not subject to popular vote. If that fails, the right next step is to follow the signature collectors and form a circle around them and block them, and get arrested doing it. And to form a human wall around polling places on election day, because an election that includes a vote on basic rights is not an American election.
Now, I know, most of us do not want to get arrested. That includes me. But I’m a lot more inclined to write checks to a legal defense fund for people interfering with an immoral and un-American attempt to create a separate class of citizens in the guise of democracy than to write a check for someone to make “please don’t kick me” ads.
Gay people are a relatively small minority in this country. We are, however, a big enough minority to be a very big headache – disrupting daily life in peaceful but highly annoying ways, clogging up the courts, and so on.
If you are really angry, act like an angry person. If you really think, as I do, that the whole idea of these referenda is appalling and wrong, don’t participate with them – interfere with them. Get every gay person in the state to sign a petition for a referendum on whether Christians should be allowed to have pets, or to make divorce illegal, or some other kind of nonsense. It would not be hard, in many states, to fill ballots up with insane nonsense like that to make a point.
There’s a point where participating in these things is just playing your role in your own oppression. It’s sad and it will crush your soul. Stop it.
{ 5 comments }
John, after reading this post, and the good point you mentioned on Sciguy about the ‘wedge strategy’ in regards to science and public policy, I wanted to make a response as a Christian. I have a very strong sense of justice and it always bothers me when Christians use their beliefs to try to ‘force’ others to accept Christian principles when God himself does not do that.
A good example of the hypocrisy of this in action is when Christians (whose entire theology is supposed to be based on the concept of love of God and neighbor) harass and persecute other Christians of different denominations.
You might not be aware of this, but Jehovah’s Witnesses, (who are Christians), were also refused the legal right of marriage in some countries, such as Greece, and even denied burial rights for many years on account of the strong influence the Church had on the government & public policy. We’ve been fighting legal battles for decades on all kinds of freedoms which have been denied to us, and our members have been viciously attacked by other Christians for our refusal to participate in ‘the standard’ or widely accepted church doctrines of whatever the dominant religion of the land is.
But this is very important to remember…Don’t forget that a true Christian (who truly lives by the principles that Christianity was founded on), will not interfere with public policy or hold public office. In fact, the original Christians of the 1st century never held public office or got involved with politics at all. Our job is to teach and instruct those who are favorably disposed, but never force anyone to convert to our views. Both the secular historical record and the Biblical account is very clear on that point.
Even Jesus himself refused to have any involvement in politics by actually turning down the attempted effort of his Jewish countrymen to place him in public office…as mentioned in the following verses:
“Hence when the men saw the signs he performed, they began to say: “This is for a certainty the prophet that was to come into the world.” Therefore Jesus, knowing they were about to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew…” (John 6:14, 15)
So a Christian who is being ‘true to form’ should never try to force a conversion or force acceptance of Christian principles, and especially not by attempting to interfere with the laws of the land in order to do so. The Bible makes it very clear that God doesn’t want people to obey him out of fear or force,…but rather, out of heartfelt love, and a desire to please him. But even so, he has given humans the gift of ‘free will’ to chose for themselves. So when other humans interfere with that right, they are actually acting against God’s will, not in harmony with it. Anyone who claims to be a Christian should be aware of that fact. If not, they are presumptuously acting on their own personal & political motives and agenda…not God’s.
Honestly, I’m not all that angry about the Maine vote. I mean, I’m not thrilled, but I can’t really get up in arms about something that will eventually come down to one thing, a Supreme Court decision.
For my part, I feel the anti-gay marriage lobby is afraid of taking this to the Supreme Court. I think that’s why we’re dealing with election season after election season with new referendums for and against gay marriage. In the end, they are all useless when the Supreme Court (FINALLY) convenes on this issue.
What I am tired of is a gay community that is so believing in the Democratic party being the ultimate deliverers of equal rights. Women got the right to vote at a time when there were no women in Congress. Blacks were freed by a congress void of African Americans. Gays have this silly notion that if we elect more gay people, that will change the laws.
Furthermore, I am saddened that we, as a country, have been unable to save the Republican Party from the Conservative Christian movement. I hoped part of the change that was promised by Obama’s election was a rescued GOP. Instead, it has been entrenched in the same failed rhetoric. Worse yet, the Democratic party has made itself vulnerable to their attacks once again.
The entire political process is failing our country, and I have little time for anyone who continues to buy into the sad us vs. them mentality that comes with it. Still, I remain optimistic about the future of the gay rights fight, and I believe that every state that rules on gay marriage, whether it is for or against, is another step towards victory.
Frankly, that’s exactly what I fear – taking this topic to the U.S. Supreme Court. I do not see any strong *federal* arguments that would make a majority of the justices vote to impose gay marriage on the states – in fact, in similar cases the justices have often looked to state legislators and voter sentiment to decide whether something has risen to the level of being protected as a constitutional right (e.g., death penalty, interracial marriage, execution of mentally retarded criminals) – and here, we have 31 state referenda and I don’t know how many legislative votes against gay marriage, versus basically 4 pro-gay marriage legislative votes (one of them repealed by the voters [Maine] and another vetoed by a governor [California]).
Because even if the U.S. Supreme Court were to rule in favor of gay marriage, I’m confident that that would so enrage and embolden the (ironically named) tea-baggers that we’d see an amazingly strong push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And *that* would be a disaster.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think the U.S. citizens would be able to arrange a Constitutional amendment. Isn’t that something that has to go through the legislature? In it’s current condition, I don’t think Congress could pass a constitutional amendment declaring the sky blue.
I feel the gay marriage case that eventually hits the Supreme Court will go down in history much like Roe. vs. Wade. It will allow an important right to a group of people, but will be constantly under fire.
I agree John, it is very humiliating to watch voters go to the polls and vote on my life. In Washington it was a double edged sword, on the one hand the people voted to approve Ref 71, and on the other hand we voted ourselves separate not equal. I am a huge fan and friend of Dan Savage and I beleive his thinking is on the right track. We must lobby, we must conduct civil disobediance where possible and we must shame our neighbors who don’t support equality.
Besides getting arrested is not a big deal, i’ve been arrested twice. Posession of a illegal substance and drunk in public (in New Orleans, go figure). Oh I am reading a interesting book by Max Blumenthal called Republican Gommorah which is quite eye opening. I saw Max on Charlie Rose discussing the book, fascinating, background on how the Republican party has swung so far right.
j
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