The Tyranny Of The Majority Is Unacceptable
This is Part II. You can read Part I here.
So, the results in Maine suck.
I need you to take a deep breath and stay with me for a minute.
If someone came up to you and said, “Hi! I’m going to give you this fabulous prize – which you already deserve – and all you have to do is jump fifty hurdles, which no one has ever cleared even one of before, what do you think? Are you ready?” You’d say, bullshit.
Right?
“Hi! I’m going to give you marriage equality – which you already deserve – and all you have to do is get the majority of voters to say yes in each of our fifty states, which no one has ever won even once before, what do you think? Are you ready?”
That’s right.
Bullshit.
Take another deep breath.
There are several truths I need you to accept.
Marriage is a civil right. Disagree? The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t. It’s already stated marriage is a civil right.
The United States was designed to protect the rights of all people, and to free them from the “tyranny of the majority.” Think it doesn’t exist? Plato did. He first floated the concept back in 380 B.C. Disagree that America was designed to protect minorities? Founding Father James Madison thought it was. So did did Alexis de Tocqueville – he coined the term in 1835 when he wrote “Democracy in America.”
If you live in this country and do not identify 100% as heterosexual, you are oppressed. You are automatically and effectively judged and treated differently than those who do. To what degree depends on your socio-economic status and geographic location.
David Mixner yesterday called this “Gay Apartheid.” I have struggled with the term all day. While I agree we share many of the same challenges in theory as Blacks in South Africa, the practices against us are not so blatant. That’s the beauty of oppression executed well – accomplishing it so the oppressed do not recognize their own oppression. In the end, the term doesn’t help us win hearts and minds, and that is still a battle I’m struggling with as well.
While we’re on the subject of the LGBTQ community’s relationship with the African American community, let me say this. Our struggle is similar. Our challenges were and continue to be similar. African Americans in this country are in terrible straits, and they, too, have every right to be angry. Just as we say no one is equal if we’re not, we must say no one is equal if they’re not. And they – African Americans – are not treated equally. We all can learn so much from each other. And we must.
It’s time to partner with the African American community. It’s time to understand their anger and their pain and realize that they are us in a few short decades if we don’t work together to solve the problem of class and inequality.
One of the “perks,” if you will, of being gay was that we were indoctrinated almost from birth with the supposition that we couldn’t possibly get married and have families. We ended up working a lot and making a lot of money. It’s true, the disposable income of gays and lesbians in America was the focus of marketing studies and every CEO ten years ago.
But now we’re forming families and raising children and you know what? That “perk,” that extra disposable income factor is slipping away. I was talking yesterday with Justin Elzie, the first Marine to come out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993. He asked me, “Are we going to be able to afford all these marriage battles?” The answer, quite frankly, is, “No.”
We’re not going to win marriage equality at the ballot box. Nor should we be forced to try. Nor should we ever have agreed to it. It is morally reprehensible to ever have asked us to offer our rights up for a vote. No other group in this country ever had to try to secure equality at the ballot box. It has always come from the judicial or legislative branches of government, not from the people. As former governor Jesse Ventura said election night, “If you put it up to the vote of the people, we’d have slavery again.”
So should we, as I wrote the Washington Blade mused yesterday, “make the more pragmatic push for civil unions?†Hell no.
Can you imagine if African Americans or interracial couples had been offered domestic partnerships but not full marriage equality, in essence and in name? Can you imagine, for example, Asians, banding together to secure “everything but marriage,” as we did on Tuesday in Washington state? What if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” were applied to Hispanics? Or if you could be fired in twenty-nine states just because you were blond?
Americans today would never stand for that. Nor should we.
It is time for this country to cease half-measured attempts at solving full-measured crises. As I wrote in Part I, this Rumsfeldian battle-on-the-cheap didn’t work in Iraq, it didn’t work in California, and it didn’t work in Maine.
It’s time to demand full equality, in essence and in name, in every aspect of our lives. And it’s time to look at our leaders and say, “We’ve grown up. We’re not playing your games anymore.”
Oh, I know. “Be patient.” “Work with your elected representatives.” “No battle for civil rights was ever easy.” “It’s a long hard slog.” (Sorry, that “Rumsfeldian” thread is still in my head.)
I disagree.
We can no longer continue to buy into the concept of incrementalism, getting and giving up and getting and giving up our rights, slowly but surely, for decades to come. Win marriage in California. Lose marriage in California. Win marriage in Maine. Lose marriage in Maine. And yes, forces are forming now to repeal New Hampshire’s hard-won gay marriage law.
The time has come to say to Uncle Sam, enough.
Civil rights are federal.
Who investigates civil rights abuses? The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Because civil rights are federally protected. And marriage is a civil right.
In a country that tells us from the moment we’re born that we can be fired in twenty-nine states – just for being gay, that you cannot marry in forty-five states, that your government will not recognize your marriage at the federal level, that you cannot serve in the military, well, tell me that is a free society that offers full equality for all its citizens?
There is a difference between society not accepting groups of people (which is wrong to begin with,) and the government actively making laws against a group of people, taking away rights from them – rights enjoyed by the majority. And that’s what has happened here. Laws have been made that take away rights that exist because we are human beings. Inherent rights all humans possess, by virtue of their being. We cannot allow this to continue. We must find a different path to secure our equality.
So, you will ask, will I continue to fight for marriage? Yes. Will I continue to fight for marriage state by state? Yes. Because to not would be unfair to us all. Will I continue to fight for repeal of DADT and DOMA, and enactment of ENDA? Yes. Will I continue to fight to have the LGBTQ community included in the Civil Rights Act of 1969? Yes.
But will I work to take us out of what I call the “whack-a-mole marriage machine?” Will I work to get us to the point where we decide what the game is and how we’re going to play it? Hell yes.
This is Part II. You can read Part I here.