Seth Marnin is the Assistant Legal Director at the Anti-Defamation League who articulates the whip saw like politics present in America today
I cannot escape feeling a bit of whiplash as a result of the past few weeks’ events. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was overturned and the supporters of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, lacked standing to appeal the district court’s order declaring the law unconstitutional and enjoining California officials from enforcing it. The Voting Rights Act was gutted. Affirmative action lives to see another day. Employees’ ability to successfully raise claims of harassment and retaliation were made even more challenging to pursue. Justices aligned themselves in previously unimaginable ways. And that was just the Supreme Court.
The New York State Senate ended its session last week without taking up the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which would have added protections for transgender and gender non-conforming New Yorkers in the area of employment, housing, public accommodations, and hate crimes. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment continues to languish. Senator Wendy Davis (D) of Texas quite literally stood up for reproductive freedom, filibustering a bill that would have virtually banned abortion in the state of Texas.
Last month we read with horror about the senseless murder of a gay man in the West Village. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs revealed in its annual Hate Violence Report that 2012 saw the 4th highest murder rate of LGBTQ and HIV-affected people (LGBTQH) in history.
The Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled in favor of six-year-old Coy Mathis when it found that the school district “discriminatorily denied” Coy “full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations in a place of public accommodation due to (her) sex and sexual orientation.” But an Ohio school added a prohibition against “Afro-puffs and small twisted braids with or without rubberbands†to their updated dress code (subsequently rescinded, with apologies).
We recently learned from the Williams Institute that lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans remained more likely to be poor than heterosexual people and that transgender and gender non-conforming people report being denied access to gendered restrooms, and experience verbal harassment and physical assault in these spaces at alarming rates. Another new study told us what we have long suspected: same-sex couples are discriminated against when trying to rent an apartment or a home.
So where does this leave us? We, together, have opportunities and responsibilities. We must fight fiercely. We may not cease doing the work that got us here. We must continue to build. That means continuing to foster the alliances we have formed and seeking ways to build new bridges. Justice Scalia opens his dissent in U.S. v. Windsor telling us that “this case is about power…†I agree completely with the sentiment, if not the rest of his conclusions. This case is about power. As is voting rights. As is affirmative action. Denying access to restrooms, discriminating against people in employment, housing, or public accommodations is all about power. Who has it and who does not.
Zakhor. Remember. We must remember that we did not get here alone. We must remember the interconnections and that we rise and we fall together. These last few weeks have highlighted for us that our collective rising and falling is not neat, nor is it synchronized. We are reminded that shifts in law and culture are not static. We take steps forward, and are pushed back. There is much work that remains to be done. Simone DeBeauvior once said, “It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting.†May we go from strength to strength.
 Image of the scale of justice is courtesy via Wikimedia Commons
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