Letters to the Editor
captainlarab
Published Letters: 541 Editor's Choice: 41
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Saintzak, you're not alone
[Read the article: Mitt Romney, father of gay marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with you that the gay marriage issue was not the best place to start with a drive towards equality; strategically, it's been a disaster for us. I would have preferred we start with employment discrimination protection (with the elimination of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as part of that push) which I think would have economically benefitted a larger majority of GLBT Americans, particularly those with less income and those in the red states. Any gay person in Alabama or Virginia will tell you, there's really no point in having a right to get married if doing so means that you will not be able to find local employment.
Eliminating employment discrimination would also facilitate grassroots activism. If you can't be openly gay in your hometown for fear of losing your job, you certainly can't be a grassroots activist. That also means that fewer straight people in that town can personally know an openly gay person, and those who don't know any gay people are far more likely to
However, it's important to realize how the gay marriage issue rose to the forefront. It's not as if all the major gay rights organizations had a G-8 summit and said, "Hey! Let's lead off with gay marriage!" What happened was, six plaintiffs in the state of Massachusetts believed that the Massachusetts state constitution guaranteed them the right to get married, felt that the state was violating the constitution in denying them this right, and sought redress through the court system. Turns out they were correct in their reading of the Massachusetts state constitution. Were they thinking of the broader political impact on the gay community? No. But why should they have had to? They were six aggrieved individuals who had the right as American citizens and residents of Massachusetts to seek redress of their grievance through the court systems.
So, I do agree with you about what the ideal political strategy should be (in an ideal world in which all GLBT activists work collaboratively with one another and keep the "big picture" in mind at all times), but we also need to be realistic about how we came to this point, and accept the fact that there is no gay commander-in-chief who can dictate to the rest of the community exactly what rights we're going to pursue, and when, and how.
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Left a sentence incomplete
[Read the article: Mitt Romney, father of gay marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, that last sentence in the second paragraph should have ended, "and those who don't know any gay people are far more likely to be prejudiced against them."
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All well and good
[Read the article: Mitt Romney, father of gay marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...as long as you live in Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, etc. How about the gays and lesbians who live in Ohio and Virginia and a wide variety of other "red states," who now have no way to legalize their relationships because their states have now amended their constitutions to prohibit any legal arrangement that even *looks* like marriage? You think they think our big national pro-marriage initiative was such a great idea?
Yeah, it's a great strategy for equality as long as you live in a blue-state enclave. Not so good for the GLBT Americans who live in that vast region you pass over on the plane trip from the East to the West coasts. But they're not the ones attending the $250-a-head fundraising dinners and writing huge checks for the major gay rights organizations in DC, NYC and California, so it's probably small wonder that their voices go largely unheard.
And for the record, yes, I did know about the Hawai'i suit, (I'm also friends with the attorneys who brought the suit in Vermont that led to the civil union law there). I started my historical narrative with Massachusetts, because that's the one that actually succeeded in legalizing marriage with a big "M," and the one that really started Karl Rove on his course of using the situation to his advantage by forcing a divide between the Democratic politicians and their GLBT base. Ever since they got a spanking in the 2004 presidential elections, the Democrats have seem to have kept all gay issues at arms' length, which leads to dissatisfaction among GLBT Democrats, which leads to less political giving and pro-Democrat activism by GLBT Democrats, which hurts the Democratic politicians, which then makes the Democratic politicans say something totally stupid and wishy-washy/flip-floppy about gay rights that ends up pleasing no one and making Democrats look wishy-washy and weak.
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As in "homosexuality is immoral" Peter Pace?
[Read the article: Pace out as chairman of Joint Chiefs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sweet.