Two Ways to Equal Marriage

My apologies to regular Blue Truck readers - it's a very hectic week here with work and Xmas shopping and all. I hope things will settle down soon and I can get back to regular blogging.

It's International Human Rights Day - and also Day Without a Gay. In keeping with all that, here's some very insightful remarks by Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry:

In his 1963 book, Why We Can't Wait, Martin Luther King reminded us that, "It is an axiom of social change that no revolution can take place without a methodology suited to the circumstances of the period." He wrote, "Direct action [such as peaceful protests and grassroots mobilization] is not a substitute for work in the courts and the halls of government... Indeed, direct action and legal action complement one another; when skillfully employed, each becomes more effective."

Leaders of established organizations who resist welcoming new energy, new creativity, new involvement make a mistake. We need more people speaking to more people; as I've written in my book, Why Marriage Matters, and elsewhere, it is conversations -- person to person, group to group -- over time that creates the needed climate for true social and legal change for justice.

Likewise, people now stepping up to, or stepping up their, involvement make a mistake if they don't work to connect their engagement to the tasks that will result in the legal change sought. We need more people to break the silence and make the case, not just with the most hard-core opponents but with friendly people and even our own as well as the reachable-but-not-yet-reached. And we need to connect those conversations and the change in hearts and minds they bring to the actual ways in which law changes.

When all is said and done, for instance, there are only two ways to undo Proposition 8 and restore the freedom to marry in California: creating a climate that enables the California Supreme Court to do the right thing and strike it down, or continuing to build public support in order to prevail on a new ballot measure, perhaps in 2010 or 2012. Meanwhile, non-gay and gay people can have these important conversations about who gay people are and why marriage matters in all 50 states, and win the freedom to marry in several other states that are now poised to end discrimination.

Those truly committed to change, whether through "new" methodologies or "old," will shed complacency or negativity and do their parts -- and find ways to work together to bring that change sooner. All of Dr. King's "methodologies of social change" remain as needed and relevant today; what we need is not just "new," it's more.