"Hope can be the consequence of action, not just its cause."
Bonus: In this opinion piece for The Atlantic, conservative gay author and political analyst Jonathan Rauch says its okay to use the F-word now: "Yes, It's Fascism"
Also well worth your time: another Atlantic piece about "The Four Types of Trump Supporter" and the different ways he appeals to each type.
-----
 |
| Larry Duncan and Randy Shepherd of Washington state, whose marriage-license pic I posted last Friday, arrived for their wedding on Sunday, nattily attired this time. The couple were married at Seattle First Baptist Church, along with 24 other same-sex couples. All good wishes to them. |
Here is a movie plot you have never seen and never will see: a disadvantaged athlete struggles against the odds, makes it to the Olympics by sheer force of grit and talent, and is ahead in the race for gold—when, with the finish line in sight, the referee calls off the competition, hands the hero a medal, and everybody goes home.
Gay Americans are in sight of winning marriage not merely as a gift of five referees but in public competition against the all the arguments and money our opponents can throw at us. A Supreme Court intervention now would deprive us of that victory. Our right to marry would never enjoy the deep legitimacy that only a popular mandate can bring.
I tell my gay friends: imagine if the Supreme Court had ordered gay marriage this past June, at the end of its 2011-2012 term. November’s game-changing electoral victories would never have happened. Gay marriage advocates would be forever stereotyped as political losers who won by running to mommy. Our opponents would mock and denigrate our marriages as court-created, legalistic fictions. The country would never have shown how much it has changed.
If we have come that far in five years, imagine where we might be in five more. Imagine, then, the opportunities to extend and consolidate support that we will lose if the Supreme Court steps in now. Strange but true: a favorable Supreme Court intervention next year would make us weaker, not stronger.
In 2010 the most important gay rights story that you probably never read came from Gallup: “Americans’ support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations ‘morally wrong’ dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup’s decade-long trend.”Andrew Sullivan, commenting on this article:
Since—well, since forever, the American majority regarded homosexuality as immoral, and the only question was whether to tolerate or repress it. In 2008, however, the lines converged, at 48% on each side. Today, same-sex relations are deemed morally acceptable by a margin of 52% to 43%. The “moral values” argument is on our side.
This is a watershed in gay Americans’ relations with our country. The belief that homosexuality is morally wrong undergirds all the other problems that homosexuals face. When the foundation of moral disapproval crumbles, so, in time, must all the superstructures of discrimination and stigma. To a majority of the public, the “morally deviant” shoe will be on the antigay foot.
So let’s pinch ourselves and say it: American homosexuals and our allies are entering a new and unprecedented phase. For the first time, we are emerging into majority status. Obviously, this is grounds for celebration, but it comes with a challenge. Majority status changes the political calculus in a fundamental way, one that requires us to move, and move quickly, to a majority mind-set. . . .
Majority support does not necessarily make the “all accelerator, no brakes” approach ineffective, but it does change the cost-benefit calculation. Pushing on every front at once is no longer cost-free. Far from it: To the public, a shrill, aggressive majority appears bullying and menacing, not plucky and righteous. Worst of all, it looks oppressive. . . .
FOR ANY minority rights movement, the turn to majority status is very easy to miss. With little or no warning, tactics that make sense for an insurgent minority stop working. Militant activists find themselves at sea, their messages no longer resonating, their styles antiquated. In the African-American civil rights movement, the activist vanguard lost its way in the thickets of Black Power and “by any means necessary.” Movement feminism likewise missed the turn, dead-ended at the minority-minded Equal Rights Amendment, and faded away.
The gay rights movement will have to show unusual foresight to be an exception. Our every instinct will be to press our advantage, exploit our momentum, and drive the other side into the sea. The straight world has ginned up any and every shabby excuse to hurt gay people, with organized religion often leading the way. And now we’re supposed to be tolerant?
Well, yes. As gays become a majority, the burden of toleration—and it is a burden—shifts to us. This is the most difficult adjustment a minority rights movement can make. Our opponents are betting we will fail to make it. In fact, that is now pretty much their entire strategy.
Gay Americans and our allies are not ready to think of ourselves as a majority. And we are not fully there yet, certainly not solidly. But the benefits and, yes, burdens of majority status are descending with wonderful speed. We will miss the turn if we don’t start braking now.
There is a dynamic here. The more we advance the arguments for equality, the more intolerable inequality becomes, and the more unfathomable opposition seems. And so, even as solid, substantive change is obviously occurring (national opinion polls now reveal over 50 percent support for marriage equality and far higher levels for non-discrimination more generally), we feel as if we are losing terribly, and so adopt a posture and rhetoric more extreme than necessary and potentially counter-productive. At this stage in a civil rights movement, we have to keep the conviction behind change, while allowing the losers some time to save face and come around.
One simple word of advice: when you are tempted to use the word "hate", substitute "fear" or "bias". It's usually more true and dials down the temperature a notch - where the rational advantage held by the case for gay equality still holds.
Broaching the subject and confessing desperation was like uttering the password to a secret brotherhood of beleaguered, overwhelmed, weary, or sometimes just resigned adult caregivers. But the sect seemed ashamed to be seen.
As I reached my own breaking point, two things happened. First, my father caught sight of my distress. He would not accept assisted living on his own account, but when I told him that he was already in assisted living but that I was the assistance; that I was overwhelmed, underqualified, and barely hanging on emotionally; that I wanted to be his son again, not a nurse and nag and adversary—when I told him all that, and when his sister and the social worker chimed in, he acceded. He was still, after all, my father, and it was still his job, he understood, to care for me. Second, the inevitable happened. As his disease overtook him, not even he could deny his incapacity. And so he moved, reluctantly, to a nearby assisted-living place, which gave me the help I needed and, to no one’s surprise but his own, gave my father more rather than less independence. Another phase of the story then unfolded, ending with his death in December. His last gesture to me, so very characteristic, was to wave me away. He wanted me to go on with my life rather than hover by his bedside.
I did go on, but I emerged from the whole experience not a little indignant. The medical infrastructure for elder care in America is good, very good. But the cultural infrastructure is all but nonexistent. How can it be that so many people like me are so completely unprepared for what is, after all, one of life’s near certainties?
I suspect a lot of bloggers may be introverts, because blogging is great if you like to sit in front of the internet all day. If not for my aversion to specialising in one subject, I probably would have been an academic historian, because I think it would have suited me to work in libraries back before there was an internet. (In a way, the internet is a library that talks back.)
Britain's most famous civil partners, David Furnish and Sir Elton JohnIn politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.
We take very different positions on gay marriage. We have had heated debates on the subject. Nonetheless, we agree that the time is ripe for a deal that could give each side what it most needs in the short run, while moving the debate onto a healthier, calmer track in the years ahead.
It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill. . . .
Linking federal civil unions to guarantees of religious freedom seems a natural way to give the two sides something they would greatly value while heading off a long-term, take-no-prisoners conflict. That should appeal to cooler heads on both sides, and it also ought to appeal to President Obama, who opposes same-sex marriage but has endorsed federal civil unions. A successful template already exists: laws that protect religious conscience in matters pertaining to abortion. These statutes allow Catholic hospitals to refuse to provide abortions, for example. If religious exemptions can be made to work for as vexed a moral issue as abortion, same-sex marriage should be manageable, once reasonable people of good will put their heads together.
In all sharp moral disagreements, maximalism is the constant temptation. People dig in, positions harden and we tend to convince ourselves that our opponents are not only wrong-headed but also malicious and acting in bad faith. In such conflicts, it can seem not only difficult, but also wrong, to compromise on a core belief.
But clinging to extremes can also be quite dangerous. In the case of gay marriage, a scorched-earth debate, pitting what some regard as nonnegotiable religious freedom against what others regard as a nonnegotiable human right, would do great harm to our civil society. When a reasonable accommodation on a tough issue seems possible, both sides should have the courage to explore it.
Well, what do you think, guys? Leaving aside the legal questions and enormous political wranglings, let's imagine for a moment that Congress did enact a Federal Civil Unions Act - and let's imagine further that this meant you and your partner could enter into a civil union anywhere you live in the U.S.A.; and that you would then be recognized by the federal government (but not every state government) and have all the federal-level rights and benefits of married couples.
Would you settle for that, instead of holding out for full, complete marriage equality everywhere, in every state as well as on the federal level?
In the United Kingdom, Parliament enacted a Civil Partnerships Act in 2005, which by all accounts seems to be working just dandy for our Brit cousins. I've done some reading and , and as far as I can tell, the only differences between CP and marriage are these little details:
1. Civil partnership ceremonies cannot be held in a church; they have to be held in a marriage license office, or in some non-religious place (like a hotel or banquet hall) that is licensed for weddings.However, in every other respect, as far as I can make out, the laws recognize civil partners in exactly the same way that they do married couples; the effect is being married in every way, but without the name. I wonder if some Blue Truck readers from Britain could comment on how well this is working over there; so far, I've not come across any complaints except from the far rightwing religious types, of which they have a lot fewer than we do.
2. Civil partnership ceremonies cannot include any religious readings, prayers, or hymns.
3. Civil partnerships are technically not marriages but . . . civil partnerships. Your passport is marked CP, not married, if you have a partner, and so are other legal documents.
