Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

Joni Mitchell sang that back in 1970 and it is a perennial truth.  Marriage was never designed to recognize emotional commitment.  It’s really all about economics.  Marriage originated to help ensure that wealth was passed down from generation to generation within the same family.  As a lesbian who embraces the F word (feminist), I’m not especially keen on emulating what I view as an economic institution designed by men as a vehicle to manage female sexuality.  What I am interested in is securing equal protection under the law for myself and other people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. 

So I am exceedingly dismayed that the judges on the Supreme Court of California decided that it’s OK for a bare majority (52%) of voters to rescind the rights of LGBTQ people to marry in their state.  I’m trying to make sense out of a decision that says those couples who were married before Prop 8 are still married, but those couples who want to marry tomorrow or the next day get only civil unions.  How is that not like “separate but equal?”

Sooner or later the issue of marriage equality will probably go to the US Supreme Court, if only to gain some consistency among the various laws of the states.  We should not wait around for that to happen, though, since rights that are extended through elections tend to be more durable than those extended by courts.

The brilliant Walter Dellinger recently observed that progressives shouldn’t expect Obama to give us another Warren court.  First of all, he may not get the chance and secondly, even if he does there is no reason to expect that the New Supremes will pursue social change the way that their predecessors did in the 1960s. 

In fact, the Court has often employed judicial activism to constrain social progress rather than accelerate it.  Historically the Supremes have made some pretty sketchy decisions.  Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Bowers v. Hardwick and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services come to mind, and I’m sure there are others.

Marriage equality is not the issue that some of us would have chosen to place at the forefront of the gay rights struggle, but it’s the issue we’ve got.  And I will admit that marriage is a useful shortcut to securing a host of spousal and related rights for LGBTQ families.  It would be a relief not to worry whether we will be allowed into the hospital rooms of our partners, whether our children will be taken from us, whether a deceased partner’s relatives can swoop in to claim our inheritance.  And in the end, without a marriage license, I’m still bound by paper – paper for which I spent thousands in an attempt to legally protect myself and my loved ones from the whims of those who would hurt us. 

Yesterday a friend used a different F word in reference to California.  “F*%@ California,” she said.  “Focus on New York.” She’s right, of course, and that’s what I’m doing.  I hope you will act locally too.

Wherever you are, take action and don’t give up until you get a law passed that guarantees equal treatment for everyone.  And I mean everyone, whether they are part of your group, your race, your religion, your issue – or not. 

I’m reminded of the labor leader Joe Hill, whose dying words are said to have been, “Don’t mourn.  Organize.”