And continuing the celebratory Friday theme: on behalf of Jewish women raised on the Upper West Side -- I'd like to say mazel tov to our nation's newest Supreme Court justice, the 112th -- and the fourth woman to don the robes of the nation's highest court.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, while lamenting that this ad didn't come out before Prop 8 passed, you can donate now and help get it on the air in California, if your pocket book is so inclined. Now, on with the original blog post...
Alex Koppelman at Salon.com's War Room blog has a perfectly devastating post on a new ad in support of gay marriage in California. His point, in short, where was this ad before Proposition 8 passed?
California's Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-1 has upheld the gay marriage ban, otherwise known as Proposition 8, that passed in a referendum last year. More strictly speaking, they held that the ban did restrict the designation of marriage "while not otherwise affecting the fundamental constitutional rights of same-sex couples." Thus it is constitutional, which is an eloquent sort of yak caca, but it was a predicted ruling.
The silver lining, if there is one, is that the court ruled not to invalidate the approximately 18,000 marriages performed in the state prior to Proposition 8's passage. This from the same court that did invalidate the marriages performed by San Francisco in 2004. Progress marches onward, or more accurately, it stumbles in an ignorant stupor towards the light of tomorrow's sobriety.
I bring all of this up, because while it is in so many ways a travesty against the civil liberties of the gay community, it does not sway me from my more hopeful post of last week. Therein, I argued that I was wrong to blast the gay community for overreaching in 2004 when it pushed gay marriage in the Bay Area and Massachusetts.
I think, despite this setback, that my general optimism remains correct. So much progress has been made, and while vast swaths of the population still vehemently oppose gay marriage, most of them aren't willing to openly oppose basic equal rights for gays. The time seems nearer than it ever has when gays and lesbians will be able to afford the same legal rights and protections of married heterosexual couples.
As for California, well... at least they're trying.
I will admit when I am wrong. Grudgingly and with teeth clenched, but I'll admit my errors nonetheless.
So I was wrong.
The subject in question is gay marriage, specifically whether the movement for legalizing gay marriage had overreached a few years ago. It was February of 2004, just as John Kerry was sealing up the Democratic presidential nomination. Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, ordered the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Rather predictably a storm of fecal matter erupted.
In the month between the directive from Newsom and the California Supreme Court's ruling to halt the marriages, some 4,000 gay and lesbian couples wed. Later that summer, the court went further still and voided all of those marriages. Still two months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, making it the first state in the union to legalize the practice.
There was something else going on that year: A presidential election. In response (partly, at least) to the actions of Newsom and the Massachusetts court, conservatives came out in droves to support 11 state-level amendments that banned gay marriage. They also backed George W. Bush for a second term.
After all of the controversy kicked up by Newsom, and all of the hand-wringing over Massachusetts, gays and lesbians in this country were left with a Republican president, an unfriendly Congress, and exactly one state in which they could wed. Early in Bush's second term, they got Samuel Alito and John Roberts, further shifting the Supreme Court away from their side of the argument.
To which, I said, the gay rights community had overreached. They had gone for it all without winning over enough of the court of public opinion. Gavin Newsom was looking for headlines and front page photos of his toothy smile. In their rush to utilize executive fiat and legislative override of majority opinion, the efforts to achieve equality for the gay community had been set back years, I argued, possibly decades.
I wasn't alone, by the way. The openly gay Representative Barney Frank criticized the San Francisco move as a "symbolic point" that did no favors to gay rights.
On a recent Sunday the NYTimes published an op-ed by Caitlan Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz titled "Showdown in the Big Tent."
THE attitude of white, liberal Hollywood toward African- American churches has long been one of almost participatory respect. Whether it’s Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, or the Blind Boys of Alabama on the iPod, or a serious — reverential — mention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference over dinner, the understanding is clear: the black church is a foundational institution in the history of the civil rights struggle, and its music (although it makes reference to Jesus Christ as a personal savior) is smoking hot.
It was only recently that the A-list discovered that this love is unrequited. Last month, Proposition 8 passed, making gay marriage illegal in California, and the demographic that lent insult to injury was the state’s African-American voters.
... Left-leaning California’s horror about this newly revealed schism between two of its favorite sons is a situation that cries out for a villain, but the one that liberal white Hollywood has chosen for the role probably won’t make it all the way to the third act.
“It’s their churches,” somebody whispered to one of us not long after the election; “It’s their Christianity,” someone else hissed, rolling her eyes. Apparently the religion espoused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is now the enemy, at least among the smart set, and if this sounds like a regional issue, it’s not.
The next day, this photograph graced the cover (top of the fold) of the NYTimes.
Before you vote on Proposition 8, you need to read this. I used to be like you--for Gay marriage. And I thought that the proposition, which aims to overturn the supreme court ruling which recognized gay marriage, was dumb, distracting, and, obvi, discriminating, disenfranchising, homophobic, embarrassing for the country etc.
But that was before I saw the sign, and--to quote the Ace of Base anthem--it opened up my eyes. (Ace of Base is just soooo right on sometimes.) The sign was more physical than most epiphanies. It was literally a sign--a sign being held at an anti-gay marriage rally. And it said "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steven."*
I immediately began to question myself, what I knew and what I thought I knew.
1) The first thing I questioned was why nobody had suggested taking the "n" of of the "Steven," rendering it "Steve." It's not that the motto "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steven" isn't catchy and powerful. But wouldn't a rhyming "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" sign be even more effective?
2) So my next question was towards myself: Had I been making uneducated assumptions about homophobia. I had always assumed that homophobia was a fairly straight forward phenomenon. The final "N" showed me that homophobia was much more textured and mutlifaceted than I had wanted to admit. There is your run of the mill dumb homophobia, whose members would have, for example, redone the sign or at least crossed out the N. And then there's really, really dumb homophobia, in which obvious poetry rules are ignored or, more likely, missed.
3) Then I wondered if I was, once again, underestimating homophobia. Was the N not mistake, but part of a deliberate poetic plan in which exact rhyme was eschewed and Emily Dikensonian near rhyme was embraced? Was this idiocy? Or the emergence of a homophobic experimental poetry sub culture?
4) Who was the dumb one now? That would be me. For making an ass out of u m e and homophobia.
So if you want to vote yes on artistic expression and yes on the renaissance of homophobic poetry, which has been called** "homo-phoetry," and no on civil rights, you'll vote Yes on Proposition 8!
You'll also want to make sure you vote for McCain-Palin, especially since Palin announced desire to amend the constitution and ban gay marriage. (In all fairness, the Governess is not that familiar with the Constitution, so she may not know what this all means.) Palin explains that she is "not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do." She'll just non judgementally criminalize their way of life.
*I swear I saw this sign. I didn't have any camera on me, but this is for real. I mean, it would be a really bizarre thing and not quite over the top enough to make up.
** by "has been called" I mean "has been called by the author."
