My 3/5’s of a Marriage

“The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that this system of racial separation, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans.”  Wikipedia, “Brown v Topeka Board of Education

Courtesy Wikipedia:  Street Kids confront police at Stonewall.

My ³/₅’s of a Marriage

    The trend to see civil rights, or even basic definitions of humanity, let alone citizenship, as negotiated settlements within our Constitution has impacted communities far beyond the African-American experience. 

 While the African-American community has by far born the greater share of the burden of such hypocrisy and exploitation, the victims of such attitudes have also included women, Asian-Americans and immigrants, and less formally but just as seriously, Native Americans, Latin Americans, informal enemy combatants, and the LGBTQ community.

    Misperceptions that the basic civil right of marriage equality can be a negotiated right or that an entire population group should be satisfied with something that looks like equality but really is not in fact equal, but a negotiated settlement, are only the latest manifestations of the 3/5’s rule.

    America – “land of the free?”  Not always.  Champions of equality?  Often depends on whom.

    Regrettably, throughout our history, our rhetoric has shamefully failed to live up to our reality – and that this inequality is purposeful and a choice should just piss people off! 

    Too many have bought into the system and drank the Kool-Aid™ of negotiated civil liberties.  This is a dangerous ideal and while it might be American, it is not worthy of Universalist perceptions of liberty.

    We are not alone.  Liberal Britain has recently experienced painful debates over civil rights and gay marriage.  Even France, who if anyone, has surpassed the United States in both the rhetoric and commitment to liberty, equality and the commonweal, has faced political division over the recognition of the equality of rights for the LGBTQ community.  What’s going on?

    Failing to recognize inequality is one thing – failure to act once that inequality has been identified and named is hypocrisy.

    We have all grown up with the legend of the 1950s and 1960s unified liberal struggle to achieve recognition of basic civil rights for the African-American community in the South.  Based on the struggle for LGBTQ civil rights, much of that myth could be called into question today.

    Minnesota Public Radio’s recent airing of a program on Rosa Parks called us on this mythology.  Ms. Parks had to deal with inequality and discrimination in the South.  But then she moved to the North and had to deal with inequality and discrimination in Detroit.  The lesson is that it is often easier for politicians to denounce social problems and injustices elsewhere than to deal with those found in their own backyards – or in their own state legislatures.

    Almost every ranking Democratic politician since Kennedy has aligned themselves with the Kennedy spirit and the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  One is left with the impression that hordes of young, socially aware Democrats invaded the South to march with African-Americans in Memphis, Selma and Montgomery.  Even President Obama recently mentioned Selma as though he had a personal connection to those events.  He does not.  A few whites marched.  Most did not.

Facebook Image questioning political attitudes in North Dakota

    Problematically, Obama also mentioned Stonewall, as though a ring of protective Democratic and socially empathetic Republican officials did anything to reach out to that isolated, if defiant, gang of gay kids and drag queens in New York City.  Mayor John Lindsay was technically a moderate Republican at the time – so moderate that he had no trouble running for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1971.  The Democrats were not at Stonewall – and I am beginning to wonder just how many of them showed up in time for Selma.

    A media peer in Minneapolis recently surprised Governor Mark Dayton by indicating that he was only the third “gay” governor of Minnesota, but the first “gay” governor from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Coalition.  The upswing is that the Democrats in Minnesota have always been strong on the rhetoric of support for LGBTQ civil liberties and equality, but like an ill-advised Internet hook-up, keep coming up a bit “short” in bed.

    Republican Arne Carlson is generally credited with having led the fight for recognizing and protecting gay civil rights and non-discrimination in Minnesota – after Democratic lawmakers failed to act.  In fact, Carlson is the one who first expressed the idea that Minnesota needs to be on the right side of history.  Independent Party Governor, Jesse Ventura, effectively declared one’s sexuality or gender identity to be a non-issue in public hiring, political appointments and in the application of state laws.  Republican State Senator Paul Koering brought down fellow-Republican Michelle Bachman’s first attempt to pass an anti-gay marriage amendment. 

    To date, Democratic Governor Dayton has been a very vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights and equality, and has attended a lot of parades.  He has demonstrated little effective progressive legislation and still we might be lucky to end up with the negotiated inequality of civil unions versus marriage.

    What is the deal with “negotiated” civil rights?  The labeling of African-Americans in the American South as only 3/5s of a person – and to that degree, as “persons” only for the purpose of allocating Congressional representation, is horrific and indefensible.  Historians often debate the extent to which liberal politicians of the era were complicit in this negotiated settlement.  Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson did possess bully pulpits from which to decry such injustice, and everyone else was complicit in signing the document.  In the gay community, Democratic administrations in Minnesota prior to Carlson failed to take on the risky task of extending full recognition and protections towards the state’s LGBTQ community.  Democratic President Bill Clinton freely negotiated away LGBTQ rights with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993 and the Federal “Defense of Marriage Act” in 1996.

    Now, we are being asked to accept or even to limit our ambitions at equality to civil unions, rather than to demand the right of marriage.  Many liberal politicians chide us, stating that separate does not imply unequal.

    Sorry sirs and madams, but according to the 1954 Supreme Court decision, in the United States of America, separate is not equal.  (While lawyers might indicate that this may or may not apply to LGBTQ rights, political theorists and philosophers might argue otherwise.)  Regarding equality, LGBTQ court cases against accepting civil unions as “equal” have also referenced the 1967 Loving v. Virginia which struck down laws against inter-racial marriage, based in part on the Equal Protection [for All] Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

    “Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”  Chief Justice Earl Warren, Loving v. Virginia, 1954

    Conservatives get it.  In the United Kingdom, David Cameron’s Conservative government just enforced the justice of full and equal same-sex marriages.  What is it that the Liberals and Democrats just don’t get?

    Stated bluntly, just as the liberal politicians were not “there” at Stonewall in 1969, and were not “there” in Washington in the 1990s or “there” in the Minnesota of the 1970s, we have no reason to expect them to be “here” “now”. 

    Obama might reference Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall, but the reality is that “they” were not necessarily “there.”  The LGBTQ community needs to differentiate between rhetoric and reality.  The Democratic Party might be better at historically appropriating key civil rights moments than they are in being fully present during them.  We need to be aware of tendencies towards negotiated civil rights and demand full equality – for we are a Western Liberal Civilization and we are Americans.  And, we need to both recognize, support, and demand allegiance from those who were actually there at Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall.  Even if not all gays marched in Selma, there were in fact gays at Selma, there were gays at Seneca Falls, and because the LGBTQ community is present in all genders, in all races and in all ethnic groups, we have been “present” in all of these moments and should demand that others be present in the moment we are demanding recognition of our rights.  Fair is fair.  Equality is equality.  Presence is presence.  We don’t need to settle for 3/5s of a marriage.  Separate is not Equal.

The 3rd Selma Civil Rights March frontline. From far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun; Ralph Abernathy; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ralph Bunche; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; Frederick Douglas Reese. Second row: Between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis. Heschel later wrte, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying." courtesy Wikipedia.com

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Note:  I have many friends in the Chicago, DC, and Minnesota African-American LGBTQ community that often disagree with the associations between the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and gay rights today.  I agree that there are important differences and distinctions.  But, recognizing that fact, the essential truths that inequality and discrimination are the same, regardless of whom they are directed against, is also a fact and must be recognized – along with the often unacknowledged struggles of Native Americans, Asian Americans, immigrant Americans, gay Americans and others.  If you disagree, read the histories of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho for a differing perspective. 

    Recently, Minnesotans recognized that the same biases and discrimination threated both the recent immigrant community and the LGBTQ community.  In cooperating, both groups were able to defeat popular plebiscites seeking to enshrine discrimination targeting them in the State Constitution.  Therein lies a lesson for us all.  Just saying.