LGBTQ Martyrs

Update 06 June 2013 (former addendum to A Tale of Two States)

  I am not sure of the date of this current Facebook meme (04 June, 2013), but it represents an additional illustration of the great lack of understanding of the basic issue:

The short answer is .... YES!  (someone else please sit down with Monique and explain to the Illinois legislator who these women and men and boys and girls are -- she's not going to take the time on her own -- their stories contradict her prejudice -- is my frustration starting to show?)  

Hint:  Each of the persons below is now dead for being or being perceived as homosexual.

 

 

The Fight for Marriage, and Marriage Equality

A Tale of Two States

    Coming back to roost from a season of volunteerism for pro-same-sex marriage campaigns, I honestly thought I would be writing a very different column.  The greater struggle for marriage and equality should have been in Minnesota, not in Illinois.  After all, Minnesota had Michelle Bachmann and a large Tea Party Caucus with which to contend.

    What happened?

    I propose that there are three key differences between the Minnesota experience and that in Illinois.  Minnesota did not have prior “civil unions” on which to fall back, Minnesota’s pro-same-sex marriage coalition was broad and deep, and Minnesota’s LGBTQ community is not irrevocably tied to the Democratic Party (DFL).  In fact, Libertarians and Independents formed a significant block of pro-same-sex marriage supporters in Minnesota.

    Last fall, on-line interactions between bloggist Will Kohler and IL State Representative Rita Mayfield indicate key differences between Illinois’ challenge and Minnesota’s movement from struggling to defeat an anti-gay amendment to passing full marriage equality.  Mayfield’s now famous comment is… “A civil union between two men or two women is supposed to be fundamentally the same as a civil union between a man and a women[sic]. What am I missing?”

IL Rep Rita Mayfield (D)

    Mayfield seemingly felt that gays and lesbians already had it all.  She was barraged by religious lobbyists while according to her comments, no one from her district had yet bothered to sit down with her to discuss how the differences between same-sex unions and marriage-equality impact their personal lives as her constituents. 

    In Minnesota, I watched the floor debate in Sen Jim Carlson’s office with a couple, Jim and Steve, who had personally taken the time to confront Carlson with the issue and to educate him with the real-life consequences of not being able to marry to his constituents.  Carlson admits that they changed his mind.

    To many outside of the LGBTQ community, civil unions for gays seem like a huge “gift” to a new-fangled and still too-little understood minority group. 

Trickle Down Theories of Civil Rights

Courtesy www.slapupsidethehead.com

    Safe in Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle or San Diego, one could easily forget the plight of our gay brothers and sisters who do not live in historic, safe, urban gayborhoods.  While we focus on same-sex marriage rights and piercing the pink corporate ceiling, too many of our gay brothers and sisters still struggle for basic civil rights, social recognition and the ability to live and work in peace, without humiliation or discrimination.

    As the nation’s urban gay-centers gain more rights and protections, gays elsewhere are often being increasingly isolated and attacked, possibly in quiet retaliation by those who feel threatened by recognition of these civil rights, or perhaps fear change in general.

    In 29 states, a gay person still loses many or most of his or her native civil rights as soon he or she “comes out of the closet,” only to find themselves potentially evicted from their apartments, kicked out their homes, losing their jobs, denied business services and loans and even verbally and physically assaulted with impunity by others.  (How often are urban gays told by cops that being victimized “sounds like a personal matter”?)  25 states still ban same-sex marriage. 24 states still lack basic protection for the LGBTQ workers in the private sector. 20 states still lack basic anti-hate crimes protection.  And it is still legal to discriminate in housing in 29 states.

    Urban gays often seem blinded to the plight of their brothers and sisters.  HRC (Human Rights Campaign) understandably fundraises also in rural and conservative areas while focusing spending and attention almost exclusively on expanding rights where campaigns are most likely to succeed.  But, this often feels like a theory of trickle-down civil liberties – as ineffective as Reagan’s infamous trickle-down economics.

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.