Keith Olbermann on Proposition 8
I particularly like Keith Olbermann’s take on this issue as he goes to lengths to de-personalize his response, which makes his argument that this is a basic human rights issue all the more compelling. (Not that something cannot be both personal and a human rights issue, but, you know, rhetoric and all that.) To say that I have been upset about the passage of Proposition 8 — and of similarly discriminatory laws in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida passed this election — would be a gross understatement. I spent much of President-Elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech and Senator John McCain’s concession speech crying because I had made the mistake of looking up the returns for California just before. While I am not idealistic enough to believe that prejudices against members of the glbtq community have been erased, I had hoped, perhaps naively, that we might at least have a raw majority of people standing against this sort of thing.
I have been for a long time ambivalent about gay marriage — fighting to enter into an institution founded on gender inequity that engenders discrimination against those who are unmarried for whatever reason seems like another example of striving not to eradicate inequality, but instead, to enter into the high end of a system that would remain unequal. I still believe that. However, the passage of Proposition 8 and its ilk have driven home to me just how much of a civil rights issue this really is. This is about marriage, sure, but it is, more importantly to me, about blatant, legal discrimination against people, and that I cannot condone in any way shape or form. That is wrong, period. No quibbling, no arguing, it is just flat wrong. Am I pro-gay marriage? Not exactly, but, I’m more anti-discrimination than I am anti-gay marriage. There just shouldn’t be these sorts of discriminating laws on the books.
Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, pictured in the New York Times.[source]
Last night I was doing some research on the history of miscegenation laws in the United States for a course I am designing. The couple who took their case to the supreme court rather appropriately had the last name Loving. The Lovings fought for years for the right to move back (legally) to their hometown in Virginia. Mildred Loving outlived her husband by a number of years, and she spent her life saying again and again that she was not a political person. She passed away earlier this year, and perhaps she was not political, but she did make a rare public statement on gay marriage in 2007:
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
Mildred Loving’s statement is a little hokey, I guess, but it’s earnest. I am glad to hear that someone who was perhaps an unlikely civil rights figure can make the connection to these more contemporary issues. Laws banning black-white interracial marriage were on the books until Loving v. Virginia was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967; that fact seems appalling now, even knowing the fraught history of civil rights in this country. Perhaps that there were laws explicitly banning the marriage of same-sex couples will seem equally appalling in 40 years.
And, as to my general opposition to marriage, here’s an excellent statement from Dean Spade and Craig Willse that addresses the issue: No To State Regulation of Families!
They also include links to a lot of further reading on the topic. In conclusion, I’m ambivalent as I ever was.