To make an analogy, anti-miscegenation laws were a horrible injustice but it wasn't "cowardice" of the politicians who favored civil rights to avoid running around the country losing elections left and right over the issue throughout the 1950s and 60s. You want to ask a politicians to take some risks on behalf of a controversial cause, but not so many risks that they lose. Backing the California referendum would have been pure cowardice -- surrendering any opportunity to advance the cause of gay equality in the name of political expedience. What Obama's doing is clever, hard-nosed practical politics.
OKAY, so I was educated in the last century, but back then they taught us that an analogy, while not actually requiring an analogue grounded in some sort of shared reality, was at least not weakened by the occurrence; in other words, we'd like to know what politician was running around the country winning elections by leaving miscegenation out of his call for civil rights. Or name us a white Southern politician who actually ran on the promotion of civil rights and/or an end to segregation, whatever the extent. We'll spot you Richmond Flowers, if you'll agree to tell us what happened when Bear Bryant offered his son a football scholarship.
The fact is that no one had to mention miscegenation in connection with civil rights, and no one could avoid the issue just by not talking about it. "Civil rights" was just another name for miscegenation to large groups of voters.
And the other salient feature of the "debate" is that it was settled by the Court, and not by politicians.
To sum up: were people running around the country losing elections by crusading against anti-miscegenation laws? No. Is that because they felt "miscegenation" was a millstone around the neck of voting rights, employment opportunities, access to justice, and other, more "palatable" rights issues? Maybe some, but--as the commonly accepted wisdom runs these days, except when it chafes to admit it--"those people" didn't vote for you anyway. LBJ famously announced he'd signed over the South to the Republican party along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Were there some civil rights "liberals" who nevertheless actually believed the right to marry the person of one's choosing was in fact something different from "civil rights"? Yes. Just as there are today.
So then, let's look the elephant in the eye before the room fills up with bullshit. Is there some figure we can point to, extend the thanks of a succeeding generation to, or put on a stamp, maybe, for his contribution to the advancement of civil rights by virtue of shutting up about interracial marriage? We'll take those crickets to be chirping "No". The mere fact that someone can cough up "miscegenation laws" as an example of the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement is a tribute to the people who rejected gradualism and legalistic hair-splitting. Martin Luther King's birthday is observed as a national holiday. Roy Wilkins' is not.
Enshrining a distinction between "civil unions" and "marriage" is cowardice. It is pandering without a John. Whose vote does it change? It holds out the promise of mere fence straddling while permanently backhanding gays and lesbians as an expedience with no foundation, not to mention the fact that scant weeks ago Senator Obama was said to be sailing towards the Presidency on the pacific waters of New, Engaged Voters, not on his ability to submarine bigots with doubletalk. Say it again: it's bad enough that you're asked to justify this sort of thing over and over again: Iraq war budgets, FISA flip-flops, AIPAC reach arounds, and Stupid Lapel Pin Tricks. What's much worse is that you seem so eager to oblige.
5 comments:
So, walk me through this. When "our" guy does it, he's fucking shrewd. when their guys do it, they're doin' it us again?
Give me an example in one's actual, personal life when this "cleverness" was deemed acceptable.
Oh, I see, but politics are different.
And so I await another election of voting against one dickhead as opposed to another dickhead.
Oh, and thanks, Dog, for making my ass slam shut by putting up Babs' photo.
I have a question:
Okay, say I'm a guy who is really, really opposed to anti-miscegenation laws. Candidate X says that they aren't a big deal and he doesn't plan to try to get rid of them.
So here's the question: Why should I vote for candidate X?
Well, I'll ignore the question and vote for Mr. X anyway. He's probably better then that bastard Mr. Y, at least.
Well, candidate X wins the election. Yay! Here's where the benefits come rolling in.
It seems to me Legislator X has two options:
1. He can do exactly what he said he would, and ignore anti-miscegenation laws. That doesn't really seem to advance my goal of getting those laws repealed.
2. He does, in fact, start an aggressive Civil Rights push and works really hard to repeal anti-miscegenation laws. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean that he got into office by lying to a bunch of people who wouldn't have voted for him, otherwise? Is that suddenly acceptable because he did it in the service of my views?
I've never grasped the logic of this strategy. People seem to think that anybody with one liberal view should hold ALL liberal views, and that therefore even if I'm for gay marriage, I should elect a guy who is against it because that guy has a really good stance on health care, or whatever.
Or, to put it more simply: I should accept that all issues are exactly as important as Matthew Yglesias says they are.
As my friend is wont to say: Let's all fsck one another till we're the same colour.
I'm not I agree that marriage and civil unions can't co-exist without marking queers as socially lesser. If we move the privileges provided by the state from marriage to civil unions, leaving marriage as a ceremonial/social/religious/spiritual event, that would be one less intrusion of government into private life (ie, its authorization of such and such a church to change the civil status of the couple).
Practically, I attended a straight marriage for some friends a few years ago, an outdoor extravaganza mixing pagan, wiccan, and other traditions. At the conclusion they were married under the law, but I've no doubt there was a form they had to sign someplace, perhaps elsewhere before the ceremony, that was to register them with the local government. Let all pre-existing marriages become civil unions under the law, and henceforth leave the marrying to churches and others, while requiring registration of a civil union to get what were heretofore the privileges of marriage.
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