Queer State of Union

By: Shmueli Gonzales

Posted: May 21, 2004

 

I find it amazing that in the 21st century one need write about the state of gay rights in America. I find it as shameful as the fact that America actually had to debate the issue of civil rights in the 1960s.

There is a lot being said about gays in the media. However amid all the sensationalism there has been a void of substance. It makes me wonder why gay people do not seem to be taking notice that the joke is on us. Entertainment and sloppy, chic media has been the insecure, hallow, American public¹s way of distracting from the reality of its discrimination.

The other day, my partner picks up OC Weekly, the modish throw rag that everyone progressive picks up with their chai lattes and Red Bulls. Two white, attractive fags don the cover that claims to sport “A Secret History of American¹s Queerest County.” It sounds like a ridiculous claim, however the more I consider it; it¹s probably closer to the truth that I care to admit.

As I read the notable facts I realized that the county that is too apathetic to have a distinguished gay rights presence is a symbol for gay America. Gays live in mass in the havens of their upper-middle class neighborhoods, in the county that is over run by intern-denominational splinter-grouped evangelical churches that hand out voter guides, and an ample supply of “don¹t ask, don¹t tell” policies that are enforced by a culture of homophobia if one deviates from that suggested discretion. In affluent Orange County gays have become too drunk of their own success to even give notice to their own rights.

Through the second half of the 1990s gay people stood by as the so-called Defense of Marriage Act passed with the help of Bill Clinton. The same man that defined felatio as not being sex also defined marriage as something sacred. The liberal state of California, whom the faithful claim is destined to fall into the ocean for its sinful ways, showed their true colors with the anti-marriage Proposition 22. Queers didn’t seem take notice that the tide of public opinion was against us as they were too busy indulging the season of capris-like crop-pants from GAP and Range Rovers.

Let¹s face the facts, yes it’s quite true that public opinion is against gay rights and gay marriage. I won¹t refute the conservative right when they like to point out that Proposition 22 was passed by an “overwhelming majority.” That doesn¹t change the fact that the American public was wrong.

How is it that people have forgotten that in the 1960s public opinion was against integration. It took a ruling of the US Supreme Court to turn the tide, an act of “activist judges” if you will.

1957 Ingration of Central High School in Little Rock, mob geers student Elizabeth Eckford.

President Bush, fervently reprimanded state Supreme Court activist judges for forcing the issue of gay marriage. The truth is that the state Supreme Courts have had to act because of the unwillingness of the US Supreme Court to tackle the issue lest they publish a precedent. The issue is once that could no longer be ignored, it would not just go away if we refused to recognize it. The shame in the current political debate over gay marriage is not that America is so loudly debating it, but that our courts have not risen to the occasion until now to give equal protection.

No matter how you slice it or dice it, America needs to wake up and recognize that we are a Republic that has a judicial branch intended to bring equilibrium to the word of law that governs us. In this republic the Supreme Courts have had to act in to ensure the rights of the minority. Our country has championed social justice in so many areas when we have realized that we need to protect the right of the few amid the rule of a majority.

FORMER JUDICIAL PREDJUCIES: Poster for a lecture given by 6 Judges against the Civil Rights Bill. The bottom of the post reads, "Members of the Judiciary"

However in the last decade gay civil rights have suffered because voting mobs have tried to hijack our nation by employing ballot provisions. The successes have only been enjoyed by the self proclaimed moral majority because the Courts have not been willing to put the prejudiced mobs in check and balance out our laws where constitutional rights are lacking.

Gay marriage will not be withheld forever. When the marriage licenses start flowing no doubt there will be small minded, but loud mouthed clans blocking the doorways to registrar¹s offices and politicians supporting them just as it happened when blacks were being integrated in the south. However the turn of events won¹t be exactly the same. People like me wont forget and we will remind people of our current sad state when everyone claims they were open to gay marriage just as much as they were open to integration. In hindsight, everyone is a humanitarian liberal for some reason.

Conservative religious activists detract from the issue or human rights when it comes to rights of gay people and insist on claiming that they are defending their rights to free exercise of their religion. In their minds they believe that gay people having rights infringes on their right to be, even resorting to out right urban legend sounding “facts” to back their arguments.

To quote Faye Dunaway¹s version of Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest, “the sword cuts both ways.”

Marriage itself is an institution of religious significance born out of the need for cultures to feel that their relationships were officiated.

Protesters of gay marriage say that they are defending the Judeo-Christian value of marriage, the go on to define it as a union between one man and one woman. That is intellectually dishonest. Judaism and Christianity do not have a common mind on marriage. In traditional Judaism marriage is officiated and dissolved by the religious institution, which is just one of many differences between the two faiths when it comes to defining a union. But then again, even Judaism is not monolithic in its idea of marriage; as the Eastern European Jews forbade polygamy in the middle ages to ease their Christian neighbors, however this was never forbidden to the North African/Mediterranean Jews who openly practiced polygamy in near eastern countries until it was curbed with the new laws enacted with the founding of the State of Israel. Religion has been defining and redefining marriage almost as long as the practice has been in effect.

When I consider the fight for gay marriage rights I consider it a First Amendment issue. In the 1980 the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism and later the Reform movement of Judaism in American, the largest of all American Jewish denominations, in the late 1990s sanctioned gay marriage. This action has been followed by other progressive movements of various faiths. As far as I see there are millions of Americans who are being denied to right to practice a central life cycle event administered by their faith according to their creed.

Moralists are showing their schizophrenia by regularly crying that their right to free exercise of their religion is being infringed upon, but are in this case asking the government to bar a religious institution by civil law and invalidate the “free exercise” clause of the US Constitution. However this is logical while we have a White House administration that also dishonestly justifies its actions as a moral crusade.

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