After years of gains and setbacks, the national movement for same-sex marriage is enjoying a period of remarkable success. Massachusetts and Connecticut became first adopters in 2004 and 2005 and that came after twenty years of advocacy. Turmoil followed, especially in California. But in 2009 three states (Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire) approved same-sex marriage. New York followed last June, and now the Washington and Maryland legislatures have acted in quick succession. Delaware's governor predicts his state is not far behind.
It's making me think about similarities between the movement for death with dignity and LGBT dignity. Like other movements for human liberty, seminal events mark a trajectory toward inevitable success.
1. It starts with consciousness-raising. As human rights lawyer Sylvia Law describes, one day a light comes on. People experience their own private "Aha!" moment. Then more do, and multiple sparks of recognition illuminate the injustice for all to see. In the 1970s LGBT advocates worked hard to muster light in the darkness of false assumptions, degradation and violence.
For end-of-life choices, common wisdom was that with death, comes suffering. We've heard doctors tell a family, "We all have to suffer some, don't we?" In our movement sparks first fly when people witness end-of-life agony and indignity and think, "This is not right." Grief magnifies outrage, and awareness dawns that American law and medicine fails us at life's end.
2. Soon fear, shame and guilt no longer keep outrage in check. People in our movement share this with LGBT communities. We all have stories of deaths of loved ones. Maybe we shrank from the bedside and let doctors continue with tubes, needles and machines long after any good could come of it. Maybe we heeded an urgent plea to increase the morphine and speed death's advance. Or maybe we didn't and feel guilty for that. Maybe Dad shot himself when he was dying of cancer and the family lives with that trauma.
Powerful forces conspire to keep talk of death taboo. We're told it's wrong to seek the relief of death when cancer's final agonies take hold. But telling our stories at kitchen tables, church basements and community gatherings turns fear into courage, grief into action. My most moving experiences come when we open a conversation about end-of-life choices, see pent-up emotion flood the room and see how eagerly people sign up for advocacy and public service.
3. The Vatican fights both movements. Catholic hierarchy uses its political power to oppose both movements. With hysterical doomsday rhetoric, it denounces gay and lesbian human rights as an "ideology of evil" and the movement for end-of-life choices as a "culture of death." To defeat Death with Dignity bills, local bishops have deployed their lobbyists and issued threats of shunning and denunciation from the pulpit to non-Catholic lawmakers and denial of the sacrament of communion or excommunication, to Catholic ones. In a surprising turn of events, Roman Catholic leaders in Maine announced they will play no role in fundraising, staffing, advertising, or campaigning against marriage equality.
I hope Catholic leadership's decision to stay its hand in Maine arises from a calculation of changing sentiment in society. If Gays and Lesbians are beyond religious oppression it's because they are no longer vulnerable to shame and guilt for who they are or the rights they seek. Today lawmakers are more likely to embrace their Gay and Lesbian sons and daughters publicly than abandon them in silence and vote against their liberty.
If the pattern holds, it won't be long before lawmakers are telling stories of the tragically painful deaths they've witnessed, rejecting the rhetoric of shame and voting courageously to empower people with choices at the end of life.
Follow Barbara Coombs Lee on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@bcoombslee
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National Healthcare Decisions Day is April 16th. Give yourself a deadline to start the conversation with your loved ones and your doctors. Preparing for death is about living fully until you die, and dying well because you are prepared.
You may also find that you want one more choice.
Gay marriage is one of the vehicles that provides a positive role model. If a young gay kid grows up in a neighborhood where some of his classmates have two moms or two dads, he finds those parents are just as involved with their kids and love them as much, as do his parents, and he sees this as a possible life for him, the chances of suicide drop dramatically. It also shows the bullies out there that other families exist.
Years ago it was assumed gay relationships were assumed to be rest-stop sex. Straight people assumed this and sadly, many gay people bought into this role, much like how women of the past often bought into the idea they did not deserve equal pay or that they had an opinion.
Gay marriage is a significant step for us. While it is not for every gay person, it is for many, and it goes a long way toward benefiting all of us, both gay and straight.
I'm not against gay marriage, I'm for it. What I question are the limitations we're putting on ourselves when I think we should be fighting for a different sort of ideals too.
What an insult to women, to compare their fight for equality with glory holes.