It's only fitting that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional on the same day that the Boston Globe reported on a Boston-area black church proclaiming acceptance for members of the LGBT community. From coast to coast, it seems, equality is winning the day.
I'll always regret that it took me so long to fully accept same-sex marriage. For a number of years, I believed that civil unions were "good enough" for gay and lesbian couples. If they have all of the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage, I reasoned, there was no need for same-sex couples to actually use the term "marriage."
It wasn't until the end of the debate over same-sex marriage in Massachusetts that I really began to take stock of my own feelings on the issue. I came to the conclusion that my opposition to same-sex marriage reflected unconscious homophobia; there was no logical reason to allow the law to accord separate-but-"equal" status to same-sex couples.
I'm happy to see some courts and churches attempt to remedy decades of discrimination against gays and lesbians. One hopes that the clarion call of justice for same-sex couples will grow loud enough for the Republican Party and the larger conservative movement to hear it.
The attacks on the gay rights movement from the right aren't just bigoted; they're boring. I'm tired of being told that my gay and lesbian friends are responsible for all that is wrong in the world. I'm tired of being told that they're somehow inferior to me, somehow undeserving of full legal protection. I'm tired of being told that I'm supposed to loathe people I like.
Equality is an American virtue. Yes, America hasn't always lived up to this virtue, but with every positive court ruling, with every change of heart and mind, we're getting closer.
I believe a better day is coming. I believe the day is coming when even the most conservative of churches proclaim that all of God's children deserve equal love and equal protection. I believe the day is coming when candidates from both major parties will aggressively compete for the LGBT vote.
I believe the day is coming when my gay and lesbian friends will be able to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night without worrying about the pain of a bigot's fist or a fundamentalist's words.
Equality is coming! Justice is coming! It must come. How can it be stopped? As Victor Hugo once noted, all the armies in the world cannot stop an idea whose time has come.
My gay and lesbian friends deserve justice. They're citizens, damn it! They should have never been denied equality. The love they feel for their spouses and partners is as moral as anybody else's love. They've fought our wars, built our towers, taught our children. How dare we tell them they're less than human, less than equal?
It took me years to accept the wisdom of the four justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court who ruled that gay and lesbian Bay Staters had the right to marry, but now I realize they struck a noble blow for justice. I just wish I had had enough wisdom, enough empathy, to recognize that reality at the time.
May God bless the justices in Massachusetts, and the federal appeals court judges in California, who understand that He meant for all of us to live together and treat each other with respect. May God bless the brave churches doing the hard but necessary work of confronting bigotry and limited thinking.
May God bless every married couple -- gay and straight -- who know that love is the answer to every problem, the cure to every ailment, the balm to every wound.
May God bless all of us who understand the quality of equality -- even those of us who needed time to understand.
Follow D. R. Tucker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drtucker
This is about equal protection. That’s why we have courts and the constitution. History has taught us that politicians and religious leaders had been wrong and make mistakes. So the Constitution says freedoms belong to every one of us -- the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom to marry -- and they act as a safeguard on some of the other parts of the system that sometimes get it wrong. The ones who needed time to understand that no one deserves to ride on the back of the any type of bus!
Re: "For a number of years, I believed that civil unions were "good enough" for gay and lesbian couples. If they have all of the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage, I reasoned, there was no need for same-sex couples to actually use the term "marriage."
While I am glad you've changed your mind, you didn't 'refudiate' the lie in that claim. "Civil" unions DON'T confer "all of the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage". They're not consistent from State to State (for the very few States that even have them). Some States went so far as to change their Constitutions to prevent "civil" unions from ever being created. At least one such State had language specificially denying those benefits, privileges and responsibilities to ANY union even "resembling marriage".
(An aside: No one ever points out that 30-odd States had to change their Constitutions to enshrine discrimination into law because the Constitutions they had before they changed them would have permitted equality. I use "change" because to 'amend' something implies making it better, and these changes most assuredly don't.)
Then there's the "one-way Federalism" that the mis-named "Defense" of Marriage Act created, requiring the Federal government not to recognize perfectly legal marriages from the States that DO have equal marriage. There's 1,176 Federal "effects that flow from marriage" that the "D"oMA prevents the Federal government from bestowing.
Equality won today!!!!!