The California decision to legalize same-sex marriage is a welcome wind of change across the American flag. For the first time in too long, the court has judged that American constitutional ideals are more important than religious ideology. The Republican California court ruled that every citizen has the freedom to join in marriage. It's that clear. No amount of lobbying, bullying, or evangelical bellowing has cemented enough silliness into the California system to stop judicial reason.
After a similar decision was reached in New England, John McCain's Rev. Hagee wrote:
"Massachusetts has just agreed to recognize same-sex marriages. It will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." He also wrote: "It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they cannot reproduce."
Religion is already barking and biting at the courts over the California decision. From local pulpits to television's megachurches, the old-hickory evangelical guard is frightening its followers further into the rabbit hole of hate, ignorance, and unbridled, false-hope giving. Between the cracks of poor public education and a sour economy, the right wing exhorts fear that if homosexuals are granted marital equality America will face God's unyielding wrath.
In the 2004 election, religion's right-wing disciples ignored any anger over our devastating Iraq war, our crumbling infrastructure, and the ailing economy, but they voted to prohibit same-sex marriage in eleven states. In evangelicals' minds, pulling the lever for Bush promised God's approval to their lost souls looking for someone to follow, someone to blame, and eternal life. In usurping the rights of men and women who simply want to be treated like other married Americans, the United States got four more years of debt, death, and economic desperation.
With California's decision, a layer in the veil of stigma has been lifted from homosexuals. The right-wing's mantle of oppression has been raised, empowering millions of American families. Committed, loving and healthy California households headed up by two fathers or two mothers have been validated at the state level. Trying to stop the determined and downtrodden by holding back their constitutional rights has only backfired on evangelical households as many scurry and scamper to make both ends meet in Bush's deflated America.
The decision to allow homosexuals equal rights is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. In a healthy society laws advance forward as mankind develops. The fabric of everyday life is enhanced by the marriage equality decision. California is embracing loving, hopeful unions. Homosexual rights do not diminish marriage they celebrate its serious significance. California's decision is a common-sense stepping stone towards an evolved America. Even under a California marriage, all federal pensions, citizenship rights, and tax advantages are denied.
In 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Katharine Hepburn as Christina Drayton came face to face with her liberal leanings as they collided with the joy of blind love. Katharine Houghton (Hepburn's real-life niece), co-stars as Joanna her daughter. While vacationing in Hawaii, the young woman has fallen in love with a black man, Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier). With effusive joy, she tells her parents of their plan to marry and expects their immediate their blessing. It's a huge stretch for these liberal parents when they imagine the two lovers loose in 1960's America. Classic drawing room comedy conventions are the girders beneath the film, but the skin of the story left 1967's audiences squirming and squealing, as they faced their own intolerance through Hollywood's idealistic liberalism.
Director Stanley Kramer turned a mirror on Americans at the height of our racial tensions. That same year the Loving vs. State of Virginia case would end all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Kramer's film unknowingly introduced America to our bold new times.
Critics say the film is dated, "stagey," and implausible. Poitier is too perfect - who wouldn't want their daughter to marry a very fine, well-educated, successful, Nobel-worthy--albeit black--man? That's the complexity and balance that have ripened this film to Grand Vin perfection in 2008. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is still relevant today. Certainly someday Americans will look back on Brokeback Mountain and think the same thing. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner underlines the secret prejudice in us all.
Today's rhetoric of spreading democracy overseas has to face up to its own hypocrisy when we hear resistance, anger, and hatred about this same-sex marriage decision. And in this election season with the economy in shambles, and a never-ending war, same-sex marriage must be old news. How will the right handle it? Is this a referendum on hatred in America? On intolerance?
The last generation took us from horrible sixties racial divisions to the reality of our first black president. It's worth noting that California overturned interracial marriage laws in 1948, nineteen years before the U.S. Supreme Court did. With mountains of progressive social evolution yet to be scaled in our America, will we have to wait till 2027 for the U.S. Supreme Court to bring us to the 20th century? The California decision is just an appetizer, let's all have dinner.