Look, generally I like Andrew Sullivan. So maybe this is the lack of caffeine talking. But I'm rather appalled at what I read in his blog just now thanking the President for rescinding his support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, because the Defense of Marriage Act is adequate. The "money quote" (as he would call it):
We should refrain from any constitutional or legal challenge to DOMA for the foreseeable future (something I've urged for a long time now). We should also refrain from any attempt to force any state to recognize a gay marriage from another state (of course that's different from a state voluntarily recognizing such marriages). We should practise moderation, just as the Senate is practising moderation....The president has given us this opportunity. It would be crazy not to reciprocate. But for the record: thanks, Mr president.
Mine eyes doth deceive me. Thanks Mr. President!? For what!? Scapegoating fags to get re-elected?!
Look, it's an overused tagline, "writing discrimination into the constitution." But the fact is, it's truer than most people realize. The existence of the FMA and the DOMA will render completely impossible legal equality for homosexuals, because they provide a rational basis for discrimination against homosexuals (see: 14th amendment law). As long as those laws exist, all of the other rights homosexuals have accumulated are completely at risk. Those who really don't believe that's what's at risk here should talk to Rick Santorum, who wants to be the next POTUS.
But beyond that, Sullivan's strategy is simply absurd. What minority ever got anywhere by compromising and pretending like nothing was wrong for a long while? When did accepting the status quo ever force anyone to change anything? Since when do government instiutions and people in red states like change?
We win hearts and minds by making clear the injustice done to us. We should make them want to write it into the consitution, not make ourselves acceptable to them--because, and Sullivan just doesn't get this--we'll never be acceptable to them as long as we're gay, and that's not our fault, that's their fault. Eventually, the whole edifice of gay rights will crumble. And then we will see what social conservatism has wrought. There will most certainly be suffering along the way. But at least history will not judge us and say, they were the minority who went out not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but who even asked to be handed their hats.
Too many people in this world--oddly enough, many of them conservatives like Mr. Sullivan--seem to believe in the Hegelian view that the world is progressing inevitably to some better state. It's by no means the case, say I. No bit of progress ever came without fighting tooth and nail, and we shouldn't forget the lessons of history, which teach us that our progress so absurdly reversible (e.g., the Florida adoption law, passed after Stonewall and upheld last week). Let us not be the shepherds of our own destruction.
P.S. Andrew--enough about Abe being gay for a while already. We get it--you're fascinated. Let's move on, eh?
1 comment:
I agree with all that this post says; but let's not besmirch the name of Hegel here. After all, part of Hegel's whole point is that simple, pacific accounts of progress don't work -- progress only comes from violent clashes between the old and the new, or the negation of the old by its own inner contradictions, depending on how you want to simplify Hegel.
That said, there were a number of 'Right Hegelians' in the 19th century who took the runic saying 'The real is rational, the rational is the real' to mean that everything that was, was A-ok.
Post a Comment