After Maine's governor, Democrat John Baldacci, signed LGBT marriage legislation, and as New Hampshire's governor ponders the same, Los Angelinos should ponder whether their own state has become an antique, a relic, worthy of the dustbin of history where White Citizen Councils and anti-race mixing ordinances lay.
Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire may sign the gay marriage bill or let it become law on its own, which would make his state the sixth in the nation to recognize LGBT marriage.
California is not pondering this issue at all but in full retreat, having just turned on LGBT equality at the ballot box, while states like Iowa are setting the national trend. California is no longer the national trend-setter it once famously was but the last Confederate Widow.
Make no mistake about it. I have serious concerns about the Marriage Issue altogether. LGBT or straight, the idea of assigning privileges based on marriage status is a bit out of step with a modern civilization. Persons should have housing, pension, and health care rights based on simply being alive and not based on whom they marry. A retail worker, for example, whose employer is more interested in quarterly reports to show profit and so will deny health and pension, should not have to rely on marrying a corporate attorney to have secure housing and health care.
But marriage is how we as a society distribute these 1000+ privileges, and if that is to be the case, we can no more deny them to married LGBT's than we can Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, or Native Americans; Republicans, Democrats, republicans and democrats, Revolutionary Communists or Democratic Socialists, Greens, Lutherans, Anglicans, et cetera. I make such an exhaustive list because some anti-LGBT Marriage people say Race is Not a Choice, where they allege sexuality is. What race you are is determined by a legal framework that set during a darker time in Western history. Further, how would it look, even during the Cold War, if the US had not allowed Communist Party USA members to marry?
Nor can we in the LGBT community be satisfied with second-tier, separate-but-equal measures, even from our so-called friends. Separate but equal didn't work for Blacks a few generations ago, didn't work for women before US Title IX, and doesn't work for the LGBT community.
But why the retreat for California? The state allowed the ruination of its stellar school system in 1978 by a vote and equally telling allowed the denial of equal rights for LGBT's in 2008. In between it ended the ability for our public universities to reflect the population in their student bodies. Again, by vote.
Who is safe now in California from having their rights taken, their services ended, simply by a majority vote?
I am not one opposed to California's Initiative Process. I am 100% for it. It is democracy that compels our foot-dragging assembly and legislature to do something, but who are these creatures who would use this process to dismantle our treasures? And who are these voters who are so easily scared to support having the ground beneath them blown to smithereens?
I do not doubt the assault on our public schools and this class of voter that can be so hoodwinked is related. We are becoming, across the board, but particularly where LGBT's are concerned, the Old South of paternal bigots who love their marginals, denialists who say we have no social problem where LGBT rights are concerned, and homophobes who make up a remarkably small percentage.
Contrary to popular belief, the homophobes really aren't our biggest worry but rather the paternal bigotry of our political friends who won't risk anything for our children, our schools, our multicultural communities, and LGBT equality but would rather make the familiar "Go-slow" excuses once made against making full equality for Blacks in the South.
States stereotyped for their backwardness, fashion-backwardness, gingham dresses are moving the nation forward. At this rate, California may have a future US Supreme Court impose Gay Marriage on us "with all deliberate speed."
* First appeared on my Examiner Page Site
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