Protests against anti-gay initiatives: too little, too late?
I'm reluctant to admit it, but I am sort of in agreement with this sentence in the LA Times today on today's nationwide protests against anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives such as California's Prop. 8:
And it remains uncertain whether the aggressive tactics ultimately advance the activists' goal: Either having the California Supreme Court throw out Proposition 8 or persuading voters in a new election that gay marriage should be legal in the state.
Right, there is already a lawsuit trying to stop the implementation of Prop. 8, so exactly what are the protests going to accomplish? Of course it's fine to give people an emotional outlet. But I think the reason why people are going to these demonstrations is -- for some of them -- guilt that they didn't do more to stop Prop. 8 before the election.
As I grow older, I look on street protests more and more as simply being theater. And there's nothing wrong with theater, to the extent that it motivates people to do something more than go to demonstrations. But if I were one of the people behind Prop. 8 -- a Catholic bishop, a Republican activist, a Mormon panjandrum -- I might look at the demonstrations and simply smirk. Just as Obama supporters are now feeling a good deal of smugness.
I also wonder: if Prop. 8 had been defeated and anti-abortion Prop. 4 won, would there be these nationwide demonstrations? And why not?
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Comments
The problem now is that the issue has become so polarized with religious conservatives rigidly opposed to gay marriage while gays are seeing it as a violation of their civil rights not to be able to marry. And, invoking the civil rights issue does not win over African-Americans who are turned off by using that term which is so associated with their struggles.
At one time, there might have been some common ground or compromise to be worked out. Then, gays could have worked on gaining marital rights in an incremental way.
Is there a way for gays to propose another proposition that would restore some rights--say civil unions for instance? Religious conservatives would be still opposed to any kind of rights but they are in the minority. Reasonable people would agree with a reasonable proposition.
Not sure what the "smug" comment about Obama supporters meant. Explain?
The best option is not to protest but to channel that zest into collecting signatures for a proposition to declare marital rights for all. It is the action rather than the demonstration that the right seems to favor and has produced result after tireless cycles of propositions and amendments.
Well, speaking for myself, I'm feeling pretty good about the Obama victory, and not a little bit of schadenfreude when I read all the news stories about Republicans being marginalized and so on. And I haven't been above a little bit of smugness.
There is a perception that the anti-Prop 8 work done by professional gay rights organizations was ineffective, and the protests after the fact are now being organized from the bottom up via the web, Facebook, etc. I think framing the issue as "marriage equality" and "removal of civil rights" will, in the long term, help the same-sex marriage issue win over those who are opposed. The parallels with the miscegenation laws that were overturned in the '60s are useful and relevant here.
In fact, the more one thinks seriously and critically about marriage, the stranger an institution it seems, and framing it from a legal rather than a religious perspective is healthy for our society.
Finally, the thought of wealthly, hatemongering Mormons and Catholics donating money to amend the constitution of a state where they don't even live infuriates me, and I am fighting back.