Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Will the DC Council pass a gay marriage bill?
According to a Washington DC council member he has enough co-sponsors for a bill legalizing gay marriage in the nation’s capitol.
The District already recognizes gay marriages performed in other states; if passed the proposal, called the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, would make D.C. the first city below the Mason-Dixon line to recognize full marriage rights.
“I think it is very important for people to realize we are talking about a civil marriage, not a religious marriage,” said David A Catania, one of the openly gay members of the Council and the bill’s author.
If passed, Congress and the White House will have to jump into a contentious social issue. I imagine those working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will do their best to keep the topic at arms length. Obama’s White House will make a muted case that local municipalities should be allowed to support marriage rights if they want to. House and Senate Republicans will typically freak and remind D.C.’s fate is controlled by Congress.
If the Council votes for the bill, I don’t expect to read how black elected officials came out to support marriage rights, although seven of the 12 council members are African-American. There will be attention to the yahoos (like that minister from Maryland and Council member Marion Barry), but nary a word will be uttered about other black pols who stepped up and did the right thing.
As a rule I have no problem with calling out the nut cases (no matter the color), but what unnerves are the racial theories that support most of our conversations about same sex marriage, assumptions that have been in the open since the failure of Prop 8. Somehow the folk in DC are navigating through those dangerous waters and finding common ground. I’ve asked it before and I’ll do it again: what is going on in D.C. that the rest of us can learn from?
I agree completely – hardly a word will be uttered about the black council members who voted to support marriage equality while the blogs will be screaming about the black church members led by Harry Jackson and Marion Barry. It’s always easy to point fingers, lay blame and prejudge than it is to rationally look an issue and see the differences within a group and the similarities across many groups.
But to answer you question, DC is a unique situation in which the entire “state” is an urban area and urban areas are chock full of people who are used to living with many different types of people and therefore more tolerant. But every area, regardless of how urban or rurual, has its whack-jobs (i.e. Harry Jackson and the Catholic Bishop).
I am happy to give credit to black politicians who support gay rights. They are walking in an inspiring line of black activists who support gay rights and deserve to be honored for it. But it sounds like you want them to get credit before they have actually done anything and that you don’t want the media criticizing those yahoos who do the wrong thing. People who want to deprive others of equal rights–whatever their color–need to be called on it. Perhaps unfairly, we do hope for more from people who have themselves experienced discrimination.