Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: The Power of Fear and the Obligation to Hope
I was not expecting the news to look like that this morning!
Yes, it was not surprising to learn that New Jersey and Virginia both elected Republican Governors – though it is deeply saddening. But I could not have predicted a loss in the tiny, liberal, free state of Maine.
Yesterday, I posted a story talking about fundraising in LGBT causes and how central the money raised was to a successful push for LGBT rights. Maine, the state we have all been watching closely for months, had a strong pro-rights group with a significant fundraising lead over the opposition. I was sure, sure, that the dollars would translate into successful votes on an issue where spin is so central to individual political affiliations.
But, the morning after, many are saying that the same old arguments – they’ll teach your kids to be gay in schools, children will no longer have mothers and fathers, marriage will be meaningless for everyone – resonated with the public. At this point, I have to agree. There is something about the fear tactic that works.
Perhaps because fear tactics have always worked. When working to promote rights at the ballot box, we are asking people to accept an unknown, to extend benefits and to do so with no concrete benefit to themselves. They are being told that this extension of rights will have concrete negative effects on their quality of life and quality of life for their children. Many don’t want to take the risk.
Identifying the fear is important.
Things that people are afraid of take a long time to happen. But they most often do. Over time, the barriers break down, the arguments for the other side lose their cache, and people start to feel like they were just ridiculous for ever believing that a silly thing like marriage could affect their lives at all.
We will get there. Slowly, but surely. And this morning, I recognize just how difficult that optimism is to hold onto.
Wow, MaineReason, that was incredible! Kudos to you for saying what I, for one, truly believe needs to be said. I second ALL of it!
Cheers!
There will be no victory at the state level. Ever. Going this way is insane and damaging to our cause. When the rights of the few are left up to the rights of the many, this is the death of democracy. The simple fact is that people are inherently selfish and the vast majority of them just don’t give a shit. So long as they believe it doesn’t effect them then they will be against us. One day the country may be comfortable enough to vote us some rights. But this will be a long time coming. We, like all other groups struggling for basic rights in this country, will only achieve a substantial victory at the federal level. Once we win our rights, THEN we can fight for acceptance. Once DOMA is repealed marriage won’t be an issue. But we can’t forget that much more is at stake than marriage. It really is difficult to have hope in the face of such staggering hate and indifference. But we can’t give up. If we lose hope, then we will fight without hope, because we must.
I was an avid, activist, financial contributor to the same-sex marriage cause. Maine has changed my mind. Idealistically, it might be the right cause. And same-sex marriage will eventually be the law of the land. But state-by-state is the wrong strategy at the wrong time.
(1) We’re psychologically battering our community. Thirty-one (!) gay marriage ballot measures have gone against us. Forget about Arizona – there are same-sex couples in relatively progressive states who were set up to get their hopes up, only to have it all yanked away from them. In some cases, even previously-enacted domestic partnership laws were left in question by marriage ballot beheadings. We must stop setting people up to be devastated!
(2) We spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend marriage rights passed in court or legislature in progressive states, while same-sex couples in Alabama, Mississippi, or Idaho, have absolutely no protections for their relationships. That money could be better spent procuring domestic partnership rights for people in more conservative areas. Polling shows that most Americans, even in conservative places, support domestic partnership protections.
(3) In places where there are no protections for same-sex relationships, the poor, women, and people of color are disproportionately affected. Rich and middle-class gays can afford the lawyers to craft the legally-sound wills and directives that ensure that one partner will make medical decisions for the other, or that either will have inheritance rights, or that their joint raising of a child will not be invalidated in courts. I know, because I hired a lawyer and did a will protecting my partner and me; and I recently left a southern state where not doing so would have been begging for trouble. Low-income gays can’t do this. So a same-sex couple in Selma, North Carolina, who have no DP protections and no money, is left to the dogs. To the extent that a greater percentage of lesbian couples, or same-sex households of color, are lower-income than their white gay male counterparts, having no rights at all is far more damaging to them. This isn’t to say that denial of marriage isn’t damaging to everyone, even to middle-class or rich gays, but it does say that not having even domestic partnership rights is absolutely devastating to same-sex couples. California and Maine both had domestic partnership protections before their marriage initiatives. Same-sex couples in many areas of Utah or Louisiana have nothing.
(4) It has become clear that a far more likely scenario than winning gay marriage state-by-state, is winning domestic partnerships on a federal, national level. The Obama administration, as well as the Congress and Senate, are poised to do it. For me (and my conscience, and my money) giving same-sex couples in Tennessee even basic legal recognition of their relationships is far more valuable than upgrading a couple’s status in Maine from domestic partnership to marriage.
(5) Getting national domestic partnership rights for couples might increase the numbers of straights who “get it” that gay couples deserve equal rights.
(6) Putting gay marriage on a state ballot makes our gay brothers and sisters in that state wonder who voted against them. Was it family? Neighbors? Friends? This isn’t bringing people together. This is causing suspicion, bitterness, and hurt. Bringing people together is probably the only way we’re going to eventually convince straights that we deserve equality under the law. Telling our personal stories works much better than forcing people to make choices along philosophical lines.
(7) Continuing the same-sex marriage “smack-down” is just emboldening our bigoted foes who will now think they can use their inhumane, despicable tactics in the remaining 19 states in the union.
(8) It took some 160 years between the first state striking down interracial marriage bans, to the Virginia v. Loving 1967 Supreme court decision striking down all such bans. Gay marriage is inevitable – and certainly in much less time than 160 years. But there has to be a more intelligent strategy than battering people psychologically in progressive states while denying people much needed resources and protection in conservative states.
Lenworth-
They want you to either hide or just go away.
How can we work harder to instill HOPE in others? What does the gay community need to do to show people were not out to destroy the American family? Do we need to be on T.V more? Some more warm heart felt “Milk” like movies? What the hell do they want from us?