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Loading ...Neff: Learning Lincoln’s lesson
This time of year, being from the Land of Lincoln, I am reminded of my childhood studies.
There is a story in my hometown — as there probably are Lincoln stories in most Illinois towns — that Lincoln once stayed in a hotel located just blocks from my grade school. The hotel is long gone, replaced by a drug store and then a tavern, but those of us who once attended North Elementary still drive past the corner and repeat the short “Abe Lincoln slept there…” tale.
I was schooled on the legend and the history of Lincoln: Young Abe and railsplittin’ Abe, candidate Lincoln and President Lincoln.Like many Illinois schoolchildren, I memorized his speeches, read the biographies, visited his home in Springfield. The speech recited year after year, in grade after grade, was his Gettysburg address.
In the earliest grades, we dressed as Lincoln with top hats and beards made of construction paper and earned Es for “excellence” if we got past “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
In later grades, we earned marks for noticing the literary devices, diagramming the sentences, and, most importantly, understanding the meaning of each sentence.
And, in those older grades, we analyzed the nation’s political, social and cultural advances on equality as we studied Lincoln’s unenlightened remarks: “There must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”
Schoolchildren in the “Land of Lincoln” have learned about equality year after year after year, in grade after grade after grade.
And yet, this time of year, with the commemoration of Lincoln’s birthday, I am reminded of how many children grow up and forget what they learned about equality. I have conversations with friends and extended family, colleagues and neighbors, and what I hear over and over again is an expressed fear that achieving equality will result in those who have, having less. We are schooled on the value of equality, but we grow up to strive for privilege, we want more than the next person, and think we are better if we have while others have not. We regress to that time seven score and 11 years ago when it was commonly held, as Lincoln said, “there must be the position of superior and inferior.”
Adults think in these terms when it comes to commodities, from McIntosh apples to Apple MacBooks. And adults think in these terms when it comes to rights and benefits.
It’s important to understand this as we continue our push for equality — the state of being equal in status, rights and opportunities.
We need to address the true fear people have — the fear is not that same-sex marriage threatens the foundation of American society, but that extending marriage rights to more people, gay people, existing marriages have less value, less meaning.
We need to remind people of the lessons they learned about equality, that we cannot have equality when we legalize exclusion from rights and benefits.
We need to point out that there is not a limited number of a certain right to go around and no one is going to come up short.
We need to point out to people that a straight person’s marriage is not devalued because a gay person also is married.
Evan Wolfson, a longtime leader in the push for the freedom to marry, points to a time when women were barred from practicing law, but that eventually the nation moved past that exclusionary law and “the sky didn’t fall.” Nor did a lawyer cease to be a lawyer. And when same-sex marriage is legal in the 50 states and the territories, when the federal Defense of Marriage Act is repealed, marriage will not cease to be marriage.
The challenge is that certain “rights” that are under dispute do not in fact exist but some people believe that they do, or should.
For many conservatives, especially religious ones, the issue has to do with their belief that they have a “right” to not have to tolerate the existence of anyone that does not conform to their beliefs. Indeed, a common complaint is that they don’t want their children “exposed” to homosexuality and all these gay rights make it impossible for them to “protect” their children because they allow the gays to be gay in public as if it were perfectly normal.
That alone offends them, and one unwritten “right” that conservatives believe very strongly in is their “right” to not be offended, or to be exposed to anything that contradicts their beliefs. In other words, they believe that their “freedom of religion” supersedes everyone else’s. Everyone must live in a way that meets with their approval.
This was, for a long time, the basis of anti-Semitism as well as overt hostility towards other faiths that were not in line with the local majority. Indeed, until well into the 19th Century (and the mass immigration of Irish fleeing the Potato Famine) anti-Catholicism was also widespread in the public and governmental sphere in many parts of the country.
However, it is also true that some people have just been maliciously misinformed by anti-gay campaigns. For example, during the Proposition 8 debacle numerous religious leaders, including Rick Warren, outright lied and told their followers that legalization of same-sex marriage would result in churches being closed and pastors being arrested if they refused to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. This was blatantly untrue but since the story came from trusted religious leaders many people believed it.
We did little to counter these kinds of misconceptions. Instead we focused on how same-sex marriage benefits US, while doing little to allay the fears and discredit the lies that were being told.
Our opponents’ actions are based on bigotry. But they don’t want to advertise it as such because it would look less “holy” to a lot of middle of the road audiences. So they resort to misinformation campaigns because that way they can make it sound like they’re defending the family instead of trying to persecute people they don’t like.
That’s what we need to fight.
Thanks for the post, Lisa. You might be interested in my tribute to Lincoln from last week’s Freedom to Marry Day, entitled, “Marriage and Gays: What Would Lincoln Do?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-wolfson/marriage-and-gays-what-wo_b_165761.html
Evan
I think it’s not really productive in the area of marriage equality to continually try to win approval from those who look down on gays and lesbians. It’s simply human nature to oppress, denigrate, beat up, belittle and otherwise trod down on others. Sorry to say, it has always been so, and always will be so. Monkeys and chimpanzees wage war. Hierarchy battles are basic human nature. That’s why our founding fathers created the bill of rights. Because they understood that at all times, people will attempt to oppress. We are protected from that oppression by our system of laws, which have never yet been fully enforced and realized in the more than two hundred years we’ve been under their protection. We will only win our rights through constant legal challenge. If we can make our lives better by somehow getting the voters not to pass some amendments, or discriminatory laws, or by supporting anti-discrimination statutes, then so much the better. But that isn’t reliable, because voters will almost always vote away your civil rights. It’s been proven time and time again. We are going to have to continue or legal and political battles. And even when the day arrives that we have achieved full legal parity for LGBT citizens in America, we’re going to have to maintain our vigilance to avoid backsliding. Keep supporting Lambda Legal and GLAD so they can keep up the court battles that we need to win in order to get what’s rightfully ours, despite the petty minds of homophobic and complacent voters.
I wish it were so simple that we just had to convince people that marriage equality, and all GLBT equality issues, were not just a zero sum game or that giving rights to some does not diminish rights for others. For a substantial number of people it is still about believing that we are sub-human deviants, perverts and freaks. The fear, ignorance and bigotry in many parts of the country is just as strong as it has always been among a certain core of the population. Why do you think that the marriage amendments in many states have passed with 75 or 80% of the vote? I live in the south and see it every day. Last week an article ran in the local newspaper that a local federal government facility has finally allowed a gay employees group to form after six years of rejection. The online comments to the story were almost uniformly full of hate and ignorance. Even if new laws are passed at the state and federal level that address our issues, we still have a long way to go to change hearts and minds.
We need to address the true fear people have — the fear is not that same-sex marriage threatens the foundation of American society, but that extending marriage rights to more people, gay people, existing marriages have less value, less meaning.
DONE GONE MOOT… We will have 5 YEARS of Proof from Massachusetts that that is not so as of 5/17…
and we will have full equality back in CA by about the same day…is my prayer.
Then I think we need to charter trains and fill them with
engaged couples in New York and have it all set up on the end of the line in Connecticut…or Boston that they are there to marry. I would think you could probably do at least a full train a month… or even a week! at the beginning.
George Olds, I’m a little puzzled as to where you’re getting the idea that marriage is not a right, and that saying it is somehow detracts from our cause. The right to marry isn’t in the Constitution word for word, but it was established in a court decision decades ago – in 1918, if I recall correctly. A subsequent decision in 1967 established that marriage is a right “to marry the person of one’s choice.” In my experience, people who oppose same-sex marriage use the “it’s not a right” argument to bolster their cause: if marriage is a privilege, then it’s perfectly acceptable to deny it to some people and permit it to others.
Granted, the idea that marriage is a CIVIL right rankles some of our opponents, who seem to think that civil rights are a matter of race alone. Well then, let’s talk about HUMAN rights. After all, even the most narrow-minded person wouldn’t argue openly that gay people are not human.
I think that voting against LGBT rights in the privacy of a voting booth has less to do with logical reasoning than general irrational dislike, fear, disgust, and intolerance. “Rational” reasons against same-sex marriage, employment non-discrimination, etc just give the bigots an excuse in public.
My only solace is that the burden of understanding in this case must rest upon the shoulders of those who withhold our liberties from us, and that the weight of such a heavy stone must one day collapse all those who would attempt to support it.
Lisa,
“We need to address the true fear people have — the fear is not that same-sex marriage threatens the foundation of American society, but that extending marriage rights to more people, gay people, existing marriages have less value, less meaning.”
Actually, both fears exist. And both are false. Many on the ‘right’ are absolutely convinced that if gays get equal treatment, American society as we know it is doomed. Equally, some (needlessly) think that when gay couples commit to one another in marriage, their ‘traditional’ marriages are not only threatened but devalued.
Of course, you and I know this is utterly false. But how can we convince them? They’re the majority, after all. One suggestion: move the conversation away from “rights”. There is no “right” to marriage in the Constitution. The kicker is that this applies to heterosexuals too. We must begin to reclaim our freedoms. America touts itself as the “land of the free”. It ‘promises’ “LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL”. There IS such a right – to “liberty”. There’s also a right to the pursuit of happiness. Why are lawyers not all over this? This, AND the Constitutionn’s promise of equal treatment before the law, the Full Faith and Credit clause AND the Equal Protections clause. These arguments seem entirely missing in action in the courts of the land.
You say, “We need to remind people of the lessons they learned about equality, that we cannot have equality when we legalize exclusion from rights and benefits.” Trouble is, str8 America has NOT “learned” – ANY ‘lessons’ about equality. (At least not if Prop 8 and Florida’s Amendment 2 are any indication.) Str8 America WANTS there still to be a “position of superior and inferior” – so that they can feel superior. (It’s why I often refer to them as ‘betterosexuals.)
“We need to point out that there is not a limited number of a certain right to go around and no one is going to come up short.”
I think continually addressing “rights” is partly to blame. Too much confusioin around “civil rights” (v. civil liberties) and “gay rights”.
“We need to point out to people that a straight person’s marriage is not devalued because a gay person also is married.”
But, once again, THEY feel their marriages ARE devalued. I’m open to suggestiins besides mine about stressing liberties and freedoms in “the land of the free” as to how we go about convincing them. I’ve found that being open, honest and out has gone a long way to disproving their ‘inferior’ theory. Any one got any other ideas?