Conflating Civil and Gay Rights

My cynical nature has long been countered by the optimistic hope that our (global and U.S.) society is characterized by continual progress, which has been most evident in the increasing acceptance and tolerance of all mankind. Consecutive generations of Westerners have had to confront the challenging and unsettling thought that people unlike them in some way are not somehow worse. A person's merit, not some other trivial quality about them, is all we should refer to when assessing their quality. First it was non-Men; then, non-Whites; now, non-Straight or non-Binary Gendered.

The fate of today's version of this acceptance battle has, to a certain extent, been put in the hand's of voters-- largely in the form of referenda. One of the more notorious of these instances of participatory (perfect?) democracy is Proposition 8, a law that Californians' passed this past November 6 which banned same-sex marriages.

Has my cherished progress been stifled? How could California -- the land of shaggy-haired surfers, hippies, Milk, and San Francisco -- be so intolerant? Adding insult to injury, it has been discovered that a preponderance of Black Californians voted for this banishment. This constituency, benefiting perhaps more so than any other from our society's historic widening of the franchise, ironically sealed the fate of Gays who wish to enjoy a similarly innocuous extension of equal rights.

Caitlin Flanagan, in a recent New York Times op-ed, attempted to wrap her head around this apparent paradox, and implicates the church -- an all-too frequent limitor of equal rights -- as a key player in convincing blacks' that Gays, unequivocally hell-bound, do not deserve the legal (and moral?) rights offered to those married by the State.

Flanagan considers this defeat of Prop 8 to be evidence of a precariousness, lingering under the surface of a strong political alliance between liberals and Blacks-- the same alliance that was largely responsible for the election of our upcoming president.

They came to the polls in record numbers to support Barack Obama, and they brought with them a fiercely held and enduring antipathy toward homosexuality: 7 in 10 blacks voted in support of traditional marriage.

While I would not go so far as to say Blacks should ignore their Church-- as religion does provide the foundation for many important lessons of morality-- they should most definitely not ignore the lessons of history. However "morally or sexually repugnant" (Flanagan's words) our Black Americans consider Gays to be, they must not be so ignorant as to forget the great distances they have come, and the importance of extending equal human rights to those worthy of the distinction "human."

In Flanagan's opinion, this fissure could be the first of many emphasizing the inherent difficulty of "creat[ing] a vast utopian society forged of many previously disenfranchised groups."

Perhaps instead of solving the economic crisis, or ending the Global War of Terror, or signing onto a binding climate control treaty, the maintenance of this alliance will be the most politically trying -- and important -- task of President-elect Obama, as he seeks to continue enjoying the support of all types of Americans.