Jeff:
"This is just a rehash of the 1960's debate on recognition of interracial marriages.. Same common sense arguments for it, same fear mongering, bigotry and lame arguments against it.
50 years from now we'll look back at this "defense of marriage" nonsense with the exact same astonishment that we view anti-miscegenation laws today. What in the world were these people thinking, and what benefit does a society accrue by denying gay people this most basic of human rights?"
There was a major difference between the civil rights legislation of yesteryear and that of today. In 1964, racial inequality was addressed at the national level, by a Congress composed of reasonable people. The Civil Rights Act of that year became the law of the land, and that was all she wrote. There was very little that bigoted people could do about it at the state and local levels, as was the intent of Congress.
Now, the same system that gave us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being used in exactly the opposite fashion, this time to promote and institutionalise bigotry. The laws of our nation are being made a mockery. We now have the odious piece of legislation called the Defence of Marriage Act, the only Federal law that restricts the Federal rights of American citizens. And between Congress and the Supreme Court, it seems like DOMA is all the Federal action on the issue we're going to see for a while, because the rest of the issue is being left up to individual states, where our Federal legislators know good and damned well it will be mired in court cases and ballot initiatives for decades.
There was once a time when enlightened, reasonable legislators took a look at needed social progress and made that progress the law of our land, because it was the right thing to do. Now, our approach to civil rights is very different- the rights of a large group of Americans are a political bargaining chip, being withheld because there are conservative votes to be gained by doing so.
I was around in the early '60s, when the fight for racial equality was the hottest of all possible hot-button topics. And I promise you, if the civil rights of African-Americans had been left up to individual states' courts and localised ballot initiatives, there would still be apartheid in much, if not all, of this country. At best, the rights of African-Americans would be subject to their physical location, making them perhaps first-class citizens in one place and very much second class in another. As we know, that is the case for gay men and women today- a trip from New York to California by car means your legal status changes drastically from one state to another. We don't even do that to illegal immigrants here, but we do it to millions of people based upon whom they love.
It is an insane, absurd, hugely immoral situation. What has happened in Massachusetts- and what is, hopefully, happening in California- is a start, but the situation will not be fully addressed until there is Federal law that specifically includes our gay, lesbian, and transgender populations in its definitions of American freedoms.
