TWO weeks ago, I wrote a column expressing my distaste for California proposition 8, a measure intended to amend the California State Constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, thereby invalidating a California Supreme Court decision to allow marriage between same-sex couples. The proposition, I wrote, was fundamentally discriminatory, hateful and anti-American.
Yet last Tuesday, my dear home state of California passed the proposition banning gay marriage by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, despite the fact that California voters chose President-elect Barack Obama 61 percent to 37 percent.
For the queer and allied community, Obama’s victory was bittersweet. Though Obama has never fully supported the movement for marriage equality — he has explicitly stated that he favors same-sex civil unions to same-sex marriage — his message of progress has always included the progress, however slight, of the gay community. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, he thanked his supporters, “black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight ... we are and always will be the United States of America.” The failure of the public to protect marriage equality in a state as progressive as California is a major setback to the gay rights movement.
The promise of progress and equality that has been the crowning jewel of the Obama campaign, that spoke to Americans of all races, genders, and sexual identities, suddenly rings hollow in the wake of Proposition 8’s passing. On the very same day that America elected the first African-American president, making huge strides to repair a painful and still very fresh history of discrimination and hatred, California — as well as Florida and Arizona — voted to curtail the rights of a different minority. How could one person cast his ballot for the promise of unity and change that Obama has espoused, then scroll down and vote yes on a discriminatory and regressive proposition that seeks to undo one of the greatest steps towards genuine equality in recent history?
At his birth, Obama’s own parents’ interracial marriage wasn’t legally valid in most American states. At that time, when interracial marriage was as contentious an issue as gay marriage is today, only 4 percent of Americans supported couples of different ethnicities and 94 percent favored making their unions illegal. Fortunately, no one put that measure up on a ballot.
It was a slow, painful process getting Americans to recognize the rights of the African-American population. It required much intervention by the court to force people to comply with unpopular changes like integrated schools and African-American suffrage. Though it is not a perfect comparison, the similarities between that movement and this one are striking. A mere 145 years ago, Obama himself could have been owned as a slave; now he is arguably the most powerful man in the world. Regressive, intolerant people fought to undo the gains of African-Americans at every turn, yet equality, rationality and fairness always triumphed in the end because of the powerful language of this great nation’s founding creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” All men, black or white, gay or straight.
Undoubtedly, many who voted for Proposition 8 did so because they, like Obama, do not support gay marriage but are in favor of civil unions. However, the very concept of the “civil union” is insulting. The allowance of same-sex marriage would leave no distinction between the love of a gay couple and the love of a straight couple, but civil unions render the two institutions fundamentally separate and therefore fundamentally different. Separate is inherently unequal. In fact, a major worry of the Proposition 8 supporters was that allowing gay marriage would force schools to teach their children to see gay people as equals. It’s not so hard to imagine parents fretting over a similar worry a mere 50 years ago, as they complained that integrated schools would force their children to accept African-Americans as equals. Imagine, schools teaching equality and tolerance. Oh, the horror!
America, it’s time to practice what we preach. We elected Obama because we were moved by his message of change, unity, and progress, and in doing so, we shattered racial barriers and proved that tolerance and acceptance can prevail over centuries of bigotry and hate. Now we — and Obama — need to stand by that belief, and apply that unity, tolerance, love and equality to all our fellow citizens, regardless of sexual preference.
Michelle Lamont’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.lamont@cavalierdaily.com.
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