“This fall, Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota will vote on ballot measures about marriage equality. Each has a chance to create a new playbook.”
Excellent, largely realistic first hand account post on TDS about this issue. A bit optimistic in places, especially in the appeal to the Federal government:
“As a citizen, I appeal to the authority of the federal government, which, history has shown, must sometimes act to ensure that citizens in all fifty states are guaranteed equal protection and rights under the law.”
but a worthy read nonetheless.
The best strategy for supporters of marriage equality has been to humanize the subject as much as possible. Make it about couples living their lives, raising children. For example NYC’s Pride week family-style events to acknowledge the number of gay couple’s with children.
Not letting the bigots define the discussion by talking about bad analogies, slippery slopes and intentionally vague debates about the nature of personal liberties. All of which are warmed over bullshit to cover for the fact that their sole argument is, “I hate teh gayz”.
There is no room for comfortable intellectual distance here. Its about people trying to live their lives with a measure of dignity and normality. Accounts like the article are sobering.
The Feds are going to have to get involved eventually, or so I delude myself. There are states in the country that would probably still relegate minorities to second-class citizenship if they could get away with it; the Feds stomped on them and will need to stomp on the anti-gay people as well.
Or so I delude myself. The Civil Rights Movement took place in a much different context. Among other things, you had a lot more guys in power, especially in the Senate (where the joke has always been that every Senator imagines himself a President) who were pretty vile, but often put pragmatism over ideology. But I don’t think a lot of the James Inhofe and JimDeMint clones now in the Congress care about national careers; they’re committed to the Cause. Nothing wrong with that per se except for the Cause being a vile one, but it makes stuff like this harder.
A lot of what we discuss here on LGM is open to debate, speaking as one (among several here) who teaches political science. Keynesian economics is a debatable issue. It’s right in my mind, and I suspect the other seven who write here, but it’s legitimately open to broader debate. This issue, which I’ve written about more than a few times, isn’t. Period. This is basic civil rights. The reactionary opinions arrayed against it are pathetic and internally incoherent and inconsistent.
On this one you’re either right, or you’re living in the 19th Century.
This.
It is plainly obvious that the other side of the issue is solely driven by an ick-factor that I just don’t quite understand.
There really is just no discussion to be had.
It’s not so much that it’s “right”, as that in an even semi-rational polity it would be trivial, just another small step in overcoming the past [albeit by allowing people to assimilate to a very conservative vision of household formation, but that's another debate...]
I don’t know that there is much of a difference at this point, ya know, with what is called peak-wingnuttery.
Their careers are pretty much based on devotion to non-issues.
Yeah, their local careers.
Until you’re trying to sit in the big chair in this country, you are a local politician. You get elected statewide. People who hope to graduate usually try and thread the needle, adopting positions and personas that they hope will make them acceptable to enough of the country to get through a Presidential primary and then get to 270.
But it seems like a lot of tea partiers genuinely do not give a fuck about being competitive on the national stage; they care about pushing their agenda forward. This makes it harder to get them to bend; they have to be broken.