The most exciting post-8 development is definitely the protests. As a friend of Jon Rauch writes:
The battle now is purely one in the culture. Against every instinct of our framers, we now have to fight for our rights (or this one, at least) in the political arena itself. That means the protests are the leading edge now, not the courts.
And Rauch writes:
The civil-rights model tried to separate marriage from the political process, because we didn’t have nearly enough straight support to win. That left our opponents with the political field to themselves while we busied ourselves in the courts. Not any more. We now have enough straight allies to win, long-term, in the political arena.
To judge from the protests, that’s where we’ll be going. Goodbye Thurgood Marshall, hello Martin Luther King. Goodbye Lambda Legal, hello ACT-UP.
This Saturday, at November 15, at 1:30 p.m. EST / 10:30 a.m. PST, will be the first nationwide protest against Proposition 8. Box Turtle Bulletin has links for cities nationwide, and there’s more info at Join The Impact. I plan to be at the Portland protest.
(Tell your friends. Post the link. Make it huge.)
I think these protests are potentially a huge deal. I’m not at all against using the courts for marriage equality; in fact, I think the court decisions, despite all the setbacks, have put progress into overdrive. Remember when civil unions were the radical, extremist approach, rather than the moderate approach that even Sarah Palin publicly says she supports?
But the courts aren’t the be-all and end-all. There’s also legislation (which people have been pursuing), and now there’s street activism. Which fucking rocks.
I’ll see you there. Right?
I might hit the one in Mo Val unless I can get up really early and take the Metro into downtown L.A. and kill three hours there before the march.
Thank you for posting this. I’ll be at the rally in Jacksonville, Florida.
Our rights as enshrined in the Constitution were not won in courts. The right to have our own Constitution was won on the battlefield (who says war never solved anything?). The Bill of Rights was established by a vote of our Federal and State representatives after the people protested against voting for the Constitution. And once we won the right to elect our own representatives in our own governments every right we have was established on the basis of a vote of some kind. The right for women and blacks to vote and for the equal protection of the laws to be extended without regards to race – things that seem blindlingly obvious to us now – were established in law by Constitutional amendments, not by invention of the courts.
Intervention by the courts may get you a privlege, but that privlege can be revoked by the people. As you have seen. The rhetoric that “fundamental rights are not subject to a vote” is historically wrong. Every fundamental right we have has been fixed in law on the basis of a vote.
If you want something to be regarded as a right, you must appeal to the people. In this country the courts don’t grant rights – the people do.
RonF,
How do you explain how women got the right to be equally eligible for government benefits and to serve as estate trustees, or schools were established that were not racially segregated, or marriages could be made without regard to race, without looking at actions by the courts?
the equal protection of the laws to be extended without regards to race – things that seem blindlingly obvious to us now – were established in law by Constitutional amendments, not by invention of the courts.
Which Amendment says the equal protection of the laws are to be extended without regard to race? I have read over the Constitution many times, and I don’t think I’ve seen that one. Also, have you come up with an explanation for why the Constitution guarantees my right to marry without a limitation on the race of my spouse, but doesn’t guarantee my right to marry without a limitation on the sex of my spouse?
Well, that’s probably because the semantics are confusing as hell.
The concept of rights has evolved from no rights, to “natural rights,” to constitutional rights. It’s still evolving and changing. And there’s still the crucial distinction between negative rights (the government cannot take away a certain something) and positive rights (the government is required to supply a certain something.)
“Fundamental” is just an arbitrary term which people use (incorrectly) as a synonym for “important” or “worth protecting,” or sometimes for “enshrined in the Constitution.” But because a right without a remedy is no right at all, in reality all rights (both rights which people do and do not consider to be fundamental) have always been socially defined; they do not spring forth from thin air.
The whole reason our judicial system oversees the constitutionality of our laws is so that the rights of the minority will not be decided by the vote of the majority.
Wow, I’m amazed that it’s not going on in my town. (Sigh, I have no car, so I won’t be making it to Nearest Big City.) Oh well, I’m still publicizing it even if I can’t go.
Remember when civil unions were the radical, extremist approach, rather than the moderate approach that even Sarah Palin publicly says she supports?
When she ran for governor in 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she would support a ballot question that would deny benefits to homosexual couples. “I believe that honoring the family structure is that important,” Palin said.
Has she publicly reversed that position?
this is sparked by the conversation i had with my boyfriend (whose political apathy sharply contrasts my beliefs). i mentioned that there was a nation-wide protest, and was appalled that i had to explain what prop 8 was. then i had to go on to explain why people were still protesting something that had passed, and then had to explain why people were protesting something that only “concerned” californians, and then i realized that my boyfriend is the same person we have to explain things to tirelessly–the people that just don’t get why people are bothering, that don’t understand the symbolism–what it means to go out and protest something that affects people regardless of where they live because the fight is taking place everywhere. and people like my boyfriend don’t understand because it doesn’t necessarily involve a straight white man, and i found that i was frustrated with him and people like him.
PG, during the debate with Biden, she seemed to say that she favored legal rights but not the “M” word. Unless I’m misremembering.
But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she said one thing for an Alaska audience, and another thing when running for VP.
Filthy, I hear your frustration and raise you a significant other who is indifferent to whether gays can get married, but is so opposed to judicial “activism” that he would have voted for Prop. 8 just to poke the CA Supreme Court in the eye.
Amp,
Ifill faked Palin’s answer by saying that she and Biden “agree” on the issue, but they don’t. Biden endorsed marriage-in-everything-but-name for same-sex couples. Palin said she did not support an expansion of benefits that “goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman. And unfortunately that’s sometimes where those steps lead.”
On the campaign trail, Palin also reaffirmed her support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would enshrine DOMA’s refusal by the federal government to recognize same-sex relationships into the Constitution. If the federal government recognized civil unions/ CA-style domestic partnerships, then it would do the same thing of granting all the same rights — of immigration, taxation, etc. — to same-sex couples.
Palin as a VP candidate was very emphatic about her tolerance for homosexuals and how she had gay friends, and she said that a McCain/Palin administration would not “prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.” A prohibition on contracts being made would be flat out unconstitutional anyway, so that’s hardly a concession on her part. And the issue with hospital visitation is not that any government official proactively stands in the doorway to block a homosexual from visiting her partner, but that without a government-recognized relationship between the parties, it is within the hospital’s discretion to prohibit visitation.
Palin doesn’t demonstrate that civil unions have any mainstream acceptance; she demonstrates that it’s no longer acceptable nationally to express animus toward homosexuals.
PG, point well taken. Forget my Palin example.
Nonetheless, I think it’s true that civil unions have far more mainstream acceptance now than they did just ten years ago. Do you disagree?
I think civil unions have more acceptance now than they did 10 years ago, although as with the LDS folks claiming that they’re really OK with civil unions (and then their sudden silence when EqualityUtah says, “Great, let’s have ’em!”), being OK with civil unions is almost a mandatory socially-acceptable position in places like California, New York, etc. I am more and more inclined to agree with those who say that government should just give all of us civil unions when we enter state-recognized relationships, and then churches can “marry” whom they please. Let religion have “marriage,” and I’ll keep my rights and responsibilities.
Apparently, Seventh-Day Adventist Church opposes gay rights.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church (along with Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses) argue against gay rights and gay marriage issues holding that religious liberty is only concerned with the first four of the Ten Commandments, or one’s obligations to God.
When a gay marriage bill came before the California legislature in April, 2004, Adventist church members were urged to contact their representatives and voice their opposition. In “The Liberty Blog” the religious liberty director for the North American Division of the Adventist church argued against the proposed federal “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007,” suggesting it could have an indirect impact on free speech, would give special protection, would be unnecessary since local laws already provide protection against hate crimes, and could lead to marginalizing those who oppose homosexual practice. In the September/October, 2004, issue of the church periodical, Liberty, which was devoted to the issue of gay marriage, another religious liberty director called for the church not to remain silent in opposing gay rights.
Most recently, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has strongly asserted in it’s churches that it opposes all gay rights including gay marriage. In doing so, it has encouraged members to not only vote for Proposition 8, but to also financially support any and all efforts to oppose gay marriage rights.
Considering the Seventh-day Adventist’s historical devotion to issues of separation of church and state, they should be ashamed of themselves.
I got this in my e-mail, though:
http://adventistsagainstprop8.org/