Thursday, May 15, 2008

...and your little dog, too! The wicked witch ain't dead yet (No, this isn't a piece on how the beyond-pathetic Billary Cunton, who is unimpeded by ethics or decency, still won't fucking take no for an answer. Besides, politically, she is dead.) At my largely if not mostly gay and lesbian workplace in Sacramento today, my co-workers were jubilant: The (Repugnican-dominated) California Supreme Court correctly ruled today, 4-3, that it is unconstitutional for the state of California to deny same-sex couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples. The case went to California's highest court after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom controversially allowed same-sex couples to marry in the city in 2004. The state Supreme Court put a halt to the marriages, and same-sex couples and human-rights organizations then sued for equal marriage rights. California is now the second state to have legalized same-sex marriage -- Massachusetts was first, in 2004 -- but California is the nation's most populous state, so today's California Supreme Court ruling was momentous. Same-sex couples in California might be able to start legally wedding in about a month. The wingnuts -- who can't be happy unless they're making others (usually members of historically already-oppressed minorities) miserable -- of course are trying to get an initiative on November's California ballot that, if voters pass it, would write bigotry and hatred into the California Constitution by prohibiting same-sex marriage in the state. That would trump the state Supreme Court's ruling of today -- the state Supreme Court can rule based only upon the contents of the state Constitution, and the current state Constitution does not prohibit same-sex marriage -- and potentially take the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court. And we still have the same 5-4 dynamic on the U.S. Supreme Court that installed Repugnican George W. Bush into the Oval Office despite the fact that the majority of American voters cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore in November 2000. So a victory for the haters in California in November would only delay the inevitable, which is full marriage rights for all American adults, regardless of their sexual orientation. History shows that the wingnuts can hinder progress but that they can't halt it altogether. (They once fiercely protected slavery, for fuck's sake. OK, so now we have corporate slavery, but still...) And it's funny, isn't it, how the word "freedom" freely drips from the fangs of the wingnuts like the blood of Iraqi babies, yet their "freedom" is only for stupid white (presumably) straight "Christian" men?   Anyway, California voters last had their say on same-sex marriage in 2000, with the pro-hatred-and-bigotry Proposition 22, also called the "California Defense of Marriage Act," which amended the state code to make same-sex marriage illegal. (Prop 22 added these words to the state code: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.") Prop 22 -- which the California Supreme Court today ruled is unconstitutional (that is, violates the state Constitution) -- passed with 61 percent of the vote in 2000. In March 2007, Field Poll reported that 43 percent of Californians approved of same-sex marriage and only about 50 percent disapproved. That's a significant change from the 61 percent who voted in favor of Prop 22 (and bigotry and hatred) in 2000. In March 2007, Field Poll noted: Californians stand out from other Americans for both their level of support for same-sex marriage and the rate at which it is growing. In most of the country today, and in California in 1977, opponents of same-sex marriage outnumber supporters two to one. Yet, today Californians are more evenly split when asked about same-sex marriage, with about half disapproving and slightly fewer (43 percent) approving. When asked to choose between three options – allowing same-sex couples to legally marry, allowing them to form civil unions or domestic partnerships, or granting them no legal recognition – opinions in California split almost perfectly into thirds. An analysis of statewide Field Poll surveys over the past twenty years by political scientists Gregory B. Lewis of Georgia State University and Charles W. Gossett of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona finds that Californians’ growing support for same-sex unions is due partly to individual attitude change, but mostly to generational replacement. Age is one of the strongest predictors of opposition to same-sex marriage in California, but not because people are becoming more homophobic or sexually more conservative as they age. In every age group, people were at least four times as likely to say that they had become more accepting as that they had become more condemning of homosexual relations since they turned 18. Generational replacement is the key. Californians born in each decade tend to be more accepting of gay relationships and more willing to grant them legal recognition than those born the decade before. [More here.] My guess is that if the wingnuts manage to get their hateful, anti-American, anti-freedom initiative to write hatred and bigotry into the state Constitution on November's ballot, the initiative will fail. It might not fail by much, but my guess is that more than 50 percent of the voters will shoot it down. Then, at least, we will be able to say that the voters have spoken on the issue -- and that finally they have done the right thing. Repugnican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger states that he respects the state Supreme Court's decision of today and that he opposes the effort of the wingnuts to write hatred and bigotry into the state Constitution. That's because Schwarzenegger, a Repugnican in a blue state, knows that he can side with the California Nazis only so much if he wants to politically survive in the state. The gay pride march toward eventual fully recognized same-sex marriage is unstoppable. We'll have same-sex marriage one day in all 50 states. Slavery used to be acceptable in many of the states and interracial marriage once was much more socially unacceptable than it is today (on that topic, Wikipedia notes, mind-blowingly, that it was not until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the laws prohibiting interracial marriage that were still in effect in 16 states were unconstitutional). Progress is inevitable. The only question is whether you are a progressive and help progress along or whether you're a conservative -- a regressive -- and impede progress. The regressives can slow us down, but they can't stop us. So yes, let us munchkins celebrate today, because right now the wicked witch is down. But let's anticipate that, like Jason or Freddy, she'll be baaaaack for our ruby slippers -- and our little dogs, too! -- and let's be ready to fight tomorrow.   Some random thoughts of a Californian gay man on today's California Supreme Court ruling (in no certain order): I wonder how many same-sex weddings I'm going to be invited to now. As I noted, many if not most of my co-workers are gay or lesbian. This could get expensive... The U.S. (heterosexual, of course) divorce rate is pretty fucking high. Wikipedia quotes a source that says that "between 40 percent and 60 percent of new marriages will eventually end in divorce. The probability [of divorce] within ... the first five years [of marriage] is 20 percent, and the probability of its ending within the first 10 years is 33 percent...." So I am torn between thinking that we gay men and lesbians should be careful what we wish for where equal marriage rights are concerned and thinking that we gay men and lesbians should show the breeders how this thing called marriage is done and maintain a significantly lower divorce rate ourselves. I never have felt that I needed societal or governmental approval of any coupling that I might have. I know what kind of a relationship I have with someone and don't need approval from without. And to me, any two people, heterosexual or homosexual, who are in a committed romantic/sexual relationship and who are living together are, in my mind, for all intents and purposes, married. I have long referred to my gay male friends and their live-in significant others as "husbands" -- fuck the law.  However, despite the fact that I don't need societal approval or recognition to feel that any relationship of mine is valid, it's infuckingarguable that it is unfuckingconstitutional to prohibit same-sex marriage just as it is unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriage. Again: There. Is. Nothing. To. Fucking. Argue. About. Whether I decide to ever legally marry another man or not, any two men and any two women should have the right to legally marry each other should they wish -- regardless of how I might feel about marriage. I anticipate that California's newly legalized same-sex marriage is here to stay, just as it is in Massachusetts. And I anticipate that over time, it will be less and less of a big deal for Californians -- even those who live in the red counties -- to see male couples and female couples acting as heterosexual couples do in public. I anticipate that California's progressiveness in legalizing same-sex marriage will result in an increase in same-sex couples' willingness to display their affection for each other in public and will result in a decrease in homophobia. An increase in gay men's and lesbians' courage to be themselves in public will lessen homophobia, and lessened homophobia will further increase gay men's and lesbian's courage to be themselves; the two will reinforce each other. The only reason that many people (even some homosexual people) have a hard time witnessing public acts of affection between same-sex couples is that they're just not used to seeing it. My advice to my fellow Californians is: Get used to it if you're not used to it yet. We're here, we're queer, and we're not going away. Nauseatingly, both the Billary Cunton and the Barack Obama camps, unsurprisingly, have issued statements in the wake of today's momentous California Supreme Court decision that they support separate-but-unequal "civil unions" for same-sex couples and that it should be up to each state to decide whether to adopt legalized same-sex marriage. (The California Supreme Court rejected the ludicrous "separate but equal" philosophy of civil unions for same-sex couples, and there are some things -- such as slavery, voting rights, criminal law rights, abortion rights, interracial marriage rights and same-sex marriage rights -- that you just don't let every state decide for itself. "States' rights" sounds great, but oh, what some of the red states would do if only they could!) While I understand that a majority of Americans as a whole oppose legalized same-sex marriage, and therefore it would be politically risky, if not politically suicidal, for any 2008 presidential candidate to openly support legalized same-sex marriage, I still just can't swallow Obama's and Cunton's official line on same-sex marriage. I have always hated Billary and her perpetually wet index finger anyway, so there is no love lost there, but his pandering stance on same-sex marriage keeps me from wholeheartedly embracing Obama. While I think that it has been important, or at least worthwhile, to knock Cunton from the race so that a better Democrat is the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, I am undecided as to how much time, energy and money I'll spend on the Obama campaign after he finally wins the Democratic presidential nomination. While I rarely use the term "breeders" to refer to heterosexuals (not all of them breed, after all), and while the term used to make me bristle (less now than it used to), the fact is that about the worst thing that anyone could do to the planet is to bring another human being into it. Six billion human beings on the planet is more than more than enough. We gay men and lesbians not only should be thanked, but should be monetarily rewarded, for the fact that we're not producing more consumers of the planet's limited resources. Homosexuality and same-sex marriage should not be discouraged, but encouraged. We gay men and lesbians, by declining to reproduce in an already-overpopulated world, just might end up saving the planet. 10:06:43 PM    Comments []