Originally published on Facebook, 12/12/09
Friday December the 4th saw another defeat for the cause of marriage equality in America, as 38 New York Senators voted against legislation that would have legalized gay marriage in New York, perhaps the bluest of blue states. Feministing.com was apparently going to have a rant about that, but instead they ran a clip of NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn's reaction to the news (which is worth watching- here.) And that got me thinking:
Like legalized marijuana, I view gay marriage as something of a historical inevitability. Just being alive and being in Iowa when the Varnum Decision was handed down by the State Supreme Court convinced me- Facebook lit up with joy and pride in the Hawkeye State for daring to do what people apparently considered to be the fundamentally right thing. And I have to admit, i don't know that many gay or lesbians. These were straight people- happy, downright proud to be Iowan because of what our Supreme Court did. It gave me so much hope for the future and convinced me that although the fight may be longer than it should be, the fight for marriage equality will eventually be won.
Yet, in the aftermath of the NY Defeat, my mind was churning. Why is it, whenever people vote on gay marriage it loses? Why should this just be left to the courts? Why isn't this a no-brainer? If you watch Quinn's remarks, you'll see that she's not asking for the moon on a string, all she wants to do is dance with her 83 year old Dad at her wedding. How can people vote against such a simple sentiment as that? First, I have to admit that the idea of voting on this issue is something I struggle with greatly- after all, we didn't ask for a show of hands after Brown v. Board. No one said 'well, it's a court decision and the people of the South deserve to have their say at the ballot box.' It was pretty much a no-brainer for people. Equality is equality. We all deserve to be equal under the law and even as the country stood up and said 'enough' to segregation, logic should dictate that if gay and lesbian couples want to get married and be equal to their heterosexual counterparts, then it should be simple. 'Enough' should indeed be 'enough.'
And yet, it's not. Part of the problem, I think lies in the campaigns that proponents of marriage equality have run in a variety of states- if you can't get gay marriage past California voters, you've done something wrong somewhere. The heart of this issue to me needs to be the people themselves- like I said earlier, it seems to me that people like Christine Quinn aren't demanding acceptance, they're not even demanding approval- all they want is a wedding- and how that threatens anyone- and how anyone could possibly deny such a simple request baffles me every single day.
We confuse 'acceptance' with 'tolerance'-- and we confuse both words with 'approval.' I think there's something in the American national character that genuinely balks at the idea of being told what to do and what to believe. It's probably what started the Revolution to begin with, but in a contemporary setting it produces knee-jerk reactions at the ballot box that don't necessarily advance causes very well. I remain convinced that Hillary Clinton's aura of 'inevitability' heading into the 2008 electoral season proved to be her undoing. Ideological hijacking of the issue of marriage equality and hysterical demands and accusations of the death of 'traditional marriage' should gay marriage be legalized provide fertile ground for distortions that seem to say if we allow marriage equality, then we have to allow x.y. and z as well.
Some people say 'civil unions' first-- but how do you ask people to wait for equality? Some people make the libertarian argument and say that the state should get out of the marriage business altogether and everyone should, for legal purposes, have civil unions- but good luck selling that one to an American electoral that treat marriage as an almost sacred word in and of itself. No, to me, there is no good argument against it- my marriage certainly hasn't fallen apart and I have a sneaking suspicion no one else's has either. And debate aside- we have to ask: how sacred is something if everyone can do it? In Johnson County- thirty seconds on the internet and the ability to write your name on a piece of paper is all it takes. And to me, that brought home the fact that the only two people that matter in the marriage are the people who love each other. The state doesn't make a marriage. People do.
Yet whatever side of this issue you come down on, the ideological hijacking of the issue that occurs on both ends of the political spectrum is a symptom of a larger problem- a cancer on the American body politic that desperately needs to be addressed and thus far has not been addressed (not to my satisfaction anyway) by our new president. The problem is that of gavage.
Gavage is perhaps the perfect metaphor for this age of hyper-partisan nonsense that we currently live in. For those of you who don't know, gavage is the process by which a tube is inserted into a duck's (or goose's) esophogus and food is crammed down its throat, all in the name of producing an especially tasty liver that gets dipped in butter and other yummy things to make foie gras.
Yes, gavage is perfect. For you see, kids- we, the American people are the goose (or duck) and the two ends of our political spectrum are the ones holding the tube to shove down our throat. People like the National Organization for Marriage warn that 'a storm is coming.' Perez Hilton calls Carrie Prejean a 'dumb bitch' for 'opposing' gay marriage. The Mormon Church is vilified by the left for their role in defeating Prop 8 in California-- and Constitutional Amendment after Amendment is passed to ban gay marriage in state after state-- and this problem of gavage goes far beyond the issue of marriage equality.
Our political discourse is marred by it- no one can have a reasonable debate with each other any more. People never listen to each other- they just talk right past each other. Pressing national problems (entitlement reform, the skyrocketing debt, the costs of education for the younger generation) never get solved because no one wants to listen. The political parties and extremist ideologues on both sides of the aisle merely take turns holding the tube, hoping that whatever they cram down the throats of the American people will produce a better result for their side.
Whether you believe that hyper-partisanism was the fault of Reagen firing the opening salvo of the Conservative Revolution or Gingrich's final assault on the dessicated remains of the New Deal Coalition in 1994, the fact remains that there is apparently no leader in America with the character to rise above it. There is no leader with the authority to change, modulate or end it-- and so the long age of American Gavage continues- eating away at our democracy, doing untold damage to our national discourse. The issue of my generation has to be, must be, to break out of this age of gavage.
Kids, we've got to make like a bulimic duck and do something about this-- because it may begin with gavage and a tube shoved down the throat of a duck (or a goose), but the story never, ever, ends well for the duck.
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