A "progressive" state legislature demonstrates their bigotry as up to 8 Democratic state senators switch their vote for the continued denial of rights to a minority. They are on the wrong side of history and will eventually be ashamed of their vote to deny marriage equality.
Five years ago, no one would have believed that in 2009 five states would allow gay marriage. In a few years, no one will understand why anyone was against it.
This is brilliant:
4 comments:
Here's the point, though. Society is becoming increasingly open in general to homosexuality; most people don't really care who someone sleeps with. But marriage is an emotional issue with a lot of people; like it or not (and you know I don't), many people that are ok with gay sex are not ok with gay marriage and see it as an affront to their values. And this is especially true among groups that would be liberal on many other issues. I don't think you can blame the legislature for responding to public opinion--it is a democracy after all.
I liken it to the situation with African-Americans. Many people were willing to acknowledge that racism, in general, was wrong, but it took a long time (and a generational change) before people would vote for a black president.
Calling people bigots doesn't help. Everyone has prejudices of one sort or another. The taboo against gays has been thousands of years in the making; it's unrealistic to expect it to dissolve in a few years.
A recent poll shows that 51% of New Yorkers support gay marriage while 42% are against it. The Senate voted almost 60% against the measure. That doesn't sound to me like they're responding to public opinion.
And we're not talking about people accepting gays, we're talking about civil rights. Civil rights shouldn't have to wait for everyone to become comfortable with the minority in question.
First, the way that politics works is that the vocal minority has more influence than the passive majority. I would bet that most of the 51% that supports gay marriage wouldn't likely vote for someone because they support it, while those that oppose would probably vote against someone opposing it.
The reality is that what is a civil right is often determined through the political process--at least in the absence of a court decision like Brown v. Board of Education. The only reason abortion is a "civil right" is because the Supreme Court said so. I could say it's a civil right to have free access to health care, but saying that doesn't make it so.
So in spite of majority support (however passive) for a vote that by definition is about granting civil rights to a minority, we shouldn't call them on this?
Since there is no legitimate secular reason to be against gay marriage (we've heard them all over the past two years and nothing even comes close), then their reason for denying this right was either bigotry or political cowardice.
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