NEWS
ITEM
" Portland, ME, November 4, 2009 (AP) -- In an election that had
been billed for weeks as too close to call, Maine's often
unpredictable voters repealed a state law Tuesday that would have
allowed same-sex couples to wed. Gay marriage has now lost in all 31
states in which it has been put to a popular vote " a trend that
the gay-rights movement had believed it could end in Maine.
_________________________________
The following is an excerpt
from a column by Huffington Post Blogger Mike Alvear of Atlanta,
GA:
Sometimes I wonder how the framers of the Constitution
would react to Maine's vote this Tuesday on whether gay people
should keep their right to marry.
I'm pretty sure Jefferson
would weep.
And
the others would share his hankie. For this must be the founding
father's nightmare: Seeing one group of Americans go into the
voting booth to take away the rights of another.....
...No matter
what side you're on, no matter what the result of the final tally,
voting is the enemy of equality.
______________________________
The
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1958, "When any society
says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a
segment of my freedom.
In Loving v. Virginia, a case
involving the right of an interracial couple to wed " "that the US
Supreme Court reminded us in 1967 that:
The
Supreme Court used Loving v. Virginia to strike down
"anti-miscegenation statutes barring interracial marriage as
violating the 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection of the
laws and due process. That decision is the constitutional foundation
upon which gays and lesbians assert their right to marry. In 2007, at
a celebration marking the 40th Anniversary of the Loving decision,
the usually reclusive Mrs. Loving, by then a widow, allowed the
reading, on her behalf, of a statement in favor of
same-sex-marriage.
Equal protection of the laws and due
process are the pillars of civil rights jurisprudence in America. But
those pillars are tottering in 2009. Consider that Maine's vote-down
of same -sex marriage occurred just weeks after a justice of the
peace in Louisiana refused to give a marriage license to an
inter-racial couple.
I would remind everyone who thinks that they
are preserving freedom by displaying guns near presidential speeches,
or opposing health care for all to spare us from socialism that
voting on other people's rights in the name of democracy sets a
dangerous precedent. It is very easy to shout "majority rules
and "the will of the people when you are in the majority. You
won't be so glib about that when you are in the minority. And someday
you may be. Political passions wax and wane; majorities
shift.
Sometimes a nation is more liberal and sometimes it is more conservative. But if it is ever a society in which some people have
fundamental rights, such as the right to marry, and others don't,
because in the politics of the day, a "majority, out of
ignorance or prejudice, has voted against those rights, it is not a
nation at all, just a group of co-habiting factions, some of which
have more power than others.
As Malcolm X said: "If you have to
fight for your civil rights, you are not a citizen.
Even
when a group is successful in gaining civil rights at the ballot box,
the cost in terms of social cohesion can be great. Consider the
Women's Suffrage movement. Women needed men to pass and then ratify
the 19th Amendment. They got the votes via a campaign that was often
racist and xenophobic. White women argued that if black men and
immigrant men had the vote why should women who were both white and
native born, and by implication superior to blacks and immigrants, be
denied?
The people of those 31 states that have voted down
same-sex marriage ought not to be celebrating. They ought to be very
frightened of what they have done...to themselves. For where does
this end? Do these people mount an armed rebellion if this issue
reaches the Supreme Court, as it probably will, and the justices,
relying on the Loving precedent, strike down all the bigotry
enshrined in the various anti-same-sex marriage laws voted by the
people? Or, if their prejudice is judicially upheld, what right and
what group will be targeted next? Will it be the right to own
property, to be free of employment or housing discrimination, to
access public accommodations or to enter certain jobs and
professions? Will it be people of color, or women, or immigrants,
even those here legally? Or will it be people who do not subscribe to
certain religious beliefs or who belong to certain religious sects?
One would have hoped that Mormons and Catholics, both
historic victims of discrimination, would have not succumbed to the
temptation of indulging in prejudice in the name of religion. And to
their credit, individuals of both religions have not so succumbed.
But institutionally, these religions have clothed prejudice in
religiosity and have used the state to deny people civil equality in
order to enforce their particular belief systems on people who are
not members of their religions. Before they seek their next victims,
they should remember that what goes around comes around. Are they so
sure that they will be welcomed into the halls of power if the United
States turns from democracy into theocracy?
But there is one
issue that is being overlooked in this debate on same-sex-marriage:
The insistence on a public vote on same-sex marriage reflects, at
least in part, public frustration over the fact that the people's
voice does not count in so many other more properly public and
votable matters. The people want affordable, accessible health care--instead, they are getting bills in Congress that prioritize insurance
company profits over people. The people want an end to the costly
wars that politicians lied to get us int--instead, they are getting
escalation of those wars. The people did not want their tax money
given to the banksters while they are losing their homes and jobs;
instead, the money flowed to Wall Street, not Main street.
This
sort of thing has been going on for over ten years now. The people
did not want Bill Clinton impeached, but he was. The people wanted Al
Gore and John Kerry to be president, but it was George W. Bush who
served two terms. I don't know if we ever have had a similar period
in American history during which the will of the people has been so
completely ignored on such a vast array of important public affairs
for so long a time.
Now the frustrated people have found an
issue where they can vote and make the results stick. Only the issue
is one of the civil rights of their fellow Americans, a matter that
should not be voted on at all. And while the people argue--and
vote--over same-sex marriage, they are being fleeced and killed in
record numbers.
"Yeah, we may be sick, bankrupt, out of a
home and out of a job, but at least we made sure those fags can't get
married!
The powers that be are laughing at you. Your fight
over what consenting adults do in the bedroom is taking your eyes and
your minds off their crimes. And that's just the way they like it.
