Jonathan Ned Katz writes:

It is the responsibility of LGBT leaders and scholars to criticize the LOSS for black and Hispanic equality and GAIN for gay equality represented by the recent Supreme Court decisions.

A story in the New York Times on Sunday, June 23, warned that the upcoming Supreme Court rulings might support gay equality and hamper the equality of Hispanics and blacks (once again disappearing those who are black and Hispanic and gay).

THIS REALLY HORRIBLE POSSIBILITY has now come true. There’s a long history of the dominant society pitting various groups’ interests against each other, and I hope that LGBT leaders and scholars will  publicly criticize this aspect of the Supreme Court’s decisions.

The Times story says that if the Court’s decisions “require only [formal] equal treatment from the government,” as opposed to taking into consideration historical and still existing discrimination, “same-sex couples who want to marry would be better off at the end of the term, while blacks and Hispanics could find it harder to get into college and to vote.”

Guest Blogger: Toby Grace

Toby Grace, editor of Out in Jersey Magazine, writes:

To everyone who sent congratulations and notes of happiness regarding the Supreme Court decision that overturned DOMA, or who intended to—thank you for joining the celebration. 

It has been a very long road, marched by a very small army. It has been almost 50 years since I stood on Christopher Street the morning after the riots, surveying a scene that looked is if a small war had been fought and wondering if my friends who had been in the fight were OK. 

The only other person on the street at dawn was a young boy sweeping up broken glass in front of a shop. He was singing to himself—softly—a song from West Side Story: “There's a place for us, somewhere a place for us, hold my hand and I'll take you there—some place, some time, some where.”

For me that was a galvanizing moment. I swore that THIS would be the place and the time was NOW! I became an activist in that moment. That was a long time ago and a great deal has happened. Often the exigencies of life interfered with commitment to the movement but the dream was always in my heart. I have been greatly blessed by being permitted to live long enough to see this day—to see the day when the young people who are so very dear to me can live openly and love the person of their choice without fear and in an environment that, when I was their age, I could not have conceived as possible. 

I will spend a little quiet time today by myself, remembering all the ones who, but for the terrible plague of AIDS, would be here today, ecstatically celebrating this victory that they contributed so much to, in laying the foundations of our liberty. 

The voices of hate are still heard, but they have become as the croaking of frogs—a chorus of meaningless noise that fades into the night. When one has lived as long as I have, one begins to see a certain repetition in the unfolding of history. I noted the protest signs held up by the religious fanatics opposing this decision outside the Supreme Court yesterday bore slogans identical to the ones the same sort of people used in opposing the court’s 1967 decision in Loving vs. Virginia—the decision that struck down laws against interracial marriage. In ’67, they claimed marrying the person one loves was against God’s law just as they did yesterday. Evidently God was not impressed with their twisted logic or their primitive theology. 

However, the millenium has not yet dawned. Thirty-seven states still outlaw marriage equality. That will change. Gays are still executed in some medieval foreign lands. That must stop. We are not at the end of the road but we have at least arrived a beautiful rest stop and we can celebrate with real joy. 

Have a wonderful day, because it IS a wonderful day and today, life is very sweet.

Toby Grace

Editor

Out in Jersey

GLBT law professor (Yale) speaks at Boston University Law Scholl on Same Sex Marriage legal history and progress

(C-SPAN taped 11-15-12)

I am glad C-SPAN taped a talk by Prof. Wm Esheridge (?) of Yale speaking at Boston University Law School on same sex marriage. His book is The Case for Same Sex Marriage, and his speech is going to be published in the (BU) Law Review. He gave a brief history.  It is, like most of the history of the movement to gain equal/civil. rights for homosexual Americans, not a single person or issue or method story.  Since the issue was first discussed in print in ONE Magazine in 1954, there have been many people and views on the issue and how to gain it, and even if it is a good idea to have it

He gives his own views and work on the subject/issue. I think it was 1971 when the Baker case happened in Minnesota. Then he mentions the case in Hawaii and how it was stopped.  He worked on a DC case.  He says that other issues affected this issue, such as Lawrence vs Texas, law changes in Europe, people knowing more lgbt people. He repeats—maybe in a sense it is practical for a non academic group but not a law school group—that Stonewall was a major event, the error that it was the first time we fought back. He says AIDS slowed the progress, but it seems to me that instead it got the movement more sympathy and got people supporting us who would not have done so otherwise.  He  says having same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts was a great step forward as people saw it in the real world.

An aside, he says to think about the subject by using three TV shows as reference:  Modern Family gives us one view, Revenge another, and then Homeland—the one many rightwingers think of since it means the issue is a Trojan Horse—ruining marriage, as someone is trying to secretly ruin the nation.  (He says give Ellen some credit too.)

He thinks a slow method is best so doubts the court will go too far until a few years, when the public is ready, as in a sense it was for Loving vs Virginia, and he says that case affects same sex marriage as does the thinking (?) in Romer vs Evans.  I think he was thinking that Bowers set us back, and another bad case could do it again.

A questioner asked the obvious: do some in the community/movement think that pushing marriage is too much like being heterosexual and giving up status as an outsider and more free person?  He replied that is an issue, but AIDS should have shown that if we are in a more committed relationship that is more supportive of a safer status and supports the idea of family.

Don Slater and others said that the decision in Connecticut giving women the right to contraceptives removed the issue of sex and/or marriage being only for procreation.

There was also a question about separating the issue of the government concern in marriage and the religious part.  He did not then point out how the Mormons and Catholics defeated the Prop 8 and instead blamed the loss on lousy advertising.