It’s a big week for LGBT rights.
Yesterday, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) announced that she will introduce a bill to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.
Today, GLAD announced it is filing suit in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts, challenging provisions in section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Bay Windows explains: “GLAD’s suit only targets the provisions in section three of DOMA that block same-sex married couples from receiving equal treatment in taxes, federal employee spousal and survivor benefits, Social Security and name changes.” The suit, if successful, would not overturn all of DOMA, but not the entire statute. I’m sure the legal minds at GLAD have a good reason for this approach. Remember, they’re the folks who brought marriage equality to Massachusetts. (That’s GLAD, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, not to be confused with GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.)
And yesterday, California legislators approved two resolutions opposing the legality of Proposition 8. The state Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on whether the measure was a significant enough change to the state constitution that it should have gone through the Legislature before going to voters.
As Bil at Bilerico writes, though, there are still several major issues, in particular employment non-discrimination and LGBT-inclusive anti-hate crimes laws, that seem to have receded into the background in the face of the push for marriage equality. To many, those basic everyday protections for body and employment are more critical than having the option to marry. Bil argues that GLAD’s marriage case may in fact set back the chance to pass other LGBT-rights measures in “flyover” states like Indiana.
I definitely see his point, but I’ll also observe that for better or worse, the marriage battle has captured the public imagination. If we can score a victory there, it may create enough momentum to make progress in other areas. If we were starting with a clean slate, marriage may not be what we’d chose to lead with, but the fact is, it’s out front now.
Or as Bil and others, like Matt Comer and Pam Spaulding, remind us, the ultra-emotional issue of marriage may still be the wrong matter to keep pushing for, when smaller, less sensitive issues may help us gain more traction for our overall set of rights.
What do you think?
[Update: Nancy Pelosi says an LGBT-inclusive ENDA and anti-hate crimes laws are a priority, and indicated they would be likely to pass before a repeal of DADT.]
I suppose it’s naïve to think we can do all at the same time. I hope it’s not naïve to think, though, that a major gain in one area would usher in, or at least speed progress, in any of the others.
I always think that the marriage equality battle found us, rather than the other way around (again, perhaps a naïve or under-informed position). Some LGBT folk have consciously put this first in their organizing. For my part, it was the virulent response by right wing Christianists that has made it a battle I feel I can’t let slide by. Feels like, hell, clearly it matters to them. And I can’t let their vision of our relationship to citizenship carry the day. But at the same time, I suppose it’s been sisters and brothers of mine who picked the fight.
Sure feels like now the whole snowball is rolling downhill, or the horses are out of the barn, or the toothpaste is out of the tube, well. Feels like a battle we have to stick out ’til it’s done with.
Given my druthers, I’d have picked federal civil rights, though. (Whether employment non-discrimination and hate crimes legislation would have been the swiftest, smartest route to that, or marriage equality, I suppose we won’t know, either for a while, or at all. )
I’d love to think that we could have it all and have it now but that just doesn’t seem to the point. I suspect/fear that we’re still in for many years of one-step forward/two-steps back. Or fighting through courts and having public backlash (a la Prop 8) and then back to the courts.
But as MLK said: “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Thank you, Debra. Those last words are going to be the ones to keep us all sane in the months and years to come.