Election overshadows discrimination

By Joseph Gauger
Collegian Editor
November 13, 2008

Reality struck much too soon the morning of Nov. 5. After a night of celebrating the results of the presidential race and about three hours of sleep, I awoke to read that Proposition 8 had apparently passed in California, pending some uncounted votes. The ballot measure amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage after the state’s Supreme Court ruled a statutory ban unconstitutional in May.

The shouting exuberance of the small hours of that morning had not allowed the scope of Election Day’s events to firm up in my mind. It was some time before the notion of an African American president sank in. The news about Prop 8 intervened, though.

Somehow I couldn’t preserve the feeling of victory knowing that voters had agreed to take away rights that had previously been recognized by the state of California. It was difficult to conceive of California, a famously progressive state known for leading other states into modernity, banning something that had been implemented in a handful of other states.

The painful irony of the Prop 8 victory is that African American voters were the only ethnic demographic that tilted heavily toward voting yes on the ban. They provided the margin of victory in what would otherwise have been an extremely close vote. People who eagerly took part in the election of the first black president were also part of this new piece of discrimination.

The entire history of the debate on gay marriage has been just as confusing as the story of Prop 8. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to prevent gay people from marrying each other. There just doesn’t seem to be any coherent argument against it.

There are plenty of things I believe in that you might criticize or formulate an argument against—things like the Golden Rule, universal health care and the progressive income tax. But why prevent two adults in a loving, monogamous relationship from having their mutual commitment recognized by the state? All the talk about the end of civilization, the corruption of youth and the dissolution of pre-existing heterosexual marriages doesn’t seem to have manifested in states where gay marriage is allowed.

I have encountered older liberals who oppose gay marriage, but they don’t have arguments any more convincing than those of the conservatives. I know that there is much less of a stigma on homosexuality among my own generation than among that of my parents or grandparents. That’s a positive thought, and gives me hope for a politically mobilized and open-minded generation brought to the polls for the first time by Barack Obama. But does that leave me waiting for the older, anti-gay-rights people to die off? What kind of rights movement is that? “We’re younger than the bigots, so let’s just wait for them all to croak.” Somehow I don’t feel righteous adopting that sort of strategy.

I firmly believe that full rights for GLBT people will inevitably be achieved in this country. This kind of social progress can only be impeded for so long, especially when the opposition is so irrational. But that doesn’t mean that open-minded people have a reason not to organize a national movement to further that progress. This is a civil rights issue. The worst possible reaction we could have to this election would be to decide that every civil rights question is magically over. America has progress to make toward racial equality, and it has progress to make on gay rights. Open-minded Americans must keep up the fight.

gaugerj1@student.lasalle.edu