Other

The federal court’s ruling overturning California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage re-ignited a firestorm that left politicians (including the President) with the options of either supporting it, condemning it or taking the middle road. The middle would be domestic partnerships.

While it is politically expeditious to endorse domestic-partner laws, endorsing gay marriage is a much stickier wicket. I realize that. But the truth of the matter is that not doing so perpetuates the class of "other".

I’m hoping the debate the firestorm kicked off will encourage sane debate about the issue. But I doubt that it will. It comes ready-made for partisan politics and name-calling. It’s an opportunity for sound bites about “activist judges”, “judicial legislation” and the general decay of moral values. Some will even claim that it will lead to legalized pedophilia and bestiality.

That’s a slippery slope they often fall down to score points with constituents who won’t bother trying to trace A to B and find out that they don’t meet. Laws protecting children and animals would in no way be impacted by laws that allowed consenting adults to choose and legally wed the person of their mutual choices, regardless of sex.

And our legislators, whether state or federal, by and large don’t want to hear about what is inherently good about gay marriage. As a body, they are too cowardly to address the issue directly. They’d rather keep sliding down that slippery slope.

They don’t want to hear or accept the simple truth that long-term gay relationships are as stable, fulfilling and healthy as long-term heterosexual ones. That children of gay parents have the same chances of a having a healthy, nurturing childhood as those of heterosexual couples. Sexual orientation plays little to no role in defining good parents: it’s the individual parents who are either good or bad at the job.

They don’t want to know that millions of gay families already exist in everything but name and have for years.

Instead, they revert to their prejudices and preconceived notions about what “gay” is, while not recognizing or acknowledging that their actions predicate and foster inherent bias and discrimination aimed at more of their constitutes than they want to admit exist.

Some days, I want to stand up and scream, “I’m a human being. I hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Let me be happy in peace, dammit.

And while that statement draws on the Declaration of Independence and has no standing in a court of law, it should guide and inform anyone interpreting the law.

Most politicos would like for people to think that law is cut and dried: that it’s precise and covers every scenario and anticipates every possible outcome. But law is fluid. It requires judgment calls. It requires speculation about original intention and possible outcomes. It is not the static, immutable creature that some want to pretend that it is.

"Separate but equal" was ruled by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional long ago. This issue is no different.

Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution broadly for a reason: they knew that they could not anticipate every situation or issue that might arise in the future. So they made the provision that it could be amended and that the sometimes-vague language could be interpreted by judges. They didn’t write a document for the 18th century: they wrote it for all ages and times.

They framed the language to protect persons who had been persecuted in Europe because of their religious beliefs. To protect the “others” of their day. Over time, the list of “others” protected grew to include people of color and women, as well as legal immigrants, regardless of where they came from.

Same-sex partners’ battle for legal countenance is the civil rights movement of our time. It follows in the footsteps of the suffragists in the teens and, later, Dr. King, who so eloquently gave a voice to a disenfranchised body of citizens. His “I Have a Dream” speech is great, not only because of the hope implicit in the words, but also for the implicit indictment of the larger society for keeping that dream from coming true. What he didn’t say was as important as what he did say.

I am not so eloquent or patient. I am simply tired of being "other". But as George Orwell so tersely put it in “Animal Farm” (his satiric novel about fascism), "Some animals are more equal than others."

As it stands, most people I know are more equal than me.

That's how it shakes out at the end of the day. Separate, but by no means equal. Just “other”.