"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This month has seen important victories for gay rights' advocates, notably the decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court and the Vermont legislature to legalize same-sex marriage. The provoked the National Organization for Marriage (heterosexual only, of course) to move up its planned ad campaign.
I generally try to go easy on people who seem earnest (though maybe I shouldn't... see MLK quote above). But the NOM ad (which can be viewed here) provoked only one reaction. Not anger or fury or disgust, but hysterical laughter. Menacing music. Apocalyptic imagery. Sky-is-falling rhetoric. I'm sure if they believed that global warming was real, they would've blamed gays for that too. In parts of it, I honestly don't know how The Onion or Stephen Colbert would've done it any differently.
Despite such unintentional humor, or perhaps because of it, the tide toward equal rights for gays seems to be turning. New York Gov. David Paterson re-introduced a bill that would legalize gay marriage in this state. No doubt, its timing was designed to prop up his personal unpopularity.
But the mere fact that being pro-gay marriage is now seen as an issue that can BOOST your popularity is an example of how much things have evolved... or should I say, been intelligently designed.
A recent poll revealed that only 19 percent of New Yorkers opposed any form of legal recognition for gay couples. New York is certainly one of the more liberal states. But a person or issue doesn't get 81 percent statewide numbers without significant support in the fairly conservative upstate.
Tellingly, this this piece from The Adirondack Daily Enterprise on how a fourth Assemblywomen from the conservative North Country, three of whom are Republican, have come out in favor of the governor's gay marriage bill. I'm not sure exactly how many Assembly members the North Country has, but I can't imagine it would much more than four.
This won't change the dynamic of voting in Albany. The gay marriage bill already has overwhelming support in the Assembly, which passed the bill two years ago. It's in the Senate where it might not pass because of a couple of conservative Democrats, unless the leadership can pick off a few Republican votes.
But if legislators from the conservative North Country feel they can take a stand in favor of equal rights without jeopardizing their jobs via a strong primary challenge, then maybe things really are moving in the right direction.
In 2007, my local Assemblywoman, Republican Teresa Sayward, stunned observers by making a moving and impassioned speech in favor of gay marriage. She explained how her views had evolved via her relationship with her gay son. The right was outraged. The Conservative Party refused to endorse her in the 2008 election, even though she votes their position over 90 percent of the time.
The right predicted, in some cases promised, that the vote would be her political demise in this conservative district. In the 2008 general election, 32,029 people cast a legal vote for a candidate in the election for her seat.
She won 99.998 percent of those votes.
She ran unopposed in the primary too.
Update: This 19 pct. opposition to all forms of official recognition for gay couples is even more surprising considering the fact that Catholics, white evangelicals and black Protestants combine to comprise nearly 60 pct. of New York state's population. So this makes you wonder if the rank-and-file of these religious groups might be more open-minded than their leadership.
Further update: The Daily News Daily Politics' blog reports that the Empire State Pride Agenda is enlisting members of the clergy in Massachusetts to push back against claims that passage of gay marriage in New York will force religious institutions to peform same-sex ceremonies against their will.
Bob Conner at Planet Albany blog offers a different take on gay marriage and other issues that a number of Catholics are concerned about.
1 comment:
Thanks for the link. I acknowledge there is a legitimate case for gay marriage, even if I am not persuaded by it. Leaving aside moral and religious issues, my main political/public policy concern is the potential threat to others' rights, e.g. adoption or dating services being required to include gay couples, and potential threats to free speech rights (see the attacks leveled at Miss California for her civil response to a judge's question). No, I don't think anyone will try to make churches hold gay marriages, but they might try to restrict public expression of religious/moral positions against homosexual sex.
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