OPINION Equality Made Strides -- Yet Has Still More to Make

A. Barton Hinkle

Nov. 7, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Barack Obama's historic victory is being celebrated -- giddily and rightfully -- as a watershed for social equality. Gay men and lesbians, however, may be forgiven if they have mixed emotions. Californians narrowly (in more than one sense) passed a ballot initiative banning gay marriage. African-Americans, who turned out in large numbers to vote for Obama, likely put it over the top, by supporting it seven to three.

Californians also passed, lopsidedly, an initiative mandating more humane treatment for chickens in factory egg farms. That is all to the good, but it must leave the gay community wondering where it ranks in the scheme of things.

Social conservatives are crowing over the California vote, and the approval of similar measures in Arizona and Florida, and (during National Adoption Month, no less) another in Arkansas banning unmarried couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents. More than 100,000 children nationwide languish in foster care. In Virginia, as Nadine Marsh-Carter noted in Sunday's Commentary section, more than a fifth of them reach adulthood without knowing the comfort of embrace in a loving family. Yet a large segment of the public believes it is better to let them languish than to let them find homes with the wrong kind of people.

WRITING ON MotherJones.com, Kevin Drum wonders whether the California initiative would have passed if Obama had taken a political risk and opposed it. Actually, Obama did.

Although he previously had said he believes "marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman" and that the issue ought to be left to the states -- a position with uncomfortable echoes for African-Americans, especially in the South -- he wrote a letter earlier this year expressing support for "fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states."

But that letter, written months ago, was soon forgotten. So, 41 years after the Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia striking down laws against interracial marriage, a black man ascended to the presidency -- and Californians sent homosexuals to the back of the bus.

Now many Americans, including and perhaps especially black Amerians, take issue with the analogy between the black civil-rights struggle and the civil-rights struggle of gay men and lesbians. Fair enough; all analogies are inexact. What's more, it's worth noting that California's system of civil unions remains intact. As a writer for the hard-left Nation noted, "There are almost no rights beyond marriage itself at stake for California queers much less anyone else. That's because the state's domestic partnership law already provides all the partnership rights a state can give absent federal marriage laws." Thus in some respects, there was less at stake than either side let on.

THAT DOES NOT make the result merely symbolic, because symbols signify something much deeper. If the struggle for gay rights does not exactly replicate the struggle for black rights, one could say it rhymes, in the following regard. Acknowledging the full human and civil rights of African-Americans -- acknowledging their social equality -- did not diminish the rights of white Americans. Acknowledging the human and civil rights of gay men and lesbians takes nothing away from straight people; in no sense can it be thought to harm them or attenuate their liberty. So the only remaining reason to oppose such recognition is antipathy toward the minority as a class. "Next to the blessed Sacrament itself," said C.S. Lewis, "your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses." To which California has replied: Not always.

Social conservatives dispute this, of course. Commentaries on American Family Radio and in other religious-right forums insist that the campaign for gay rights will undermine religious freedom, force churches to marry homosexuals against their will, encourage the recruitment of the young into a sexually deviant lifestyle, and undermine the traditional family and the institution of marriage itself.

But trying to protect the institution of marriage by preventing gay people from marrying is like trying to protect the institution of banking by preventing people from opening bank accounts. The other concerns are equally misplaced. For instance: Gay-rights groups do not celebrate the "conversion" of straight people to the homosexual lifestyle the way some Christian groups celebrate individuals who profess to have overcome their homosexual orientation. Gays do not preach against heterosexuality or stigmatize straight people (the isolated derogatory reference to "breeders" notwithstanding). Homosexuals are not asking straight people to give anything up. The cultural war over civil rights for homosexuals, like the civil-rights struggle for blacks, is asymmetric.

And so it will remain, at least for a while. Election Day marked a glorious triumph for the cause of black equality. Gay and lesbian Amerians, it seems, will have to wait.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or bhinkle@timesdispatch.com.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0177-29341242