Not So Fast...

This morning, all over the world, people are celebrating and with good cause. I think we all deserve a day off (like the nation of Kenya...good for them) or maybe even a couple days to rest and collect ourselves while the final counts are done (and the recounts...Go Franken!) However, the election of Barack Obama is not the end, it is the means to the end. This is an historic moment, but it’s just a first step in changing the world for the better. We can’t let our guard down for a moment, because last night while history broke down one wall, it put up a security fence.

You see, while we were electing our first non-white President - finally living up to the full promise of our Declaration of Independence, abolition, and the civil rights movement - 4 states were turning their attention to one of the last socially condoned forms of discrimination.

In Arkansas, they passed a ban on gay adoption. These are many of the same people who also want to ban all abortion, which means more children being born to parents who don’t want them. If they had their way, there’d be even more kids being put up for adoption, but they also want to eliminate a huge pool of people who can’t have children of their own, so want to give all of their love and attention to an adopted child. Anytime someone talks about how children do better with a mother and a father, I just have to roll my eyes. Straight people don’t have to pass any test to become parents, and in my life I’ve met a lot of people and most of their parents were highly flawed in one way or another. Honestly, gay people couldn’t do a worse job than us, and at least they would be specifically choosing to be parents and not just stumbling into it. Also, they would know that every action they made was being scrutinized, and would probably be better parents.

Arizona, Florida, and California went a step farther. As much as I disagree with the people of Arkansas, it’s one thing to want to keep children in a certain environment, and quite another to reach right into people’s homes where they aren’t influencing anyone else and telling them what they can and can’t do. If tomorrow a constitutional amendment was passed banning all marriage, what do you think people would do? Many would riot, certainly. Some wouldn’t care. Overall though, they would continue to live their lives they way they always had. They’d meet, fall in love, move in together, maybe have children and open a joint checking account. The reason is because marriage as an institution is cultural, not merely legal. So gay people are still going to be gay, still going to fall in love, still going to pair up and have lives together. So all this amendment does, and this is the sinister part, is deny them legal rights and protections. Marriage is a legal, binding contract that provides many benefits, and can even provide financial incentives come tax season. These amendments deny those same benefits to people who want to get married, but who aren’t biologically attracted to the opposite sex. They can’t help that, and yet people in three states think they should either lie to themselves and others or forfeit their rights.

Next time someone talks about crazy, liberal California, remind them about this vote. And next time you think about how happy you are that the Presidency has finally broken that racial barrier, remember that in Florida, a state where gay marriage was already illegal, they decided to beat that dead horse with a constitutional amendment. Long ago we abolished discrimination based on race in our laws, but it took a long time for that to change in practice. There are still many barriers to freedom to be broken down. Last night we had one, but we have to keep going. It may be a Sisyphusian struggle, but we can’t stop trying to get that boulder to the top of the hill, because when we stop for even a moment, it rolls back down.