A historic day, flawed
On Tuesday, Americans elected the country's first African American president. I wasn't sure it was possible.
When I was a kid in rural Kansas, my grandfather talked openly and frankly of blacks as monkeys, as tar-babies, as flatly inhuman.
He had a favorite story -- one he loved to tell the grandkids -- about seeing a truckload of black farmworkers crash and spill. He claimed that the men bounced, as if made of rubber.
From bias and hatred so deep that we viewed our neighbors as inferior to a tolerance so expansive that we embrace Sen. Obama as our Commander In Chief -- that's a hell of a journey.
America should be proud. But the journey's not over.
I was struck that on the same day we turned a corner on race, voters in California also chose to revoke equal marriage rights for millions of gay and lesbian couples.
I couldn't help but wonder what stories were being told to grandkids in this country now.
Not about black men bouncing like tar-babies but about "abnormal" gays, about lesbians who flaunt "traditional" values.
I wince when I see TV shows and stand-up comics using "queer" stereotypes (the mincing queen, the tough dike) as regular fodder for their jokes.
It's a kind of societally accepted minstrel show.
I happen to be heterosexual. I'm happily married, a father. I am deeply devoted to the institution of marriage. It really is the cornerstone of our society.
Which is why Americans should think long and hard about the moral dimensions of denying that right to millions of our neighbors.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
posted by Brian Mann @ 11/06/2008 09:09:00 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
A person I was talking to one day made a suggestion I though sounded like it might just work - at least from the politicians' end of things.
In the interest of separating Church and State, the government should not have anything to do with marriage, a divine - or at least religious rite. Instead, the government should only be involved in (from the vantage point of tax codes, census, legal rights, and other things the government should be involved in) "unions" or "partnerships". There should be a category for said coupled individuals that does not designate whether said union has been blessed by any church or other group. Unions could be performed - for civil purposes - by clerks etc. without the necessity of having the government involved in a "marriage" which would return to its original meaning: a church's blessing of said union.
"Marriage" would then be a term for use only by churches and other faith groups, and the hot potato which is same-sex marriage would be in the hands or laps of the religious bigwigs. No doubt some churches would bless said marriages, some would not, but at least it would take one layer of blowhards out of the discussion.
I know it's not a complete solution to the issue, but it does address at least parts of the problem.
Peter
I really agree with Peter, I have been advocating for that position for years. Render unto Caesar and all of that ... The state has some important benefits granted to married couples, religious institutions see the union as blessed. So, separate the activities! I really do not feel that my 40 year marriage would be the least bit threatened or the blessed state of it changed if the lesbian couple next door got married.
Leslie Anne King
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