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The Dangers of Voting on Civil Rights
Nov 10th, 2009 | 7 responsesPosted by OIA Staff in Health & Lifestyle, OpinionIn an election that had been billed for weeks as too close to call, Maine’s often unpredictable voters repealed a state law Tuesday that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed. Gay marriage has now lost in all 31 states in which it has been put to a popular vote — a trend that the gay-rights movement had believed it could end in Maine. The following is an excerpt from a column by Huffington Post Blogger Mike Alvear of Atlanta, GA: “Sometimes I wonder how the framers of the Constitution would react to Maine’s vote this Tuesday on whether gay people should keep their right to marry. “I’m pretty sure Jefferson would weep. “And the others would share his hankie. For this must be the founding father’s nightmare: Seeing one group of Americans go into the voting booth to take away the rights of another . . . “ . . . No matter what side you’re on, no matter what the result of the final tally, voting is the enemy of equality.”
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Tags: civil rights, Constitution, Equality, Gay Marriage, maine, vote
7 Responses to “The Dangers of Voting on Civil Rights”
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If civil right were a matter of popular opinion and put to a vote, African Americans would still be using seperate entrances. It’s a shame the same ethnic groups that we all fought so hard to support in their time of need for social justice have abandoned us now.
It follows, and I commented elsewhere recently…
I have just had the rewarding experience of visiting my representative, Congressman Patrick Kennedys’ web page; wherein I found that under no specific heading is there attention paid to equal rights. I found this particularly disturbing as the first listing in the column is for Animal Rights.
I would suggest that members of the House and Senate be made aware that ignorance and denial of Equal Rights For All, in ALL things, IS tantamount to a hate crime in its complicity and acceptance of maintaining the status quo of hatred and bigotry.
It is time for the LGBT communities to stand as an active political group and insist that there is a price for our support and payment is overdue. The passive stance, accepting that we’re gaining ground in our losses has to become a concept left behind as surely as polyester leisure suits. The alternative to action is acceptance of second class status and knowing, as surely as the sun rises, that the hate-mongers among us will mobilize their armies of ignorance to dismantle the acceptance and political gains we’ve made on the backs of those who came before us.
The only question, now as then is, “If not now, When?”
Ubercon,
You don’t speak for me, any more than does Mike Alvear.
Whether fascist or libertarian (as I suspect you are), we find ourselves in this society, and have to live in it accordingly. There are many reasons (of which you are perfectly well aware) why marriage can be enormously important. The list is long; inheritance rights, hospital visitation, custody, etc.
I agree that the state should not regulate the contents of individual lives, but until the nation-state paradigm is replaced by a better means by which people can live together, we have to deal with it.
It’s all well and good to say that the government should stay out of poeple’s lives, but most of the people who say things like that still have drivers licenses and pay their automobile insurance.
I don’t think it’s fascist to ask for consistency and fairness.
It certainly isn’t. It’s perfectly fine to demand fairness, not just ask for it. If you want to make the case for fairness and tolerance, I believe you’ll get further if you are yourself fair and tolerant. Perhaps you are not familiar with the Huffington Post. My point is that we need to seperate ourselves from the fringe left politically if we don’t want our personal lives to become politicized.
With support everywhere for “civil unions” why do we have a group of activists demanding we be allowed to label it “Marriage”? We were given a plum and threw it on the ground, stomped on it with spiked heels and demanded cake. It makes no sense for us to behave this way. This is and always will be a case of “Neener neener we’ve got something you don’t have” and they are right. Even though straight marriage is a joke in and of itself, carrying a 50% failure rate, they will never allow anyone else to have a shot at it. So why do we keep trying? We will not get equal rights as straights, start with that one concept and we can find a way to move forward. The Constitution does not give us the right to marry whomever we choose, it gives us the right to be alive and well, working and playing among all other Americans. Stop the madness, it’s embarrassing. In a democracy, the majority rules, and like it or not, the majority does NOT want us to call our unions “Marriage”. Take away that word and you take away their ammunition.
Ditto’s.
That just what we need- get the elitists at the Huffington Post to start lecturing our neighbors on their wacked view of this country. I think the sneering facsists that pass for leaders in the gay community can continue to fuck this up well enough on thier own. We’ve lost in 31 states. In some of those, like my own (Kentucky), we actually lost in a fashion that put us further away from the goal of equality. These setbacks have happened in states all over the map and among demograohic groups that cut across entire population. Yet we continue to marginalize ourselves by walking lock-step with the political fringe. At some point, we need to ask ourselves what WE are doing wrong. Maybe we should go about this a different way. It is clear that othere are those who will never accept us. That’s fine, we don’t need them. Most people in this country are fair and open minded. They believe that people should be free to live thier own lives as they please. They would support us if they didn’t think we were ALL a bunch of fascists… like the elites at the Huffington Post.
ubercon says: “That just what we need- get the elitists at the Huffington Post to start lecturing our neighbors on their wacked view of this country. I think the sneering facsists”
What if “our neighbors” are sneering, ignorant homophobes and Christian or Muslim fundamentalist zealots?