It’s Starting to Look a Lot Like Equality
July 16th, 2008
(. . . in two states, at least).
Massachusetts is now in the process of repealing the racist and obsolete law that Mitt Romney invoked to continue to limit marriage rights for gays after the state legislature removed the overt bar to marriage in the law. Until now, gay couples - but not heterosexuals - could not get married in Massachusetts unless they were official residents of the state, as the result of an old Jim Crow law specifying that couples from out of state could not get married “if their marriage would be illegal in their home state” - a reference to anti-miscegenation laws in southern states. The Supreme Court has long since invalidated legal prohibitions on inter-racial marriage, and the law has never been invoked since then, but was never officially appealed repealed. When gays won the right to marriage equality, the existing anti-equality law was triggered again, so now the law only applies to gays. Romney and his right-wing supporters, happy for any form of discrimination they can still call their own, used it to prevent marriages for gay couples from other states. Now that MA has a decent governor again, they’re working to correct certain oversights.
Interestingly, the article implies (though perhaps not intentionally) that the legislature only acted after marriage equality was recognized in California without a discriminatory clause, and New York state announced it would recognize out of state marriages (ironically, without actually providing equality for in-state ones). That creates a huge pressure for New York couples to seek marriages in California or Canada, to claim equality back in New York. With full marriage equality available in Massachusetts, NY couples can get it done there much more easily than in California, representing a potential revenue stream of more than $100 million over just a few years’ time. Was MA really acting to end discrimination, or just jumping on a lucrative westward-bound bandwagon? Hard to say, but it underscores the dangers of leaving your liberties in other people’s hands.
Either way, great news, again, from Massachusetts. Step by step, state by state, one of the ugliest forms of open discrimination still remaining in this country fades into the growing trash heap of conservative history. Every day, hundreds of new legal gay couples are created, and thousands of people see their stupid fears and fantasies exploded by the simple, mundane reality of equality in their states, cities, and neighborhoods. By the time the planned hate amendment referendum comes up in California this winter, there will be tens of thousands of gay couples married and living in equality in that state - and California is not going to vote to forcibly divorce them all simply out of spite. The other states will follow suit, as their own citizens marry and demand recognition of their rights. With two states now actively offering to all citizens a form of legal equality that they can take back to their homes, there will be a flood of legally married gay couples across the country not merely challenging the legal discrimination they face, but forcing their neighbors to admit that it’s their own friends and family members they are hurting for no reason.
It’s over. The haters have lost, faster even than I imagined. The bigots are now doing nothing more than fighting a rear-guard action to see how long they can continue destroying at least some lives, somewhere. They’ll succeed in that - they’re good at it. Jim Crow taught them how to evade and undermine legal equality with a fierce and savage cunning, and they haven’t forgotten. If we don’t get a decent Supreme Court, it could be that the last state to hold out for discrimination could go for decades before giving up. But that’s all just trapped-animal raving. As far as the nation’s choice between equality and bigotry is concerned, and notwithstanding some early and painful victories by well-organized bigots, it’s over.
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