Thoughts (Not Mine) On the Hypocrisy of ‘Incremental Progress’

Please note up front: I’m not necessarily endorsing the following column or the blog on which it appears.  But, seemingly no one wants to deal head on with the rankest of the hypocrisies among the ENDA anti-T-inclusion crowd: that there is a striking correlation between the anti-inclusionists who cite ‘incremental progress’ as a justification and those who have a ‘civil unions are unacceptable - marriage, or bust!’ attitude on the issue of same-sex marriage.  The author of the following doesn’t address ENDA - and I do not know what his position is on it; however, it is a piece which should cause more people to ask why ‘incremental progress’ is not okay on the issue of marriage.

Lesbians and gay men have already lost the fight for same-sex marriage and it is time to move on to a fight we can win.

Same-sex marriage with all of the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage cannot exist in the United States in the near future. Here is why: Forty-five states have laws or constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Source: Human Rights Campaign) There has been over 48 million votes cast on this issue in 29 states and almost 32 million, almost two-thirds, voted against same-sex marriage. As the noted gay historian and professor at the University of Illinois [editorial note: he's at the U of I at Chicago], John D’Emilio, observed in his 2006 article, The Marriage Fight Is Setting Us Back, “The campaign for same-sex marriage has been an unmitigated disaster. It has created a vast body of new anti-gay laws.” There has already been, in effect, a national referendum and we have lost……BIG.

Despite the title, “marriage”, same-sex marriage with all of the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage does not even exist in Massachusetts. Massachusetts’s same-sex marriage, California’s domestic partners, and Vermont and New Jersey’s civil unions all have the same federal benefits of marriage: zero.

Anecdotal reports of inappropriate or anomalous implementation of California’s two and one-half year old comprehensive domestic partner laws would not be solved by changing the title to marriage. Lesbians and gay men in Massachusetts have reported problems with their state’s implementation of same-sex marriage. Like California, Massachusetts’s legislature is having to plug some holes because both of these policies are new. Any new and comprehensive policy, no matter how well written, will have bumps along the road to implementation. (The Gay & Lesbian Review 5/2007 page 6, Marriage Equality Not a Reality In Mass. by Dale Mitchell, Cofounder, LGBT Aging Project, Boston, MA)

The Myth About Same-Sex Marriage
There is a myth that marriage has more rights and benefits than civil unions/domestic partners. That myth is born from the fact that civil unions/domestic partners have only been passed by states. States have no power to grant the 1138 federal benefits of marriage. However, a national civil union policy would. Senators Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Dodd, & Biden have pledge to support a national civil union policy.

Same-sex marriage activists will say, “Separate is not equal.” Analogy to Brown v. Board of Education (1954, US Supreme Court) is a common error which ignores the historical facts. “Separate but equal” was invented by white supremacists in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896, US Supreme Court) to oppress African-Americans. Domestic Partners was invented by a gay man, Tom Brougham, in 1982 and advanced by lesbian and gay organizations to obtain the benefits of marriage when most lesbians and gay men viewed marriage as a discredited patriarchal institution. Indeed, the acceptance of civil union/domestic partners is more comparable to Brown than to Plessy.

In poll after poll, a clear majority of voters say they would support civil unions with all the same rights, benefits and obligations of marriage but they would not support same-sex marriage. Illogical? Yes! But it is a fact we must live with.

There have been no successful direct challenges to statewide domestic partner or civil union policies. Domestic partners and civil unions have been overturned only when they were included in ballot propositions whose primary purpose was to ban same-sex marriage.

All of the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage are attainable, with public support, under the title civil unions or domestic partners. Same-sex marriage is not. We may not like that fact, however, it is none-the-less a fact. Why the leaders of our community do not see the obvious is beyond my understanding. It is time that someone in the lesbian and gay community tell our leaders that their strategy on same-sex marriage has failed. We must return to the successful strategy of attaining our rights through civil unions and domestic partners which has worked well for over 20 years.

Who among us will be brave enough to say, “The emperor has no clothes” before we are all stripped naked of our rights.

Respectfully,
Leland Traiman
www.EqualityWithoutMarriage.org