Below The Beltway

The passage of Proposition 8 in California on Election Day seems to have become a turning point in the debate over same-sex marriage, with yesterday’s nationwide protests being only the latest example:

SAN FRANCISCO — In one of the nation’s largest displays of support for gay rights, tens of thousands of people in cities across the country turned out in support of same-sex marriage on Saturday, lending their voices to an issue that many gay men and lesbians consider a critical step to full equality.

The demonstrations — from a sun-splashed throng in San Francisco to a chilly crowd in Minneapolis — came 11 days after California voters narrowly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 8, that outlawed previously legal same-sex ceremonies in the state. The measure’s passage has spurred protests in California and across the country, including at several Mormon temples, a reflection of that church’s ardent backing of the proposition.

On Saturday, speakers painted the fight over Proposition 8 as another test of a movement that began with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969, survived the emergence of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and has since made enormous strides in societal acceptance, whether in television shows or in antidiscrimination laws.

“It’s not ‘Yes we can,’ ” said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco city supervisor, referring to President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign mantra. “It’s ‘Yes we will.’ ”

Carrying handmade signs with slogans like “No More Mr. Nice Gay” and “Straights Against Hate,” big crowds filled civic centers and streets in many cities. In New York, some 4,000 people gathered at City Hall, where speakers repeatedly called same-sex marriage “the greatest civil rights battle of our generation.”

(…)

The protests were organized largely over the Internet, and featured few representatives of major gay rights groups that campaigned against Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote after trailing for months in the polls. The online aspect seemed to draw a broad cross-section of people, like Nicole Toussaint, a kindergarten teacher who joined a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Minneapolis.

“I’m here to support my friends who are gay,” said Ms. Toussaint, 23. “I think my generation will play a big role.”

Jazz Shaw at The Moderate Voice says that the protests should be a signal that something’s not right:

I’m not so foolish as to think that racism and intolerance have completely disappeared from our shores. But at this point it is at least increasingly restricted to some backward holdouts in comparatively small numbers who are primarily engaged in developing a time machine so they can go back and take one more crack at Pickett’s Charge or rescue some of Hitler’s DNA to be stored until cloning techniques improve. Given this heartening news, though, I find myself wondering whether anyone was left behind in these advances? I’m afraid that the answer is still yes.

The current spate of demonstrations against California’s decision on Proposition Eight should be the first indicator of Something Being Rotten in Denmark. Allow me to tie this point in with the two preceding paragraphs. We aren’t asking a question along the lines of whether or not a gay or lesbian American could be elected as president here. We’re holding an allegedly serious national debate as to whether or not gays and lesbians even have the same basic rights as everyone else, or whether it is proper for the majority to pass legislation limiting their rights based solely on their sexual orientation. Opponents - primarily found in the so called “social conservative” band of the political spectrum - are quick to point out that of course they aren’t homophobic, and of course gays have the same rights as anyone else. That’s why we’re going to provide them with these shiny new civil contracts which are pretty much just as good as a marriage, see? (Astute readers who have studied the civil rights movement in America should, at this point, be nodding their heads and reminding us of exactly how well “separate but equal” worked out for black Americans.) It is not the struggle for “marriage rights” which should capture our attention, but the fact that we are even debating the question at all which should sadden us.

And, much as religion was used in the South to justify the bigotry that was starkly exemplified by Jim Crow, so it is today that religious othrodoxy, combined with the continued belief that the power of the state should be used to enforce completely private issues of morality, to use the power of the majority to deny and disparage the rights of an entire segment of society.

It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.