Gay marriage debate needs perspective

It seems popular and comforting to think that, in 50 years, Americans will look back on all… It seems popular and comforting to think that, in 50 years, Americans will look back on all this commotion about homosexual rights and wonder how we could have ever been so naive, stupid and cruel, to think that as a society, we were going to grow out of this whole thing.

And, to some extent, I think that this thought is justified. But the thought alone doesn’t give me as much comfort as I see others taking in it. Most people seem to view the realization of homosexual rights as a foregone conclusion. The question has been thrust upon the stage, and the idea that, as a country, we will fall down on the side of discrimination is almost incomprehensible to the student mind.

The arguments for gay rights all seem so clear. It’s not the state’s job to regulate private moral matters between consenting adults. And even if you believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality, bringing it up in this context is to say that the United States should try to match its law to Biblical command — a notion, I think, most would frown upon.

But, something in all of this seems to be getting lost. The actuality of this almost surreal circumstance is that the majority of Americans are not in favor of gay marriage. All around the country, state legislators are meeting, and in almost every state, there’s a strong voice behind the move to amend the Constitution so as to prevent gay marriage. Gays are being killed for the sole fact that they are gay. Of course, there’s that Constitutional amendment Bush proposed. And even the glee brought by gay-marriage licensing in San Francisco, gay capital of the world, has been struck down by “The Governator” there.

It all seems so bizarre — almost too bizarre to deal with.

Gay rights will come eventually, we think. They have to. The way things are now, it’s just all too weird.

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. received a letter of criticism from fellow clergymen in the South. They urged him to stop causing so much disorder. God, in time, they said, would iron out all injustice. All he had to do was wait and have faith. In response, he wrote his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

“Such an attitude,” writes King, “stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.” Time, he argues, is neutral, “Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability.” And when time is not being pressed by the progressives, “time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

Wait? King asked. It would do no good to wait. But more than that, he said there is no time to wait, that the situation facing black people was a dire one including segregation, lynching and an implied inferiority that worked to erode the self-confidence of children. I don’t wish to argue that the injustice facing homosexuals today is as severe as the injustice blacks faced in the 1960s, but I do feel most people misunderstand it.

The relation of family is thoroughly woven into the more personal matters of our law. For instance, a gay life-partner of 20 years, because they are not technically family, can be denied access to their partner’s deathbed. If the parents of the person on their deathbed never accepted their child’s homosexuality, they can deny the life partner the ability to go to the funeral. Of course, there are tax issues, as well, that result in discrimination against gay couples. And I can’t even imagine what it would do to one’s self-image to live in a society that proclaims itself as the land of freedom and opportunity and yet, at the same time, regards you, in the most public and formal way, as a moral degenerate unworthy of the privileges granted to everyone else.

The time for action is here. But if we, as a society, choose not to act and rather, to seat ourselves on time’s wheels of inevitability, then we will find in 50 years that we have gone nowhere. For as King says, “Freedom is never voluntarily given up by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Questions, Comments, Insights or Suggestions? Wminton@pittnews.com.