Quote:
Originally Posted by princessbelle
Wow. As all of your posts are to me for sure and i know many others Dreadgeek, that is so moving.
There are so many people on this site that are far more eloquent with their wording than i. But, i wanted to try to express my humble thoughts on this.
Is it possible to "borrow" Dr. King's beautiful words and try for the same outcome, so to speak? Is it possible that "we" can utilize his intelligence and heart for yet another step for equality of humanity?
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I think had he lived, Harvey Milk might have grown into that figure. I think he was on the road there. Do I think it will come to that? Perhaps? It may not, though. Consider: Recent polling has shown that a majority of voters, nationally, believe that marriage equality should happen. Ten years ago, that number was much, much smaller. Twenty years ago that number was so low as to make it look impossible. Yet, here we are. We've had two court and one legislative victory. We are starting to get allies where we didn't have them before. Conservative thinkers are starting to get the point and are increasingly writing in *favor* of marriage equality. Why? Because--and here the point must be conceded--marriage equality *is* a fundamentally conservative thing. It does not seek to do away with marriage. The driving force behind it is not to be done with pair-bonding but to simply broaden the legal definition to accommodate what we already know--same-sex couples form enduring pair-bonds and same-sex couples sometimes already have or wish to have children.
That is really rather conservative in that it seeks to reform the system, not radically alter it.
In fact, I think a great deal of the gay rights movement is *not* radical just as most of the civil rights movement was not radical. Certainly the three or four top items on the agenda, currently, are not radical. Those are:
1. Marriage equality
2. Military service
3. Equal employment opportunity and protection from unjust termination
4. Issues of child custody and adoption
Not a very radical list, I admit. However, there is nothing there that I fundamentally disagree with. I know I've left off issues of health care particular vis a vis transpeople but that is because I subsume that into the larger need to reform how healthcare is delivered in this nation. I'm not saying it isn't important, it obviously is. I'm saying that if we solved the healthcare issue by, I don't know, doing what every other industrialized nation does, the issue of healthcare for transgender people would largely take care of itself provided that the healthcare was administered in a fair way (e.g. not excluding gender services *because* they are gender services).
I think that these are all achievable goals. In fact, I know they are because they've been achieved in various other nations to some greater or lesser degree. Others almost certainly disagree and I'm happy to discuss other visions.
Those are concrete and achievable goals and it can be done by law. We cannot and should not aspire to mandate how people feel about queers. ALL we can do is make it illegal to treat queer people as something other than human beings and citizens, fully deserving of the protection of the law. The Civil Rights Movement did not flip a switch and America became a land of racial harmony. It isn't a land of racial harmony *now*. But it did make it illegal to refuse to hire someone because they were black. It did make it illegal to refuse to sell a home to a couple that could afford it because they were black. It did not require proprietors of hotels to love the black family that pulled up to rent a room, it did require them to rent us the room. First the barriers were removed and then the social change happened.
I believe that something similar will happen with queer people over the course of our lifetime. Ironically, I am about the same age as my parents were when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act were passed. I am a year younger than they were when the SCOTUS handed down the Loving decision. The year after that--the year Bobby Kennedy and Martin were gunned down--my parents voted for the very first time. That was 1968. My mother died Memorial Day of 2007. She missed the election of the first black President by 15 months. The year my mother was born, black people were still routinely being lynched in the South. One lifetime. 1922 - 2007 and she *almost* saw a black POTUS. Almost.
I was born two years before Stonewall. While I would like to live to see 2100, I most likely will shuffle off this mortal coil sometime in the 2050s or 2060s. If I’m lucky I may even see the 2070s or 2080s. In that time, I expect that we will see one or perhaps both of the following: The inauguration of a President who, in her victory speech, says "I want to thank my mothers, Jane and Alice..." and/or the inauguration of a President who, while she takes the oath of office, is accompanied by her wife. I think I may live that long.
Why the Presidency? What's so special about that role? It's because of who the President is. In England, the Prime Minister is the head of government but the Queen is the head of state. In the United States, the President is the head of both the government and head of state. It is this latter role that makes the Presidency significant. The President is the person who, for the time they are in office, embodies the Nation. They are the face of the United States to the world. That is why Barack Obama's election was significant not just for the United States but was a signature event in world cultural history. Why? Because for the first time since there WAS a distinct civilization that could be called the West, a white majority nation elected a non-white person as its embodiment. Having a woman President will be a big deal for us but it will not have significant ramifications outside the United States because other states have already had women as head of either government or state or both. Having a gay President will be a big deal for us because it will mean that America--which is largely not queer--will have decided that a gay man or lesbian will do a good job as the embodiment of the nation.
That's a long road, I know but who would have thought, as Dr. King lay dying on a Memphis balcony, that forty years later another black man would become President? Certainly not my parents.
Cheers
Aj