Tag Archives: links

Marital Blitz

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Really interesting piece on long-term same-sex marriage strategy.

Despite the fact that Americans keep voting for DOMAs, there is no anti-gay backlash…. [In 2005,] Illinois and Maine passed anti-discrimination laws. California’s legislature voted to gender-neutralize marriage — a historic first — despite Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto. Massachusetts’ legislators upheld marriage equality. Connecticut’s legislature passed a civil unions law. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Topeka — hardly liberal bastions — passed LGBT antidiscrimination laws; Virginia’s governor and Salt Lake City’s mayor extended health-insurance coverage to government employees’ same-sex domestic partners; and Alaska’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that — despite the state’s DOMA — local governments must offer equal benefits to employees’ married spouses or same-sex partners. That’s why the religious right is so eager to run anti-marriage measures. “We were so close to winning completely on basic nondiscrimination that the discussion had to go to this completely new level in order to shock and create pause among the general voters,” said Thalia Zepatos, a National Lesbian & Gay Task Force field organizer in California….

The 2004 marriage initiatives and the subsequent Democratic gay-bashing had a salutary effect on LGBT organizations. “People had a strategic epiphany that [victory] wasn’t going to come in an avalanche,” said Evan Wolfson, founding director of the national group Freedom to Marry. “We would need a fifteen-year plan, not a two-year plan. That sunk in in a much more grounded way, with a sober awareness that it would be much longer and harder.”

The 2004 votes woke the community up to the fact that the LGBT legal superheroes (Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund; Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders; National Center for Lesbian Rights; and ACLU’s Gay Rights Project) could not defend their marriage gains. “[W]ith all the brilliant legal scholars that we have — and there are many — for whatever reason, there’s been a blind spot on the political side.”

The answer:

By the year 2020 (give or take five years), the goal is for 10 states to have full-marriage equality; 10 states to have civil unions or the equivalent; 10 states to have nondiscrimination laws and be repealing (or peeling back the effects of) their anti-gay marriage amendments; and the final 20 states to show progress.

You know the fortunate thing about state DOMAs? The people created them; with enough education and political effort, the people can also get rid of them. It will happen. Over time.

Spineless Democrats

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Yes, and yes.

I love the first link. Read the whole thing. Here are the first few paragraphs.

Effective immediately, the Democrats will be known as the lyin’-ass boyfriend party – the perfect date for progressive voters looking to be stood up, bullshitted blind, or left holding the tab.

For five years now it’s been “Please baby, baby, baby, please! I’m sorry I was a no-show last time, but hey, that was because I was working overtime to save up to do something extra special for next time, which is the really big event – right, baby?”

Last April, when the Democrats backed away from filibustering extremist appeals court nominees, it was, “Don’t you fret, baby. We’re not going to go to the mat over small fry like Owen, Pryor, and Brown because we’re saving the filibuster for the big one – you know, the Supreme Court, baby.” Months later, Democrats folded rather than fight John Roberts, the young-ish yes man with a penchant for executive privilege and a wife who used to head an anti-choice organization. After all, they said, they needed to save their energy, and the filibuster, for the next Supreme Court nominee, who would undoubtedly be worse.

Well, baby, the moment of truth has arrived. It’s Alito-time, and the lyin’-ass boyfriends are backpedaling again. Why aren’t they going to raise a ruckus this time? Aw, baby… the filibuster is just so darned hard to use with only 45 senators! And what’s the point of trying to do anything until we’ve recaptured the Senate or the White House?

I have terrible news for the Democrats: being the minority party is not their real problem.

As I said: continue reading.