I tend to be of two minds on a lot of subjects, so it’s not surprising that I can see the merits on both sides in this article on where the gay rights struggle goes now:
The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, at a meeting last weekend in Las Vegas, concluded that the group must bow to political reality and moderate its message and its goals. One official said the group would consider supporting President Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security partly in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the program.
“The feeling this weekend in Las Vegas was that we had to get beyond the political and return to the personal,” said Michael Berman, a Democratic lobbyist and consultant who was elected the first non-gay co-chairman of the Human Rights Campaign’s board last week. “We need to reintroduce ourselves to America with the stories of our lives.”
But others involved in the drive for gay and lesbian equality say the Human Rights Campaign’s approach smacks of pre-emptive surrender and wrong-headed political calculation.
“For a certain segment of the movement, for which I would certainly elect the H.R.C. as poster child, it means that the error was that we were wanting too much too fast,” said Jonathan D. Katz, executive coordinator of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale. “It is entirely characteristic for them to believe that what is required is a sort of retrenchment and a return to a more moderate message. They are, of course, completely wrong.”
I tend to be moderate in my activist nature. I think you win more battles, particularly in a democracy, by quiet, civil persuasion, and by building broad, deep support — so that you ultimately end up winning without a fight.
On the other hand, I’m something of an idealist. I think unequal treatment of gays in our country is a deep and bitter wrong, and will one day be looked back on the way we look back on Jim Crow laws. To compromise or slow down the fight toward equality (which would seem to be centered on the issue of gay marriage) is, in that way, a abhorrent.
The debate also assumes that we’re not seeing (or going to see) a pendulum effect, an actual roll-back of gay rights. That would be a horrible tragedy (and travesty), and it would be even worse if it were triggered by a societal backlash at gays for reaching too far, too fast, even if (IMO) justly.
I do believe the increasingly visible presence of gays in our society has done more to change hearts and mind (and laws) than all the in-your-face we’re-here-we’re-queer-get-used-to-it activism, parades, and stunts. Those have their place, too, in terms of promoting solidarity and in terms of at least some legal victories. And certainly, looking back on the black civil rights struggle of the 60s, it was both moral suasion and loud protest and legal challenges that led to successes there.
But, ultimately, in a democracy, and in a society, you can only push so hard for acceptance, before society starts to push back. And that’s when everyone loses.
(Posted by CronDave)