The March Towards Equality Continues

What a wild year it has been for marriage equality!  It has been one year since the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Since that ruling last June, we have seen that marriage equality has taken this country by storm.  This graphic from Utah Unites for Marriage sums up the major advances that have taken place:

It has been a pretty amazing ride.  States that people never dreamed about opening up for marriage equality like Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Indiana have seen their same-sex marriage bans fall like dominoes.  This week we saw the first appellate court decision in regards to same-sex marriage since DOMA fell last year.  The decision of Judge Shelby declaring Utah’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional was affirmed by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.  Marriage equality is marching forward.

A few years ago, I would not have dreamed that marriage equality would have taken such a hold in this country.  I knew (and I still know) that marriage equality is inevitable.

To mark the success of marriage equality, I wanted to look back at a post I made to Facebook in June 2012.  It was a post entitled, “It's Not the Chicken I Smell, It's the Red Herring:”

I whipped several people into a frenzy the other day when I suggested that I don't care what Chick-Fil-A and Dan Cathy believes. There were people saying that I was being passive and that I was telling people how to think. With all due respect to my friends, who I love very much, they are falling into the trap that stops debate. Debate needs to continue and debate does need to be loud at times, but I will call out a red herring when I see one. I will continue to fight for pragmatism. 

I know many people think that I am being a wimp when I try to be a pragmatist. I don't consider myself a wimp; in fact, I'm just trying to bring solutions to problems in a different way.  It is because, as you are all aware, the past 12 years of Bush and Obama have just brought about divisiveness and has stopped any sort of progress that our country could have been making. I am sick of it and I am going to try and tackle problems in a logical, methodical way while trying to bring opposing sides together. There are times that I will piss off people on the right and I will piss off people on the left, but so be it. That is how I will know that I am being fair-and-balanced (my apologies to the Fox News Channels for stealing their line, but I am really trying to be fair-and-balanced). It is my opinion that Chick-fil-A is a red herring because it brought nothing new to the debate over gay marriage. It just showed that we are still divided on this issue. It caused Christians to believe that liberals and gay-marriage activists were shoving gay marriage down their throats and vice-versa. This fight brought nothing new to the national dialogue except that it has divided us further. I am sick of the divisiveness, and listen, I am a realist and divisions will always exist but when I see major divisions being caused over a mid-sized restaurant chain then I feel like I need to step in and try to calm the atmosphere. We are talking about a man, whom I do not respect.  However, I do respect his constitutional rights.  Besides, his words will not shape policy in this country.  Why the all firestorm for a man who has no (and will never have) impact on actual policy in this country?

You know what we should be talking about (and debating)?  We should be discussing how the Democrats will be introducing gay marriage into their party platform at this year's Democratic National Convention that will take place in Charlotte in September. This is actual news that will impact actual policy.  This is the first party to introduce the acceptance of gay marriage unto its official party platform. That step the democrats are taking is something that will make a difference, that platform will move more policy than a Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A. It is a step that pro-gay marriage supporters should cheer. Even the director of the Human Rights Campaign noted that this was a very positive step and that he also believes that the Republicans will have that same policy position someday. I am in agreement with the director of the Human Rights Campaign. I will be positive and I will not be divisive. I do know that gay marriage will be a reality.....soon. The debate will continue and I will stand-up and continue to speak out on this and other issues that I believe are important. However, I will follow the example of a Martin Luther King, JR. and Abraham Lincoln who promoted peace and healing. Both of these great men wanted real change and they started real change, they fought monstrous battles, but they stayed positive and tried to send out a message of peace and tolerance. These men wanted real change and that ended in their assassinations but I will continue to try and fight like these men did, even though I shouldn't even try and compare myself to these two giants in American history, but I will try to follow their lead and fight the battles the need to be fought and leave the red herrings and phony, hate-filled rhetoric behind me.

Amazing progress.  Two years ago we were fighting about Chick-fil-A and Dan Cathy while not concentrating on the fact that a major party was adopting a platform that supported marriage equality.  We got lost in the divisiveness of the debate.  One year ago, we saw DOMA decapitated.  This year we saw marriage equality win court case after court case.  We saw happy same-sex couples being married in Utah, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, among the other 19 states where same-sex marriage is legal.  We have made amazing progress and we should all feel blessed for what we have accomplished.

I am not saying the rest of the journey will be easy, we could still see some disappointments.  That disappointment could come from the Supreme Court next summer.  That is if they decided to take Utah’s same-sex marriage case up on appeal.  However, I believe that the Supreme Court will eventually validate same-sex marriage.  They will discard the bigotry into the dustbin of the past.  However, if there are legal disappointments to be had, just remember that same-sex marriage is inevitable.  If the marriage equality movement fails in the courts we must stand steadfast and confident.  I can say this without hesitation because 68% of people aged 18-33 (Millennials) support same-sex marriage.  Even if the courts disappoint us, we will be able to count on the younger generation.  This might sound cold, but as the older generations leave this world, the Millennials will take over and they will help bring marriage equality to all 50 states.

So get ready my friends, it will not be long until I can look the man that I love, in the eyes, and say “I do!”  That moment will not come soon enough, but it will come, that is a guarantee!

Further reading:  If you are interested in hearing about me and my partner's marriage journey, I urge you to read this article written by Nancy Leong, Associate Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.