Reading Obama’s speech, which seems to be a modern-day version of Nixon’s “Checkers” speech in terms of repudiating the now-famous Rev. Wright. But was caught by something more apropos to the discussions that we keep having around here, about Sen. Brubaker’s bill and what it seeks to regulate.
More after the jump.
Obama talks of how the United States Constitution “had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.”:
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
Equal citizenship under the law, and the gap between the promise of our ideals and our reality.
Well, that just boils the gay marrige thing right down, doesn’t it?
Conservatives want the debate to be about something other than this. They want it to be about what their Bible says. They want it to be about traditionalism (”We’ve always done it that way” - small wonder this idea should get traction in Lancaster).
More charitably, they want it to be about what they see as a fundamental disconnect in natural terms. There’s an obvious reason for the pairing of men and women, from the physical act to the children it produces. Nature, or God, or whatever you believe in really does seem to have intended it this way. Which makes deviation from it seem, at best, unnatural; and why, then, should society itself sanctify such a thing?
This seems to be the crux of the argument waged by those opposed to gay marriage - to gay equality.
I think the crux of my argument, on the other hand, is contained in the first few lines of Obama’s speech. And I would ask those who oppose gay marriage one, very simple little question:
Do you believe in equality under the law?
You can’t just answer with the quick “of course” and continue to oppose equality under the law, or that the law ensures true equality will never exist. You can’t answer, “Yes, but…” There is no “but.” Or rather historically there has been; but our history, as Obama goes on to note, can be defined as our collective effort to overcome that but. To live up to the promise of our ideals.
Well, do you truly ascribe to that ideal? Understand, it’s not easy - and was never meant to be. Those who articulated the ideal were themselves unable to live up to it; but it’s bigger than we are, bigger than even they were.
Yet this idea, equality under the law, is perhaps the cornerstone of American liberty. The entire edifice of this country, in a legal sense, in a moral sense, is built upon it.
What I fear is happening is that there is a core of Americans who, simply, don’t believe in it.
Equality for them, of course. Equality for those who look like them - yes. Equality even for those who don’t look like them, though that’s a relatively recent thing in our history. But yes.
But, equality for those who simply appear to be wired differently (or who, in their terminology, “choose” to live differently)? No. They really don’t favor that.
But when that’s the case - then you really don’t believe in equality under the law, do you?
Conservatives are always trying to portray liberals as un-American. And if the standard is blind support for everything America does, then yes - conservatives are indeed more “patriotic” than liberals.
But if the standard is fealty to the supposed ideals upon which the country was founded - then it’s liberals who are the patriots, conservatives who argue, ultimately, against those ideals - be it warrantless wiretapping and the idea that the Fourth Amendment is quaint and outdated; or here, where Herculean efforts are undertaken to prevent equality under the law.
There are going to be a million arguments as to why I’ve got this all wrong. But it all comes back to that one, simple little question. Either you believe in equality of law or you don’t.
And if you don’t - will you please knock it off with all the yammering about freedom, already?
