Here are excerpts from David Horsey's commentary, along with a few comments of my own:
Wouldn't it be great if, for once, the U.S. Congress took the lead in social change instead of being dragged kicking and screaming to a decision long after most of the country has moved on?
Apparently, that's not the nature of politics. Still, my holiday wish is for the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy to be voted away by Christmas. Polls prove the country is ready. Surveys show the military is ready. Experience in the British and Israeli armed forces demonstrates no crisis is created by homosexuals serving openly. It is unlikely anyone fighting for this country in Afghanistan has failed to figure out if the guy next to him is gay, while also appreciating how that soldier is a tough son-of-a-gun.
The only ones who seem to fret about gay and lesbian soldiers are Republican senators and House members catering to a loud contingent of social conservatives who think national policy should be dictated by 3,000-year-old religious taboos.
Oh, and then there's John McCain. Just as he has with tax cuts for the wealthy and immigration policy, McCain has flip-flopped on gays in the military. Ever the maverick, he now has gone "all mavericky," in Sarah Palin's phrase, against his own better self. He is one old soldier who should have just faded away.
Looking back through our history, it has seldom been Congress that has led the way to social progress. The disenfranchised and disdained have had to push and protest and struggle and die in order to get the politicians to finally move. Black Americans and other minorities put their lives on the line time after time to win their liberties, one by one. The legislation that gave women the vote, workers the right to organize, children the right not to be exploited and all citizens the right to clean air and water and food did not come because a majority of lawmakers simply got together to do the right thing.
I recognize that past realities are hugely complicated, but today it seems insane that Americans had to fight against each other in their bloodiest war in order to end slavery.
Slavery? How could anyone have ever thought slavery was right? Well, there are these passages in the Bible that said it was OK, so…
This is a great point, don't you think? We have these vicious battles - literally, in the case of slavery - over issues that seem obvious in retrospect. How could anyone have thought that slavery was right? After all, you'd be hard-pressed these days to find anyone far enough to the right that they still support slavery (although there are still slavery apologetics, especially in the South).
The other big social issues of our history are similar. How could anyone have ever thought segregation was right? How could anyone have ever thought anti-miscegenation laws were right? How could anyone have ever thought that women should not be allowed to vote or to hold public office?
Afterward, even conservatives abandon such ridiculous positions, though they fought like hell to support them at the time. We look back at that in astonishment. How could they have been so blind?
Gay rights is the same thing. How could anyone think that it's fair to discriminate against homosexuals? How could anyone think that it's even their business if a gay or lesbian couple - consenting adults - want to get married? How could anyone be so blind that they can't see this as a civil rights issue, with the solution... obvious?
Americans in the future will see this as just as astonishing as the opposition to women's suffrage or to racial integration. They will see this as absolutely no different than anti-miscegenation laws in the early 20th Century - which, astonishingly, weren't overturned until 1967! (Hard to believe, isn't it?) Even conservatives will have moved forward, just as they have with these other issues. They'll wonder how these things could have ever sounded reasonable to anyone.
If only we could recognize where history is taking us and nimbly leap the ramparts of the dying order. Future Americans will look back on this moment with disdain, wondering why anyone would have thought it made sense to deny gays and lesbians the opportunity to serve their country in battle. And, not only that, but generations to come will also find it curious that those who hold the institution of marriage sacred fought so hard to keep homosexuals from becoming old married folks.
That's another good point. If you really value the institution of marriage, why wouldn't you want to see gay and lesbian couples getting married? Frankly, marriage does seem to be struggling in this country, but why wouldn't conservatives want to see more marriages, rather than denying homosexuals such a fundamental right?
Do they think we'll all turn gay if that option becomes available? (Or are they just afraid that they might be tempted?)
The fact is, they are losing this battle, anyway. Opinions about gay rights are changing rapidly, so it's clearly only a matter of time. For one thing, now that homosexuals are coming out of the closet, a lot of people are finding family and friends who are gay. Unlike racial minorities, these people look just like you do. They're clearly "us," not "them."
Here's another good point:
Still, until recently, I really did not see why civil unions were not an adequate vehicle for gays and lesbians who sought to commit to each other and enjoy the same legal rights and obligations as straight couples. Plenty of liberals, including President Obama, continue to see it that way. But an essay by Andrew Sullivan began to turn my thinking around.
Sullivan, a gay man, right-leaning columnist and former editor of the New Republic, has been a passionate advocate for gay marriage. He makes many intelligent points, but the one that hit home with me was his most personal. He described the experience of taking his partner along on visits to his family. No matter how committed and how caring the relationship, the partner was always the boyfriend, someone welcomed but still outside the family circle. Only when gay marriage began to be legalized in a few states and Sullivan was able to come home and announce he was getting married to the person he loved did the dynamic change. Marriage suddenly made that person part of the story, part of the heritage, fully integrated into the family's identity.
Ironically, it was a matter of family values. I could see how this mattered and it flipped my thinking from "why do they need to marry?" to "why not?"
Why not, indeed? Purely on legal terms, it is no longer a winning argument to say the government has a right to bar certain people from a state-sanctioned domestic arrangement available to all other citizens. As the challenge to California's gay marriage ban moves through the courts, it becomes ever more clear that the legal rationale for this discriminatory practice is disintegrating. Even the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court may fracture on this issue when it is finally brought before them.
I don't know about the Supreme Court, since the GOP has packed it with right-wing lunatics. Hey, I'm not exaggerating. Anyone who thinks that corporations are no different than people is a complete lunatic. It's not just a "conservative" Supreme Court these days. It's a court with a (narrow) majority which has gone completely off the rails.
Nevertheless, Republicans seem to be fighting a holding action on this issue, an issue they will eventually lose. So, why? Well, the party is controlled by extremists. Republicans in general aren't so strongly in opposition to gay rights, and America as a whole certainly isn't. But the people who are opposed are fiercely committed to that opposition. In politics, that matters.
They seem to be fighting a battle they're almost certain to lose. But let's not get complacent. Nothing is inevitable. And they can still do a great deal of harm to gay Americans while we continue to deny them equal rights.
Our descendants - liberal and conservative alike - will wonder how anyone could have thought discrimination was a good idea. But that doesn't help the people who suffer from it now.
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