The Viscount.com for Gay Equality--Essays On Equality section.

When reading Martin Luther King Jr.'s legendary "I Have A Dream" speech, we see the emphasis he put on "the fierce urgency of now." Dr. King repeatedly stressed, "NOW is the time" to push forward, and warned against taking "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."

While there are many parallels between the civil rights struggles of black Americans and GLBT Americans, not everything is identical among the two causes. Therefore I must wonder if gradualism in our struggle might not be prudent at this time, even at the risk of it being a "tranquilizing drug." This is indeed mere wonderment, however -- I'm afraid we have rounded a corner where gradualism is no longer an option. And I would suggest that is regrettable.

Two years after Vermont's historic civil union legislation, public opinion polls there now show a reversal of earlier opposition. A fairly good-sized majority of Vermonters, about 52%, now favor the civil union law, compared to opposition in the range of 35% and the remainder holding no opinion. The general mood about it in the state seems to be almost "ho-hum" in fact, as people have now had it demonstrated that the world didn't end, and that their own marriages were not in any way "threatened" by gay couples enjoying rights equivalent to civil marriage.

The point is, a little bit of "settling in" time has been productive. But thanks to the Massachusetts State Supreme Court decision (which certainly was the right one), things are on a much faster track now -- that rounding of the corner I alluded to above. And thus my chief concern at this time is the potential backlash against the GLBT community by conservative forces, and how bad it will be.

Their frustration level is going to become progressively higher, as it becomes clearer that this march toward GLBT-straight equality is unstoppable, and the enlightenment of more and more people on this issue inexorable. Most thinking, rational people are now on board. Homophobia is not merely outdated and out of fashion -- it is considered despicable among intelligent people. But while the hard-core anti-gay forces are now a minority, they cannot be discounted as an extremely small one. They're sizable, and heaven knows they're loud. And most importantly, they are resolutely, firmly, adamantly, forever uncompromising -- this having its roots in the religious beliefs of many of them. That is a critically important topic which needs to be addressed separately and at length to understand why they are so unyielding. But for now, suffice it to say they feel any compromise -- ANY compromise -- on this issue is a betrayal of their religious beliefs, which they are not only loath but greatly afraid to do.

Yet their frustration will find no relief in some of the counter-measures they are attempting, as these will ultimately prove futile.

Chief among such counter-measures is, of course, proposing an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Put as simply as possible, that will not happen. Even in the event it attained the required two-thirds majority in the U.S. House, to reach two-thirds in the Senate (67 votes) is impossible with the filibuster procedure. And even assuming the breaking of the filibuster, it would take years to get the measure approved by the required 38 state legislatures. There aren't 38 states where it enjoys enough support for passage at this time, and even in states where it is supported, not all legislators consider it as pressing as other issues. Most importantly, with each passing year, as more and more people drop their opposition to full GLBT equality, support for a heterosexual-only Constitutional Amendment will dwindle. Time is simply not on their side.

The U.S. Supreme Court can offer them no hope, because it will refuse to hear appeals concerning the Massachusetts case (and the soon-to-be-decided one like it in New Jersey, which looks like it will go the same way), as those matters are strictly the purview of the individual states. In fact, if anything, the Supreme Court will probably be called upon in the near future to strike down the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" as unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates Article IV's "full faith and credit" clause as well as Amendment XIV's equal protection provisions. And given the gratifying intensity of the four U.S. Supreme Court members in their recent striking-down of Texas's so-called "sodomy" statute, it is well within the realm of possibility they would deliver a similarly gay-friendly ruling against D.O.M.A.

President Bush is well aware of all these realities, I'm sure, which is why the White House is so desperately trying to finesse this issue. Foremost on Mr. Bush's mind at this juncture is, of course, getting re-elected. And while I believe he is not a man of fiercely anti-gay feelings, he has, politically speaking, climbed into bed with a sizable constituency which is. The hard reality of it is that he cannot be re-elected without the support of the so-called "Religious Right." Yet at the same time, an estimated one million gay Americans voted for Mr. Bush in 2000, and with another close election months away, the president is understandably reluctant to swerve too far to the right for fear of alienating the latter group (not to mention moderate voters in the general population), without which he also might lose his re-election bid. But there are more voting "Religious Righters" than Log Cabin Republicans, by a factor of about six to one according to most estimates. So if backed into a corner -- as his core conservative constituency seems utterly hell-bent on doing to him -- I have little doubt on which side of this Mr. Bush will come down, and I don't see how he can stave off this inevitability much longer. In either scenario, he is still liable to lose. And this is all the more ironic, because as noted above, the President is surely aware of the realities surrounding the issue, so he would be doing little more than placating these people with rhetoric while knowing full well he can deliver nothing to them of substance. It boils down to who offers the greatest number of votes he can least afford to lose.

While my appraisal of the president is, as mentioned, not "fiercely anti-gay," that is not to say I fully embrace him or even fully trust him. The rhetoric Mr. Bush has been employing of late, decrying "judicial activism," as well as the Executive Branch's attempts (some of them successful) to run roughshod over the other branches of government with its extreme tactics in the war on terrorism, most notably the "Patriot Act," give me cause for alarm. Their contempt for the judiciary is plain for the world to see. Yet it is long established in this country, at least since the case of Marbury vs. Madison in 1803 if not through definitive statements in the Constitution, that the Judicial branch is the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not Constitutional. A rallying cry against judges supposedly "legislating from the bench" is cause for concern, first of all because it displays a contempt for the single most effective, Constitutionally designed guardian of individual liberties, and second, because that is exactly what judges are supposed to do. Only a court can ultimately stop a tyrannical executive or legislature, and preventing tyranny by the majority over any minority is one of the bedrock principles of our entire American system. Devising a means of going around the judiciary is the wrong course, because there is already a remedy built into to the judicial system for someone who feels they've been wronged: That is the appeals process, and it allows for repeated (though obviously not unlimited) appeals. As former Vice-President Al Gore demonstrated in his concession speech in December of 2000, there are times when -- whether one likes it or not -- one must simply show respect for the rule of law, and accept a court decree as final. The rumblings against alleged "judicial activism" sound very much to me like a war cry to somehow neutralize one entire branch of government. And that leads me back to my beginning question at the top of this essay: Because the legal means available to them will only result in their ultimate frustration, what extra-legal means might they be willing to try?

How bad will be the backlash, and how far will they go?

Continued....