On April 25th 1993 around 80,000 LGBT citizens flooded the National Mall in Washington, DC. Their message manifested our movement.
Many of us wanted to see the government spend more money on AIDS research, some of us called for an end to the ban on service for gays and lesbians in the US military, all of us wanted the various state sodomy statutes invalidated.
It struck me yesterday that the 30 year old man I was would have mixed feelings about our successes today. While we have made great strides in our struggle for equal rights in the US, our message seems to have become fragmented.
You see, I'm greedy. I wanted nothing less than the full implementation and recognition of our full civil rights and over the years while I have supported the individual gains we have made, I fear we have lost sight of the goal. Our message has become diffused by our various lobbying groups.
OUTSERVE took point on open service for gays and lesbians. Now that the goal has been attained, the organization has realized that open service, while admirable, by itself does nothing about the state of our overall civil rights while DOMA is in place.
Various marriage rights groups have worked hard on making visible the plight of couples discriminated against because federal law actually allows for states to decide individually whether they will marry same-sex couples. It also allows a state to deny recognition of married Lesbian and Gay couples by not granting legal reciprocity. Reciprocity is the bedrock of treaties with other nations and it also is the rule that says (for example), if you are married in New York, you are also legally married in Alabama, also it means if you are married in Argentina, you are legally married in the United States. So while I am happy that now 10 and possibly more states will allow same-sex marriage, I am very unhappy that a state is still permitted to deny the recognition of same-sex marriages from other states but are NOT PERMITTED to deny recognition of a heterosexual marriage from anywhere.
Lawrence v. Texas ruled that all state sodomy statutes were unconstitutional, and rendered them legally null. Yet states are still not taking these odious laws off the books. Nevada is still in the process of taking its sodomy statute off the books and it will require another legislative session and a repeat vote to actually take the law off the books for good. So what good is a Supreme Court decision when states neglect to follow the mandate of the high court? The secret is this, the Supreme Court has no enforcement powers. Article III of the Constitution only says this in referring to the Court's power:
"The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under the Constitution, the laws of the United States and Treaties."
Essentially the Supreme Court may only adjudicate, not enforce its rulings. That power is vested in the Department of Justice, part of the co-equal Executive Branch.
So have we made gains? Undeniably, yes we have. We are much better off now than we were then. But by going the piecemeal route we have guaranteed that the struggle for our full equal civil rights will take longer and trace a more circuitous route.
I reflect on these matters not to dampen our successes, but to remind us that we have a long way to go to secure our full civil rights and that the struggle is not winding down, but should be ramping up.
~J
