The New Gay Orthodoxy

Ben Wiseman image

The professional Christian set and those in the Republican Party who pander to them in a manner little better than that of tawdry whores continue to bloviate about "protecting marriage" - which is really all about keeping gays inferior and stigmatized - yet the country is moving on and leaving them in the dust of history to share a space ultimately akin to the segregationists of old.  Some are disingenuously shrieking that this sea change is impeding their "religious liberty" and/or their freedom of speech.   It's not because voicing one's views and beliefs and trying to force those views and beliefs on others are two very different things.  While different in many ways, those speaking against gay rights and same sex marriage in particular are not so different from the segregationist who sought to use the nations laws to punish blacks who they saw as inferior.  A column in the New York Times looks at the sea change although it gives too much credence to claims of victim-hood by Christofascists whose real complaint - like 1960's era segregationists - is that they can no longer victimize others.  Here are excerpts:

TO appreciate how rapidly the ground has shifted, go back just two short years, to April 2012. President Obama didn’t support marriage equality, not formally. Neither did Hillary Clinton. And few people were denouncing them as bigots whose positions rendered them too divisive, offensive and regressive to lead.

But that’s precisely the condemnation that tainted and toppled Brendan Eich after his appointment two weeks ago as the new chief executive of the technology company Mozilla. On Thursday he resigned, clearly under duress and solely because his opposition to gay marriage diverged from the views of too many employees and customers.

Something remarkable has happened — something that’s mostly exciting but also a little disturbing (I’ll get to the disturbing part later), and that’s reflected not just in Eich’s ouster at Mozilla, the maker of the web browser Firefox, but in a string of marriage-equality victories in federal courts over recent months, including a statement Friday by a judge who said that he would rule that Ohio must recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the state.

And the development I’m referring to isn’t the broadening support for same-sex marriage, which a clear majority of Americans now favor. No, I’m referring to the fact that in a great many circles, endorsement of same-sex marriage has rather suddenly become nonnegotiable. Expected. Assumed. Proof of a baseline level of enlightenment and humanity. Akin to the understanding that all people, regardless of race or color, warrant the same rights and respect.

Even beyond these circles, the debate is essentially over, in the sense that the trajectory is immutable and the conclusion foregone. Everybody knows it, even the people who still try to stand in the way. The legalization of same-sex marriage from north to south and coast to coast is merely a matter of time, probably not much of it at that.

At least beyond the offices of Chick-fil-A, it’s widely believed — no, understood — that being pro-gay is better for business than being antigay. Hence the inclusion of a same-sex couple in the famous faces-of-America commercial that Coca-Cola unveiled during the Super Bowl. Hence a more recent television spot, part of the Honey Maid food company’s “This is Wholesome” ad campaign. It showed two dads cuddling their newborn.

Increasingly, opposition to gay marriage is being equated with racism — as indefensible, un-American. “What was once a wedge issue became wrapped in the American flag,” said Jo Becker, a Times writer whose sweeping history of the marriage-equality movement, “Forcing the Spring,” will be published this month.

I can’t get quite as worked up as he [Andrew Sullivan] did. For one thing, prominent gay rights groups weren’t part of the Mozilla fray. For another, Mozilla isn’t the first company to make leadership decisions (or reconsiderations) with an eye toward the boss’s cultural mind-meld with the people below him or her. And if you believe that to deny a class of people the right to marry is to deem them less worthy, it’s indeed difficult to chalk up opposition to marriage equality as just another difference of opinion.

But it’s vital to remember how very recently so many of equality’s promoters, like Obama and Clinton, have come around and how relatively new this conversation remains. It’s crucial not to lose sight of how well the movement has been served by the less judgmental posture that Becker pointed out.

Sullivan is right to raise concerns about the public flogging of someone like Eich. Such vilification won’t accelerate the timetable of victory, which is certain. And it doesn’t reflect well on the victors.

I personally cannot feel any sympathy whatsoever for Eich and the Tony Perkins and Brian Brown types of the world.  Perhaps it's because I lost my job for being gay, was brutalized by a bigoted judge in my divorce and forced into bankruptcy all because of individuals' "sincere religious belief" and/or fear of standing up to bigots.   Those opposing same sex marriage and their predecessors through the past decades and centuries have inflicted so much pain, so much unhappiness and so much inequality, that, in my view, they deserve no sympathy whatsoever.