aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, July 07, 2006

Marriage by any means necessary

I should probably opine a bit on the marriage decisions.

The question is, do we get that right through the legislature or get it through the courts? An emerging consensus is that the legislature is the more legitimate way and that all those rabble rousers pushing it through the courts should have been working through the legislature.

I don’t agree.

I don’t think it matters whether it’s the courts or the legislature. It’s the balance and the interplay of both that moves us forward. The battle is the conversation. Do we suppose we would have been better off without Brown v Board of Ed? (As it happens I’ve come darn close to arguing so.)

In gay rights it’s the old assimilate or agitate question that was with us from before Stonewall through AIDS and ACT-UP and now played out as the legislature (assimilate) or the courts (agitate).

I’m as assimilationist as they come, but it was those couples in Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and most notably Hawaii who put this issue on the agenda. It took the mainstream gay activist world - including me - by surprise.

The notion now that it is a favor to us to be tossed back to the legislature misses that it was those court cases that got us here in the first place. We’re going to win, and when we do there are going to be those who find it illegitimate, whether by legislature or by court order.