Same-sex marriage victory: Equal rights struggle goes on

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On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a sweep­ ing and historic decision that grants gay and lesbian couples the legal right to marry. The ruling invalidates discriminatory laws in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee that had been upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. It requires all 50 states to allow same-sex couples to marry.

This victory for the LGBT community comes on the strength of its decades of work against homophobic stereotypes and unjust laws in the struggle for equal treatment. The Court’s 5-4 opinion holds that state marriage bans violate the “due process” and “equal protection” provisions of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Today’s decision has been 50 years in the making and will stand with Brown v. Board of Education as one of the landmark civil rights moments of our time,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision sparked instant victory celebrations, as well as reminders from the LGBTQ community that the road to freedom is long and this decision is just the beginning. “The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the funda­ mental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them,” Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in the majority opinion.

The LGBT movement How did our rights to the “due process” and “equal protection” guarantees of the 14th Amendment be­ come a reality? Some will credit the lawyers, the Su­ preme Court justices, and the politicians. But it was the movement of the last 47 years of rebellion and picketing and marching—and most of all, committing the revolutionary act of coming out—that should be credited with this victory.

This Court decision might seem totally rational and just a long time coming to those outside the LGBT community. But for those of us who have been inside the decades of struggle and ongoing work combat­ ing the homophobic attitudes in our society, it was an amazing victory and a well-deserved celebration. It illustrated the fact that we did not need to continue a strategy of fighting state by state but that we could win victories for all 50 states.

While the ink was hardly dry on the decision, most activists were thinking, “married one day and fired from your job the next,” but it was important to savor the triumph. All the rainbow lights and flags every­ where were a catharsis and a reminder that people can take on embedded institutional injustice and win. It also propels us forward.

This decision is not just about the act of marriage itself but all the financial benefits that this capitalist society grants based on the social institution of mar­ riage. It was always interesting in the state campaigns for marriage equality that the NGOs insisted in saying, “shouldn’t everyone be able to get married?” while the LGBT union activist’s message was, “why shouldn’t your coworker receive the same rights and benefits that you have?”

Gay liberation took a great leap at 1:20 a.m. on Sat­ urday, June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn on Christo­ pher Street in New York City. It was a common police raid of a gay bar where the police routinely harassed bar patrons including physically inspecting trans and drag customers as well as lesbians wearing pants. The legend goes that a cop hit a lesbian in the head with a billy club and handcuffed her, and she turned to the crowd and screamed, “why don’t you do something?” as she was thrown in the police van.

However it started, the importance of the event was not at the beginning but in the fact that the crowds grew every night for five nights as they fought the police. The gatherings included the most marginal­ ized members of society—large numbers of homeless youth, people of color, and drag queens—who were driven by outrage over endless police harassment, Once again, the organizations reverted to a state-bystate strategy. They ignored the clear constitutional precedent in the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia, which stated that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional and that “the right to marry cannot be infringed by the state.” Specifically, the Court said these bans on interracial marriage violated the “due process” and “equal pro­ tection” provisions of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Still, the large national LGBT organiza­ tions opposed a national strategy that would boldly assert the constitutional right to marriage equality.

These organizations have strong ties to the Demo­ cratic Party, which wants nothing to distract from their electoral campaigns. The Human Rights Cam­ paign appointed Democratic fundraiser and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as its national corporate spokesman for same-sex marriage in 2012.

Just four years ago, as part of the last presidential election, Barack Obama made clear his opposition to marriage equality through his White House Commu­ nications Director, Dan Pfeiffer, who told activists at the Net Roots Nation Conference, “The president has never favored same-sex marriage. He is against it.”

The same month, Obama was asked during a White House News Conference about New York’s becoming the latest state to legalize same-sex marriage. He re­ plied, “I think it’s important for us to work through these issues because each community is going to be different, each state is going to be different.” This was the position of all Democratic leaders: Go get it one by one until you have 50 states!

Going forward As we move forward to end all LGBT employment discrimination, the same message will be sent by the Democrats to just go state by state. There are still many battles to be fought, and the state-by-state strat­ egy is no longer required because all 50 states are covered by the 14th amendment of the Constitution. There are still 28 states where the LGBT community has no job protection.

We need federal-level protection against workplace discrimination and housing discrimination for the les­ bian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Too often transgendered people have been left out of state civil rights legislation.

(continued on page 9, in “Racist attacks on Muslims in Myanmar”)