IT HASN'T BEEN A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN AMERICA
As we reflect, we'd like to think that the great moral voice of his times, MLK, Jr., would have been a champion for LGBT rights, in due course.
In New Jersey, last year, we looked to leadership from Julian Bond, who gave full throated and powerful testimony to the State Senators, on behalf of gay equality at law. State Senator Nina Gil, stepped into the shoes of Coretta Scott King and implored people to find a new civil rights courage, born of the old.
Yet, the Democratic Party and the Senate as a whole were unable to articulate a consistent message on civil rights, even in weakform. They voted "no". New York, the same. Maine, more or less the same.
"Personal beliefs" is the pernicious mantra which has set the tone by which civic leadership is either abdicated or distorted and the unrepentant silent majority, comforted.
Even the bold words of Ted Olson, excoriating the Nation in court to live up to its promises, found most major politicians too busy to comment and too glad to have the matter talked about by people who might have taken the time to understand the details.
In this environment of fecklessness, a newform of second-class citizenship is trying to emerge as normative and become ensconced in law, by precedent of the courts or by the expediency and apathy of the legislature.
In the cross-currents of ignorance, uncertainty, and fear, many ostensibly steeped in the civil rights tradition don't seem to recognize this newform. Their ears don't perk up when some trumpet a "justifiable discrimination", as coming on the heels of the long history of misguided animus, like the odd distinctions tragically used to push the Cherokee onto the trail of tears, and many other such 'rationalized fears' that paraded as 'justifiable discrimination' in the gravest horrors of the 20th century.
Indeed, our paralysis on the questions of moral courage in our times has caused a few to have pointed out recently that the Supreme Court may be perniciously on the verge of a Dred Scott decision for committed couples who are gay or lesbian.
At times like these, the clarity of MLK, Jr., seems far away.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Martin Luther King Day, 2010
