Twenty years ago the politically active part of the American LGBT community was vigorously, at times bitterly, debating the question of marriage. Marriage was a reactionary, bourgeois, repressive institution. No, marriage was a legitimate lifestyle choice and way of expressing one’s love.
It was out of those conversations that the organizing for legal recognition of same-sex marriage began. Because civil marriage in the United States is primarily governed by the states, it meant that the organizing would have to take place locally—city by city, town by town, state by state. Because each state has its own constitution, laws and traditions, the local organizing efforts would vary according to the judgment of local LGBT leaders and their allies as to which campaigns, strategies and tactics would best advance their agenda.
LGBT leaders were, in effect, taking the problem (vague, ill-defined, unsolvable) of equal rights and justice and turning it into a (specific, immediate, winnable) issue. Whether one has the legal right to visit a sick spouse in the hospital, or to survivor benefits, or to inherit—just three of the literally hundreds of specific benefits attached to having a legally recognized marriage in the United States today.
The first victories were judicial, beginning with the Goodridge decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2003. That was followed six years later by the first legislative victory, in Vermont—the same state that had first adopted civil union legislation back in 2000. Now all that organizing has paid off with its first popular vote victories—last night in Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota. Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while voters in the first three states approved same-sex marriage referendum laws.
Same-sex marriage supporters had suffered 32 consecutive defeats, many in 2004, at the polls. Maine became the first state in which the citizens reversed course, having defeated same-sex marriage in a 2009 referendum.
In a terrific piece of reporting, the Boston Globe’s Martine Powers, illuminates how the strategic decision by LGBT leaders 20 years ago to take up the issue of marriage slowly but steadily worked to persuade a majority of Mainers who voted yesterday:
“Perhaps no family better exemplified Maine’s complex perspective on the issue than the Grants, who live in Gray, a town about 30 minutes north of Portland.
Alena Grant, 20, said that her Christian upbringing led her to vote in favor of the same-sex marriage initiative. “I believe everybody deserves to be happy,” she said.
Her father, who declined to give his first name for fear of negatively affecting his business, voted no.
“I have nothing against them, and I have nothing against giving them civil unions and equal benefits,” he said.
“But they don’t, or can’t, procreate, and so they can’t spread the word of God, and that, to me, is what marriage is all about. I don’t condemn them for it.”
And Alena’s mother?
She was undecided right up until the time she reached the ballot box.
“In the end,” Leni Grant said, “I did vote yes.”
“I won her over!” Alena exclaimed.
“You didn’t,” she said matter of factly.
“But we have wonderful friends who are gay, and I think they deserve many things in life, and one of those things is happiness.”
“As for the biblical part of it,” she continued, “that decision is up to God.””
Mr. and Mrs. Grant likely will never “approve of homosexuality”. But by turning the discussion in the direction of the specific issue of civil recognition of same-sex marriage, LGBT leaders and their allies in Maine were able—over the course of the last 10-20 years—to win the support of 2 of the 3 Grant family voters. It’s one example of what “hope and change”* looks like.
*As is building enough political power to win the public support of the president of the United States.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
