Saturday, November 08, 2008
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Here's how. The Mormon Church gets in a hissy fit after the California Supreme Court declares that Prop 22 -- which tried to outlaw same-sex marriage -- is Unconstitutional. Mormon and Fundie terror over the extremely remote possibility that school teachers will now be required to teach children that it's okay to be gay, just before giving them the free condoms and showing a short educational film featuring an all-male cast. The Mormons shit their special underwear over this idea while the Fundie men probably secretly creamed theirs, and the vast sums of money to finance Prop 8 flowed into California.
The propaganda was sold to the voters -- mainly targeted at parents -- with exactly this idea. Somehow, a Supreme Court decision striking down an old law would somehow magically lead to a new law being passed that would force the aforementioned teaching, and prevent churches from being able to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.
What people failed to notice was this: 1) California had been performing same-sex marriages, some 18,000 of them, for the six months before the election -- and nothing happened! The issue would have been settled, forgotten, just a piece of history. 2) Court decisions striking down unconstitutional laws do not automatically create a whole new set of laws requiring compliance. The only thing that changed was that civil marriage registrars in the state of California would be allowed to issue a license for a same-sex couple.
If Prop 8 had not happened at all, if things continued as they had, the subject would have been forgotten here and life would have gone on as normal. Chances are that children living in more conservative parts of the state would never encounter a classmate with same-sex parents, a teacher with a same-sex spouse, or their parents gay, married friends. They would never have to ask the question, "Why does Billy have two Moms?" because the question never would have come up.
Now, instead, Prop 8 has just insured the inevitable. Had it lost in November, the double-rush of Senator Obama becoming President-Elect, and the most populous state granting equality at last to a minority group would have pushed the existence of same-sex marriage right out into the streets. If it had failed, then you would have succeeded in creating the type of activist climate that then would have led to the whole slate of scary laws the backers claimed would happen. Not as extreme as my example above, but the possibility of same-sex marriage would have become part of the curriculum.
Since Prop 8 has passed, it has created something more effective for change -- and dangerous to bigots. President Obama's election alone created the atmosphere for continuing positive activism. "Yes, We Can" was not a campaign slogan, it was a Party platform. Having had the entire Republican party removed as a target of GLBT rage, that rage is turning elsewhere, and it's going to be right back at the backers of Prop 8. We've already seen a week of statewide protests and three challenges to the proposition. This story has legs -- and because of that, it has been and will be covered in-depth on the news until the issue is resolved.
So, because of a bunch of bigoted assholes in a backward state, every school kid in California -- and a good deal of them outside -- just may now learn, whether or not their parents wanted them to, that same-sex marriage exists, two people of the same gender can fall in love, and it's totally normal that Lacey has two Moms, and Dennis has two Dads, and Cathy has two Moms and a Bio-Dad. And this bunch of kids is going to wonder, "Why are they trying to stop this from happening?" And, later, when some of them realize that they have certain feelings for the same sex, they won't be forced to pretend they don't just to satisfy some artificial norm.
Kids don't "catch" being gay. They can't be "recruited" into it. They are born that way. Some people would prefer to raise children with blinders, but that's how we wound up with people in power who were able to perpetrate the unmitigated disaster of the last eight years. But the children who grow up learning everything about the world without imposed judgments, left to provide their own, will usually always fall into the tolerant camp.
When Prop 8 is defeated -- and it will be -- the strength of the backlash and the current weakness of the homophobic branch of the Conservative fundie arm will combine to ensure the destruction of the latter, and a good chance that all of California will again become a mecca for the new and the different.
"New and different". See, those are the things you have to embrace if you want to see positive change. It's a remedy for the Same Old Shit -- which is what the closed-minded have been fertilizing their children with. It makes really bad fertilizer, though, because nothing can grow in it.
The backers, in using a "Save the Children" approach, will inadvertently and quickly do just that -- but in exactly the opposite way they intended. The seeds for long-term liberal dominance are being sewn right now, and a lot of these kids will be old enough to vote -- and smart enough to remember -- right about the time President Obama's second term is going to end.
Labels: California, Proposition 8, same-sex marriage
You know what? I could give two warm, wet shits about all three of those topics. But you might want to go back and re-read my post and drill it into your thick redneck skull that, yes, who has the right to marry whom is a damn important thing.
By the way -- how many times have you been married and divorced? Douchebag.
