The struggle for full equality for gay citizens is just that a struggle. It moves forward and backward in fits and jerks, but in general in the last few years it has gained more ground than it has lost.
Just recently a strong member of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a virulently anti-marriage equality group, quit over the realization that what the group stood for was actually unconstitutional and hurting real people who just want the same rights as everyone else. Louis Marinelli is to be commended on his late, but accurate assessment of the group’s activities.
Sadly for every win it seems we have another set back. The reactionary Attorney General of Virginia is once again weighing in on the gay civil rights issues and, as usual, he is injecting his conservative and religious views into the legal policy of the Commonwealth.
He has sent a letter to the State Board of Social Services saying that its plan to change adoption regulations in such a way that would allow gay couples to adopt for the first time in Virginia “does not comport with applicable state law and public policy.”
Ken “The Cooch” Cuccinelli (boy, the liberal in me hates putting a name in quote for an Italian American, but it is the best way to mock this heinous douche bag) has consistently gone out of his way to tell state agencies that they can not have regulations that protect equality that exceeds the narrow ones adopted by Virginia’s conservative legislature.
He told State Universities that they could not have a non-discrimination policy based on sexual orientation because the state did not have that policy and they would have to end it.
On this issue the Commonwealth is probably on rather shaky ground. The conservative lawmakers who want this policy to continue are saying that religious groups who handle adoptions should be able set their own criteria and since most of them are ant-gay that would prohibit the adoption of children by gay couples. The problem with this is that everyone of those agencies are state regulated and that means they have to either follow the policies of the state set out of get out of the adoption provider business.
Besides the blatant bigotry of denying gay couples the right to adopt there is a legal problem for the state as well. In Florida a similar ban was thrown out, and upheld at appeal. The case found that the so-called evidence that gay couples were not as good as heterosexual couples in child rearing was without merit. In fact it actually found as a finding of fact that there was no difference in the outcomes between gay parents and hetero parents.
This makes statements like the one from Del. Robert Marshall have almost no standing in law, from the Washington Post article:
Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), who has been lobbying Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) to do what he can to kill the proposal because he does not think it is healthy for gay couples to raise children, said he was pleased by the advice.
“It was a correct decision in my judgment,’’ he said. “The General Assembly has not made sexual orientation a protected class. This will be welcome news to a lot of faith- based adoption agencies.”
What is really important in that statement is what The Cooch, Conservatives and Gov. McDonnell are trying to do is keep sexual orientation from being recognized as protected class in terms of discrimination law. As long as that does not happen it allows Republican governors to use administrative decisions to keep from providing things like health care for the partners of gay state employees and from having to provide the same kinds of protections from discrimination that African Americans or women receive.
However, the tide on this issue is turning. The ability to treat gay citizens as somehow other, as people just engaging in behavior that has wide spread social disapproval is ending. More and more people from the Right are seeing the reality that gay people are not materially different from anyone else. The fact of who they are attracted to sexually is, when you get right down to it, one of the least important things about them and should not be used as a way to deny them rights that all other citizens enjoy.
Slowly but surely the myths about homosexuality are being knocked down. Whether it is through person to person contact like with Mr. Marinelli or through the findings of courts in Florida and California, the lies that have infected our society about gay citizens are being exposed as just that.
I spent my High School years as a kid actor in a professional theater. In that environment there was no stigma for being gay or lesbian. My life long best friend is gay and came out to me among the first people he told. It has always been self evident to me that gay people are just people. They are as likely to be brave or strong or craven or bad as any other group.
Still I had some understanding for those who had never known a gay person or more likely never known they knew or were related to gay people. It is always easy to be fearful and believe stupid shit about people you’ve never met or interacted with. As the gay community has come out of the closet that has begun to end.
It only the Dead Enders who for reasons of ideology or religion insist that being gay is not something born into you. It is only these people, being manipulated by for political advantage that have fought so fiercely to exclude there fellow citizens from the full participation in civic life.
There is little doubt that most of the old guard on this issue will change their minds. But the important thing is that they are old and aging and the generations behind them could care two figs about who someone is attracted to, they are far more interested in how they act in terms of society than in the bedroom.
So, while this warning from The Cooch is tragic for loving gay couples who want to share that love with a child, and for the children who will go wanting for a home, the fact is it is just a rear guard action of a failing strain of bigotry. 50 years from now people will shake their heads in wonder that we spent so much time and effort to keep discrimination against citizens based on sexuality legal. And that will be a good day.
The floor is yours.