Paradox, Progress, and So On
By Matt Coles, Director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
As we approach annual Pride celebrations across the country, it's important to look back on the remarkable progress and stunning setbacks we as a community have faced. Last year same-sex couples married in San Francisco, Portland, and New Paltz. Despite the President's support, Congress rejected a constitutional amendment that would have excluded same-sex couples from marriage nationwide. But 18 states have now amended their state constitutions barring any possibility of same-sex couples to marry. Nine of those amendments ban civil unions too. Then, just after the election, the Supreme Court in Montana, one of the states that passed an anti-marriage amendment, said the state university had to recognize domestic partnerships in its health plan.
In December, a judge in Arkansas -- a state with an amendment banning marriage and civil unions -- struck down a ban on gay foster parents. But before the ink dried on the decision, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling upholding Florida's ban on adoption.
2004 opened with sweeping settlements in cases brought by high school students against the Morgan Hill, California school district for harassment and in Eastern Kentucky to start a gay-straight alliance. The Morgan Hill case generated a historic federal court decision holding schools responsible for the safety of LGBT students. The Kentucky case resulted in a federal court decision that the First Amendment does not allow a school to use community opposition as an excuse for shutting down a GSA. But later in the year, a North Carolina school vice principal tore down a gay student's school election posters, and a local judge allowed it. Still later, a Missouri school district disciplined a student for wearing a GSA t-shirt, and refused to relent despite an obvious free speech violation.
The somewhat paradoxical lesson of a somewhat paradoxical year is that while we are making progress at a remarkable pace, none of our recent gains is secure and continued progress is not assured. Recently, we've had important breakthroughs like the Lawrence decision striking down laws against intimacy, the Massachusetts decision allowing same-sex couples to marry, and the national attention to the Florida adoption law. But our opposition is motivated as never before. They believe that unless the rules are changed to stop us - and amending state constitutions to forbid legislative or judicial change is nothing if not changing the rules - we will eventually succeed.
While recently focused on civil unions and marriage, our opponents have much broader goals. They want to block any recognition of same-sex relationships. They want to prevent gay people from being parents. They want to keep GSAs out of schools. They want job and housing discrimination to stay legal. They do not want gay people to be any part of this society.
To meet the challenge we have to press forward vigorously on all the major issues too. Our opponents tie their arguments together so that they can use success in one area to help them succeed in others. Increasingly, they base their arguments against adoption on the notion that gay parents cannot give children the stable homes that marriage provides. At the same time, they base their arguments against marriage for same sex couples on the idea that the purpose of marriage is for raising children. When they succeed in preventing gay people from adopting, or in getting courts to accept the idea that gay parents are a second choice in custody, they strengthen their case against marriage, and every defeat on marriage bolsters their cause on adoption. And it doesn't stop with marriage and parenting. When they succeed in convincing schools to teach that intimacy without marriage is wrong, they advance their case against gay student clubs. And on, and on, and on.
Pressing forward on all the major LGBT issues isn't just a question of defense. We have to press forward on all the major LGBT issues because at their core all of these issues are, in fact, strands of a single issue. Sharing life with another adult, understanding and accepting yourself, being able to work, to build a family, and to be a member of society are all essential parts of human life. Relationships, parenting, gender identity, schools, job discrimination: equality in each of these things is an important goal for its own sake, and because it is a part of achieving all the others.
LGBT people should have the same chance to make a decent, meaningful life that everyone ought to have. Last year did not come out of the blue; our successes represent years of work and years of progress moving public opinion and moving the law. The level of success we have had in the last few years shows that the slow process of opening the public mind is working.
This is a crucial moment. We have a singular opportunity to make great progress. If we fail, we will face a much more difficult process that will take at least a generation longer. We have no choice but to give this fight everything we've got now. Get busy now.