Liberal Crozier
08-08-2006, 12:16 AM
Deb Price
GAYS CAN LEARN FROM CIVIL RIGHTS BACKLASH
I n May 1954, overjoyed by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional, NACCP attorney Thurgood Marshall predicted school segregation would vanish within five years.
Instead, a decade later, only 1 percent of black children in the Deep South sat in the same classrooms as whites.
What had interfered? A fierce backlash by the white majority.
That backlash prompted black leaders to debate whether full-throated demands for equality, particularly in courts, should be replaced by a go-slow approach aimed at giving white supremacists more time to see the error of their ways.
The aftermath of the Brown decision has much to teach those of us who are gay and feeling wobbly after a string of heartbreaking setbacks in our push for equal marriage rights.
Legal scholar Carlos Ball offers historical perspective and a much-needed pep talk in "The Backlash Thesis and Same-Sex Marriage" in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. (Find it using Google.) He stresses that the heterosexual backlash after the 2003 Massachusetts ruling opening marriage to gay couples was a predictable majority response to minority progress -- much like the backlash after Brown.
Why? Because civil rights movements ask "the majority to give up privilegesthat reinforce their perceived superiority," Ball says. And a lot of people get mighty angry when their special privileges are threatened.
The Massachusetts marriage decision certainly wasn't the first ruling to trigger reactionary constitutional amendments or to bring out the worst in some folks.
Soon after Brown, 11 black children were admitted to a white high school in Milford, Del. White parents were furious; outsiders burned crosses; the school was boycotted. In the end, integration was delayed another eight years.
Louisiana amended its constitution in 1954 to declare that public schools "shall be operated separately for white and colored children."
Yet NAACP attorneys wisely pushed ahead, getting the Supreme Court in 1955 to order desegregation "with all deliberate speed."
Resistance intensified: Southern voters replaced moderate politicians with strict segregationists. The Ku Klux Klan spread like a virus. Nearly 100 Southern congressmen blasted the high court. Some towns shut down their schools.
But once backlash is recognized as unavoidable, it is "less threatening," says Ball, who adds, "The aftermath to Brownteaches us that the backlash can be overcome."
Recent gay marriage setbacks -- court losses in New York and Washington state, and the sad breakup of the lead lesbian couple in the Massachusetts case -- are painful. But civil rights movements are "struggles"-- difficult and long.
Gay rights attorneys Evan Wolfson and Jon Davidson note that only after losses in 14 states' courts did a challenge to a ban on interracial marriage succeed--in California's Supreme Court in 1948. Interracial marriage remained illegal in 29 states. Nineteen years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last 16 bans.
Thank goodness advocates of racial equality didn't wait for attitudes to change. In 1958, just 4 percent of whites approved of interracial marriage. That rose to 17 percent in 1968, the year after the court's ruling, but it took until 1997 for a majority of whites, 61 percent, to approve. In 2003--when Gallup last asked--27 percent still objected.
The durability of prejudice is no reason to go slow in pushing for full equality. Speak up for fairness, and trust that the nation will catch up.
Reach Deb Price at or (202) 662-8736 or dprice@detnews.com.
Ed. - Liberal and I realise that we are discussing this issue rather forcefully despite opposition from centrist and right wing LBGT activists. The worry is that traditionally liberal US activists will succumb to the suggestion by the former group that same-sex marriage should be put on the back burner until the majority ends their opposition, or your political friends - albeit lukewarm and conditionally loving friends - use you for their political ends which coincidentally provides you with no support for your rights.
GAYS CAN LEARN FROM CIVIL RIGHTS BACKLASH
I n May 1954, overjoyed by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional, NACCP attorney Thurgood Marshall predicted school segregation would vanish within five years.
Instead, a decade later, only 1 percent of black children in the Deep South sat in the same classrooms as whites.
What had interfered? A fierce backlash by the white majority.
That backlash prompted black leaders to debate whether full-throated demands for equality, particularly in courts, should be replaced by a go-slow approach aimed at giving white supremacists more time to see the error of their ways.
The aftermath of the Brown decision has much to teach those of us who are gay and feeling wobbly after a string of heartbreaking setbacks in our push for equal marriage rights.
Legal scholar Carlos Ball offers historical perspective and a much-needed pep talk in "The Backlash Thesis and Same-Sex Marriage" in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. (Find it using Google.) He stresses that the heterosexual backlash after the 2003 Massachusetts ruling opening marriage to gay couples was a predictable majority response to minority progress -- much like the backlash after Brown.
Why? Because civil rights movements ask "the majority to give up privilegesthat reinforce their perceived superiority," Ball says. And a lot of people get mighty angry when their special privileges are threatened.
The Massachusetts marriage decision certainly wasn't the first ruling to trigger reactionary constitutional amendments or to bring out the worst in some folks.
Soon after Brown, 11 black children were admitted to a white high school in Milford, Del. White parents were furious; outsiders burned crosses; the school was boycotted. In the end, integration was delayed another eight years.
Louisiana amended its constitution in 1954 to declare that public schools "shall be operated separately for white and colored children."
Yet NAACP attorneys wisely pushed ahead, getting the Supreme Court in 1955 to order desegregation "with all deliberate speed."
Resistance intensified: Southern voters replaced moderate politicians with strict segregationists. The Ku Klux Klan spread like a virus. Nearly 100 Southern congressmen blasted the high court. Some towns shut down their schools.
But once backlash is recognized as unavoidable, it is "less threatening," says Ball, who adds, "The aftermath to Brownteaches us that the backlash can be overcome."
Recent gay marriage setbacks -- court losses in New York and Washington state, and the sad breakup of the lead lesbian couple in the Massachusetts case -- are painful. But civil rights movements are "struggles"-- difficult and long.
Gay rights attorneys Evan Wolfson and Jon Davidson note that only after losses in 14 states' courts did a challenge to a ban on interracial marriage succeed--in California's Supreme Court in 1948. Interracial marriage remained illegal in 29 states. Nineteen years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last 16 bans.
Thank goodness advocates of racial equality didn't wait for attitudes to change. In 1958, just 4 percent of whites approved of interracial marriage. That rose to 17 percent in 1968, the year after the court's ruling, but it took until 1997 for a majority of whites, 61 percent, to approve. In 2003--when Gallup last asked--27 percent still objected.
The durability of prejudice is no reason to go slow in pushing for full equality. Speak up for fairness, and trust that the nation will catch up.
Reach Deb Price at or (202) 662-8736 or dprice@detnews.com.
Ed. - Liberal and I realise that we are discussing this issue rather forcefully despite opposition from centrist and right wing LBGT activists. The worry is that traditionally liberal US activists will succumb to the suggestion by the former group that same-sex marriage should be put on the back burner until the majority ends their opposition, or your political friends - albeit lukewarm and conditionally loving friends - use you for their political ends which coincidentally provides you with no support for your rights.