November 15th was a day of national action for the US gay movement, which called for demonstrations in more than one hundred American cities, the culmination of Ten days of protests against the referendum abolition of same-sex marriage rights in California.. Gay unions had been authorized by the Supreme Court last May and since then people have been getting married in the state over 18,000 same-sex couples; All these marriages are now in legal limbo, waiting for someone, presumably the Supreme Court itself, to decide their validity in light of the constitutional amendment that declares only unions between a man and a woman legal.
The passage of the so-called "Proposition 8"« for 52% to 48% It is singular in that it is a rare instance of revocation of a legally established civil right by means of a popular vote and has opened a debate on whether in a case like this the referendum is a legitimate expression of a majority morality or whether instead, as Barack Obama also argued, the civil rights of minorities must be protected by the state even against majority opinions.
The newly elected president's position is significant, as the anomalous factor in the Californian vote was precisely the African-American electorate which, together with Hispanics and Asians, participated in record numbers in Obama's election. while at the same time voting by a strong majority (2 to 1 among blacks) against marriages. The gay movement has thus been bitterly confronted with the realization that the very same progressive popular movement that led to the election of the first African-American president had simultaneously led to the stinging defeat of its own demands for equality. This has caused an internal rift within the left: gays, specifically, accuse blacks of betraying a civil rights struggle, a betrayal all the more unforgivable given that it was perpetrated by a population that has historically been a victim of segregation, itself a protagonist in a long struggle for rights, in which they were supported by the gay political movement.
Blacks, for their part, cite cultural and religious tradition as an explanation; but as the dispute has become more intense, many have also objected to the equation of the "black condition" with the homosexual one, a position which includes the idea of homosexuality as a "voluntary choice" but also the claim of a certain "historical primacy" of racial discrimination – no homosexual has ever been a slave, it was said, or had to sit in a separate waiting room. Jasmyne Cannick, a black lesbian writer, went so far as to ask in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, "What possible benefit could a homeless person, an HIV-positive person without health insurance, or a black person recently released from prison derive from the right to marry a person of the same sex?"« calling the pro-marriage movement largely a fad of a wealthy, largely white, class of homosexuals. The fact is that the defeat has regenerated the political conscience of a movement that since the election day has found itself galvanized in dozens of daily protests in many Californian cities, which often brought together thousands of people (15,000 people marched in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silverlake last Saturday.) quickly organized by flash mobs via the Internet. Protests that showed enormous energy, especially on the part of a new generation of activists, who had been absent since the days of Harvey Milk, father of the movement and first gay alderman of San Francisco, assassinated in 1978.
Many criticized the campaign against the referendum, which omitted any reference to gays, opting for a soft, vaguely pro-equality stance and counting on the opposition's absenteeism. The opposition, however, was lavishly funded by religious organizations, mobilizing the grassroots in the hinterland with an effective, McCarthyite-inflected campaign that threatened "the teaching of homosexuality" in schools.
The largest contribution to the campaign for repeal came from the Mormon Church., paradoxically, that is, by the religious sect that had suffered violent persecution for its marital choices (Mormons were officially polygamous before the reformation of the last century renounced it). Mormon faithful contributed over $15 million to the yes campaign, and much of the gay anger of recent days has been directed against them and the showy white marble temples that were immediately surrounded, as in the case of Los Angeles, by noisy pickets of protesters. The Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City, in a statement, denied an anti-gay directive, defining the funding as a spontaneous contribution from the faithful, many of whom, however, confirmed that they had received specific instructions in this regard from their parishes. One of them is the Mormon owner of El Coyote, a historic Mexican bar and restaurant in West Hollywood frequented by gay customers, who admitted to donating $$100 to the cause at the church's request. The restaurant has now been boycotted, along with many other businesses that have been known to support the anti-gay cause.
Meanwhile they have been presented numerous appeals to the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results, The movement has garnered the support of many politicians, including Governor Schwarzenegger, who, after the June ruling, expressed open solidarity with gays. Now the Court will presumably have to revisit the issue, at least given the 18,000 pending marriages, but it is unlikely to contradict the referendum result. The movement's other options are to revise the constitution with a new referendum (risking losing again, however) or through parliamentary legislation, where the Democratic majority would be expected to be in favor. First, the fundamental question of jurisdiction must be resolved: whether constitutional matters, particularly civil rights, can be decided by referendum, or whether social progress must sometimes be forced through "enlightened" political action, a view that now seems to prevail in Washington. On the other hand, if the issue of black rights had been left to majority rule, segregation would still exist in the South.
The gay movement's task will be to promote the thesis that seeks to extricate the state from its defense of "cultural values" and instead demand the rigorous protection of the rights of all citizens. This reasoning has led some to suggest, instead of instituting gay marriage, the abolition of civil marriage for all, including heterosexuals, leaving the state solely with the task of sanctioning secular and legal unions, such as the Dico, for all, and each individual, separately, with the right to a preferred religious ceremony.
