Leading up to and after a Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, we can expect to see more last-ditch actions such as those aimed at forbidding county clerks from issuing same-sex marriage licenses, which could be passed in Texas and in the deep South, until federal courts put these efforts asunder.
We’d be in a stronger position to oppose these efforts to enshrine discrimination by the state if certain quarters weren’t using the power of the state, where they are in control, to force private vendors to provide services to same-sex weddings (the comments to the Dallas Morning News story contain many claims that it’s LGBT people who are the ones being intolerant, provoking responses claiming that our intolerance is justified intolerance while your intolerance is just intolerance…or whatever).
On a related front, CNN.com looks at the schism between Christian conservatives and big business over defense of religious freedom laws. Then again, the populist right and its counterpart, the progressive left, have never really looked kindly on big business anyway.
More. The debate over whether independent vendors with religious views opposed to participating in same-sex weddings should be forced by the state to do so gets confused, often deliberately by the right, with a related but different issue: whether civil servants should be able to opt out of performing same-sex marriages. As I posted last month:
…here I think the answer has to be no. There is a key difference between private, self-employed citizens who don’t want to provide creative services to same-sex weddings, and servants of the state.
While some of my friends on the left seem to think everyone is essentially (or should be) treated as a servant of the state, that’s actually not the American way, and shouldn’t be.
But, on the other hand, if government officials can’t perform their duty to treat all citizens equally, citing their own religious convictions, then they should step aside. Separation of church and state is also the American way.
14 Comments for “Rearguard Actions”
posted by Jorge on
This post lacks some needed defense.
After Brown v. Board of Education, the States resisted, too.
1) And in the times before (and after) then, the African American community had at least two competing mindsets. Did the white establishment try to pick and choose which represented the true face of the African American community? I happen to doubt it. But if so, you would have nothing.
2) And the federal government sent soldiers. There are people who think that had a negative effect. I am not one of them. At the end of the day, the rule of law prevailed. With gay marriage, that could possibly happen, but it would be unlikely. And besides, when you’re talking about state power here you’re talking about States, not the nation-state.
It is time to go back to sleep.
posted by Houndentenor on
It took up to 20 years for some school districts to desegregate. My hometown didn’t do it until 1969, 15 years after Brown. At least a few states are going to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Then what? I don’t think Obama is going to send in troops like Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson did in the 50s and 60s. (And I don’t think he should either, in case someone thinks I do. The conspiracy nuts down here are armed and deranged. It would be a very bad idea.)
posted by Houndentenor on
It’s already legal to discriminate against gay people in Texas as it is in the majority of states. There will be no federal law banning such discrimination any time soon. No florist or baker is going to be fined here, but clerks, even those who want to issue marriage licenses will be barred from doing so here. Stephen knows this. Moreover, it has been standard practice for Fortune 500 companies to have nondiscrimination in their company policy since the late 90s. There are few that don’t. Who got this? The very progressives Stephen loves to denounce. They formed employee groups, asked for them, and got them. So why is corporate America so in step with the views of Americans while Republicans are not? The religious right which runs the GOP these days.
posted by Mike in Houston on
Much as I would like to tout “progressives” role in persuading businesses to jump on the equality bandwagon, it’s a bit of conflation to say that only progressives had a hand in this.
To borrow from Lori and the libertarians (great band name btw), naked self-interest played an equal or greater role. Self-interested employees wanted better treatment at work and formed employee groups. Self-interested companies wanted to recruit and retain talent — and avoid losses due to turnover. (Fear of lawsuits was not a big factor since – as you point out — damn few places had LGB much less T employment protections in place.)
Even so, making the “business case” for LGBT equality didn’t happen overnight. And fundamentally, it’s an economic argument not a political one. It’s an economic argument that the GOP ideally should embrace — but won’t because of the thrall of the religious right. It’s to progressives & Democrats shame that when we had both houses and the presidency, ENDA wasn’t passed.
posted by Lori Heine on
Lori and the Libertarians will be playing at the Lavender Lollapalooza.
I’ll be the one on keyboards!
posted by Houndentenor on
I was a contractor in a certain financial services company when they announced their nondiscrimination policy. It happened because an employee group asked them to. From what I heard (from someone who was in the meeting) the conversation went something like this:
Executive: Are we discriminating against gay employees now?
Group: No.
Executive: And will this cost us anything?
Group: A few employees may want to add their partners on to their insurance.
Executive: Okay, then.
There was some backlash. I had the good fortune of opening the hate mail sent to the CEO. The head of HR actually personally apologized to me for the hateful crap I was reading every day. Honestly there wasn’t much of it and I was told later that most of it wasn’t even from anyone with an account with us (in which case they had no reason to care what they thought).
So that’s what happened. Employees asked and got. A few wingnuts wrote angry letters. One or two cut up their cards and mailed them in. (I thought that was funny. And they call US drama queens!) Otherwise, not really a big deal. It was also viewed at the time as good for recruiting. For those of you too young to have been working in the late 90s we had these people called recruiters who actually went out and looked for people to hire and even promised them bonuses and benefits if they came to work for their company. It sounds like something from Harry Potter now, but that was the world back in the good old days.
posted by Lori Heine on
This is a muddled post. From the viewpoint of conservatives trying to eject the social right from power, it makes some sense. From a libertarian viewpoint, it’s nonsense.
Sometimes this blog succeeds at bringing together a libertarian and conservative view, and others, it does not. This post fails big time.
Big business got as big, and as dominant as it has become, by partnering with big government to squelch competition from smaller businesses. It has absolutely zero interest in scaling back big government; it only wants to control it.
Big business is, by and large, very much on board with LGBT inclusiveness, and this is a great thing. Which shows only that there can be no black-and-white, Simon-simple way to understand big business. Small businesses wish to be free to discriminate, but will not long survive if they do so. Most of them must scrap very hard to make it, and operate on a very narrow margin.
What’s more, as hardly any same-sex couples are going to seek services for their weddings from businesses known to be homophobic, the likelihood of being forced to perform said services is virtually nil. In at least some of the (very few) cases when this has happened, the couples have sued not because the services were refused, but because the businesses in question did not discover their scruples against same-sex marriage until AFTER the payment had been made–after which the payment was not refunded.
As is so often the case in these political battles, the social right and the statist left are both screaming about dangers that–on closer inspection–really aren’t so dangerous. This is an overblown melodrama, played up by hysterics. Only ignoramuses are buying it.
That is probably why–other than in places like IGF–the whole “they’re coming for our religious freedom” dirge isn’t playing as well as the social cons had hoped.
posted by Jorge on
whether civil servants should be able to opt out of performing same-sex marriages. As I posted last month:
…here I think the answer has to be no. There is a key difference between private, self-employed citizens who don’t want to provide creative services to same-sex weddings, and servants of the state.
The state is required to treat its servants equally, just as it is required to treat its citizens. The state cannot discriminate against its employees for religious reasons. It has to allow the opt-out if it is at all possible to do so, and it usually is.
posted by Lori Heine on
“The state is required to treat its servants equally…”
It has no right to collect taxes from us for services we are then going to be refused. Government employees lose the “right” to discriminate when they go to work for the taxpayers. We have no choice as to whether we will pay them, so they should have no choice as to whether they will do their jobs.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I don’t understand why conservative Christians who own/operate businesses need special rights to discriminate against gays and lesbians, when they don’t need special rights to discriminate against other “protected classes”.
I don’t understand why conservative Christians who own/operate businesses need special rights to discriminate in the case of same-sex marriages, when they don’t need special rights to discriminate against inter-racial, inter-religion, intra-denominational marriages, or remarriages after divorce, all of which are anathema to some conservative Christians.
Until that is explained to me, then I’ll continue to think that the so-called “religious freedom” argument currently being hyped is nonsense.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
—I don’t understand why conservative Christians who own/operate businesses need special rights to discriminate in the case of same-sex marriages, when they don’t need special rights to discriminate against inter-racial, inter-religion, intra-denominational marriages, or remarriages after divorce, all of which are anathema to some conservative Christians.
Heck, I got to imagine that a Star Wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings-themed wedding would probably upset a fair number of conservative Christians. Given the efforts by some to decry Harry Potter as the anti-Christ, I am surprised that these type of ‘fan-themed” weddings are not frequently the target of religious liberty bills…..
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
The idea that all Democrats are members of the Democrats of Progressive is silly.
Again, most elected Democrats are more moderate – to -conservative and this is especially the case when their constituents.
Remember that the efforts to add sexual orientation to federal civil rights laws were modifed/downgraded (in the 1990s) to just employment law. It came very close to passing in 1996.
I think that adding gender identity made the bill harder to sell. but tossing transgender folk under the bus
Also i’m not sure that a “no trans” ENDA would have a warm reception in Congress now.
Its always been very difficult to get federal civil rights laws out of committee, let alone passed.
If you look at the long and complicated history behind the 1964 law or the 1990 disability law, its amazing thst the laws got passed at all.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The rearguard actions include the dramatic (e.g. Alabama and Texas) and the mundane (e.g. Wisconsin). We have a lot of cleanup work yet to do.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Ain’t some lady actually suing every single ‘homosexual person’ in the world?