The Outfield Door
Someday, the New York Yankees will make a call to the bullpen in their hour of greatest need, and he won’t be there.
But that day still seems a long way off. For now, whenever that outfield door opens, Mariano Rivera — by consensus, the greatest relief pitcher who has ever lived — runs to the mound and then quells the threat. Bats splinter as hapless professionals engage in a usually futile effort to center a ball bearing in on them at an impossible angle.
Nor does it seem as though there’s any limit to how often Rivera can do this, nor for how long. While other managers follow the robotic script of having their closers pitch no more than one inning, Rivera often pitches two, especially in the crucial play-offs, where — as a cascade of humbled relievers can attest — humiliating failures are the norm.
So, while Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter led the team in offense during this World Series, with Matsui’s exploits triggering an unappreciated text to a Phillies fan (”Godzilla Destroys Philadelphia”), it was once again Rivera — now 39 — who put the clamp down on the final innings of two of the Yankees’ four wins.
He can’t do this forever. His velocity is down, and teams are starting to get hits (but, crucially, not runs) off him. But it’s still a marvel to watch, and Yankees fans will squeeze every drop of enjoyment out of it. Apparently, so too will Rivera. In the zany post-game celebration, he said that before the Series he “was going to retire, but now I think I’ll pitch for five more years.” Opposing managers, break out the anti-depressants.
What are they Celebrating?
I was struck by this photo:
What lies at the heart of this last stand against full equality for gay and lesbian citizens is a lingering sense that we never should have come out. No one in 2009 is so unsophisticated as to repeat Anita Bryant’s dictum from the first round of the gay rights wars that “We wish you’d all just go back into the closet,” but their circumlocutions don’t effectively disguise an identical view. It’s most obvious in the one effective scare tactic remaining to them — the effort to invoke the indoctrination of innocent children. “Gay marriage will be taught in schools! It’s supposed to be unspeakable.”
But whether or not a state recognizes civil unions, same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or none of the above, in fact many classes will contain the kids of same-sex couples. And, marriage equality or no, many practical educators will use the diversity before them — including single parents, kids raised by other relatives, or adopted, or in foster care, or…. — to teach their students about respect for all families.
In so doing, they are also seeding the ground for kids who are from traditional families but who might happen to be gay. Whatever’s taught in the home, if kids hear in school and other social settings that families are of all sorts and stripes, including gay, they might be expected to suffer less trauma when they assay that leap of faith across the chasm, joining the community of supportive gays on the other side. Little of this seems to have occurred to equality opponents, who have found an effective political bludgeon, and are willing to gamble that none of their kids will turn out gay.
There’s something else at work, too. Consider this excerpt from Lisa Belkin’s article to be published in this Sunday’s Times, where she summarizes studies done on the children of same-sex (mostly lesbian) parents. After noting that such kids do just as well as children raised by heterosexual parents, she says:
More enlightening than the similarities, however, are the differences, the most striking of which is that these children tend to be less conventional and more flexible when it comes to gender roles and assumptions than those raised in more traditional families.
There are data that show, for instance, that daughters of lesbian mothers are more likely to aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers — 52 percent in one study said that was their goal, compared with 21 percent of daughters of heterosexual mothers, who are still more likely to say they want to be nurses or teachers when they grow up. (The same study found that 95 percent of boys from both types of families choose the more masculine jobs.) Girls raised by lesbians are also more likely to engage in “roughhousing” and to play with “male-gendered-type toys” than girls raised by straight mothers. And adult children of gay parents appear more likely than the average adult to work in the fields of social justice and to have more gay friends in their social mix.
Heterosexual couples might want to pay attention to these results. While the gay-marriage debate is playing out on the public stage, a more private debate is taking place in kitchens and bedrooms over who does what in a heterosexual marriage (takes out the trash, spends more time with the kids, feels free to head out with their friends for a beer). The philosophical underpinnings of both conversations — gay marriage and equality in parenting — are similar, in that both focus on equality for adults (in the case of heterosexuals, mostly wives). But even if parents who seek parity do so for their own sanity and in pursuit of their own ideals, might it not also be better for their children?
Yes, if less conventional, more tolerant children are your goal. Because if the children of gays and lesbians are different, it is presumably related to the way they were raised — by parents with a view of domestic roles that differs from most of their heterosexual peers.
In sum, according to Belkin: “Same-sex couples, it seems, are less likely to impose certain gender-based expectations on their children.”
Perhaps, at root, that’s what the strongest opponents of equality most fear.
Reading the Maine Marriage Equality Setback
Let’s face it; this loss in Maine is tough to swallow. Here’s a comment from a despondent reader:
I know after some rest I’ll even out and get back to the business of living, but right now I feel very done with the ballot box, and donating, and phone-banking, and talking myself blue in the face, etc. I honestly don’t feel its proper to submit the rights of a minority to a popular vote and I’m not up for any further indignities at this time. I’m sure I’ll come around and get on with it like everyone else, but right now … I don’t know.
It’s easy to feel this way, especially after the heady victories over the past year throughout New England and in Iowa. There’s a brick wall that still hasn’t been battered down: When voters have been asked to weigh in on marriage equality, they consistently vote against us. We’d likely win in a state like Vermont, and maybe in a few other places, but we’re not there yet in most places — even, as we saw, in California or Maine. Nor is the Maine story as “spinnable” in our favor as the California narrative, because this time the equality forces outspent their opponents, and did the very kind of door-to-door campaigning that was supposed to result in victory. It’s tempting to join the reader’s pessimistic appraisal, and ask: “What’s left to try”?
It’s fair enough to feel that way on the day after such a devastating loss. But two things seem worth saying. First, we should acknowledge that there is indeed something wrong with putting minority rights up to a vote by the majority. But of course the constitutional or, in Maine, referendum, process in many states allows just this sort of result. Judicial challenges, as we’ve seen, are risky, too. One day (not soon) the U.S. Supreme Court may put an end to this state-by-state denial of basic equality, but for now, we’re stuck with the political process. That’s not necessarily a terrible thing, as it forces us (or should) to continue to engage our neighbors about our lives, and their value.
Second, we’re pushing closer and closer to that 50% threshold. It seems right now that we’re in the 47-48% range in more socially progressive states, so we’ve not far to go. And when the (in this sense) toxic word “marriage” is taken out of the equation, we’ve now cleared that majority hurdle: It looks as though the Washington full domestic partnership ordinance will stand. This result mirrors national polls, which now consistently show a majority in favor of at least marriage-in-all but name status for same-sex couples. It’s literally the word “marriage” — and its manifold, deeply embedded religious and cultural significance for many (including same-sex couples, of course) — that keeps the wall standing.
But let’s keep this in mind: In 2009, we’re already there, in many places, on equality in all-but-name. In a few states, we’ve even crossed the barrier on marriage. In several others, we’re close. Now think about where we were a decade ago. From that perspective, our progress has been nothing short of astonishing.
As a father with two young kids, I’m determined that they grow up in a place where their family is valued. As a citizen married in all but law to my spouse, I demand equality. Nothing else will, or should, placate us. I still believe — I still know — that we will get there, and soon.
Victory in Maine Would be Monumental, However Close the Vote
Andrew Sullivan is wrong in saying:
“I should say this about Maine. Whoever wins this vote will do so by the slimmest of margins. I don’t think it therefore represents much of a victory for either the pro-gay or anti-gay forces. It represents an essential 50-50 split. Maybe the coming results will alter that. But all we find out from Maine is that this is a very evenly divided state on this subject.”
I couldn’t disagree more. If marriage equality holds in Maine, it will be the first time that voters, faced with a decision about marriage equality only, decided that same-sex couples were entitled to not only the same rights and privileges as they, but to the same dignity and respect, as well. And because this will have been achieved by voters — not by courts, or even by legislatures — the right’s one remaining, populist argument disappears. No longer would they be able to crow that, whenever “the people” get to vote, “traditional marriage” wins.
That’s a huge, perhaps tectonic, shift towards marriage equality.
A Few Thoughts As We Await Decisions in Maine and Washington
(Some thoughts are flying around up here, and I want to get them down and disseminated quickly. So this post will be link-free, at least in its first version.)
Within the hour, we might know whether Maine voters have decided to let the marriage equality bill enacted last summer stand. Update: It appears that this will go into the wee hours. As of about 11 pm EST, only 22% of precincts had reported, and the vote was essentially tied. Find updates here.
Later, we’ll have an answer to the slightly less dramatic question of whether the Washington electorate (or the tiny percentage of it that votes in mid-term elections, anyway) will let stand the comprehensive civil union bill that was passed into law a few months ago, or will overturn it and thereby cause the state to revert to the slightly less generous version of civil union status that previously existed. (Still awake?)
I feel like I’ve been going on about these issues forever (I’m hardly the only one), and I sometimes find myself wondering: What’s left to say? When I read that there were literally hundreds of people scheduled to testify on the D.C. marriage equality bill, I’ll confess that my first reaction was one of numbness.
Haven’t we already made the case? How many more tearful children of same-sex couples will need to speak to the often-subtle, but real, shame that most states continue to enforce by fencing their parents — really, the whole family — out of a basic civil right? How many more visions of apocalypse will be described and displayed by opponents? We can all see, I think, how this is going to end, so — why isn’t it ending?
Because it’s marriage, and a (shrinking) majority of people remain uncomfortable with a change of this magnitude. Marriage equality is either radicalism dressed up as conservatism, or the other way around, and that ambiguity has both spawned endless scholarly debate and given much of the electorate cold feet. Better, some say, to stay away from the religiously charged lightning rod of “marriage” and offer the deliberately bland “domestic partnership” or “civil union” as a supposed virtual equivalent. In a limited sense, this is a good strategy: Washington’s domestic partnership law is quite likely to pass; Prop 8 took away marriage but left full domestic partnership status in place; and both Vermont and New Hampshire used the “civil union” to grease the skids towards full marriage equality. Even in Maine, equality opponents seem ready to accept civil unions, just not “marriage.”
I won’t go on about why the whole idea of marriage-in-all-but-name is unacceptable. It suffices to say that once one’s willing to grant all of the benefits but withhold the name, what is left is pure discrimination. If you have trouble seeing this, here’s a quick thought experiment: Imagine that the proposal were to call same-sex unions “marriages” but to rename opposite-sex unions “civil unions.” Acceptable? Q.E.D.
Everyone cares about marriage because that’s the status we understand, and that’s valued. As far as gay people in committed, long-term relationships are concerned, we are married in every way that matters. We just need the law to catch up, and thereby serve its valuable symbolic and educational role in changing hearts, minds, and practices in the many everyday ways that pass unnoticed. Consider this homely example:
A couple of years ago, we bought an unnecessarily large fridge from Sears, which should change its slogan to: Where Americans Suffer Thoughtless Customer Service Procedures. Every time our adhesive service contract comes up for renewal, whoever answers the phone is asked whether she can speak to “Mr. or Mrs. Culhane.” Every time, we tell the voice that this is a same-sex household1 and that we’ve told them this before. The reaction: “I’m sorry, but that’s the way we are required to speak.”
Really? In 2009? Yes; and Sears is hardly the only company from whom we’ve gotten this treatment. There’s nothing sinister about it, and it comes even at the hands of other gays: When I told my retirement portfolio counselor about my “spouse,” she then proceeded to ask a question about “her.” (When I corrected her, she quickly disclosed that she “also was gay.”)
What does any of this have to do with Maine? Plenty. If we don’t win today, soon we will. As more and more people realize that the most important political act they can take part in is to be out, out, out, our numbers, proximity, and lives will work their transformative change on an ever-swelling number of our fellow citizens. Things are moving fast, now. It took Mainers three tries to support their state legislature’s sexual orientation anti-discrimination bill. Expect the much more cutting-edge marriage bill to pass either today, or next time.
We are pushing on the wheel of history, and everyone can hear the creak.
- Well, we only used the italics this last time. ↩
Why Maine Matters
Winter has already come to parts of Maine. In the ominously named “Caribou,” several inches of snow have already fallen, and the western part of the state has experienced a “wintry mix” – which sounds like a snack from a bad holiday party.
So spare a thought for the ground warriors up there, slogging through this mess in their door-to-door campaign to tip the very tight race on gay marriage in their favor. That’s a good tactic in a small state, but really: Who cares? Why have millions of dollars come cascading into the state in an effort to influence this question? It turns out that more is at stake here than most people realize.
First, some background: This past May, a marriage equality bill was signed into law. But Maine law allows citizens the “People’s Veto,” whereby a small percentage of citizens can ask their fellow Mainers to reject recently passed laws.
So, this coming Tuesday, voters will decide ballot Question 1, which asks whether the new law should be rejected. And the pelts are flying. The “Yes on 1” forces ran an ad that had unspecified “legal experts” predicting apocalypse –including a flood of lawsuits and “homosexual marriage taught in schools” – were the law to stand. The State’s Attorney General, Janet Mills, said that she’d “scoured” the law for any mention of marriage in state-wide educational curricula, but found none. “Yes on 1” answered that by calling Mills’s opinion “a shameless political ploy.” And so on.
What’s really at stake here? Just that a few thousand same-sex couples might get to marry? Even that’s not as big a deal as you might think. “Yes on 1” spokesman Mark Mutty, in what was surely the dreariest debate on an important topic ever televised, was willing to just about throw the baby out with the bathwater, conceding that gay couples should have the same rights as straight ones – just without the name “marriage.”
But the anti-equality forces are running out of rhetorical weapons, and a loss in Maine would strip them of an important one. When courts demanded marriage equality, “robed activists” were the problem. Next, when legislatures passed equality bills,those exercises in representative democracy weren’t…democratic, because they had been hijacked by special interests. “Whenever the people have voted,” they say, “’traditional marriage’ wins.”
In a few days, they might not be able to say that, either. If this law stands, the final wall will have been breached.
“Lmao. U don’t stop my checks.”
I know my readership includes many fans of pro football. After reading this post, I invite you to tell me why you support this sport.
Whether or not you’re a fan, you’ve by now likely heard of the flap concerning Larry Johnson, a successful Kansas City Chiefs running back. After yet another crushing loss last weekend, Johnson “tweeted” his disrespect for the team’s coach. His nasty provocation drew responses from some outraged “followers,” who couldn’t help pointing out Johnson’s history of violent run-ins with the law (including domestic violence, throwing a drink at a woman in a nightclub, and pushing another woman’s head).
Johnson decided, in that way that Twitter seems to have been created to foster, to kill the messenger. According to outsports (much of the rest of the blogosphere has maddening in its reserve), Johnson responded as follows:
“[T]hink bout a clever diss then that wit ur fag pic. Christopher street boy. Is what us east coast cats call u.”
Actually, this troubles me less than the rest of the story. I don’t expect civility (or…anything) from Twitter exchanges, and one might charitably laugh this off as part of a nasty, fleeting exchange. But then Johnson closed his tweet with this epigram:
“Make me regret it. Lmao (”Laugh my ass off”). U don’t stop my checks. Lmao. So ‘tweet’ away.”
U don’t stop my checks. That’s really it, isn’t it? Translation: “I make the big money, and I’m the sh*t,1 so I’m above your criticism (and the law itself.)” And of course the NFL enables this sort of thing: not so much by its reaction to the event (Johnson received a two-week suspension, which will only result in one missed game because of a “bye” week), but by its ceaseless glorification of these men who, for several hours each Sunday, collide with each other with force sufficient to…I’m coming to that.
Why wouldn’t Johnson, along with every other major football star, feel himself entitled to do whatever he wants, including this follow-up with the press the very next day: “Get your faggot asses out of here.”
Of course, the obligatory acts of contrition followed, but it was really no apology. It began: “I did not intend to offend anyone…” Are there responsibility-acceptance programs alongside those in anger-management? (Inexplicably, GLAAD applauded the statement.)
But it’s the NFL that has the last laugh, not the unrepentant players. For all pro football players strike a Faustian bargain: A few years of glory and almost limitless license, in exchange for a shorter life — and a cognitively and physically crippled one, at that. In this New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell raises this provocative question: How different are pro football and dogfighting, really? Is Michael Vick’s conduct (which ranks high on the reprehensibility scale, to be sure) any worse than what the NFL, and indirectly, millions upon millions of fans enable each week? Let’s end with this somewhat lengthy excerpt from the article, where Gladwell considers the case of now-retired offensive lineman Kyle Turley. Then let’s hear from the defenders of football:
He knew all the stories about former football players. Mike Webster, the longtime Pittsburgh Steeler and one of the greatest players in N.F.L. history, ended his life a recluse, sleeping on the floor of the Pittsburgh Amtrak station. Another former Pittsburgh Steeler, Terry Long, drifted into chaos and killed himself four years ago by drinking antifreeze. Andre Waters, a former defensive back for the Philadelphia Eagles, sank into depression and pleaded with his girlfriend—“I need help, somebody help me”—before shooting himself in the head. There were men with aching knees and backs and hands, from all those years of playing football. But their real problem was with their heads, the one part of their body that got hit over and over again.
“Lately, I’ve tried to break it down,” Turley said. “I remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them. You don’t remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you’d get into a collision where everything goes off. You’re dazed. And there are the others where you are involved in a big, long drive. You start on your own five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you get to the other end of the field, you’re seeing spots. You feel like you are going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom, boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.”
“Then, there was the time when I got knocked unconscious. That was in St. Louis, in 2003. My wife said that I was out a minute or two on the field. But I was gone for about four hours after that….”
“They cleared me for practice that Thursday. I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t know what damage I did from that, because my head was really hurting. But when you’re coming off an injury you’re frustrated. I wanted to play the next game. I was just so mad that this happened to me that I’m overdoing it….That’s football. You’re told either that you’re hurt or that you’re injured. There is no middle ground. If you are hurt, you can play. If you are injured, you can’t, and the line is whether you can walk and if you can put on a helmet and pads.”
- Johnson apparently is closing in on a Chiefs’ career rushing record, although that’s not much better than closing in a Washington Nationals record in baseball. ↩
Teaching Marriage (and Respect) in Maine Schools
This Letter to the Editor in the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel caught my eye:
I’ve been a member of the Waterville Board of Education and its curriculum committee for almost 13 years. I am also an attorney.
I am disturbed by false assertions that the marriage equality law would lead to homosexual marriage being taught in our schools. There is no state-mandated marriage curriculum, and the new law has nothing to do with what schools will teach.
The Department of Education, the Attorney General, and the No on 1 campaign itself have made that clear.
Nevertheless, opponents of marriage equality charge that gay marriage will be taught in schools, over parents’ objections, if the law isn’t repealed. This is simply untrue. Not only is curriculum a matter of local control, Maine law (20-A M.R.S.A sec. 6209) provides for accommodation in instances where course content conflicts with the sincerely held religious beliefs and practices of a student’s parent or guardian.
Beyond curriculum, the reality is that some children in our schools are being raised by same-sex parents now. Their friends learn about their families just as they learn that some children have stepparents, one parent, adoptive parents, grandparents, or others who serve as guardians. Families have many different faces.
The children of same-sex couples deserve the same legal protections as others. Maine schools need to be places where every student is safe and respected. Denying same-sex families the protections of civil marriage would only undermine that goal.
Voting “no” on Question 1 will uphold a law that protects Maine families and kids by extending fundamental civil rights to same-sex couples. At the same time, it protects the rights of parents and churches, which have the right to their own beliefs and restrictions regarding marriage.
Joan Phillips-Sandy
Waterville
Can we please put this issue to rest, already? But even if we do, will it make a difference? Not according to this gloomy forecast cum assessment of the general political situation.
What Obama (Really) Thinks About Maine Question 1
Where does Obama stand on Maine’s ballot Question 1, which, if passed, would reject the state’s marriage equality law before it ever takes effect? As we used to be told in high school social studies class, compare and contrast:
1. In response to a question from the Advocate about his view on the referenda in Maine and Oregon:
“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes ‘strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.’ Also at the dinner, he said he supports, ‘ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.’”
2. Attorney General Eric Holder, replying to essentially the same question from a reporter after an event at the University of Maine:
“[The president and I] are of the view it is for states to make these decisions. That federal law [DOMA] is not necessarily a good piece of legislation, and we are going to work to repeal it….”
What th–?
When I read the first (and earlier) quote above, I did notice that the question had been answered with the circumspection and avoidance that too often characterizes (and results in caricature of) the legal profession: Read carefully, the statement doesn’t take a position on Question 1, because it’s not clear that a right is being “taken away.” One might argue that this case is different from California, where marriage equality was in effect — gay and lesbian couples by the thousands had married — and then taken away. Under Maine law, same-sex couples’ right to marry wasn’t, in a sense, “complete” until the date for challenging the the new statute through the referendum process had expired. So is a “right” being taken away by a Yes on 1 vote? Yes and no.
Given Holder’s more recent statement, though, it’s clear that Obama’s avoidance reflects a willfully agnostic position on Question 1. In short: he’s not with us on this, at least not in any way that’s useful. Is anyone surprised? If we lose by a point or two, I’ll know exactly where to place the blame.
That hate crimes uplift disappeared quickly, didn’t it?
On the Brink of Hate Crimes Law Protecting the LGBT Community
Tomorrow, President Obama is expected to sign the hate crimes bill (smuggled into an essential military spending measure) that will, at last, extend the reach of protection to those attacked and seriously wounded or killed because of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.
Before I offer an opinion on the measure, it’s worth pausing for a moment at the imminent passage of the first significant piece of federal legislation enacted on behalf of the LGBT community. Whatever one’s belief about the value of this law as opposed to others in the pipeline (or not) designed to address the community’s needs, it’s appropriate here to pause and offer thanks and respect for the advocates who worked tirelessly for this, including, of course, Judy Shepard. Of course, this had better not be the only thing the Obama Administration does, but I’ll leave that alone for today.
I’ve likely spent more time thinking about the wisdom of hate crimes legislation than is healthy. For a long time, I had trouble with it; to an extent, I still do. There’s something to the argument that violent crimes are just violent crimes; that, by trying to dig more deeply into impermissible motives, the prosecutor runs the risk of punishing conduct the law didn’t intend to target, or, worse, targeting conduct because of its speech content rather than the serious physical consequences it produces.
Sometimes, those offering these arguments aren’t doing so in good faith — they oppose only this hate crimes bill, but not protecting victims of crimes committed because of race, religion, or national origin. Sorry, but given the prevalence of anti-queer (and I’m using the term advisedly here) violence, this is just a specious assertion: If anyone needs hate crimes protection, it’s the most outrageous gender “outlaws.” Even more “mainstream” gays are targeted at a rate that’s high even among despised groups. Worse, the LGBT community is the victim of a great number of the most serious cases.
Some, though, make the principled conservative case against hate crimes law. Andrew Sullivan is prominent among these. (He’s addressed the issue on many occasions, but particularly persuasively, on what are really philosophical grounds, here.) But I’m less concerned about the metaphysical basis of “hate” than he is. Instead, I look at the situation this way: What we (collectively) are saying in bumping up the penalty for a crime against a protected group is that: (1) Words can’t be punished in themselves, but when those words are linked to criminal action, they become something else; and (2) That “something else” is sufficiently upsetting to the community that we want to both stand with the victims and send a message to the those who might engage in similar behavior.
The trick, of course, is to use the words to prove a heightened degree of criminality. But the fact that we’re using words instead of some other indicator of intent shouldn’t be dispositive, unless one is willing to cling to the obvious fiction that we can never punish anything related to “words.” We punish fraud, defamation, and “fighting words,” to name a few. And words are routinely used to define crimes, and to establish motive and intent.
Once that’s out of the way, then we’re in familiar territory: Deciding how culpable particular acts are. And these are judgments we make all the time. Here is David Gibson:
“[T]he law is full of degrees of criminality. Premeditated murder is not viewed in the same way as a crime of passion, just as rape is treated as an especially heinous type of physical attack that is meant to degrade a victim, and so is deserving of appropriate penalties….
“[T]hese attacks can inflict [damage] on an entire community. Just as a serial rapist on the loose sows fear among all women (and their families) and curbs their freedom, so too a hate crime “is meant to terrorize a community, not solely to victimize an individual,” as Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, put it.
“If blacks or Jews or Latinos or Christians — or gays and lesbians — cannot live in a neighborhood or walk the streets without fear of attack, then that climate of fear inhibits the free and full functioning of individuals and society. Laws not only make penalties to inflict on perpetrators who violate societal norms, they also make a statement about what a society values.”
This is pretty good. It’s also, I think, an answer to the charge that hate crimes perpetuate the victimization of the named group. The better argument is that, properly implemented (but will they be?), these laws send the strong message that victimizing Group [N] isn’t tolerated. Over time, this signal can diminish the anti-gay (and other) violence it seeks to address.
I did say earlier that I’m not fully comfortable with hate crimes laws. Although I agree with the Supreme Court that any ‘chilling effect’ on constitutionally protected speech is so minimal as to be of little concern, I do have a concern about prosecutors and jurors becoming overzealous (but this is likelier, I’d bet, with crimes based on almost anything other than sexual orientation or gender identity.) And if there is this tendency to prosecute for political gain, then we can expect the scapegoats to be poor and uneducated people, especially those on the extreme margins, such as transgendered persons of color.
Thus, some radically left groups oppose hate crimes laws, too, and find unexpected common ground with the more conservative voices in the LGBT movement. Here is an especially strong statement of this critical position, expressed by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in opposition to a proposed New York State bill that included hate crimes protection:
“Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities’ side while continuing to discriminate against us. Liberal politicians and institutions can claim “anti-oppression” legitimacy and win points with communities affected by prejudice, while simultaneously using “sentencing enhancement” to justify building more prisons to lock us up in. Hate crime laws foreground a single accused individual as the “cause” of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or any number of other oppressive prejudices.
“Anything that expands the power of a system that damages our communities so severely is against our long-term and short-term interests. Any legal weapon that’s created to make our justice system more harsh and punitive cannot be trusted in the hands of institutions that have shown their prejudices and corruption time and time again.”
Read the full Sullivan article against this letter, and find yourself asking whether the costs are worth whatever benefits might accrue. Reasonable people might disagree.