The first of many rants to come on California's latest bout with institutionalizing bigotry:

*Disclaimer: I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to dress this up. It is raw because the subject is raw.

It’s Different...But Not In the Way That Really Counts

Yes, racist oppression is different from oppression of gays and lesbians.

Sure...this is true enough. It’s true in the same way that the fine print of retail contracts and credit card offers are “true.” It’s also true in a tactical sense: one can find several important differences between the two, differences which affect our plans on how to challenge them both. You can find differences in the body counts, the flavors of atrocities, the choice of targets, and the weapons of each.

But all of this misses the point. When someone points to the parallels in the struggle for civil rights among people of color and gays and lesbians, they are not claiming that every struggle is identical. They are appealing to the common sense of humanity we hope to evoke in others when we witness anyone being attacked. To pretend ignorance of this obvious appeal is an act of petty moral cowardice, an attempt to pull that ladder up behind you and narrow your horizons.

Worse yet are attempts to spark up another round of Oppression Olympics, and appeals to “paying your dues.” This appallingly selfish attitude is exemplified by attempts to rank oppressions and imply a certain minimum level of prerequisite suffering before a form of oppression is recognized as such. Conveniently, absolutely every self-appointed participant in the Oppression Olympics somehow manages to privilege themselves by acknowledging the suffering of people they identify with, while putting just enough distance between themselves and the group of people they are waving off as Not Really Important Enough For Me To Help.

Unfortunately, divide-and-conquer is still successful. Most of those who are lately making leaps to distinguish racist oppression from homophobic oppression are not doing so as a matter of abstraction, but in order to rank hardships in a juvenile attempt to “win” the oppression olympics, or worse yet to rationalize their attempts at waving off the plight of gay people altogether. This is the same kind of selfishness and denial which keeps each of us from working to defend each other in the first place, and it’s exactly what keeps us vulnerable. This is an evasion...it ignores the fellow human beings who are under attack and are calling upon their brothers and sisters to stand with them in the face of bigotry and systemic violence. It’s like seeing friends being thrown overboard and then bickering over the color of the water. The appropriate response is to throw a rope, not have a pissing contest.


Why Prop 8 Is a Big Deal

Has the sky fallen since the passage of Prop 8? Of course not. Do the gay and lesbian couples who have solemnized their commitment to each other in marriage love each other any more or less than they did before Prop 8? No.

Prop 8 is most dangerous not for what it does directly, but for the political and moral precedent it sets. The deeper question raised by the Prop 8 is NOT whether or not the State of California will recognize the rights of gay people, but something much more fundamental.

What Prop 8 is really asking us as is to choose between two options as a plural civil society. Knowing full well that there are people in the world who don’t share our views, there are essentially two broad responses:

commit ourselves to living WITH each other, and develop a common standard for how to handle our inevitable disagreements peacefully;
commit ourselves to living OVER and UNDER each other, in a neverending war of Might Makes Right.

As with any other attempt at theocracy, support for policies like Prop 8 is support for the latter, for a neverending war.

This is not a case of symmetrical opponents, but of asymmetrical war. It is less obvious because (most of the time) it is a war waged through proxy battles rather than direct combat out in the streets. It is a hidden war, because the boundaries of the factions do not line up with the boundaries of individual bodies. A given individual is commonly in favor of peaceful coexistence on most fronts but committed to the hidden war on other fronts.

To the Theocrats: The Gloves Come Off

If you are religious, I welcome and support your freedom to believe whatever you like. Within your own religious community, you can adopt whatever standards for truth and morals and ethics you see fit.

But the moment you insist that the doctrines of your faith be translated into public policy, it’s no longer a private matter. The moment you so much as hint at proposing or changing any law we are ALL forced to live under, you must come up with a nonreligious basis for what you want which can be communicated to others outside your faith. If you can’t come up with any reasons outside of your religion, you can either:

keep it to yourself, whether individually or within your religion;
try to impose it upon others anyway, rightfully earning the opposition of anyone who values freedom and peaceful coexistence

No more polite silence, in which I hold back my laughter or hide my disgust as you recite chapter and verse of your preferred mythologies as if they must be held as true by default. No more pretense, in which I recognize the beauty of devotional art and sentiment while withholding my rejection of the superstition and magical thinking it is attributed to.

No more.

An opponent is someone who works against you. An enemy is someone who is trying to destroy you.

If you want your faith enacted as law, and you are working to make it happen, you are my enemy. Not my opponent, but my enemy. You are attempting, through the institutionalized violence of state force, to impose your will upon everyone else, and for that you rightfully deserve to be defeated by any means necessary.

Worst of all, you are demonstrating your commitment to the war of all against all...you are saying to me, and to anyone outside of your narrow story of how the world should be, that you are interested in the welfare of others only to the extent that it suits your own goals.