Gay marriage will soon be legal in Washington. Opponents are angry at politicians and promise a ballot measure to overturn what the Legislature will soon enact and Governor Gregoire undoubtedly will sign.
Their anger and their effort are misplaced. For once, politicians aren’t at fault since they’re following their constituents’ sentiment – or at least the sentiment of the political squeaky wheel that’s about to get greased. To see who is responsible, values voters should look in the mirror.
I recently watched New York enact gay marriage, and it’s a hot-button issue in New Jersey, where I now live, so Washington state isn’t unique.
But gay-marriage opponents, where have you been all this time? For the three years I watched the Washington Legislature up close and personal, on-site political activism by gay marriage proponents was forceful and persistent, but there was comparatively little vehemence, voice or vigor from opponents, especially church people.
I’m not talking emails, sending each other some organization’s newsletter or signing petitions, because those have a low threshold of effectiveness and a high level of diminishing returns.
I am talking jamming community and town hall meetings with legislators where you then see beads of sweat on their upper lips and rallies in Olympia attended not by a few hundred, but by tens of thousands voicing an unequivocal, unremitting and unrelenting roar of human thunder that would shake the place to its foundation and make every legislator quake in his Gucci’s or her Birkenstocks.
That’s what the Tea Party did over taxes and government spending, and it worked.
Finding refuge in a lawyer’s office where he gladly takes a retainer fee to fight what he knows is a losing battle in court is an abdication of citizenship. Besides, everyone knows that no matter who wins or loses, the lawyer is the ultimate winner because he gets paid.
The wrong-headed fightagainst releasing the names of those who signed R-71 to overturn the “everything but marriage” bill in 2009 illustrates the point. Instead of being afraid to go public for fear of retaliation, why wasn’t it invited by demanding to go public – pull a John Hancock and put your name to the cause in letters so big and bold that there’s no question who you are or where you can be found.
When the United States Supreme Court decided 8-1 in Doe v. Reed, 561 U.S._____ (2010) that Washington state’s Public Records Act and notions of governmental transparency trump hypothetical concerns about privacy and the unwillingness of some people to be inconvenienced or even harassed, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a concurring opinion that concluded with these words:
“Harsh criticism, short of unlawful action, is a price our people have traditionally been willing to pay for self-governance. Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. For my part, I do not look forward to a society which, thanks to the Supreme Court, campaigns anonymously and even exercises the direct democracy of initiative and referendum hidden from public scrutiny and protected from the accountability of criticism. This does not resemble the Home of the Brave.” Citation omitted.
Legislative and governmental acts done in secret rarely, if ever, have good outcomes – in fact, they’re the stuff of which tyrannies are made.
Political battles are won by those who take to the streets en masse and haunt the corridors of the Legislative Building, not by those comfortably and anonymously seated in church pews. And the priests and pastors who should have motivated and led their flocks like prophets of old to descend repeatedly and forcefully on Olympia to make their case? I didn’t see them.
To win the war you must fight the battle.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
