Three attorneys on the team that drove the US Supreme Court’s 2015 lg to legalize gay marriage feel new anxiety after the high urt’s June opn overturng Roe v. Wa.
Contents:
- HERE’S WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WHEN YOU’RE GAY BUT MARRY HETERO
- HOW GAY MARRIAGE WON
- THE STGGLE FOR GAY RIGHTS IS OVER
- GAY MARRIAGE ALREADY WON | APR. 8, 2013
- GAY MARRIAGE
- THE WAR OVER GAY MARRIAGE IS ALREADY WON
- WHY THE BATTLE FOR GAY MARRIAGE WAS WON SO EASILY
- TIME COVERS THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
- HOW GAY MARRIAGE WON THE US
- GAY STRASBOURG
HERE’S WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WHEN YOU’RE GAY BUT MARRY HETERO
The gay and lbian muny has gone om Stonewall to the altar two generatns * gay marriage already won *
When at last the doors of the whe marble temple swung open on March 26 for the first of two ssns voted to the subject, the lucky on found seats time to hear Jtice Anthony Kennedy — thor of two important earlier cisns favor of gay rights and likely a key vote this time as well — turn the tabl on the attorney fendg the tradnalist view.
HOW GAY MARRIAGE WON
* gay marriage already won *
Gays and lbians enjoy the same right to privacy their timate liv as heterosexuals, Kennedy clared, while a separate ncurrg opn, Jtice Sandra Day O’Connor add plaly, “Moral disapproval of a group nnot be a legimate ernmental tert unr the Equal Protectn Clse.
The Stggle for Gay Rights Is OverFor those born to a form of adversy, sometim the harst thg to do is admtg that they’ve Tsironis / RtersEdor’s Note: This article is part of a seri about the gay-rights movement and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprisg.
THE STGGLE FOR GAY RIGHTS IS OVER
TIME Magaze Cover: Gay Marriage Already Won * gay marriage already won *
For this childhood fan, was a marvel: A sport wh heavily oiled men nng around spanx tights that was neverthels notor for crassly homophobic stereotyp now celebrat gay day seems to brg wele exampl of how Amerins are beg more relaxed about sexual orientatn. Aga, ” clared the headle of a characteristilly psimistic Tim op-ed by the legendary gay activist and playwright Larry this glooms li the 2016 electn, which many gay activists believe threatened to halt, if not reverse, all of the progrs they have ma.
GAY MARRIAGE ALREADY WON | APR. 8, 2013
The road to full marriage equaly for same-sex upl the Uned Stat was paved wh setbacks and victori. The landmark 2015 Supreme Court se Obergefell v. Hodg ma gay marriage legal throughout the untry. * gay marriage already won *
It was an obv joke about Pence’s religsy and social nservatism, an example not of Tmp’s purported homophobia but the lack of rpect he has for even his most loyal followers, up to and cludg his own vice print, whom he is apparently willg to mock before a group of Whe Hoe visors. Days later, the Natnal Coaln of Anti-Vlence Programs (NCAVP), a group mted to batg antigay hate crim, published a report claimg a shockg 86 percent crease “hate vlence related homicis of LGBTQ people” om 2016 to fdgs would be alarmg, if te. Likewise, the portn of heterosexual rponnts who said they would feel unfortable “learng a fay member is LGBTQ” was 27 percent 2016, and rose to 30 percent the followg for the report on LGBTQ homicis, is unclear how many of the murrs clud the report were actually motivated by antigay anim.
GAY MARRIAGE
The hight-profile Supreme Court w for gay and lbian rights, a cisn wrten for history, stopped short of what advot really wanted. Where do that leave the movement? * gay marriage already won *
But is the nflatn of transgenr issu wh the gay-rights movement, a recent velopment and not one unrtaken whout some ntroversy among gays and lbians themselv, which acunts for much if not most of the evince ced as reprentg regrsn on gay to marriage equaly and other protectns for gays advanced by the Supreme Court, Jtice Anthony Kennedy’s “opns seem secure bee his jurispnce largely mirrors chang society, ” Saikrishna Prakash of the Universy of Virgia Law School told Poli, referrg to the former Supreme Court jtice’s majory opns the 2003 se strikg down sodomy laws and the 2015 se legalizg same-sex marriage.
THE WAR OVER GAY MARRIAGE IS ALREADY WON
The latt news and ment on same-sex, equal or gay marriage * gay marriage already won *
The ia that gay Amerins might have achieved somethg approachg equaly go agast a central assumptn of the zegeist, which, this age of Tmp, Brex, and a risg global ti of natnalism and illiberalism, postulat that Enlightenment valu are on the cle. When I asked the Human Rights Campaign, the untry’s leadg gay-rights group, for statistics on the number of LGBTQ people annually nied employment, hog, or service at a hotel or rtrant due to their sexualy or genr inty, the group was unable to provi me wh any. In a 7–2 cisn, all the more damng for havg been wrten by the judicial hero of the morn gay-rights movement, Anthony Kennedy, the Court cisively led agast a gay uple’s attempt to force a Christian baker Colorado to make a ke for their weddg ceremony.
WHY THE BATTLE FOR GAY MARRIAGE WAS WON SO EASILY
The urt assailed Colorado burecrats for nng roughshod over the First Amendment rights of the baker, whose relig nvictns forba him not om servg gay people—he offered to make the uple all the baked goods they uld ever wish to nsume—but om exprsg approval for somethg he nsirs gay people are expected to be grievoly offend by the behavr of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakhop. Ameri is a land of some 330 ln people, and I do not require every small-bs owner across the untry to reject 2, 000 years of relig teachg orr to pursue my by a moral absolutism remblg the relig zeal of those they oppose, some gay activists and their progrsive alli have taken a zero-sum approach to the issue of antidiscrimatn, seekg to punish and stigmatize people who hold the exact same view of marriage that Barack Obama exprsed up until May 2012. Meanwhile, the state of New York is threateng to close an evangelil adoptn agency that ref to place children wh gay upl, spe the fact that the agency do not even accept ernment fundg and that no gay uple had ever even plaed about beg nied you had told gay activists 10 or even five years ago that their energi would center upon mpaigns related to var foods—forcg p pastry chefs to make k and boyttg Chick-Fil-A, or “hate chicken, ” bee s Christian owner has donated money to efforts opposg same-sex marriage—most would have nsired their missns plete.
To unrstand why so many the movement refe to accept victory, helps to unrstand the tensns that have long existed at s the emergence of “homophile” activists the 1950s, the tenor and aims of the Amerin gay-rights e have alternated between two tennci: tegratnist and separatist. If tegratnists believe that gay people are pretty much the same as straight people and th want the same thgs out of life, separatists ntend there is somethg herently distct about “queerns” obligatg s adherents to pursue polil paths and romantic and social arrangements divergent om the Amerin mastream.
TIME COVERS THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Galvanized four years later by the Stonewall rts, when the patrons of a Greenwich Village bar fought back agast police harassment, the gay movement veloped a more radil and antagonistic attu toward straight society as s lears me unr the sway of the untercultural New Left.
”One of the first groups to emerge the aftermath of Stonewall, the Gay Liberatn Front, adopted s name as an homage to the munist Natnal Liberatn Front of North Vietnam, rid marriage as “one of the most sid and basic staers of the system, ” nounced the “dirty, vile, fucked-up palist nspiracy, ” and donated funds to the Black Panthers, an anizatn not exactly known for holdg progrsive views on homosexualy.
HOW GAY MARRIAGE WON THE US
But by the time the worst years of the epimic were over, gays unrstood how much they had to ga om mastream social acceptance the form of hospal-visatn rights and relatnship regnn—and had monstrated that they had more mon wh the straight majory than perhaps eher si had regnized. The language of gay activists durg this perd, wh s emphasis on rights and rponsibili, was all about fdg a place at the table, not overturng leadg gay wrers and tellectuals at this time of unprecented polil progrs and social advancement weren’t the vote of queer theory and tersectnaly who domate llege mp and fe the voice of gay activism and journalism today, but nservativ and classil liberals like Bawer, Sullivan, David Bdnoy, Jonathan Rch, Norah Vcent, Cale Paglia and other wrers affiliated wh the Inpennt Gay Fom. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court se strikg down sodomy laws, told me that the wng legal team “nscly chewed argument rooted sexual liberatn favor of arguments that emphasized mment, love, and fay—and pecially the ia that lbians, gays and bisexuals are ‘jt like’ heterosexuals.
”Like the Ain Amerin civil-rights movement (which had s own separatnist analogue the form of black natnalism) before , the e of gay equaly has been most succsful when s spokmen and women addrsed the Amerin majory as fellow cizens seekg the same rights and rponsibili they take for that posss cultural and polil power, the gay-rights movement is revertg to the ntrol of s radil element, wh many the vanguard bent on upendg the Amerin social orr that only recently accepted .
Succs has lowered the stak; rponsible lears (cludg many of the morate and nservative gays who played an unsung role the movement’s succs) have retired om the fight, clearg the field for the sort of culture-war topics roilg the left at Tmp, the gay-rights movement is bet by missn creep. Take, for example, the Wleyan Universy Open Hoe, which once scribed self as “a safe space for Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgenr, Transsexual, Queer, Qutng, Flexual, Asexual, Genrfuck, Polyamouro, Bondage/Disciple, Domance/Submissn, Sadism/Masochism (LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM) muni and for people of sexually or genr dissint muni. Would forever be ashamed of utterg on natnal televisn, “queer” is now affirmatively ployed by homosexual and heterosexual alike spe the disfort still many gays—due not jt to s history as a slur, but the polil and liftyle radilism aga, there’s the unfortable merger of sorts wh the transgenr movement.
GAY STRASBOURG
Meanwhile, has bee an annual rual for followers of the Black Liv Matter movement to halt gay-pri paras major ci across North Ameri to prott the very prence of uniformed police officers, spe a recent survey fdg that 79 percent of LBTQ people (and 77 percent of nonwhe LGBTQ people) support a police prence at Pri celebratns. Consirg that law enforcement ed to terrorize gays—ed, that one such episo of police btaly advertently helped stir the morn gay-rights movement 50 years ago this week— is the height of absurdy to antagonize police partments eager to protect gay people, much ls monize gay ps.
“Buttigieg don’t seem terribly sold on the ia of gayns as a cultural amework, formative inty, or anythg more than a tegory of sexual and romantic behavr, ” plas Christa Ctecci of Slate, assailg Buttigieg for unrstandg homosexualy by s leral fn.
” A culture that once preached dividualy and personal eedom has bee nformist and hectorg, s self-appoted queer missars nstantly policg the language and brgg prsure to bear on those who n afoul of their ever-evolvg end of gay rights do not mean the end of homophobia.