When we go to ComicCon we geek out on all the fun stuff there are for “Whovians.” Assumed one is armed with a bottomless wallet, there are thousands of things to buy, and that’s just if you’re looking for a Tardis. Yes, in the show a Tardis is the Doctor’s time traveling space ship. At ComicCon it’s a bathrobe, a coffee mug, a life-sized inflatable, even a teapot -- and those are just the things my friends and I own.
It’s a Tardis world and we’re just living it. This is what I think -- until I go back and teach in my high school classroom and make a Tardis joke. Most of the time, you can hear crickets chirp. Doctor Who, it seems, may have traveled the galaxy, but he has not spent much time in my classroom.
I mention this not to demonstrate what a geek I am. In my defense, there are lots of Tardis jokes. (1) Rather, it’s to point out that when you’re in the middle of something fun and exciting, it’s easy to start to believe that it’s happening everywhere, all the time, to everyone.
That’s how I feel sometimes about what’s happening in LGBT rights, and in particular gay marriage, or, as I prefer to think of it, marriage equality. The news these days is always so positive, that even a small setback seems like just a momentary blip on the road to marriage equality for everyone.
But then I think back to June 2013, when the Supreme Court threw out the stupidly named Defense of Marriage Act. I was in Utah, and even as I watched the celebrations on TV, I was very much aware I was in a state that was very much not celebrating.
The local news, from Salt Lake City, made it very clear in their reporting that gay marriage was not coming to Utah anytime soon. In the name of balance, they interviewed one woman who was in favor it, but the tenor of the story made it clear she was very much the minority.
I bet she’d have been thrilled to just have to listen to crickets.
So which is it? Are we truly in the middle of a LGBT revolution? Or does it just seem that way from the inside?
My gut tells me things are absolutely getting better. Even FOX News says the movement towards marriage equality, “has shown results, with state bans falling in courts at a brisk clip, most recently in Idaho and Arkansas.”(2) Indeed, just 10 years after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize marriage equality, nearly 44 percent of Americans now live in states where it is legal.(3)
Nate Silver, a statistician who became famous after predicting the correct outcome of the every senatorial race and the presidential race in 2012, sees marriage equality as largely the law of the land by 2020. “Support for same-sex marriage would continue to increase based on generational turnover, probably enough that it would narrowly win a national ballot referendum by 2016.”(4)
Interestingly, what Silver doesn’t think has sped up that much in the last decade is the pace of change. Looking at decade worth of polling he writes, “we have sometimes considered the possibility that support for same-sex marriage is increasing at a faster rate than before. The data seems to suggest, however, that the increase in support has been reasonably steady since about 2004.”(4)
So why does it feel like things are moving so quickly? My theory is because they actually are, at least compared to other civil rights movements, such as African-American rights. A brief history lesson, if you will. (I know, I know; I’ll try to make it interesting.)
Unlike the beginning of a stock car race, or the expansion of Angelina Jolie’s lips in “Tomb Raider,” most civil rights movements don’t have a defined start date. There are, however, certain milestones we can point to and say, “This was important.” If for no other reason than this makes history a lot easier to assess on multiple choice tests.
Looking at the history of Civil Rights for African-Americans, that beginning is probably sometime in the 1860’s. Whether the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th through 15th amendments, or the Civil War, which finally forced southerners to join the civilized world, these were great achievements to be sure.
Still, it would be another 100 years before those laws would be fully enforced by the Federal Government. Until then, lynchings, injustice and separate but equal were still the law of the land, whether endorsed by various state laws, or just people choosing to be close their eyes to the truth.
Compare this with the last third of a century in LGBT history. Many consider the modern LGBT Rights movement in America to have begun in 1969 with Stonewall.(5) Unlike the African-American rights movement there was no law, no constitutional amendment, so grand speech from the president. There was just a group of oppressed people who’d grown weary of mistreatment. Hacked off, they rioted, and a year later started America’s first gay pride parade.(No, this is not me being snarky; it’s true.)
For the next 35 years they would win some victories and lose others. Slowly LGBT rights moved forward. But it was halting and even painful, as it often went in reverse. In the South -- there’s that word again -- sodomy was still a crime in every state until 2000.
Then came 2004, when not only Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage, but the Supreme Court overturned the anti-sodomy law in Texas. By extension, this made same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. Yes, even in the South.
Certainly, there have been setbacks since 2004. Numerous states passed their bans on gay marriage since then. These are also the states, however, whose laws are being declared unconstitutional month after month in the spring and summer of 2014.
Again, contrast this with the African-American Civil Rights movement, where it took them more than a century to achieve what it’s taken LGBT people just a few decades. For people familiar with the history of this movement, and other similar movements in America and the world, the speed with which America seems to have embraced LGBT equality is stunning. Indeed, some would argue LGBT people have seen more progress in the last decade than African-Americans have seen in the past 50.(6)
Does this mean the battle is over? No. -- and not even in Nate Silver’s 2020 America:
“With evangelicals slower to change their minds, Southern states should move at a slower pace than the national average,” argues David Frum in the Daily Beast.(7) “Parts of the South, Plains, and West would probably still have gay marriage bans.”
Insert joke about the South here.
Unfortunately, for LGBT people that live in the South, they are still a long way from the feeling of inevitable success that seems to be washing over the rest of the country. Once again, I’m reminded of that solitary woman I saw on the news in Utah, another state that banned sodomy until the Supreme Court told them they couldn’t.
In recent weeks I’d like to think she was thrilled when it was legalized in Utah, and only momentarily depressed when a judge once again said it wasn’t. Her future lying optimistically with the Supreme Court, pretty much as it always has for LGBT people in Utah and so many other places. I’d like to beleive she finds hope that even Utah’s own U.S. senator says marriage equality it’s going to happen.(8) And that perhaps soon she can celebrate with the rest of us.
Until then, I’ll try to remember her -- and all the others who can’t.
References:
1) There’s even websites -- six of ‘em.
Google: “Tardis Jokes”
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+doctor+who+fans+called&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS504US507&oq=what+are+Doctor+Who+fans+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.5167j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8#q=tardis+jokes
2) Fox News: Tactics on gay marriage endure 10 years after first US same-sex couples tied the knot
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/15/tactics-on-gay-marriage-endure-10-years-after-first-us-same-sex-couples-tied/
3) Human Rights Campaign: Resources: Percent of Population Living in States with Marriage Equality
http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/percent-of-population-living-in-states-with-marriage-equality
4) How Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Is Changing, and What It Means
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/how-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage-is-changing-and-what-it-means/?_php=true&_&_r=0
5) Raina Bowe: Stonewall: You need to know
http://rainabowe.weebly.com/unbroken-raina-thoughts/stonewall-you-need-to-know
6) Come back on June 16, 2014. I’ll write about this more.
7) Nate Silver Predicts Gay Marriage Will Have Majority Support in 44 States by 2020
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/27/nate-silver-predicts-gay-marriage-will-have-majority-support-in-44-states-by-2020.html
8) The Salt Lake Tribune: Hatch concedes gay marriage will likely become legal in U.S.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57998571-90/case-gay-hatch-legal.html.csp