The recent victories in marriage equality have been truly inspiring. It is great news that DOMA is dead and that with the addition of the Great State of California more than 30% of the population of our nation now lives where marriage equality is the law of the land.
However we are far from done in the fight for equal rights for our LGBT fellow citizens. While marriage equality is on the march, there is still a long way to do for housing and employment equality.
This combined with the fact that the Prop 8 decision was construed specifically so the High Court did not have to make a sweeping decision (at least not yet) does offer us some political opportunities.
Specifically it is time to try to get ballot initiatives overturning state bans on marriage equality. This is a really advantage for Democrats, in that we know the younger voters feel strongly that these kinds of bans are nonsense and will (probably) turn out to support it.
Taking advantage of this lets us replay the motivation and, hopefully, the electoral gains the Republicans made in the last decade, state by state. Even if we don’t win all of them (we won’t, there is no sense kidding ourselves) by energizing younger voters to turn out for Democratic causes, we cement their voting habits for most of the rest of their lives.
The way to build a more Liberal/Progressive nation is to get young folks voting for those causes.
One of the things that we will need to do is push some memes out into the conversation that benefit us and show our opponents to be out of touch reactionaries who should not be listened to. To this point I’ve come up with three memes (well, two play off each other) that I recommend everyone who has full equality for LGTB citizens as a priority use, as often as possible.
1)So far homosexuality has been documented in 400 species, homophobia has only been documented in one.... So what, exactly is "unnatural" in this context? It seems pretty clear to me, homophobia is unnatural and should not be tolerated as an abomination against nature.
2)Homophobia is a Choice, no one is born homophobic
3)Homophobia is a lifestyle choice that I strongly disapprove of. It is a choice and while we should allow people to make their choices, we should not give any space to such a socially destructive choice.
You might recognize the style of these statements from crap we’ve had to listen to for decades from the anti-gay folks, and that is intentional. Their statements were always lies, used to paint our LGBT as “other” and somehow deficient based on their sexuality.
Using these statements has some advantages over the Christianist Right. First off they are all true and based in fact. The second is that they are still useful in painting a group as “other” but this time we are painting those who want to punish LGBT citizens for their sexuality. Given that they are familiar they will tend to get more memory space with folk since the related false memes are still out there.
Finally, the best part to me, is that by doing a little rhetorical ju-jitsu we can stick it to the kinds of people who have been so hateful to LGBT citizens for so long, taking their hurtful words and use them to hurt them politically.
I have no idea if we can actually stamp out anti-gay hate. Given the fact that it is so intertwined with religion it is probably going to take a very long time. But if we can make it so socially costly to say anti-gay things in public that it gets less press that is a very good thing.
In short, if we use these kinds of memes, there is a chance, just a chance that we can drive anti-gay sentiments into the closet. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a more fitting result to the fight for full equality.
The floor is yours.