The Equality Zero-Sum Game Round Whatever

[browngirl]

[More US politics.] I know this is a matter of perspective, but sometimes it seems that conservatives are so good at pulling together while liberals are so good at infighting.

So I've been lying here reading the Internet's reactions to this week's US political news. Having seen it recced a couple times I read the often wise and estimable ursulav's post "Rain On My Parade And I Will Cut You". This essay is the most eloquent expression yet of an attitude I've seen around and really disagree with, that Senator Davis and her colleagues' and supporters' courage in Texas and the victories of overturning DOMA's Section 3 and Prop 8's death are more important than the loss of the Voting Rights Act. (To say nothing of the debacle in Ohio.) [Personal note: It doesn't help that some of the people in the comments are people whom I've seen support feminism and turn around and excuse racism, but that's about my personal reaction, not what I think we should globally do. Back to that.]

As I pointed out in my comment, "considering how the Voting Rights Act being defanged endangers these laudable instances of progress (Senator Davis nearly lost her district due to the gerrymandering that is now legal, and due to it Rep. Tim Huelskamp is likely to gain more like-minded colleagues to support his proposed anti-same-sex-marriage amendment to the US constitution) it seems kind of counterproductive to celebrate those victories by declaring the pointlessness of concern about the VRA. It makes sense to me to be worried about the stability of a new patio built on eroding ground." [The last line is a reference to the essay's central metaphor.]

So I may get cut indeed, or I may get ignored (that happens a lot when one points out intersectionality). But it makes me sad to see a victory getting used as a reason to ignore a defeat, especially one that endangers that very victory.

And it makes me think about the common complaint about liberals that we fight amongst each other. I may well have done that myself by disagreeing publicly with Ms. Vernon: I AM delighted by the decisions against DOMA and Prop 8, and I am awed by and admiring of the Texas Senators' stand, with thousands of women of Texas standing with them. I do think we should celebrate.

But I also think we should not forget or dismiss other struggles. For my part, I can't support one thing if it means I have to betray myself to do it. Many people pleased with these political successes think that the VRA decision doesn't matter because racism is over and/or because even if it isn't the VRA decision will only affect people of color/people in the South/other groups they don't belong to. For one thing, that supposition is not true: issues of voting suppression have popped up all over the country and across class lines and urban/rural lines as well as racial ones (my friend sageness wrote an excellent description of gerrymandering in Texas.). However, even if it were... being a woman of color myself I can't and won't dismiss the VRA decision as unimportant (also, as I pointed out above, it endangers these victories).

So what am I to do, then? Should I keep quiet in the name of liberal unity? Or does it make sense to ask my fellow liberals to remember that even issues that aren't personally important for them are still important? (And I'm reminded here that one of my many reasons for supporting marriage equality is that I want the issue settled like it should have been long ago so that people can't use it as a reason to ignore other issues facing LGBT people, such as the dreadful hatred and danger transgender people face just for existing or the fact that it's not illegal in many states to fire someone for being LGBT. These issues of equality matter beyond our own groups, our own skins.)

Comments

[sethg]

The DOMA and Prop8 decisions bother me, even though I am happy about their outcome.

The thing is, I feel like the current Supreme Court is, for lack of a better term, lawless. I don’t mean that they have a theory of contitutional interpretation that I happen to disagree with, the way I disagree with the “substantive due process” philosophy that almost undid the New Deal. I mean that they are operating without a theory: instead, they know who they want to win in each case, and then they come up with some constitutionaloid argument for that case.

Maybe I am just overly nostalgic about previous generations of Supreme Court justices, but I think it’s telling that in the VRA decision, as in Bush v. Gore, the majority basically said that their ruling was narrowly tailored to the specifics of the case and couldn’t be used as a precedent. Republicans and Democrats could spend the next year negotiating over a new preclearance formula, publish thousands of pages of findings, and pass a law... and it would get litigated all over again, and God only knows if it would get struck down again.

So the DOMA and Prop8 decisions don’t feel to me like “the Supreme Court is recognizing the constitutional rights of same-sex couples”, but rather “Justice Kennedy doesn’t want to tell his gay friends in California they can’t get married and can’t get Federal benefits, but he doesn’t want to make same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states, either”. Which is still an improvement on the status quo, but... doesn’t make me feel better about the Court. Maybe if Justice Kennedy had African-American friends in Alabama....

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

The court is pretty seriously divided between different attitudes and judicial theories. It's not a situation in which I'd expect the court to express a consistent theory.

In re the VRA decision, I think that they're trying to express the idea that the concept is OK, but nobody's revised the sh*t-list in 40 years, and that's getting unreasonable.

As for the SSM issues, it seems to be clear to me that they're trying not to get ahead of public opinion, but well aware that public opinion is going to consider it a matter of equal rights in 10 to 20 years. That's a situation where you don't want to enunciate the theory you're going to use a generation hence, but preferably just hint about it.

Then again, 'A Supreme Court Justice (Frankfurter, I think) once said, "we are not the court of last resort because we are infallible, rather we are infallible because we are the court of last resort."' Who are you going to complain to? We already have hellish fights over SC nominees...

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I feel like the current Supreme Court is, for lack of a better term, lawless.

I like and am educated by your analysis here. *takes notes*