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The recent victory against in the California Superior Court shouldn't be taken for more than what it is, since it's only a regional court, but it's also not trivial. Judge Walker laid out the issues fairly carefully, and the conservative half of the US Supreme Court -- where the case is undoubtedly headed -- has a particular problem in that the case was framed very carefully to draw parallels with the laws prohibiting miscegenation (the mixing of races) that existed in many regions of the USA prior to 1967, when Loving vs. Virginia decided the question in favour of general human rights throughout the USA. He was very specific in finding that the campaign against marriage for all was motivated by animus, not reason, which is a very good thing. In specific detail, his finding of fact are almost a wish list of incontrovertible truths about the hate-filled and bigoted motivations behind the anti-gay movement.
We note with some pleasure that one of the most vicious of the Conservatives on the current court is a Black man married to a White woman, and his vote to allow the public to outlaw anything they don't like would be a vote against his own marriage. He might not care, but his wife ought to.
This is often depicted in the media as a "culture war," but that's a deliberate distortion. It's only the latest faux "issue" in a long series of "white-bigots-only" skirmishes.
The fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell (He's the twit who thought that the Teletubbies were gay infiltrators trying to convert American children into flaming sodomites) was still preaching White Supremacy at the time Loving became the law of the land, but soon switched to anti-gay hate mongering:
In 1984, Falwell called the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church "a vile and Satanic system" that will "one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven." Members of these churches, Falwell added, are "brute beasts." Falwell initially denied his statements, offering Jerry Sloan, an MCC minister and gay rights activist $5,000 to prove that he had made them. When Sloan produced a videotape containing footage of Falwell's denunciations, the reverend refused to pay. Only after Sloan sued did Falwell cough up the money.*
Times are changing.
"If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made," Falwell boomed from above his congregation in Lynchburg. "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line."
Falwell's jeremiad continued: "The true Negro does not want integration.... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race." Falwell went on to announce that integration "will destroy our race eventually. In one northern city," he warned, "a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife."*
Pretty soon, real soon now, bigotry of this sort will be intolerable in civilised society.
I can hardly wait.
* From Agent of Intolerance by Max Blumenthal
