resistance Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

A few words about Proposition 8

First, let me apologize for not covering this story much, much earlier. My attention was on the presidential race and on several races here in North Carolina. Proposition eight was a proposal to ban same-sex marriages. Remember, in California, same-sex marriage was legal. So, a right has been taken away.

When you listen to the rhetoric of those who oppose same-sex marriage, it sounds frighteningly similar to the rhetoric of those who opposed integration of the races.They talked about these classic institutions that would collapse if blacks were allowed to marry whites (and in some states blacks to marry blacks).

I’m not sure why we are so resistant to doing the right thing. Just think about our history and how at every step of the way there has always been significant resistance to doing the right thing. Consider when women were fighting for the right to vote. Why was there such resistance? All men and women should be treated equally under the law. It is mind-boggling that there was such contention. With gay marriage again we see the resistance. It is not hard for us to see what is the right thing to do.

For those who object on religious grounds, let me say this: civil rights, too, were strongly objected to on religious grounds. If you and your church do not want to include homosexual marriages as part of your congregation then that is your right. It is not your right to prevent others from getting married in a civil ceremony. I’m extremely disappointed in so many religious leaders who came out, as it were, in favor of this proposition.

Gay marriage will happen. It will happen within our lifetime because it has to happen. We can not, must not, formally discriminate against any group. We simply can’t.

Finally, I am not worried about the institution of marriage. I’m also not worried about my own marriage. My own marriage will fail or survive based on my actions and the actions of my wife. If a gay couple moves in across the street the strength of our relationship will not be changed. My wife and I love each other. Our love is not based on whether or not a gay couple lives across street. So, if a marriage does break up because a gay couple moves in the neighborhood, there was something else wrong with that relationship before the new neighbors arrived. America, it is time for us to stand up, once again, and do the right thing.

Resistance

The following is from Alan Taylor’s American Colonies: The Settling of North America. It is about the passive but meaningful resistance of subjugated people. It is about the response of Mexican Indians to Spanish domination in the 16th Century.

” To sustain a measure of psychological autonomy, Mexican Indians privately nurtured a mythic understanding of the Spanish conquest as cosmically insignificant and ephemeral: of no more enduring significance than the many previous cycles of rising and falling native powers. Having experienced the Aztecs, and the Toltecs before them, the natives of Mexico expected to outlive their Spanish masters.

From our own vantage point on the radical transformation of Indian lives under the onslaught of colonization, this native myth seems far from “true.” But the Indians preserved much of their cultural identity within that transformation, rendering the myth real in their thoughts.

Because of the internal nature of native resistance, the friars could achieve no more than a compromise in matter’s of faith and practice. They ultimately had to tolerate a vibrant religious syncretism in which the new Catholic forms absorbed native content.”

I think this is useful in seeing how people today and always have responded when to outsiders a situation might seem hopeless. There is always some way to respond.