Well, I’m a little early, I know. It’ll be another month before we get to celebrate one year of marriage equality in Wisconsin. It happened last year on the opening day of PrideFest, June 6. In fact, the announcement came just in time for PrideFest’s opening ceremony. Within a week, 500 couples got married. Then came the appeals and the stays until finally, months later, the U.S. Supreme Court made it final. So here we are on the eve of another PrideFest and our first anniversary. Traditionally, paper is the suggested gift for the occasion. Of course, our governor in absentia, Scott “Punter” Walker has a paper gift in mind. Well, it’s more of a document. It’s an amendment, a constitutional amendment, a Federal Marriage Amendment. Its purpose will be to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman and to give states the right to enforce that definition. In other words, back to square one for marriage equality.
Walker’s position is part of his presidential ambitions, of course. He’s pandering to his extreme right Christian conservative base. Far be it for a would-be candidate to err on the side of social justice. But then, I recently had a conversation with a gay Republican about Walker and his opposition to marriage equality. As if to buttress his upcoming irony with incredulous legitimacy, my friend was careful to drop the insider line, “The last time I was at Walker’s house.” He then told me the governor really supported same-sex marriage. He just couldn’t do it publicly. I almost blew my beverage out my nose. Recovering, I admitted there was indeed Walker’s 2004 “PrideFest Weekend” Proclamation as County Executive, the gay guy in his county administration (the one who went to jail...oops) and even mansions have closets, but... Really? This gay Republican went on to gush about the pistol stored safely in his trunk, but that’s another column.
The reality for LGBT people is the fact that even if the U.S. Supreme Court grants marriage equality to the remaining states, there’ll still be opposition. Even now, our euphoria has been tempered by the continued resistance by the machinations of our governor and other Republican presidential hopefuls. It takes the form of laws like the religious freedom acts that allow (and tacitly encourage) discrimination against LGBT people. Or, it may be bureaucratic obstacles that still deny rights we thought we gained. Locally, a married lesbian couple still cannot manage to get both their names on their child’s birth certificate.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Looking at our American history’s attempts to dismantle the structures of discrimination, we can see a pattern. It’s been a century and a half since the Emancipation Proclamation and half a century since the Civil Rights Act. But rather than settle into the advance of true equality we see voting rights under attack, public education scrapped, and on and on. The LGBT community should expect the same.
We’ll celebrate our first anniversary of marriage equality but we still need to defend it against our bitter, angry and jilted rivals.
