History and Gay Marriage

"The President has long believed that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights and legal protections as straight couples. That's why he has called for repeal of the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" and determined that his Administration would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts. The states should determine for themselves how best to uphold the rights of their own citizens. The process in New York worked just as it should."

After hearing that the bill passed, Mary Rodriguez, in white, cheered at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, where the gay-rights movement began more than 40 years ago. Photograph © Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times.

The opening passage I've lifted above is from a statement the White House released in response to the vote last night in Albany (the capitol of New York State) to legalize same-sex marriage. If this is Obama's position - and apparently it is - I wonder if he recalls the phrase "Jim Crow," which was the system by which States in the American South institutionalized the bigotry of the white population toward African-Americans for decades and decades. Among the problems with Obama's unwillingness to look to history for lessons that might guide us moving forward is that he ends up looking like a fool. In the current debate this means that state after state can enshrine religious bigotry in law by withholding equal protection of the laws from gay citizens. After all, New York is one of just six states (plus DC, of course) that have legalized same-sex marriage. And, according this report in to The New York Times: "Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage." Does Obama think "the process" worked just as it should in all those jurisdictions too? And, as The Times also reports, let's be perfectly clear too - the NY legislation was carefully drafted to insure that private and religious organizations can continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian citizens. This accommodation enshrines bigotry.

Having said all that, I am ambivalent about the entire preoccupation with marriage. Legislation allowing gay men and lesbians to marry is important insofar as it allows them certain legal rights and privileges that might otherwise be withheld from them. On the other hand it also clearly is an example of the normalization of gay liberation - homosexuals now are free to be just like heterosexuals. The aims of gay and lesbian politics turn out to be not so "queer" after all. (I myself would prefer that legal status and political-economic benefits be more clearly disentangled from one's marital status altogether.) And when I saw the photo above, taken at celebrations around the Stonewall Inn last night, I wonder at the irony of that political transformation.*
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P.S.: This conclusion may seem odd or unsubstantiated. And I hardly am an expert on the topic. So, what follows is a passage from this recent interview with my colleague Douglas Crimp who is extremely articulate about such matters and from whom I have learned a tremendous amount.

"I think . . . that something of an enormous shift happened in the wake (sic) of AIDS toward a conservative gay culture where issues like fighting for equal rights to marriage and to fight in the military took precedence over what I think of as a truly queer culture, which is a culture that wants to change how we think about forms of human relations in a much more general sense. I still feel very much what I learned from early second wave feminism, which was the critique of marriage as an institution and how marriage actually served governance as a way of managing the complexity of relations that are possible among people.

One of the greatest gains of the gay liberation movement and the general liberation movements around sexuality and gender was the possibility of rethinking all kinds of questions of affective relationships so that among gay men for example, if you stop thinking about finding Mr. Right, finding a lover or finding a marriage partner, and rather think about possibly sexualizing friendship, maintaining friendly relations with people whom you have had a romantic relationship or having fuck buddies, then a whole proliferation of ways of connecting with others opens up."

The Poor Oppressed Business Community!

These are the panels of a mural by Judy Taylor that, since 2008, has adorned the building housing the Maine State Department of Labor. According to news reports the Governor - Republican Paul LePage - has ordered the mural removed because it allegedly makes the Department inhospitable to businesses. He rationalizes his order by reference to a set of complaints (anonymous, as far as I can tell) from those suffering the discomfort. The mural was funded by the state Arts Council, the artist was selected via a competitive process, and the panels depict workers, their organizations, and the history of labor conflicts (including - gasp! - strikes!) in the State. This mural hardly is in-your-face agitprop. After all it simply celebrates freedom of association.

The governor also has ordered a set of rooms in the Department that currently are named after labor and political leaders be re-labeled. (As if the business elites would be quaking at the memory of Frances Perkins!) His putative aim is "neutrality" that will make the business community comfortable enough to invest in Maine. And here I thought businessmen were oh so robust and vigorous. How could a simple mural be so intimidating?
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P.S.: All this really raises a question in my mind. If the Republicans don't like welfare recipients because they don't work, and they don't like working people because they might organize to stick up for themselves in the face of authoritarian business structures (and firms are indeed authoritarian), just who is it that Republicans like?

P.S.2: And here is a report from the newspaper of record.

P.S.3: Update on subsequent events here and the resulting court filing here.

Interview: Eric Hobsbawm

Yesterday The Guardian carried this interesting interview with Eric Hobsbawm who, in addition to being an influential historian remains a pretty unrepentant Marxist. At the very end he offers this basic diagnosis of our contemporary situation:

"What I'm saying now is that the basic problems of the 21st century would require solutions that neither the pure market, nor pure liberal democracy can adequately deal with. And to that extent, a different combination, a different mix of public and private, of state action and control and freedom would have to be worked out. . . . What you will call that, I don't know. But it may well no longer be capitalism, certainly not in the sense in which we have known it in this country and the United States."

My own thinking about politics and culture (starting with my doctoral thesis) owes a considerable amount to Hobsbawm's historical essays on the "invention of tradition" - a conception of historical events that converges surprisingly with the work of Thomas Schelling. I will add that Hobsbawm also served pseudonymously for many years as the jazz critic for the New Statesman in Great Britain. You can find his reflections on that part of his career here.