NY HAS To Pass Gay Marriage
Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
Along with prizes for everyone and a determined lack of embarrassment that the mascot for an all-girls institution was a beaver, educational documentaries were a mainstay of my schooling in New York City. These documentaries were particularly favoured when we had reached those eternally popular subjects for history students, of school age and beyond: slavery and the Holocaust. They always featured the same ingredients: black-and-white news clips of American people and politicians voicing opinions that were par for the course in the day ("Negros should never own property", "You can't trust a Jew", etc), included to make us, cosseted liberal schoolchildren that we were, gasp. Be grateful you were born now, and not in the unenlightened past, these documentaries cooed. Right?
But in 2011 America, it all too often feels like we are living in a history class documentary. One day, footage of American politicians – fromGeorge W Bush to Michele Bachmann – proudly stating their abhorrence of gay marriage as though bigotry was a qualification for political office will sound as shocking as Richard Nixon grouching that "Jews are disloyal", as retro as the sexual harassment of secretaries in smoky meeting rooms in Mad Men. But that day, it hardly needs stating, is not yet here.
There are some subjects that should be discussed in shades of grey, with acknowledgement of subtleties and cultural differences. Same-sex marriage is not one of those. There is a right answer.
For the past 10 days, the question of whether same-sex marriages will, at last, be legally recognised in New York has been hotly debated. The New York state assembly approved the marriage equality bill, for the fourth time, last week and it is now up to the New York Senate. Two Republican senators, James S Alesi and Roy J McDonald, said that they would vote for the bill and McDonald's explanation behind his vote proved that he is one hell of a Republican to have on side: "Well, fuck it. I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it."
But, as of writing, it is still undecided, and New York governor Andrew Cuomo is having to negotiate with an intractable religious-tinged right and, as President Obama learned in the first years of his presidency, that is not a group of people willing to compromise.
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has been vociferous in his homophobia, claiming last week that gay marriage is "a violation of what we consider the natural law that's embedded in every man and woman."His breathtaking blindness to the thought that most people would consider the paedophilia that the Catholic church covered up for so long to be far more of "a violation of the natural law" than legally recognising two adults desiring to make a commitment to one another is indicative of many of the problems within that church. (Incidentally, last week US Roman Catholic bishops voted 187 to 5 to make only the most token of changes to the church's current policies on the sexual abuse of children,claiming they are sufficiently "effective", despite tragic evidence to the contrary.)
An idealist I may be but religion should be about providing a sense of inclusiveness and reassurance, not an easy excuse for bigotry, and for anyone in New York, of all places, to use religion as an excuse to cause others misery is unconscionable. The upcoming 10th anniversary of 9/11 should act as a clear reminder, were a reminder necessary.
Yes, the Bible does state that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but the Bible contains a lot of teachings, many of which have been notably cherry-picked out for reasons ranging from practicality to distaste. Polyester, for example, is biblically banned ("You shall not . . . wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together," Leviticus 19:19), as are tattoos ("You shall not… make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord," Leviticus 19:28.) Now, I happen to agree with both of those edicts but the point is, much in the Bible turns out to be conveniently negotiable in the modern world.
Moreover, religion has been used in the past as justification for racism, sexism and antisemitism. It still is in some countries, but those are not countries that the US generally wishes to emulate. (In fact, we generally use that as an excuse to bomb them, but that's another story.)
If New York passes this bill, it will be the sixth and most populated American state to recognise gay marriage. If it doesn't, I will experience a similar trajectory of feeling to the one I had when George W Bush was re-elected: shock, anger, shame, disenfranchisement, bafflement at how a place that I thought represented one thing betrayed its values.
Progress is not just about what products Steve Jobs grandly unveils this year in California, or how many Twitter followers one has. It is about attaining mental and moral enlightenment.
Our grandparents saw, if not the end of antisemitism then at least an end of it being an acceptable part of mainstream discourse. Our parents saw the beginning of that same moral tide turn against racism and sexism. Now is the time for homophobic legislation and talk to be seen for what it is: as shocking as racism, as unforgivable as antisemitism. If a film director can be banned from Cannes for making a stupid joke about Hitler and a fashion designer can lose his job for drunkenly blathering about Nazism, then politicians and religious leaders who strive to ensure gay people live lives of inequality should face measures far more stringent.
There is no grey area here. This is a black and white documentary
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