Behind the Proposition Eight Ball

I've found myself posting on the My Space blogs of a number of disappointed and/or angry gay performers (and the Facebook page of an old college friend who has a lesbian daughter) who are outraged at the success of Proposition 8 in California, which overturns gay marriage in that state.

They're shocked -- shocked! -- that voters in the enlightened state of California would do such a heinous thing as to vote against something as normal and natural and seemingly inevitable as gay marriage.

Personally, I'm shocked at their naïveté. The gay community in California seemed to believe that voting "No" on 8 was a foregone conclusion, that it would go down to a resounding defeat if it wasn't for those dastardly Mormons (a protest against the Mormon Church is scheduled for tomorrow in New York -- for all the good that's going to do) and the money they put up to push the proposition through.

They couldn't be further from the truth.

The gay and lesbian community, both in California and around the country, need to face a couple of unpleasant but undeniable facts:

First, you can get people to vote for anything on a ballot initiative. And I mean anything. Did these people really thing Proposition 8 would fail? If it was on the ballot to eliminate the First Amendment -- hell, make that the whole goddamn Bill of Rights -- you could count on it passing. In 1954, if school desegregation was on the ballot, in California or anywhere else, do you really think it would have succeeded? If you do, let me know what you're smoking because I want to try some.

What California needs is a proposition to outlaw propositions.

Second, when the idea of gay marriage is put on the ballot in almost any state of the union, it's always going to go down to defeat. Gays and lesbians are completely blind to the fact that most Americans, probably an overwhelming majority of them, are simply opposed to the notion of gay marriage. By the way, so is Barack Obama. He's said so multiple times. How many gays and lesbians voted for him?

Gay marriage cannot be settled to the satisfaction of gays and lesbians by a plebiscite. It will fail every time. The only way that the subject of gay marriage is going to be decided one way or the other is if the Supreme Court rules on it. Some day a case will come to the court and they will make a decision, either as history making as Brown v. Board of Education, or as wrongheaded as Plessy v. Ferguson, and that will, hopefully, be an end of it.

But of course it won't. Because even if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage tomorrow, that would just energize the lunatic right in this country who would be thrilled to have another cause to line up next to their anti-abortion crusade.

History does not always go in a straight line. You win battles, you lose battles. You take a step forward, then you take a step or two back. The vote on Proposition 8 is merely a speed bump on the road to legalizing gay marriage.

I think it will happen eventually. And I think it should. But the gay and lesbian community shouldn't delude themselves that it will happen tomorrow. History more often than not doesn't work like that.