Friday Gay Blogging, Saturday Edition: Don't Make Waves

Another muddled commentary on Prop 8 from Andrew Sullivan. I sometimes have real trouble figuring out his position, although I suspect that my basic analysis is correct: he's bought into the right-wing position that the courts in this country are somehow not legitimate arbiters of constitutionally guaranteed rights. That idea seems to permeate his writing on the issue of same-sex marriage (although, be it known, he himself was married in Massachusetts under law that resulted from a court decision).

And any rate, this post struck me as somewhat fuzzy in concept:

Reading all the accounts of the oral arguments on Prop 8 yesterday (for a diverse round-up, see here), I have to say there's a chance of what, to my mind, is the optimal decision. The Justices seemed highly skeptical - and rightly so - that a voters' initiative could not change the results of a controversial court decision.

Once again we have the right-wing position that the whim of the people is paramount, which has never been the case in this country, and it seems to me that the question is a valid one: under what system of government could the majority -- and a relatively slim majority, at that -- strip a group of citizens of fundamental rights? Not ours. Sullivan is sliding past the real issues here (and it seems that the justices may be, as well.) The Supreme Court's decision in Romero several years back should have laid that one to rest.

Since the No On 8 forces campaigned last year under the same assumption, it's a little rich to see them now protest that the vote was not a real one anyway and they engaged in it only on the assurance that they would win. Moreover, if the court upholds Prop 8, we avoid giving the Hewitts and Romneys and Santora their "black robes" moment, an endless harangue about evil judges despotically dictating to God-fearing Americans. I've been in enough of those arguments to want to avoid them in future. They deflect debate from the real issue: that gay marriage is good for gays, straights and society as a whole. They give bigots a legitimate reason to oppose our equality, while allowing them to avoid the real arguments for it.

I suspect that here, for Sullivan, is the real issue: he wants to avoid the specious arguments of the right. Not counter them, not disprove them, just avoid them. The idea that a court ruling in our favor gives bigots a "legitimate reason" to oppose our equality is just so completely through-the-looking-glass that I have trouble believing that this is not tongue-in-cheek. What is legitimate about it? Please, elucidate. (I'm not going to get into the staggering incompetence of the national gay leadership on this one -- that speaks for itself.)

And of ourse, the right has avoided the real arguments in favor of marriage equality all along. That won't change, and for them to use the courts as an excuse is no news at all -- that's been the mode. It's part and parcel of the right's campaign to delegitimize the courts, which has been ongoing. It seems to me that commentators such as Sullivan would serve our cause much better by pointing out the realities of this "debate" -- that the right's position is as morally bankrupt as it is intellectually impoverished, and that an attack on the courts, of which this is part, is about as un-American as anything can be.