The Daily Background
| Why equality has to come at a federal level
by Arlen Parsa
First, more on whether the “Gays for Giuliani” ad will do more harm than help. From me:
Does anyone, including you, believe that this ad is going to setback the movement? Or change anybody’s minds about equality?
As I said before, when equal rights are guaranteed for all Americans, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, it will happen because the federal government took action. As I’m sure we can all agree, South Carolina isn’t exactly on the verge of either legislatively or judicially guaranteeing equality for all its residents (after all, almost 80% of S.C. voters approved the state’s 2006 constitutional ban on equality for gays and lesbians).
In short, even if this ad was in the position to change opinions, which it is not, it really wouldn’t matter because South Carolina isn’t going to be where the equality battle will be fought: it will be fought in a few more states at the moment, but ultimately equality will have to come at a federal level. Equality for all Americans should not, and cannot be left to individual states. We’ve seen that fail in the past when individual states haven’t guaranteed the same equal rights for all Americans in the past, and we’re seeing it happen right now in the movement for gay equality.
I think it’s worth adding two more examples of how equality cannot be left to states: suffrage for Native Americans and women. In both cases, some states were willing to grant equal rights to each group, but other states weren’t. Eventually, the government stepped in and guaranteed equality at a federal level. Equality must come at a federal level.
Ironically, agreeing that states can move forward for now but that ultimately this is a federal issue puts me in the same camp as Fred Thompson. He of course considers “moving forward” as state bans on gay marriage, and he wants a federal ban on equality, but at least he isn’t using this phony “it’s a states issue” cop-out that both Democrats and Republicans use when they’re afraid to say they’d go 100% in one direction or 100% in the other at a federal level. I don’t think anyone really, truly believes this is a states issue, and the strategy of calling politically tough issues that deal with equality “states issues” has a long tradition, rooted incidentally in the civil rights movement:
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, traditionally a stronghold for the Democrats, became key swing states, providing the popular vote margins in 1960, 1968 and 1976. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for states’ rights, which was a signal of opposition to federal civil rights legislation for blacks.[4]
Recently, the term has been used in a more general sense, in which cultural themes are used in an election — primarily but not exclusively in the American South. In the past, phrases such as “busing” or “law and order” or “states’ rights” were used as code words. Today, appeals largely focus on cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and religion. Yet, the use of the term, and its meaning and implication, are still hotly disputed.
[…]
n 1948, after Truman had desegregated the Army, a group of Southern Democrats known as Dixiecrats split from the Democratic Party in reaction to the inclusion of a strong civil rights plank in the the party’s platform, following a floor fight lead by Minneapolis Mayor (and soon-to-be Senator) Hubert Humphrey. They formed the States’ Rights Democratic, or Dixiecrat, Party, and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president; he won four Southern states. The main plank of the States’s Rights Democratic Party was maintaining segregation and Jim Crow in the South. The Dixiecrats, failing to deny the Democrats the presidency in 1948, soon dissolved, but the split lingered. (In 1964, Thurmond was one of the first conservative southern Democrats to switch to the Republicans).
In other words, when it became too hard for Republicans to say they wanted to discriminate at a federal level, they changed their rhetoric to calling civil rights issues “states issues” meaning they’re fine with letting their conservative electorate discriminate all they want in their own states. It’s your state, you have the right to discriminate all you want.
Earlier:
Is the “Gays for Giuliani†campaign hurting more than it’s helping?
“Gays for Giuliani†group plans media buys in South Carolina
[…] I’ve touched on the codeword “states rights” previously in a post called “Why equality has to come at a federal level.” In short, the same codeword is still used […]