[Mb-civic] GOP Gays and the 'Finkelstein Phenomenon" - Los Angeles Times

[George R. Milman]

Robert Scheer

April 19, 2005

The issue arguably cost John Kerry the presidential election, and Kansas has
just become the 18th state to constitutionally ban it, yet there are reasons
to feel optimistic about the granting of full civil rights to people who
have chosen a life partner of the same sex. 

Even as the heartland state was enshrining bigotry in its constitution, a
bipartisan legislative majority in Connecticut this month approved same-sex
civil unions - and, unlike the laws allowing same-sex marriage in
Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont, this one was not in response to a
court order. 

More important, we continue to see public expressions of what I am calling
the Finkelstein Phe nomenon: The slow but inexorable societal acknowledgment
that gay people are real people living real lives, not an abstraction or a
subculture. And many of them are Republicans.

Arthur Finkelstein, for example, is an enormously effective right-wing GOP
political operative who revealed recently that in December he took advantage
of the groundbreaking and much-maligned Massachusetts law to marry his
longtime partner. When asked why, he cited "visitation rights, healthcare
benefits and other human relationship contracts." 

Finkelstein, in the past, must have conveniently forgotten his own interests
when he helped engineer the election of known conservative gay-bashers such
as Jesse Helms. He represents - along with Dick Cheney's highly regarded
lesbian daughter and the Log Cabin Republicans - yet another example for
conservatives of how being gay is much more fundamental than a "lifestyle
choice." In fact, it is just another manifestation of the human experience. 

Acknowledging this, the Connecticut Legislature granted gay couples the same
tax advantages, family leave privileges, hospital visitation rights and
other benefits now reserved for heterosexual married couples. And although
the state's Republican governor did manage to have an amendment inserted
into the bill defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman, the law's
opponents were right when they said that this partial civil rights victory
will ultimately lead to the legal acceptance of gay marriage.

"It's hard to believe that the train, as it rolls down the tracks, is going
to stop at this station," complained state Sen. John Kissel, who voted
against it. "Going down this track has a price to it."

The price may be high for bigots. But as many whites learned in the
post-segregation South, there is a far greater gain in learning to respect
people who are "different" and to live with them constructively. 

Although racial segregation was a "traditional value" for most of this
nation's existence, it was belatedly overturned as subversive of the values
of a democratic society, as discrimination against gays will be.

Integration was most ardently opposed by Southern white Baptist preachers
who cited the Bible, and now we hear the same Scripture-based attacks on gay
marriage. Yet this is hypocritically selective because Christian writings
are full of historical anachronisms, such as the acceptance of polygamy and
women-as-chattel. Marriage to a divorcee, a common occurrence even among
conservatives, is expressly forbidden in Matthew (5:27-32): " . whoever
marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

In any case, religious interpretations should never intrude on matters of
secular law, as has occurred relentlessly in the same-sex marriage debate.
But faced with a logical and long-building civil rights movement spurred by
the "coming out" of millions of regular Americans, conservative politicians
have fallen back on "traditional religious values" because they can find no
other convincing argument for supporting repression.

As San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer wrote last week
in reaffirming his preliminary ruling in March, laws limiting marriage to a
man and a woman discriminate against same-sex couples on the basis of gender
without a legitimate state interest for doing so.

"To say that all men and all women are treated the same in that each may not
marry someone of the same gender misses the point," Kramer wrote, dismissing
the state's argument that tradition provided sufficient grounds for such
discrimination. 

As it has been for racial minorities, women and immigrants, the progressive
acquisition of civil rights is marked by partial victories, regional
setbacks and flare-ups of naked hostility and even violence. Yet the pattern
is clear: The breakthrough Connecticut legislation eventually will be
followed by other states and the nation as a whole because it is so
obviously an extension of rights that all citizens in a democracy deserve. 


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times 

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