Tuesday, May 26, 2009

We The Un-People Salute SCOTUS

So, now that the California Supreme Court has ruled that a disinformed majority of voters may declare that some of the people are second-class citizens without equal constitutional rights, what's next? Can any majority now withhold anything it pleases from any minority? If not, exactly where was the line drawn?

Until today, I had blissfully supposed that the courts protected minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

But no. After forty-plus years of sitting in the back of this bus, not by choice, I've begun to get it that in the US of A, the Constitution is not for me.

This was an incredible ruling. The only other legislative catastrophes of comparable dimensions (in my lifetime) have been DOMA and the obstinant refusal of US states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Funny how they all cluster around WSEX on your radio dial. Meaning around the enforced alignment of your gender identity with your biological sex, and the social ramifications that follow from that.

It's the quaint but pervasive notion that homosexuality is a mis-alignment of biological sex with [inherent] gender roles that makes homophobia just another manifestation of sexism. This, then, makes the watchful among us wonder who benefits from keeping queers down.

So anyway, back to my rapidly disappearing legal personhood.

What's next? Does this not mean that he who has the gold (to fund voter propaganda and finance voter turnout) will win the civil rights lottery? If he who has the gold rules, look out, people. The Baptists, the LDS, and the Vatican are not paupers.

And does this decision not invite a 100 Year War of the Propositions in every state?

What would that mean for us at a practical level? Should we plan to move like ping pong balls whenever the majority in state we’re in votes to declare that we’re second-class persons? Will I have to re-file my taxes with each and every reversal? Married. Not married. Married. Not married. And what if I’m in the hospital when a vote comes down? Would Catherine have to leave the room?

People can’t be partly equal. And state-based solutions obviously can’t work.