I ADMIT TO HAVING BEEN more partisan than is usual for the mull as we got closer to the election, and I plan to return to my more inclusive state of mind next week.
But before I do, I have something to say to my friends on the right.
It concerns the three anti-gay marriage measures which passed in various states this election, including the one in California.
If you voted for one of those measures you need to take stock of yourself, and whether you are really interested in living in a free county.
Freedom works both ways. If you want to be free, if you want your children and your grandchildren to be free, then you need to extend that freedom to others, and particularly to others you don't like or agree with.
Your freedom to live out your values is inseparably tangled with the freedoms of others to live out theirs.
Here's how your freedom gets taken away:
- A climate develops in which a minority group—say, for example, your group—is disapproved of, or seen as some kind of vague threat, by people who don't understand them. They decide that your very existence is a danger to them, that by simply going about your life, living and loving and being who you are, you upset their little world.
- Someone decides that a universal right and practice—say, for example, marriage—should be denied to you.
- Before actually doing anything about it, whoever has made this decision reframes the argument, claiming that for your kind to marry is a threat to the institution of marriage, that allowing you to marry somehow damages marriage for the rest of us—that by some kind of magical process, your right to live a normal, happy, life is in direct conflict with theirs.
- Then comes the really crucial move: the pretense that this is for the sake of the children. "If we don't put a stop to these marriages, soon the public schools will be telling our children that it's okay to be whatever you are."
And so it becomes respectable—even a duty—to deny a basic human right to a minority, for no other reason than that the majority is bigger, and stupid enough to be tricked into using their numbers against a minority.
First it may be marriage that is taken away, next, the right to vote. Once this kind of thing begins, once people buy into the reasoning behind it, it can go anywhere. Minorities can find themselves unable to live a decent life.
You can substitute any minority you want in the scenario above: Baptists, Methodists, Jews, blacks, whites, Republicans, people with blue eyes, or even gays.
It doesn't matter who it is. What matters is the simple fact that a free country is not made primarily of laws—it's made primarily of free people, people who cooperate in keeping each other free.
And those who feel threatened by by the rights of others can never be truly free.
