CSotD: Love triumphant … more or less
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Stuart Carlson is one of many cartoonists commenting on New York's legalization of same-sex marriage, but one of the few who didn't simply shout "Hurray," most with some variation on the "I love NY" icon.
Carlson does a nice job of contrasting the exuberant nature of the change with the irrational fear that resists it — it's like that big smooch that Bugs Bunny lays on Yosemite Sam just before he darts off out of range, sending Sam into an incoherent, inarticulate rage.
I also like it because it isn't so focused on the passage of the law in New York but more on the inevitability of change and the absurdity of the resistance. New York's move is certainly a key indicator, and the microscopic intensity with which the national media watch everything in the Empire State provided more of a window than, for instance, when the measure passed in New Hampshire or Connecticut.
It was reminiscent of the move to ratify women's suffrage. To begin with, New York played electoral politics with that one: The Senate would ratify the amendment one year only to have it die in the Assembly, and then they'd switch the next time it came up, so that they could preserve the status quo without either house having to take the full weight of the blame.
There was also the defection of a key opposition vote, reminiscent of the sudden switch in Tennessee over the 19th Amendment, based on a mother's telegram to her legislator son, that made that state the one whose approval turned the amendment into law. In this case, it was Stephen Saland, a Republican from Poughkeepsie who had voted to kill the measure two years ago, who changed his mind this time, saying, "“While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience.”
However, those similarities not withstanding, it's not like New York's move towards marriage equality had the impact of Tennessee's on the 19th Amendment, and there were probably quotes like that available in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and the District of Columbia, if anyone had bothered to collect them.
And, it should be noted, there were probably quotes like that available, too, in Maine and California, where the law was passed only to be overturned in plebescites by those who seek to hold back the tide and occasionally manage to do so.
It is really not important that the opposition is motivated by irrational fear that what happens in someone else's house will change what happens in their own house. It's not important that they allow themselves to be moved by calls to protect God's holy sacrament by hypocrites who cast off their own what-God-hath-joined-together spouses like last year's fashions. It's not important that they seem to think we still live in the Middle Ages, when the church functioned as the civil authority for lack of a literate, secular bureaucracy to record marriages and other contracts.
The important thing is that they are motivated and that they will show up at the polls and that there is certainly no guarantee that this particular Supreme Court will uphold the concept of equality if the matter comes before them.
So, a little dancing, a little joy, a bit of celebration.
But then back to work.
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