Here’s an email that rebuts the one I printed yesterday. I have to say that it makes a good point, and helps – for me at least – to delineate between civil disobedience and what the mayor of San Francisco has just done:
Moore got in trouble because he defied “settled law.” He knew when he placed the monument in my home state’s Judicial Building that doing so was contrary to well-established law regarding the display of religious symbols in public buildings. In doing so, he treated the public space as his own private pulpit and violated his oath of office.
Public officials such as Newsom and Moore do not have the LEGAL DISCRETION to act as they have done in their respective cases. Moore ultimately was thrown out of office after he defied the Federal court’s order, but he was only cited for contempt of court after he had already persistently violated his oath of office as a public official. And he was roundly condemned across this state and across the country for his actions long before the contempt order was issued by Judge Thompson. Again, if public officials have the privilege of being able to disregard the CLEAR mandates of the law in executing the law, then there is no law at all, just arbitrariness.
Civil disobedience relies upon private citizens forcing public officials to enforce unfair or immoral laws, even when the officials in good conscience would prefer not to do so. By doing this, it points out the immorality or unfairness of the laws in question.
The proper way for Newsom and others to have made a symbolic showing on this issue while conforming to the law would have been for thousands of gay/lesbian applicants to have appeared day after day at his office seeking marriage licenses, and for him to have publicly and reluctantly denied their individual requests. This would have three immediate results. First, enormous public relations boost for the movement in question. Second, would have created grounds for suit in state courts under the state constitution’s equal protection clause, which is the proper forum for deciding if the statute in question is unconstitutional. Third, it would create an enormous disruption of other governmental business, thereby making the protest have a practical impact.
I’m pretty much persuaded by this, and my joy at the sight of so many couples finally getting recognition may have blinded me to it at first. But I still draw a distinction between those private citizens seeking marriage licenses and the mayor. They are merely seeking their civil rights. He is supposed to enforce the law. But I also think the public relations coup in this is arguably more profound than classic civil disobedience. What actual marriages do – even if they are eventually held legally void – is to put real human faces on an otherwise abstract discussion. We’ve all been trained to do one thing after people get married: congratulate them. When members of the religious right respond to these marriages with horror, they fly in the face of basic human and civil instincts. That may not excuse Newsom. But it is definitely transforming the debate. And when it happens for real in Massachusetts, it may prove decisive.
The Dish 