Chris Geidner goes back fifteen years to this week in 1996, when DOMA was introduced into the House of Representatives. But he does something much more valuable at the same time. He revisits the struggle within the gay community to get the campaign for marriage rights off the ground. At times in the early days, it felt like just two of us – Evan Wolfson and yours truly – who pushed against the understandable incrementalism of the gay establishment, men and women who, with some notable exceptions (like Tom Stoddard), who really did not want to tackle marriage rights when we did.
It shocks the current generation to be told that marriage equality was fiercely opposed by the right and the left when it emerged as a serious issue in the early 1990s. Here is leftist Michael Warner as recently as 2000:
''At a time when the largest gay organizations are pushing for same-sex marriage, I argue that this strategy is a mistake and represents a widespread loss of vision in the movement.''
My book tour with Virtually Normal, my fully fleshed out case for marriage rights – was picketed in some places – by the Lesbian Avengers. My backing of marriage equality was also the pretext for outing my sex life by leftists who regarded anyone supporting marriage rights having sex when single as some sort of hypocrisy! I was heckled in London – by my fellow gays. HRC was, at best, condescendingly tolerant and, at worst, actively hostile to marriage equality and very defensive on behalf of their Democratic party patrons:
Of HRC's approach at the time … Sullivan is characteristically blunt.
''They were like, 'No, we want to get ENDA. … We know that has higher polling, we can do it.' And my position was, 'Screw ENDA. First, this is a more fundamental issue about the government discriminating against us as opposed to our fellow citizens, and, secondly, if we win this, the argument that we make on this will so change the debate that ENDA will become easy.' And their view was totally understandable — I'm not saying it wasn't.''
But, as Sullivan says he told people at the time, ''It's coming anyway. The courts are going to have to make these decisions.''
And so it came. What has frustrated me these past few years is not the success of the movement, which is simply thrilling, but how that success has in some ways blurred the real and fraught history of this cause both within the gay movement and outside it. Geidner's piece is an excellent first step toward recovering the actual history, with its large share of tensions, setbacks, internal arguments and the battle against and within the Clinton administration.
Nothing is easy; and nothing is inevitable. This was a struggle against both ideological sides toward a sane, humane resolution of a pressing problem. It is not over yet. But its success does cast light on the limits of ideology, if confronted relentlessly with logic and passion and argument.
The Dish 