Quote:
Originally Posted by sigmadiva
If the issue of gay marriage is so compelling, then it is an issue that can stand on it's own. It does not need 'help' from another major issue. Does that make sense?
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It does, and I'm understanding your point much better now too. Thanks.
I think there are two frameworks at play here simultaneously. One is a (for lack of a better word) "societal" framework -- the gay rights movement as a whole, whether it be about gay marriage, gay couples at the prom, violence against gays, equal employment opportunities, etc. I think if you look back to Stonewall (and before), you find a movement that, while some parallels with the Civil Rights Movement as well as other historical movements are indeed drawn, is a movement that stands on its own and that makes its own arguments. It was from this framework, I suppose, that I kept insisting that the gay rights movement doesn't compare the struggle of gays to the struggle of Blacks
only.
There is also the legal framework, and that is how the gay marriage issue is framed in California and elsewhere that legal challenges have been brought. In the legal framework, it is to be expected that those who claim that constitutional equal protection guarantees include a right to same-sex marriage will cite and rely on the "separate-but-equal" cases and cases like
Loving v. Virginia that interpreted and applied the same or similar constitutional provisions, while opponents will seek to distinguish those cases. That's how the courts work, by looking to precedent.
Sometimes the "societal" and legal frameworks overlap. Sometime the legal framework is used to force changes in the societal framework.
I hope this makes how I've been looking at this make more sense as well.
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