Received
a comment from a friend today trumpeting the incrementalism in
Washington that purportedly led to the passage of full marriage equality
(vis a vis the passage of civil unions six years earlier). The argument
made by some is that civil unions paved the way for full marriage
equality.
The fundamental fallacy of statements of this sort
is that they are reductive, and in truth can't be proven empirically.
Had activists in Washington adopted a synergistic strategy employing a
sophisticated balance of both conventional AND unconventional methods of
advocacy, they might not have waited as long as they did.
The
lack of grass roots enthusiasm for civil unions in Colorado's LGBT
community ought to be instructive, but privileged power brokers have
never been attuned to the grass roots for as long as I can remember.
One can certainly make a coherent argument for civil unions as an
expression of second wave human rights (that is, socioeconomic rather
than political)--but we continue to exhibit astonishing and arrogant
myopia in refusing to have a conversation about how pursuing a separate
and unequal solution to our grievances undermines the struggles for
equality of OTHER marginalized populations in Colorado. For many in the
local LGBT community it is an inconvenient (and easily ignored) truth
that Brown v. Board of Education remains the law of the land.
Christopher Hubble a concerned citizen with a long history of nonviolent activism in the LGBT community.