By Todd Craig
Lots has been said and written about Colorado's civil unions fight that took place in the legislature this spring. While both sides rallied and the wheels of politics spun faster than even Twitter could keep up, hopes rose and subsequently crashed for Colorado's gay citizenry with equal speed as Republican Speaker of the House Frank McNulty politically maneuvered to kill civil unions in our state.
Even though I was optimistic when the bill was introduced, and even though I would have been happy to see the bill pass, I now find myself kind of glad it didn't. Here are three reasons why I don't feel overly bad about the failure of Colorado's civil unions law.
Civil unions, while a step closer in the evolution of equality, aren't marriage, and settling for anything less than total equality is, well, settling for less. I know what you're going to say to this, “It's about gaining rights.” And believe me, I'm all for getting more rights. I am a gay man, a husband for the last seven years, and together we're fathers to an adorable five year old son. We have a stack of legal paperwork about the thickness of the Denver Yellow Pages that we had to buy and notarize over the course of months just to get the same legal rights and protections as someone who naturally gets them after a flight to Vegas to be married by an Elvis impersonator over the course of a drunken weekend. But, I can't in good conscience look the love of my life in the eye and ask him to enter into a civil union with me. That's gay. I want the rights, sure, but I'm greedy. I want the word marriage, too. This point was made in the ruling of the Prop 8 overturn being upheld by the California Supreme Court when they wrote in the decisions that:
“We need consider only the many ways in which we encounter the word 'marriage' in our daily lives and understand it, consciously or not, to convey a sense of significance. We are regularly given forms to complete that ask us whether we are “single” or “married.” Newspapers run announcements of births, deaths, and marriages. We are excited to see someone ask, “Will you marry me?”, whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly, it would not have the same effect to see “Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?”. Groucho Marx's one-liner, “Marriage is a wonderful institution ... but who wants to live in an institution?” would lack its punch if the word marriage were replaced with the alternative phrase.”
Long story short, if the Supreme Court of California recognizes that the word marriage is as important as the rights that come with such a union, why should Colorado's LGBT community ignore that same importance?
The fight for civil unions earned energized Colorado again. The history of gay rights in our state has definitely had its ups and downs. But for every defeat our community has suffered, like Amendment 2 in the early '90s, there has been an opposite reaction of greater force in the years following with the trend is going in our direction more often than not. Even when the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman was written into the state constitution and a civil unions measure was defeated at the ballot box as recently as 2006, the fight for equal rights didn't end; it grew stronger. The following year in 2007, then Governor Ritter signed the second-parent adoption bill into law granting same-sex couples the right to adopt. And two years after that in 2009, Colorado's legislature passed the
designated beneficiaries law that addressed some of the discrimination that Colorado's LGBT community faced. If history repeats itself, as it often does, Colorado's LGBT citizenry and their growing numbers of supporters should be able to move forward in their quest for equal rights despite such a defeat.
And tying to that last point – I'll call this the Obi-Wan Kenobi factor - which is based on the famous last line he uttered before being struck down by Darth Vader's light saber in
Star Wars - “You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
Essentially, the fight for civil unions earned us more allies. We all have seen the polls that more than half of Americans are in favor of gay marriage, and as times change, more and more attitudes based on discrimination, homophobia, and fear are being left behind in the dust. As we have grown more visible and more real to the the world, so has understanding grown. As state after state and country after country around the world take steps to provide equal rights and protections to gays, lesbians, and their families, the cries and panicked screams of our opponents ring more and more hollow and out-of-touch. The world doesn't end when you give gays the right to marry. Institutions aren't harmed. Families and love grow stronger while our rich and diverse culture grows even more rich and diverse. The bottom line is that with each one of these fights – even losing ones – the gay stories are shared, understanding and knowledge is gained, and our number of allies grows. After all, it wasn't long after our loss that Judy Shepard and our Vice President convinced the President of the United States to come out in favor of gay marriage. With that announcement came magazine covers, another surge of publicity to our cause, and more allies, most recently with an endorsement from the NAACP. In the end, we may have lost a battle in the legislature, but we gained more positive press, more supporters, and the President of the United States in a whirlwind of pro-gay marriage spirit.
In the end, should civil unions have passed? Probably. Should we be bitter that it didn't? It would be understandable. But ultimately, the civil union law is dead, for now at least. Now it's time to move on and move forward. We need to marshal our energy, money, and resources from now until the November election. For if we see this loss as nothing but a loss, then nothing will be gained. If we see the death of civil unions as a lesson from which to learn, grow, and become stronger than we were the day before, then like with Obi-Wan Kenobi, even when we lose, we win. After all, Colorado's gay and lesbians deserve nothing less than the biggest win of all: total equality.
