Wake-Up Call

Wake up, Representative Goguen.  Wake up, Governor Romney.  Wake up, President Bush. Wake up, Maryland. 

 Massachusetts has had civil marriage without regard to gender for over a year.  Society has not fallen apart.  Slavering wolf-packs of liberals are not roaming the streets to force same-sex marriage on unsuspecting heterosexuals.  Heterosexuals are not having their tax breaks cut back.  Mitt Romney continues to suggest that he fixed all of the state's woes, and will also be a great President of the United States.  The MBTA continues to operate mostly on-time for the heterosexual majority as well as the non-heterosexual minority, the roads continue to be paved,  Berkshire County continues to be treated like a mythical land ruled by Munchkins solely to enclose Tanglewood, and the Big Dig continues to leak. 

And Emile Goguen continues his verbal campaign against gay marriage and his attacks on the judiciary.  An online "news" service run primarily by anti-gay, anti-abortion advocates continues to write love letters to Goguen, and to pillory the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court because she ruled that our amended Massachusetts Constitution bans gender-preference discrimination.  The Maryland legislature continues in a nasty battle to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional by constitutional amendment after a Maryland judge ruled against a 1973 statutory ban.

And a hate-filled teen from New Bedford died in "custody," if you want to call it that.  Hospital custody, critical condition, inevitable death.  For some reason, a troubled, Nazi-inspired youth barely old enough to vote decided to make his own political statement about same-sex attraction and life.  With hatchet and gun, he seriously injured three men in a bar catering to gay patrons.  He fled, picked up a woman "acquaintance" and apparently killed her when things got hairy a mere 1500 miles away.

Nobody has hesitated to call his violence a hate crime.  Neither will anyone hesitate to call the youth's killing of an Arkansas police officer or a 33-year-old female companion murder.  And no one but the boy's anguished family and remaining friends will wring hands too loudly over the fact that this violent, dangerous boy was shot and fatally wounded  after he killed one police officer and fired on others who were trying to arrest him.

But will we leave all of the blame on him? 

When humanity's worst take out their anger and hatred on minorities, they certainly do so because their own hate has overwhelmed respect for law and justice.  Any Klansman, any Neo-Nazi, any homophobic idiot  can tell you this.  He or she will tell you this proudly, as a matter of fact.  He or she will tell you this because they see themselves as fighting "immorality."  He or she sees "Driving while Black," "Succeeding while Jewish," and "Being Happy while Gay" as intolerable crimes against the majority.  The majority of course might not wish death upon the different, but may be uncomfortable with the difference itself.

However, it is of course just a few sick individuals whose hate goes out of control.  The boy from New Bedford is an anomaly, not the majority.  No one condones this sort of hatred, right?

Neither Emile Goguen nor the frightened homophobes in Maryland's legislature will agree that they condone the violence, or even the hate.  President Bush and Presidential candidate Romney surely will not.  And they are probably being honest when they say that – "to condone" means to silently overlook, even silently forgive an offense.  I doubt that any of these elected representatives are that mean to the core. They just want civil rights to be reserved for the right-thinking, God fearing majority.  They are just trumpeting the values that made America great – well, except for the value of freedom of religion.  But that isn't mean.  Right?

Wrong.  These pandering politician are mean enough to have given the boy a coffin full of societal support for his own deeper hate.

Their meanness is not at all silent, or their intolerant sound-bites wouldn't make the news.  State Representative Emile Goguen, supported by "conservative" religious groups, airs radio ads attacking the Massachusetts courts because our highest court read and explained our state Constitution.  He attacks the courts because the justices understood the Declaration of Rights, all of its amendments since John Adams wrote the original, and all of the prior precedent and history of freedom.  The Maryland legislature is battling to keep same-sex couples away from marriage licenses and the contractual civil rights licenses create.  Lame-duck Governor Romney pilloried the courts, lambasted justices, championed discriminatory amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution, and (based on a nine-decade-old racist statute) tried to get municipal clerks to obstruct out-of-state same-sex marriage license applications.  After himself attacking "activist judges" in  the 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush has become silent about seeking a same-sex marriage ban through the U.S. Constitution.  His continued silence is not guaranteed, and his Supreme Court appointments clearly show his intention to limit tolerance. 

When these and many other politicians preach intolerance, they monger hate.

Two dead, one critically wounded and now dead "in custody," at least three injured. When politicians monger hate, they are not allowed to claim surprise that the fringe-haters maim and kill. They are not allowed to avoid their responsibility for supporting such intolerance.  They are not allowed to protesteth, "But I didn't swing the hatchet."

Wake up, Representative Goguen.  Wake up, Maryland.  Wake up, Governor-Presidential-Candidate Romney.  Wake up, President Bush. 

 Your hate-crime is calling you. 

 
Copyright © 2006 by Gregory P. Lee.  Gregory P. Lee is an attorney in Massachusetts, and also is proprietor of Three/Four Communications.