Friday, July 11, 2008

Another Summer of Love?

So, how’s everyone’s summer?  I hope you still have all your fingers, after last week’s barely-legal back-yard fireworks. Exploding stuff seems to suit the apocalyptic American mood right now, between fires in California and floods in the Midwest.  Gas is up, the economy’s down, gosh, even our summer drinks are on the rocks!

And yet, in the face of all these bad vibes, we’re experiencing what pundits have called a Summer of Love, because of the waves of same-sex marriages headlining the news.  Looking at the photos of the ecstatic couples in California who, at least until the November election, are finally able to marry, often after 20, 30, or 40 years together – well, you’d wonder who could begrudge them that hard-earned happiness. While entertainment TV might be filled with goulish close-ups of hetero divorces like Christy Brinkley’s, we could instead be cheering on same-sex couples who are willing to make a commitment in exchange for the more than 1400 legal rights of marriage – you can look it up! – from hospital visitation to jointly filed taxes and many more, that straight couples often take for granted.  In this time of cutbacks – of Americans “staycationing” in the backyard because we can’t afford to go anywhere—do we really have to be stingy about love, too?

It reminds me of recent visits with families of new babies, in which alarmed older siblings are – with careful kid logic – working through the idea that now there might be less love to go around.  Tell the kids that love is among the few things that expands, limitlessly, upon increasing demands?  Well, it just blows kids’ minds. But you’d kind of hope as adults, as voters, we’d get it by now.

And yet here we are, still, struggling with how to portion out love, as well as rights – because both are bound up in American marriage. Despite our cultural romance with love stories, the bottom line is that marriage is a legal contract about responsibilities, benefits, and basic human rights.

Anyone who’s been in – or even near – a marriage knows they are far less about romance than the practical work of partnering – dividing chores, sharing burdens and finances and joys, dealing intimately with illness and dying, and practicing daily empathy, even when you don’t feel like it.  In other words, marriage is a practice of good citizenship. Just-released research has shown that same-sex partnerships tend to be far better at achieving equitable citizenship in the home – better at fairly dividing the chores – grocery shopping, vacuuming, taking kids to the dentist—that drive maddening wedges between many heterosexual couples.  So, same-sex marriages may model the very best of what we hope for in all partnerships: Empathetic good citizenship that strengthens homes as well as communities.

One of my favorite writers, legal scholar Patricia Williams, says Americans are too parsimonious about rights. Rather than guarding them for society’s favorites, she urges extravagantly, “Society must give [rights] away … Unlock them, […] giv[e] them to slaves … Give them to rivers … Give to all of society’s objects and untouchables the rights of privacy, integrity, and self-assertion; give them distance and respect.  Flood them with the animating spirit [of] rights …” (The Alchemy of Race and Rights [1991], 165).

Here in South Bend, our Common Council will soon have another opportunity for this kind of generosity. An upcoming vote could expand our Human Rights Ordinance to include protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered citizens, with the logic that sexual orientation or gender identity should never prevent any of us from our rights to fair housing, public accommodations, education and employment.  In 2006, this appeal to equity failed by just one vote.  During this Summer of Love, let’s reconsider what it really means to love one’s fellow citizens – to want for one another what we want for ourselves.  Are other cities in our listening area ready to declare for equity, too?

After all, love and good citizenship are so elementary that they are at the heart of the not-just-for-children animated film Wall-E.  It’s filled with Chaplinesque goofiness, reminding us how much delight we can take in the every day stuff of life, from old brassieres to paddle balls.  But Wall-E also models the way intimate partnerships can inspire empathy on a larger scale – for our communities, our planet, and, heck, the universe. Wall-E is an apocalyptic tale – perfect for this summer – but it also plants its feet firmly in the soil of optimism.  Now that the smoke from last week’s fireworks has cleared, maybe we’ll see, finally, that more than ever in these times of cut-backs, generosity with rights, as with love, enriches us all.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on July 11, 2008
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