I took a day off yesterday. Did some walking around. A head-clearing day. Spring cleaning for the mind and so on.
When you're a Democrat and you suffer a political defeat, this is what you do. You take a walk and take some stock. When you're not drinking, that is.
After Maine, I starting thinking back to first principles.
See, a lot of us have always had this itch in the back of our heads that has been telling us how wrong it is to subject people's civil rights to an up-or-down vote. When I had this thought, I always countered with, "Hey, I don't give a damn how equality happens. It just has to happen."
That answer tided me over pretty well until Maine happened. Then I started thinking about that itch. Maybe my conscience was right all along. Maybe it’s not right to put people’s freedoms up to a vote.
Now, like I said I took the day off yesterday so I haven't read any kind of analysis on this subject from anyone. It's entirely possible that voters were confused by the wording of the question, or by the lies spread by the other side. Sometimes elections aren't what they seem.
But what I'm thinking is that if it can't happen on a ballot in Maine or in California, how can it happen anywhere? California, so liberal. Maine, so non-churchgoing. Both were heartbreakers. And even if it can happen, should it?
I'm allowing for the possibility that I'm wrong, but maybe the voice that tells me we're going about this the wrong way is correct. Maybe people's rights are too important to be subject to the whims of the majority.
Imagine if we'd have had to wait for every last racist holdout to be OK with integrating the Armed Forces, for example. We'd probably have seen a segregated Army all the way through World War II, Korea, Vietnam and maybe the practice would still be in place today.
Imagine if we had put women's right to vote up to a popular vote. The majority of the battles fought by the suffragettes and their supporters were fought on the legislative front, or else states chose to give women the vote as they became states and drew up their constitutions.
I'm a big believer in democracy and in the wisdom of the American people, but progress on the civil rights front has historically come through the courts, or through legislation, not through ballots cast.
And perhaps that is the way we could -- and the way we should -- bring the issue of marriage rights to rest. Maybe how we win, not just that we win, matters.
Another argument in favor of this approach: This may be a case where the morally right thing to do is also the tactically smart thing to do. Legislation and court decisions have given us the few victories we've seen so far on the GLBT rights front. If we look at the distant and recent past, this seems to be the best road to victory.
Once again, I'm of two minds on this. I could be wrong. In fact, there's a louder, lustier voice in my head screaming, "Fuck 'em. We'll fight them on all fronts until we grab what is ours!"
I still believe if there were a similar battle to be fought in some other state tomorrow that we should still put all of our energy into winning. I just thought I'd share what my thought process has been for the last 24 hours or so.
We should make the decisions our consciences tell us to make. So what is yours telling you?