Yesterday's NJ SC decision is clearly a partial victory. The joyful celebration that is ongoing is 100% appropriate!
The right will certainly try to exploit the movement/legislation toward single sex marriage as a wedge issue; but that strategy also works the other way!
We too can/must take the "offfense"; but from a creative, rather than destructive, perspective.
The same impulse toward basic human rights/fairness that drives SSM legislation can/will/must form and strengthen a coalition of activists that shall advance the WHOLE of the progressive agenda.
I can't emphasize the last point strongly enough. There is much strength in unity.
Setting a tone/theme that resonates in sympathetic vibration throughout the full spectrum of individual "issues" is the essence of a formula for transforming the legislative/political/social landscape.
There's an old cliche, "to cut off one's nose to spite one's face"....THAT is the "sensibility" that we're up against. When the NJ body politic become more conscious of the reality that it is just that, a single body, great things become possible.
It may scare us at first to contemplate the prospect that we are all one in Spirit, that the old saying "we're all in the same boat" is essentially (and from an ecological frame, LITERALLY) true!
We may fear losing our "individuality". We may fear our "special interest" is getting short shrift
The irony is that the ONLY way we can ever hope to fully be able to manifest our essential uniqueness is precisely in the context of a healthy unity.
That's what the word "wholesome" really means!
The opposition is driven by insecurity and fear; nothing else. To the extent that we cling to our own insecurities and fears, that opposition is within us. FDR had it right folks; "...we have nothing to fear but fear itself...".
The truth is that the phrase "Moral Majority" actually applies to those of US "who care about people, and social injustice"!!!
We care, not just in the abstract sense ("the bleeding crowd") but because we feel the interconnectedness/unity of all humanity/life in our bones/heart/mind.
The Quakers are on to something in that all of humanity's great poltical/Spiritual movements have in common the Reality that we all need each other's support and recognition in a the context of a society of Friendship. Alone, we can accomplish little if anything (it's also a miserable mode of "existence" eh?).
I realize that, at this point, some of you may feel that this approach is pollyannish/naive/un"realistic"...I urge you to reconsider/reject that "take" in advance as cynicysim emanating from your own fears.
It's supremely ironic that the most practical poweful politics of all is the politics of love...and that it's also the politics to which it is easiest to say...no.
Here's an old tune that metaphorically speaks to the heart of the matter...
