The Prime Minister, Proposition 8 and the Promised Land
It is great to see the Prime Minister speak so strongly against the passage of Proposition 8. It has been horrific to sit and watch as so many families hang on the balance as their marriages are deliberated in the California Supreme Court; and Gordon Browns’ description of this malicious attempt to tear families apart as “unacceptable” adds to the broad and diverse coalition of those who believe that marriage is ours by right.
New jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, even the Mormon ruled state of Utah, are all grappling with this issue, well over a half century since Separate but Equal was ruled unconstitutional. Today it is still the dominant feature of the civil rights question, as it has been in days gone by.
Martin Luther King, told us over and over he had been to the mountain top; that he had seen the Promised Land, and it was going to be built in the deepest, racist and most violent part of the south – that out of segregation, a nation of equality could be built.
Well we have seen it too. We know what our promised land looks like because we have lived it; in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in Spain and South Africa, and for too little time we lived it in California.
It is time it comes here.
Tuesday 17th March, the Scottish Parliament will step into that ever growing line of legislatures who have been held accountable before their citizens as we ask for the rights we have been promised. The Prime Minister has called this inequality in Marriage unacceptable, he is right. There are couples clamouring at the gates of churches who will gladly marry them before the eyes of God but right now the law says no.
The law says no, we cannot have what others take for granted. The law says no, we cannot tell the world about our husbands or our wives and no, we cannot be equal in our own land.
As the law says no, we can respond only with yes. Yes, we can live as if we are married, we have done it. Yes, we can build a family, we are doing it; and yes, we deserve equality from a government we elect, and that we equally pay for.
We don’t yet live in the Promised Land, but by God we’ve seen it. We can move that mountain and we can have what is ours and it can start in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, 17th March. Let us not come back from the brink of equality as other places fall to separate but equal, let us not be scared or cynical as we listen to those who only hate, but let us say yes, yes we can have our Promised Land and yes we can have it here.
Top Authors
Subscribe
