The Uncontrollable Marriage Movement

Yglesias counters Megan on the role of the courts. Matt is right that there is not some Gay Politburo deciding strategy in civil rights movements. I know something about this. I spent over a decade trying to persuade the HRC Politburo to take marriage equality seriously. But the only people the gay rights muckety-mucks take seriously are very very rich donors. But then actual, real, living gay couples sued for their equality, against the wishes of the gay establishment. That's how this movement started in Hawaii, and Alaska, and Massachusetts. The Gay Politburo at a national level tried to stop it. Do you realize that no gay legal group would take on the first mariage case in Hawaii? A straight guy did it. I'm so glad Matt understands:

Say you’re living your life with your partner and you want to get married. But then the local legal authorities tell you that you can’t get married. That seems like unfair discrimination to you, so you inquire with an attorney. The attorney says, yes, your state has never allowed a man to be legally wed to another man, but he agrees with you that it’s unfair. And not just unfair, illegal, a violation of your state constitution’s guarantees of equal rights.

So you sue! Then the case comes before a judge and the judge thinks, yeah, the local authorities’ action is a violation of the state constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. Is the judge supposed to rule against you even though he thinks your case has merits, offering as his reasoning “it would be counterproductive to the long-term political strategy of the gay rights movement for me to offer the ruling I believe to be correct”? That doesn’t sound right.

And is Gay Rights Central Command suppose to somehow stop you from suing? How would they do that?

The fact is that as best I can tell most gay rights organizations agreed with Megan about this. As of a few years ago, their big idea was to push for what they saw as practical legislative goals hate crimes laws and an Employment Non-Discrimination Act to help slowly but surely continue to build legislative support for full equality before the law. But they had no ability to prevent various individuals in Hawaii, Massachusetts, California, and elsewhere from pursuing their legal rights as they saw fit.