Monday, March 08, 2004
What is a civil right? Whatever people yell about?
"'An act as unremarkable as getting a wedding license has been transformed by the people embracing it,' Rich wrote, 'much as the unremarkable act of sitting at a Formica lunch counter was transformed by an act of civil disobedience at a Woolworth's in North Carolina 44 years ago this month.' Nearby, the Times ran a photograph of a smiling lesbian couple in matching wedding veils � and an even larger photograph of a 1960 lunch counter sit-in.
Rich's essay - 'The Joy of Gay Marriage' - went on to cast the supporters of traditional marriage as hateful zealots. They are 'eager to foment the bloodiest culture war possible,' he charged. 'They are gladly donning the roles played by Lester Maddox and George Wallace in the civil rights era.'
But it is the marriage radicals like Rich and Newsom who are doing their best to inflame a culture war. And as is so often the case in wartime, truth � in this case, historical truth - has been an early casualty.
For contrary to what Rich seems to believe, when Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain approached the lunch counter of the Elm Street Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. on Feb. 1, 1960, all they were looking for was something to eat. The four North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College students only wanted what any white customer might want, and on precisely the same terms � the same food at the same counter at the same price.
Those first four sit-in strikers, like the thousands of others who would emulate them at lunch counters across the South, weren't demanding that Woolworth's prepare or serve their food in ways it had never been prepared or served before. They weren't trying to do something that had never been lawful in any state of the union. They werenen't bent on forcing a revolutionary change upon a timeless social institution.
All they were seeking was what should already have been theirs under the law of the land. The 14th Amendment — approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1868 — had declared that blacks no less than whites were entitled to equal protection of the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 — passed by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate and signed into law by President Grant — had barred discrimination in public accommodations.
But the Supreme Court had gutted those protections with shameful decisions in 1883 and 1896. The court's betrayal of black Americans was the reason why, more than six decades later, segregation still polluted so much of the nation. To restore the 14th Amendment to its original purpose, to re-create the Civil Rights Act, to return to black citizens the equality that had been stolen from them — that was the great cause of civil rights."
Ah yes, Supreme Court, supreme law of the land with which it is forbidden for any politician to argue lest he be branded as an anti-choice fanatic, upholder of slavery, destroyer of civil rights. Why do people think this time will be anything different?
Rich's essay - 'The Joy of Gay Marriage' - went on to cast the supporters of traditional marriage as hateful zealots. They are 'eager to foment the bloodiest culture war possible,' he charged. 'They are gladly donning the roles played by Lester Maddox and George Wallace in the civil rights era.'
But it is the marriage radicals like Rich and Newsom who are doing their best to inflame a culture war. And as is so often the case in wartime, truth � in this case, historical truth - has been an early casualty.
For contrary to what Rich seems to believe, when Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain approached the lunch counter of the Elm Street Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. on Feb. 1, 1960, all they were looking for was something to eat. The four North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College students only wanted what any white customer might want, and on precisely the same terms � the same food at the same counter at the same price.
Those first four sit-in strikers, like the thousands of others who would emulate them at lunch counters across the South, weren't demanding that Woolworth's prepare or serve their food in ways it had never been prepared or served before. They weren't trying to do something that had never been lawful in any state of the union. They werenen't bent on forcing a revolutionary change upon a timeless social institution.
All they were seeking was what should already have been theirs under the law of the land. The 14th Amendment — approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1868 — had declared that blacks no less than whites were entitled to equal protection of the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 — passed by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate and signed into law by President Grant — had barred discrimination in public accommodations.
But the Supreme Court had gutted those protections with shameful decisions in 1883 and 1896. The court's betrayal of black Americans was the reason why, more than six decades later, segregation still polluted so much of the nation. To restore the 14th Amendment to its original purpose, to re-create the Civil Rights Act, to return to black citizens the equality that had been stolen from them — that was the great cause of civil rights."
Ah yes, Supreme Court, supreme law of the land with which it is forbidden for any politician to argue lest he be branded as an anti-choice fanatic, upholder of slavery, destroyer of civil rights. Why do people think this time will be anything different?
