Michael Klarman: The Political Risks of Supporting Gay Rights
[Michael Klarman is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of "From Jim Crow to Civil Rights," which won the 2005 Bancroft Prize.]
It is difficult to ask historically disadvantaged minority groups to be patient in waiting for full recognition of their constitutional rights. Thurgood Marshall, the great NAACP organizer and litigator, was asked after Brown vs. Board of Education whether, in light of threatened violence and school closures in the South, he would have been "well advised to let things move along gradually for a while." Marshall responded that he did indeed believe in gradualism, but "I also believe that 90-odd-years [the time elapsed since the Emancipation Proclamation] is pretty gradual."
Gay rights supporters today are starting to feel the same way. They have loudly condemned the Obama administration for failing to act quickly enough in repealing "don't ask, don't tell," for defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court and for opposing same-sex marriage.
Yet there may be good reasons for the president to move slowly. Historically, American presidents have rarely gotten far ahead of public opinion on civil rights issues, and the few times they have, they've paid a substantial price for doing so.
President Lincoln, known to history as the Great Emancipator, was a relative latecomer to the abolitionist cause. It was, in the end, battlefield losses during the Civil War that forced him, almost as an act of desperation, to free slaves in order to undermine the Confederate labor supply and strengthen Union military forces. The Emancipation Proclamation was so unpopular in parts of the North that it cost Republicans dozens of congressional seats as well as control of some Northern state legislatures in the fall of 1862....
Read entire article at LA Times
It is difficult to ask historically disadvantaged minority groups to be patient in waiting for full recognition of their constitutional rights. Thurgood Marshall, the great NAACP organizer and litigator, was asked after Brown vs. Board of Education whether, in light of threatened violence and school closures in the South, he would have been "well advised to let things move along gradually for a while." Marshall responded that he did indeed believe in gradualism, but "I also believe that 90-odd-years [the time elapsed since the Emancipation Proclamation] is pretty gradual."
Gay rights supporters today are starting to feel the same way. They have loudly condemned the Obama administration for failing to act quickly enough in repealing "don't ask, don't tell," for defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court and for opposing same-sex marriage.
Yet there may be good reasons for the president to move slowly. Historically, American presidents have rarely gotten far ahead of public opinion on civil rights issues, and the few times they have, they've paid a substantial price for doing so.
President Lincoln, known to history as the Great Emancipator, was a relative latecomer to the abolitionist cause. It was, in the end, battlefield losses during the Civil War that forced him, almost as an act of desperation, to free slaves in order to undermine the Confederate labor supply and strengthen Union military forces. The Emancipation Proclamation was so unpopular in parts of the North that it cost Republicans dozens of congressional seats as well as control of some Northern state legislatures in the fall of 1862....