My Number Eight Wish for the 2006 Elections

This post is part of a series listing my ten wishes for the upcoming election. Each day I will post one wish starting with number 10 and working my way up to the wish I desire most. Because we should think globally and act locally, you’ll notice a Minnesota slant to my wishes. If you’re a progressive or a liberal or a left-wing nut job from another state, I hope your wishes come true too. And now, without further delay, here’s today’s wish…


8. Wisconsin says no to homophobia in its State Constitution

Same sex marriage is not allowed under Wisconsin law. But, just as in so many other states, fear that “activist” judges will overturn state-sponsored discrimination, has led religious groups to seek constitutional amendments. By amending state constitutions to define marriage as being between one man and one woman, conservatives extend very far, the day in the future when reason finally triumphs over hate. All the states who rush to amend their constitutions today will, fifty or one hundred years from now amend them again to remove these provisions. Proponents of the Wisconsin amendment are using this effort to prove that same-sex marriage bans have traction outside the Bible belt.

As you can imagine, I want to prove them wrong.

I won’t go into a lengthy discussion of how efforts to limit marriage to one man and one woman mirror step-by-step 19th and 20th century efforts to outlaw marriage between people of different races (even to the point that anti-miscegenation proponents cited biblical justifications to support their argument just like people who support same sex marriage today do, they used the slippery slope argument (if you allow blacks and whites to marry, then you have to allow a man to have more than one wife, etc.)). I won’t sound off about how these efforts sustain homophobia, which, at its darkest, includes violence against our GLBT brothers and sisters. I won’t get into the tyranny of the majority. I won’t talk about equal rights for all citizens or equal access to state services. I won’t talk about the bastardization of constitutions, so that they move past an expression of rights that we hold dear and treasure, and toward the latest political flavor of the day. I won’t talk about the steady elimination of the separation of church and state. I won’t go on and on about our migration toward a Christian theocracy.

I’ll spare you all that, and I’ll just wish that we would have one state that would find the courage to stand up to discrimination and ignorance. I’ll just wish for one state to say it’s time for all of this homophobia to stop. Wisconsin has the chance to stem the rising tide. My wish is that they will do so.