BETTER TO MARRY THAN TO BURN, EVEN IN CATHEDRAL CITY

By: Paul S. Marchand

SUMMARY: with a majority of Americans, including many prominent members of both political parties, now supporting marriage equality, strident conservative opposition to marriage equality may no longer be a politically viable strategy, especially in Cathedral City, with its substantial LGBTQ population.  Incumbents or challengers in this Fall’s Cathedral City municipal elections be warned, divisive and homophobic Culture War appeals may well fall flat.

Joe Biden, Arne Duncan, Bill Clinton.

Aside from being prominent Democrats, what do these three straight, white guys have in common?

Among other things, all three have recently come out publicly in support of marriage equality.  While President Obama’s own position continues to “evolve,” the Biden-Duncan-Clinton position seems to be carrying the day even among many Republicans and evangelical Christians.

What a change since 1993, when a Hawai’i Supreme Court decision ---ultimately overruled by a state constitutional amendment pushed by the Mormon church--  upholding marriage equality in that state triggered a nationwide backlash, and when I was one of the first attorneys in California to handle a marriage equality case.  Today, while anti-marriage equality laws remain on the books in a majority of states, California --sadly-- among them, popular sentiment has swung ever increasingly toward marriage equality.
 
Of course, my own position on marriage equality has never evolved; it never needed to.  I have always been an open supporter and advocate for marriage equality in particular, and for LGBTQ rights in general.  It is a record from which I have never felt any need to hide, and on which I have thus had no need of modifying my views. I was thus pleased when Rancho Mirage Mayor Scott Hines earlier today signed the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry statement, and I hope that other Coachella Valley mayors will follow suit if they have not already done so.  If, two decades ago, supporting marriage equality might have been political suicide, today it betokens nothing more than a commitment to inclusion and sound policy.

Of course, while mayors coming out for marriage equality has been only part of the national conversation about the place of queer people in commonwealth, it has reflected the way in which our straight neighbors are coming round to the notion that we, too, are entitled to ride at the front of the bus.  As we’ve watched the evolution of opinion among our straight neighbors, we queerfolk have noticed two different, yet paradoxically related, phenomena.  On one hand, the American right has portrayed us with increasing stridency as an enemy Other, a Sum of All Fears upon which they seek to project every one a the insecurities by which they are so dreadfully hagridden.  On the other, of course, is that increasing consensus in American society that being queer is simply “not strange” and certainly not dangerous.

It is that growing public sense that we are “not strange,” together with the related sense that they are losing the Culture Wars that has sent so many cultural conservatives into paroxysms of anger and backlash.

Yet, the overwhelming, clear and convincing evidence of empirical, day-to-day experience, suggests that by this point in our history pretty much every American has had some degree of interaction with a queer person.  We are truly everywhere.

We are certainly present in substantial numbers here in Cathedral City, where --depending upon whose numbers you use-- anywhere between 35 and 45 percent of the population is GLBTQ.  (Given the clunkiness of the acronym, dear reader, I hope you’ll indulge me in the use of the word “queer,” which so many of us have been working to reappropriate from those who use it as a term of opprobrium.)

When I first started coming to Cathedral City a generation ago, and acquaintance of mine suggested to me that while Palm Springs may be more like West Hollywood, Cathedral City has a definite Silverlake vibe.  Either way, the not insubstantial queer presence here in Cathedral City has been an integral part of our experience as perhaps the most richly diverse community in the entire Coachella Valley.  It is perhaps for that reason that our local politics have been remarkably free from the kind of Culture War appeals that have often besmirched other communities.

Nonetheless, as we approach an election season in which Culture War issues will probably make up a large part of Mitt Romney’s campaign appeals, we need to be alert and resistant to such appeals becoming a part of our own political discourse.  No one should seek political office in Cathedral City who is not prepared unequivocally in advance to disavow divisive Culture War strategies and tactics. 

In a city that is roughly one half Latino, no incumbent or challenger should be elected who pledges to represent “the other fifty percent” that is presumably non-Latino.  By the same token, in a city that is anywhere from one third to almost one half LGBTQ, no incumbent or challenger deserves anybody’s vote who is not prepared to acknowledge, accept, and respect our queer place in Cathedral City’s body politic.

For if opposition to marriage equality is becoming increasingly obsolescent and unviable at the national level, where polls are now showing a majority in support of marriage equality, it is equally true here in the Silverlake of the Coachella Valley.  Culture Warriors and Tea Partisans take note, Cathedral City can neither afford nor accept the frivolous luxury of a divisive, homophobic wedge issue politics directed against a substantial portion of the community.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral city, where he served two terms on the city Council.  The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute legal advice, and should not be so construed.  Mr. Marchand was one of the first attorneys in California to challenge California’s then-statutory gender-discriminatory marriage law.  Like his patron saint, Paul the Apostle, Mr. Marchand believes that it is “better to marry than to burn.”