What the Left Forgot
For those of you on the progressive merry-go-round, at least one brass ring is firmly within reach. The Supreme Court's opinions in the pair of marriage equality cases decided last week have given the gay community- and all progressives who helped and cheered-much of what reasonably could have been expected. The justices shoved aside Congress's moral tastes and preferences about marriage, as expressed in the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing the push for same-sex unions to march on where it should, in the states. Now that's federalism. And polls show that while the march may be slow, it's inexorable.
But before you go all happy-dance, though, put your Champagne down for a second, because these decisions raise a profound question: What's left? Not only as in "what's next?" but more importantly as in "what else should the left stand for?" While progressives were devoting deserved attention to gay rights, they simultaneously turned their backs on much of what they once believed. This raises a critical question: what does it even mean to be left anymore?
Progressives haven't had a solid culture war win in the courts like this one for a long, long time. Since, come to think about it, Lawrence v. Texas-which was about gay rights too. (Lawrence was the 2003 decision striking down gay sodomy laws as unconstitutional.) Advocates, academics, and thinkers on the left have put tremendous energy and focus into the battle for gay rights and marriage equality, and the fruits of their labors paid off. They have moved what seemed to be an unmovable needle: on public opinion, in legislative houses across the country, and in the courts. Amazing.
But did you notice that, on the way to this victory, the left, as a movement, seemed to abandon almost everything else for which it once stood? That while gay marriage rose like cream to the top of the liberal agenda, the rest of what the left once cherished was shoved aside, ignored, or "it's complicated" to oblivion? Stipulate: Gay rights is an unequivocally just cause. But this win, however deserved, addresses no more than a small fraction of what the left once believed essential.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/18215-focus-what-the-left-forgot
