States' rights for the win?

i'll be very upfront here: i am not a legal scholar, and everything i'm about to say comes from my amateur ability to analyze court opinions.

according to my facebook newsfeed, equality (that pesky concept) has been achieved! the supreme court overturned DOMA! even google incorporated a rainbow graphic for folks who searched words like 'gay' or 'lesbian'.

i certainly would not begrudge folks their celebrations. many people have worked very hard on multiple levels to facilitate this legal gain. congratulations! however, it's important to note that the same supreme court that overturned DOMA also dismantled the voting rights act of 1965. so, when we exclaim 'equality!', whose equality are we really talking about?

there is something strikingly similar about these two cases. most notably, both opinions rely on federalism and the ability of states to make their own decisions. in justice kennedy's majority opinion for overturning DOMA, he commented that it would violate federalism and states' rights to "chart their own course" (new york times). justice roberts wrote the majority for the decision on the voting rights act, explaining that the voting rights act of 1965 departed from the principle of states' rights.

now i understand that these are complicated, multi-faceted decisions that deal with more than the question of federalism. however, that they both had this thread in common is not inconsequential. there is a relationship between the court deciding that states have the right to grant marital status and the court determining that the federal government does not have the right to regulate states' voting laws. i don't know what the connection is between the timing of these decisions or the convergence of their use of federalism. i'd love to hear what folks think about this!

i do think that if the gay and lesbian movement is invested in fighting for equality, then today is a difficult day because many gained legal access to rights based on the same principles that the court used to de-prioritize the rights of others. therefore, at the same time that gay, lesbian, and queer couples will celebrate their legal claim to marital status, other folks will confront greater obstacles to their right to vote. for example, the state of texas already announced its intention to go ahead with voter id laws - racist laws that will disenfranchise many.

while overturning DOMA certainly facilitates greater access to rights for many glq couples, the connection between these two decisions is troubling. it's more than time to consider who is being included and who is being excluded from the idea of 'equality'.

For all the gay female athletes who did it first.

"with 'i'm gay', a sports barrier is broken'. that's the headline on the front page of the online version of the new york times today, which is, honestly, a little confusing. we'll get to that in a second though. we all know the build-up is the best part.

i have a conflicted relationship with sports. when i was a kid i read the sports page every morning. i was a dedicated celtics and red sox fan. i knew a lot about my teams. i went to games. i also played basketball and softball for years. i was an umpire and ref too. i was all about it. i stopped in high school. for a lot of reasons. since distancing myself from the world of competitive sports, i have ambled back in a few ways. one of the ways was through starting to follow women's sports like roller derby and the wnba.

i lived in seattle for three years, and the storm is a fierce team of talented athletes. they won the title. twice. still, i couldn't tell you how many times i have overheard conversations from folks bemoaning the fact that seattle doesn't have a professional basketball team since they lost the sonics. apparently, the storm doesn't count.

in the past few weeks i've read a number of articles pondering over the lack of out gay male athletes in professional sports. especially after brittney griner, a ncaa champ and #1 draft pick for the wnba, came out this past month. when she made her announcement, sports media asked: when will a man come out? until today, there were no active professional male athletes who were out, but there are a whole bunch of active professional female athletes who are and have been for years. it's just that no one (aka the media) really cares.

for comparison, the headline of the article covering griner's coming out was: female star comes out as gay, and the sports world shrugs. female athletes are, in large part, expected to be gay. by participating in spaces that are overwhelmingly considered to be male, they are transgressing gendered boundaries and thus not 'appropriately' performing femininity. women who play professional sports are like tomboys who never grew up. they either need to prove their femininity by being really 'girly' (since somehow mainstream society still doesn't understand femme queerness) or they need to prove their heterosexuality by being hetero-coupled. if they don't, they are read as masculinized women and assumed to be gay. when they come out, no one cares because a) they already expected it b) no one watches their sports anyway and c) why care about women's sport if you're not attracted to the women (and you can't be attracted to gay women; that's wrong).

there are numerous issues with a system that 'forces' all people who are not the 'dominant' sexuality to come out and identify themselves to begin with. that's a bigger issue than this post, and i'm not going to address it right now. i think it's great that jason collins has come out. maybe he will be a great role model for young gay (male) athletes. it's important to note, however, that he is not the first out professional athlete. there have been many before him, and the mechanisms that contribute to their invisibility are real. so for all three of you who read this post, i'd like to make some of these female athletes a little bit more visible. here's a link to a list ellen made of some out athletes. check it out:
http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/05/12-our-favorite-out-athletes-last-40-years?page=2,0

Not everything needs to be reenacted.

i know, i haven't been posting. i created this blog for a number of reasons. one of them was to have a welcome distraction from my school work. it turns out, i have had more 'welcome distractions' than i have had time for lately. here's hoping that with the fast approaching end of my masters (oh wow), i will again feel highly committed to my blog! and, you know, find a job or something...

since the title for my blog comes from the haggadah, i felt that i really should sit down and get some thoughts out during passover. so here goes! (forgive me if i'm rusty).

the other night when i was making dinner and listening to this american life, i learned about the conner prairie interactive history park in indiana. they bring history to life! they have a special event called: follow the north star. guess what that re-imagines? well, according to their website, during the 'follow the north star' event, you get to "become a fugitive slave on the Underground Railroad, fleeing from captivity, risking everything for freedom". that's right, with a simple payment of $20 for non-members and $17 for members (yeah, they have members), you too can experience slavery.

there are innumerable problems with this interpretation of a 'history' lesson. i mean, people are paying money to re-enact slavery. they are re-imagining slavery. just let that sink in for another moment.

since there is no way i could present an exhaustive list of all the issues with 'follow the north star', i'm going to raise two that strike me as particularly salient. one, this is not what slavery was like. conner prairie boasts authenticity due to extensive research. it seems, however, that they are forgetting one highly distinguishing characteristic - slavery was not a choice. when teachers bring a school group to participate in follow the north star, the kids come away believing they now know what slavery was like. this is a quote from an eighth grader pulled from one of the testimonials one their website: "'Follow the North Star' puts you in their place". however, they all got permission slips signed. they elected to go. they were probably excited for their field trip. i hope we're all on the same page here. creating the opportunity for a bunch of americans (mostly white americans) to believe they understand what it felt like to be a slave works toward erasing the experience of actual slaves and the complicated legacy slavery left in the states.

two, 're-enacting' slavery firmly establishes it as something of the past. school groups can go and learn about how mean white people were to black 'way back when'. it's as if all of these 'bad' things (as in, racist and violent attitudes and behaviours) happened back then and are a part of 'history' not present day. teaching slavery in an old-timey fashion without concurrently locating everything within a post-colonial context really just seems to re/produce a post-racial attitude.

like i said, these certainly are not the only problems with 'follow the north star'. also, 'follow the north star' is not the only event at conner prairie interactive history park! check out their website for more rousing trips you could go on: http://www.connerprairie.org. or, consider having your wedding on the prairie!

i'm interested to hear what other people think about this 'history' park. what strikes you?

also, check out the episode of this american life in which they visit it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/120/be-careful-who-you-pretend-to-be