The Republican National Convention has a new chairman, and his name is Reince Priebus. If there was ever a muggle name that sounded more like a bad guy in Harry Potter, it’s Reince Priebus.
In fact, it’s pretty damn close to Pius Thicknesse, the icky icky wizard (prominently pictured left) who assumed control of the Ministry of Magic under Voldemort’s reign in the final Harry Potter volume. He was a snaky bastard, basically Himmler to Voldemort’s Hitler.
I mention the reference to Potter as my own humble contribution to the “he’s got a funny name” joke heap this week for Priebus, but not as an actual admission that he will perform the kind of evil deeds Pius did. Actually, wait, there is a slight connection.
At the close of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, go with me on this, non-fans, when Voldemort’s evil left this world, people such as Pius and the ever-more nasty Dolores Umbridge (in the awful pink dress to his left), survived the final Hogwarts battle (by not showing up at all), and then went about their lives unpunished for their tyranny by claiming to have never believed Voldemort’s lies in the first place.
This is what will come one day of Reince Priebus and his own personal Umbridge, National Orgainzation for Marriage’s equally toad-like Maggie Gallagher. First, watch this video of Priebus promising Umbridge-Gallagher he will keep marriage from gays (for the good of the article, do try to stomach all 6 odious minutes):
What Gallagher-Umbridge keeps referring to as an “unbroken strain of successes” on the marriage front is actually a lie about to become lie-ier when Prop 8 is overturned later this year.
I say it will be overturned not out of some blind optimism but out of good-natured pragmatism. Ted Olson and David Boies fought a flawless fight, and this overturning will happen. Where my optimism dovetails is that anti-gay ilk’s bread-and-butter is in striking back. Every success from our corner has been met with a vicious counterattack. My educated guess is that Prop 8′s overturning will throw other states’ non-ability to vote away our rights into question, and the only other retaliation will be to strengthen DOMA or worse yet, revive Bush’s Federal Marriage Amendment (the law equivalent of throwing a scorpion on an already snake-bit man).
Priebus will seize advantage of the 2012 election mayhem, stoke the potential Republican candidates’ social conservatism stances on marriage and make it a platform during the election. This will be no difficult task considering the likely candidates are an Evangelical, a Mormon and a Soccer Mom.
Here’s where it gets good: neither the potential FMA nor a Republican candidate will succeed. No way to dress that up in anything but hate.
Here’s where it gets bad: the scramble to stop FMA will take our energies away from undoing DOMA, and a weakened Obama will be forced to water-down his already watery support for repeal of DOMA in order to secure as much potential voters as possible, and he will back away from the dog-fight.
Here’s where it gets good again: our victory with the Prop 8 decision will allow other states to keep their gay marriage laws, undo other Props, and provide a nice lay-up shot for other states to follow suit. By 2012, we might have a solid 10 states with gay marriage laws. And if GetEqual continues to put the heat on the White House, Obama will try to make it up to us for backing away from DOMA by weakening parts of the law with various Executive Orders (like he did with allowing hospital visitation rights). This will make it easier for his second term to tackle DOMA, or help the next Democrat to undo it.
My main point is: Marriage Equality is an unstoppable force. I don’t know when, but that train is coming into the station. And in 20 years or so, people like Priebus and Gallagher will be shame-forced into either keeping quiet on their opinions or rewriting history to paint themselves as neutrals.
People who oppose Marriage Equality are anti-gay, but they’re not evil (not all of them, anyway). There is no Voldemort in this situation. I don’t believe our country has the capacity to produce a Voldemort (or a Hitler). Our Voldemort is the law DOMA itself, which makes it more like an unseen entity such as the lidless eye of Sauron.
Priebus and Gallagher are servants of this law, and they call marriage a “gift from God,” as if any supposed god would have much stock in how us gays conducted our little affairs down here. God really cares about the difference between Marriage and Civil Unions?
My primary care about Marriage Equality isn’t so much the laws of marriage itself (although those are vital). Marriage Equality (and the fight for the word “marriage”) means we are not seen as an inferior people.
All the world’s problems flow from the need of the majority to quantify minorities as inferior people. There is a burning desire to quantify, label and qualify. A law such as DOMA and such as Prop 8 is the written proof of God they wished they had. To them, as long as we are made inferior, as long as laws are written to illustrate that fact, God’s existence is proofed and made manifest.
Gays in America will never be subjugated to the treatment experienced in Nazi Germany, or for that matter in the Wizarding World, but that desire to prove superior by keeping others inferior all flows from the same bad heart.
To them, Marriage is Might. To us, Marriage is Dignity. Which will survive?
