I don’t know, I feel like there’s a certain “SOL threshold” when you talk about scenarios like that. When it comes down to it, if you’re in some tiny rural town that’s all against you, you’re just fucked. Sure, the law “protects” you, but if the entire town is against you, they may just disregard it. Even if you successfully sue them, or they’re swayed by threatening to sue, they’re going to make things laboriously difficult for you in the most passive aggressive non-provable ways. (Or in ways that would be so tedious to document only hardcore activists who were already planning to sue would even bother)
I think if you’re really in that small town Monstro mentions, the only real solution is to “just move”. No amount of lawsuits will make that pleasant to live in. No matter how much I try I am not going to get anything done in a town that’s 99% fundamentalist Mormons, and no black couple is going to get along in a town founded by KKK members, and no homosexual couple is going to make living in some completely homophobic town.
I’m not saying protecting homosexuals as a class is bad. It’s not, and I support any legislation or amendments that aim to ensure as much as possible they’re treated equally. But I don’t think “What about Podunk, USA, where everyone is a racist homophobe?” is a good argument, because even with the law on your side you’d still need to be able to move mountains to actually get them to cooperate. It’s not like you can prove your waitress intentionally forgot about you for 45 minutes.
But “just move” isn’t possible for everybody; what if you realized you were a lesbian after you were already married with kids? Moving away from your children’s father is not all that easy and impinges upon custody arrangements. And what happens when it’s not the town, it’s the whole country? For many people, it’s the whole country.
Right, and I accept it may not be possible, but I still don’t think it will do much in Smalltown, VA. Not for years. It will do good in larger towns where there was already pressure from both sides and now non-discrimination is the path of least resistance, but if everyone is united against you already and there is no local “other faction” I’m not confident it will help.
I’m not saying that’s right or just, and I’m not saying the person SHOULD just move, or it’s their fault if they don’t move. I’m saying I’m skeptical it will really change anything in the places that are already practically unlivable in for these classes. It will help indirectly in that it promotes a cultural shift that may trickle down into those towns in years or decades, but I don’t think it will help SOL gay people in those towns in the short term.
Jragon, the “just move” solution is absolutely one that a lot of minorities have taken over the years, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any person who solves their problems with bigotry that way.
But they’re not the ones who change things. The ones who change things are the ones who stay and struggle, the ones who are in the most bigoted communities and say, “That’s not right.”
Friend of mine runs the Campaign for Southern Equality, and this is something she runs into on a regular basis: people think it’s foolish to be fighting for gay rights in the most homophobic states in the country. She responds by saying, in effect, if you’re not going to fight bigotry where bigotry lives, where would you fight it?
I didn’t mean it’s not worth it to target bigoted towns, states, or countries and try to change them. That’s absolutely necessary. I was more responding to the sentiment that this law (or lack of law… veto… whatever) would really do much in terms of making things better for people in those towns. Things certainly can be made better with targeted efforts, but they need to be targeted and tailored.
A blanket law is a starting place, as it gives a framework for the activists to work in. So I guess in that sense I’m wrong. I just don’t think championing this law(/veto/status quo) as something that helps people in small towns is misguided since I don’t feel it really does much. Maybe I’m just being too cynical and instead I should be happy that the precedent is now there rather than flippant about it not magically solving all discrimination and giving me a pony.
