Steps and Leaps

Posted on July 8, 2009 in Class Culture Wars Equality Gender

The left has racked up a few disappointments lately and is ready to jump the ship if some voices are to be believed. Pulling out the blender of metaphors, I think we need to hold our horses and stay in the game. Too many leftists elect officials and then do nothing other than express their views in opinion polls and fail to show up for elections to remind them that their issues, their power is important. This strategy always fails. One tweeter I know feels that the left has failed to build serious infrastructure, meaning “policy/advocacy machinery that can use majorities to advance policy and govern.” I agree. And I also believe that members of the left discount the value of steps as opposed to leaps. The Left only seems to want leaps.

Two issues: health care and gay rights. I am for both of these. I believe that health care is the principal issue that the Left needs to push today. The public option is supported by 72% of Americans. We need to push our representatives and Senators to use our majority to establish this. Americans have wanted this for years. A leap is demanded by the public. Screw the AMA. Screw the Republicans. No compromises and no prisoners on this one. We have established the consensus, so we need to take advantage of political reality to demand that what we voted for be enacted. End of story.

Gay rights. We have not yet established political hegemony on this issue. Many are upset that “don’t ask, don’t tell” hasn’t fallen with the breath of our words. There are signals of change, but we need to build on them more. I suggest that the issue of the day be same sex marriage. When we have enough states allowing same sex marriage, we can take the next step: putting pressure on the military to drop “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Or otherwise forbidding soldiers/sailors/airmen from talking about their married lives — even mentioning that they have wives and girlfriends. The key word is fairness, a key moral value for the Left. The military should do one or the other. The second option that I have proposed is more likely at this moment. In the meantime, focus on same-sex marriage.

Consensus is what we must build. Twenty years ago, when the Quaker meeting I attended considered same-sex marriage, it was realized that we were well ahead of the curve. We did this small thing in the hope that our state would one day invite same-sex couples to receive the same protection as the rest of us. It was a small step and we should not kid ourselves that we need take no more small steps on the issue. On the matter of health care, the last small step was mental health parity, the idea that insurers had to treat mental illness on the same par as other syndromes. Now we must challenge the insurers themselves. They are spending $1.4 million a day to defeat a public option for health insurance. This indicates to me that they have far too much money to play with.

In the meantime, we should also consider what we can do to change the way lobbyists operate on Capitol Hill. I believe in One Person, One Voice. But the idea backed by courts and Congress is that money equals free speech. Defeating this notion will be key in our struggles ahead.