Don't Ask

by Dick Mac

The civil rights movement that culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began, in earnest, with the bus boycott sparked by press coverage of Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give-up her seat to a white person, in 1955.

The dogged determination and hard work of African-American leaders was rewarded with major federal legislation to protect black Americans, in less than ten year.

Homosexuals launched their movement for civil rights a few years later in 1969 and within forty years, two pieces of major federal legislation have been passed that specifically limit the civil rights of homosexuals.

Democrats can take credit for all three pieces of legislation: Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA64), and Bill Clinton signed Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

What do you think the United States would have looked like from 1965 - 1995, if the CRA64 had not been enacted and additional legislation had been passed further limiting the civil rights of black Americans? How do you think black America would have reacted to this after forty years of fighting for civil rights?

How would liberal white America have reacted? If the Democrats had failed to pass CRA64, then passed the Miscegenation Act of 1970 and the Separate But Equal Education Act of 1985, would white America have allowed it?

I think they would not. I think that many white Americans, especially educators, lawyers, businessmen, and clerics, would have stood to be counted among those outraged that any government would consider limiting the rights of fellow Americans. I think voters in places like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, and Washington, along with voters in some major metropolitan areas and college towns in-between would have been outraged and the Democrats would have never seen another day as a viable political party.

I know scores of white Americans who would have been so outraged, that they would be marching in the streets.

So why is it that the Democrats are given carte blanche to discriminate against homosexuals for a full forty years after that civil rights movement began? Why are otherwise kind and open-minded Americans allowing the Democrats to represent them when the Democrats have done so much to hurt homosexual Americans?

I know the argument that "well the Republicans are much worse." Honestly, though: I don't think Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush would have ever signed a piece of legislation like DADT or DOMA - I think they would have told their party in Congress to drop it like a hot potato and find another way to reach their goals - that no self-respecting politician who likes to promote personal freedom (however disingenuously) would ever sign legislation limiting the rights of white, middle-class taxpayers.

Now, Bush II is a different story, and we will never know if he would have signed those laws; but he didn't have to, because Bill Clinton did.

DADT and DOMA are still on the books. Barack Obama promises that DADT will be repealed on his watch; but DOMA stays.

Let's go back to my scenario about CRA64 never being enacted, but anti-black marriage and education laws being passed. Imagine if a future president then repealed the anti-black education law, but left in place the marriage law with no plan to repeal it. Would that be considered acceptable?

"Why," I ask my liberal, educated, Democrat-supporting friends is this an acceptable situation?

I know: Don't Ask!