The last major obstacle to civil equality was toppled this week. Where does the gay-rights movement go from here? sullydish writes
Photo: AFP via Getty Images The last major obstacle to civil equality for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people was toppled this week — by another Republican-appointed justice, Neil Gorsuch. . Gorsuch’s reasoning was far more constrained than Anthony Kennedy’s in Obergfell — which guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to civil marriage — and was, in many ways, a punt.
The Equality Act, the key piece of Democratic legislation designed to update the 1964 Act to include gays and transgender people, is therefore moot. The core goals have been accomplished without Congress needing to pass any new laws. What Gorsuch has achieved is exactly what that bill purports to legislate — except for the Act’s attempt to gut religious freedom, by exempting its provisions from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
There will be attempts to maintain the dubious idea that gay men and lesbians are still the object of widespread hate. But our success largely disproves that. There’s no evidence that we cannot get into colleges, or cannot succeed in the workplace. Are we more likely to be murdered or attacked? Nope. The alleged epidemics of violence against gay men and trans women of color evaporate on inspection.
None of this means that we live in a world where homophobia has ceased to exist, where discrimination is unknown, or where visceral fear of and disgust toward trans people does not endure. In fact, prejudice and discrimination against the unknown or different are part of human nature, and partly because of that, young trans people of color are very much at risk. So we can try to keep shifting the culture — and man, has it shifted — in order to lessen the prevalence of irrational prejudice.
And if Bolton were a principled person, or even just a responsible citizen, he would have testified to this and more when it might have mattered. The idea that he didn’t testify because the impeachment inquiry had only scratched the surface of Trump’s wrongdoing is preposterous. There’s no reason the House or the Senate could not have explored new avenues of investigation, prompted by Bolton’s testimony.
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