(Many county clerks are standing up for equality today, here is Wu Ming’s story from Yolo County. – promoted by blogswarm)
As readers of surf putah may have noticed, I’m a big fan of Yolo County Clerk, Freddie Oakley. She has a very accessible elections site, has been vigilant in avoiding election-day glitches of the sort that bollox up voting in bigger and wealthier counties with great regularity. How many other county clerks even know about the problems with Diebold’s buggy and easily hackable voting machines, let alone have written op eds as cogent as this one about the need for verified voting? And while I disagreed with her decision to cancel early voting stations on UCD campus last election, I will give her credit for starting the early voting up in the first place.
But in addition to her work to protect the vote in Yolo County, Freddie Oakley will stand up for marriage equality this Valentine’s Day as well (Also covered in the Enterprise, as well as the Davis Vanguard. The Chronicle has a related story up about other Northern Californian County Clerks supporting marriage equality, albeit not in such a creative manner). Instead of just turning away same-sex couples who come every Valentine’s Day to protest their unequal treatment under California and federal marriage law, Oakley made up her own “Certificate of Inequality” to pass out in solidarity, made with her own money and passed out on her lunch break.
Oakley’s certificate will read:
“Whereas: The state of California arrogates the right to limit your freedom to marry based on the gender of your chosen spouse, and
“Whereas: Based on your choice of spouse I may NOT issue a license to marry to you, and
“Whereas: I am unable to divine any legitimate governmental purpose in the regulation of your marriage partner’s gender,
“Now, therefore: I issue this Certificate of Inequality to you because your choice of marriage partner displeases some people whose displeasure is, apparently, more important that principles of equality.
“Issued to: (a name here) and signed, this day, February 14, 2007
Freddie Oakley, Yolo County Clerk-Recorder.”
An evangelical Christian who strongly supports the separation of church and state – “[…] I’m not happy about enforcing a law that is discriminatory and based on religious principles,” […] “Religion has no place in government.” – Oakley confuses the standard media narrative that places religious folks on one side and those who support a religiously neutral secular state on the other. In reality, this is not solely an issue of religious versus secular values, but also a question of whether the state will enforce one side in a sectarian dispute; to wit, whether the state will tell Unitarians, Quakers and Congregationalists that the same sex couples that they marry are not married unless the Southern Baptists and Fundamentalists agree to it. Additionally, these laws conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, which guarantees all citizens the same rights under law. As Rich Rifkin points out in the comments after the Davis Vanguard article, it is illegal to deny business licenses to a gay or lesbian owner because of their sexual orientation; how then can it be legally defensible to deny them the legal right to marry other consenting adults?
While the stunt is witty, the issue is anything but trivial. This country has made grave errors in the past by trying to write popularly-held prejudice into marriage law, in a perverse effort to “defend traditional marriage.” California had miscegenation laws until a California Supreme Court decision reversed them in Perez v. Sharp in 1948, and it took Loving v. Virginia in 1967 before the “traditional definition of marriage” was rightly thrown out as an embarassing relic of a hateful past at the national level. The current political momentum appears to be repeating history, as California’s Assembly and State Senate were once again the first state legislature to challenge a prejudicial status quo (although supposedly “moderate” Governor Schwarzeneggar vetoed the bill, on the bizarre rationale that the legislature is not democratic, and that only the people can pass such laws, via initiative).
As a straight, married citizen, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, it does me no injury for my neighbor to marry whom they love. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. My marriage was one of the best decisions I have ever made, and it has filled my life with joy; how could I ever deny that joy to someone else?
Good for Freddie Oakley, and may everyone have a great Valentine’s Day.