This week I am proud to be a New Yorker. Our governor and our state legislature, which have not been a source of pride in recent years, distinguished themselves in noteworthy ways.

There was the normal stuff. A timely budget and new ethics law passed without much drama. And there was the extraordinary, a fundamental human rights advance. Marriage is no longer a heterosexual privilege in my home state.

I should add that there are many problems with Governors Cuomo’s approach to our economic problems, in my opinion: too easy on the wealthy, too hard on the poor and public employees. I hope that now that he has established himself as fiscally responsible, he will turn next year to more directly addressing the suffering of working people and the poor. I am not a fan of the economically conservative, socially liberal blend.

In fact, the establishment of the new marriage contract right has both advantages and disadvantages for specific gay couples, as was observed by Katherine M. Franke in a New York Times op. ed. piece. There is less openness about the inclusion of partners in insurance coverage, more restrictions. The marriage option should not become a marriage compulsion. And I am also not sure how progressive this development is. It is noteworthy that the advance of gay marriage ties people to a traditional state sanctioned relationship, something which wise conservatives have noted (including Gary Alan Fine in a private exchange we had). Gays in the military and gay marriage, seen in this light, are important conservative advances. No wonder former Vice President Cheney is a supporter of gay marriage.

Yet, marriage equality is something that is truly significant, going well beyond the details of the marriage contract and political ideology. It formalizes a fundamental advance in human rights and dignity. Another opinion piece in the Times gets at the true significance of the moment, Frank Bruni’s “To Know Us Is to Let Us Love.” He underscores how spectacular the advance is in comparison to what he had hoped for as a young gay man coming of age in the 80s, and he makes the point that once people know homosexual love, they approve. After citing the examples of some leading public figures, he tells the story of his 76 year old Republican father:

“Years ago he would quietly leave the room whenever my sexual orientation came up in a family conversation. But when he urged me to attend a Halloween party he gave for his friends last fall, he insisted I bring Tom, whom he has come to know well over the two and a half years we’ve been together. And as he introduced us to his golf partners from the country club, he said, ‘This is my son, Frank. And this is my other son, Tom. Or at least I think of him that way.’”

And then Bruni asked his father the telling question:

“‘Do you support gay marriage? I asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, explaining that it still seemed strange. He added: ‘But not if you know the person.’ ‘Meaning me?’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean Tom. He’s a good person. If you and he got married? I guess that would be O.K. Yeah, that would be fine.’”

The first time I read this passage, I confess, I teared up. This is true recognition of the other, and a great advance in that it is increasingly becoming the norm. The recognition is more important than the contract. The contract seals the human ideal.

There was a long cultural march leading to this victory, with more legal challenges to go. But I think it is worth noting the march as it appeared in everyday life. Hannah Arendt tells us that political power is constituted when people meet each other as equals in their differences as distinct human beings, and they speak and act in each other’s presence and they develop the capacity to act in concert.  It is the power of Tom, Frank and his father that led to the advance this week in New York, and I believe it is the continued development of this power that will extend gay rights and dignity in the coming years.

Before closing, I must pay tribute to an old friend, Joe Borgovini, who died of aids in the early 90s. We lost touch, but through the web and a Google search a few years ago, I discovered the sad news which I very much feared. We were college apartment mates. I vividly remember the day he told my then girl friend, Naomi, and me that he is gay. I think it must have been in the late winter or early spring of 1970. Coming out was just becoming a significant form of activism. We were truly shocked. Joe had another life about which we knew nothing. He, for the first time, openly told us about himself. Our friendship deepened.

There hadn’t been any open discussion about sexual orientation in our social circles, which means that such discussion was rare indeed, since we were all New Left activists, very much at the forefront of progressive politics. It now seems remarkable how limited we were. We were often demonstrating for social justice and the environment, against racism, against the war. “Gay Liberation” was a very new thing. And after our first discussion, a world that had been hidden became visible. A world, not only  individuals, came out. We talked with our friend and we proudly marched in the first Gay Pride Parade in Albany, New York, with him, along with his friends. I wish we could celebrate with him today.

In my state, New York, thanks to the Tea Party favorite, Carl Paladino, Andrew Cuomo’s election as Governor was never in doubt.   In Delaware, thanks to Christine O’Donnell, Chris Coons easily became Senator, when it seemed that he was likely to lose against a mainstream Republican.  In Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who started and finished with low approval ratings, managed to be reelected, thanks to the Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle.  On the other hand, Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Rand Paul in Kentucky each impressively were elected to the Senate, assuring that there will be a discernable taste of tea in that great deliberative body.

As Paul put it,

“They say that the U.S. Senate is the world’s most deliberative body. Well, I’m going to ask them, respectfully, to deliberate upon this. Eleven percent of the people approve of what’s going on in Congress. But tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave and we’re sending a message to ’em.

It’s a message that I will carry with them on Day One. It’s a message of fiscal sanity It’s a message of limited, limited constitutional government and balanced budgets.” (link)

The language is ugly, but clear.  The political discourse of the Senate is about to be challenged, and this is the body where the Republicans are in the minority.  It will be even louder and clearer in the House, which I admit I find pretty depressing, both from the political and the aesthetic point of view.  It’s going to be harder to actually deal with our pressing problems, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Indeed, it is in spheres of aesthetics and discourse that the Tea Party has been most successful.  It’s not a matter actually of how many races Tea Party politicians won or lost.  They won some and lost some, but from the beginning the Tea Party’s great success has been how it changed the public discussion about the pressing issues of the day.  In my next post, I will discuss this more fully, comparing the Tea Party with the Solidarity Movement in Poland, on the one hand, and the anti-war movement, the Dean campaign and the Obama campaign, on the other.

Response to replies

But before I close today, I’ll add a few words on the responses to my posts on the elections.  To date, most of the people sending in replies appear to share sympathy for the Democrats and a critical attitude towards the Republicans, with one exception.  I welcome differences of opinion and thank all the repliers for their contribution to deliberate considerations.  I am not surprised by the general commitments of the people replying.  I actually think it is important to breakout of partisan ghettos, but know that they exist.  I need to take seriously someone who does breakout, so first a respectful, and I hope not overly defensive, response to Billy.

He criticized me for the title, “The Results Were Expected.”  I agree it wasn’t the best choice. I was writing very quickly on the night of the elections and the next morning, and also involved with my teaching.  The line was actually my first sentence and I didn’t have time to formulate a fresh title, so I just moved it up.  Billy construed the passive voice as an attempt on my part to deflect the responsibility of any one party for the results, in a sense discounting the voting on Election Day for having any meaning that needed to be confronted.  Somehow the word liar came into his formulation, but I didn’t understand that.  But he did pose a serious question: “Does that mean that there was no point in voting?”  Perhaps if he read only the title his would be a significant criticism, but given what I wrote in the post and in the one preceding and following it, clearly it is not what I mean, even if the title was unfortunate.

On great and small politics, Billy wonders why I think that the Republican Party’s small as opposed to great ends are in tension, and he seems to accuse me of crass partisanship in this regard.  But my point is simple, and not just about tax cuts.  In principle, the Tea Party, and its faction of the Republican Party, are for small government, going as far as to suggest that the Constitution does not permit health care reform.  But the Constitutional argument of limited government against health care should also be applied, in principle, to Social Security, Medicare, and, slightly off point, to the provisions controlling private business discrimination against African Americans in the civil rights legislation.  With such a commitment to private freedom, we could indeed responsibly have the sorts of tax cuts the Tea Party imagines, and there would be no tension between Republican Party politics, great and small.  But clearly this will not happen.  Short of doing such things, all the Republican talk about seriously balancing the budget is empty.  And Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln and I all agree with Billy that people have a right to what they have earned, but that commitment doesn’t mean that we also don’t have a responsibility to contribute to the public well being, including the public’s health.

I agree with Scott: the idea that the wealthy are the only ones who contribute to the public good and economic growth is about as convincing as Marx’s  “labor theory of value.”  It is an ideological declaration, nothing more.  I am still looking for a responsible conservative, though.

As far as Boehner’s tears, mentioned by Eric, Alex and Iris, I don’t know what to make of them, particularly as a person who has delivered newspapers, swept sidewalks, waited on tables, cleaned public toilets and worked as a stock boy to pay for my studies.  I see that work as a simple fact of life, not something to get all sentimental about.  And on Iris’s point about independents, I too find them a puzzle, probably because I think a lot about general principles and not about small politics, more about that later.  As Michael Correy writes, the issue of how small and great politics are matched is a serious challenge and should have appeal beyond the partisan to the independent, involving very serious thought and practical action.  I am a Democrat and a strong supporter of Obama because I think he and the leadership of his party are the ones who are trying to do this.

I particularly appreciated Silke Steinhilber in her response to Congressman Boehner silly remarks about the health care law. Not only because I agree with her, but also because she draws the analogy to the German situation in a telling fashion.  We live in the world where mindless fiscal hawks have run wild.  They are not only taking public goods away from us and our children, but what they are doing makes no economic sense.  We have to control deficits in the long run, but public spending is a way of getting out of recessions.  And crucially such spending also contributes to private good, as Ms. Steinhilber and her daughter understand at their playground.