Minority Report

In light of yesterday’s defeat of marriage equality in Maine, I’ve been thinking about what it’s like to be a minority seeking permission from the majority to be treated as a full-fledged person in the eyes of civil society. The disability community and the GLBT community have vastly different experiences of prejudice and discrimination, but we have in common an intimate familiarity with the indignities of being excluded from taking part in the everyday routines of mainstream society. And that exclusion is a direct result of the majority’s naked prejudice, callous disregard, and outright contempt for the minority.

You think I’m overstating things? We needed to pass a fucking federal law that says kids with disabilities are entitled to a public education. And less than two decades later, we needed pass another fucking federal law that says people with disabilities should be able to go to the movies and possibly maybe be considered for a job as long it doesn’t cramp the employer’s style. Any kind of civil rights law would be unnecessary in a society where the majority is enlightened and rational. But that isn’t this world. In this world, the majority can be kind of a dick.

I’m far from certain that either of these laws would have received majority support if they were put to referendum in the states. But as a friend of mine just reminded me, the founders had this really cool idea. A representative democracy can act as a civil society’s better angels, shielding the minority from the worst impulses of the majority and even promoting the minority’s equal status under the law. At least, that’s the idea. As we saw yesterday, the mob still gets its way sometimes.

Same-sex advocates are fighting the same fight against the majority that has been waged so many times before, even while asking the majority to recognize them as equals. I have no doubt they will eventually win that recognition, but there’s something both absurd and deeply frustrating in observing that we have been here before and will be here again. Nearly four decades of disability activism hasn’t freed me from the everyday disregard and condescension of my fellow citizens. Legalizing same-sex marriage won’t bring an end to homophobia. But it’s a lot easier to ignore the clueless masses when you have the freedom and status to enjoy the same pleasures and rewards of life, to carve out an existence free from officially sanctioned second class treatment.