BlackCommentator.com May 23, 2019 - Issue 790: The Anniversaries of May 17th are Bittersweet - Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe, BC Editorial Board

May 23, 2019 - Issue 790

The Anniversaries of May 17th
are
Bittersweet

"This year on May 17th marked the fifteenth anniversary of
marriage equality in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Looking back at advances such as hate crime laws, the repeal
of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' and DOMA, the legalization of marriage
equality, anti-homophobic bullying becoming a national concern,
to name a few, the LGBTQ community has come
a long way since the first Pride marches."

When you reside at the intersections of multiple identities, anniversaries of your civil rights struggles can be both bitter and sweet. And, May 17th was a reminder.

At 12:01 a.m. on May 17, 2004, the city of Cambridge was the first to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. At 9:15 a.m., the first couple was married. Then Cambridge City Clerk Margaret Drury said to Tanya McCluskey,52, and Marcia Kadish,56, of Malden, “I now pronounce you married under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

Also, on that day was the 50th anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court case of "Brown v. Board of Education,” a ruling that upended this country’s “separate but equal” doctrine, adopted in the “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision of 1896.

While joy washed over me that day knowing my now-spouse and I could follow McCluskey’s and Kadish’s footsteps and be legally married, we could not rejoice over the limited success, huge failures, and ongoing resistance of “Brown” that allowed a few of us entry into some of the top universities of this country, as it continues to be challenged as a form of reverse discrimination.

On this year’s 65th anniversary of "Brown v. Board of Education” African Americans and Latinx Americans continue to attend not only segregated schools - whether here in Boston or across the nation - they also attend high-poverty urban ones with metal detectors. And, sadly, not only have policing while schooling has doubled since 2001 to the present day, so, too, the school-to-prison pipeline.

Where it was once thought that access to quality education would dismantle, for future generations, the pox of bigotry and ignorance their parents inherited, race and class, unfortunately, continue to be discriminating indices upholding not only “separate” school systems but also “unequal” treatment of students.

This year on May 17th marked the fifteenth anniversary of marriage equality in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Looking back at advances such as hate crime laws, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and DOMA, the legalization of marriage equality, anti-homophobic bullying becoming a national concern, to name a few, the LGBTQ community has come a long way since the first Pride marches.

I give thanks for these advances that I had the opportunity to write Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, who wrote the landmark decision in “Goodridge v. Department of Public Health” the following thank you note in April 2016:

"When I left for NECN (New England Cable News) on Friday I never imagined in my wildest dreams I would meet you there. And, of all things take a group photo with you and my buddies Sue O’Connell and Scott Kearnan. WOW! And, thank you!

The closest I came to meeting you was once many tables removed from the stage you spoke from as GLAD’s 2013 Spirit of Justice Awardee.

A tsunami of thanks I send your way for authoring the Goodridge case, allowing me and so many of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters across this beautiful Commonwealth of Massachusetts to marry the person we love.

As an African American lesbian, there aren’t too many places in this country I feel protected by state laws.

The Goodridge decision bestowed upon me full citizen-state rights that when same-sex marriage was legally recognized on May 17, 2004, I then began to proudly lift my voice and say, “I, too, am Massachusetts!”

This June will be the fourth anniversary of "Obergefell v. Hodges,” the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. The ruling was a great day similar, I surmise, to that day in June 1967 when the Supreme Court case of Loving versus the State of Virginia declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.

However, with victory comes backlash. Opposition to the SCOTUS decision went public with born again Christian Kim Davis—the now infamous Kentucky County clerk who not only refused to issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couple, but she forbade her co-workers to do so, too.

There is the talk among Christian evangelicals of walking back “Obergefell v. Hodges” without disrupting other precedents on marriage,” Rebecca Buckwaler-Poza wrote in the article “The End of Gay Rights” in the June 2017 issue of Pacific Standard Magazine.

“The Supreme Court can significantly undermine LGBT rights even without reversing a single case. The Court can strip the rights to intimacy and marriage of their meaning, carving away gradually and masking the magnitude of changes by phrasing them in arcane legal terms.”

And, last year, the Supreme Court ruled in "Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission” in favor of Jack Phillips, the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on the grounds of religious freedom.

Over the years, I’ve learned that joy can share its space with sadness.

May 17th is always one of those days.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister, motivational speaker and she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Rev. Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio and a weekly Friday segment “The Take” on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also she writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and Cambridge Chronicle. A native of Brooklyn, NY, Rev. Monroe graduated from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church in New Jersey before coming to Harvard Divinity School to do her doctorate. She has received the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching several times while being the head teaching fellow of the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard who is the author of the best seller, THE GOOD BOOK. She appears in the film For the Bible Tells Me So and was profiled in the Gay Pride episode of In the Life, an Emmy-nominated segment. Monroe’s coming out story is profiled in “CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing up Gay in America" and in "Youth in Crisis." In 1997 Boston Magazine cited her as one of Boston's 50 Most Intriguing Women, and was profiled twice in the Boston Globe, In the Living Arts and The Spiritual Life sections for her LGBT activism. Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's research library on the history of women in America. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev. Monroe and BC.