This is the second of a three-part series promoting domestic partnership benefits for the state of Wisconsin.
Tackling the question of domestic partnership benefits is far more challenging when speaking of it in terms of "morality" or "values." It is these words that, in recent years, have created rifts among several strata of the American mindset, namely the arbitrary groups we've denoted as "conservative" and "liberal." It's not necessarily a bad thing; it just means we're poised for change.
However, in our pursuit to find the correct path through what is often a catastrophic miasma of political talking points and unreasoned arguments, we have a tendency to only look at the future, and rarely do we take a warranted look at the past. The civil rights movement isn't over yet, and domestic partnership benefits are one part of that progression.
On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate was equal. For 58 years we legally agreed racial segregation was, in fact, a fair practice. We honored that decision by closing many of our schools and their better resources to minorities. We closed many, many doors.
Plessy v. Ferguson and the American acceptance of it after 1896 was an action so perilously immoral its effects are still felt today. You need look no farther than Milwaukee to see how segregation can affect the boundaries between race and wealth.
In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education overturned the Plessy decision when a group of NAACP lawyers and civil rights activists helped pave the long road up to the high court through repeated attacks on the principles which had originally helped establish the Plessy doctrine.
Segregation was anything but "equal," and repeated cases over the decade prior to the Brown decision were challenged at all levels by the NAACP. They made advancements when possible; they weathered one treacherous storm after another, knowing that there was a bigger one around the corner. And eventually, we all hope, that storm will close.
As the next battle in a continued civil rights engagement, domestic partnership benefits are one part of a larger progression. We stand at a crossroads, one in which we have the opportunity to do what is right and to honor human fairness.
Gay and lesbian couples deserve equal rights. To pass homosexuality off as what some have labeled a mental illness and others as sin is to totally neglect almost the entirety of human existence. Since our origin, homosexuals have been our artists, our teachers, our brothers, sisters and parents. They've been sitting next to you on the bus. They've been Wisconsin taxpayers. They have been the vice president's daughter. They've been the force behind great works in our world, as well as some of our greatest failures. They have been members and witnesses to our collective human existence. And as equal sharing parts, they deserve equal rights.
Still, the task of encouraging Wisconsin residents to pressure legislators for the provision of domestic partnership benefits is a bit daunting. After all, 59 percent of the state of Wisconsin made it crystal clear they favored a civil union ban last November. There's little definitive proof suggesting the same majority would turn their heads on the issue of domestic partnership benefits. Understand this fact, absorb its merit, and then pay it no heed.
Doing the right thing has rarely meant doing the popular thing. If history hasn't been an indicator of that, then experience will certainly tell any wise Wisconsinite the correct route usually means forging a new course altogether.
The state of Wisconsin fought for civil rights in the past, through visionaries like Milwaukee's James Groppi and Lloyd Barbee, through the students of UW-Madison and even through the pages of this very paper. Wisconsin, I assure you, is the better for it.
Sundeep Malladi ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and history.
