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I Take It All Back

by Scott H. Payne

It is true that one can argue for the delay of certain decisions with a certain well intentioned glibness. It’s not that you oppose the particular initiative or need for the decision, but rather that there is so much to do, so many decisions to make, isn’t it important to tackle each of them head on, one-by-one?

It is, I suppose, until one sees the run-off impacts of pushing the need to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or the Defense of Marriage Act off to another day, or not having a President who believes in equal rights under the law speak loudly and clearly of the need to support marriage equality, or inviting Rick Warren to participate in the inauguration of that President in the harsh and unforgiving light of purely putative and explicitly discriminatory legislation elsewhere.

Though there is not a one-to-one relationship between one’s actions (or lack thereof) and the existence of such legislation, one wonders what degree of moral authority one possesses in order to address such issues having embraced the fierce urgency of whenever.

It is a humbling and, in some senses, chilling realization of tacit and unintended complicity.

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6 comments

1 Jaybird { 12.01.09 at 5:50 pm }

Compromise a little bit here, a little bit there, make a deal here, make a deal there.

Politics is the art of the possible, after all. To be sure, Rome was not built in a day. Ideological purity is all well and good but we are getting things actually acomplished here! Or we will, right after we make this deal…

And, one day, you realize that you don’t have any you there anymore. It’s all gone. You traded your birthright for a mess of pottage.

2 Jonathan McLeod { 12.01.09 at 7:43 pm }

Nice, Jaybird. There’s hardly a need for me to comment after that. Of course, I will, nonetheless…

There can be a good argument to go slowly, and to not take on too much at once, but with something like DADT, there is no excuse to for going so slowly.

3 Jivatman { 12.01.09 at 9:18 pm }

There are legitimate arguments that additional time should be allotted when crafting large and complex legislation such as stimulus or health care bills.

But those arguments cannot be made for many simple issues of human rights such as the repeal of DADT.

4 Koz { 12.02.09 at 1:38 am }

I must be dense but this post is only marginally comprehensible for me.

5 Nob Akimoto { 12.02.09 at 3:50 am }

I honestly don’t quite get the premise behind this post.

Are you arguing that incrementalism on say gay rights is responsible for the Uguandan legislation and forms some sort of tacit “complicity”? …are you serious?

Or is there something else?

6 Trackbacks { 03.21.10 at 11:46 am }