Debate over Multnomah County, Oregon's decision to let gay and lesbian marriages take place seems to have settled into three arguments:
1. Gays and lesbians should never be married.
2. The process for making the decision was flawed and the politicians should be held accountable for their mistake.
3. This was an important civil rights decision.
Some people seem to cross over between arguments two and three.
Most of my adult life has been spent working on civil rights issues: expanding voting rights, fighting expansion of police powers, working to make housing a human right rather than a gift of privilege.
Opponents of civil rights always question the timing. You’re moving too fast! This will hurt the cause in the long run!
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about the “process question” this way in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
I’m one of those people who don’t like to wait. Like King, I hear “Wait” and I know that it almost always means never – whether the question is racial justice, economic justice, or legal justice.
People of good faith can disagree on whether the timing was right or not. But if you believe in equality – if you believe in justice – then the Multnomah County Commissioners should be receiving praise instead of criticism.
They did something rare and noble in the cause of justice.
They didn’t wait.
(The Rev. Paul Davis from Portland's First Congregational United Church of Christ)
