Rights Are Never Won

“the future’s not ours / to see tenderly” – Hoa Nguyen, “SEEDS AND CRUMBS”

It’s unfair to interpret Dr. King’s “the moral arc of the universe is long, and bends towards justice” quote as a description of cosmic law. The universe is under no obligation to us humans. Justice only comes if we fight for it. This is not to say that Dr. King was wrong to say what he said. Religious leaders and thinkers will often say words of encouragement that are partially true, but mostly meant as words of encouragement. The Book of Revelation, for example, is not a literal description of the apocalypse. It’s a “hang in there” text, loaded with symbolism because being Christian could get you state-executed. 

Not to brag, but I was born in 1987. In my lifetime, Seinfeld had the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode, there were the Grant Hill/Jared Dudley “using ‘gay’ to mean ‘dumb or stupid’ is not creative, and you’re better than that” ads, the f-slur was prominently featured in two of the biggest comedies a few short years before getting almost entirely exorcised from everyday speech. Hillary Clinton got on the floor of the senate and said she opposed gay marriage. Barack Obama said “my views are evolving,” which was an unbelievably obvious lie. As soon as he got his little second term? Dude starts pushing for gay marriage legalization, and the Supreme Court makes one of their few good decisions ever with Obergefell in 2014. As a culture, we have made undeniable progress on equality for LGBTQ+ people in my lifetime. That Seinfeld episode feels kinda ridiculous now, the then-necessary Grant Hill ads make the recent past seem like ages ago. Now that we’ve had a few decades of people being relatively unafraid to come out, the old “you know someone who is queer, whether you know it or not” adage is really proving true. It’s simply not that unusual to see married gay couples. Pronouns are in email signatures. Trans people are visible enough that Davey Chappel did like five hours of live therapy about it. I recognize that I’m talking about two different things, cultural attitudes and legalities. Both matter, both are always precarious.

Backlash and blowback are two concepts that should really be taught to high schoolers. The narrative I was fed my whole life was that things were getting better—civil rights for people of color, the Lily Ledbetter Act for equal pay for women, equality for LGBTQ+ people. 

In case you haven’t looked around lately, the United States is fascist now.

There’s an open war on trans people, with battlefields in congressional chambers, op-ed pages, social media, the streets, wherever you can think of and probably a few places you never would. It’s all based on bogus misinformation campaigns like “boys playing girls’ sports” and backed by all the billions of the Harry Potter franchise.

Not trying to fearmonger, but do you believe this Supreme Court will uphold Obergefell if pressed? Personally I’m not optimistic that they’d uphold Loving, so hey, we’re all in this together.

It’s annoying, the fact that bigots don’t suddenly see the light when presented with logical information or a good West Wing-style speech or a new law. You’d think a plurality of people reaching critical mass for something like Obergefell or respectful “what’re your pronouns” prompts would mean that the rights are, like, “won” or whatever. But no, bigots stay bigots. Unless we want to start mass-executing bigots—at minimum, a third of the U.S. population—we can never think of rights as won. We have to think of rights as temporarily granted. Here, at the end of the column, I feel I should play the clip that inspired it. Someone on bluesky posted this and framed it as a real conversation. Turns out, it’s from a show called Tiptoe. Doesn’t make the sentiment any less true.

Johnny Utah asks if I’m good and mad, and the answer is absolutely yes. I genuinely like living in a multicultural society. I want to see queer people being openly and unabashedly themselves, without fear. I want this for the same reason that I want to live around people of color who are afraid to live how they want to. The fascist utopia is thick-aired and tedious, tense and monotonous. The multicultural social paradise of my dreams is vibrant with color, has music leaking out of every corner, has dancing, and constantly smells like someone’s grandma is cooking. I want the world I thought was coming when I was hopeful-eyed in college. That world, where the moral arc of the universe always bends towards justice, doesn’t exist. Even so, a better world than the world of 2026 is possible. It is possible. It is possible. Hang in there.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris