“Us” & “Them”

So, by now I’m sure most of us have seen the new commercial from the organization calling itself the National Organization for Marriage.
Two things strike me about this commercial. First, its implication that freedom is a zero-sum game – if you gain rights, I automatically lose some of mine. And second, that every one of its arguments – Every. Single. One – was used 40 years ago to scare white people into opposing integration laws. We can’t let black people ride our buses and drink from our water fountains, or be allowed any of the other privileges that whites take for granted, because they won’t be able to restrain themselves if we do. (Which is pretty funny… I’d rather hang out with Emmitt Till than the guys who beat him to death any day of the damn week.) A recently as last November, on the Saturday before the election, a Republican poll volunteer earnestly shared with me his profound worry of what “they” would be empowered to do to “us” if Barack Obama won the presidency.

There it is, in language that bigots have learned to use only around those they think might be sympathetic: us and them. Let me put it this way… Of all the people who honestly believe that letting two men get married would cheapen the concept of marriage itself, how many are working for a Constitutional amendment to ban, say, divorce? Adultery? Spousal abuse? All-night Vegas wedding chapels?
None. Because that’s different. Because “we” do those things, and we know that even if a man cheats on his wife of 30 years, it’s only a sad comment on his own failings, not an indictment of all marriage between men and women. For the same reason that it’s okay for conservative Republican Sarah Palin’s kid to be an unwed teen mother. Because she’s “us,” and sometimes these things happen.
These things are not allowed to happen to “them.” They are Other and otherworldly, and no matter how many of Them have been committed couples for decades, how many lead protective lives and raise children in loving households, They will always be “them.”
My apologies to the actor who plays the woman in the commercial lamenting that her child’s school teaches him/her that “gay marriage is okay,” but that’s exactly what your kid needs. The same laws that protect my dear friends’ right to love who they want also protect your right to teach your kid about “us” and “them” all you want in the privacy of your own home.
But in the public sphere – which includes schools – we have an obligation to move beyond “us” and “them.” Because “them” is a cockroach you crush underfoot without a second thought. “Them” does not deserve to live freely, because “them” is less than human.
But mainly because “us” is more vast than any of us can imagine. And when we diminish “us,” we truly deny our collective humanity and deprive our best selves.