While You Were Being Gay

The Supreme Court has crippled the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for gerrymandering, voter discrimination, and the imminent disenfranchisement of undesirables from the electorate.

          On Wednesday, June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, in a 5-4 split decision, struck down key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as being strictly between one man and one woman and therefore denied equal rights to same-sex married couples throughout the nation. The decision, considered a large victory for the gay rights movement, was hailed throughout the country. CNN reports that over 30% of the United States’ population will be affected by the ruling, as same-sex married couples gain equal access to 1138 federal marriage benefits.

            This of course is a good thing, something long in coming, ever since President Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law way back in 1996. And although the court’s ruling does not affect state marriage definitions and laws, same-sex couples are right to feel that they have been handed a long over-due victory, that they have realized some measure of equality in the eyes of the federal govt.

            The ruling was of course met with much celebration. Facebook superstar and homosexual Star Trek alumnus George Takei released a flurry of memes and posts, and throughout the nation gay couples, as well as their friends, families, and supporters, could be seen and heard on the internet and the streets voicing their relief and happiness.

            Go gay rights.

            Gay rights FTW.

            However, what was far less publicized, what was met with a much less vocal reaction, and what American’s do not see in their news feeds or from their preferred media outlets, was the court’s ruling the day before.

            On Tuesday, June 25, 2013, in another 5-4 split decision, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

            As the NY Times relates, “The section determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts.” Originally this provision was to ensure that certain states could not selectively disenfranchise minority voters by enacting discriminatory ID requirements, by restricting and locating polling places with the intent of making voting overly burdensome, by redefining voting districts in order to break up minority communities and effectively make their votes meaningless (a practice known as gerrymandering), and by other means.

            Ari Berman, who covers voting rights for The Nation magazine, said in an interview on Democracy Now, “Section 5 is really the most important part of the Voting Rights Act. That’s what’s given the law its teeth historically, because it forced states with the worst history of voting discrimination to have to clear their changes with the federal government, and it shifted the burden of proof onto the discriminators as opposed to those who had been discriminated against for so many years.

            The invalidation of Section 5 comes after over a decade of systematic attempts by interested parties to “scrub” unwanted voters from the roles.

            In a 2012 Democracy Now interview, Myrna Pérez, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center in the Democracy Program at New York University School of Law, noted that “the kinds of restrictive laws that are being passed… make it very difficult for eligible Americans to participate and to vote… And we need to make sure that we are not the victims of manipulation by partisans who want to rig the rules of the game such that they can be making the decisions as to who gets to participate and who doesn’t.” She continues, citing a voter ID law in Texas that, thanks to the now defunct Section 5, was then unable to be implemented. “One of the examples that I like to use is the Texas photo identification requirement that is not going to be in place. The list of acceptable ID was created with such like target precision that there was a decision made that if you had a University of Texas ID, you couldn’t use that to vote, but if you had a concealed gun license, you could. That’s a specific kind of targeting of certain voters to make sure that some people have a voice.”

            This is of course just one example, and Texas Republicans are already in the process of redistricting, including plans to divide Native American nations and other minority groups in a bid to effectively neuter them of their electoral power. And natives have continuously been targets of discriminatory voting laws and gerrymandering, even with Section 5 intact. Now, stripped of this fundamental protection, natives and other minority groups can expect an even greater and more effective push to remove them from the electorate, de jure and de facto.

            Congressman John Lewis of Georgia characterized the decision in stark terms. “These men that voted to strip the Voting Rights Act of its power, they never stood in unmovable lines, they never had to pass a so-called literacy test… It took us almost 100 years to get where we are today.”

            That the Supreme Court has a decidedly conservative bent (with 3 generally liberal justices, 2 centrists, and 4 hard-line conservatives in its present incarnation) is not in question. One need only recall Citizens United, Bush v. Gore, or the AmEx decisions, to name but a few. And so the question arises: Why would the court hand this victory to gays the day after striking down Section 5?

            The answer, I believe, may be as simple and transparent as it looks. The DOMA decision, and Gay Marriage generally, is a side issue, a political talking point, a hot-button with which to rally support and divide the country, whereas Section 5 had for decades stood in the way of political supremacy for those who, without despicable practices like voter suppression and gerrymandering, are finding it increasingly difficult to ascend to office.

            And that, America, is the hard truth, the dirty little not-so-secret that was slipped by US while we were being gay.

-follow On the Matters of the Day on Facebook