The non gay marriage liberal agenda

I’ve written on several occasions that I’m quite frustrated about how gay marriage has become the sine qua non of liberal politics.  As I wrote on Dahlia Lithwick’s FB page today, I’m glad that somebody smarter and a better writer has taken on writing about this (with Barry Friedman):

But did you notice that, on the way to this victory, the left, as a movement, seemed to abandon almost everythingelse for which it once stood? That while gay marriage rose like cream to the top of the liberal agenda, the rest of what the left once cherished was shoved aside, ignored, or “it’s complicated” to oblivion? Stipulate: Gay rights is an unequivocally just cause. But this win, however deserved, addresses no more than a small fraction of what the left once believed essential.

It didn’t have to be an either/or proposition. Progressives could have pushed marriage equality without ditching all the causes and ideas on which their movement was founded.  It’s not like anyone in the gay community ever asked them to abandon the rest of their agenda. But progressives did. Perhaps it was battle fatigue, or a loss of confidence in how to fix things. Or maybe issues like poverty and education seem intractable, and it just got too hard to keep trying.

And somehow, somewhere along the line, to be progressive also stopped meaning a commitment to help the poor. The central problems that defined the left from the early history of the Progressive movement through the Great Society are as urgent today as they ever were: Economic fairness; a war on poverty, meaningful education reform, voting rights, workers’ rights, racial justice, women’s rights, equal access to child care and health care. But while none of these social ills has been remedied in modern America (and manyare now worse) all that talk about “welfare queens” seems to have scared folks off.  Face it: There is not, and never has been, anything sexy about the minimum wage.

Now, personally, I don’t post a lot of political stuff on FB (that’s what the blog is for), but I really enjoy all the political postings I come across and I love it as an insight into the liberal mind (just not enough conservative FB friends for the same insight– but I can watch 5 minutes of Fox News for that).  And it frustrates me.  Dozens and dozens of friends change their profile picture or make excited status proclamations over gay marriage but have nothing to say about poverty, unemployment, health care, etc.  (Not John F., though!)  Heck, if there was even a quarter of the enthusiasm for these other issues, I’d feel much better, but as it is, it’s just depressing.  Yes, these issues are harder– all the more reason we need people to get strongly behind them.  And let me risk apostasy by saying I do think the fact that American children are literally hungry and good hard-working people cannot find jobs and Americans are literally dying because of the inadequacies of our health care system is more important than the legal status of relationships of same-sex couples.  Again, not that these couples don’t deserve rights and legal protection, but relative to these other issues, I just don’t think this is where such a disproportionate share of the energy of the liberal project should be focused.