Small gains, terrible losses.
Concurrent with the right to exercise free speech is the duty to speak up and express one's thoughts and opinions. In an informed democracy, such discourse is an important - even elementary - component of the free exchange of ideas that leads to our examination of and commitment to such ideals as truth, liberty, and justice.

The California court decision re: Proposition 8 is unsurprising, though some of the language contained in the decision is unexpected. Other pundits have spoken regarding the possibility that the decision may so narrowly interpret Proposition 8 that same-sex unions will be allowed to have all of the same rights and privileges of marriage, lacking only the moniker. From a reasoned perspective, should this not be considered a victory?

As Thorstein Veblen pointed out, human beings are not rational actors, and as a result, what could be considered a boon from a rational point of view is not always positive from a humanist point of view.  Children given hamburgers in McDonald's wrappers consistently report them as tasting better than the same hamburgers made with the same ingredients but without the trade dress. The entire field of marketing and branding exists to change our perceptions about products, services, or ideas that may be identical (or nearly so) to ones with different names and appearances. Ergo, we as a species make decisions based as much upon our emotions and our instincts as we do upon reasoned thought (perhaps strikingly more so, depending upon how much one reads various journals of current neuroscience).

To that end, labels define us and our thinking about ourselves and other people in a profound fashion. We cannot ghettoize some people and claim that they are equal while telling them that they are not. We cannot argue that we have upheld the substance while ignoring the style. Our words - our descriptions, our labels, our names - create for us expectations. From those expectations we derive our hopes for and our understanding of the world. We can hardly claim to uphold equality in the breach when our very language says that we do not.

We the people must include all of the people. We the people brooks no exception, for to do so is to say this: that if we the people guarantee some right to a few or even to many but not to all, then we the people have spoken, and we the people have said that those not guaranteed the same rights are not part of the same body for whom we reserve those rights. We state that those few are neither we, nor people.

We the people must speak for all people; we must speak for all rights; we must speak for all time. We have acknowledged the existence of universal human rights and we have acknowledged the need for social equality. We must cleave to these convictions, for to deny them is to tear us apart from our fellow humans. It is to turn the unification of we into the division of us and them.

Today, our system of justice has told the people, "You may act as equals, so long as you do not claim to be equals." We have told a class of people that they are separate, but equal; that they may exercise free speech, as long as they do it in designated zones; that they may live their lives according to their self-determination, so long as they do not offend the rest of us by striving for recognition. We have told them that they may do what they wish so long as they are properly reminded that we are ashamed of them. We should be ashamed of ourselves instead.

The struggle for liberty and for recognition comes slowly and with turmoil. "Wait a while for things to change" is the oft-heard refrain, yet it seems that all too often change comes only when trauma shocks us into action. Bloody batons descending upon heads of poverty-stricken Indians marching to the sea - an assassin's rifle destroying the eloquent speaker who decried the unjust treatment of different races - human pyramids of prisoners tortured and humiliated in the abstract pursuit of "destroying evil," which became justification to create evil of our own. So it is that we must take today as another sign that struggle continues. Evil must be constantly opposed - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," as famously opined by Edmund Burke. We may measure the decision today as a lesser evil, one that is less in the balance because it could have been worse, it does some good, it opens the door for later. Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil; if it could have been worse, it could have been better; if it does some good, it could have done more; if it opens a door for later, it should have opened a door today.

Make no mistake, there is no ingratitude for progress, but neither can we rest upon our laurels and congratulate ourselves or comfort ourselves with the cold thought that this small step is some sort of triumph. It may have been a small step that Neil Armstrong took upon the moon, but it was a giant leap that catapulted him there. We must strive to make sure that our small steps are only the last few moments before the giant leap.