This is a long clip, but as it so often is when Professor Maddow gives a lecture, it’s worth watching in its entirety. She notes that last week’s Supreme Court decisions created a bit of whiplash for progressives, similar to the night of Barack Obama’s election in 2008 when Californians celebrated up until the moment when their fellow citizens voted to rescind their gay and lesbian brothers’ and sisters’ civil right to marry. While the Supreme Court advanced civil rights for gays and lesbians in punting Prop 8 and overturning Section 3 of DOMA, they rolled back one of the hallmarks of American civil rights law by gutting the Voting Rights Act. So where’s the parallel? She explains that now, the fights for the right to vote and for the right to marry will be carried out in states, many of them very red. The fights on these issues, as she says, start today, and we all have a responsibility to be engaged and educated on both fronts.
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