Same-sex marriage fight not over yet, both sides say (CBS News)
GOP sneak tactic gives Ohio new anti-abortion laws with new budget (The Rachel Maddow Show)
High Court Opens Door To More Voting Rights Suppression (Hartford Courant)

I admit that I have occasionally entertained the thought of moving to another country. A little over ten years ago, as George W. Bush sent this country to war under false pretenses, I gave a lot of consideration to moving to Canada, and I did so again the following year when Republicans squeezed Bush back into office on the strength of a “be afraid of the gay” campaign that enveloped many battleground states, particularly Ohio. (The open attempts the Democrats made to suppress the third-party candidacies of Ralph Nader and David Cobb that election also made my stomach churn.) I didn’t think much about moving to another country after that — in the meantime, Canada gave itself a right-wing prime minister who seems to redefine the word “jerkface” every week, so moving there is out of the question now — but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t given this matter much more thought lately.

Last week’s Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage were a triumph, but their effects weren’t that noticeable in those states, like mine, where same-sex marriage remains illegal. Maybe we’re closer to some law or decision that will make same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states, but we’re not there yet. Besides, those decisions were bookended by two events that make it hard to be happy about much of anything these days: The same Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, and new anti-abortion laws being jammed down Ohioans’ throats without a chance for us to even begin to debate them.

For all the power and flourish of the “Red State/Blue State” speech that launched President Obama’s national profile in 2004, whatever commonalities we may have as people are becoming more and more overshadowed by the laws being passed in states across this country where Republicans have decided to play a take-no-prisoners brand of politics, jamming through far-right laws by any means available and then doing whatever they can, through gerrymandering and other tactics, to make these laws practically impossible to strike off the books even if Democrats regain power in a state. It would be bad enough if this kind of assault were happening in red states alone, but since the 2010 elections it’s been a mainstay of several purple-to-blue states that just happened to vote Republican in that midterm election, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and here in Ohio as well.

Although the Supreme Court did not technically strike down the Voting Rights Act, they removed its key enforcement provision and insisted Congress come up with a new formula to determine when it gets used. (Chief Justice John Roberts argued that times had changed since the law was first enacted in the sixties. Funny, does that mean we need new gun laws since the Second Amendment was passed at a time when muskets were state of the art?) As recently as seven years ago, the last time Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act — with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress — it passed the House 390-33 and the Senate 98-0. This was anything but controversial at the time. Given how dysfunctional Congress has been since Obama’s inauguration, though — these days you can barely get a bill naming a post office through the Senate without Rand Paul trying to attach a personhood amendment to it — the idea that Congress will be able to pass a new formula to give the Voting Rights Act its muscle back is pretty much laughable, especially when so many Republican-controlled states have already, in just the week since the Supreme Court rendered its decision, rushed to pass through a number of voting restrictions that would have never passed the Justice Department’s smell test. Although courts could still strike down voting laws, that process takes a lot longer than the mechanism we once had under the Voting Rights Act, and in the meantime Republicans could tilt an election their way, then gerrymander districts to all but guarantee that they remain in power, like they’ve already done in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Although the drama of Wendy Davis and her filibuster in Texas has captured the public’s attention much more than what’s happened regarding abortion here in Ohio, what Republicans have done here is downright terrifying. Not only did they attach these radical new anti-abortion laws to the state budget at the last minute, in a way that let them get through without debate, but this also prevents the measures from being overturned by popular appeal as happened with the anti-union laws they tried to ram through a couple of years ago. (I wouldn’t be comfortable even with laws I agreed with being passed in such a manner.) From defunding rape crisis clinics merely for telling rape survivors that they are legally entitled to abortion, to mandating women pay for a medically-unnecessary ultrasound before they can get an abortion (and if it ends up being a trans-vaginal ultrasound then I really hope some woman has the courage to charge Ohio Republicans with raping her through that ultrasound), to creating a Gordian knot by requiring abortion clinics to get transfer agreements with hospitals and then barring public hospitals from making those agreements, all the way to redefining pregnancy as starting from the moment of fertilization (which now technically makes some forms of birth control abortion, so Ohio women who want them will now presumably be forced into getting ultrasounds before they can obtain birth control), the new laws just passed by Republicans in Ohio pretty much dwarf anything Republicans in other states have tried to do. If that’s not bad enough, Republicans in North Carolina are now trying to force through similar legislation literally as I type this, presumably trying to sneak this through while North Carolinians are too distracted by the holidays to pay much notice.

It is nothing short of galling that these stories of state Republicans running roughshod over these states and their citizens are not getting more attention. Yes, there have been big national news stories in recent months, but right now we’re back to the point where eliminations from “reality” television shows are mainstream national news stories. At what point will what millions of concerned citizens in Ohio, and North Carolina, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and other states where Republicans are launching a full-scale assault on people’s rights, have their voices heard?

Some may say that the obvious solution is for people like me to move to a blue state in New England, or on the west coast, where we won’t have to worry about these things. First of all, that’s a short-sighted view given how many of our friends are in these red-to-purple states where these things are taking place; leaving them behind would be cruel. More importantly, though, many people who would love nothing more than to move to a blue state cannot do so due to various factors, not the least of which is the expense involved in moving and the problems of finding jobs in this economy. There are also family issues involved for many of us; my sister and brother-in-law may soon be forced to move to Chicago because of my brother-in-law’s job, which means that if I were to leave the Toledo area, my elderly mother would be forced to rely on the help of strangers to help her with household tasks, and none of us are comfortable with that idea.

Maybe the time will soon come when same-sex marriage will be legal in all fifty states, but with the way other rights are being eroded across this country, that feels more and more like it would be a Pyrrhic victory. A few years ago, the constituency of Brighton Pavilion in England became the first to elect a member of the Green Party to the UK Parliament. It’s a nice coastal town, and apparently a mecca for Great Britain’s GLBT community. I don’t take it any of you could help me find work and a place to live there? It’s starting to feel more and more like moving there may be the last opportunity I have to keep what little sanity I still have.