Who Makes Whose History?

My headline question is occasioned by what struck me as an odd headline over a column by Jonathan Capehart, an opinion writer for the Washington Post and opinion voicer for MSNBC, “Obama continues to make gay history.” That column was accompanied by the following picture of a Newsweek cover:

It had been thought that with his belated support for gay marriage President Obama’s evolution was “complete“; who knew that he would keep evolving until gay himself?

Let us assume, however, that Obama’s gayness is political, not personal (and assuming further that, contra the feminists and the new left, that there is a distinction between personal and political). But whatever the nature (or not) of his gayness, can President Obama actually “make” gay history? Can a president, any president, hand a people or a group its history?

If he can, wouldn’t that mean that Earl Warren and the other (all white) Supreme Court justices made black history — not American history or legal history or civil rights history but black history — when they decided Brown v. Board of Education? Most supporters of gay marriage, like the Post’s Capehart, are usually accurately described as progressive, and most of the time progressives believe, say, that blacks make black history, women make women’s history, etc.

If Obama can make gay history, then Louis Brandeis made women’s history with his pioneering development of the “Brandeis brief,” relying on social science data more than legal analysis in promoting liberal causes such as women’s labor issues. In any event, it is useful to keep in mind that yesterday’s liberal causes don’t always seem so liberal today (or when they do, liberals don’t always still support them — remember when liberals supported colorblind equality?). “Before joining the Supreme Court,” George Will has just reminded us,

Louis Brandeis defended constitutional challenges to progressive legislation by using briefs stressing social science data, or what purported to be such, rather than legal arguments. He advanced his political agenda by bald assertions inexcusable even given the limited scientific knowledge of the time. For example, in his 1908 defense of an Oregon law restricting the number of hours women could work, he said “there is more water” in women’s than in men’s blood and women’s knees are constructed differently.

There are many lessons here about making history. One of them surely is “Beware of liberals bearing causes.”