A Facebook friend tagged me in a comment the other day, offering a hat tip for an image that he’d borrowed and posted. It was an equals sign, made of bacon.
It was an image I’d originally posted to Facebook two years ago, on the morning of June 26, 2013, the day the Supreme Court would issue two major rulings that would bolster the quickly mounting case for nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage: In one day, key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act were struck down, and Proposition 8 was tossed out.
As part of the representative obligations held by every out gay, my chosen celebratory sign for the virtual front lawn of my Facebook profile would 1) indicate my alignment with the cause of marriage equality, 2) remove myself, if only slightly, from the ubiquitous branding of the Human Rights Campaign, whose crimson and pink equality signs were swiftly overtaking the profile pictures of my whole gay network, and 3) express my enduring ardor and current hunger for bacon.
Once the decisions were delivered, other variations of the equals sign sprang up across social media, part of a creative burst of optimism. Even though nothing about the same-sex marriage debate had been finalized or ultimately solved, the notion of equality suddenly felt like something we could make our own, even if out of bacon. In the daylight of a victory, the equals sign became less a logo and more an emblem of a winning team.
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That Wednesday got a lot more credit for being a new day than a morning after. Just one day before, the Supreme Court had issued another major ruling: “Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General et al.” struck down key parts of the Voting Rights Act, gutting protections for disenfranchised voters that had stood through challenge for nearly 50 years. The “court errs egregiously,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissent.
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It only took an hour or so for the gay confetti to settle; as soon as it did, my bacon beacon of equality struck me as more fat than lean — not just cheap, but gloating and offensive.
The explanation I offered myself for this sudden change had something, I think, to do with diplomacy and content management: It’s a fallacy to believe that a Facebook post can represent the totality of one’s concerns or consciousness at a given moment, but it’s one that’s persistent enough that you’d be safer to expect it than not. (No one wants to be a one-issue poster. I just had to diversify my sharing portfolio. This was an optics thing, really.)
But nearly two years later, it happened again. This past week my network broke out in a red rash of equals signs, all pointing curiosity and clicks toward the unfolding, potentially definitive Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, just one hour away from the steps of the court, Baltimore was tearing itself to pieces as demonstrations following the death of Freddie Gray led to violence, fires, and looting (if you watch cable news), as well as large peaceful protests (if you’re on Twitter or Periscope).
This time, the disconnect I felt with the proliferating logo felt more profound. It wasn’t that I thought it was tacky or ill-timed, or tone deaf; it was as though I was watching the symbol have its very referent torched.
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In the same way a word morphs into nonsense when you say it over and over again, the repetitions and iterations of the equals sign — tucked into my feed between shots of burned out pharmacies, plumes of gas, and cable news anchors plugging their ears — rendered it meaningless. What did “=” even refer to? Where can I go to see this “equality” stuff in action? Is it still in beta? Is it even real? Who gets it and who doesn’t?
On social media, posting feels like a way of providing evidence of immersion in an issue, or at the very least registering that the ripples of a distant wave have lapped at your feet. And while platforms like Facebook have made injustices harder to ignore, and advocacy easier to activate, they’ve also helped to fracture our understanding of equality, splitting it into separate pursuits that struggle to help each other, rather than a shared goal across identities.
Comparisons are often drawn between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. (It’s even become commonplace to refer to the latter as the “new” civil rights movement, as though the former had reached some sort of resolution.) But even as those causes both seek the same effect — equality under the law — they’re treated as parallel concerns that run close but never converge (ironically, like an equals sign).
Social media doesn’t create these distinctions that make one equality appear distinct from another, but it can certainly reinforce them. Everything from our feeds to our friends lists contribute to a view of the world that inevitably leaves others out. It’s important to bear in mind that a view from one’s bubble is not a window on the world; and when it comes to equality, if it doesn’t belong to everybody, it doesn’t belong to you.
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Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.