Rights and the Vampire-Human Social Contract

With the advent of synthetic blood produced by the Yakonomo Corporation, vampires decided it was safe to reveal their existence to the human world. According to Tiffany McElroy, a broadcast journalist in the mockumentary In Focus: Vampires in America, the so-called Great Revelation forced humanity to “reexamine every notion we’ve ever had about life, the natural world, and even our own existence.”¹ And while men and women everywhere were reconsidering what it meant to be a member of the human race, the Great Revelation also raised an intriguing political question: Do vampires deserve rights?

Even more overtly than Charlaine Harris in her Southern Vampire Mysteries, Alan Ball uses True Blood to explore the questions the Great Revelation raises regarding equality, justice, and civil rights in a democratic society. Tapping into contemporary debates about diversity, gender, identity politics, and immigration, True Blood offers important philosophical insights about justice and the proper role of the state in establishing and protecting rights.

We’re Here. We’re Dead. Get Over It.

In a televised address to the United States as part of the Great Revelation, an unnamed vampire stood in front of the American flag claiming that “all we [vampires] want is to coexist with you [human beings] and enjoy the same rights and freedoms as everyone else.”² Advocates for vampire rights like Nan Flanagan, spokesperson for the American Vampire League (AVL), echo these sentiments. In an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher, Nan asserts, “We’re citizens. We pay taxes. We deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else.”³ Vampires are seeking the equal protection of the state in exchange for their adherence to the basic laws and norms of society.

Implied within Nan’s statement is a traditional view of the state as having been formed by a social contract. A social contract is an agreement between individuals, or between citizens and their government, that establishes and underwrites the laws that govern society. Under such a contract, individuals consent to enforceable limits on their actions in exchange for rights and protections provided by the state. Nan maintains that because vampires participate fully in the civic obligations asked of any citizen—respecting the law and paying taxes—they deserve to be treated as equal partners in the social contract alongside human beings.

In order to promote vampire rights, the AVL actively lobbies in support of the Vampire Rights Amendment (VRA), a bill that, if passed, would provide a guarantee that equal protection under the law will not be denied to any individual on the basis of being a vampire. The VRA would provide constitutional recognition of vampires, allowing them to file suit against public acts of discrimination. It would shield vampires from attempts to infringe on their social, political, and economic rights.

The VRA is not without its critics, however. Spearheaded by the Fellowship of the Sun, opponents of vampire rights offer numerous arguments to discredit the notion that vampires deserve equal protection. For example, Reverend Theodore Newlin, leader of the Fellowship, appears on a TBBN news program to argue that the state should never have granted vampires basic political rights, such as the right to vote, because it “legitimized their unholy existence.” Claiming that vampires are “creatures of Satan” and a demonic presence, Newlin insists that principles of political equality should not apply to vampires because they “have no soul.”⁴

The contrasting perspectives of the AVL and the Fellowship of the Sun, while fictional, have a familiar ring. Contemporary American society is filled with clashes between minority and majority groups (divided by race, gender, and sexual orientation), religious and secular communities (divided over issues like the teaching of evolution in public schools and public displays of religious artifacts), and different interpretations of the obligations the state has to its citizens. These debates are unavoidable in a liberal republic like the United States, a regime that protects individual rights and in which citizens actively participate in government through the election of representatives. What makes the Great Revelation so interesting is that it creates a compelling test of social contract theory and gives us a new perspective on the demands of diversity in democratic society.

This American “Un-Life”

For a small Louisiana town, Bon Temps has a vibrantly diverse population. It has its religious and secular communities, public employees and business owners, and a host of unique individuals who represent different elements of American life. In Bon Temps we meet Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic, single waitress; her grandmother Adele Stackhouse, whose greatest joy seems to come from learning about local history at her Descendants of the Glorious Dead meetings; Sookie’s handsome, blue-collar, womanizing brother, Jason; Sam Merlotte, owner of the popular bar and grill; Tara Thornton, a strongwilled African American woman who is quick to confront anyone in whom she senses even a hint of racism or sexism; her cousin Lafayette Reynolds, an openly gay short-order cook whom we would expect to find in a more urban environment than Bon Temps; and Arlene Fowler, a single mother in an on-again-off-again relationship with a man who currently goes by the name Rene Lenier. And when Bill Compton walks into Merlotte’s, Bon Temps “welcomes” its first vampire.

The cast of characters that makes Bon Temps unique is also what makes it typically American. It’s a community of individuals all trying to carve out a space for themselves in which to pursue the things that make them happy. The United States was formed largely out of groups of people as diverse as this collection of Bon Temp residents, all of whom agreed to establish a government that didn’t impose a uniform way of life upon its citizens. Borrowing from the political philosophy of John Locke (1632—1704), the American founders established a regime that protects individual rights and allows citizens to pursue their own happiness so long as they don’t trample on the “life, liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.”⁵ Sookie can fall in love with a vampire, Jason can date an assortment of women, and Lafayette can, well, be Lafayette. All are free to pursue happiness in their own ways as long as they don’t hurt anyone else.

That’s not to say that the United States has always lived up to its founding promises. As Tara is quick to remind everyone, America’s legacy of slavery and its ongoing problems of race and gender discrimination fly in the face of the values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Ideally, though, ours is a pluralistic society, with tolerance for diversity and a commitment to individual rights. According to our pluralistic ideals, you’re free to express yourself openly and practice your chosen faith without having to subscribe to a particular set of officially sanctioned beliefs. Moreover, you can enjoy the rights of a citizen without having to belong to a particular race, gender, class, or (in the case of vampires) “life-or-death-hood.” As long as your actions don’t directly impose on others, the state should leave you alone.

The advent of the synthetic TruBlood (called TrueBlood in the Southern Vampire Mysteries) makes it possible to expand the concept of pluralism to include vampires. As Nan explained to Bill Maher, after he challenged her to consider the historical legacy of vampires feeding on and exploiting humans, “Now that the Japanese have perfected synthetic blood, which satisfies all our nutritional needs, there is no need for anyone to fear us.”⁶ It’s because of the development of synthetic blood that vampires decided to make their existence known. No longer needing to prey on human beings, vampires can “mainstream” into human society. Everyone can live and let un-live.

A Vampire’s Right to Life?

Locke’s natural rights philosophy provides the basis for the equal protection of life, liberty, and property for human beings, but does it really support the incorporation of vampires into civil society? Even apart from the obvious paradox of enforcing a right to life for someone who’s already dead, the claim that vampires have natural rights runs up against the belief of groups like the Fellowship of the Sun (probably shared by many ordinary citizens) that vampires are not endowed with any natural rights because their very existence is unnatural.

The Reverend Newlin puts forward just such a notion. From his perspective, God could not have endowed vampires with the same natural rights as human beings because vampires are not really God’s creations at all. In an interview on the TV network TBBN, Newlin says of vampires, “Literally, they have no soul.” Lacking a soul, vampires can be denied the basic rights of human beings. Newlin suggests that vampires are a perversion of nature to whom natural rights need not apply. His perspective recalls actual historical arguments suggesting that members of certain racial minorities are not fully human, which led to laws depriving them of rights on the basis of skin color (and even enslaving them). By the same token, the argument that vampires cannot be granted the same rights as human beings because they’re “unnatural” calls to mind claims used to oppose legal recognition for same-sex unions.

Of course, Nan Flanagan and other members of the AVL attempt to counter the claims that their existence is unnatural. “Who’s to say what’s natural? Who’s to say that what my body can do is any less natural than what yours can do?” asks Nan in her In Focus interview. Statements about naturalness are matters of perspective, faith, and belief—not empirical claims that can be demonstrated with any certainty.⁷ But in the theory of John Locke, rights are natural, not merely established by law or the social contract. The social contract is merely our agreement to submit to a common authority that exists solely to enforce and protect the rights we already possess by nature. So from a Lockean perspective, where does that leave our theory of the state in terms of its obligations to citizens whose bodies never grow warmer than room temperature?

It’s clear that the state must do something to avoid extreme lawlessness. From the moment Bill arrives in Bon Temps, we witness the problems that would prevail if the state didn’t establish and maintain equal rights. Mack and Denise Rattray are among a growing class of criminals who sell vampire blood (or V). Their attempt to drain Bill outside of Merlotte’s Bar and Grill is foiled by Sookie, who is herself attacked by the Rattrays later when they come back bent on revenge. The brutal murder of fang-bangers by Rene Lenier (or, as he was known in the nearby town of Bunkie, Drew Marshall); the vigilante torching of the home of Liam, Diane, and Malcolm; Eric’s murder of Royce (one of the arsonists); and Steve Newlin’s attempt to initiate a war against the vampires to satisfy his quest for vengeance after the death of his father—all are the kinds of violent acts that should invoke the protection of the state. If vampires were given no legal status to guarantee this protection, we would undoubtedly see even more and worse cases of this sort of violence.

But it’s not just police protections we expect from the state. We also count on the state for protection against unjust discrimination, whether by government agencies or private businesses. A news broadcast on TBBN reminds us of one of those important protections when it announces that the Vermont Supreme Court overturned laws restricting human-vampire marriage, finding them to be an unconstitutional violation of equal protection. ⁸ We’re also reminded of these protections by the title sequence of each episode of True Blood, which includes historical images of the struggle of African Americans in the civil rights movement for the right to be fully enfranchised and to participate at all levels of the social, economic, and political life of their nation. It was the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection clause”—stating that equal protection under the law cannot be denied to any born or naturalized citizen—that allowed African Americans and other minorities to seek help from the courts to overcome discrimination and gain equal access to housing, voting, employment, education, and public accommodations. Vampires face similar discrimination after the Great Revelation, at least to some extent. As Bill plans the renovations he wants to make on his newly inherited home, Sookie reminds him that the property is legally his only if the VRA passes. It’s not enough for the state to protect people from harm. It must also ensure equal access and opportunity for all people, so they can be fully included within the social contract that underlies civil society.

The Great Fanged Menace

Of course, one could argue that because vampires have a history of feeding on people—however valiantly Nan attempts to gloss over that bit of history by claiming that there’s no historical record of violence—vampires are not deserving of rights. But the AVL can counter that human beings too have a record of abuse and inhumane acts, including slavery, dropping an atomic bomb on civilian populations, thousands of years of war, and, in just the last century, genocide on an unprecedented scale. A history of violence can’t be used as the basis for a blanket denial of political rights unless we’re prepared to disenfranchise ourselves as well.

Fear of rogue vampires, who assert predatory superiority over human beings and refuse to feed on synthetic blood, causes skepticism and hatred of all vampires by some human beings. True Blood provides evidence that there are quite a few rogues roaming around—after all, the assassination of Theodore Newlin by rogue vampires is what led to his son Steve’s taking over the Fellowship of the Sun. But even if not all vampires want to mainstream, this isn’t a good reason to deny equal rights to vampires as a group. Many human beings are dangerous—the Rattrays and Rene come to mind—but the actions of a few lawbreakers don’t justify restricting the rights of everyone else. Moreover, groups like the Fellowship of the Sun pose just as serious a threat to the vampire community as rogue vampires do to human beings. The Fellowship’s plan to make all vampires “greet the sun” aims at a vampire holocaust. And the paramilitary training of the Soldiers of the Sun, an elite group of vampire hunters who serve the Fellowship, shows that they mean to deliver on their threats. As Steve’s bumper sticker announces, the Fellowship wants to take the “un” out of “undead.”

Just as we can’t strip all human beings of their political rights because of the danger posed by a few, it would be misguided and wrong to do that to vampires. The Lockean theory of the state would demand the equal protection of vampire rights if, of course, vampires really possessed any rights by nature. But what exactly entitles someone to rights, and how do we know who has them?

Locke argued that since God created us, we are in effect God’s property. God wants us to live, and we therefore have a right not only to go on living, but to retain our liberty and property, which Locke thought were necessary for our survival. Our duties to others are derived from our obligation to protect God’s property. But is belief in God necessary in order to be admitted to the social contract that protects our God-given rights? Locke suggests that it is, going so far as to claim that “those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God” because “promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bond of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.”⁹ Since Locke’s political philosophy of toleration extends only to those who believe in God, it is legitimate from his perspective to withhold full legal protection from those who in all other respects adhere to the civil law of the state.

Moreover, Locke simply assumes that human beings are the only creatures whom God endowed with rights. But can we really fault him for not anticipating vampires’ coming out of the coffin and insisting that they too have rights that society should recognize?

Vampires Were People, Too

Given the problems the Great Revelation poses for Locke’s view of natural rights and the state, we might want to look to alternative ways of understanding where rights come from and how they must be upheld. One such view was proposed by John Rawls (1921—2002), who, like Locke, believed that rights exist prior to the establishment of the state, which comes into being through a social contract designed to protect those rights. However, unlike Locke, Rawls did not couch his theory in terms of God-given rights in a state of nature. Consequently, Rawls offered a theory that allows for greater toleration and diversity within a democratic society. Famously, Rawls proposed a thought experiment involving what he called “the original position,” showing how it would be possible for a group of rational deliberators to arrive at a consensus concerning the social contract, without appealing to divisive theories about natural or divine rights.¹⁰

Imagine a group of individuals—not just human beings but also vampires, shapeshifters, Weres, fairies, maenads, and perhaps other creatures that are capable of entering into rational deliberation. Stand them outside of any existing society and ask them to choose from a host of political alternatives the structure of the society under which they will live together. Imagine also that they’re completely ignorant of their own personal characteristics—their race, class, gender, religion, species, and social and historical circumstances—although they do have some general understanding of biology, psychology, economics, politics, and other subjects. Most important, assume that they’re rational beings capable of understanding the consequences of their decisions behind this hypothetical “veil of ignorance.” What social arrangements would they choose in such conditions?

Rawls believes that if a group of individuals entered into a social contract under these circumstances, with no knowledge of their own personal fortunes to bias their considerations in favor of their own group, they would all choose a society that, first and foremost, provides basic civil rights and freedoms for each individual equally. This would allow for a society in which all of the parties to this contract would be able to peacefully coexist and pursue the good life regardless of whom or what they are, provided of course they respect the rights of others. If anti-vampire zealots like the Newlins were forced to deliberate about justice behind Rawls’s veil of ignorance, not knowing if they might themselves thirst for a platelet-filled liquid diet, their anti-vampire bigotry couldn’t influence their decisions about the distribution of basic rights and social goods. Likewise, vampires like Liam, Diane, and Malcolm wouldn’t be so willing to consider vampire supremacy a foregone conclusion if, for all they knew, they could end up as mortal as their prey.

According to a Lockean view, the state exists only to protect our basic natural rights to things like life, liberty, and property. The Rawlsian social contract, on the other hand, is also concerned with distributive justice, the question of how to allocate fairly the benefits and burdens of living in society. One of the principles that Rawls believes the parties to the social contract would agree to in the “original position” is that “all social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these is to everyone’s advantage.”¹¹ Inequality of outcome in society is justifiable as long as everyone has equality of opportunity and, moreover, as long as social inequalities work to everyone’s advantage, especially those at the bottom of society. For example, we can justify paying a doctor more than a ditch digger, since the extra compensation will attract the most qualified people to the medical profession, something from which we all benefit. Rawls’s principles of justice are designed to extend fairness and recognition to everyone, especially to those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. For as Tara tells Jason when they’re sitting alone on the couch in Adele’s living room, “Everybody is, you know, somebody.... We’re all just trying to be seen, to matter.”¹² Consequently, deliberators behind the veil of ignorance would favor social arrangements that treat every person as though he or she does matter. For example, Rawls believes that a just state would provide everyone with fair and equal access to basic social resources like education, employment, and participation in the political process.

When it comes to the distribution of economic resources, Rawls’s principles of justice might very well work to the advantage of human beings. Vampires like Eric Northman and Bill (let alone Godric) have had centuries to accumulate private wealth that gives them a substantial economic advantage over mortals. Given the power, influence, and access to other resources that comes with wealth, this disparity could lead to what Rawls considers an unjust outcome, namely, an extreme inequality that is in no way beneficial to the least advantaged, in this case, human beings. Rawls’s theory of justice forces us to reexamine how society deals with the advantages derived from accumulated wealth. Behind the veil of ignorance, rational deliberators might choose to institute a system that allows vampires and mortals alike to accumulate private property and will it to others, but it’s also likely that they would want the government to redistribute some of that wealth through progressive taxation and providing social services to the needy. While Rawls still defends classically liberal notions of capitalism and private property, his theory of justice also allows for a progressive redistribution of wealth that ensures a social safety net and extends to everyone the opportunity to succeed. Such principles of distributive justice are absent from the social contract theory of John Locke.

Rawls focuses on how to secure the basic liberties and opportunities that will allow all citizens to participate fully in the social, political, and economic life of a diverse society. For Rawls, the validity of the social contract doesn’t depend on our sharing any belief about God. All the Rawlsian contract demands of us is that we possess the capacity for reason. If vampires are just as capable as human beings of rational thought (and there is significant evidence on True Blood that they are), then they can be equal partners in the social contract. Reason would order society, securing equal liberty for all, while ensuring a distribution of resources that benefits even the least advantaged in society. In some cases, that distribution might benefit human beings, while in other cases it might benefit vampires. In no way, however, could reason lead us to establish a society based on unfairly denying basic rights to any group or individual. If our diverse human population can construct a just society using the Rawlsian thought experiment of the original position, there’s no reason that vampires can’t be party to that contract. For all that matters is the rational exercise of the mind, not the beating pulse of the heart or God’s granting of a soul, when formulating the principles of a just society.

On Coffins and Contracts

Although Alan Ball’s True Blood explicitly deals with the political challenges vampirism poses for human society, it’s in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries that we find the best example of a justification for political rights based on rational deliberation. In Dead until Dark, Sookie does not kill Rene Lenier. Rather, she escapes and runs to Bill’s house, where she telephones the authorities just before passing out. Bill comes to visit her in the hospital, the same hospital where Rene, now under arrest, is also recovering. Knowing Bill’s desire for vengeance, Sookie tells him, “Don’t kill Rene.... [T]here’s been enough murder. Let the law do it. I don’t want any more witch hunts coming after you. I want us to have peace.”¹³ Her request reflects the view that first and foremost, the state must protect everyone’s rights equally to eliminate the problems caused by personal vengeance and private defense. Only then can we establish the peace necessary for a free society. But it’s equally important to afford access to social goods in a manner that guarantees equal opportunity to all. As Ball demonstrates time and again in True Blood, the twofold goals of political equality and access to key social resources regardless of race, gender, sexuality, class, or “dietary needs” is the lifeblood of any social contract that could underwrite a pluralist democracy like that of the United States.¹⁴

NOTES

1 In Focus: Vampires in America, supplementary material on the DVD True Blood: The Complete First Season, Home Box Office Network, 2009.

2 Ibid.

3 Episode 101, “Strange Love.”

4 Episode 102, “First Taste.”

5 These are the rights, identified by Locke, that no one can be justly deprived of. See John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas P. Peardon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), pp. 5-6.

6 Episode 101, “Strange Love.”

7 For more on the problem of deciding what’s “natural,” see Andrew and Jenny Terjesen’s chapter in this volume, “Are Vampires Unnatural?”

8 Episode 112, “You’ll Be the Death of Me.”

9 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), p. 52.

10 John Rawls first elaborated these ideas in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

11 Ibid., p. 54.

12 Episode 102, “The First Taste.”

13 Charlaine Harris, Dead until Dark (New York: Ace Books, 2001), p. 291.

14 I would like to thank Dean A. Kowalski, Timothy M. Dale, and Rochelle Sack for their observations and suggestions while developing this essay, and George Dunn and Rebecca Housel for their comments and revisions. Thanks also to Margaret Hankenson for introducing me to True Blood, and to Kristi Nelson Foy for the Sookie Stackhouse novels.