Finally! For the longest time I have stuttered and stumbled at the tongue as I tried to enunciate my issue with the LGBT community's up-in-arms-ness over the rights of gay marriage.I have tried to state my case and come off rather poorly. I began to think, after some quiet time, that maybe I was what others were accusing: righteous, ignorant, careless, apathetic, anti-gay.
But then I read Bob Ostertag's wonderful op-ed on the Huffington Post.
In it he accomplishes (without trying I'm sure) what I've been laboring to do: explain why I think there are other, more important things than gay marriage.
YES! EXACTLY!"Gay marriage" turns the real issues of equal rights for sexual minorities upside down and paints us into a reactionary little corner of our own making. Yes, married people get special privileges denied to others. Denied not to just gays and lesbians, but to all others. Millions of straight people remain unmarried, and for a huge variety of reasons, from mothers whose support networks do not include their children's fathers, to hipsters who can't relate to religious institutions. We could be making common cause with them. We could be fighting for equal rights for everyone, not just gays and lesbians, but for all unmarried people. In the process we would leave religious institutions to define marriage however their members see fit.
That's how you win at politics, isn't it? You build principled coalitions that add up to a majority, and try not to hand potent mobilizing issues to your opposition in the process.
We have done the opposite. Instead of tearing down the walls of privilege enjoyed by the nuclear family, we are demanding our own place at the married couples' table (leaving all those other unmarried people out in the cold).
I know the idea of gay liberation is ancient by today's standards, but it wasn't so long ago that a lot of gay and lesbian activism began from the premise that the queer perspective was one that could offer a particular contribution to a more just society as a whole. My how times change.
Is this really where decades of struggle for sexual freedom ends? With the state granting its blessing to homosexual nuclear families emerging from City Hall, husband-and-husband or wife-and-wife, with the photographer and the rice and the whole bit, finally having become just like them?
Not for me. Not for my family, with its various men, each of whom I love in a different way, a child, and two moms. Not that my family is any sort of queer norm. But that's the beautiful thing about queer culture: there is no norm. We piece together our families, holding on to those relationships that work."
Often those who disagree with me (viciously or peacefully) tell me "it's about equal rights". Well - why can't we band together with all the others without equal rights and create a truly unified front for equal treatment? Why must we draw a line in the sand and say "NO! This is a GAY ISSUE. WE NEED OUR RIGHTS."
Truthfully, everyone needs their rights. And they need to speak up and fight for them. It's not about being invited to the hetero marriage table so we can pick out groom and groom cakes and take Sears family portraits.
It's about decency and the rights to live how we see fit. Also, the article is worth reading because it has some interesting info on Mr. Warren that I've not heard elsewhere.
Someone should forward this piece around to all those raising their second uproar in regards to Rick Warren. I'd love to see how that discussion goes.
On small issue all those other people mentioned, HAVE THE RIGHT TO MARRY. THe mom can marry her Baby Daddy. The hipster can go to town hall. I am not allowed to marry my boyfriend.
ReplyDeleteSo if the sexual revolution isn't supposed to end at gay marriage, where does it end? There is very that is easier than declaring marriage a passe institution. So what's the goal? Is this goal, in the next 20 years (I'll be generous, in our lifetimes?) salable to the American voters?
ReplyDeleteI've actually talked to some people before who've had a few really good ideas. However, their ideas would never get a semblance of a voting base. They call themselves Anarchists.
I sympathize with you that what the "gay agenda" is aiming for isn't perfect. No, marriage isn't perfect. But it will end problems that gay people face.
Changes take time. Drastically changing the American ideas of the familial unit, while not inherently bad, would undoubtedly not happen quickly. I'm thinking of past revolutions, where status-quos both political and social, have changed dramatically and quickly. Not many of them ended well.
You know what really pisses me off. . is why now? Where was everyone when Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, and Utah passed their amendments in 2004? Where was everyone when the state I live in, South Carolina, and Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin passed their amendments in 2006? Where was the ire? Where was the anger? This all started back in 1998. But it happens in California and it's like OMG we must fight, fight, fight. I'm sorry but where were you when my rights were taken away two years ago? I really don't have any sympathy for you now.
ReplyDeleteto Ghostlite:
ReplyDeleteReally? You don't sympathize with others who lost their rights, just because no one sympathized with yours?
But to answer the real question, there are many reasons why the California vote was indeed more important. First off, California had been actually giving out gay marriages. Families were created; children were adopted. And then the vote took that away; it destroyed families which previously had been legal. That was the difference in California.
The other part is money. And politics. Which, the fact is, are many times one in the same. Given the current political climates in many of the states that already lost, no amount of money thrown at them would have made the vote go differently. California was different. California was liberal. California was where advocacy groups wanted to make their stand.
Unfortunately, the Mormons, a smaller minority than gays, had more money to throw at the issue. And so we lost. Goes to show that you can't ever discount a minority.
And I do sympathize with your frustration. I grew up in Michigan, and was there in 2006, when our state constitution was similarly amended. With similarly low amounts of outrage. Or at least national coverage.