This was the line that connected with me like a powerful right hook:
And for all of us who are married, the initiative feels like a gut-punch to our weddings, a cruel and bitter attack on our families and the homes we have built and will defend.
Sullivan's right. If you attack one group's marriage, you attack all marriages. Every church, every sect has been attacked on its marriages in its beginning years, and it is the larger society's acceptance of its members' right to marry according to their beliefs that has marked a group's becoming part of mainstream culture. The Mormon Church rewrote their own beliefs to gain acceptance, and to this day marriage is a major area of dissent and outright schism for the church. Lack of accepted marital status has given critics of GLBTs the chance to say "those people" must exercise their thwarted needs for love, sex, and belonging in perverted ways, since they cannot exercise them in the culturally approved ones, through marriage. With marriage, GLBTs are one step closer to the community at large. They have wedding planners and registries; they have anniversaries and their stars' weddings are in the pages of People and Us. They become familiar, not secret. They cannot be torn apart easily, as were the black couples who married by "jumping the broom," Sullivan's reference. They get to go through the who rigamarole of divorce court, another way to belong to mainstream culture.
Please, California voter friends, I don't care if it's hailing hammers on Election Day. Roust everyone you know who votes and get them out there. This is not something that should be settled by moneybag churches who are, in a lot of cases, going against their own out-of-state parishoners' feelings. This is not something that should be decided by quiet thuggery. This is something that should be resolved by members of the culture, by neighbors, families, and those who share the highways, stores, clubs, and movie theaters with fellow Californians.
Don't let old, frightened people tell us who may wed.
- Location:chained to my desk--again
- Mood:
determined - Music:"A Song for the Gods," Taipei Chinese Orchestra
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tammy212- tammy212
- Tamora Pierce's Homepage
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I can't help but see the parallels between gay marriage and anti-miscegenation laws. Particularly since many of the same arguments are being trotted out. I can only hope that, a few decades after gay marriage is legalized, people won't be able to imagine that they could have been illegal in the recent past....
Come hail or sleet or the more likely sunshine, I'll be handing in my ballot marked NO on Prop 8.
However you look at it, Prop. 8 is only for the convenience of those who dislike homosexuals. This "protect marriage" policy is just an excuse- who are they to decide the meaning of marriage in any event?
The argument that it is "right" for a man and woman to be together because it is a law of nature is ridiculous. As humans, have we not defied many laws of nature set for us? We've outlived our general life span, and technology itself is a defiance of nature. Education is also a defiance of nature. We've orreached ourselves when it comes to overcoming what nature has set before us- why should it matter if some people choose people of their own gender?
Gay marriage will not inconvenience those who are uncomfortable with the fact. They are not shoving it in the faces of those who oppose it; it is their right to get married if that is what they want. It is those who are for Prop. 8 who are inconveniencing the others--forcing their ideas, in short, on those who do not agree with it.
The Prop. 8 commericals complain that schools are teaching their children that gay marriage is right. And what is wrong with that? Do you /want/ your children to grow up prejudiced? It is because we are raised being taught that it is /wrong/ that so much prejudice and bullying happens even in today.
They claim that gay couples will be allowed the same rights as married couples, such as hospital visitation rights. They simply want to stay the fact that "marriage" refers to a man and a woman. But again, that is only for the /convenience/ and peace of mind for those who oppose it. We are raised to think of the word "marriage" with sentimental value-- gay citizens are raised to think the same. Marriage can have sentimental value for them just the way it has sentimental value for those who are not. It is the same thing as telling a couple, "You can live together, but you cannot marry."
Many couples these days move in with one another without getting married. Yet most still get married eventually. Why? It has sentimental meaning. It is romantic in a sense to be married, bonded legally to another person. Who are those who approve of Prop. 8 to deny a human being that right?
In short, Prop. 8 is just the obstacle that those who wish to take away basic human rights from others have set up. If Prop. 8 is passed, that will just make us, the American people, look bad. Some time from now, whether weeks or years, gay marriage will be made legal regardless of what people say now. And the people then will learn of history, today's history, and the teachers will talk of those who passed Prop. 8 as the ones unwilling to change, the villains who denied people the rights that they will consider normal, because in that time, it will seem just as ridiculous to them as other stuff may seem to us. They will see us as horrible people who stopped people from rights because they are different. We will be, in their eyes, little different from those in our past who have stopped people from rights because of the color of their skin.
Sorry for ranting.
I just recently started seeing those Prop 8 commercials you're talking about, and... gah.
I'm glad you were able to defend your thoughts and beliefs against her without going totally psycho which I might've done. e.e There's no such thing as separate but equal. To be equal isn't to set them off in some little box safe and separate from "contaminating" the rest of the population.
Those commericals just make me grind my teeth.
Nice post. Thanks for the link.
What ever happened to parents being responsible for their children? What ever happened to net nanny? Why can't parents be responsible enough to take care of their own children, so that the entire Internet doesn't have to be censored heavily for all Australians.
I don't even need to mention the fact it's going to cost extraordinary amounts of money (better put to use in cancer research, education, health), as well as slowing down the Internet considerably.
Why does the Australian government decide if I, an adult in every sense of the word, am not allowed to watch adult movies if I wanted to (I don't, but you get the point), or wanted to research an up-and-coming young photographer who does artistic nudes?
Why am I being forced to have my Internet censored just because parents are too lazy or irresponsible to adequately take care of their own children and make sure they're safe on the Internet?