If we avoid the tempting but misleading analogy to race and look at what's directly at stake, the combination of widespread opposition to same-sex marriage and equally widespread support for other gay rights is easier to understand. Gay rights in employment and civil unions don't require the elimination of longstanding and culturally potent sex roles. Same-sex marriage does. And while a lot of people reject the narrow and repressive sex roles of the past, many others long for the kind of meaningful gender identities that traditional marriage seems to offer.One guess at what group feels they were robbed of "meaningful gender identities," and thus likely long for them with a much greater intensity than the rest of the populace. It's quite likely that the same impulse that would attract men by the hundreds of thousands to the Million Man March--the sense that something had been lost--is the same impulse that would lead them to reject an expansion, and to their mind, a redefinition of marriage. I have been stuck on religion in this conversation--I've forgotten all about history. It really explains a lot. I know we're hurting folks. But it really is time to heal up and get it moving.
« Mark my words | Main | Team of rivals rant... » Even more Prop 814 Nov 2008 05:27 pm
Sorry, sorry, sorry. I can only write what I feel folks. I'm not entirely convinced by Rich Ford's argument here, but he's gotten to one essential truth, that has thus far gone unstated:
Comments (79)
I'm not sure why same-sex marriage needs be presented as an issue of gay rights. (Work with me, here:) A single woman has the right to marry a single man. A single man has the right to marry a single woman. Why do women have a right that's denied to men? Why do men have a right that's denied women? I'm straight. I don't want to marry a man. But I oughtta have that right--I've got plenty of rights I don't use, or want to use, that remain my legal imperative. 
Are we still talking about race and Prop 8? I thought that was behind us. Anyway, let's start talking about ignorance and fear and bigotry and Prop 8, and let's leave race out of it.
You're not wrong but this: "But it really is time to heal up and get it moving." Easier said than done, brother.
I think that if you regress religion, race, economic status and prop 8 voting, you'll still find that race is irrelevant once you control for religious feeling. The answer to this problem isn't marching, rallies, or blaming black people. It's having long, heartfelt conversations with neighbors about what this really means. That people are already building lives and families together, and that offering them gay marriages does not encourage (nor does banning discourage) this. What it does is allow a modicum of security and stability within that relationship. For their spouse, for their children; this stuff is essential.
My African American family delivered 4 votes against prop.8 but it would have been three if our grown daughter had not been able to talk some sense to her 69 year old father. Now my husband is not religious at all and as an engineer has always been interested in science and yet he clung to his "mild" homophobia--I guess it was a Black manhood thing. I bet there was a generational divide in the Black vote on prop. 8, maybe we need a Sarah Silverman type campaign among Black voters. I also just read a long piece on the Daily Beast by Kevin Sessums who interviewed a half dozen gay entertainment industry "machers" on the prop. 8 vote and the first thing I noticed that is that they were all White--no people of color. None explicitly blamed voters of color for the outcome and David Geffen made the most sense, decrying the campaign's lack of outreach to these communities. But before any of these guys start lamenting the lack of enlightenment among Black voters they should take a look at their own companies and see how diverse their own organizations are.
"http://www.msnaughty.com/blog/2008/11/14/passing-it-on-google-and-the-secret-list/" Following on this, it's worth remembering we're only 5 years out from Lawrence v. Texas, the SCOTUS decission that gave same-sex couples the right to have sex.
DBT, I have those conversations when the opportunity presents. And TNC, thanks for caring, thanks for writing, thanks. Of course, thanks for seeing your own self interest here, too--which means maybe you don't need the thanks? But we all do.
What I'm interested in is what kinds of arguments work in terms of convincing homophobic people to either can the homophobia or decide that they can have their homophobia but still allow gays to have their marriage. I grew up being told that gay is ok, so I don't have that perspective. Any of you guys who got over your own prejudices, what did the trick?
"The answer to this problem isn't marching, rallies, or blaming black people. It's having long, heartfelt conversations with neighbors about what this really means." While I agree that generally most minds will be changed through these types of conversations, I think the real sense of urgency or necessity in having these types of conversations comes from the more public deomnstrative things like marching, rallies. It puts real people, real faces, real stories to what is otherwise a footnote on the back page of the paper. I mean even with prop 8. very few folks outside of the people like Sullivan for whom gay rights are sort of central issues were even giving sifificant time to prop 8. I guess what I'm saying is that yeah, person to person conversations are the most effective means of persuasion, often people need an external trigger in order for those types of conversations to take place... I keep thinking as I watch the ire that is currently being directed at the Morman churchfor financing yes on prop 8 how in the world could the Morman church have even been able able to compete in terms of money spent unless people, the gay community included, were completely asleep? I think I could count on one hand the number of Morman I've met in my entire life...People need a wake up call.
Instead of guessing as to why people voted for Prop 8 (homophobia, yuck factor, religion, longing for traditional gender roles, etc.), why doesn't someone just ASK them.
This had not occurred to me at all.
In my experience, the difference between a person who supports and a person who opposes legal gay marriage is often (though, not always) that the person who supports gay marriage knows gay people who are in a stable, loving relationship (with kids, even!) who are or want to be married. It's a lot harder to oppose gay marriage when you've met the partner of your co-worker and discovered he's a personable guy whom you enjoy talking to/having a beer with/bowling with.
Very insightful. Thank you for it. I quoted you and Ford in my own blog. Not sure I added much to the discussion, but I wanted to document the stream of thought. QT
This is an interesting post T-NC, and maybe you're on to something. But, I think when those exit polls came out, the thing that was weird about them was that African-American women were more likely to vote for Prop. 8. The sample size wasn't large enough for the poll to be really accurate, but I think it was 74% compared with 69% for AAs as a whole. Which would mean something like a 10-point gender spread. It's possible you're pinning this on the wrong gender.
TNC and fellow commenters. I am very sorry. I pasted the wrong thing in my quote. I DID NOT mean to put in a URL to my blog. I meant to quote back from a previous comment, but hit "post" before I double checked. TNC, will you kill that post when you have a moment? Thanks!
Lizzy L: I wish I could share your optimism. I have been together with my boyfriend for almost eight years (we live in CA) and get along with his family very well - I have spent every Thanksgiving with them, most Christmases etc. And yet my boyfriend had to talk his parents out of voting Yes on 8, his mother for religious reasons, his father because of 'activist judges'. My boyfriend could only convince them not to vote at all. In the end, there are still parents and friends who will willingly sacrifice the happiness of those close to them in the name of some abstract principle.
Any of you guys who got over your own prejudices, what did the trick? I convinced a couple of homophobic friends of mine this way. I told them "If gays want to become as miserable as us, then why stop them?"
I'm sorta (sorta) with Bakum up there that there is an element of red herring in continuing this discussion of black voters and Prop 8--Catholics, White Protestants, married people all voted for Prop 8 by clear, big majorities. That said, the point of this post (and Ford's argument) is potentially interesting. Since the exit polls recorded race and gender, one could presumably look at black male voters as a group. I looked but I couldn't find any breakdowns along those lines. Does anyone else know if this information is out there? Then again, the numbers, at that point and some before it, are getting pretty small for a sample size.
The sample size wasn't large enough for the poll to be really accurate, but I think it was 74% compared with 69% for AAs as a whole. Which would mean something like a 10-point gender spread. Oops. Thanks JM, I missed this when I started my previous comment. Do (or anyone) have a source for this?
I was worried about whether I remembered the numbers right, so I went and looked it up. Here's a link to the infamous poll: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=CAI01p1 The sample's too small to really know what's going on, but it certainly doesn't support the hypothesis that African-American men are to blame . . .
I'm superthick on this issue, never understood/was too young to understand what the MMMarch was about, but meaningful gender identities - like in a privileged, myopic way, I think a lot of us white dudes look at black men and feel yall are living the meaningful gender identities that we've been robbed of, or maybe robbed ourselves of. Like to paraphrase Paula Cole (and flip Jeru The Damaja), where have all the white cowboys gone? Like honestly, I listen to rap the same way my grandfather came home to watch Bonanza or went out to catch John Wayne flicks. I'm not on some supersimplistic "50's my thugged out hero" fanboyism like your average high school teenage white male was 4 years ago, it's more complicated than that, but there's something of that there. And needless to say, the white male executive in 2008 isn't living the life of the dudes on Mad Men. That's over. Whereas Ron Artest, he's nuts but he's living a meaningful gender role alright. Stanley Crouch is slapping his fellow scholars. Fabolous jacked Sebastian Telfair's chain. And he's gone platinum twice! Like it's criminal and terrible and whatnot, but there's still that freedom and swashbuckle tomfoolery there that we don't have as easy access to. So to me it's almost more like, we white people live in such an androgenized culture anyway that to us homosexuality is just whatever, what difference does it make once the gender lines have gotten so fuzzy anyway? Whereas - to make a HUGE generalization - I don't think you've seen as much blurring of the lines, at least not in the hoods.
"I really don't understand why they don't just strip the word "marriage" out of government and let everybody get their civil unions and if they wanna call themselves married, fine." And that's the fairest solution. Kick it to the churches and synagogues - the ones that want to do it can do it, the ones that don't want to don't, if you want some secular extragovernmental entity to call you married, that's fine too. Get government out of the business of marriage period. (Of course, you still need government, in this scheme, to somehow block marriages of minors and adults, polygamy, etc. I guess you don't give them civil unions...)
Why dont we legalize beastility and sex with children and prostitution and lets see 3 woman and 3 men can all mary each other and have children marry each other and then lets see what else can we think of. Oh, I forgot lets let a dad or mom marry their child and then lets let my Aunt Ria marry her dog and have sex with it. Oh and make sure that my dad marries his horse and in 50 years that will be normal to and we can teach that to our children in school and make the churches marry my mom and my brother because it is ALL in the name of LOVE and CIVIL RIGHTS....oh don't forget those who want to have sex with infants 2 months old because they are sharing their love...maybe they can get married too.
Greta, a couple people have made that argument. See this law prof here, ex-editor of the Harvard Law Review (Dan Markel, not Barack Obama): http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/02/sex-with-minors.html
Greta, I have no words for your ignorance. And I pity you. You must lead a very small and lonely life to be this bitter.
Greta: ever heard the saying "the right to extend your fist ends at my face?" The right to decide who may get married and who may not ends when you're deciding for other people. But there is no right to marry a child or animal. Children can't consent and it's a violation of their rights. Animals can't consent. An incestuous couple can't marry because the child's rights to an equal relationship are violated. As for polygamy, it's usually religiously motivated and enforced, another violation of rights. You have no reasonable argument against two consenting, unrelated adults.
Polygamy would also be far harder to fit into the framework of marriage. We'd certainly need a different set of rules for dealing with a polygamous relationship (end of life decisions, inheritance, community property etc.) Homosexual marriage is just as simple as a change on some paperwork. We already have an host of laws and court decisions to fall back on for a relationship between two consenting adults.
The obvious rejoinder to Ford's dismissal of the easy analogy to race is that, many decades ago when a significant part of the population was against the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, those people felt comfortable in their well defined ethnic roles that dictated homogeneously colored neighborhoods, and not letting your daughter date "one of those". I'm sure that if we transported one of them here, they could quite truthfully say that they're not bigoted against coloreds, they just think it's proper that people keep to their own kind... you know, everyone just gets along better that way.
The main problem with Ford's argument is the institution of the closet. Most black folks can't pass for white, but gay folks pass as straight all the time. There's no way to enforce a "straight only" office, since everyone's de-sexualized to a large extent at work. This is why people support job equality but not marriage equality for gays - job equality doesn't actually require acceptance of behavior that people are uncomfortable with. Instead, it requires that gay people keep their heads down and their personal lives to themselves, as they have done for centuries. But when it comes to marriage... well that's another story. Marriage in our society is ultimately about sex, and if you're talking about rights for gay people that's the crux of the matter.
I will say this for Greta, who's pretty dim, but has the glimmering of a point. In philosophy of law, there's a huge debate about whether you ought to be able to ban conduct that doesn't "harm" anyone. Whatever that means, that's a notoriously hard line to draw. They call it the Hart-Devlin debate, though other parties joined in over the years. So the Hart side, the no harm, no law side, of course says that laws banning gay marriage (to say nothing of laws banning gay sex) are wrong. Lord Devlin disagreed. Now, I want to be clear; I'm for gay marriage (a little tentatively), but I want to show that the "no harm, no foul" principle, AKA The Harm Principle, has its flaws. So here we go. Some people have taken the harm principle a little farther than Hart has. Dan Markel, for instance, who I linked above. He says it's ridiculous that we pretend that teenagers aren't old enough to make up their minds about sex, and we should legalize sex between minors of a certain age and adults, so long as we can somehow be sure the minors know what they're doing (he has this crazy sex-ed permit concept - laughable but Markel's a brilliant guy, don't make too much fun of him). He also thinks incest between adult siblings, at least as long as they don't have kids, is okay. No harm, no foul. He's a little shaky on parents and children, but if the children are old enough he's alright with that. Again, no harm, no foul. Maybe you're fine with all that. But then we come to bestiality. Of course, you have sex with an animal, that harms the animal, the animal can't consent. But there's an interesting case that's kind of an exception to that. Don't read this if you don't want to be grossed out. In Wisconsin, there's a man who likes animals. I won't give you his name, as you might send him harassing mail or whatever. On October 11, 2006, this guy - who's already locked up on a sort of probation site for a previous crime involving a horse - is found to have had sex with a dead deer he found by the side of the road. Now, the deer's dead; he can't complain. And obviously, deer aren't smart enough to think thoughts like "I really wouldn't want some guy having sex with me once I'm dead." For starters, deer probably don't understand death. So no harm to the deer. But this is definitely something that ought to be illegal. So what the counterargument to the harm principle usually looks like is this - there's some behavior that harms yourself. If you fuck dead deer, you're making yourself a sicker and less morally worthy person. And that's why it's okay to ban having sex with dead deer. But now the anti-gay folks have a huge opening. Because they go, aha! You can ban stuff that harms your character, degrades yourself, and we believe that's just what having sex with someone of the same sex does. In fact, we think anal sex is wrong, straight or gay. (Many of the anti-sodomy laws used to ban both.) So if it's okay to ban things that a democratic majority believes is self-degrading, and we've got a democratic majority here that thinks gay sex is, then why can't we ban gay sex? So now you've got a real problem. You can bite the dead deer bullet, you can just say, "well, psychologists say sleeping with deer is bad for your mind, they don't say the same of homosexuality" (of course, psychologists used to say homosexuality was a mental disorder), you could say, "letting people fuck deer on the side of the road is bad for the culture" (of course, the Mormons feel the same way about gay marriage) - it gets kind of tricky. Now in no way do I mean to compare the two. But I want to show you that the harm principle isn't as ironclad as it looks.
Asher- that stuff is fascinating. I'd love to give an equally long reply, but I don't have time. So a couple of minor things- I like you when you make comments like this. When TNC called you on your 'i like generalising' comments, I figured you were being facetious, and this is why. It's the difference between your last comment and greta's- nuance (and basic logic). But also- paragraphs please. It was kinda hard to read. Back to your substance- I agree, there isn't some perfectly logical, unrebuttable way to frame the gay rights issue, and although you said you weren't really comparing deer-fucking to gays, it kinda gets at the reason gay acceptance is increasing- Before, gays were like deer-fuckers in the eyes of society- sick, depraved, and definitely ick. Now, it's changing, and we've got a bunch of young people who have no problem at all with gays- not even the ick factor; we've got the hard-core evangelicals who still feel like gays and deer-fuckers are on the same plane of depravity; and we've got this squishy, conflicted middle, who are torn between their upbrining of 'gays are sick, depraved, and ICK', and their current lives of 'my friend Ted is gay and he's really quite nice, and that nice Ellen woman is on tv and she seems harmless'. We're not going to overcome homophobia because Americans start changing their mind on the harm priniciple, we're going to overcome it because they learn to overcome their gag reflex.
First, I completely appreciate the serious identity issues that heterosexuals may have to go through when LGBT people finally achieve a parity of civil and human rights in this society. How do I understand it? Well, most people forget that until I was 13 I was straight. It's true! I went through a long process of cultural shock and acceptance, and so did my family. So did Jim Crow south when Supreme Court ended segregation. We all have to shed a few tears in the course of life. When thinking about solutions, the only sure fire one that I can see in front of me is for gay people to leverage their disproportionately higher percentage of disposable income and buy our civil rights. We're the first majority middle and upper class sub-group to be under such assault. We've already forced our way into corporate benefits and sanitized most mainstream commercial messages by leveraging our buying power... Maybe the economic downturn will be our opportunity to bribe the heteros to give us marriage? How much does marriage cost? 700 billion? I should start saving now....
Apropos of not much, perhaps the gag reflex question, I wonder what fraction of men who voted for Prop. 8 also enjoy watching two women doing it. And is this hypocrisy?
Are we talking porno lesbians or real lesbians here? SNL had a good skit relevant to this topic a few years back...
"Apropos of not much, perhaps the gag reflex question, I wonder what fraction of men who voted for Prop. 8 also enjoy watching two women doing it. And is this hypocrisy?" On the occasions when our film featuring a homosexual couple has played film festivals, I have alway had at least one man approach me and say more or less the following: "I'm a straight guy, I came here because my wife/girlfriend wanted to see this film. I've never seen two guys have sex before and to be honest, I wasn't sure how I was going to react. But I've to tell you. After hearing them talk about how they feel about each other, hearing them talk about how it feels to be with each other, well by the time the movie got to the sex part, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world." Of course I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say that when I first found out about straight sex, I thought it sounded pretty gross. Then I saw it, and I changed my mind.
[quote]And while a lot of people reject the narrow and repressive sex roles of the past, many others long for the kind of meaningful gender identities that traditional marriage seems to offer.[/quote] While I think that the original article has some interesting insights, I have to admit that this is not one of them. Let's go back to history, and acknowledge that within many black communities--amd other marked communities---folks have been living with nonheteronormative gender identities for a long, long, time. And very happy with cohabitating; common law marriages; multiple serial primary relationships; alternative/nonnormative family structures such as extended families, godmothers, & aunties, etc. while fully cognizant that these "lifestyles" meant that they would not have access to the benefits of marriage as conferred by the state whch are by and large economic benefits. But if you don't have economic access, these benefits don't much matter and "marriage" validation by the state is not such a critical issue. And if the state--and the dominant culture-- persists in pathologizing these relationships, and continues to suggest that if we could marry we would marry, and that we long for "traditional" marriages, or--as many in the same-sex marriage movement have stated---that we are not fully grown-up or validated until we are "married"--well, hell, all of us living this other life aren't going to invest much in state-sanctioned marriage. [An aside about gender and sexuality identifications: we've known for almost a hundred years that the identifications on gender roles and sexual identity--the NAMING--of such varies in different communities by region, by ethnicity, by race, by socieoeconmic realities---but whiteness, mythical middle-classed heteronormative whiteness, always seems to prevail.] Speaking of history, doesn't anybody remember Bush's 2004 Healthy Marriage welfare reform act that enforced poor women---in the popular imaginary disproportionately Black welfare queens---marrying as a way to end social welfare support? Enforced heterosexuality in the name of economic mobility. Don;t remember? Didn;t affect you? Well, that's why some communities aren;t so excited about state-sanctioned marriage and are happy to keep "marriage" in the private sphere, whether that's our bedroom or your house of faith.
I mean to say, if it is not clear, that I have not been robbed of a meaningful identity--y'all are just refusing t see my identity as meaningful.
This poll will probably not get as much ink as the initial "70%" exit poll: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/kpcc/kpccnewsinbrief/2008/11/african-americans-may-have-sup.html
Moonmarked, I'm not too sure that it should be disregarded--did you check out "The Surrendered Wife" phase? There's a whole movement centered around the idea that a woman's role is not only secondary and constrained, but submissive. Women voluntarily threw themselves into it in droves, turning over the finances to their husbands and convincing them they thought the husbands were right even when they weren't. Or check out this attempt to change a boy's gender identification: "They turned their house into a 1950s kitchen-sink drama, intended to inculcate respect for patriarchy, in the crudest and simplest terms: 'Boys don’t wear pink, they wear blue,' they would tell him, or 'Daddy is smarter than Mommy—ask him.'" From this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/transgender-children/4 (The kid turned out gay, a massive break for the straight women in his area. They've got enough trouble dating without people raising their boys to think women inferior.) I'm not going to pretend I know what communities or minorities have a higher incidence of wanting rigid gender norms, but I can certainly see it playing a part.
There was a comment about how we should ASK people WHY they voted YES on prop 8. I wanted to tell you why I voted YES on prop 8. Not because I want to be bashed, or anything like that. I want to give you an honest answer without being bashed or my property vandalized or anything like that. I want to tell you why because it seems like their NEEDs to be heartfelt communication between both sides instead of all this hate going back and forth. I would love to share with you why I voted the way I did; without being called horrible names and degrading me and my rights to vote the way my conscience feels. I voted YES because I am NOT IGNORANT This is what i found out - A catholic adoption agency shut down because they for religious reasons do not believe in homosexuality and do not want to adopt out children to homosexual families A doctor was sued and lost to a homosexual couple because he did not want to inseminate them although his counterpart was willing to do it. He did not want to do it for religious reasons. So my whole reasoning is this: PROP 8 was written POORLY. I think a person should not have his right to religous freedom stripped away by 3% of the population. However, on the flip side I dont think 3% of the population should be denied rights BUT I don't think that 3% of the population should have the RIGHT to FORCE others to do things they FEEL are MORALLY Wrong and COULD potentially affect their SALVATION. This is dear to the hearts of many just as the issue of HOMOSEXUALS in happy relationships want and it is DEAR to their heart to GET MARRIED. SO WHY is it that we can not have BOTH.. GAY people get married but not start lawsuits or force their marriage on others who feel like it is MORALLY WRONG FOR THEM and THEIR FAMILIES. That is why I decided to vote YES on Prop 8. I don't want to force anyone to have to do something they don't believe in. THAT to ME seemed more INTOLERANT than not letting homosexuals get married because I believed eventually that they would get that right but I don't think these other issues have been addressed reasonably. And I believe they should be addressed before a law allowing homosexuals to get married is passed. AND obviosly, there alot of people that feel this way because they voted this way. Not BECAUSE I AM A BIGOT, HOMOPHOBIC, or a HATER or anything like that. I feel that PROP 8 WAS WRITTEN VERY POORLY. Perhaps, laws could be passed that let gay people have their rights to be married but that religious people not be denied their rights to believe and worship how they see fit for their lives and be SUED. So I hope that you all can understand why I voted yes and appreciate where I am coming from and know that the majority of people that I know who voted yes did it for the reasons that I stated above. NOT because we HATE GAY people, NOT because we are BIGOTS, not because we want to deny people their CIVIL RIGHTS! We LOVE everyone, this proposition was horribly written.
As a form of protest, how about if every time an adult Mormon is introduced at a public program, they are briefly booed. Not drowned out, not hassled, but note is taken that they are a member of a hate group.
First, I'd like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments. (What is race but extended family?) Second, I'd just like to say that only a sick, sick society would even entertain the idea of gay marriage.
The white patriot's Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved) ---- T.S. Eliot: "White Trash" is a white person who fornicates with a non-white. ---- BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS. Obama has supported: (A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians. (B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation. (C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans. (D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities. (E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs (F) Creating a mandatory "America Serves" community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans From evolutionary philosophy email list: "Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's white race.""
Glad to see you did research, Robin. But you should have started with the dictionary and the definition of "bigot". Because you clearly don't understand what it means.
Robin- If Prop 8 was so poorly written, why did you vote "yes" on it?
I certainly think it's imperative that the entire progressive community take people like Robin and Nigel and call them out as true bigots. One of the greatest problems with our movement is that there is little or no concrete societal consequence to hating gay people. The math is simple: if you oppose civil rights for gays it doesn't mean you're "traditional" or "moral" or "religious" - it just means you're a BIGOT.
In her book on the history of marriage, Stephanie Koontz gives data showing that poorer people and people of color are both the least likely to have grown up in hetorosexual married, male-breadwinner households and (not coincidentally perhaps) are the most likely to valorize such an arrangement. This seems an important point: if you feel like you've been left out of some prvilidged Ozzie and Harriet scenario, it's easier to think that solves all the problems than if you've taken part in it.
Robin, California already has an "opt-out" provision in schools, which means parents can pull them from class. My understanding is that the California law is different. Also, in terms of religious freedoms, did you actually read the Court Document that legalized gay marriage earlier in the year? It specifically states that NO religious group will be forced to perform same-sex marriages or change its religious policies about same sex-marriage. Read the document. There's a link to it here, and it addresses a lot of these issues. It's long, but worthwhile. As Prop 8 was designed to overturn this ruling, and enshrine in the state Constituion that marriage was just between a man and a woman, I think it's important to know what you were overturning. If Prop 8 hadn't passed, the only thing that would have happened is this decision would stand. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage16-2008may16,0,6182317.story As for the other two cases - the insemination case and the adoption case - if anyone knows the story on those, please let me know. Also, reading books on the history of homosexuality and Christianity would probably be an interesting exercise. It's not as cut-and-dry as you might think. I am an atheist and 100% pro-gay rights, but I am reading a book on this topic now because it's important to me to understand and perhaps be able to meet someone with our opinions halfway. But, Robin, all of this begs the question: even if all of what you say is true, even if your kids learned gay marriage was okay, even if adoption organizations had to adopt to gay couples, even if religions had to be careful about what they said about gay couples outside of their churches, WHAT is wrong with gay marriage? Even if it is not "tradition," what is wrong with gay marriage? And do not say that it could lead to polygamy or marrying animals or marrying your daughter - we have limits on our laws now; there is no reason to believe that we can't set new limits (which we have done for many, many things over the years). So, WHAT is wrong with gay marriage, in and of itself?
Sounds nice but I don't think so! What? The term "meaningful gender identities" is one that suggest it can do the impossible. So does this term solve the riddle of 50% divorce, the variety of economic insecurities and dislocations that many young couples experience, relative lack of social and economic of success some long term couples and on, on, on.... Organized religion is the primary reason that Prop 8 types of measures are successful. Although formidable am unconvinced, a well organized and focused approach will prevail and marriage independent of sex will be the reality.
I can shed light on the adoption agency issue that Robin cited. Here's the "Yes on 8" party line: "In 2006, Catholic Charities in Massachusetts chose to stop performing adoptions because in order for them to do so, they would have to be willing to adopt to gay couples." What the "Yes on 8" people don't tell you: The reason the church was required to comply with the law stating that they could not treat a hetero married couple differently from a same-sex married couple is because Catholic Charities was a state contractor. They received money from Mass to perform adoption placement, and it was in their status as a *state contractor* and not as a religious organization, that they were compelled to comply with the law. The Mormon Church is still running adoption services to this day within Massachusetts. The difference? They don't take state money.
Thanks Jay C for 'splaining the details, but they don't matter to people like Robin. She'll find some anecdote or another that lets herself feel "non bigoted" for her vote. I bet you there were religious agencies, civic groups, restaurants, teachers, etc. that "quit" rather than stop teaching bigotry or accepting black members into their clubs. But I bet like the smoking ban and the "doom and gloom" restaurants/bars said would happen, most of it was bluster. Mostly country clubs slowly integrated, restaurants too, interracial marriage was legalized and the world didn't end, etc. So, TNC & others - the analogy of race is dead-on. It's not identical, hence the word "analogous". It's not about who's "woe" is worse, or that gays can (I suppose) hide who they are and blacks can not. It's that the opposition is taking the same form and using the same words. People used nearly identical arguments in denying blacks the rights to live in non-blacks-only housing, serve in integrated units the Army, marry white people - that they now use on gays. If you can't see that, I'm sorry, you're missing something. That black people have been "co-opted" by the rhetoric, and fail to see that they are now perpetrating nearly identical bigotry on another minority group is really sad. That's not to say that black people's homophobia is especially pernicious or they owe gay people something "extra". Just that it's ridiculous to claim the civil rights struggles of both groups aren't basically analogous. So while gays should reach out to everyone in an attempt to win hearts and minds, I refuse to accept this idea that gays need to wait for bigots to get around to supporting their rights. That's not how blacks got their rights, nor Jews. Minority rights have never been, and never should be, dependent on majority acceptance.
Just want to say one thing.... The recent hoopla surrounding Prop 8 would lead many to think that gay rights are a white-washed issue. However, in the streets today, and as evidenced by the video record, people of ALL ethnicities, religious backgrounds, etc. were present in support of equality. The supposed divide, possibly based on some weak factual evidence, is obviously being exaggerated to some extent.
"The Mormon Church is still running adoption services to this day within Massachusetts. The difference? They don't take state money." Jay C TR: I wasn't aware of that. This gives me something to think on, thanks.
Shark, I'm not sure how what you are saying is related to what I was discussing. And IT, while Stephanie Koontz does discuss that poorer people and people of color are the least likely cohort to have grown up in hetorosexual married, male-breadwinner households, much social research of the last 40 years suggests that many of those children continue to live n non-heteronormative families and DO NOT valorize "hetorosexual married, male-breadwinner households." In fact, research suggests that for for people and people of color the issue of access to marriage is not an issue to organize around. As I mentioned, after the welfare reforms that were passed in 2004, for many poor people and people of color it has been more important to organize around NOT having to marry and/or be pressured into being or staying in destructive marriages and domestic arrangements. It reminds of the complexities of the prochoice movement where some women are concerned about access to abortion and can't wrap their minds around how, for many poor women and women of color the issue is around access to pregnancy and reproductive health, in addition to abortion. For us, sexual and reproductive heath and justice is much more complicated than the single issue of abortion. And for many poor people and people of color, and for many queer folks and poor queers and queer folks of color, access to samesex or heterosex marriage isn't as important as having access to those 1000 federal marriage benefits regardless of your family structure.
Jay C, thanks for those details. That's helpful. And jcricket, I agree with you, a minority should NOT have to wait for the majority to give them their rights. I honestly don't think Prop 8 should even have been allowed to be on the ballot. However, I really believe that there are a lot of people who are just on the verge of having their minds changed, and it helps to be armed with facts, especially in light of the fact that really, in a place like California, we could go back and forth on the issue every two years until the end of time. It certainly can't hurt.
The strongest argument, the one that will prevail, is people making it easy to understand their lives. Flesh-and-blood human beings making it easy to see that what they want (family, security, dignity) is what everyone wants. And then, making it easy to see that current law makes it harder for them to get those commonly-longed-for things. I don't mean that the arguments about equality and rights are wrong. And I don't mean that the anger when they're denied is wrong. I do mean that an issue like this isn't likely to be won on abstractions or fury. (See also, Professor Obama on the relative importance of litigation and organizing. Trust, understanding, and energy are what bring the big changes. Courts help, but they don't make the main difference.)
First, I'd like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments. (What is race but extended family?) Second, I'd like to propose that we let the queers secede from the Union - forming their own country in California. They can have "gay marriage" and all the gay parades they want, and we won't have it in the civilized world. ------------ The white patriot's Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved) ---- T.S. Eliot: "White Trash" is a white person who fornicates with a non-white. ---- BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS. Obama has supported: (A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians. (B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation. (C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans. (D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities. (E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs (F) Creating a mandatory "America Serves" community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans From evolutionary philosophy email list: "Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's white race.""
On the subject of gender identity and discomfort with the concept of gay marriage, I'm reminded of a comment I read at another weblog: Opponents of gay marriage don't like it because they can't tell who's supposed to be the chattel in the relationship. In other words, I'm not sympathetic at all to people who are looking to marriage to give them "meaningful gender identities." And I don't believe that those people truly reject the narrow and regressive sex roles of the past -- at least not in any way that would truly be meaningful. I'll accept that they want to find ways to define themselves and their relationships that are beneficial and an improvement on the past. However, if they think they can get there by hanging on to vestiges of the past (or by denying other people the right to define themselves and their relationships in other ways), they're on a path that will get them nowhere but back to the past. There was an article in the NYT a while ago about how sex role issues can complicate, and even completely derail, heterosexual marriages -- in no small part because these role issues invariably and perniciously place inequitable burdens on the women in these relationships -- and about how homosexual relationships tend to be much less freighted with these sort of socially imposed problems. I'm not saying homosexual relationships are all perfect, and I'd never say that. But research tends to indicate that same-sex couples are better at carving out egalitarian frameworks for their relationships than opposite-sex couples are. Moreover, I strongly believe the experiences of same-sex couples in this regard can be instructive, and ultimately helpful, to heterosexual couples because they provide alternative relationship models to those previously available to people who really *do* want to escape from the narrow and regressive sex roles of the past. Simply put, we straight folks can learn something from the ways in which gays and lesbians find their way through the job, which they are embarking on without some of the baggage straight people have imposed on the process, of building long-term socially recognized relationships. By denying them the right to do so, we're not just engaging in bigotry; we're depriving ourselves of our own opportunities to grow.
As much as I disagree with, and am angry at everyone who vote Yes on Prop 8, I actually have more respect for people who are straight forward about their opposition to gay marriage, compared to someone like Robin, who tries to dissemble and drive us around the bend with justifications and circular reasonings. The lady doth protest too much, IMHO.
Robin, may I suggest that you now take some time to research what the lack of marriage equality does to couples and their children? Could be time well spent... ...if you are not spending more time on rationalizations which pretty much have no merit. I think I recall white parents that felt they were being forced to have their children sit next to black children in class and learn that black people were equal (hell, even to have black history included in the curriculum!). They felt their rights were being attacked....ironically, by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. In a pluralistic society, you really can't have particular groups dominating the civil sphere and excluding others from their rights. Check out the NAACP's lawsuit to stop Prop 8: if the majority can take away a despised minority's rights at the ballot box in the gay case, then they can do it for other minorities whenever they like... Mull that one over. And, as a Catholic, I can tell you: I don't need the state to be Catholic for me to live out a life toward salvation. The state shouldn't be in the business of salvation. That's for your church to worry about. Stop turning my government into your moral police, please.
Grr. Link should have worked. How about
What arguments like Debra's and Matt's and Asher's miss is that marriage is a contract. So it's not about "no harm, no foul", the problem is that the contract is between two people who can legally bind themselves to a contract. Minors cannot legally enter into contracts, nor can animals, nor cartoon characters. So the problem is, does the cartoon character want to marry the man? The character cannot consent or be in a contract. No contract, no marriage. And likewise, with polygamy, that would change a two-party contract to a three-party contract, which is a completely different legal creature. You would have to create a whole different law to handle an (equal) polygamous marriage, because all of the rights of marriage are reciprocal, and that doesn't work with more than two parties. (Me, betty, and sue are married. Sue gets sick and dies. Betty says she should be cremated, I say she should be buried. Whose wish controls? This is completely different from two-party marriage). Gay marriages are two-party contracts between consenting adults, EXACTLY LIKE straight marriages. The other examples that come up in the slippery slope stuff are not. (mostly)
In regards to this whole so-called "ick" factor-- Sorry, I just don't want to contemplate _any_ of y'all doing the nasty-- gay or straight, you are welcome to keep any and all of that to _yourselves_. Don"t see why people would think gays are any ickier than straights-- you all are pretty icky. I think calling people like Robin a bigot is not particularly helpful, not matter what you really think of her. She is obviously terrified, and is trying to find ways to rationalize her fear with "evidence" that backs her up. Pity her if you are able; she's weak. Sorry, Robin, I'd fail you in my class if that was the "research" you turned in on your term paper. Grade of D-. Also, learn to turn off the CapsLock, and stop yelling in my face when you type. Please feel free to call Nigel whatever you like; he is an obvious imbecile, probably waiting for his electro-shock therapy to begin.
bread & roses, Thanks for the sanity, even in the face of utter nonsense. You have more patience than I.
bread & roses, One problem with the harm principle is that it ignores that people enter into such contracts all the time. For example, there are people hired to work on "international tax minimization strategies", which I find more repulsive than some guy fucking a dead deer.
Re: He says it's ridiculous that we pretend that teenagers aren't old enough to make up their minds about sex, and we should legalize sex between minors of a certain age and adults, so long as we can somehow be sure the minors know what they're doing In a world in which people became social adults at the same time nature made them physical adults that might be OK. But that's not our world. We keep teenagers in a state of immaturity and childishness for some years beyond puberty. As a result they are vulnerable to pressure and coercion from adults. Hence their ability to consent is impaired. Re: He also thinks incest between adult siblings, at least as long as they don't have kids, is okay I don't think it should be illegal, but that doesn't mean it should be socially acceptable either. And incestuous marriages (including those between close cousins) are harmful since a large, impersonal society needs exogamy (=marrying outside one's immediate kin group) in order to function properly. As for the dead deer case I see no reason to make something like that illegal; it's one of those things (like passing gas in public, chewing with one's mouth open etc.) that is best handled by social disapproval (in this case strong disapproval) not law.
Gay marriage is disproportionately opposed by poor people and religious fundamentalists. Black voters are disproportionately both. I very much doubt that skin color has any independent explanatory significance. If gay marriage proponents want to achieve stable acceptance (as opposed to a 51-49 majority on the next referendum), they need to try to sympathetically understand why poor people and religious fundamentalists oppose gay marriage and address those concerns on their own terms. It's not so hard, if you don't start from the premise that the only possible explanations are bigotry or totalitarianism.
"The answer to this problem isn't marching, rallies, or blaming black people. It's having long, heartfelt conversations with neighbors about what this really means." I disagree with this statement (except for the blaming black people part - that should not be part of the response). We need to make bold movements such as protests to show our numbers, to show there are a lot of gay people and they're just regular people. This helps create the space for a conversational, personal appeal to work.
Oh, and Greta? The argument about polygamy is just stupid. Polygamy has already existed in the human tradition. Gay marriage has not. Therefore it cannot be the case that gay marriage will cause polygamy. If you want your "traditional" marriage, quit slamming polygamy.
Lebecka: "Don"t see why people would think gays are any ickier than straights-- you all are pretty icky." Two reasons: 1) Poo is very icky. This fact has no bearing on the vast majority of hetero sex, but comes into play when thinking about male on male gay sex. This also explains why gays are icky but lesbians are hot. 2) Rationally speaking, all sex is a bit icky. But my brain has a special mental override which only works for sex with attractive women. At least some gay men (the 100% ones, not the 80/20 bi ones) have the same mental override, but in reverse. These are the ones who find sex with women disgusting. Note: I'm not claiming this makes gay sex immoral, just explaining why straight people like myself perceive it as more icky than regular sex.
sklein11 - Respectfully, I'm not sure there's actually much gays need to do to gain the 51 to 49 acceptance, except wait. In less than 10 years opposition in California dropped 10% (Prop 22 passed 61 to 38; Prop 8 passed 52 to 48). People 18-29 support gay marriage 2-to-1, People 30-44 are softening in their opposition quickly, and certainly future voters under 18 support gay marriage in at least 2-to-1 numbers if not more. So within 10 years I'd bet a Prop 8 like resolution, at least in CA, would fail 40-60. Gay marriage will follow the same trajectory as interracial marriage. Legalized by the courts and legislatures (for the most part) well before public acceptance at large catches up. The general public didn't "support" interracial marriage in stable majorities until well into the 1980s - 100 years after the first anti-miscegenation laws were repealed and 20 years after the Supreme Court invalidated the laws that remained on the books in 16 states. My prediction is that in the next 4 years another 1-5 states will legalize gay marriage or recognize it from other states (WA, NH, NJ, NY, MD & RI are among the states I'm thinking of). Public opinion will follow just demograhically, if nothing else.
On the ick factor: First, there's lots of people I don't want to picture having sex, regardless of their orientation. Real |
I really don't understand why they don't just strip the word "marriage" out of government and let everybody get their civil unions and if they wanna call themselves married, fine.
I mean who really actually wants a seal of approval over their nuptials from Sacramento? Let government take care of the contract, and we can self-define our sacrament.
Posted by joypog | November 14, 2008 6:07 PM