Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

Perhaps, jaymc, but when so much of gay identity revolves around disgusting consumer culture, it would be a breath of fresh air to not feel so subversive, as it would mean that there are others who find the Castro or most parts of Boystown or most parts of Chelsea (etc etc) kind of sickening.

Perhaps, jaymc, but when so much of gay identity revolves around disgusting consumer culture, it would be a breath of fresh air to not feel so subversive, as it would mean that there are others who find the Castro or most parts of Boystown or most parts of Chelsea (etc etc) kind of sickening.

Sorry, tabes, but jaymc OTM in this one.

yeah, he is right, but i don't really feel like wanting 'my own homosexuality' (ie homosexuality coming from an anti-hegemonic point of view) to be less subversive is a bad thing. it raises issues as to how i am any different than some be-Prada'd body fascist queen who wants to get married, but i think that the answer is that my values are different--

Most of the gay dudes I know who got married did so because they have been with their significant other for a long time, and it was important to them. Not because of Prada or whatever.

Anyone who thinks that marriage is about "legitimizing love" has not thought very much about marriage and, if married, has not been married long. Marriage is all about social ties and obligations. That is why it is done in the sight of witnesses, with formal oaths that spell out those obligations.

Couples in love tell one another whatever they want to share, in private. Deciding to get married entails telling everyone outside the confines of that couple - not simply that they love each other, but what their future intentions are, very publically. Because marriage is public business, not just a private feeling.

An op-ed from the NYT today that as a (black and white) biracial queer of sorts I can very closely identify with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09thrasher.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Iowa’s Family Values
By STEVEN W. THRASHER

IF it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.

In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)

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Of course, the desire to define relational rights and responsibilities with a partner, to have access to the protection that this kind of commitment affords, is rather conservative. But it’s a conservative dream that should be offered to all Americans. Though it takes great courage for gays to marry in a handful of states now, one hopes that someday, throughout the nation, gay marriages, like my parents’ union, will just be seen as marriages.

It’s safe to say that neither the dramas of our family, nor its triumphs, could have been possible without the simultaneously radical and conservative occasion of my parents’ civil marriage in Iowa. And so when the time comes, I hope to be married at the City Hall in Council Bluffs, in the state that not only supports my civil rights now, but which supported my parents’ so many years ago.

yeah, but guys, the important thing is, I'm not helping you get down on your knees to suckle at a toxic teat.

no siree

yeah, he is right, but i don't really feel like wanting 'my own homosexuality' (ie homosexuality coming from an anti-hegemonic point of view) to be less subversive is a bad thing.

But wasn't jaymc saying the opposite--that he feels like you want to be more subversive and that's why you oppose gay marriage?

the conflict, in some ways, is that i think these rights are obvious and self-evident, and shouldn't even have to be bestowed by the state, as if they were some sort of gift.

yes, the op-ed piece is right. but i just fear that with the advent of these rights finally being bestowed, gays will become as complacent, as zombified as the rest of the population, if they're not already. that is, by accepting the rights given as parcel to this 'conservative dream,' i fear that gays will simply be subsumed (and assumed) into the larger cesspool of the capitalist dream.

so, it is not the right to marry that i am opposed to, really. it is the results of what will happen when these rights are finally given.

Most gays are already part of the capitalist dream, table -- or want to be. Since gays are as boring, awful, and predictable as our het brethren, there's no reason to project Genet-esque fantasies of subversion on them.

In my milieu it's subversive enough for an openly gay man to mingle and fuck freely amongst straight society -- and keep my identity.

tabes i think it's pretty selfish for you to be against gay marriage because you want all gays to be 'rebellious' or 'different' - imo you should want gays who would like to have the same rights as straights to be able to have those rights because of they deserve them, regardless of what the gays will 'turn into' after

just as i would say to a gay marriage opponent who wants to preserve the 'sanctity' of the word 'marriage', i ask you how your life would be personally affected by a couple who wants to get married officially getting married?

take, for example, when i went to a screening of 'Milk' at the Castro Theater. in line with many men (and some women), many of whom were married or had been planning to get married, i was confronted by a cohort of gays wearing matching shirts passing out fliers that warned people of 'dangerous elements' (read: homeless, mostly African-American or hispanic men) in the neighborhood that would 'steal your valuables and holiday gifts' from your car or your person. the racist and classist overtones inherent in this act are disgusting imho-- gays should be working with the downtrodden and indigent, not trying to eliminate such from view for fear that they'll steal the modernist lamp-set in the trunk of the volvo.

that's a pretty awful reason to be against gay marriage dude, i gotta say

awful anecdote at least

are you blind, j0rdan?

it is not the right to marry that i am opposed to, really. it is the results of what will happen when these rights are finally given.

and how is it an awful anecdote? you support ignorance?

I am a homosexual against gay marriage

yeah marriage really ruined straight people too. it caused capitalism, i hear!

nah i'm saying that projecting the actions of some ppl in a 3 block piece of san francisco out onto the rest of the gay population is idiotic

Most gays are already part of the capitalist dream, table -- or want to be. Since gays are as boring, awful, and predictable as our het brethren, there's no reason to project Genet-esque fantasies of subversion on them.

it seems, alfred, that we know different types of gays.

j0rdan, the history of gays 'claiming' a neighborhood and then gentrifying it is so long it would make your head spin.

What's it to you if you don't approve the "results" of another couple marrying? Jordan OTM: you're creating a slippery slope similar in intention to Maggie Gallagher and Ramesh Ponnoru's.

it seems, alfred, that we know different types of gays

I'm very pleased you know a group of Sidney Poitier-esque Perfect Gays.

take, for example, when i went to a screening of 'Milk' at the Castro Theater. in line with many men (and some women), many of whom were married or had been planning to get married, i was confronted by a cohort of gays wearing matching shirts passing out fliers that warned people of 'dangerous elements' (read: homeless, mostly African-American or hispanic men) in the neighborhood that would 'steal your valuables and holiday gifts' from your car or your person. the racist and classist overtones inherent in this act are disgusting imho-- gays should be working with the downtrodden and indigent, not trying to eliminate such from view for fear that they'll steal the modernist lamp-set in the trunk of the volvo.

― the table is the table, Thursday, April 9, 2009 9:38 PM (7 minutes ago)

dude, not all gay people are like this just like, as you obviously know, not all black people steal televisions for a living

xpost what jordan said

table, I guess what you're trying to say is that gay rights people complain a lot about marital rights, but those rights are trivial compared to the injustice that is right in front of their faces -- e.g. starvation, classism, etc. Is that correct?

in a way, yes.

Look, I sympathize with your impulses. I've read my Wilde and Genet. Tension will always exist b/w us and the straight world -- tensions that a repeal of DOMA will never efface. Hooray! But the slippery slope of your subversion lead to "transgressive" acts like fucking indiscriminately enough to get you dead of AIDS, and that's not a fate to which I aspire, bub.

So does it bother you that instead of feeding from the Chelsea/Castro cesspool, it'll be from the straight cesspool? Either way people are going to buy things they "need"

x-postss

it bothers me gay or straight.

It's all good: without them, I don't know, Flaubert wouldn't have written Sentimental Education.

i mean, i just feel like there is such an intense myopia going on here. the late 80s and early 90s and hell, even the late 90s, were horrific for a great majority of gays living in the US. yes, the supreme court finally gave us the right to fuck each other in the ass in the privacy of our own abodes. yes, there are states where we can get married and where our civil rights of partnership are recognized. yes, we have become a gigantic money-making contingent fueling the culture machine (for better or for worse, whatver).

STILL: the most at-risk group for teen suicide is homosexuals.

STILL: most of us gay men can't TRY to give blood because hey, we all have AIDS in the eyes of the FDA and AMA.

STILL: there are still licensed psychologists and psychiatrists who run 'reparative' practices in 'curing' homosexuality.

STILL: there is insane future-talk among conservative groups of using prospective gene-selection technology to essentially erase gay births from the face of the 1st world.

i think my point is that marriage and civil rights are a major issue, but they are not the end of it, and that i worry about some of the attitudes i've heard expressed in SF about everything finally being 'equal.' that's as stupid as saying that because we have a biracial president, racism is gonna magically end.

xp: And you don't think a world in which more people regard homosexuality as "normal" (so to say) will help to remedy any of those at least in part?

sure, but i object to the idea that marriage is the major normalizing force!

Not the, but certainly a, whether you personally like it or not.

it surely will act like it, yes, but it just saddens me.

table, I guess what you're trying to say is that gay rights people complain a lot about marital rights, but those rights are trivial compared to the injustice that is right in front of their faces -- e.g. starvation, classism, etc. Is that correct?

― Your heartbeat soun like sasquatch feet (polyphonic), Thursday, April 9, 2009 8:49 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

i can sympathize with this, but it veers into some uncomfortable territory, as far as i'm concerned. that is, it sounds perilously close to the "you shouldn't feel bad about your own life's disappointments because, you know, there are people starving in sudan" argument. which, of course, has many elements of truth, but is ultimately kind of bullshit

xp to gbx:

well, yeah. i think that my point (at least towards the bottom of this thread) is that there's still majorly awful shit going down against gays both in the US and especially elsewhere, and that a normalizing force such as marriage is not going to just swoop all those problems away. additionally, the oppression and subjugation that gays have faced since...well, since the Protestant Reformation, is also not some sort of societal antique that could never come back.

no i can appreciate that. btw i'm not sure how to dovetail this with those dancehall threads, but man i can't help but think they're......relevant?

i need to eat right now and go to the studio to finish a paper, but i just wanted to say that this thread has helped me rethink and change my opinions on some things, and that it has done so without getting overly insulting. so thanks for engaging.

the history of gays people with money 'claiming' a neighborhood and then gentrifying it is so long it would make your head spin

Table has a point though in that it often starts with homosexes and sundry bohemians--who make it a desirable place to live--before the rich people roll in.

cf John Leland etc

Have you thought about the fact that the US is not the only country where gay marriage is an issue, there are several countries ie Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. The countries of those I've visited Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, are really open countries where I did not notice the gated communities of Gays with Lexus'.

Also Table, just as I would not like to have rights not permitted to me for the religio-conservative mindset of others, I wouldn't like to be disenfranchised for you to live out you some Dennis Cooper fantasy of subversive fagdom.

i wonder if i should actually read this thread ever