Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

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

xpgay marriage is legal in Sweden, it's just not clear yet whether or not it will be in church.

too zombified to read it :/

haha, not that I'm the marryin' kind!

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.

This has been dealt with sufficiently, right? No need for me to bring up arguments that have already been run? (I skim-read the thread after this.)

pretty much iirc

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.

http://cockingasnook.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/medium_umbridge.jpg

As far as the idea that gays, as a group, are any more well-to-do than society as a whole, I already spelled it out in the gay thread:

I would assume this is due to the fact that it's much easier, due to cultural factors and a greater economic safety net, for economically advantaged queers to be openly so than for their economically disadvantaged counterparts. Thusly, in a set of openly queer people, the economically advantaged are going to be overrepresented.

fwiw, guys, you should attend to table's last comment iirc

group hug

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.

i've heard far right/libertarian dudes say they were in favor of gay marriage because of this reason...or more specifically they were against the government controlling marriage and charging money for marriage licenses etc, therefore anyone could and should be able to get married.

group hug

Nah, I gotta help the poor and indigent first.

JUST KIDDING (hugs, table)

I think its weird to argue that "rights" somehow exist independent of a legal framework.

(x-post)

I mean the law is the framework that gives the term "rights" meaning - without the ability to appeal to an agreed-upon legal framework, what constitutes a "right" is essentially meaningless.

Ah, we're entering Hannah Arendt territiory here.

really? I thought we were just getting started on Derrida.

i think our thoughts should turn to gay divorce

lol

we should have the right!

When Rod met Maggie. How you say, 'odd.'

Tomorrow's the day for Iowa, right?

Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are optimistic. What am I missing?

Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. ...

thank you maggie gallagher for the cool new display name!

Rod Dreher: I don't understand why so few people grasp the religious liberty implications of gay marriage.

Do these people even have a brain? What if my religion happened to believe that straight marriage was illegal? I'd love to hear a logical, rational explanation of what these "implications" are.

Here's another howler:

But the two most important messages I've been telling people: 1. Marriage matters because children need a mom and dad. And 2. Gay marriage is going to effect a lot of people besides Adam and Steve.

Both wrong. 1. If a kid doesnt have a mother and father, what happens, he spontaneously combusts? And 2 doesn't even need to be addressed it's so stupid.

People are always posting links from weird websites, why were you reading that in the first place Ned?

Ned is an avid follower of Maggie Gallagher.

I like it when she smashes watermelons.

she swings a mean Bible

She was soooo cute as the baker in that Will Ferrell movie!

In this case, that was linked from Andrew Sullivan's site, not that he can't be any less weird about other things. But Dreher I've kept an irregular eye for a while because he is the self-described 'crunchy con,' a term he invented. (Seems to boil down to: Conservatives, eat organic! Otherwise, steady as she goes.)

She was brittle and hilarious as the mother of Robin Williams' son in The Birdcage

wasn't that Christine Baranski, I'm not following this thread

I got so far into that article thinking it was Maggie Gyllenhaal.

And then I stopped reading.

Maggie Gyllenhaal probably has her own stories.