Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

Need to bait the hook better next time.

bait yrself, Jersey hater

As long as the state is marrying people, it should be marrying everybody.

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/wt/wt070226let_oscar_be_oscar/benigni-lg.jpg

yes, let's get Rev Moon to marry us all to Pinocchio.

I don't actually hate NJ. I just think it's cool that there's a character than looks like NJ.

i think gay marriage is bullshit--i think all marriage is bullshit. i was walking around christopher st this summer and some woman from fox news with a big camera wanted to interview me about the subject--i assume b/c i was the gayest person she could find in the village, but i declined.

it's a weird issue b/c i think it's so consumed the queer movement in the US that, at this point, if someone says theyre against gay marriage, it means they're homophobic. which made it hard to watch biden sidestep the question in the debate.

but in the end--why would i want to be part of your fucked up, heteronormative, historically misogynist tradition? so i can have my relationships okayed by straight people? whatevz.

I hope this doesn't wind up giving fuel to the McCain campaign, given that both tickets are against gay marriage anyway.

While I have some sympathy for the "all marriage is bullshit" argument, I think it's a bit short-sighted. I don't think it takes into account why people enter into marriages, which is not always for normative reasons. (And there is nothing at all heteronormative about gay marriage? Almost by definition? I mean the whole problem is that it's a queering of a text/ritual/concept, surely.)

i think that the reason gay marriage has become the center of the gay rights movement is that it seems totally safe to straight people. i.e. they can see it as "oh, gay people are just like us!" which then leads to real downwithit straight folks asking halfjokingly who "the man" is, ha ha. i don't really buy that it's queering anything.

seems to me that any legit reason people enter into marriages for (i.e. civil rights, immigration, etc) should be guaranteed to people whether or not theyre fucking anyone.

gays should go back to reminding us that they're not totally safe to straight people

I am using that post as evidence that when you die and your estate is getting divided, ptero

remove "that" from sentence

the second "that"

ABORT SNAPPY POINT ATTEMPT REPEAT ABORT

i dont have an estate b/c i am so RADICAL & QUEER

i float above your petty economics like a revolutionary fairy!!!

Face it, breeders. We're just not cool enough to hang with the queers.

i float above your petty economics like a revolutionary fairy!!!

No, just a powerless one...

as opposed to if i had the incredibly powerful right of marriage? o please, bless me with yr straight privileges!

take us to your magical land free from historically misogynist institutions

welcome to lesbian separatism my friend

you will feel weirdly at home here.

Crutis, are you considering becoming a lesbian?

I mean, some gays aren't safe to straight people, and some straights aren't safe to gay people, and some are, and some of each want to get married, and some don't, etc., etc.

sure... it just is disappointing that the whole queer movement focuses around marriage when (it seems to me) there are so many more relevant & important issues. & i recognize it's a PR move, but for who?

i teach HS... i hear kids getting called faggot & dyke several times a day; see kids struggle vs in tolerant parents; watch pregnant teens slowly drop out. & then i'm supposed to rally behind the very (i think) middle class issue of gay marriage? like that's gonna make an iota of difference to the 16 yr old queer kid in my class? like thats gonna help transgendered people or poor people or anyone who isnt already doing ok?

i mean god bless the middle class & everything but it just isnt a movement i feel particularly inspired by.

marriage is gay

i totally support gay marriage. equal rights, this is HUMAN BEINGS we're talking about!

It's not going to make a difference to them now, maybe; it surely will make more of a difference to the queer kid in your class ten, twenty years from now. Did Stonewall make a huge difference to the queer kid in a Seattle classroom in 1969? Maybe, but probably not right away.

(Also many European countries that have legalized gay marriages have also seen a steady decline in all marriages -- though of course correlation is not causation.)

i think stonewall (insofar as it was about people's right to exist as queer) was significantly more radical than gay marriage. and as such--perhaps trickled down to the rest of the queer community in a more meaningful way.

i buy this philosophy pretty much: http://www.beyondmarriage.org/index.html

i mean, i get the argument--that thru middle class gay folks becoming more mainstream the freaks and faggots and transpeople and whoever will benefit. but it's kinda a lame movement anyway. it's like--sure, mainstream 1970s white feminism helped out women of color, too. but it was still pretty wack the way that went down.

(not to draw inapplicable parallels or WHATEVZ)

I feel like such a hypocrite about gay marriage because I have zero interest in being married myself, I've been in a relationship now for sixteen years and I'm psychically as married as I could ever be to another man, but the state has no business confirming/denying/permitting what is already true.

That said, the painful way that gay marriage's untouchability united McCain and Obama was truly cringe-worthy, and it reminded us all watching at home on TV that the whole "we'll give you whatever you want, just don't call it marriage" line that they BOTH trotted out is some seriously "separate but equal" segregationist bullshit that stinks to fag heaven.

with that said, if granting marriage to the homos can somehow magically undermine the institution of marriage, i am all for it!

xpost

to pigmy: yeah, i agree totally. it's funny cuz when they asked that Q at the VP debate i was like, "oh who cares" & then by the end of biden's answer i was like, "YOU PIECE OF SHIT HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLE!!!!" (let alone whatever palin was spewing about her 'tolerance')

Yah, most queers I know are thoroughly modern and blase about their own queerness, kind of just getting on with particulars really, and then you see displays like that and realize that you're still a "touchy issue" for all these unseen millions.

ugh that 'tolerance' garbage was reprehensible

Yeah, I didn't expect him to come out swinging against it so strongly. It made me sad.

And Palin's answer wasn't nearly as bad as her record in Alaska (regarding benefits).

It's kind of perfect that marriage would be the topic that introduces this phony pretense of "I'm tolerant personally, but . . . ". That is in fact the Zizek formula for ideology- "je sais bien, mais . . ." ("I know very well, but all the same. . . ")- I say that it makes sense that this would be brought up in relation to marriage because marriage itself is almost always compromised by precisely this kind of performance for the Others who are watching- "We aren't religious, but Grandma really wants us to get married in church so we're doing it for her"- the ideology is perfectly happy to ride piggyback on precisely such supposed displays of "disbelief" since the outward form gets to stay the same.

yeah it was kind of jarring!

it's funny tho, it's like how homophobia is lurking there somewhere. like how i grew up in a nice liberal northeast town and could have told you from age 5 that there was nothing wrong with being gay & still found myself horribly ashamed & in denial & not having met a single queer person by the time i was a teenager.

& maybe that's part of the argument behind gay marriage, that by normalizing it you can fight that sort of secret homophobia, otherness. but for some reason that argument doesn't really hold much sway for me.

(xpost)

Face it, breeders. We're just not cool enough to hang with the queers.

― NJ Sucks (libcrypt), Friday, 10 October 2008 23:44 (Yesterday)

aren't you 40 and a big radiohead fan?

sorry pterodactyl but gay people like you make me wish i wasn't.

40 yes; Radiohead is good but not my fave in any category.

i.e. get over yourself x-post

I wasn't being sarcastic. Just goofy, Matt P.

am i reading it right that you're against gay marriage cause you personally don't want to get married/aren't down with the whole concept?

well thats kinda mean!

cuz i'm not particularly inspired by gay marriage ?

Ptero, I wasn't saying that gay marriage is as "radical" as Stonewall. You were talking about how effective it is for your student. I don't think either made much of a short-term difference in the lives of most of the contemporary queers, no matter how legendary Stonewall is treated now.

Also, I am totally willing to have Biden play the "give them equal rights but don't call it marriage" game if the alternative is Obama losing the election. I mean, ffs!

yo--i'm not against gay marriage!

i just think it's a lame issue to focus a queer movement around. b/c it doesnt address the actual issues/problems of a majority of queer people. & it also doesnt address the underlying inequality of the whole marriage debate, which is that whether or not you have health care or can immigrate or have visitation rights or whatever shouldn't depend on yr sexuality or who you're sleeping with or if you're sleeping with anyone!

AND i object to it cuz i think it's a fucked up heteronormative, misogynist institution that i honestly dont understand why anyone gay OR straight would want to participate in.

@ to casuistry--naw, i agree with you re: stonewall. wasnt trying to argue, was just kinda typing my thoughts aloud...

"well, not if it goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman and, unfortunately, that's where those steps sometimes lead"

Examples please? When and where has this happened?

Well, I still think there might be some things to salvage in that institution. You're not signing up for 1950s marriage, after all!

Plus I'm not sure what issues you're thinking of, but health insurance, hospital visitation rights, and parental rights have been fairly central issues to queers for a while now. Unless you think being queer should automatically mean you don't want kids? I mean, I don't want kids, but I don't think it's because of my queerness -- that just secures that I don't have any "happy accidents".

I just find the word tolerant really offensive, like, I feel like a bad smell is what you tolerate.