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My sexual orientation and my positions on gay rights
Wayne:
--- Quote from: letxa2000 on September 22, 2008, 11:39:23 pm ---How do you figure that I have prejudices? Believe it or not, the fact that I don't agree with gay marriage doesn't mean I have prejudices against gays. That is similar to calling me racist just because I won't vote for Obama, and I won't have it.
--- End quote ---
Believe it or not, yes it does mean you have prejudices against gays.
Calling you homophobic because you say people shouldn't be allowed to marry who they love if they are gay is similar to calling you racist if you said Obama can't run for president because of his race.
Wayne:
--- Quote from: letxa2000 on September 23, 2008, 12:03:52 am ---I'm willing to give you the legal rights. But if you push me to call it "marriage," no.
--- End quote ---
The very notion that you claim the position to give me rights shows what kind of values you hold, and they are deeply offensive.
Marge_Innavera:
Hi, I'm a straight woman, married to a man, no children (never wanted any, either of us).
I've had gay friends, mostly male gay friends, since college and supporting gay rights was something I guess I took for granted until a few years ago when I got rather radicalized about human rights in general. That was about the time I saw Brokeback.
About marriage -- feel very strongly that without marriage equality true equal rights for sexual minorities just isn't possible. The identity of GLBT people as a group considered "the Other" by so much of society is based on not only sexual attraction but intimacy in general, the foundation of a life with a permanent partner - not religious beliefs, not tribal or ethnic identity, no race. And if GLBT citizens don't have the legal right to marry (whether any individual chooses to or not), then their very identity will always be a lesser one in human society.
Civil unions and the prattle of our current crop of political candidates about "leaving it up to the states" is just a revival of two of the staples of Jim Crow and the White Citizens Councils. It might happen that civil unions might be a necessary intermediate step but that can't be the final goal.
This is an interesting thread! Glad you started it.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: letxa2000 on September 22, 2008, 10:32:29 pm ---This is a false comparison. Those were separate but un[/n]equal. I can agree with civil unions which would be legally identical in every respect to marriages.
Why should gays prevail? If red has been red forever and now someone wants to call it green, why should everyone else be forced to adapt to that?
--- End quote ---
Society has been 'forced to adapt' to all kinds of social changes. A common pattern is that the very idea is ridiculed at first, and that established organized religious groups are adamantly opposed, conveniently forgetting this part of their history later.
Here's a few excerpts from the California Supremes' legal view on the "tradition" argument:
"Although the understanding of marriage as limited to a union of a man and a woman is undeniably the predominant one, if we have learned anything from the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views and official policies toward members of minority races and toward women over the past half-century, it is that even the most familiar and generally accepted of social practices and traditions often mask an unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed by those practices or traditions.
"It is instructive to recall in this regard that the traditional, well-established legal rules and practices of our not-so-distant past (1) barred interracial marriage, (2) upheld the routine exclusion of women from many occupations and official duties, and (3) considered the relegation of racial minorities to separate and assertedly equivalent public facilities and institutions as constitutionally equal treatment. As the United States Supreme Court observed in its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, supra, 539 U.S. 558, 579, the expansive and protective provisions of our constitutions, such as the due process clause, were drafted with the knowledge that "times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress."
And the basis of their objection to the civil union ghetto:
"because of the long and celebrated history of the term "marriage" and the widespread understanding that this word describes a family relationship unreservedly sanctioned by the community, the statutory provisions that continue to limit access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples — while providing only a novel, alternative institution for same-sex couples — likely will be viewed as an official statement that the family relationship of same-sex couples is not of comparable stature or equal dignity to the family relationship of opposite-sex couples.
"Furthermore, because of the historic disparagement of gay persons, the retention of a distinction in nomenclature by which the term "marriage" is withheld only from the family relationship of same-sex couples is all the more likely to cause the new parallel institution that has been established for same-sex couples to be considered a mark of second-class citizenship. "
The last I looked, the full decision is at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S147999.PDF
letxa2000:
--- Quote from: Elle on September 23, 2008, 12:13:36 am ---I wouldn't call anyone a racist based on knowing they wouldn't vote for one particular candidate, Obama. I wouldn't call somebody prejudiced based on knowing they didn't want one particular gay couple to get married. I WOULD see prejudice if I then found out it wasn't just that one gay couple, but ALL gay couples they didn't want to allow to get married.
--- End quote ---
Now I see your argument but I disagree. There is an infinitely long list of things I would not accept as "marriage," not just same-sex. So it's not that I'm prejudiced against gays, it's just that I have a traditional definition of marriage. Big difference.
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