With everyone and their grandmothers getting their panties in a wad over whether or not gay marriage (or even civil unions) should be allowed, it’s always interesting to survey the gay community to determine levels of interest. While for some it’s a crucial issue that demands daily recognition and daily efforts to force the gay rights movement forward, for others it’s just a passing point of interest, sometimes degenerating into downright apathy.
The problem is that the importance of gay marriage doesn’t sink home for many people because we tend to think “I can’t, so why bother worrying about whether or not I would?” So rather than ask whether one is interested in fighting for gay marriage rights, instead ask: if you could legally marry, would you?
If gay marriage suddenly became legal in your state/province/country/incorporated territory/that freaky monkey shack where you live, would you get married?
(a) In a heartbeat. My partner and were already thinking about it.
(b) Yes, if I had someone I wanted to marry.
(c) Yes, but only to spite people who were against it.
(d) Maybe. I’m not sure, or I’m at a stage in my life where I can’t
really think of things like that.
(e) Not in a million years. Marriage freaks me out.
(f) No, although I’d support others who did.
(g) God, Adri, your default answers always suck so much. I have
another response and I’ll elaborate in the comments.
(h) I’m not gay or bi, so this doesn’t really apply to me since I’m
allowed to marry whom I please (although that’s not going to stop
me from sharing my opinion on it in any way at all).
I think I’ve already made my answer quite obvious: somewhere between e and f. I’m happy for anyone else who wants to get married, but me? Never going to happen. My knuckles are too thick to get a properly-sized ring on and off anyway. (Yeah, yeah, I know, men always have an excuse, no matter how lame. I think fear of marriage is hardwired into our DNA.)
While skimming the news this morning, I ran across a post on the Blade Blog alerting to a speech Mike Huckabee intended to give on his stance on various civil rights issues, including gay rights. The post itself didn’t really hold my interest; a comment by a “jeri” to the post, however, did.
jeri . on 1/25/08 5:52 AM:
the use of the term “gay marriage” is representative of a “slave mentality; it fails to recognize gay individuals as valid citizens. civil unions for gays is equivalent to a “gay marriage”. support for this concept actually demeans the GLBT population. think in the term EQUALITY. GLBT citizens are in every way equal - they pay taxes, they serve in the military, they raise families, they contribute to society. we deserve real equality, not only symbolic equality – and by definition would include marriage equality. if you don’t think in terms that demand full equality, you are supporting the proposition that you somehow do not deserve it. personally, I don’t want to validate the arguments of those want to “keep us down.”
Jeri actually elucidates a few thoughts I’ve lingered on, albeit not very clearly and using some unnecessary extremist language; saying that calling it “gay marriage” is a slave mentality is like me saying that because I’m whatever fraction African-American that Louisiana requires to grandfather me into being legally black, I’m going to renounce my slave name and run around calling myself Panther Abimbola. It’s just a little too extreme; there are times when the struggle for gay rights can be compared to the struggle for African-American rights, but this isn’t the right way to do it.
I admit that I’m less inclined to think about gay marriage as a critical issue, even though I applaud when another state legalizes it or another legislator takes a stand in the battle for that particular right - and I have been tempted to snag a willing partner and slag off to tie the knot just out of sheer spite, even if spitting in the faces of the conservative right is rather akin to spitting in the wind when saddling myself with an infuriating ball and chain (or two balls and a…nevermind). I don’t think about it often because I’m not the marrying type, and like any selfish human being I’m less interested in something that doesn’t have a personal impact on me. I can barely even cohabitate with another human being without inviting wholesale slaughter; the idea of allowing a piece of paper to lock me in stone-set oath for the rest of my life just makes my skin crawl. I will happily spend the rest of my life with a man, love and remain faithful to him - but I don’t want to feel trapped into it by the letter of the law, captured by my own honor that forces me to adhere to a vow.
The problem with marriage in my eyes, however, is that it’s part of the letter of the law in the first place. I know you’re sick of listening to me beat my favorite dead horse about the separation of church and state, but it’s the particular lack of separation that lets me agree in a rather offhand fashion with jeri - even if I approach the issue from a different perspective and hopefully explain myself a bit more clearly. Marriage is a religious institution, and it’s on religious grounds that our most vocal opponents protest our right to marry, claiming that it’s a sin in the eyes of their God, their faith, and their dead puppy Jake.
Because marriage is a religious institution, it should have no status in the eyes of the federal government beyond the same acknowledgments and occasional exemptions granted to other religious acts and institutions; that would be true equality. Remove the legal power of anything strictly defined as marriage, and one removes much of the obstacle to gay marriage. Most of us aren’t asking for recognition by any faith - or if we are, that’s another battle to be fought on a different field. Most of us are asking for recognition by the state and its governing powers.
So make marriage no longer an issue of the state, for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Institute civil unions for all, as the primary method of conjoining one’s home, resources, and taxable value. Make the strictly-defined act of “marriage” wholly religious, a choice undertaken by those who wish to follow that path, but not one that determines whether or not they’re granted legal status as unified partners. This country was founded by people fighting for freedom of religion. Freedom of religion includes freedom not to be governed by religion, and yet in many aspects of the law, we are. We are governed by shifting faith-based ideals of what a legal union should be, thus removing the very freedom that our forefathers fought for and demeaning not only the gay population, but the American population as a whole.
Jeri says that we shouldn’t call it “gay marriage”, not if we want to be equal. I say that we shouldn’t call it “marriage” at all. This isn’t a case of “separate but equal”, further invalidating the point made about a slave mentality. This is a case of separating what makes us inequal, so that religion will not prevent a unified public governed under a fair and binding law.
A LiveJournal friend that I read rather often, Vivian, is fond of saying “Keep your God off my body.”
Kids? I got nothin’ today. I’m burnt out, drained, and out of whatever juice it is that fuels my random bouts of eloquence. I blame the fact that I just started a fourth new writing job (good, more good than I’m at liberty to discuss here) but for now am still working my old non-writing fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-bills job at the same time until the first check for New Writing Job clears (bad, very bad, my stress levels are through the roof), and the only thing maintaining my sanity (and staving off my infamous temper) is remembering that I’m doing all of this so I can move out of this Texan hellhole and back to Chicago, and remembering that hey, once the dust settles, I’ll finally have achieved my goal of being a full-time writer (if…not quite in the way I’d originally planned).
Gods, that’s a lot of parentheses. Why do people pay me to write, again?
In the interests of actually posting something topical rather than whining about “oh my god, earning a paycheck is so hard”, though, I did want to run through a few news articles that touch on things that have recently developed regarding issues discussed here in the past. So without further ado (and ’cause I have sh*t to do and need to get going):
CDC Disputes Study of Staph Infection Among Gays: Remember that CWA article quoting rates of MRSA infection among gays and using it as evidence that we’re all going to hell because we’re nothing more but unclean, disease-ridden sinners who spread the plague via our unnatural ways? The CDC has pretty much said “slow your roll, biatch” and is taking a closer look at those statistics and how they might have been skewed to point to those results and make MRSA out to be the next big AIDS-style “gay cancer” scare.
Gay Canadian Health Minister Offended Over Donor Ban: In another instance of official parties getting involved in the news and taking a stand against possibly skewed preconceptions and prejudices against the gay community, the Canadian Health Minister is prepared to actively fight the ban on sexually active gay men as donors of healthy, viable organs. Damn straight…er…well, not so straight, but you get the idea. It’s about time someone in politics showed some common sense, rather than persisting in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, as the old saying goes. It would be nice if that “someone in politics” would crop up here in America to brandish a flaming cluebat of common sense, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Anti-Gay Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Heath Ledger Funeral: Here’s one that’ll really piss you off. Del mentioned in the previous post about Heath Ledger’s death that the WBC (that’s right, Freddy Phelps is back again) is already making plans to picket Ledger’s funeral, accusing him of being hellbound because he promoted acceptance of gays as a “fag enabler” through starring in BrokeBack Mountain. Here’s the worst part:
That…that’s real classy, right there. Just in case you weren’t feeling the Love of GodTM (oh yeah, I’m feelin’ it, like a North Carolina glory hole), it now comes in pamphlet format, just to make sure the grief of Ledger’s family isn’t trivialized enough by these filth-spouting, batsh*t crazy nutjobs. You’re going to hell, kiddies. I’ll be there, too. Bring your own munchies, but the martinis are on me.
Man Probed On Water Polo Photos On Gay Sites: Lastly, here’s something new to help dispel the palpable air of gay martyrdom that’s starting to float around here like some choking miasma of smugness. As if the “probing” pun in a gay headline wasn’t bad enough, UC Irvine dispatcher Scott Cornelius is under investigation to find out if he took pictures of teenaged - teenaged, people - water polo players and posted them on gay websites.
…
Thanks, Scotty. As if we didn’t have enough flak to deal with with people considering all of us to be dirty, perverted pedophiles. Yeah, okay, now and then a piece of jailbait is nice to look at as long as he at least looks over eighteen, but fer Chrissakes, you don’t take pictures of these kids and post them online as potential wank material! Good gods, didn’t your Momma ever teach you better? Hell, if she didn’t smack you upside the head enough, I’d be happy to volunteer to compensate.
Idiots. Frigging idiots. The worst part is that of course someone will sound the alert, wave the torch, and raise the flag, and eventually Cornelius will come to be considered yet another example of the gay community who proves that we’re filthy pedophiles who want to make hot, sweet love to their children (typing that made me gag). If Cornelius hadn’t done anything gay-oriented, he’d just be considered another sick individual, with his sexual orientation not even a consideration.
The worst part?
There were people out there looking for photos like that.
I just hope they didn’t know that the boys were underage. I need to retain at least some faith in humanity and in the gay community, because right now I’ve barely got the thinnest thread left.
That’s it, I’m out. Ciao bella, and see you tomorrow with something of more substance.
A church in Michigan that supports gay equality in terms of marriage and clergy ordination has been turned away by an insurance provider worried that the church’s social policies might make it a target for vandals.
The national governing board of West Adrian United Church of Christ upholds equality for gays, and that worried Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co., reported the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 8.
Brotherhood had previously turned down churches that speak out against other denominations, demonstrate at the funerals of U.S. servicepeople, or preach violence against others.
Brotherhood also canceled the policies of some black churches during a rash of arson cases in the 1990s.
But turning away a church because of its progressive policies is something new.
I may be a bit biased here considering my less-than-eggshell hue, but the first thing that stood out to me in that article was the canceled policies of black churches. That may fly in Michigan, but down here in the South that’d get someone slapped with a lawsuit faster than Don Imus getting pimp-slapped for calling someone a nappy-headed ho. Unfortunately, denying a church for supporting gays would likely gain a raucous round of applause.
While I recognize the rights of a private business to deny service as they see fit and to act in their own best interests, and recognize that they have a point that churches that support unpopular views would be targets for vandalism, neither the logic nor the right inherent make the denial right. There’s a slippery slope between self-preservation and prejudice, and Brotherhood Mutual is teetering at the height of that slope and on the verge of careening down it at breakneck speed.
I admit that I can’t look at this fairly, though, because I have little faith in insurance companies. Their initial purpose was to protect people in extreme cases, providing them with a contingency plan and backup funds built slowly over time through regular contributions, meant for use in emergency/extreme circumstances. What they’ve become is a moneymaking machine that only wants clients whose money it can take with the least risk of having to pay out - meaning that the people who might most need insurance due to undesirable circumstances are the least likely to be granted that protection. It’s despicable that supporting gay rights suddenly makes one part of a high-risk group, suddenly undesirable to the money men of America. That sinks well below practical business survivability. There are a few trustworthy insurance companies out there, those who are genuinely interested in the well-being of their customers, but they’re rare.
I’m done. I can’t say anything else without going on a tirade. I want to get up on my soapbox and throw a fit condemning Brotherhood Mutual, but I can’t when underneath my simmering annoyance I condone their policies of denying coverage to churches who speak out against other denominations or advocate violence. On one hand, it demonstrates fairly that they’re denying people evenly based on risk rather than personal beliefs. On the other hand, it makes me feel like a biased snot for saying “oh, it’s okay to deny those people because I don’t like the way they think”. So I’m just going to walk away from that and just acknowledge that Brotherhood Mutual likely isn’t particularly homophobic; they’re just another typically sleazy insurance company trying to make as much money as possible.
So to divert to a lighter topic, don’t forget that the weekend-long 100 comments party starts at precisely midnight CST; there’ll be a post up detailing the (overly wordy) rules and the prizes, and you’ll comment to that post. The goal is to get 100 comments on a single post before Monday’s comic. Here’s hoping it won’t be a huge flop.
To start off the morning, Kaine won the 1,500 comments contest and is now the proud owner of a horribly pink 1GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player with FM tuner and voice recording capabilities. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but Kaine, I’ll be e-mailing you (I owe you one anyway, and got a little sidetracked) regarding where you want the MP3 player sent. Poor Lessa; missed it by just one.
This weekend, we’ll be having a comment party. Yes, a comment party, as weird as that bloody well sounds. The basic idea is this: at midnight CST on Friday, I’ll put up a post solely for the sake of commenting, explaining the full rules of the party…ish…thing. The purpose is to hit 100 comments to that post alone (comments to other posts won’t count) over the course of the weekend. You can’t just spam the hell out of the post, but like I said, the post itself will explain the rules. Whoever gets the 100th post will get a t-shirt in the Cafepress style of their choice with either the pink/blue or red/blue design posted in yesterday’s comic. There may be a runner-up prize for #101. I’d say if we really wanted to, we could hit 100 posts in one day; hell, if Hikaru and I start bickering, we can manage 50 of those ourselves in just a few hours.
Moving on to the usual mini-discussions of news that occur when Adri just isn’t in the mood for a high-blood-pressure sermon:
Arthritic, sporty, gay? Your finger ratio may tell you: Although it’s pretty common knowledge that apparently the lengths of your fingers in relation to each other can determine whether or not you’re good at math, researchers have also found a correlation between various other traits and the lengths of particular fingers. Long ring fingers indicate a likelihood for osteoarthritis; “male” finger ratios hint at lesbianism. I keep surveying my hands looking for “female” finger ratios to see if that’s supposed to be an indicator of my status as a fabulous king (one queen comment and I skin you) of gay snark. Funny how this one finger in the middle keeps popping up a bit higher than the others…
Gay bar’s straight bouncer wins discrimination suit: A straight woman who worked as a bouncer in a UK gay bar often dealt with harassing comments about her sexuality - a reversal of the usual harassment of homosexuals. She also claims she was fired for it and that her employer often called her a “breeder”; while the court determined that her firing had nothing to do with her sexuality, she was still awarded a settlement for facing discrimination in the workplace - and right well she should be. I still don’t know where we get this idea that because some heterosexuals are nasty to us, that gives us the right to behave in an equally bigoted, discriminatory fashion towards them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, more cliched BS, blah blah, the point is that no one’s sexuality gives anyone the right to behave like a complete douche towards them. It’s not all right to place the shoe on the other foot and “show them how it feels”. It just makes you as bad as the people that you mock and loathe.
Wasn’t asked, told anyway: In a refreshing change, a gay servicemember (who, if you follow the link, is not only brave but quite attractive) came out on public television and wasn’t in any way rebuked or confronted about it by his unit or his commanding officers - and he’s discovered that he’s not alone. Hundreds of gay servicemembers serve active duty with their sexuality fully known by their units. Their fellow servicemembers just don’t care. Out in the field, one’s sexuality doesn’t matter. What matters is capability, and whether or not the people in your unit can put their skills to use saving your life and the lives of the soldiers and civilians around you. Too many highly skilled individuals with knowledge and experience that could be valuable in avoiding bloodshed have been barred from service for the most idiotic reasons - the top reason being that the Pentagon somehow thinks that open homosexuality in the military will foster dissent in the ranks.
With presidential candidates campaigning from state to state and 2008 now here and just waiting for the countdown to the presidential elections, we can thank George W. Bush for rousing the political awareness of an entire nation of people who, regardless of party lines, tend to share the same sentiment: we can’t let this happen again. Everyone has their key issues that make particular candidates more appealing; some vote based on stances on gay rights, others on women’s rights and abortion, others on welfare, healthcare, childcare, education, taxation, military spending…the list goes on. Most look for a candidate with a balance of values that most closely reflect their own personal beliefs on multiple issues, and will choose the candidate who’s the closest fit without being a polar opposite on any one key issue. It’s often a “lesser of two evils” situation.
That’s where I find myself today: seeking the lesser of not two, but multiple evils. Although many potential candidates have drawn massive unconditional support from members of their respective parties, I find myself rather reserved. Although I’d love to vote Independent or some other third party, the unfortunate truth is that if you don’t vote for one of the Big Two, your vote will do little to determine the future of this country’s leadership. If I want to choose a candidate that I can be fairly sure is a supporter of gay rights so I can ignore that and move on to focus on their stances on other key issues, I’m pretty much stuck with the Democratic party.
I’m not happy with that.
Nor am I happy with the Republican party. In this case, struggling to choose the lesser of two evils leaves me wholly undecided, because I can’t think of a single Republican or Democratic candidate that I honestly think could do the job. They’re either starry-eyed boyscouts, confused flip-floppers, short-sighted idealists, militant bigots, religious zealots, shady sleazes, outright liars, or just plain batsh*t crazy - or any combination. Not one of them inspires confidence as a leader; not one of them leads me to believe that he or she would have the slightest idea of where to begin unraveling the tangle that the last eight years have made of this nation and its affairs while maintaining the outward appearance of strength required in dealing with our foreign allies and enemies.
One thing I can say about G.W.: he’s one crazy mother f***er, and most would think twice about screwing with him because he’s just nuts enough to push that big red button. His “don’t mess with Texas” attitude has pretty much blanketed the U.S., and outside influences are rightfully wary of provoking him. Hell, I’m wary of provoking him. I’m a little amazed that we made it this far through his terms without him declaring a religious war on home soil.
The problem is that a new candidate will have to fill the void left by his aggression with diplomacy, strength, and confidence. With the current global climate, the United States cannot afford a leader who gives the illusion of being weak, ready to capitulate and incapable of dealing with crisis or hostility. Neither can we afford another diplomatic disaster like W, both in domestic and foreign issues. Politically, we’re wounded and limping. We need not only a nurturer, but a protector.
Unless someone pulls one hell of a hat trick and surprises everyone, I doubt we’ll find that in the current list of Big Two potentials.
But I refuse to skip the vote, so I’ll be stuck picking someone. I’ll weigh my options, their histories, and their campaigns when the finals come around and the choices have narrowed down, and who knows - I may even end up voting Republican, if I can swallow my gorge. Voting Democrat won’t be much easier. I normally don’t let my sexuality sway my vote, but in this case I may have to lean on that in forcing myself to choose a candidate.
It’s rather sad that at this point, it hardly matters. No matter which way we vote, we’re screwed.
With apologies to international readers for the U.S.-centric nature of this post: who do you think would do the best job as the United States’ next president? Even if you aren’t old enough to vote, or hell, even if you’re from another country but still have an interest in U.S. affairs…if you could vote for the president of the United States right now, who would you vote for, and why?
Since today is the first day of the new year, you’d think I’d have resolved not to sleep past noon. Ah, well. One less resolution to break. Since I’m not even technically supposed to be working today (day off and all, natch) and I’m not feeling particularly talkative, you won’t be getting a rant/dissertation/sudden and prolonged case of diarrhea of the mouth today. Here’s a few points of interest in the news, instead:
This isn’t quite that bad, but it does raise the question: if Huckabee indeed believes that we’re born gay, does that mean that in his eyes we’re born into sin and there’s no hope for salvation? Or are we born into sin but can be saved as long as we don’t engage in any homosexual activity, thus denying who we are and accepting a hateful belief that to love others according to our nature is wrong?
See that? That crap is one of the many reasons I’m an atheist. We ask the easy questions.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, that wipes out 99% of the ‘Life Guidelines’ questionnaire. Let’s just cover the key basics, then. Are you a viable, self-supporting member of society who contributes to the economy?”
“Yep.”
“Do you hate anyone just because an invisible man in the sky tells you to?”
“Uh…no.”
“Are your actions in any way causing harm to yourself or others?”
“Nope.”
“Are you engaging in mass destruction of property or any other criminal activity possibly involving napalm?”
“Not the last time I checked.”
“Okay, you’re good to go, then.”
“Nifty.”
See? Problem solved. (Of course, you could also argue that atheists are lazy and take the easy way out, while people of faith follow a more difficult path, which brings up the subject of why despite my sarcasm I actually respect many people of faith for choosing the more difficult road, but…that’s not a topic for this column. Moving on…)
New Year, New Unions for Gay Couples: When the ball dropped at the start of the new year today, it didn’t just signify the beginning of a new year; it signified the beginning of new rights for gay partners who wish to engage in legalized unions. New Hampshire’s legislature on gay partnerships went into effect at midnight, and dozens of couples lined up to tie the knot. While the cynic in me says half of them were just doing it for the novelty and will be divorced by 2009 (hell, I was tempted to grab R and drag him up there just to make a statement, but I think within a month I’d have been on my knees begging him to sign the divorce papers)…the rest of me hopes that those couples find the happiness they deserve.
Remind me to never visit Spain: The Pope is at it again, this time with a Dec. 31st broadcast that apparently went over quite swimmingly in Madrid. In it he said the family was “based on the unbreakable union of man and woman and represents the privileged environment where human life is welcomed and protected from the beginning to its natural end.”
Privileged environment.
Jay-sus, I feel like it’s the segregation days all over again. Or at least my college years in Alabama. Elitist b*****d.
The sad thing is, repeating something over and over again doesn’t show faith in one’s convictions. It demonstrates an inability to adapt, an inability to discuss one’s stance from a logical standpoint with valid reasoning to back it, and an inability to accept that the world might not actually operate according to one’s hidebound beliefs. It’s another example of not wanting to own up to the fact that one’s prejudices are wholly one’s own responsibility, rather than hiding behind dogma as a shield.
That’s it from me. Just that little bit and I’m burnt, spent, and done - longer than I intended, but still not quite one of my usual sermons on a single topic. I need some verbal Viagra or something, as long as it doesn’t make me go deaf.
Screw it, I’m goin’ back to bed. See you tomorrow, hopefully before noon.
You know what? I’m not in the mood for serious discussion this morning. It’s Friday, it’s been a horribly long and busy week, and I have one more day of work to get through (and about six articles to finish) before I can go anywhere near my Don Rodolfo Malbec and a few chunks of nice, aged asiago. So you’ll have to pardon me if today, I randomly blurt out pretty much anything that comes to mind, tongue firmly in cheek and heavy on the snark. It will likely be silly and pointless, but most of life is anyway.
First, I really can’t imagine why anyone would care if Lindsay Lohan is potentially swinging from the fence. Who gives a rat’s? Celebrities play on ambiguous sexuality all the time, especially those noted for bouncing in and out of rehab like yo-yos on Prozac (or LSD, or heroin, or whatever the trendy drug of the week is…). They’re not gay/bi, they’re just vapid and indiscriminate in their partners, and think a girl/girl kiss makes them as edgy as Madonna. This is news pretty much only to Slashdotters and other such socially inept dwellers in the parental basement, who’ve just found new fodder for their Lindsay Lohan girl-on-girl fantasies. Make sure to lotion up, boys. Your palms will start to chap pretty quickly.
Despite aggressive spam filters, I routinely get hundreds of spam e-mails a day. The majority of them are overly concerned with the size of my endowments, with a fixation oddly reminiscent of my cat’s unhealthy obsession with watching me undress. (Or unsure of what they want to say about my pen, as they start out so often with “Your Pen Is…” My pen is what? It’s right there, on the desk. What about it?) The concern is admirable, really. Too many men aren’t concerned enough about their sexual health, so all these lovely solicitous e-mails are a heart-warming reminder to schedule my annual doctor checkup.
I’m horribly distressed to see, though, that my spam e-mails just aren’t politically correct enough. They always assume that I have a girlfriend or a wife, or am desperately seeking one, or just “want to know her how she is from the inside”. For shame, spammers, for shame. Have you ever thought that I, your target customer, may not be interested in the young woman whose image you’ve kindly provided to illustrate your point, however lovely she may be? What if I want to know him how he is from the inside? I’m shocked and hurt by your lack of consideration, really. Especially since your constant comments that Concetta has a conspicuous f***stick are really quite insensitive to MtF transgenders.
Or is it a veiled compliment? Are you somehow implying that not a single gay man on the face of the earth needs your enhancement products, and that our online profiles tell the truth and we are, in fact, all gifted like John Holmes?
A weighty point to ponder, indeed.
Any transgendered individuals who read Darkside Rainbow will no doubt be relieved to know that, according to American Daily, your gender dysphoria is just an affliction indicating a disconnection from reality that should be treated and ultimately cured with therapy and prayer. Liberalism is also a mental disorder, transgender rights are ridiculous, and gender identity is pure nonsense. Prayer should be able to fix that, too. The FtM gay male he’s talking about in the article? Just a confused straight girl in plaid shirts and dockers who’s an absolute fool for trying to do anything that would allow her to live more comfortably with the lot she’s been given. There. Don’t you feel better now that Matt Barber’s cleared that up for you? Run along now, pray for a few hours, and maybe his God will be kind enough to “cure” your gender dysphoria and make you so happy with your birth gender that you’ll happily fall into your appropriate 1950s-esque gender role. Remember to start your prayers with “Dear Lord.” He likes being called “Lord.”
To close things off on a more serious note: I’m not a praying man despite my seeming familiarity with the Captain’s Almighty’s titular preferences, but if any of you out there are (well, or praying women, considering the demographics of my reader base) , keep Mehdi in your thoughts; the young gay Iranian is awaiting the decision of a Dutch court over whether to return him to the UK, where he will likely be summarily packed up and sent right back to Iran - and we all know that gays don’t exist in Iran.
I’m done, and out. See you Monday. Yes, I’m posting a comic on Christmas Eve. Just call me Scrooge, baby, and get your plebeian butt back to work.
When I was in university, I had to walk to classes - twenty miles, barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways. We weren’t allowed to have clothing; my school’s uniform was the meal sack, with a few holes cut out for the arms and head. If you didn’t follow tradition you were flogged and made to walk across a bed of broken glass to the school monument, which was forty miles uphill both ways. And they only fed us on alternating Tuesdays.
…
All right, maybe not. But at the risk of being called an old geezer, in my generation kids were raised to know better than to pull the kind of stunts this Princeton University student almost got away with:
(Mount Laurel, New Jersey) A Princeton University student who argued that his conservative views were not accepted on the campus confessed to fabricating an assault and sending threatening e-mail messages to himself and some friends who shared his views, authorities say.
Princeton Township police said that Francisco Nava was not immediately charged with any crime, but that the investigation was continuing.
Nava claimed to have been assaulted Friday by two men off campus, police said. But he later confessed that scrapes and scratches on his face were self-inflicted, and that the threats were his work, too, said Detective Sgt. Ernie Silagyi.
[...]Nava, a 23-year-old junior politics major from Bedford, Texas, found himself at the center of one campus controversy recently when he wrote a column for the student newspaper criticizing the school for giving out free condoms, which he said encouraged a dangerous “hook-up culture.”
A short time later, Nava made his first report to the university public safety office that he was receiving threatening messages in his campus mailbox. A friend says Nava told him one message read, in capital letters: “ONE MORE ARTICLE AND YOU WON’T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.”
Other members of the Anscombe Society, a conservative student organization, who have spoken out against premarital sex and same-sex marriage, said they received similar threats. So did Robert George, a professor in the politics department.
Robinson-Brown would not say exactly how the university responded to the threats. But she said that, in general, when students are threatened they are given access to counselors, assured that the campus security force will take their calls right away and can be moved to new dorm rooms.
Another student wrote in the campus newspaper Friday that the threats Nava received did not get the same forceful response as anti-gay graffiti that appeared this semester outside the dorm rooms of some gay students.
Brandon McGinley called it a double standard, which made it seem OK to “use intimidation tactics to silence the voices of morally conservative students.”
If I’d ever pulled anything like that and been caught - and you can bet I would have been; my parents always knew when I’d done something, even if they didn’t know what just yet - my mother would have torn me a new one and my father would have taken a belt to my behind (yes, even at 18+, for something like that). Once they were done, my grandmother would have taken me out in the back yard, made me pick my own wooden switch, and then given me a good lashing with it. College kids from any generation are known for stupid antics, but there’s a line you just don’t cross, not if your parents raised you to know what’s good for you. Francisco Nava crossed that line.
In a way I can see what he was trying to accomplish, by proving that there’s a double standard regarding discrimination and protections for those who face threats for their beliefs or simply for their state of being. There was a strong reaction to anti-gay graffiti; people were roused in support of gay rights. There was a lesser reaction when he faced supposed threats for his articles, as if his rights weren’t as important.
But he botched it in more ways than one, coming at it from the wrong angle - and I don’t just mean by getting caught. One, while the article isn’t wholly clear on this, he didn’t seem to make it apparent that the faked threats were because of Nava’s anti-gay stance and participation in an anti-gay group on campus, which removes the double standard right there. It’s only a double standard if gays are threatened for being gay and receive better responses than anti-gays who are threatened for being anti-gay, rather than just being threatened on general reasons of being “morally conservative”. As far as I can tell, the article written before he started his hoax wasn’t even about homosexuality; it was just about promiscuity in general, encouraged by the dissemination of condoms on campus.
Two, it’s hard to make a solid case for directly parallel discrimination when gays are discriminated against for what we are, while anti-gays are discriminated against for what they believe. I think Nava and many of his ilk may have problems grasping that because they believe being gay is a choice and a lifestyle. While causality doesn’t make discrimination against any group any less heinous and certainly doesn’t justify threatening anyone (if there were real threats involved, anyway), people tend to be roused more by those victimized for traits they can’t help than those victimized for something they chose and that, in turn, discriminate against others for who or what they are.
The third problem is that doing something like this weakens the case for believability where a double standard is concerned in the first place. There is a double standard, even with the point above regarding the difference between a state of being and a choice; we, as gays, are widely seen as the victims, and anti-gay groups as the aggressors - but in terms of rights, as we struggle to find equal footing we all become victims of attempts to completely remove our rights in order to grant them to the opposition. Because gays have fewer rights, though, we’re given more benefit of the doubt, more support, and more sympathy.
Few people see our struggle for equality as an attempt to take rights of expression and belief away from anti-gay groups. They may see things differently. Does that mean that I think our struggle for equality is wrong or that their attempts to suppress said equality are right? Not just no, but hell no. Something’s got to give, and I’m sick of it always being us. They have the right to their beliefs, but we have the right not to have them enforced on us. So yes, there’s a double standard. It’s an unfortunate necessity and it can’t be avoided in any situation of opposing groups struggling to win out against one another; that’s just life, and fairness really has no place in it. But in between that double standard, there is a balance to be found somewhere, if we can try to find a happy medium that recognizes equal rights for all without discriminating against anyone - meaning each side’s got to give a little and take a little.
But valid points regarding that double standard, which may actually open ground for talks between opposing groups as each side recognizes the viewpoints and concerns of others, are completely eroded when one has to fabricate acts of persecution in order to prove it.
During Sunday’s live webcast, I addressed a reader question asking what I think of the Iraq war; I pointed out that Americans don’t understand enough about Iraqi culture to even try to govern it. After reading the news this morning…I can’t help but conclude that we don’t even understand enough about Iraqi culture to comprehend the slightest effect that we have on their society. Unfortunately, I think most of us don’t really care, either. Many Americans are of the opinion that Iraq will be fine once it’s become a homogenized little mini-America, just another annexed territory with a bit of a transAtlantic leap between.
Hopefully for the Iraqi people…that will never happen.
BAGHDAD — In a city and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he wanted to.
Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him, this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men have always been publicly affectionate here.
But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.
But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially vilified.
In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their last names not be used.
They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment — four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood gossip can scare them enough to move.
“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed, nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”
His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier. There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their hair and forcing them to eat it.
It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq. According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 for being gay.
Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past. [Read more for a description of gay life in Iraq before the occupation.]
Truth told I, like anyone, often don’t fully appreciate the impact of something until it touches on something deeply personal to me. This, more than anything, more even than the body counts and the horrific news reports of bombings and siege, has made me realize the profound and lasting effect that the American invasion has had on Iraqi culture. It’s sobering, it’s painful, and it’s probably entirely selfish that it took that for me to view the occupation through such personal eyes and really take a moment to feel something for the Iraqi people beyond logical assessments of why Americans shouldn’t be occupying Iraq. I can’t help that. That’s human. Willful blindness, self-absorbed preoccupation.
That’s the way many of us are, to some extent. Iraq is “over there”; it’s a political issue, not a matter of real people with real lives that have been forever altered by something beyond their control. We feel strongly about the politics, about the people who agree and disagree with us, but we don’t extend our compassion and our understanding of the Iraqis as people unless we’ve been there or unless we find something that strikes a chord in us and makes it so very deeply personal.
Mohammed’s story and the stories of other gays in Iraq have made this personal for me. I’ve felt for a long time that America should pull out of Iraq, but that feeling has only intensified as this forces me to look beyond not just the issues of how the American occupation has changed gay life there, but how it’s changed other aspects as well. Their entire society has changed; we’ve destroyed parts of their culture that can never be retrieved, affected political balances, increased religious, social, and political intolerance, and in some cases created the very atmosphere of fear and terror that we claim to be fighting a protracted and useless war against. Life is naturally made up of disastrous changes, and one either adapts and survives, or fails - but the changes we’ve wrought in Iraq aren’t natural. They aren’t beneficial. And the Iraqi people won’t recover from them for a very, very long time.
It’s like engaging in battle over fertile fields. Your battle, won or lost, may be all that matters to you at the time…but in the process the fruits of those fields are destroyed, trampled carelessly underfoot while you’re too busy looking on to your opponent. Eventually the battle will end; the land will clear, and the bodies will be removed, enshrouded, and buried. But the great trenches of war will remain; the land ravaged and stomped by a thousand feet, razed by fire, poisoned by the substances of war. It’s only when the fight has moved on that the land may start to recover, and the people of that land can move in to nurture it slowly back to health - even though its shape and character have changed entirely, and it may never be what it once was, may never grow as it once did.
The Iraqi people are both that field, its fruit, and its tenders.
Every day, the GBLTQ community faces prejudice; we’re accused of corrupting principles of home and family, destroying traditional marriage, promoting sin, seducing children, even bringing down the wrath of one god or another in the form of natural disasters ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the Indian Ocean tsunami. If there’s a problem with the price of rice in China, it’s our fault. We’re the scapegoats for practically every homophobic cause in existence - and now, according to Pope Benedict XVI, we’re also a threat to world peace.
The annual message from the head of the Roman Catholic Church to the world has been unveiled. [...] It is entitled The Human Family, A Community of Peace, and in it he calls for the dismantling of nuclear weapons and environmental co-operation and describes gay marriage as “an obstacle on the road to peace.” The 80-year-old German-born pontiff theorises that peace and the family are inherently linked and any threat to the “traditional family” will be opposed by Catholics.
[...]“Many legislative initiatives work against peace by weakening the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, by directly or indirectly forcing families not to be open to accepting a morally responsible life, or by not recognising the family as having primary responsibility in the education of children,” he said.
[...]“The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanisation’ for the person and society,” he wrote.
“The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order.
“Whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace.
“This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.”
It really disturbs me that millions of people worldwide look upon this man’s words as the word and law of their god. Any remotely agreeable fellows out there want to take a New Year’s road trip to New Hampshire with me to get semi-hitched out of sheer spite alone? No? Thought not. Let’s move on to the discussion, then.
Here’s my main problem with that entire pile of bigotry: the Pope is defining a family by marriage alone, rather than accepting that one doesn’t need marriage papers to mate and bear children, and even provide for both mate and children. A simple word and a few documents don’t automatically confer moral responsibility; the number of broken homes and abused children that come from traditional marriage can attest to that. A strong family would be a strong family with or without that definition, based on the characters of and the relationships between the people involved. So right there we’ve found one instance of flawed logic in this critical institution of marriage as the “new life” that promotes moral responsibility and proper child-rearing. A wedding ring will not change a person’s character for the better; nor will lack of one change said character for the worse.
I can almost get behind the idea that peace is related to the family unit, simply out of sheer animal territoriality. We, as beasts, instinctively want to protect our mates and offspring; it’s hard-coded in those twisty little ropes of deoxyribonucleic acid that form the building blocks of the mess of muscle, blood and bone that we call homo sapiens. That can actually lead at first to further violence when defending one’s claim, but eventually leads to peace as boundaries are defined and the human animal attempts to avoid conflict in order to preserve the lives of those within its territory and maintain one’s own safety in order to act as guardian and provider. These rituals of territoriality existed long before we slapped words like “marriage” onto our pack-animal mating behavior and frittered together a few documents to make it sound important, binding, and somehow fundamentally tied to a universal truth rather than a label that we concocted to apply to existing relationships.
The problem is that we’ve moved beyond simple competition for territory, food, and mates, and into a more complex economic and social structure that we like to call civilization. We’re no longer competing to provide for a single family unit, or even for a single pack. We compete to provide for cities, states, provinces, municipalities (hey, I’m not just assuming the U.S. here), entire nations, and one doesn’t have to be part of a man-woman-children family unit to be a part of any of those common groupings. Even if we aren’t contributing to the gene pool - and that goes for heterosexuals who don’t breed, and not just homosexuals who don’t seek alternate methods of childbearing - we’re contributing to our local economy and our local workforce, thus using our skills and our revenue to strengthen our respective nations and help contribute to the maintenance of a peaceful balance. Family alone is no longer the sole foundation of a peaceful society. Industry and commerce are large factors, and one can contribute quite well to industry and commerce without being part of that kernel family unit that the Pope espouses.
With the human race numbering in the billions, we aren’t needed to ensure the continuation of the species; in fact, we may well be helping to combat overpopulation, a problem that would definitely lead to more violence. The more families - defined by marriage or not - breed, the more mouths there are open and crying for scarcer and scarcer resources, and the more one must consider the possibility of taking what one needs by force when there’s too little to go around.
Even more, if gays were allowed to marry and form families, we would be able to help stabilize the flagging family unit by looking after those who fell through the cracks of the much-touted traditional marriage and heterosexual family unit. There are so many gay couples who would be happy to adopt children whose straight parents either voluntarily left them or lost them due to neglect and abuse. Those children would grow up loved, properly looked after, well-educated, and could eventually grow to contribute even more to the society that they help to form…rather than being forgotten, with only a few given the opportunity to struggle towards something better rather than become a burden upon the economy. I’d say that’s one hell of a “primary responsibility” to take up, if only we were allowed. It’s the proponents of traditional family units that are dropping the ball, not us. We’re even offering to help pick up the slack, clean up the mess…but they don’t seem to want it cleaned.
Yes, the family unit - if not necessarily marriage, people keep forgetting that it’s just a word and fabricated standards - can be defined as the first “natural” society. Every social structure starts off small. First the family, then the neighborhood, then the village/town/city, then the region, then the nation; it all builds in borderline fractal tessellation, and every nation is made up of all of these smaller units broken down again and again. They are the foundation, but they aren’t the be-all and end-all of society, and they aren’t the only role for which any family unit - regardless of the gender pairings of the primary providers in the family - is suited. That’s like saying that a car can run without fuel, transmission, a muffler, wheels…as long as it has an engine. Yes, the engine is the core unit of propulsion, but it couldn’t operate without all of those other supporting factors. Society has grown too complex to try to reduce the encompassing issue of world peace to something so oversimplified and utterly rooted in dogma.
There are too many entrenched faith-based assumptions without logical foundation for the two issues to be anything other than mutually exclusive. You can feasibly approach peace in society and its relation to the family unit from a sociological and anthropological perspective, as long as you retain objectivity and account for multiple influencing factors rather than making hard and fast statements of absolutes with little grounding outside of personal beliefs. You can’t base your argument for traditional marriage on wholly subjective ideas of morality and flawed assignations of roles in child-rearing and then try to apply the argument objectively to the sweeping issues of economics and culture that govern the interactions of many societies. You can’t call something a “divine institution” and then hold it up as a standard for a global community that will quite happily inform you of their differing ideals of what constitutes “divine”.
And you can’t say that gay marriage is a threat to peace, when we’re trying our damnedest to make peace with the ideals of the world we live in - and not break its structure, but join it in the only way we can.
Next thing you know, they’ll be calling us terrorists and swearing that we want to bring democracy to its knees.
I am a geek. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love books, I love computers, I love programming, and I spent half this past weekend intensively researching formation of pillow lava and submarine lava tubes along fissures on the mid-Atlantic ridge - ostensibly as background information for a story idea, but after a while I forgot about the story out of fascination with the subject matter. I read Slashdot, I can write my own applications in Flash, and discussions of nanotechnology in crystal solar cells and aberrant prion structures can turn me on faster than a gyrating Chippendale covered in chocolate sauce. Tinkering with the building blocks of our world and ourselves just sends little thrills of pleasure down my spine. Obviously, scientific advancement and discovery don’t make me uncomfortable.
What makes me uncomfortable is the intentions not only of those who make the discoveries, but of those who are given the information and the power to make use of it.
So you can imagine that I was at once fascinated and disturbed to read that scientists have discovered how to use drugs to turn homosexuality on and off within a matter of hours - in fruit flies, mind you, not in humans. I’ve long been a proponent of some kind of biological explanation for homosexuality, whether it’s genetic or a more complex combination of factors resulting from chemical adaptations to the environment, making it as much a physical trait as the color of your eyes or the tendency to grey early around the temples. While fruit flies and humans aren’t exactly the same, the finding that fruit flies’ sexuality is affected by a gene they called “genderblind” and the transportation of a neurotransmitter called glutamate is still a major leap. Chemically altering the levels of glutamate changed the flies’ sexuality by changing how they react to the scents of pheromones. If the same can be said of humans and other animals, then we’ve helped to narrow down the biological source of homosexuality. Great; conclusive proof against homosexuality as a sin or lifestyle choice.
What bothers me is what can be done with this. On one hand, you have to experiment with being able to artificially create and remove biological homosexuality in order to prove that it even is biological, so of course I wouldn’t assume that the scientists involved in the experiments have some kind ulterior motive. They’re trying to understand the nature of homosexuality, nothing more. What I worry about is commercial and private interests pouncing on this. There are enough homophobic people in positions of corporate and political power in this country, people who view homosexuality as a disease, that they could easily take this finding as proof that homosexuality is a defect that can and must be “cured”. It makes me shudder to think of drugs designed to change the synaptic response to glutamate, marketed loudly as the “gay cure” and administered indiscriminately to humans to fix their “defect”. The very discovery is a new weapon for ex-gay ministries to use to seduce people into thinking that they even need to be cured.
Am I doomsaying and predicting the end of the world as we know it? No. This isn’t the Marvel universe, and we’re not going to be rounded up in mutant concentration camps and administered cures for our “genetic aberration” (I told you I was a geek). All I’m doing is raising a note of concern that should be present in all scientific and medical discoveries: concern for the ethical use of findings, and awareness that all discoveries, no matter how innocent, can be misused by those with the wrong intent. It’s a fancy way of saying that I don’t trust people, especially people in power.
What I’m saying is to be aware. You’d be surprised at the things your government does when they think you aren’t looking, such as pushing legislation that could allow government copyright agencies to seize and sell your property on the suspicion of copyright violation, without trial and without recompense - fully overriding due process and protections against unlawful search and seizure, much the same as civil forfeiture in drug possession cases. No, that’s not farfetched speculation of what could happen. That’s an actual bill in the works. The United States government will do anything its people will let it get away with, often with the encouragement of privately owned corporations and religious organizations - even if often, people only “let” things happen by being passive, by not acting, by not even knowing what’s going on until it’s too late.
Don’t be passive. Keep your eyes open. Homosexuality is a hot issue, a divisive issue, and can draw focused attention from legislators. There’s no cause for outright paranoia; this isn’t 1984 and while yes, Big Brother is watching, Big Brother isn’t all-powerful. It’s up to the citizens to protect their rights before they’re taken away - and part of protecting your own rights is being informed. Be aware of what’s happening around you, and how it affects you. Be aware of the ethical accountability of all factions of government, science, medicine, capitalist enterprise - so that when the time comes to speak for yourself, you can.
After all, it’s hard to protest something when you aren’t even aware of it until it’s done.
Yesterday was not a pretty day in gay and lesbian news. To take a look at a few of the highlights (since I can’t in good conscience say “lowlights” without feeling as cheesy as Hikaru):
Shepard Hate Crime Bill To Be Dropped: While I’m still rather cynical in my stance towards use of emotionally-charged phrases like “hate crime” in the criminal justice system, it still bothers me to see that this bill is being pushed by the wayside. Regardless of the words used to describe it, people are still victimized every day out of prejudice against their sexuality. If other minority groups gain special protections under hate crime laws, then it’s entirely unfair (since when was life ever fair?) to leave the GBLTQ community out.
In some ways it’s unfair that anyone should have more protections under the law than anyone else - or stronger penalties, which imply stronger protections through greater punishment as a means of discouragement. But hate crime laws do some good in forcing people to understand that prejudice-related crimes aren’t acceptable, hopefully leveling the playing field a bit…unless you bat for the other team, that is. Reportedly the Democrats are resigned to sidelining the bill after a threatened White House veto. What was that about “Relax, it’s all right, the Democrats are in charge now”? Pfft.
Iran Executes 21 Year Old Accused Of Gay Sex When He Was 13: …then again, the next time I feel the need to complain about the state of gay rights in the US, perhaps I should spend a day or two in Iran. Unfortunately, I doubt I’d ever make it back home. In a rather convoluted trial, a man was spared execution for the sake of a retrial only to be summarily executed ten days later. The article itself is confusing, mentioning never accusing the man of rape - when at that age, wouldn’t he have likely been a rape victim, and thus possibly spared the death penalty? Regardless, the entire affair is sickening. No homosexuals in Iran, eh? One way or another…
HIV-Pos Navy Priest Charged With Unprotected Sex: Dear United States Navy: STOP SCREWING UP. Thank you. Sweet honkin’ Jeebus, what are you teaching these people? In a lovely two-for-one shot, a gay Roman Catholic Priest has been charged with knowingly having unprotected sex with military men without informing them of his HIV+ state. From the article: “Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, 42, is charged with sodomy, aggravated assault, indecent assault, fraternization and conduct unbecoming a military officer.” Um. You know, I don’t think that’s what they mean by “don’t ask, don’t tell”. I’d be laughing out of sheer schadenfreude at the situation (come on, two of the loudest anti-gay protesters rolled into one?) if the entire situation wasn’t so horrific. Who knows how many of those men were infected and their lives destroyed?
Well, that was a lovely, depressing little romp through the news.
Maybe I’ll stick to airing little bits of my dirty laundry and using them to chastise my peers. That theme seems to be working for me.
Edit/Update: Prize for the 1,500 Comments Contest
Just thought I’d let you know that I snagged something for the prize in the second incarnation of the comments contest: a Sandisk Sansa 1GB MP3 player.
In pink.
Because that amuses the bloody hell out of me.
We’re already at 1,126 comments, though…er…[cough] …a large portion of that may be my fault. Ahem. Anyway. Rules are the same; spam comments/comments just to inflate the comment count will be deleted; my comments and pingback link comments count to raise the comment count but don’t count to win, and whoever gets the 1,500th comment (or the first qualifying comment after 1,500) wins.
And to answer a question from last time: international readers do qualify to win. International shipping on small, lightweight items is generally quite cheap, and customs isn’t a problem when I mark it as a gift.
Some time ago, I said that I didn’t quite understand the outrage in Tuscany over an anti-discrimination ad featuring a photo of a newborn baby. I thought the ad was clever, to the point, and extremely effective. I didn’t once stop to think that using the knee-jerk human reaction to anything involving children in such a way constituted some rather underhanded and manipulative tactics, right from our side of the gay vs. anti-gay war. I thought it was all right, because it got the point that I wanted to make across. I didn’t realize that I was setting a double standard.
The ads begin with an announcer saying “If we change the definition of marriage..” but is interrupted by a child.
“Grandma, my teacher said if grandpa was a girl that’s ok, you can still be married,’” the voice says.
The announcer then returns to say: “Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking: ‘God creating Adam and Eve is so old-fashioned.’”
“Thinking the unthinkable: ‘If my dad married a man, who would be my mom?’”
I started frothing. “This is wrong,” I snarled to myself. “It’s dirty, it’s underhanded, it would take a bunch of sleazy rats to use children to prey on people’s reactions just to spread their propaganda–”
And that’s when it hit me.
I was being a damned hypocrite.
I was being just like every other narrow-minded, hot-headed political mudslinger who flings words like “liberal” and “conservative” around as insults, points fingers, and accuses the other side of every atrocity known to man. I was condemning them for tactics that people on my side of the argument used, and following the very same mindset: it’s reprehensibly wrong if they do it, but it’s permissible if we do it because we’re right, damn it. It doesn’t matter which side you define as “us” or “them”. In the end they aren’t so different.
In the end, I became what I loathe most. I lost my rationality, my objectivity, my sense of fairness. I succumbed to bias.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been that disgusted with myself.
No, it isn’t all right to use manipulative tactics like that to spread your propaganda - and no matter what side you stand on, to someone your beliefs will be considered propaganda. It’s not right for us, it’s not right for them, it’s not right for you, and it’s not right for me. If I’m going to condemn conservatives for using such methods, then I have to condemn anyone else who does as well, even if I agree with their message.
You can’t call it “fighting the good fight” when you fight dirty. Some may say that you do what you must to win; I can’t say that I agree. Just because one side fights dirty doesn’t mean that you must sink to those levels to win. Don’t set a bad example, and don’t follow one, either; rise above, and set the standard for your opposition to adhere to. Both sides would benefit if we fought fair, fought cleanly, and met each other face to hard, ugly face. That includes facing our own hypocrisies, and recognizing our own double standards. It means understanding that we often loathe things in others that reflect what we hate most about ourselves. It means respecting the opposition…and making ourselves worthy of their respect, in return.
Only then will these battles of human rights come to the table of negotiation, and be settled fairly with no further blood shed.
Do you know what the LGBT community (oh, excuse me - the LGB community) just did?
We just pulled a W.
That’s right, we took a page out of the rulebook of the man that many of us despise as one of the worst presidents in the history of our nation.
Remember “No Child Left Behind”?
Uh-huh.
Now remember the recent presidential veto of a bill that would have provided healthcare for thousands of children who don’t currently receive care?
…how many children do you think were left behind there, hm?
So what happened to our solidarity? What happened to human rights and civil rights organizations, LGBT/GBLTQ foundations, lawmakers, representatives, lobbyists, all so loudly protesting the removal of trans-inclusive language from ENDA? Somewhere along the way it died down to an abrupt and pathetic murmur, and the T in LGBT got left behind while the rest of us sailed on merrily ahead. I know we’re all tired of having to fight for every last tiny thing we get, but is that any reason to roll over and show our bellies and accept the little table scraps we’re given with hardly a fight?
Are we really so selfish that we’re willing to say, “Well, let’s just take it this time and make sure we’re covered, and we’ll worry about the transpeople later”?
Not acceptable, people. Not acceptable. There’s a reason we call ourselves the GBLTQ/LGBT community - because we are a community, no matter how much we snipe at each other from within. It’s like family; you may not always like each other, but you pull together in the end and support each other even if you don’t always approve of each other.
There comes a time when you have to pick your battles, and be satisfied with the small victories. This is not one of those times. If we start letting transpeople be pushed aside…
With everyone and their grandmothers getting their panties in a wad over whether or not gay marriage (or even civil unions) should be allowed, it’s always interesting to survey the gay community to determine levels of interest. While for some it’s a crucial issue that demands daily recognition and daily efforts to force the gay rights movement forward, for others it’s just a passing point of interest, sometimes degenerating into downright apathy.
gay marriage, civil unions, ball and chain, two balls and a rather short lead line, tying the knot…with your tongue, I’m just making up tags
