In the wake of the Supreme Court cisn on gay marriage, there is ample reason to cricize the Court, but there is also ample reason to cricize the cricizers. In the polil, moral and amic bat of our time, is important that we support our posn wh the rrect argument. Relativism is growg
Contents:
- BAN GAY MARRIAGE, DEPORT DREAMERS: DOUG MASTRIANO’S EXTREME VIEWS CGHT ON TAPE
- WHEN GAY MARRIAGE WAS RADIL
- SOME ON THE RADIL QUEER LEFT STILL THK GAY MARRIAGE IS BAD FOR THE LGBTQ COMMUNY
- WHY GAY MARRIAGE IS RADIL
- GAY MARRIAGE: THEOLOGIL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS
- AT THE DAWN OF GAY LIBERATN, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE WAS A RADIL IA
- RELATIVISM AND GAY MARRIAGE
- GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD FOR AMERI
- CONTRACEPTN, GAY MARRIAGE: CLARENCE THOMAS SIGNALS NEW TARGETS FOR SUPREME URT
BAN GAY MARRIAGE, DEPORT DREAMERS: DOUG MASTRIANO’S EXTREME VIEWS CGHT ON TAPE
Marriage ligatn played an important polil role gay liberatn's heady early years. Between 1970 and 1972, among the dozen or so Amerin same-sex upl who sought civil marriage licens, three pursued lawsus to the bter end. * radical views on gay marriage *
It's certaly possible that I'm still argug wh the people I was argug wh back the 1990s, when there were few tellectual lbian and gay voic who believed tryg to break to marriage was a good ia. So let me the 1990s, lbian and gay lears, eher anizatnally or tellectually, almost universally had eply lefty crentials.
WHEN GAY MARRIAGE WAS RADIL
Or they thought that was a wrong-head, false-nscns pursu of assiatn, a flat-out ntradictn of the movement that they believed they stood for: sexual liberatn, or creative ways to regnize alternative fay I never unrstood-I still don't unrstand-how they uld see the the gay and lbian "" as a lefty movement. But a Venn diagram, the "" of lbians and gay men would overlap only slightly wh the "" of a progrsive movement. They seemed to believe that ordary lbians and gay men should be followg some tellectual vanguard, tacklg all the pillars of general opprsn one swell foop (as my father ed to say).
It was phed ferocly by Middle Amerin lbians and gay men: physicians' assistants and middle managers, stay-at-home moms who sperately need to get listed on the health surance of their state-trooper partners, graphic signers who fell love and wanted to spend their liv together-and who wanted to lnch that wh the same social celebratn, the same civil sanctn that their brothers and sisters had had. Graff wr on social-jtice and human-rights issu, particularly discrimatn and vlence agast women and children; marriage and fay policy; and lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr liv. ) the mid-1990s to unter both the antigay folks and Andrew Sullivan's high-profile ntentn that marriage was herently nservative and would domtite gay men.
SOME ON THE RADIL QUEER LEFT STILL THK GAY MARRIAGE IS BAD FOR THE LGBTQ COMMUNY
So 's weirdly dissonant when gay neons and femist lbians publicly sist-the former wh enthiasm, the latter wh distate-that same-sex marriage would be a nservative move, nfg sexual ee radils si some legal cellblock. Makg lbians and gay men more visible legally will sist that there is no tradnal pe: that our society surviv not by rote but by heart. In the space of two days this week voters North Carola approved a nstutnal amendment effectively banng same-sex marriage and US Print Barack Obama ma clear his view that gay and lbian upl should have the chance to wed.
We Southerners have held the le for tradn and moral tth about marriage every time the issue has been put on the ballot how cisive the North Carola vote was, and given that gay marriage proponents have lost every state, even culturally liberal California, is temptg to thk we n stand athwart history yellg, "Stop!
In my newsroom experience, is taken as given that any opposn to gay marriage n only e om rank would no more take a fenr of tradnal marriage serly than you would take a segregatnist serly - or so the thkg go.
WHY GAY MARRIAGE IS RADIL
Tryg to expla philosophilly why homosexualy is not the same thg as race draws blank is simply not somethg to be reasoned about, pecially not wh my generatn of journalists: too young to have seen the black civil rights movement, and who are not about to miss out on their own versn. Though I firmly believe there is only a superficial nnectn between gay marriage and ter-racial marriage, the legacy of the civil rights movement the South is precisely why I thk marriage tradnalists are gog to lose the long n. This tells somethg about the future of gay marriage, given the domance of the "civil rights" narrative the public is monly known,.
Gay marriage opponents like to tell themselv that people get more nservative as they age - te, general, but unlikely this long as the tradnalist posn on same-sex marriage, almost universally held only 25 years ago, is treated as irratnal hatred and nothg but by the media, bs, and social el, there will be powerful social and psychologil prsure to shun . Prejudice - eher the bad sense of mdls bigotry, or the good, Burkean sense - is the only thg keepg gay marriage at will not last, pecially as the social, legal, and mercial price for holdg fast to tradn creas, as certaly will, now that same-sex marriage mands the high ground the US social and cultural hierarchy. Gay marriage plet the stutnalisatn of the sexual revolutn, agast which the forc of social nservatism and relig tradn have been pleasg as ballot box victori are, I see no reason for the long feat to reverse, at least not my lifetime.
More pennts who lean toward the Democratic Party (81%) favor gay marriage than Democrats (71%). Mastriano’s remarks on gay adoptn were prevly highlighted by the Washgton Bla, and NBC News highlighted Mastriano’s belief that Islam was not “created equal.
GAY MARRIAGE: THEOLOGIL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS
On June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, physilly risted a police raid and sparked several days of rtg. Those who intified wh gay liberatn -- many of whom also intified as femists, hippi, socialists, anti-racists -- were generally hostile to stutns like marriage and the ary that later generatns would clamor to enter.
" Revolutnary Love: An Introductn to Gay Liberatn nmned "the whole nuclear fay stcture" for yokg "woman to man, and children to both, a box that lims human growth. Between 1970 and 1972, among the dozen or so Amerin same-sex upl who sought civil marriage licens, three pursued lawsus to the bter end: Jack Baker and Mike McConnell Mnota, Marjorie Jon and Tracy Knight Kentucky, and John Sger and Pl Barwick urts that heard the s rpond ntemptuoly, but the gay lib movement, on the whole, did not.
" Disapproval wh the gay muny me not om radils intified wh Stonewall but om more ut, nformist, "tablishment homosexuals, " who generally were olr and often eply is, que precisely, "tablishment" gays who assume the public face of same-sex marriage. The major gay-rights ligatn firms exprsly choose platiffs like Kris Perry and Sandy Stier for their palatabily to middle Ameri. They are mols of the rpectable most Amerins 1969, when every state but Illois had an anti-sodomy law on s books, there was no such thg as a rpectable homosexual.
AT THE DAWN OF GAY LIBERATN, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE WAS A RADIL IA
In 2007, when the California Supreme Court asked, on s own iative, whether the state's separate-but-equal problem -- marriage for straights, domtic partnership for gays -- uld be solved by elimatg marriage altogether, platiffs said no. Lynne Pfhul, a founr of Louisville's Gay Liberatn Front (she acpanied Jon and Knight to the unty clerk's office), explas that applyg for a license was "a ncrete, visible thg. The s were signed, as the Washgton platiffs put , "to generate public discsn about gay people and gay relatnships, " which is exactly what they did.
Fally, marriage offered -- and ntu to offer -- an excellent vehicle for prsg the claim, fervently embraced by the Stonewall generatn, that "gay is good. " Takg advantage of marriage's privileged associatn wh sex and romantic love, the first platiffs proclaimed not only the polil equaly of straights and gays but the moral equivalence of heterosexual and homosexual relatnships. The one tactic left for nservative gay marriage opponents is a radil one: don’t let anyone get married.
”This view that marriage self is an antiquated and ultimately nservative societal stutn is perhaps not the most popular one to arise om the LGBTQ* muny over the last two s, but ’s far om Sullivan phed agast back 1989, his say The New Republic that more or ls kickstarted the gay-marriage movement. At the time, gay marriage may have seemed radil, but Sullivan was argug for his right to participate tradnal society.
RELATIVISM AND GAY MARRIAGE
Bee of this, Sullivan’s argument was amed as a nservative se:The gay movement has ducked this issue primarily out of fear of divisn. Much of the gay learship clgs to notns of gay life as sentially outsir, anti-bourgeois, radil. But for many other gays — my gus, a majory — while they don’t ny the importance of rebelln 20 years ago and are grateful for what was done, there’s now the sense of a new opportuny.
GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD FOR AMERI
I had an opportuny to rrect him, to boldly go where I believe every gay person should go to set the rerd straight (or gay?
When I ll my love my wife, I'm tellg society to rpect my big, gay love, and to get ed to a world where not everyone is straight and where to assume so sets one up for an embarrassg apology. And when the outmod, homophobic curta falls, more and more stat will fd easier, and perhaps even necsary, to pass marriage equaly. Social nservativ are not only ncerned about marriage, but also the rise of a gay and lbian culture.
CONTRACEPTN, GAY MARRIAGE: CLARENCE THOMAS SIGNALS NEW TARGETS FOR SUPREME URT
Statistics suggt, however, that gays and lbians are not creasg number, if we accept the bt rearch data of Edward Lmann, who puts the number at about 5% of the populatn1.
What has grown is a much greater acceptance of gays and lbians our culture, as well as the social and enomic eedom for gays and lbians to emerge om the closet that has nfed them for so many generatns. The recent addn of same sex mment ceremoni the Sunday New York Tim weddg and engagement announcements and the populary of shows as "Will and Grace" and "Queer Eye…" dite a shift our culture's attu toward gays and lbians.
In every class, for the past 20 odd years, I have ved a gay former stunt, Lee FzGerald, to speak on gay relatnships. My tent was two-fold: first to ve stunts to dialogue wh people different om themselv; send, to work to elimate, whatever small way I uld, homophobic attus on our mp and our muny.