Video Blogs
TV Shows:
Find Articles On:
Who's onlineThere are currently 17 members and 693 guests online.
|
IMHO: Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black's gay rights speeches at the Oscars
By now we know that Sunday night was a very gay night at the Oscars, and I’m not just talking about the musical numbers. Sunday night was also a night when the entire community celebrated as Milk took home two wins, one for Best Original Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black, and of course Best Actor for Sean Penn. Most of the blogosphere has been buzzing about the two heavily political speeches that followed said wins, and while all of what was said needed to be said, there was something that stuck out to me in both of that functions as a cautionary tale of what I believe is currently going on with the gay rights movement. Both Penn and Black spoke out passionately about marriage equality, as has every gay celebrity on every red carpet, most of our famous straight allies, and, well, pretty much all of the real LGBT leaders that are doing the hard work on the front lines of our cause.
But what is that cause exactly? Black and Penn’s speeches are indicative of what I see as aa large-scale problem within the movement right now -- that problem being the one that casts marriage equality as the bottom line of the gay rights struggle. (On a side note, the fact that Penn’s speech is getting all of the attention over the one given by the real-live gay man who won shocks me very little given the nature of celebrity and Hollywood politics.)
Sean Penn holds his Best Actor Academy Award for Milk When was the last time we heard talk about homeless gay youth, the fact that our country still doesn’t allow gays to serve openly in the military, or the fact that in many states you can still be fired for being gay? I would venture that those issues affect far more gays and lesbians than that of marriage equality, but they are continually ignored for the pro gay marriage bit that has become the safe haven for the nice hetero Hollywood liberals who are given entirely too much praise and attention from our community. Now don’t go lighting the torches just yet. I fully believe in the equal rights that extend to marriage. And of course I love our allies and the fact that a very good, very gay film won two Oscars. But these speeches tell me it’s time to broaden what is quickly becoming a singularly-focused agenda, to get celebs talking and people thinking about these other issues, because they’re just as important and just as beneficial to the community. I believe in my heart that there will be marriage equality for our community in the not too distant future, but we should make sure we’re giving a voice to and doing everything to put an end to all the other inequalities, too. Submitted by on Tue, 2009-02-24 17:21. |
 Recent Comments
Recent blog posts
|
Welcome to AfterElton.com!
- Login
- Join Now!
News, Reviews & Commentary on Gay and Bisexual Men in Entertainment and the Media
Black addressed some of that
Furthermore...
Further the more
The oscars may have been the biggest across the board audience for gay rights to be heard this year. If there was going to be a message delivered to the general population, one that would resonate, then it had to be a concise and clear sound bite, one that would be memorable and undeniable. The issue of gay homeless youth doesn't have the mainstream appeal in the media right now. After prop 8, the next rung on the ladder is marriage equality. To talk about all of the rungs at once loses focus and makes it harder to climb.
The most important thing said was said by Black, when he reminded the gay kids listening that they were valuable. Gay rights be damned, if we can't stop kids from hanging themselves.
Gays with guns
Why not?
So you think that someone gay who joins the military is vile? So go to hell. Hey I served during Viet Nam and hated the war, but I served my country. Go to Canada you twerp! So you hate the idiotic war in Iraq --so do most of us - but I will defend the right of gays to be in the military. Gays with guns// I would arm a gay militia to take out all the gay bashers without a moments qualm.
So what fight? - you are clearly a pacifist - don't mix your ideologies!
I take issue with your "Go to Canada" remark
I'm sure it's not your intent but that comment suggests Canada is full of people who do not support their military. Canada may have a reputation as peacekeepers (bit of a misnomer but that's another topic of discussion) but we definitely support our armed forces.
News clip
News clip from MSNBC:
http://tinyurl.com/627hro
Rob's got a point...
I tend to think of myself as a "bad gay" because while I understand the point of marriage equality, and the powerful message it sends to society. But it's not the most important issue out there for me, even though it gets all the attention. I left the military rather than deal with DADT anymore. While I've been privelaged to work for some liberal companies with good policies, as I contnue my job hunt after my company ended, I want ENDA. I think we need healthcare reform, and better management of HIV/AIDS through that. The Matthew Shepherd Act will save lives.
These are the pieces of the fight that effect every one of us, not just those fortunate enough to have families. I don't begrdge them marriage - and again, I recognize both the benefits and the symbolism. But marriage equality dominates the news and the energy these days. I'd just like to see some time spent on some of the broader issues - call it selfish, if you want. I'm eternally single, and not unhappy about it.
from a legal stand point these are all the same issue
Yes, equality under the law
Black did address youth.
Penn & Black
Black's speech was not just about marriage
Marriage isn't everything
This is frequent sore point with me. Marriage is one issue, but it is not the only issue.
Indeed, I've felt a little disenchanted with the gay rights movement for a while now. I am single and don't even have a boyfriend or prospects of a partner. So while I intellectually grasp the importance of marriage equality it is only in the abstract sense, as even if it were legal in my state, or the entire country, tomorrow it would change nothing in my life.
But for the gay rights movement these days it is virtually all that anyone wants to talk about. Even standing, unresolved, issues like anti-gay violence, the troubles facing gay kids, employment discrimination, parental rights discrimination and even, God help us, AIDS have taken a back seat in the mad rush to the altar. I have been flamed on many gay rights discussion boards for daring to suggest that any of these are more important than marriage, or that winning marriage will not automatically cause all these other problems to disappear.
This is ironic really. Because Dustin Lance Black won his Oscar for Milk. In Harvey Mlik's day same-sex marriage was barely even an idea in the gay community. Indeed, many gay people, even as recently as a few years ago, were loudly derisive of gays wanting to adopt a "heteronormative lifestyle" like straight married people. Milk himself was certainly not monogamous by any stretch of the imagination. The struggles of his day were a lot more basic. Simple right to not be treated as criminals and pariahs by society were what was on the table, with marriage being a vague notion in the heads of only a few.
But marriage defines the gay rights movement today, to the point that it's hard even for some gays to remember that gay people still get beaten in the streets. That gay kids are not safe at school. That AIDS is still killing people, albeit more slowly and less dramatically than in the past. We have all but forgotten these problems in the quest for marriage licenses.
So it's important to realize what Black, raised as a Mormon (shudder), was really saying. Gay couples waiting to get married aren't the only people in our community with problems or the only ones that have needs. We can't go forgeting the state of discrimination that still exists in this country, of which marriage inequality is only one facet.
And at the risk of being flamed
I've already pissed off several people today on various topics on here, but since you said it all much more politely and eloquently than I did, I thought I'd add the one point I think you missed that no one likes to have brought up:
We don't all live in California or New England.
You can call California a bellweather for the nation, but still, we all don't live there.
I will try to restrain myself in my response
Nobody cared until....
If you will recall, until there were actual cases in front of the state supreme courts in Alaska and Hawaii few people took same-sex marriage to be a significant social issue. Indeed, it was the possibility of impending victories for marriage equality in those two states that not only launched a massive proactive (and successful) effort to ban it in those states, but it also drove the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" (which Bill Clinton sold us out and signed) as well as a few dozen state bans that nobody had seen the need for until the Alaska and Hawaii cases came up.
Suddenly same-sex marriage went from a crazy notion discussed on day time talk shows, to becoming a serious issue that conservatives could get people worked up over and organize around.
We became so mindlessly fixated on what we want that we virtually forgot that we are not the only ones that can file lawsuits, lobby politicians and submit ballot measures!
The assumption was that same-sex marriage would cure homophobia. In fact the opposite was true - it inflamed it! The sight on TV of mass weddings at San Francisco city hall didn't inspire all Americans to embrace equality. It made many of them even more vehement in their hostility to gay rights and more vigorous in fighting against us.
We need to stop pretending that a handful of lawsuits to win marriage rights is going to solve our problem. There's nothing we can win in the courtroom that cannot be taken away at the ballot. So we cannot continue pretending that it doesn't matter what the general population thinks of us or that their opinion doesn't matter. For right or wrong - it does!
As I mentioned in another post, we can't even get more than three out gay people elected to Congress! What does that tell you? It tells me that we're not as strong at the ballot box as we need to be. It tells me that we've been ignoring the need to talk to the general public rather than over them. We've been pretending that they don't matter, and they keep reminding us that we're wrong time and again when they vote these stupid bans into place.
This is why conservative pundits own the public debate. Because we don't bother to talk to the public. We sit around waiting for Barack Obama to do it for us. Maggie Gallagher, James Dobson, Rick Warren and others tell all kinds of lies about us and the extent to which we're discriminated against and we rarely call them on it. We just dismiss them as bigots (which they are) and assume that everyone else can see through their lies just like we can. Then we're shocked to discover that people actually believe them!
We need to pull our heads out of the bridal boutique and really take stock of our situation, because it's not as good as we like to think it is. And marriage is not a magic fix waiting just around the corner!
I will be blunt- you are arguing from idealogy
Are you even reading my posts?
Or even reading your own for that matter?
You are the one arguing ideology, not me. I am arguing pragmatism rooted in my profession (marketing).
When attempting to market/sell something there are two fundamental questions:
1) Will anyone want to buy it?
2) How do you convince them to buy it?
We have been approaching the problem from the opposite direction, identifying what we want, and assuming that the general public will have no choice but to give it to us.
History, however, proves that this is not as simple as it sounds however. It's not a fluke that it took us more than two centuries to get from a nation founded with institutionalized slavery of blacks to a black winning the presidency. You think there weren't people even in the beginning opposed to slavery? There were, even very prominent ones like Benjamin Franklin. But there were also those like George Washington not quite ready to give it up.
And so we had the long, torturous process of swaying public opinion against slavery. Even that was never fully successful and seccession, and civil war, ended up speeding the process. But even that was not an end to the second class status of blacks in America, which remained such that the civil rights movement was still fighting a century later. Heroic figures like Dr Martin Luthor King wielding powerful oratory that could convince not merely blacks of their inherent right to equality, for this was self-evident to all but the most self-hating, but also convince many whites as well. And let's be honest, the struggle continues even today.
But ideology is where you and many others are coming from Craig. Marriage equality is part of a naive dream that holds that there is a silver bullet, a magic milestone that will bring the struggle for gay equality to closure in one fell swoop.
It's an unrealistic notion.
We've assumed that a legal victory will wipe homophobia off the map. That if we could marry, it would serve as proof to the homophobes that we're just as good as them and that they'll capitulate and accept that. Indeed, all too many believe that what the general public thinks doesn't matter at all, that whatever comes out of the courtroom will rule over public opinion.
You falsely try to use Utah as an example but it is not a good one in the context you're attempting to use it in. Legislators that dislike gays can and will continue to deny us rights as long as the voters that put them in office allow them to do so. Again, you focus solely on the halls of government, on legislature and the courts, assuming that the public is irrelevant and plays no role in issue.
But they do. Anti-gay politicians get into office because voters put them there. Ballot measures and state constitutional amendments get passed because voters pull the "yes" lever on them.
The power of the voter upsets the gay rights movement, because it's always easier to sway a few people than to sway many. This is why the U.S. backed so many dictators during the Cold War. The idea was that getting one dictator to oppose the Soviets was easier than swaying millions of citizens in foreign countries. Electorates don't always do what you want. We have thought the same way, trying to find a path around the public in order to circumvent widespread anti-gay attitudes.
Yet, as we have been seeing, it's a marginal strategy at best. More often than not grassroots organizing by conservatives has handed us our butts on a platter as ban after ban has passed in state after state.
Law, does not really exist. It is a psychological/sociological construct created by human beings whose only existence is to the extent that people believe it exists. Therefore, law must be accepted, even if only grudgingly, by enough people or else it has no binding force whatsoever. This is how the contradiction of "freedom" and "slavery" co-existed so long in our society.
Thus, in order for law to work in our favor enough people must be made to agree that it ought to. Because if we cannot attain that then we cannot make our rights stick.
The Proposition 8 debate in California was controlled almost entirely by the conservatives. We somehow expected them to play fair and argue our side of the case as well as their own. Instead they spread lies about churches being closed and clergy being prosecuted for refusing the perform same-sex weddings. And we, dismissing anyone who listened to them as too stupid to dialog with, just assumed that we had enough supporters to win the day.
Even after the fact, the press is skewed. During the Inauguration build-up the news readily reported that gays were outraged by Obama inviting Rick Warren to give a prayer, but all they told their viewers was gays were upset because he opposed same-sex marriage. Very, very few press actually went into detail about some of the more hateful things Warren said or the lies he told before Election Day. We just assumed everybody already knew I guess.
You see what I'm saying? It's not ideology. Not even close. It's Marketing 101. We're expecting our competitors to advertise our product for us. We think we can then just walk in and make the sale. It's the most ridiculously naive thing imaginable.
Who is our voice? Who is our Dr King? If it's Barney Frank then I'm moving to the U.K. ASAP!
Caling your argument pragmatic does not make it so
Calling your argument empirical does not make it so
Follow up point
Who brought the issue?
You keep asking this in an attempt to deflect from the reality of the situation. The bans did not begin to appear until after the lawsuits to win marriage came close to succeeding in Alaska and Hawaii.
Therefore, we are the ones who initiated the issue.
Again, no ideology here. You're merely claiming my stance as "ideological" because you don't like it and want to invalidate it.
The difference between now and 1964 is, as I noted, public opinion. There is no strong, charismatic leader or leaders that is able to generate the kind of inspiration for the gay rights cause that Dr King was able to invoke on behalf of the black civil rights movement. At the same time, our opponents are able to capitalize on their religious base to present themselves not as malicious bigots who hate gays. but as concerned citizens trying to defend "marriage", "traditional family values" and "religious freedom".
These are arguments that were not as applicable in the 50's and 60's, especially as Dr King and so many other civil rights leaders were themselves ordained ministers. It was thus easier to paint racism for what it was, bigotry pure and simple. That you had bigots doing outrageous things like turning firehoses and dogs on peaceful protests, terrorists bombing churches and Klansmen burning crosses provided a nice way to trigger revulsion in people who might have been on the fence.
We have nothing similar. I have found in many conversations that the average straight American is woefully underinformed about what rights gays do and do not have. I know several Californians who believe that domestic partnerships provide all the same rights as "marriage". Conservative pundits promote this notion. They successfully cast Proposition 8 as not being about denying gays rights, but rather protecting churches from being persecuted for refusing to perform same-sex marriages.
We failed to effectively counter that notion. Indeed, we have a tendency to think that just because we see through these kinds of spurious arguments that everybody else should as well. It doesn't help that our best spokesperson was Gavin Newsom, who all but dared California to pass Prop 8, while on the conservative side you had warm, cuddly figures like Rick Warren, always talking about "uplifting" spiritual things and pretending that they're just concerned Christians worried about their faith. None of the fans of Rick Warren's books want to see him arrested for refusing to marry same-sex couples. That would be horrible. So when he hints that that might happen of course they leap to his defense.
The issue Craig, is that you are so biased against what I am saying that you're just atatcking it because it's unpleasant.
The Right controls the debate, because we allow them to. They are the ones talking to the public, while we're behind closed doors trying to sway judges and legislators. Our entire strategy revolves are judges and politicians in fact. This is why the Right does so much better than we do when it comes down to ballot measures. They go grassroots and work to sway people in the voting booths. We behave as if voters don't matter.
The proof of this, as I cited below, is our astonishing shortage of gay elected officials. For that matter, why aren't we better represented in the Obama Administration? The Latinos were merciless. They made it openly clear that they expected multiple Cabinet appointments to go to Latinos. They've got two, and had Richardson not had "issues" they'd have had three. But there's not a single gay or lesbian at the Cabinet tabl!
Why does Obama feel that he doesn't need to reach out to our community the way he has to Latinos, Asians and others? Because there's less political impact if he does. We're a very small community, and we're very incestuous. We do not have strong political ties outside our own circle and we're not very good at working the grassroots to rally straight support. So while it's PC to throw us a bone he doesn't feel strongly obligated to us.
Since we've done such an abysmal job of making straights aware of our problems (do you realize that as recently as Christmas my straight cousins were unaware that I could not get legally married in my state!?) we lack traction when we're up against charismatic religious leaders like Rick Warren.
Until and unless we accept that public opinion does matter we're going to remain on the defensive. The bans you keep bringing up were grassroots reactions to our attempts to get around public opinion by way of the courts. They are the proof that we cannot ignore the public in this debate. Otherwise the Right can just out vote us at the polls.
All the more so because ballot measures decouple these issues from partisan politics. Proposition 8 made it possible for people to vote Democrat on Election Day and oppose same-sex marriage at the time. It was politically brilliant, because it meant that stopping same-sex marriage was not linked to any particular party having to win the election.
Our opponents have a way better marketing strategy than we do.
sillver bullet? not
I agree with Craig that Marriage is a very good and sound issue to work on. It plays at the core of or detractors message, which is the family unit. We deserve to be married and have families if we so choose and live in the suburbs, just like anyone else. For me it's like blacks integrating into neighborhoods. We have a right to be part of the fabric of our communities, not just the closeted priest and choir director. That is what marriage rights mean to me. It is one step in the direction toward tolerance and understanding. An important step that can have a broader effect in the communities where marriage is accepted.
Is it this the only rung on the ladder? No, Is it the last one, certainly not.
Is Marriage Equality the most important or going to have the largest impact in our struggle for equality? That is debatable. I say it is important, and because I believe the impact will be the butterfly that starts a storm, I say Marriage Equality is imperative.
And P.S. To those who say this is a new issue on the Gay Rights slate. It is not. In the 1970s we all talked about the right to marry each other. Jack Baker and Michael McConnell applied for a marriage license at the Hennepin County (Minnesota) courthouse on Monday May 18, 1970. You could call that the start of a long struggle for Marriage Equality that brings us right here right now.
Newsflash: we already have families!
At the risk of stating the obvious, we can already trot out innumerable couples that have been together for decades. We can trot out gay couples with children.
Are you truly so naive as to think that the Religious Right would find them any less offensive if they had a marriage license to legitimate their relationships legally?
Even if we could cram marriage equality through every state court and legislature, as well as Congress and the Supreme Court (and we can't) that would do nothing to change public opinion.
America saw pictures of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia Rossi getting married in People magazine. Proposition 8 still passed shortly afterwards. Mass weddings in San Francisco city hall a while back did nothing but inflame hostility on the Right. It certainly didn't generate a groundswell of support for marriage equality around the country (or even in California based on what happened on Election Day)!
In my mind the marriage issue is a classic case of putting the carriage in front of the horse. We have this false belief that it is winnable nationwide in the short term and that when we win it it will fix everything else.
Speaking as a Canadian...
I think marriage equality does change public opinion. Slowly, very slowly, but it seeps in to society's pychy. The conservatives up here stomped around angrily for a while but when it became clear that the sky had not fallen, and all our children had not been recruited, they chilled out and meandered off to other marginalized groups that they hate. There is no shortage of things for the Religious Right to hate on, and that is never going to change. What does change is that people slowly become immune to the shock of seeing and hearing about same sex couples.
We have had several visible out gay folk in our political system (one or two that the gay community could have done without) but except in small circles, the gay factor is not the story about these folks. If someone can get something done in politics, most people up here are more easily overlooking their personal life. I think the marriage issue can take a lot of credit. It's just not that big a deal anymore. In other words, there's bigger fish to fry.
Of course, we Canadians are a completley different species than Americans and maybe it's like comparing apples and kumquats.
I say we take the warning labels off everything and let nature take it's course.
Yeah, but Canada had...
Yeah, but Canada had friendly courts that ruled in our favor in province after province. By the time this was in front of Paul Martin's Liberal government it was strongly supported by provincial courts, much of his own party, plus the NDP and the Bloc. Sure the Conservatives sulked. But even after they became the government they were still outvoted.
We're not so lucky here in the U.S. Our Right has demonstrated the ability and will to pass ballot initiatives and/or legislative actions to block state courts from ruling for same-sex marriage. That's also assuming that many courts are inclined to rule in our favor, which many are not.
Likewise, we don't have a gay-friendly Congress. We only have two parties of any significance. One is all out hostile to gay rights and the other is ambivalent at best on the topic.
Political consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada were virtually nil. Those MP's whose ridings were strongly opposed were already Tories anyway. When Harper tried to bring the issue back up even many Tory MP's conceded that they had little interest from their constituents in trying to launch a repeal effort.
That's the exact opposite of the U.S., where same-sex marriage is a major political hot button that generates lots of fundraising and political action. You guys were already on friendlier ground even before it passed.
Newsflash?
"Newsflash: we already have families!"? tee he he!
You're too cute by half. (I mean half as cute as you could be.) I didn't mention Religious Right families. There may be no way to enlighten the most ignorant, I know that. That's why I was'nt talking about them.
The Right is winning the battle by convincing people who would never align themselves with the religious wing nuts on issues like the Origins of the Planet, Sex education or Women's role in society, but these same folks will align themselves with the right wing on the issue of Gay Rights.
And I know that we have gay families. It isn't about "trotting out" couples for a focus group at one of your marking seminars. It's about going to the PTA meeting and seeing the gay spouse (and legal guardian) of a couple speaking about the same concerns about the education of his kid that you have, (something he might not have to legal right to advocate without marriage.) It's about a Lesbian couple at work who have the courage to invite you to their marriage ceremony after seeing them attend so many other's. It's about meeting that gay mom at the play ground and not being afraid to ask, or feeling you don't have a right to ask how long she's been married to her partner after seeing the ring on her finger. I believe marriage equality can provide something very unique that just being out doesn't. And I believe it is a foolish intelectual exersize to say otherwise.
News flash: This is a war! It is being fought at ground level. No matter how much we debate over pragmatic vs empirical or over political vs marketing. The war is being won one relationship at a time, one relationship between gay and straight. Yes, there are unmarried couples at the front lines, but I believe that one of the best tools we can give our soldiers on the ground is marriage equality.
Where we disagree is on what it is that changes public opinion. You can't change everyone's opinion; you know that don't you? But you can change some. Did you know that? Changing the law will have the effect of giving legitimacy, in the minds of some. That alone will change some people's opinions. But it will also empower those who wish to marry, people who may bi in the closet and they will change the minds of some more. That looks like a gain to me. That looks like shining the light of wisdom and love on the cockroaches of hate.
Of all the jobs I have worked, all the diverse groups I've volunteered with, here is the speech that I have heard the most. It's the "You were the one." Speech. "You were the gay man who completely changed my mind about gay people. I was raised to hate gay people, now I'm going to look at every gay person differently." Perhaps you have never heard that speech. But I know what the people fighting the good fight need, and Marriage Equality will be one of our strongest tools in fighting the good fight.
You are looking at this like a marketing czar. Ellen and Portia in People? That wasn't going to combat the nasty lies that were being broadcast by the right wing just before the election. But I will tell you one thing that certainly did help fight those lies, it was living proof of a gay married couple right next door or at your kids school, or at work.
So are we debating what we are debating or are we debating what we're debating about?
We're debating about...
...the failure of ongoing strategy.
You think that PTA Mom's don't see gay parents worried about their children now? Even without the marriage license?
It's like my comment earlier, about the idiot I once argued with who imagined that their homophobic parents would "have to accept" their partner if they were legally married. No they wouldn't. And no they don't. Racists are still racists, even with a black president in office.
The real issue orbits around the word "marriage". You see, it's a touchy subject with straight people right now. They're not sure anymore what they want it to mean. Traditional notions of male dominance, female submissiveness, who earns the most money, who raises the kids, does the housework and much, much more are all in dispute right now. Book stores overflow with relationship books and the counselling industry is booming, as are the divorce lawyers.
And like most frightened animals on embattled turf they're becoming hostile and defensive. It all seems like it's spiralling out of control and they can't arrest the spin. It just keeps getting worse and worse.
Into this mess comes us. We're enamored with the word "marriage". It has great symbolic weight and meaning, even beyond the simple pragmatic question of legal rights and benefits. After all, in the U.K. a "civil partnership" is functionally equal to a "marriage" under the law. Indeed, the bulk of the Civil Partnership Act's function was to simply modify other laws pertaining to "marriages" so that they essentially applied to "marriages & civil partnerships".
But it's the word that so many ache at the lack of. The belief that if they had the word then everyone would be forced to lay aside their prejudices and accept same-sex couples.
There's two fundamental flaws there:
1) Same-sex couples already exist. People that disapprove of homosexuality will continue to disapprove of it, even if it has legal sanction. The fact that sodomy laws were struck down has not changed the attitudes of people that don't like gays. Those people that didn't mind gays never thought the laws were just in the first place.
2) Same-sex marriage does nothing for single gays whatsoever. Sure it feels nice to know you can get married, if you can find someone. But if you can't you're S.O.L. Those benefits remain beyond your reach as surely as they did before same-sex marriage became legal. And, as noted above, same-sex marriages don't fix anti-gay discrimination in the broader sense.
It's ironic though. Because the gay rights movement has, to a large extent, become rather contemptuous of those gays that have the poor taste to be single. We're not supporting the movement by having partners and families to show off at PTA meetings. Our failure to find partners devalues us. Our concerns are irrelevant, because only the partnered matter.
In short, the gay rights movement is, ironically, becoming as narrow-minded and tunnel-visioned as the Religious Right.
Employment discrimination, bullying in schools, anti-gay violence, HIV and other disease issues, chronic depression amongst gays, elevated suicide rates, higher-substance abuse rates....all of these have becoming unimportant. In a humorous turnabout, the answer of gay rights activists is the same as Christian conservatives preaching to their flocks: all your problems can be solved by getting married!
And so we're at an impasse. The straights are freaked out over marriage just now, both their own problems with it and our attempts to get in on it, and so they're willing to fight with surprising vigor to keep us out of it.
We've lost our ability to pursue any non-marriage-related goals to any meaningful extent to the point where we're rapidly becoming politically-neutered and even our erstwhile "allies" don't want to deal with us anymore because all we do is whine about marriage.
That "marriage" is not one of the items on Barack Obama's wish list of gay rights action items is enough to trigger a refusal to even care about the other items on the list. "He doesn't support same-sex marriage!" the angry activists roar! Who needs "useless' stuff like protection from job discrimination or dealing with anti-gay violence? That's all worthless without "marriage" to provide that crowning symbol.
Another newsflash: being able to get married does not mean that one possesses equality!
Craig likes to keep cross-referencing the civil rights movement and I will indulge him here. Even when free blacks were allowed to get married, that didn't mean that they were equal under the law!
What? You think that blacks didn't win the right to legally marry until the 1960's? You think they didn't get married, legally, have kids and try to care about their well-being prior to the late 20th Century?
Marriage isn't a fix for all problems. Indeed, as a stepping stone it's a limited one at best.
Carriage in front of the horse as I said before.
We get it!
People's minds aren't made up. And Marriage Equality will change some folks minds, whether you like it or not. I don't know that kids idiotic mother. Neither do you, I'm guessing. If she were a strict law and order type who's only objection is that her son isn't married, than theoretically, marriage would make her accept him. What the hell are we arguing and how long are you going to beat this dead horse?
WE GET IT. I HAVE SAID IT. Marriage Equality is NOT the end all and be all, you can get off your soap box and start arguing again. Okay?
The merits of a Marriage Equality bill are undeniable. We know it's not an end all or be all. Nobody but you is arguing that.
If I were the V.P. casting the deciding vote on a National Marriage Equality Bill, it would be a no brainer.
If there was a multiple choice, between 1: "no Marriage Equality", 2 "Civil Union", 3 "Marriage Equality". I would choose "Civil Union" if Marriage Equality didn't have a chance of winning. In California Marriage Equality has a chance of winning. On the national level I believe we should be fighting for Civil Unions, the president has already come out in favor of it.
My personal preference would be a national law that would strike "Marriage" from all laws and replace it with "Civil Union" while making Civil Unions legal for same sex couples. So that only churches and secular groups could deem a relationship a marriage. It's a war of semantics. And one we would do well to win.
You seem to be devaluing this one battle ground because it isn't winning the war and because it isn't winning all the other battles. Shame on you and everyone else who thinks like that. The path to full rights for our community is long. It is rocky. And it will take a very long time before we see the end of discrimination. But one of the rocks along that road is Marriage Equality. You advocate that we walk past that rock rather than pick it up. To me that's asinine.
We seem to only be able to pick up one rock at a time. This one is within our reach. I say we grab it. Deal with it. And we will be better organized and better prepared to move on to the others, (like Employment discrimination, bullying in schools, anti-gay violence, HIV and other disease issues, chronic depression amongst gays, elevated suicide rates, higher-substance abuse rates). In reality, people are working on all of these issues.
I fell like the argument is do we take action while the iron is hot for this one issue, or do we pass on the opportunity? You're saying we pass. I humbly disagree..
The left behind issue
I disagree with your assertion that same-sex marriage is "within our reach".
It isn't. Not nationally anyway.
True, it can be wone in individual states, but the obsessive focus on it represents a kind of internal discrimination within the LGBT community. The huge bulk of our money and effort is poured into fights like the one in California where, even if we do win, will result in little more than a "feel good" effect for those gays who are either a) single or b) live in less receptive states.
In other words, it's about everyone laboring for the good of a minority within a minority. Overturning Proposition 8 won't help the gays in Utah for example, who even now have nowhere near the rights their brothers and sisters in California already have, even with Prop 8 as the law of the land for the moment!
We're devolving into a mass of slave states and free states and nobody wants to get too deep into the issue because the disparity is increasingly acceptable to activists. It's the new gay ghetto paradigm. Gays with the poor taste to be single, or to live in a square states, have no business expecting anything from the national gay rights movement, whose efforts are focused on winning marriage rights for couples on the coasts.
By the way, if same-sex marriage is legal, but so is employment discrimination, then a gay can still be married and get fired from their job. A marriage license won't change that.
change
It isn't. Not nationally anyway.
Once again you expose your broader side, and by exposing your broader side I mean you are an ass.
I made it perfectly clear that I believed that Marriage equality was within the grasp of California. I really don't know how much clearer I could have made that argument. I have lost all due respect I held for you because of that one statement. Well, because it is a trend in your arguments. You want to stand on a soap box and pontificate. I can only hope that works for you.
Like I have stated, we are given opportunities in this battle for equal rights. Just as we are given opportunities in life. I believe that winning the battle in California for Equal Marriage will weigh heavy on the minds of everyone in America. You believe it is a waisted effort. Let's talk about that.
First of all you make the assumption that we can ONLY fight the battle of discrimination on one front at a time. Shame on you. There are many people fighting the good fight on many fronts. They all deserve our kudos.
You are suggesting that the fight for Marriage Equality is drawing attention away from other battlegrounds and other states. It is really sad to think that we can not be allowed to mass our concerned efforts, just as the opposition does to defeat us in states like California. I would hazard to say that you are abetting the opposition.
The war between Free States and Slave States is an apt analogy. Because without that clear definition I wonder if slavery would ever have been abolished. We needed to see the stark contrast: that the abolition of slavery did not ruin a state, like Minnesota. Like wise, people need to see that Marriage Equality will not destroy a state like California.
As far as Utah goes, well, Utah was settled primarily because an outlaw religion wanted to have a haven. No amount of concern will change the evil that grips the hearts of the Mormon leadership and they run the state. I still see Utah as an outlaw on the issue of Human Equality. Only the will of the Federal Government will change that, as history has shown. The ignorance and willful evil that grips Utah may be the last battle ground of all decent people, but it certainly shouldn't be the first, well, that's my less than humble opinion, anyways.
While this battle may not help you personally, Psionycx, I still wish you the best of luck in the fight for liberty. Because as much as you annoy the fuck out of me, I still take you as a comrade.
Nukely
Your pathetic tactic of falling back on firing personal insults at people who don't think what you want them to think exposes you for the one with the arrogance issue. If someone doesn't believe what you want them to, you start firing insults. Because your intellectual arguments are so weak.
I would also point out this line from you: "We seem to only be able to pick up one rock at a time. This one is within our reach. I say we grab it."
You yourself are arguing in one post that we seem to be unable to handle multiple issues at the same time, and therefore we should focus on one. In your next post you literally reverse position and declare that we can do many things at once just fine.
As far as I'm concerned your arguments have no clarity, their just an obsessive pursuit of the one thing you care about and your ideas veer around aimlessly in regards to how to attain that goal in the real world as opposed to your idealistic fantasy land. You rely on personal attacks because you have no substance.
I am not impressed by you or your arguments. I'm sorry but there it is.
I don't expect
anything unusual.
But darling you grossly misquoted me and my statements.
It isn't. Not nationally anyway.
Being able to juggle several arguments at once seems to be one of the fundamental problems with the gay rights front. At times we argue that we can only hold one view and in other cases we are certainly working on separate fronts. That isn't an argument it is an observation, sorry if my actual argument obscured that. But those observations do not excuse the fact that you grossly misquoted me.
Just so you know, an observation is not an argument. I often try to clarify a situation without offering a conclusion, argument or even a specific goal. I believe that it's more important to know what we are talking about and clarify that before we start pontificating and running for public office.
Seems to me...
...you've got two different issues here...
"Our failure to find partners devalues us. Our concerns are irrelevant, because only the partnered matter."
"Gays with the poor taste to be single, or to live in a square states, have no business expecting anything from the national gay rights movement, whose efforts are focused on winning marriage rights for couples on the coasts"
Is it really civil rights you are talking about or something more personal? Legality of marriage will in the minds of many legitimize many of the other issues. It's a matter of perception. Can you not see that?
I say we take the warning labels off everything and let nature take it's course.
All political issues are personal Janet
An important Dale Carnegie rule is that when trying to convince someone to do something or care about something you need to convince them why they should want it, not why you want it.
Increasingly, gay rights groups are asking many of us to right checks, sign petitions and then go and shut up. Issues faced by non-partnered gays are seen as having ever-decreasing relevance in the face of the push for marriage. Indeed, there's a growing sense that a lot of other issues faced by LGBT people have either "gone away" or become so rare that they're not important anymore, which is untrue.
As a single person my political views are shaped by my own life, just like everyone else. This is why, for example, I am more concerned about how Barack Obama handles the economic crisis than I am with how he handles same-sex marriage or civil partnerships. If I lose my job I'm in deep trouble (and it's not like I'm in a two-income household). In contrast marriage would have no impact on my life. So obviously I care more about the issues that affect me directly.
Most people are the same, which is one reason we're having such a battle on the topic of marriage equality in America. All of our arguments, as a community, are why we want marriage rights and how it would benefit us.
Needless to say (or as Dale Carenegie would have said) we're having a problem, because our arguments center on us and what we want. They're extremely self-centered and do not make a strong appeal to other people as to why they should want it too. Thus there is a strong disconnect between the activists and the audience.
I have written checks for marriage equality causes in other states by the way, so I am not detached from the issue. But it would be foolish to expect me to center my life around it given that it is not an issue that is getting traction in my own state, or is likely to anytime soon given our politics.
Since the lack of ability to legally marry is not a huge problem for a single guy like me, and because there are a lot of political problems that have a much greater immediate impact on me personally, it really should be a surprise nobody that I, and others like me, might have things we see as being a higher priority.
Yet, just as the movement has lost interest in public opinion, they've lost interest in those gays for whom marriage is not the central issue. That's all there is to it.
Simpler
You have moved your argument from: assuming that every GLBT person sees Marriage Equality as the End All & Be All; when it's obvious that not all GLBT feel that way, (and without proving your point, btw), you moved your argument to the fact that the struggle for Marriage Equality is drawing energy away from other struggles, and admit that those are struggles that you would be more likely to benefit from, rather than look at what benefits the community as a whole.
Well, I have to agree that the fight for Marriage Equality may divert some energy, I would argue that it also draws in participants who might otherwise not commit to helping this community. I argue that there are people who will fight for Marriage Equality today and tomorrow become leaders who fight to end discrimination in employment and housing. I argue that this issue has a net gain of new participants to the cause rather than a net loss.
I see the fight for Marriage Equality as energizing our community, as addressing an obvious wrong and as being important because it has grasped the national interest, something LGBT issues often fail to do, and grasping the national attention like this is something that happens once in a generation.
You seem to see this as a wasted effort because you don't see an immediate reward for yourself or others like you. When they ask me to sign my name to fight for LGBT rights, I put my name down. When they ask me to fight for the rights of people who use the name Psionycx on gay Blogs, Sorry if I am not so quick to pick up that cause.
It don't get no simpler than that.
There is only one issue...
... and that is Equality. That really is THE issue. No one is suggesting that you center your life around only one smaller issue. Marrige equality is part of the bigger picture and that is something that *everyone* can relate to.
You say: we're having a problem, because our arguments center on us and what we want. They're extremely self-centered and do not make a strong appeal to other people as to why they should want it too.
It's only the idiots in society that don't understand that equal rights for all folks affects them as well. THAT is the appeal that should be made to everyone. You show people how taking away civil rights of one particular group affects their lives and the veil suddenly lifts. They realize that at any time, anyone in their family can have their rights taken away by one thing or another. You tell them: what if it became illegal for people that don't want to have children to marry, or people that are past the child bearing age to marry, or people who are born in different countries, or people with IQs lower than 100, or ....insert any crazy idea. If enough people are conned into thinking it should be....it COULD be. Our freedoms are very precarious.
So, if a big issue that folks can understand is on the table and that affects many hundreds of thousands of people here and now, then yes, we should be fighting for that. I'm straight, married, separated...I could care less about marriage in my life. But I'll fight to the death for anyone to have the right to love, commit and legally marry whom they chose so long as they are of legal age and consenting. It's a simple a human right.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
Ideologies
I will merely point out (without weighing on the substance of the discussion) that everyone argues from ideologies. One may be able to support--or not--the various aims and ideas that comprise the paticular ideology from which one is arguing, but one is nonethless arguing from an ideology. Using the term in a pejorative, dismissive manner is so early 19th century.
Gar vethed e-chunen; go hon bedithon na meth.
Everyone does not argue from idealogue
Ideology vs. Empiricism vs. Reality vs. Pragmatism
Craig - For someone who's so wrong (and can't spell!) you sure are arrogant. I've been reading your back and forth with Psionycx from last night, and I have a few thoughts. I come at this predisposed to be on your side since I'm a passionate supporter of marriage equality. But you're way off base to classify Psionycx' position as ideological (I assume you're just trying to make your case appear stronger than it is, as you did by invoking the name of Andrew Sullivan), and I find his basic argumentation more persuasive than yours.
At its core, your disagreement can be boiled down to the following:
Psionycx holds the view that changing people's attitudes toward gays is more important than enacting marriage equality. In fact, what he sees as the over-emphasis on marriage equality takes attention and effort away from more important issues, such as job discrimination, HIV issues, etc. And it further runs the risk of a backlash from the people whose support we need to enact other important legislation in many jurisdictions around the country.
Your position is less cogently stated, so I hope I summarize it correctly. You hold the opinion that legal recourse is the proper strategy. Further, you don’t accept the decoupling of marriage equality from other legal issues that Psionycx is urging. You see all legally based issues as part of one whole. And you seem to be implying that some sort of national law verifying the equality of gays will then automatically result in fixing all the legal problems around the country. You state that “the solution to all of this in fact will happen federally when one national standard happens”.
I think that marriage equality is a fight worth undertaking with vigor (and ultimate victory is assured), but I agree with Psionycx that the emphasis on that has become too one dimensional, and has crystallized the gay rights “issue” around marriage equality in the minds of both the gay community and the overall society. And that’s to the detriment of other, more important issues, which don’t ever seem to be discussed any more, at least in any broad sense. Marriage equality is important, but it’s more important, for example, to change laws that allow companies to fire people for being gay. It’s inconceivable to me that in 2009 a company can do that, but in many states that is legally permissible. However, we’re too busy talking about marriage equality to allow the proper focus on these other things.
You grossly oversimplify and distort things when you talk about a “national standard” as the “solution to all of this”. So much of a person's daily life is regulated by state and local laws outside the purview of the federal government, so even a comprehensive national “Gay Equality Act” would not solve all the problems. Further, we are nowhere near any sort of consensus in the congress for any law remotely like that. And you'll have no better luck with the Supreme Court. There is currently no consensus there either for sweeping gay rights. The court's rulings rarely bear on comprehensive situations, most cases dealing with narrow issues, and states rights will always get in the way in any event.
The obtaining of legal rights will not happen via one swift, national act. Rather, it will occur gradually, in fits and starts, faster and slower in different jurisdictions over a long period of time. You can’t tie all legal issues together and treat them as one thing simply because the legal underpinning (legal equality) is essentially the same in these cases. Returning to marriage equality in California will not change employment laws in other states. It won't allow gay adoption where it is currently prohibited. It won't bring marriage equality in other states. And it won't prevent all the other discrimination and lack of protection allowed in jurisdictions throughout the country. So Psionycx is correct on this score, and in his contention that marriage equality is inherently decoupled from other legal issues.
One of Psionycx’ main points is that it’s important to our gay rights struggle to try to change people’s attitudes, that it’s not enough to simply try to change laws. I agree strongly with that. You can enact all the laws you want, but that won't prevent people from hating you, or making jokes about you, or attacking you, or preaching against you, or saying you're going to hell, or even killing you. It won't prevent the subtle discrimination of the sort that still today exists against black people and others. On the other hand, if you change attitudes you'll not only gain acceptance and equal treatment from those whose minds you change, but all the legal changes will inevitably follow.
You keep saying that your position is based on empiricism and historical reality. Actually, it's not. This isn't a discussion that can be adequately addressed by empiricism. In the first place, it's a question of preferred strategies, since ultimately we'd all like to get to the same place of full legal equality and full societal acceptance. And it's a question of whether one prefers legal protection attended by widespread disdain, or attitudinal changes followed inevitably by legal changes. In the second place, the gay rights situation can't necessarily be compared to the racial civil rights struggle. There are several dissimilarities, but I'll just mention two. Most opponents of black civil rights did not cite scripture to spiritually buttress their racism (though, of course, most were at least nominally Christian). They were just haters or inherently biased. In fact, scripture totally buttresses the case for racial equality, and a large number of civil rights leaders were also pastors or church leaders. In the gay rights sphere we are dealing with millions of otherwise good, kind people who base their beliefs on specific sentences in a book they consider to represent the very word of God. Secondly, racial bigots could not discover that their son or their brother or their best friend belonged to the very group against which they were biased.
I'm not trying to pick on you here, but there is one huge, glaring error in your post above. You state that the right said "that if gays stopped asking for marriage they could get other rights". That simply isn't true. The right has never made that "offer".
In the end I look at it like this. We have to push and push hard for equal rights in all areas. But I would rather live in a society where my fellow citizens accept me and value me, and who then pass laws to reflect those feelings, rather than in a society where the law protects my various legal rights, but where large numbers of my fellow citizens hate me, fear me, and resent the legal system for what it forces them to accept. Though as I said before, that choice is a false one. Let's do whatever we can to reach out to our fellow citizens and change minds and attitudes, but at the same time let's push for our legal rights, as disjointed and slow a process as that might be. And as important as marriage equality is, let’s not reduce the gay rights struggle to primarily that issue, and let’s not shortchange employment equality, HIV issues, health issues, adoption issues, gays in schools issues, etc.
Much more coherent than mine
Thank you Dennis, you cleaned up much of my ramblings.
I do want to be clear here: I am not opposed to working for marriage equality nor national anti-discrimination laws.
However, reality is that we do not have the votes to get it, either in Congress or in the general population. Even if we could get something through Congress and get Obama to sign it (not certain by any stretch of the imagination) then state-level challenges will drag on for years.
Straight America is increasingly of the opinion that we gays are pretty well off other than not being able to call our relationships "marriage". There is an erroneous belief that anti-gay discrimination only happens in rural pockets, that gays can get all the legal rights of marriage through domestic partnerships and that HIV is only in Africa nowadays.
Since marriage is the primary thrust of the LGBT rights movement nowadays those beliefs are being tacitly reinforced by our community. We've stopped talking to the public except on the occasions when we make a stink about marriage. Even then, we don't talk to the concerns of the straight population or debunk the lies of the Right, we just go on about what we want.
The Right is thus running circles around us. They're using the voting public as their main weapon against us, and had the GOP not made such an utter mess of the economy and war on terror we would be even worse off than we are now. But they still take advantage of ballot measures that do not require any particular party to be in power to push their anti-gay agenda.
With all our efforts focused on judges and politicians and the single issue of marriage, we have become too easy to politically outflank. Indeed, we're still a long way from general equality at least partly because we have developed the mistaken belief that marriage = equality.
It doesn't. To make matters worse, it creates a certain sense of disengagement for single gays and gays living in states where same-sex marriage is not likely to be legal anytime soon. Marriage equality in Massachusetts and Connecticut is nice, but it does nothing to help gays living in Utah.
But watered-down efforts to address other gay rights issues, diluted by the singular focus on marriage equality, are often ineffective. Utah, again, is a case in point. Getting a marriage bill past their Mormon-dominated legislature or courts is a pipe dream. For them, the fight is still over basic anti-discrimination, with marriage being a distant dream.
Now, maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe Craig knows Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid personally and has the inside scoop on some ambitious legislative plans they have to push a federal fix-all-the-gay-inequality-problems law through Congress. But somehow I doubt that any such legislative plans exist. Likewise, Obama has yet to have any opportunities to enanct a major ideological shift in the Supreme Court so I wouldn't expect any major breakthroughs there either.
So to me it seems like we need to work on the general public. We're not going to attain any of our goals, including marriage equality, without more support from the American voting population.
The power of the symbol - some thoughts
You have a good point, but, I think marriage, in many ways, is the sentinal issue of the gay rights movement - though it is certainly not everything. Consider that the civil rights movement was no less concerned about lynching and poverty simply because their focus for many years was on ending segregation. Marriage equality encompasses many of the issues that face the gay community - being somehow of less value, to have fewer rights - separateness. It is also an issue with which straight people can identify - a commonnality that gives them a way to feel compassion and empathy even if they don't know any gay couples who wish to get married - also a vehicle for making a statement (many straight couples are now refusing to marry until their gay friends have the same rights).
It is not uncommon for other progressive movements to use powerful symbols to make thier points. For example, for the environmental movement, the polar bear has become the sentinal species of global warming although their are thousands of species that are in even worse trouble. It is a strategy that can backfire, but it is still a powerful one.
That being said, I do think that the ongoing travesties such as suicide, violence, homelessness, and HIV/AIDS need to be brought up as often as possible; we should all make an effort to inject those issues into discussions of marriage equality as much as we can.
Unrealistic expectations
I remember once getting caught up in a flame war on some message board. Some highly delusional individual was putting forth the idea that their parents would "have to accept" their partner if they were legally married.
That notion is so stupid that it was hard to moderate my response.
I know straight people whose parents despise their perfectly legal, opposite-sex spouses! One friend of mine had parents that were so hardcore Italian that they refused to even tolerate him dating non-Italian women!
So, the expectation that marriage equality will solve all, or even most, of our problems is delusional at best. Racism has yet to go away, even with a black man sitting in the Oval Office! There is such a thing as having realistic expectations and just as wise folks in the African-American community are being mindful that Obama's election hasn't killed off racism in America, we need to understand that same-sex marriage will not cure homophobia.
Proposition 8 is a perfect demonstration of this. Marriage equality was won, and then taken away, in a shockingly brief span of time. The sight of Ellen DeGeneres and George Takei getting legally married did not dispel anti-gay attitudes sufficiently to win a popular vote. This is a lesson that ought to have been learned going all the way back to the debacles in Alaska and Hawaii, where in both cases imepending court victories were pre-empted by anti-gay ballot actions.
Marriage has, in fact, been something of a double-edged sword (or symbol). Just as it is something for gays to rally around it has also been something for our foes to rally around too. Conservative anti-gay groups have had a field day marginalizing us using marriage as the means. Conservative pundits like Maggie Gallagher tell their unquestioning audiences that gays "already have all the same rights as marriage" through domestic partnerships and that we're merely trying to "steal" a religious institution meant for male/female couples purely so that we can beat right-thinking Christians into the dirt and silence their beliefs. Sadly, many people believe her and her ilk.
Thus were the "No on 8" people shocked by their defeat at the ballot box. Surely this right, once attained, would convince people that all would be well. They forget that same-sex marriage has been legal in several other countries (plus the state of Masschusetts) for years now and conservatives still refuse to accept that as evidence that God won't rain fire down on America should it become legal here.
And while we're fighting over the symbol of the wedding rings anti-gay attitudes still exist. As they do in other countries. Legal same-sex marriage in the Netherlands has not stopped Muslim immigrants or home-grown neo-Nazis from assaulting gays. Even with legal equality won the hate does not go away.
But we, as a community, have become enraptured in this fantasy that if we could marry then everything else would fall into place. Religious conservatives would start to see us equals and treat us with respect. Our parents that disapprove of our sexuality will suddenly learn to love us, and our partners, again. The streets will be safe and so will the schools. AIDS will fade away. All will be well.
Unfortunately, none of it is true. We need to stop pretending that marriage is the solution to all, or even most, of our problems.
You are so right!
Just the fact that we have so few...
Just the fact that we have so few openly gay politicians in national office should illustrate very, very clearly just how severe our real problems are. And by the way, Barney Frank can get legally married in his home state!
We have, I believe, a big 3 openly gay people in Congress in the U.S. (someone please confirm yea or nay)! In my neverending pursuit of more raw data to ponder I've been nosing around U.K. politics and determined that their Conservative party has at least three openly gay men in front bench posts. Their party leader did a 180 and turned into a straight ally sometime around 2004 and has since voted in favor of civil partnerships and anti-discrimination law! And they're supposed to be the equivalent of our Republicans! Now throw in the hordes of out gay people in the more left-leaning Labour and Liberal Democrat parties and the contrast with the U.S. becomes outright embarrassing!
So what is the message we should be reading into this? If we're really at a point in society where we should be able to push same-sex marriage through, why can't we even get more gays into Congress or even one gay into Obama's Cabinet?
From where I'm sitting it looks like we have a much bigger problem on our hands than just the question of getting marriage licenses. If anything, I think that w, as a community, have become so fixated on marriage that we're ignoring massive problems on other fronts because all we care about is being able to throw real, legal, weddings!
Three active
I can only come up with three active members of Congress - Tammy Baldwin, Jerod Polis, and Barney Frank. We used to have Jim Kolbe, Republican from Arizona, but well, enough said on that subject.
This actually brings back memories of a business trip to Wisonsin in 1998. I worked for a software company, and flew out with another guy to try and close a deal. Client was driving us to lunch, downtown in the college area, quite liberal part of town. We had to take a detour, because as he said, some dyke was holding a rally, trying to run for Congress, but it would never happen, not in his state. I was in the back seat, and Christopher, my coworker was already spinning from the passenger seat to stop me from coming over the seat and killing the guy. I was fairly freshly out, and somewhat militant at the time. He managed to silence me with a look - after all, I knew he was thinking that you don't kill a million dollar deal and a huge payday over a crappy comment from a client - as he told me later over drinks, you take his money, and you donate part of what you make off it and use it against them. Still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I gave $2000 to the HRC from that deal.
But back to your original point. Three people. That gives us .56% of Congress. If we're 10% (or more likely, 4%-6% of the population), that means we're woefully underrepresented at the federal level, as Psionycx says. Our agenda, such that it is, won't happen until we have better odds.
That's because we're waiting for a straight messiah
This comes up a lot, especially in arguments over Barack Obama. It seems to me that the LGBT community is waiting for some straight politician(s) to come forward as our hero(ine) and lead us to the Promised Land.
Straight allies are wonderful to have, but at this point they're virtually all we have!
LGBT people are massively underrepresented at all levels of government from local communities right up into Obama's Cabinet. And so here we sit, hoping and praying for some eloquent hetero to champion our cause because God knows we cannot do it ourselves!
Anyone else seeing the problem here?
We're obsessed with marriage. We talk about it incessantly amongst ourselves and our attornies argue about it in front of judges across the land. As for the rest of the American population, well, we're rather hoping that some nice hetero will figure out what to say to them because we sure as hell have no idea!
This being the case we clearly have a PR problem of epic proportions on our hands and it is not going to get better anytime soon under our current strategy of avoiding public discourse.
I'm still digging to find out why gay Conservatives are able to get elected in the U.K. Hell, why so many gays get elected period! We need Darrien to chime and help with answering that one.
Gay Tories and other wee timorous beasties
Ultimately, it's a generational shift. The Conservatives in the UK looked around and saw that there were openly gay politicians in the ranks of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats who weren't suffering at the ballot box because of their sexuality. Moreover, those politicians were getting front-bench positions. The whole 'public outcry' thing about sexuality tended to be relatively short-lived every time a politician came out and once sexuality was out of the way, it allowed a politician to progress up the greasy pole on his (or her) merits.
Openly gay politicians didn't have to worry about blackmail or hostages to fortune and when they get judged by their electorate it's on the quality of their work rather than their antics in the bedroom (or washroom). Basically, a tipping point gets reached at which one party avoids sexual scandals and the other doesn't. Also, one or more party gets a lock on equality politics and the other doesn't.
The Conservatives in the UK couldn't afford to be left behind - the younger generation isn't as hung up about sexuality and if the Conservatives want new members and voters, they can't be hung up about it, either.
The only major difference is that the gay Conservatives tend to go off and get civilly partnered and have a party, whereas the Lib Dems and Labour politicians seem to just party. Thus far, the elecotrate doesn't appear to give a damn one way or another so long as those politicians get on with their jobs and don't scare the horses overly.
Nm. It's late. I'm tired.
Nm. It's late. I'm tired.