Drawing by child with two mothers (presumably). Photo by Liz Henry
I honestly think that gay rights is the civil rights struggle of my generation. It’s hard, its unpopular, and it effects real people. It is – like the civil rights struggle – about very normal people trying to live very normal and even boring lives in peace. Gay people aren’t asking for anyones first-born and they aren’t looking for recruits. They don’t want to destroy marriage, as much as that even makes sense. When I first met a gay person I thought it would be a radical experience, and I was sorely disappointed. The gay part is totally fucking boring. The only part that makes it interesting is how much they’re discriminated against. Gay people are people first and gay a distant 34th, following nice/mean, smart/dull, kind/cold, and whatever else matters to you in people. Most people who know gay people realize this and they’re not going to insult them to their face. Even most bigots are cool with individual gay people. Which is what gets me the most. They’ll call gay people insane sinners, compare them to pedophiles and murders, deny them marriage and adoption rights, call for them to be committed and then turn around and say it’s nothing personal. Of course it’s personal. Gay people are people. Gay rights are personal rights. Civil rights if you will.
Homophobia and homophobic policies mess with real people. Not some abstract ‘gay person’, this is your cousin, friend or co-worker. You can smile at him/her over dinner, but go home and say that he’s insane or going to hell and deny him the right to become and even more normal and boring person by getting married. Wtf.
On another personal note, I studied in Montreal where being Gay was totally not an issue. Montreal and San Francisco are the two of the most gay friendly cities in the world. I didn’t notice it corrupting the family or destroying society much. There was a gay part of town and the city painted that Metro station with the rainbow colors. I had a gay roommate who was kinda awkward when he moved in, but over time he came out as a very happy and fun guy. One of my close friends is gay and I used to go out to gay clubs with him just for a change of pace. The music was good and the people were cool and they didn’t try to convert or molest me or anything. That’s the extreme of gay culture too, not the stay home and rent a movie majority. Still, they were just totally normal people. Boring even. I honestly didn’t think that much about it.
A bit more impersonally, the only blogger I read every day is Andrew Sullivan – a gay conservative. Actually, scratch that, I also read Pink Is The New Blog for trashy gossip. It must be coincidental that my two daily reads are gay, but they are both good writers and solid people. I find it patently absurd that these people can’t live and love as they please. I find it absurd that their committed relationships can’t end in marriage. Behind all the scientific and moral debate there are very real people with very real lives. I’m not great gay crusader nor do I even claim to understand ‘them’ that much. I just feel really confused to live in a time when their right to live and love is even debated.
We are all surrounded by homosexuality. Everybody has a gay friend, co-worker or relative. We have gay leaders, watch gay people on TV and read gay writers. Gay Gay Gay. People are usually OK with those gay people and very few are going lean across the cubicle and tell their gay colleague that he needs psychiatric help. However, when it comes to some hypothetical ‘gay man’, those same people are quick to spout absolute venom, saying they’re sinners, depraved, disturbed and sick. People will argue to commit gay people to asylums, compare them to drug addicts, murderers, and pedophiles and then turn around and watch ‘Will and Grace’.
This is what I think is so deeply wrong, and that’s why I went off on the ‘True’ Sri Lankan for this post. I feel bad for calling out people who I am apparently one degree of separation away from, but there is a couple on Amazing Race Asia who TSL supports. Which is great. But they are obviously gay. Now in the past TSL has said things like,
Some people who are homosexuals have been abused when they were young that has caused them to turn to homosexual relationships.
It is also believed that homosexuality rises out of a mental imbalance and when treated it can be corrected. Medical Science has not understood how the brain works fully so any treatment is still far away.
Homosexuality is a behavior and a habit like smoking, boozing, drug addiction, etc…
I dislike people who incite hatred towards homosexuals or pass remarks at them, rather they need all our compassion and help to bring them out of this situation so that they can lead normal lives. (Truth Behind Homosexuality)
Personally, I find it terribly offensive to have my gay friends, co-workers and heroes compared to drug addicts, abused children, and the mentally ill. I find it deeply patronizing to say that these adults should ‘get help’, or that they should be committed to institutions. That is bigotry plain and simple, as plain as saying that African Americans are dumb and inferior. What really offends me, however, is the attempt to couch that bigotry in a ‘but I don’t hate homosexuals stance’. That opinion, espoused by many, goes from bigotry to intellectual dishonesty (which I actually dislike more). It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to say that you were raped as a child, have less impulse control than a drug addict and are so insane that you should be committed. Nothing personal.’ I can stand the homophobia (as it’s so common), but to say that it’s nothing personal just makes my blood boil.
Again, I apologize to Sahran and his Amazing Race partner for even bringing them into this, but as public figures it was just an example that’s in my face. It actually made me think of the current issue of Mary Cheney (Dick Cheney’s daughter) and her lesbian partner getting pregnant through whatever artificial method. The same right wing which calls for writing discrimination against gays into the Constitution are totally cool with this one person starting a family. Cause denying civil rights to a group is ‘nothing personal’. Bush is one example,
Jake Tapper ponders some lessons learned from covering the Mary Cheney story. Money quote:
“This is what we got out of the White House when we asked, over and over, if the President, as he declared in 1999, still opposed same sex couples adopting children. Our intrepid White House off-air reporter, Karen Travers, asked if that position still stood.
“When Vice President Cheney told President Bush that his daughter was pregnant, the President congratulated him,” the White House spokesman said. “President Bush is happy for the Cheney family.”
Right. Okay. Travers tried again: does he still oppose same sex adoptions?
“In 2005, the President said he believes the ideal is for a child to be raised by a man and a woman, but children can receive love from gay couples and private adoption firms can make their own decisions,” said the spokesman.
Jake thinks that means Bush is still opposed. I’m not so sure. I don’t think the president has the slightest problem with his veep’s daughter having a committed relationship and having a child. It’s just that he cannot say that in public. Hypocrisy is now hardwired into sustaining the Republican coalition (Andrew Sullivan
On a far lower level, one of the writers on The Corner, a (IMHO a Kool-Aid Conservative Blog) defends the general silence that the right wing has had on the issue.
Lopez frames the issue as an egregious media seeking who the father is. I see very, very little of this, since almost everyone assumes it’s an anonymous sperm donor. Then the following:
Yes, I think fatherhood is crucial and am opposed to redefining marriage and all the rest. And my “deafening silence” on the Mary Cheney “issue” (what nonsense) doesn’t change that.
But this is absurd. Lopez aggressively favors all efforts to strip the Cheney grandchild of two mothers. Lopez has politicized this family’s personal life, and attacked it viciously. Lopez supported the Virginia state constitutional amendment that will mean that the Cheney grandchild will only ever have one secure parent. Lopez favors adding this terrible insecurity to the Cheney-Poe child’s life. And she wants it not to be personal. Sorry, but it is personal (Andrew Sullivan
But to end on a more positive note, I’d like to congratulate South Africa for recently legalizing gay marriage and Israel for recognizing foreign gay marriages. This means that those nations plus Netherlands, Spain and Canada now recognize gay people as people and gay couples as an important building block of society. Rewarded and supported by marriage. Here’s to very normal, boring, and deeply personally and socially rewarding married lives for gay people in those countries. Here’s also to a future where my children can read about the struggle for gay rights in some textbook and say, ‘Wtf? Was that even an issue?’
I’m not very happy about the fact gay people want to get married so badly.
Gays used to be fabulous people. Wasn’t it nice to look at a well dress gay person having a tea Sunday morning holding the cup with two fingers, talking fabulously to his company with charming gestures?
Now they want to get married and be boring like rest of us? Have kids and go crazy whole day? I don’t know what is wrong with them that they want to be miserable like straight married people.
I think gays should not get married. They should continue to be fabulous.
sahran and howard.
thank you indi. you have spoken truly and well.
xxx
Sam, you probably mean well but even [i]I[/i] find what you just said embarassingly patronising. Gays are not monkeys for our entertainment. They are people.
I’m not opposed to gay rights or gay civil unions. But gay marriage is counter productive. It’s commonly acknowledged that gay relationships tend to be open and promiscuous on the whole. Straight people generally hold exclusive relationships in high esteem. You could argue that gay marriages would threaten the very basis of traditional marriages by questioning the rationale for exclusivity. The pessimists may say that it would be followed by legalisation and social acceptance of poligamy, pederasty and zoophilia in the coming few decades.
I think there should be 3 times of legally accepted relationships. Common law/de facto, registered civil unions and marriages between a man and woman. I also think the government should keep its hands out of unregistered de facto relationships.
Hello JMalicious,
I certainly did not mean Gays are monkeys. Neither pretty ladies, British, Japanese or Indians in that manner. But everyone have their own unique identity. That doesn’t make any of them monkeys. All I’m saying is gays are loosing their identity in this process. Anyway it is not for me to decide – It is just how I feel.
Anyway my first comment is really a joke. But be serious now, ‘marriage’ is not relationship. Marriage has nothing to do with relationship. There is no such a thing call traditional marriage. Marriage is a legal contract between two people about their property and legal rights. Everything else – like relationship, moral or religion is just icing on the cake.
It is all about property, insurance, welfare and specially the inheritance law.
Usually in a gay person’s death, his/her first-family (parents/siblings) have right to his/her inheritance – but the partner may had spend a whole life with him, contribute to his wealth, have no rights.
There is two ways to solve this problem. Marriage has to give up its legal strings and stay purely in the religion area. OR open up legal benefits of the ‘marriage package’ to everyone.
The bottom line is this is not really about homosexuality or heterosexuality.
This recall powerful dialog form Angles in America.
Roy Cohn: AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.
Henry: No?
Roy Cohn: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing, and one thing only: Where does an individual so identified fit into the food chain, the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will come to the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, a homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men, but really this is wrong. A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anit-discrimination bill through the city council. A homosexual is somebody who knows nobody and who nobody knows. Who has zero clout. Does this sound like me Henry?
Saying that gays are more promiscious is kind of a moot point. A lot of monogamy is due to social forces and support, marriage being the strongest. Gay people haven’t had that option, and it may be better if they did. Also, if my demographic (African, Hispanic, Asian, whatever) is more or less promiscious, that doesn’t bar me from marriage. Marriage isn’t a demographic thing, it’s between two people.
Marriage is the simpler option because there is existing legal and social infrastructure to ‘process’ it. The simpler option is usually the best.
Aiyo men! All this hoopla about gays……and weddings. Don’t you know…its not about marraige or getting married…its about equality. The constitution of the US, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even the constituiion of Sri Lanka says that all men are created equal…….so why are some people more equal than others? Indi is right when he says the “gay rights is the civil rights struggle of my generation”. People, especially bigotted, homophobes will jump up and down denouncing gay rights and they will cling on to anything, including the whole marraige thing, to try and drive their misguided point home. At the end of the day….its about Human Rights for all…not just a chosen few.
It is sad that we live in such a judgemental society… On the flip side though, I lived in a more liberal society and worked in an establishment that comprised mostly of gay people and didn’t get promoted because I was straight. I wasn’t too bothered by it, but it does beg a prudent question- how do we strike a balance between positive discrimination and ensuring that those who are marginalized get to lead normal lives? At what point do we start judging people for who they are or in this case, what they are capable of and stop making allowances for the fact that they are perceived ‘differently’ by society at large? By sub-standaradizing gay people are we not highlighting these differences?
Feminist theory (I can’t remember which branch of feminism) purports the notion that positive discrimination is necessary to bring women to a status quo in societies where male domination is institutionalized. That is to say that while we accept that men and women are equal, women need to be treated better because the existing institutional (legal, social and economical) inequalities need to be overcome so that they in effect are equal. The application of such a notion may in fact be a necessary evil for a society such as ours, at least at this stage of the evolution of gay rights (or lack of). But at what point do we stop?
We stop when it’s been 22.3 years.