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 greyautumnrain | |
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Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for a year now. Coincidentally, my 5th wedding anniversary is this Saturday. A year ago there was much squawking by opponents of gay marriage about how letting non-heteros marry would be a disaster for traditional marriage. Well, last I checked I was still happily married to my husband. I never have understood what people have against gay folks. I just don't get it. Why should we care? I mean if you're not interested in having a relationship with the person in question you really have no reason to be concerned about whether they prefer males or females. If you are interested and it turns out that you're not their type, that should be the end of it. I know some people have religious objections, but if you think its wrong for religious reasons you don't get to impose that on other people given that we don't have a state religion. (Of course some people are in denial about the whole no-state-religion thing, but that's another can of worms.) I find the opposition to gay marriage terribly ironic. When I was in my early teens a friend of my father said something negative about gay men. I wanted to know why he thought that gays were bad, because I was actually pretty surprised by the view. He came up with a few steroetypes, but his major complaint was that gays were promiscuous. (Said man later had an extramarital affair that involved getting his girlfriend pregnant and ended in a divorse from his wife. Pot, meet kettle.) The complaint about gay men sleeping around did seem to be the major complaint of others too, at least the one that got air time. Now, when same sex couples want to make a long term legal commitment to a partner these same people are complaining. I'm just not following the logic here. Now, a year after it became legal in this state the sky has completely failed to fall as far as I can see. I'm still married, my married friends are all still married, and other hetero couples have become married in the past year. I'm totally failing to see how letting two men or two women who love each other get legally married has harmed "traditional" marriage. Tags: random rants
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From: harrock |
Date:
May 17th, 2005 09:06 am (UTC)
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World still here
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I have a great rant in me, some day, about how people who think that the institution of marriage is in danger might be right, but that instead of using gays as their scapegoat, they ought to be welcoming the reinforcements with open arms. Sadly, the rant isn't quite there yet, because unlike most of my rants, I harbor hopes that it might convince somebody, somewhere, to change his mind.
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Listening to something 'bout this on the radio this morning (I don't even remember what the something was at the moment), I thought of a scene in a goofy (gay) romantic novel I read this year. Paraphrased:
Kid: Everyone now thinks the people who wouldn't let Rosa Parks sit on the bus are skanks, right? So how come the people who don't want you and [your same sex lover] to get married don't realize that in a hundred years, everyone's going to realize that those were skanks?
Ignore the word "skank," that's not actually the bit I'm focusing on. :) But consider that once the step forward is taken, it's harder to step back, and eventually, people's mindsets change to incorporate the new of-course-that's-how-things-are. There's still racism in America, yes; but slavery and Jim Crow laws have stayed abolished and the norm is that those are unreasonable things to have. There's still gender inequity and stereotyping, but the assumption is that a woman can and should do any job a man can (even if that "should" doesn't actually match practical reality).
So here's to moving forward. There's been some forward motion already--it's not universal, but the love dares to speak its name in a more widespread public fashion than it used to, and I don't think that's really reversable. I'm not saying it's going to happen without a lot of fighting, but I do think we'll be looking back on this in a generation or two the way our parents look back at the movements of the 60s: the work isn't complete, but boy, look how much better off we are. And how the new generation only knows about anti-gay-marriage laws as a story their parents tell.
(Yes, OK, I grew up in Boston, my mother teaches womens' studies, I know mileage varies. I still think there's cause for hope. :) )
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