Utterly Meaningless

When I watched the video JJ posted a couple of days ago, I was a little shocked not one of the hostesses thought to mention Mathew Sheppard in response to Gov. Huck.

I’m also a stumped by the Fundies who decry the “redefinition of marriage” as anything other than one man and one woman. Hmmm…seems they conveniently fail to remember how their icons in the Old Testament, the same Old Testament they cite as the authority on homosexuality, all had multiple wives.

Who exactly are the original “redefiners” of marriage?

IMO, folks who are openly gay have far more courage than their Christian bashers.

Grrrr. Yeah. That pretty much lands Huckabee in the running for the “DOUCHE OF THE YEAR” award.

Especially when you add this little gem to it:
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So, according to Huckabee, the difference in the racial equality struggle and the fight for gay equality is violence? Is that what it’s been narrowed down to? And we aren’t deserving of equality because we don’t face violence?

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Latiesha Green, transgender woman, shot and killed for being gay. She wasn’t gay, but the spectrum of sexuality and gender related issues includes all of us, and as far as her killer was concerned she was gay. Now she’s dead.

It shouldn’t be a struggle. It should have happened already. Equality for all is not a special right for any.

And! As someone on Shakesville said, “So what violence did white, upper-and-middle class men face to earn their more-equal-than-the-rest rights?”

Looking at you, Huckster. Go ahead, take your time with that question.

He says something in the same video actually, about persecution of American Christians, poor things — I guess he was having a millennial flashback and thought he was in a Charleton Heston movie?

Ok, I watched the video, and read the response. Yes indeed, it was powerful and moving. I suppose the first myth to bust, I’ve known gay rights was a civil rights issue for quite some time. I’d be willing to bet many folks on my side see it the same way. So I hate to dissapoint, but I can’t really take up the banner of ‘anti-gay rights’ for y’all to see. My banner is far less melodramatic – I just want to protect the word ‘marriage’ from redefinition. So forgive me if I don’t respond to most of that response. Because I agree with most of the response – civil rights is important, hatin’ and beatin’ and killin’ and whatnot is bad.

Marriage isn’t a right, it’s a social institution. You can make a halfway-decent case that it wasn’t even a legal institution until the days of mormon polygamy, when those in charge hurredly passed laws in response to a guy with more than one wife.

“Opponents of marriage equality and gay civil rights are terrified to see “their” culture slipping away from them.”
– Please note on how the author differentiates between ‘opponents of marriage equality’ and ‘opponents of gay civil rights’. I do it too. They’re different things. My side will win if folk agree, your side will win if folk disagree.

“I can not legally fight our foreign enemies in service to this great nation without living a life of deception.” Oh, horse crap. Keeping private lives private isn’t living a life of deception. Rewritten for honesty’s sake: ‘I can not legally fight our foreign enemies in service to this great nation and be an agent of social change at the same time.’ And that’s correct. We don’t pay our soldiers to be agents of social change – we pay them to intimidate our enemies and occasionally kill them.

“We are told by Governor Huckabee that marriage is a 5,000 year institution that needs to be protected. This institution was one that outlawed the marriage of the parents of the future President in 22 states. Minds can change.”
– Can, and do. But I can’t go so far as the author, and just adopt the unblinking reaction that “if change is blocked, it’s a bad thing”. I’ve seen a couple go by in my day that I believe to be a bad thing. The coopting of the original (good) feminist movement by the “if it feels good, some evil man doesn’t want you to have it” crowd. The slow post-WWII ebbing of patriotism and national pride. The decoupling of ‘power’ from ‘responsibility’. The widespread acceptance that if you find a bank to let you live in their house, that makes you a ‘homeowner’.

Sometimes, when you tinker with the building blocks of society, it can be a bad thing. Minority or majority, just because you want something, doesn’t necessarily make it good for you. Take a look at the history of humanity and the collapse of great civilizations – am I the only one who notices humanity’s track record of wanting things we shouldn’t have?

I’m not talking solely about letting gays marry here. I’m saying anything that weakens the family unit, the fundamental building block of society, is not in our best interests.

How does gay marriage, or redefining marriage to include gay couples, weaken the family unit?

It seems to me it does just the opposite.

Unless you define the family unit as consisting only of a man and a woman and their offspring.

Which is really just a circular way of saying you don’t want gay marriage.

If you define the family unit in any way that is broader than that and as a stabilizing thing in society, gay marriage is no more a weakening influence than any other marriage.

Nance

In response to this:
“I can not legally fight our foreign enemies in service to this great nation without living a life of deception.”
Rob says this:
Oh, horse crap. Keeping private lives private isn’t living a life of deception.

You are wrong. Picture a random scene, a gay soldier and a straight soldier, both performing their duty, doing their job, discussing things as people do. Perhaps they are on break and enjoying lunch. Straight soldier mentions that his girlfriend wants to go see the new Twilight movie. Gay soldier has heard that it’s good and mentions that his boyfriend and he are going.

Gay soldier is now essentially out of the closet and may face whatever discrimination that happens to fall on him. How dare he not keep his private life private? He should have pretended to be straight I suppose, and he should just accept that it’s his duty.

Rob, I lived a life of deception for many years. I put myself in the closet and pretended to be straight but have, in the last year, finally found the courage to accept my sexuality and come out. I also have children, so that means that I have a family. I’m tired of people talking about protecting families and intentionally leaving my family out. That’s basically what you are doing, and no amount of trying to paint it differently makes what you are doing right.

Lucky for me that if my kids’ dad gets serious about someone, he can marry just as if he were straight My kids can have the protection of having a married step-parent – one more level of protection should something happen to me. Or is that something that only kids with step-parents who are straight should have.

I’m the other side of the coin from Sam, but we live in CT.

Stop leaving my family out too.

CT only very recently allowed gay marriage. How has it worked? Has the divorce rate among straights skyrocketed?

“Opponents of marriage equality and gay civil rights are terrified to see “their” culture slipping away from them.”
– Please note on how the author differentiates between ‘opponents of marriage equality’ and ‘opponents of gay civil rights’. I do it too. They’re different things.

You’re misreading this, Rob. They’re not two different things. The first is a subset of the second. There’s no way in hell that the author DOESN’T view marriage equality as a civil right.

Here’s a great example of how one gay marriage weakened the family unit.

Rob, you goof, marriage is as much a right as free trade. It should no more be the government’s business who I marry than it should be their business who I give my money to, provided nobody is defrauded and violence is not involved.

I’ll tell you what right needs to be denied here–it’s the so-called “right” of the government to tell us who we can and cannot have a relationship with, absent the aforementioned fraud or force.

Suddenly, throngs of rightwing loonies rushed out to divorce, as gay marriage had an immediate, devastating effect on their marriage. They couldn’t stand another day of being married now that the word could be applied to gays.

Or Not.