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  • From: Michael Williams <michael AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Interesting SWF on the gay marriage thing.
  • Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 19:44:09 -0500 (EST)


On Sat, 21 Feb 2004, Lee Haslup wrote:

> As it pertains to the gay marriage issue isn't healthcare subsumed under
> "partner benefits," or am I missing something?

If one is lucky enough to have an employer that recognizes same-sex
partners. For the majority of my working life, I have not. I do now,
which is wonderful, and hats off to my employer for it, but it's entirely
their option to do so. I know, I know, why always with the compeling? I
guess I'm just an ass.

> You are right that I tend to view things from 10,000 feet. More people
> should, I think, when contemplating societal issues.

...when those societal issues don't affect them? It's all well and good
to sit around and chew the fat about sharp edges on social institutions,
but that sharp edge happens to be stabbing me between the eyes at the
moment. For me, this is not political, it /is/ personal.

> partner would be good for a child that they might raise. On the other
> hand, the dilution of the idea of marriage and the blurring of its edges
> will be unfortunate for rather more children whose family environment is
> that much less stable. I concede your point but, on balance, find other
> considerations more pressing.

I'm still just not getting the dilution of the idea of marriage here.
Increasing the availability of and participation in marriage doesn't make
marriage go away. Marriage is not a finite resource that can only be
spread around so far. Straight people are not going to get divorced or
fail to wed because gay people can do it, too. Straight men and straight
women have been shacking up in various forms of legal bliss for thousands
of years, and I just don't see how that is threatened by adding another
leaf to the table so somebody else can sit down.

Here's where you'll probably label me a crackpot: the heterophobe in me,
the one in the very back of my brain, thinks straight people who don't
want gay people to get married are just scared we're better at it.

> So, you are arguing that the institution of marriage is a patched and
> shabby thing, fallen into disrepair and disrespect -- that one more
> thing may well push it over the edge into irrelevance? You seem to be
> arguing my side, should I be arguing yours? Please advise.

No, I'm saying that if you want marriage strengthened, let in every strong
relationship you can. Is this where I cock one eyebrow and we pretend we
find one another witty?

> Thus the brilliance of the definition of marriage as the union of one
> man and one woman. Paula and her partner are unlikely to slip up on
> their medication, or have one too many Margaritas, and "accidentally" go
> out and adopt a child but with heterosexual couples accidents happen all
> the time. Marriage, according to the conventional understanding casts
> the net just wide enough.

Because, you know, /every/ pregnancy results in or is the result of
marriage? Huh? I just don't get it. First you say marriage needs to be
protected to produce children, then that it needs to be protected in case
of children? Is marriage kept behind glass, halfway down the hall, next
to a pull-alarm?

> It's interesting to observe here that this is a point on which you are
> altogether wrong with regard to American history. It's something of

Ah, so I guess women didn't have to march, or lobby. I guess women
didn't spend decades agitating for the right to vote and being told,
repeatedly, that they didn't deserve it. I guess there were no radical
women's organizations, no politicla parties organized by women, no women
arrested for acts of civil disobedience just to get the vote. I guess
Martin Luther King, Jr., just went on a stroll through Memphis and looked
around wide-eyed and amazed to see others had joined in. I guess Rosa
Parks sat on that seat because a white person saw the rightness of
inviting her to do so. Do you know how the 19th Amendment came to be an
inevitibility? Do you even know why Susan B. Anthony was put on a silver
dollar?

I do not feel that I, as a gay person, have been as thoroughly beaten
down, shafted and left for dead as women and African-Americans were in the
past in our country, but I do feel that I have to fight for my equality,
that I cannot just "live and let live" and enjoy the same treatment as a
straight person, so there you have it. I have to work for social change,
and the fact is, as glowing as those rose-colored lenses must be, that
social change in our country is a history of minorities compeling the
majority to /cave in/, not enlightening them.

I certainly hope straight people see the rightness of our cause
eventually. In the meantime, I think it's certainly our right to "compel"
you to change your minds.

> wanted. The vote was given to women by men who had been convinced of
> the rightness of their cause, not taken.

The vote was given to women because for forty years women had been being
arrested for demanding ballots, had been enfranchised already by newly
formed states (take Colorado, for example), and the proposed amendment had
been building steam in Congress for four decades. It was not an act of
kindness, it was an act of trying to appear to keep up with changes that
had already happened.

> the strict legal meaning of the term. I don't believe that the intent
> of the people who approved the laws was that it include you and your
> partner and, less importantly, I don't even think it would be a good
> idea. The quotes around the word "fair" indicate, not that it is unfair
> for you to get married, but that I have considered the issue of fairness
> and find it less important than other issues involved.

So am I seeking fairness by seeking to get married, or am I seeking
liberty? Because I see it as liberty, pure and simple - the freedom to
live my life and still be treated like a full citizen.

> Well, they do have that one problem with the whole man/woman thing.

Would it help if my boyfriend pretended to be really, really femme?

Well, time to sign off, as my husband, I mean boyfriend, I mean, uh,
/wife/, yeah, my wife says we're running late to a party. Ironically,
it's an engagement party. I wish I had the freedom to do the same thing -
and sure, I can have a party, and call it an engagement party, but
everyone there will be thinking the same thing: they're not /really/
getting married, so whatever, it's just a party. I don't know if you'd
want to come to that party, not because anyone would accost you, but
because it just wouldn't be as much fun as the real thing.

--
http://www.compoundx.org "I am...
Michael Williams I am the...
http://www.ibiblio.org/michael tomato!"
michael AT ibiblio.org --Roger Smith





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