How I pay:

1 - By not acting like a horses ass.

2 - By not screaming that somebody must be a homophobe every time they don't like me (maybe I'm just not likeable, that's possible. or maybe I did something to that person unintentionally.) There will be people who don't like me because I'm Queer. Ditto there will be people who don't like me for some other reason. Since I'm not psychic I have no way of knowing which it is unless they come right out and say it - so I'm not doing me or any other Queer any favours by screaming about homophobia every time something goes wrong.

True story: I live in kind of a shitty neighborhood, for Canada. What I mean by that is while there isn't a lot of violent crime going on where I'm living, there is a TONNE of property crime. Lots of theft. When my mail or my bike gets stolen (the mail happens all the time, the bike happened once and I never got another one because why bother?) Nick immediately jumps to "They are harassing you because they hate gay people!" which is just super crazy, since we have no way of knowing who the "they" in the situation are, let alone what their motivation is.

3 - By going out of my way to be the kind of person that people tend to like, even when I don't feel like it. I smile at people strangers when I pass them on the street and I say hello and stop for small-talk with acquaintances. I run errands for the guy on the 1st floor who is ill. When other people from my building are sitting around in lawnchairs out front I pull up a chair and hang out for a bit. I give up my seat on the bus for elderly people, women with small children, people with a disability, and anybody who looks like they are tired and would rather not stand up. I help people with heaps of groceries get their groceries on and off the bus. I try to keep the noise in my apartment to a minimum. If it's late at night I turn the teevee down real low and turn on closed captioning. I pay my rent on time. And I never go into the express line at the grocery store unless I really DO have 10 items or less.

4 - By being who I am but not making a huge deal out of it. I'm not confrontational around the Queer stuff. If I'm in line at the coffee shop and someone is shit talking gay people I approach them with a SMILE and ask them to please rethink who might be listening - I never yell or call names or act like a jackass about it. You'll never catch me in a teeshirt that says "Pussy is rad!" or "I am going to fuck all of your girlfriends!" or anything like that.

There is no Promised Land. People are what they are and we just are not evolved enough as a species to love and respect everybody - we never will be. Some individuals are pretty good at it...but as a species? It just isn't going to happen.

I'm Canadian, as most people know. So I'm pretty freaking lucky. It's illegal to discriminate against me for my "sexual orientation" (or whatever you want to call it.) I can marry whoever I want. I can work wherever I want. I can live wherever I want. I can shop wherever I want. If we can ever get that bill to add language around not discriminating against people who are transsexual added to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms passed I will be happy as a freaking clam.

Equal rights and protections is good enough for me. But as far as how individual people feel about the Queer "community" goes - the people who love us are just gravy. The people who hate us aren't especially shocking and are not going to ruin my buzz.

[QUOTE=Corkey;408916]Why are you assuming I don't vote?

There was more to her suggestion than Vote, I just didn't repeat it, as the message is the same. We have to use the power of the vote to make changes. I wasn't assuming you didn't vote.

Three big *R*'s have already signed a declaration to remove what little rights we gay folks have, we have to unite and fight the fight to be sure they do not get into office. Thats all.

SNAP.....all gone. back to the days of hiding who and what we are.

This doesn't actually make any sense, though. Regardless of how you choose to live your life, you don't currently have the right to legally marry in the US. Even if you live in a state with marriage rights, your marriage still isn't federally recognized. You don't just magically have that right because you say so. If it worked that way, there would be no reason to have this conversation. You can have a relationship that you feel is a marriage, you can have a ceremony, but that doesn't get you all the benefits of a legal marriage. That's what this conversation is about.

Congratulations. I'm talking about in the US. If you don't live in the US, then what are we arguing about? The conversation is about getting marriage rights IN THE US.

That last bit is utterly fascinating since you have no idea how old I am.

So, is your answer just to stop the fight? Do you feel it's a fight that will never be won? I'm just asking for clarity here.

Corkey:

Okay, if you don't care what they think then how do you get them to actually fold us into the circle of people called 'citizen'. I'm not a Canadian citizen and neither is my wife so we can't get married in Canada. The US government isn't obliged to acknowledge a marriage done in Canada.

I'm not talking about begging, Corkey. I'm talking about being pragmatic because, at the end of the day, we have to live in the same country as the people who hate us. They are not going away. We can't make them go away and they overwhelm us in sheer numbers. So we have to convince the vast middle, those people who are not actively anti-gay, that we have the better case. That is NOT begging.

We do not have the numbers to simply win by decree. We cannot *make* the majority do *anything* they don't want to do. Yes, in an ideal world, we would just say this WILL BE and it would become so. We don't live there. We can't even maneuver an absolute dictator into power on our behalf. So we have to win through process. We have to get enough people who are not gay on our side that the social pressure to change the law will be too much to ignore. We are not going to do that by grabbing them by the collar and screaming "I don't give a damn about you or what you think, now you WILL make marriage legal between same-sex couples!" Straight people do not HAVE to change the law. The law, as stands, works well-enough for their needs. It benefits straight people very little to expand the definition of marriage. If it were important enough to straight people for same-sex couples to get married the law would already be that way. So we have to convince a majority, that feels no widespread pain over our lack of rights, to somehow see our cause as a matter of justice. We have to win them over.

That is not begging, Corkey, that is the political process. What other choice do we have other than the political process? We can't break away. We can't all just leave. We shouldn't *have* to leave. We can't get our way by sheer number of our votes alone. We do not have the numbers to take over the government by either democratic or non-democratic means. I also do not think we should succumb to the temptation to use non-democratic means--meaning, we can't just outlaw homophobia. We must not do that. We must never outlaw *ideas*. So given all of that, what other choice do we have but to go to the majority, present our case, show how the opposition is the same crowd it has *always* been, and that just as the cause of my parent's generation was righteous so is our cause righteous?

Living in an open, democratic society means learning to get one's way by convincing 50% + 1 of your fellow citizens to side with you to change the laws. It means convincing the media that your cause is worthy of covering you. It is convincing lawmakers to champion your cause, even if they are not one of you. It is convincing the clergy to side with you and to use their pulpit's as a place to rally people to your cause. Politics is the art of compromise in order to achieve the possible. Despite what the Republicans in Congress *believe* about negotiation, it does not involve the other side capitulating abjectly. That means we have to understand what the costs of change are. None of that is negotiating anything away or begging for anything. It is trying to figure out how to achieve a just goal through the processes of our country.

Cheers
Aj

Tolerance implies and reinforces 'love the sinner, hate the sin'......makes me want to bitch slap the person saying that.........

Acceptance is turning on the tv, flipping channels and NEVER EVER seeing Bennie Hinn praying over letters and mailing out prayer clothes he prayed over on tv to those who send $19.95 so they can be saved. Acceptance is not having a murder count on the local news every night. Acceptance means Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, Bob Jones University are closed due to no enrollment. Acceptance means equality and value for each and every human being.

Acceptance is the government getting out of the business of regulating how adults order our families. Marriage has always been a contract to pass property, money and establish paternity for the transfer to the next generation of males. How about civil marriage does not exist? How about signing legal documents to cover inheritance and benefits? Spiritual marriage is not the business of any government .

What am I willing to do for what I believe in? I have risked my life more times than I can count for what I believe in. Stepping into rush hour traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, playing cat and mouse with the cops so I can make it on the Bay Bridge to stop traffic, walking out of the gay bar, down the dark alley to the street looking for the cowboys with baseball bats cuz you know they are there...somewhere....waiting....and the police are way more scarey than the cowboys.

Apathy is our enemy. Settling is our enemy. Morality linked to dogma is our enemy. We once walked in light and that was lost. Until we find light again as Dylan Thomas wrote:

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Okay, then my point stands. You're married in Canada, but you live in the US. That means you don't get the benefits that come with marriage. In the place where you live, you marriage is not recognized as valid, and wishing doesn't make it so. So where does that leave us?

I agree that the republican tea-party idiots won't ever be swayed. But they are a small minority of the voting public. They get lots of press because of their crazy antics, and republican politicians have to cowtow to them if they want to be elected or stay in office. But the vast majority of people can be swayed if we work hard to educate them. We have to counter the voices of the extreme right. They scream the loudest so they get all the press. We need to bring another voice to the discussion. Do you feel that that is a fight worth fighting?

I forgot.............

The greatest enemy of all enemies..........the one that must be overcome at all costs......

violence

What a vast difference there is between the barbarism that precedes culture and the barbarism that follows it.
-- Friedrich Hebbel

the violence in my own mind is my greatest enemy

I agree with you that they are cow-towed to.... but the question is why? Take a look at the Koch brothers (and Karl Rove for that matter) who fund the Tea Party. With the amount of money they have, the commitment to eliminate taxes for the super wealthy (and I am not talking about the rich because $250,000 income for a small business owner is an WHOLE other topic), and time time time on their hands to dig their heels in deeper to accomplish what they want to. I am hoping we can combat this... With corporations as "persons" now, we are going to have a tough road.

Take the recall in Wisconsin for example.. and the variance in funding between the dems and the repubs:

http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/ar...?article=34206

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...e-recalls.html

This I found really discouraging, Toughy. So, assuming that you mean what you appear to mean above, you are saying that in order for queer people to be accepted there must be NO place for a Benny Hinn. You are saying that queer people will truly be considered legal and social equals ONLY when there are no murders. You are saying that queers will only be accepted ni society when there are no Christian universities. I find that discouraging, Toughy, because it seems like what you have said above is that queer people will be considered legal and social equals--acceptance from the larger society--sometime after the twelfth of never. And how would we get to this world? I'm not sure I'm willing to pay those costs, as I calculate them to be, Toughy. NOT because I have any love for Benny Hinn or I think that the Christian universities you mention turn out good scholarship. Benny Hinn is just a carnival barker in a better suit and Bob Jones, Regent's, Liberty and Oral Roberts *combined* couldn't turn out a real top-shelf scholar if they tried. It is because I don't want to win our battle on eliminating the opposition, I want to win by convincing the middle.

The world you are describing, Toughy, isn't achievable by OUR species in a manner that is not oppressive in a broad way. In order to get a world where one will never see another Benny Hinn or where Christian fundamentalist universities have no enrollment, one would have to *outlaw* religion. Are you prepared to do that, Toughy? Are you willing to pay that cost because I'm not sure that I am. That might surprise you. I am no friend of religion but I also recognize that our brains bend *toward* religion and, as such, I view religious belief as an built-in part of human nature. Whether that is a feature or a bug, I don't know. I do know that unless I can come up with something to *replace* one's religious belief I have no business robbing someone of that which brings them meaning.

Then there's the stuff that really says "this will happen when the Winter Olympics are held on the Sun". When there's no murder count? Acceptance means equality and value for every person? What 'value' are you talking about and what kind of equality? Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. A relatively free and open society can just about manage the first one but it takes a totalitarian dictatorship to pull off the second one. I'm not sure I'm ready to have the kind of state necessary in order to enforce equality of outcome JUST so my 'tribe', if you will, is accepted as you have defined that term. In order to have NO murder count, you would have to fundamentally change human nature or you would have to make a society where surveillance and control was so complete and total that no one would ever have the opportunity to commit a crime because they are *always* observed and *always* monitored. That is a world of cameras on every lamppost and in every corner. I don't want that world, Toughy. I love Jaime like she were the very breath of life itself, and as much as I want to be able to legally marry her, I would rather not be able to than to have to live in the kind of society that would make your vision above possible.

That kind of society would rebound to our sorrow, Toughy. This is the thing I don't understand--we all talk 'as if' we admired Dr. King but, quite honestly, I think that mostly that is very superficial. We, as queer people, face a similar numerical and social challenge as my parent's faced in their time. Their generation could have demanded that the Klan be made illegal--and it would have failed. They could have tried to make America a nation where racist thoughts or speech were made illegal. They could have demanded these things at the point of a gun. You know what would have happened? We wouldn't be having this conversation and no one under the age of about 45 would have any memory of meeting a black person because we would have been wiped out.

This is similar. Sure, Toughy, we could try to create a society where Christianity is made illegal and, quite honestly, it would be far easier for Christians to simply wipe us out to the last than have their religion made illegal. Or we could keep spinning our wheels, generation after generation, telling ourselves 'one day' while making NO discernible headway because instead of rather simple and pedestrian goals--marriage equality, equal employment opportunity, military service, etc.--we set impossible goals for ourselves (e.g. the utter destruction of Christianity, the complete elimination of poverty, everyone being equal and valued).

What you call acceptance, your vision of what it means for queer people to be in a decent enough social and legal position that the queer rights organizations can turn out the lights and go home is nothing I recognize as acceptance. Quite honestly, I don't see what half your list even has to do with queer people becoming full and equal citizens.

Unless we're not meant to take your words to mean what they appear to mean or we are not meant to take your words and try to apply them to the real world, I don't see that you have set achievable or, for that matter, desirable goals.

Cheers
Aj

Betenoire:

My grandmother used to say "be a better person than you have any right to be". I was an adult before I understood what she meant. What you describe below, though, is a near Platonic example of my understanding of it. It means recognizing you have a legitimate gripe, something that could put one in the mind of "damn you, society, I'm gonna get mine if I have to walk all over you to get it!" and then NOT walking all over society but flying high above it. Being not just a candle in the dark but a burning star.

My grandmother would say it and she lived it. If ever someone had a legitimate gripe, it was my grandmother. Her husband was lynched by the Klan, her eldest son was run down and had his leg shattered by some boys from town. She worked as a domestic and then at an orphanage. She was oppressed in that special way that a black woman, born at the beginning of the 20th century and living until the 1980s could be oppressed. Yet, she was kind and gracious to everyone I ever saw her interact with. She rarely had a harsh word and I never saw her take a spiteful action or speak a nasty word about *anyone*. Even people she didn't really like.

Your method of payment is much like mine.

Cheers
Adrienne

Aj.........I need to digest what you said. It is never my intention to discourage anyone. When I asked my grandmother how she and my grandfather stayed married for 60+ years.........her reply was....'you have to be decent with each other always'. I think those are words to live by.

My world of acceptance is truly but a pipe dream, where the world is not a melting pot but a salad bowl. Differences are as celebrated as commonalities.

Lately I have been failing at articulating what my intellect tells me....as someone said in another thread........'I used to be so smart'. Maybe it's because more and more I operate from an open loving heart which does not always translate to words.

i've long been interested in the concept of social contracts. i've done some reading here and there and i can't say that my retention is much, but i have to wonder if this can't be used to advantage by not just queers in the larger community of the world, but all marginalized/oppressed groups.

seems to me there should be some lawyer clever enough to work this angle.

as i understand it, a simplified version of social contract is that in order to be a part of a community/civilization, the "citizens" agree to abide by rules, pay taxes, do what generally is best for the group as a whole. in return, the "state" agrees to treat the citizens equally and fairly, to protect all and to generally work to the benefit of all citizens. anyone...please correct me if i've got this wrong.

it seems to me the "state" is not holding up its end of the bargain here. i know they tax me on my wages, write me tickets for speeding or no seat belts, generally hold me to the laws of the land. in what seems like the same breath, i have been denied the right to marry whomever i choose, my taxes go to pay the salaries of those who would turn a blind eye to crimes committed against me and generally don't think i should exist in the universe, let alone in this particular society. is there not some point where the "state" can be called on not ensuring the safety of any portion of its population against the rest of the population?

when i was younger, i had a notion that all the queers should just take over a single state, secede from the union and take all the grand gloriousness with us. let the rest of the country live in leisure suits and poorly decorated homes, with bad haircuts. but, that's me.

tangent aside, i wonder if a class action suit was brought against not only state, but federal government for not holding up their end of the bargain...sue for return of taxes, punitive damages, whatever...if that would not serve as a way to bring the issues of second class citizenship to the forefront. it would be *just* about sexual deviants wanting to wreck marriage then...it would be about the dignity that all humans have a right to. it would be about all the groups who don't have a place at the table, not just the ones who didn't get silverware or a clean plate.

ok, i'm rambling off into hyperbole. that's what i've been wondering.

bueller? bueller? anyone???

Take your time, Toughy. I do want to say two things. While we might have dreams of how the world would be if we had a better people to do social change with, we only have us. If we lived in world of *infinite* resources, there would be no need for competition. If we lived in a world where everyone thought alike, then, ironically, we could have the world you're talking about where differences are as celebrated as commonalities.

But look at who we are. Is there a *single* culture that anyone can name where one couldn't tell a story about two sisters jealous of one another and people will understand what that story is about? Can anyone think of a culture where a story about a couple kept apart by their parents, or one where a good woman stays by her drunkard husband, or families quarreling about this or that would not resonate? There's a reason for that. People are jealous. They get angry. They quarrel. They are selfish. They prefer their family over strangers. They prefer their countryman or their neighbor over the stranger in their midst.

This is what we have to work with and we have to do it in the most democratic fashion because all the other alternatives are pretty unsavory.

One thing about your operating from an open, loving heart. I don't often talk about this and, quite honestly, I have done an insufficient job letting my love for humanity come through. That is my own failing as a writer. I am operating from an open and loving heart too, Toughy, even if I'm less obviously public about it. I hoped (and still hope) that my loving heart will come through without my having to tell people 'see, I'm a loving and open-hearted person'.

When my son was just a toddler and I would get frustrated with him, I would say "act my age!" It was my way of reminding myself that I was the adult and he was the child and my desiring for him to behave like an adult was patently ludicrous. That, to me, was being both open-hearted and loving. Instead of trying to make him be what I thought I needed or wanted him to be, I had to meet him where he was, warts and all. When I met Jaime, the mistake I told myself I would avoid was expecting her to be anyone other than she is. I try not to see my wife through rose-colored glasses although I'm sure that I do. You've met her, it's easy to do. But if we are going to last, I need to meet her right where she is and never expect her to be anyone other than herself. That, to me, is being open-minded and loving.

That is how I try to approach my love of the other 6 billion of you lot. I don't expect us to be anything other than what we are. So any social change we're going to have has to be done with that in mind. That's not to say we shouldn't dream big, but expecting humanity to one day live in a state of perpetual kumbaya is to expect a 2 year old to act like a 22 year old.


Cheers
Aj

There's a number of problems. The first is that the government has sovereign immunity. What that means is that for most things you can't sue the government, particularly not the Federal government. The second is that if you are going to sue the Federal government, that very same government has to tell you that you *can* sue them. Third, we'd have to determine on what possible grounds we are suing them. The social contract is an unspoken contract and so would not stand up in court. Fourth, in order to have standing we would have to show that the government was in breach either of law or of a signed contract.

What we *can* do is sue our states for violation of our 14th Amendment rights. But even that should probably be done only on a limited basis. What we're going to have to have is that enough states will pass laws guaranteeing marriage equality. Then when a couple in one state, moves to another state where their marriage is not recognized, sue that state for violating the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution. The short version of that clause is that a contract executed in California is legally binding in Oregon. This is going down the same path as interracial marriage took. By 1967, 33 states had legalized interracial marriage. All of the states of the South, however, still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books and in force. Mildred and Richard Loving were an interracial couple (she black, he white) who were originally from Virginia but had moved to DC and gotten married. They then went to Virginia and had to rent a hotel room. Their being married violated Virginia law and so they were arrested, tried and convicted. The judge suspended the sentence on the proviso that they leave Virginia never to return. They appealed the decision and the Virginia Supreme Court upheld it in one of the uglier court decisions one is like to read in American law. They then appealed it to the Federal courts and it thus wound up in the Supreme Court.

We *can* use the law in that way but a class action lawsuit simply won't work because the legal system has to recognize that you have rights under the law and, at present, it doesn't in a consistent fashion which, after all, is what the whole argument is about.

cheers
Aj

i kind of figured that wouldn't work, or someone would have grandstanded that play already. i wonder, though, if just the effort would garner enough press to make people just stop and think for a minute.

i do find some irony in a system that outlawed interracial marriage because the people were "different" from one another. now? they want to keep people who are alike from marrying.

Let me throw another iron in the fire here: Marriage rights are important and I support them, but are we allowing that particular issue to over-shadow other (and in my estimation more important) issues? Issues such as equality in housing, the workplace, hiring, healthcare, etc., and the worst one: violence against LGBTs. I think these are at least as pressing, however the whole marriage thing seems to be such a focus that I don't really hear people talking about these other things. Gays and lesbians and trans people are getting beaten and killed all the time. We need more law enforcement crackdowns on bashers, current laws to be enforced more, more hate-crime legislation, campaigns to raise awareness and educate people, etc. I think the "It gets better" campaign has been a great step, but we need something like that to address these other issues too. Think about all the AIDS activism in the 80s and 90s and how much things changed for the better because of it. In the press, marriage rights seems to be the only thing reported on, as if all we need is that right, then we will have equality. But we won't.

I know we can't have a utopian society where all these issues are permanently and completely fixed, but that doesn't mean we have nothing more to gain.

I think the reason marriage equality gets so much attention right now is that we're *so close* to winning that fight. There's a sense that we're in the home stretch, so a lot of people want to throw in their lot for a fight that actually has an end in sight. Kind of like how a lot of competitive runners will tell you they get a burst of energy they never would have thought possible when they round that last turn and they can see the finish line. I predict that once we've achieved marriage equality, one of those other issues will take the forefront, and we'll be having the same conversation again, only it will be some other issue that some people think shouldn't be getting all the attention when there's all these other others to work on. As a community, we seem to focus on one thing at a time, and I actually think that's a good thing. I think we can get a lot more done with a lot of people focusing on one thing at a time rather than trying to focus on a few dozen issues at once.

I get what you are saying, Atomic. I live in a state where queers have pretty much no rights. A constitutional amendment was passed here to ensure that and everything. :|

There are little pockets in Michigan where we have some rights, say in Ann Arbor or the more progressive 'burbs of Detroit. But, by and large, I am a second-class citizen here.

I have often started heated debates in LGBT political circles here by saying, "Why don't we start with employment rights? Why do we have to go for the big one right away?" It's akin to saying, why can't we make out first, why do we have to jump right to crazy monkey sex? ;)

When I bring this up, I am practically shouted out of the room as being a radical or something. I've spent my entire life in mainstream politics, and I know the way to get the majority to accept a concept is start small. I've built more campaigns around this simple notion than I care to admit.

I understand, however, many more places in the US are far more progressive than where I live (a shame, really, because Michigan was a progressive bastion back in the day, with the labor movement and then the student movement and whatnot). I understand other places are light years ahead of where we are in Michigan in terms of queer rights. And maybe that is part of what drives a perceived impatience in the community...this patchwork of progress here, lack of progress there.

Jake

I think that marriage was an issue that was kind of forced on us. By that I mean that through the mid-to-late nineties the queer movement was, more or less, happy about domestic partner benefits. Marriage was seen as something to be tackled down the line. However, the religious right started lying saying that domestic partnership was just a way to destroy marriage by stealth. At that point, I think what happened is that folks started to think that if we were going to be *accused* of trying to sneak into marriage through the backdoor we might as actually *do* that since it was going to be said about us anyway.

That said, I think that these other issues are equally as important but I also think that they can be solved in other ways. For example--and before anyone jumps down my throat for throwing around privilege, I *recognize* how lucky I am--I am a knowledge worker. I have spent most of my adult life being paid to transfer knowledge in my brain into the brains of other people or to recombine that knowledge in very interesting ways. Of the jobs I've had since 1994, almost *all* of them have offered domestic partner benefits. I was the first gay employee at one start-up I worked at and after I started, they had me wait a few days until they could contact Aetna and change the health insurance plan so that it DID cover domestic partners. They hadn't thought about it until they needed to.

Now, this was all in the Bay Area and so locale contributed but it has been my experience that fields that didn't exist one hundred years ago (computer science, genetics, etc.) are far *more* likely to provide domestic partner benefits and to have explicit non-discrimination language that protects queer people. Housing is probably going to have to be dealt with through a combination of legislative and legal processes.

This is a tough one. I actually support hate crimes laws because I understand the need for them. Every bashing isn't just an immediate attack on the queer person in question but is a message sent to all queers in the area 'next time, it could be you'. The problem is convincing OTHER people of that. If you do not or cannot imagine being attacked because of *what* you are then it looks as if people other than you are being given 'special protection'. We aren't but it *looks* that way to people of a certain mindset. This is an area where I think we may have to give some ground--NOT in the sense that we'll just have to accept a certain level of violence but we may have to accept that the law does not make it *legal* to assault someone for being queer, law enforcement, depending upon locale, may insufficiently investigate the crime because it is a queer bashing. That means we may have to use social pressure or some other way of pressuring local law enforcement to act right. Again, I'm not saying that I oppose hate crimes laws, I do not. It's just not a battle I think is winnable and I think we can use the existing laws to our benefit.

I am also in favor of queer people getting concealed carry permits in locations where that is possible. I think the stakes for any potential bigot need to be raised. It is one thing to attack someone you think is weaker but won't be armed. It is quite another thing to attack someone who *might* be carrying a gun. After a couple of gay bashers are shot while trying to hurt one of us, I think they will have to use a very different calculus. Let them sit in a bar or their home and wish to do violence to us all they wish. I don't care. Let them step up to one of us with violence in mind and I hope that queer person shoots them dead, quite honestly.


PLEASE continue doing this and going into queer communities and passing on your experience. We need more people with your knowledge who understand that we have to win enough people to on our side so that we have the majority.

Cheers
Aj

True enough- there are also some things with marriage equality that just fit in with many of the other struggles we have. These have to do with taxation and do feed into housing rights along with employment. There are also some very important variables concerning child custody that are part of marriage equality. It really isn't just about "marriage."

That said, we continue to be second class citizens on many fronts and violence against us- all over the US is something that needs our full attention. There is so damn much work to be done! Our being able to work together from every aspect of queer identity is paramount.

Oh.. throwing in self-defense measures (Aj brought this up)- a good alternative to a hand gun are the various personal stun guns available. These are legal in most states, easy to carry, not expensive and effective. Also good for dog attacks. I had a situation in which all I had to do was activate mine in the air over my head to stop a man that was coming at me physically. he ran like hell when he saw and heard the charge. I would have landed the next charge on his body if he had not stopped, but, I didn't have to.

I can't think of an issue besides marriage that directly affects more people, no matter what their orientation. We humans tend to partner. Those partnerships need to be legally recognised if we're to expect to keep our property or rights to our children when the doo-doo hits the fan. Perhaps my perspective has been skewed because of my personal losses, but I'm convinced that creating legally recognised family is an imperative.

Making new laws that make it illegal to discriminate against us in employment/housing/public accommodations would be great. Those laws might be enforced after people drag themselves along with a bunch of miscreants through the legal system. It won't mean quite as much as I wish it would in the current conservative court system.

Marriage equality, however, will effect an enormous proportion of our community, and it will effect us in one fell swoop. I can be driven to apoplexy by lgbt people who dismiss marriage equality as not very meaningful to their own lives. Each of those people likely has parents. If they're Americans, all those parents receive social security. Some of their elderly mothers are, no doubt, living on their husband's social security income. Those mothers weren't rousted out of the homes they lived in for most of their lives by their husband's families after their husbands died. Many of those doubting homosexuals and their mothers were likely carried on their father's health insurance. Because they were recognised as a legal family. I could go on and on, but we all know this drill.

The part that gets disconnected is where we forget that WE also will need the same legal protections our parents assumed. It's all very nice to have our relationships officially validated and all, but the real value to marriage comes in a crisis. If you've never faced the hostility of your partner's family after their sudden death, you're a lucky soul.

Many of us have lived so long as outsiders that we don't know how to think about our lives and relationships with the long view. The trajectory that straight people grow up thinking about, (school, marriage, family, old age), was never a model for us. Until now. It's scary for people who have always valued themselves by how non-mainstream they are by dint of their queerness, to contemplate that their ID might become a little less edgy once they can have a legal husband or wife just like everyone else. It's coming. Some of us are going to be just like everyone else. Some of us will continue to be very edgy because we happen to be edgy people. But not simply because we're queer. It's time to get used to it.

Ok, so what would that social pressure look like? And, the problem isn't just with law enforcement. It's with the whole system. Like judges allowing the "gay panic" defense to be used in a murder trial. Like juries buying into such a defense. Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...ying-jury.html

Here is where you and I part ways on perspectives. I think answering violence with violence is not the way violence against LGBT folks will be ended. Defending yourself, yes, but shooting someone dead? I don't believe that will make anyone think twice, just like I don't believe the death penalty is any sort of deterrent either. I think shooting someone dead just perpetuates the cycle of violence. It also could give bigots an additional false sense of moral high ground, in that they would have the "gays and trans people are dangerous murderers" argument to augment their absurd justifications for their violence. I believe Dr. King had it right about the necessity for a civil rights movement to be absolutely non-violent.

Plus, I just hate guns. The more people who run around with concealed guns, the more likely death from gun violence will occur. We need more gun control, imho.


Drew

Aj........... have not forgotten you...I will come back to you as I am still digesting..........

I think marriage as an issue is the epitome of assimilation. The revolutionary thought is marriage is a sacred spiritual bond and as such has no place in government recognition. All of the benefits of civil marriage are actually legal benefits that include right of survivorship and transfer of property. All of those things can be accomplished by way of legal contracts. Civil marriage does not guarantee the contract will be honored, so what is the frigging point? Legal contracts in the form of marriage and death benefits are contested on a daily basis everywhere in this country. Pre-nups are common to protect the interests of each party..........again legal contracts.

I want a radical shift in social organizing. Marriage is NOT the business of the State. Benefits of any individual should go where the person wants...period. The US has some fucked up ideas about Social Security and health care. Women are treated as second class citizens because of marriage. A woman stays at home and the husband works, and she only gets benefits because of her husband. She is not a whole human being and the value of her work in the home is void. Women who are married part of their life and hold no outside job get nothing because they did not pay into Social Security. They worked their entire lives and if hubby decides after 20 years of marriage he is done...........she gets nothing if she cannot afford a good lawyer.

If we are going to rethink queer, then we must rethink not queer. If we are ever to defeat the patriarchy then we must not use patriarchal value systems. A woman who stays at home and raises children deserves decent pay for her work for society and deserves more than cat food when she is to old to have and raise the children and grandchildren.

The social pressure looks like using existing civil rights laws. The courts are *obliged* to treat all citizens equally. If the court allows something like the gay panic defense, then we turn to the next higher level of government and sue the lower court for violation of our civil rights. We keep doing that. This is not new territory. Until the 1970s you would be hard pressed to find a white man doing more than spending some time hanging out in the station for the murder of a black person in parts of Dixie. Police departments were sued for civil rights violations. I think the same thing can work here. If not, then it begs the question 'are we citizens' and if we are not, why aren't we?

I believed that for a very long time. Here's the thing, I've been watching the America Right for a very long time. These right-wingers are a whole different breed in larger numbers. They are talking about 'second amendment remedies' if elections don't go their way. They are marching down the street with weapons slung or prominently displayed. Those weapons are meant to send a message. I presume that they mean it and if they do--and we would be very foolish to think they don't--I don't want queer people to be the only ones unarmed when they decide to 'take their country back' through more direct means. I'm not saying it should be mandatory, I just think that those queer people who decide to own firearms should not be considered pariahs in our community.

Cheers
Aj

Toughy;

You do understand that this is nearly a word-for-word recapitulation of the conservative argument *against* marriage equality? I have heard innumerable conservatives argue that there is nothing that marriage grants that can't be recapitulated through contracts and so why push for marriage? Well, here's an example. One of the queer people at work and I were talking about how much more we pay to cover our spouses than our straight colleagues do. Much more. In the $400 a month more range. That's a lot of money. If we were in a state-recognized marriage, that would be illegal.

Okay. How do you plan to sell it to society? What if they don't *want* that? Toughy, there have been other plans to try to remake society wholesale based upon some grand vision of what a truly better society would be and as far as I can tell every single one of them either tore itself apart or created a nightmare. I'm inherently suspicious of grand schemes to reorganize society whether they come from the right or the left. That movie has yet to have a happy ending.

You have to start with the society we have and the species we have. We don't get to rerun the tape and get a species with a different evolutionary history. That means that if we are going to do grand redesign we should probably be VERY careful about it. That is why I'm a reformer and the civil rights movement was a reform movement. The civil rights movement was not a movement to completely remake society. It was a movement to make society apply the rules it claims to hold dear to black people. I believe that is an achievable goal for queer people. I have yet to hear an explanation for how we get to where you are talking about and I would really like to understand that. I think it's important.

Yes, that IS an injustice. I don't see how eliminating marriage eliminates the injustice. I think that there are ways to deal with those situations that *don't* require dissolving marriage.

I'm with you on defeating the patriarchy but I'm not sure what you mean by patriarchal value systems? And by whose measure?

But on the rethinking not queer, how do you convince not queer people to go along with your grand vision? We may get there, Toughy, but if we do I'd be surprised if I were alive long enough to see it. I say that because human beings appear to be wired for knitting together in social structures and one of those social structures is a pair-bond. We are not an *entirely* monogamous species but, as a species, we lean toward monogamy. Nature gets a vote, Toughy and I don't see society going in the direction you are talking about, specifically regarding marriage, of its own volition. We've been forming pair-bonds for a very, very, very, long time. That is going to be a hard habit to break because our brains are wired-up in such a way that they really *like* bonding. I don't know how you convince the rest of the species to give up marriage. How do you do that, Toughy?

Just to give you something to chew on, consider that I am not religious. I am not a political conservative. I'm a secularist and a humanist. I'm a social democrat. And I am expressing profound reservations about your vision even though I see how I would benefit from it. So if I'm a hard sell, how do you sell it to people who are ideologically far from you?

Cheers
Aj

Hey Toughy...

*hugs* and hope all is well.... Your hugs and support remain with me.

I just want to say that marriage IS a function of the State... In fact, it always has been...

And unfortunately the benefits of marriage are not accomplished through contract law.

Even with appropriate legal planning we miss out on so many things including but not limited to:

Social Security benefits
Pension Benefits
Tax advantaged group health care benefits
Tax free transfer of property benefits (whether alive or dead)
Unlimited Marital Deduction
Gifting Issues on Real Property and other forms of property
Family Leave Benefits
Joint Tax filings (or not)
Immigration benefits
Medicaid (Medical) benefits and spend down limits

And on and on...

Basically the property laws of our country are based on British (common) and Spanish (community property) law (and there is Louisiana which is based in Roman or Civil law). To disrupt the law would mean undoing centuries of Western European civil discourse... literally.... and something that because of colonialism has literally spread across the planet. Sadly, it is not based in US history... nor is it symptomatic of our current society... rather it is endemic to the understanding of how we interact with each other. For example, common law is based on how we understand how we SHOULD interact with each other. Civil law, on the other hand, is based on how we interact with each other being mandated by law. They are different world views as far as HOW the social contract is established.

Thanks so much for this articulation, City! There is so much more involved with the issues of civil rights and marriage. To my mind, it could be the single most important means to our being able to fight all of our fights. It is about legitimizing in terms of law and legislation. It is not simply about "marriage" at all.

Let us not forget the impact of passage of legislation for interacial marriage did as a vehicle of human rights.

By sacred spiritual bond I am talking about pair bonding and a religious or legal aspect is not required to have that bond. I'm so not a believer in a personal god.

Holding tightly to the tools of the patriarchy will never change the patriarchy. Civil and religious marriage are tools of the patriarchy used to control girls and women. Slavery was (and still is) a tool of the patriarchy and was so ingrained in all societies and cultures and endorsed by the law and religion. One probably heard the same arguments when the idea that slavery was wrong started permeating society and cultures around the world. Slavery was centuries old and appeared to be critical to the social structure of the entire world. Guess what...........it wasn't and isn't.

All those legal benefits civil marriage gets don't have to be connected to civil marriage.

There is no reason to believe that social structure is stagnant. Obviously it's not and there is no reason to keep defending the structure of marriage. It's no one's business how I order my life and what kind of family I create and live in.

As long as we keep arguing for our limitations and hold fast to how the patriarchy runs the world, we will keep having those limitations and the patriarchy. Paradigm shifts do happen and it always starts with one person.

Toughy,

I've been reading your responses here with absolutely no clue how to respond. At first, I thought you had to be joking, then I realized you were in fact very serious. I'm really having some trouble wrapping my brain around your ideas here.

It looks to me very much like your idea of how you think society should be structured involves the end of religious freedom for anyone who disagrees with you. It also appears that you're in favor of only the rich being able to gain the benefits that currently come with marriage (since poor people generally can't afford lawyers to draw up contracts for them). Now you're comparing marriage with slavery, which I honestly find offensive. If this is your vision of life without the patriarchy, I want no part of it. It doesn't sound even remotely revolutionary or utopian to me. Or have I misunderstood you?

Toughy:

Firstly, just because a similar argument was made for slavery does not mean that the argument necessarily works. The logic you are using is this:

People said slavery was natural, critical to society, etc. Slavery was a moral evil. People said a moral evil was critical to society. They were wrong. THEREFORE, any argument on the basis of it being critical to society is also suspect.

The problem is that it does not follow. Just because society was wrong about slavery and used a very bad and inconsistent logic to reach their wrong conclusion *does not mean* that any argument reaching a similar conclusion is therefore wrong. To see why let's take this. Just so it's clear that this is NOT a Godwin violation I am NOT comparing any position that anyone has taken with anything the Nazi's ever did or espoused.

The Nazi's were wrong about any number of things. Nazi scientists were the first to link smoking with cancer. But the Nazi's were wrong. THEREFORE, they must have been wrong about smoking causing cancer. Except that smoking DOES cause cancer. Does that mean we now have to reverse position and claim that since they were right about this one thing, they must have (or might have been or we endorse) anything else they might have stated? No.

Works both ways, Toughy. Perhaps you are right but this *still* avoids the central question. Again, for the purposes of this discussion I am willing to stipulate that you are right. I grant you that IF society were arranged in a way more congenial to your idea of what society *should* be like (and whether you are willing to acknowledge that you are talking about remaking society as you would like it to be, that IS what you are talking about) THEN society would be a better place. My question is how do you get society to go along with you?

That's the question you keep avoiding, Toughy. What if the rest of us, or a majority of us, find your idea suspect? What then? How do you convince a society to *completely* change how things are done if they do not want to?

Since you invoked slavery, I'm going to remind you of how slavery ended. The South did NOT want to end slavery. Blacks did but white Southerners, for the most part, saw nothing particularly abhorrent about the system and would have been happy to let it continue indefinitely. Slavery ended because the North invaded the South, beat them into abject submission, and then imposed emancipation at the point of a bayonet. Are you prepared to go to that length, Toughy?

Now, the South was manifestly wrong. There are no arguments that one can make in favor of slavery that do not start out with having to deny the humanity of the enslaved group. But the point here is not whether the South was wrong (that is not in dispute) it is HOW the South ended up having to accept that slavery would no longer be allowed in this nation. It is now illegal to have slaves. Is THAT what you are after, Toughy? Making it *illegal* to marry?

Again, you don't have to convince me--at least not for the moment. I am stipulating that your idea of how to order society is *self-evidently* better, for the purposes of this discussion. My concern is how you get from where we are now, to where you believe we should be. Again, how do you deal with the innumerable people who are either unconvinced that this actually *will* be a better world or who are convinced that it will *not* be a better world? That's the question, Toughy.

Cheers
Aj

Re- "marriage." The literature (based upon new studies) now being published by various social and behavioral scientists post the 2010 census, brings out some very radical changes in how the US views it. It ain't our fathers & mothers institution any longer. And something that I have been quite happy about is that it is not what the US far-right would want us all to believe.

So many of the property-based and child custody kinds of things we tend to associate with marriage are just no longer at the heart of why people (any kind of people) would marry.

Society does change and so do our institutions. Sometimes, a lot slower than many of us would like- but they do change.

Maybe as more and more of this new body of work is viewed and understood, we will address our "utopias" very differently?

Yes, it does, depending upon the couple in question and local conditions on the ground. However, are you saying that NONE of the women who are married--whether that is a m/f pairing or a f/f pairing (for sake of simplicity I am considering m/f to encompass any male person)--are there willingly? If you are, how do you explain so many women who have some choice making an inauthentic choice? Unless you are saying that ANY woman, chosen at random, regardless of cultural background, is enslaved if she is married then you need to explain the presence of women who, we will for the moment presume are self-interested, rational agents, see themselves as happily married and believe that they entered their marriage of their own free will. So, is that they are not happy but they don't realize it? If that is not the case then is it the case that they are happy but for the wrong reasons? If so, what are the right reasons for women to be happy?

I am not making an argument denying that for vast numbers of women around the world, marriage IS slavery. The more patriarchal the society, the *less* the society has embraced the idea of inalienable rights of humans, the more likely it is to be the case that marriage will resemble slavery. I am, rather, arguing that if what you say is true then we need not explain women in areas where they have little or no choice. Rather, we have to explain women who DO have a choice. Why would women, economically empowered, educated women *voluntarily* enter into slavery *particularly* when some number of these women took women's studies courses in college and are well aware of the patriarchy. Are they *also* expressing inauthentic preferences or false consciousness?

Unless I have reason to believe otherwise, whether or not I agree with her choices, I have to presume that a woman who is empowered to make choices is going to make good choices in the lack of coercion. Therefore, if a woman who is not under coercion or mental duress, I presume that her choices are authentic and that her preferences are as well.

Cheers
Aj