Opinions

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by aishah

<snip>
* so much of the money and work in our community goes towards this single issue, while we are experiencing violence, bullying, unemployment, incarceration, police brutality, etc. etc. etc.
* the people who will benefit most from passing gay marriage ( for example, upper-class white gays and lesbians who are seeking to be accepted as part of a heteronormative society) are not the most vulnerable people in our community who need our protection (for example, homeless youth, incarcerated trans* women of color, queer sex workers, etc.). and the people who DO need obama to speak out for them will never matter to him

New Rules Target Sexual Assault Epidemic Facing LGBT Inmates

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's Department of Justice has released new rules to combat the epidemic of sexual assault in the nation’s prison system, a crisis that disproportionately affects LGBT inmates, as the agency specifically addressed Thursday.

[aishah]

^ okay, he is pretty awesome and i'm glad he keeps making me happy i voted for him

another thing that came to mind while i was at work yesterday is the gratitude piece...i think a lot of time folks think that when people are critical, we're being ungrateful, and that's bad. to me, i am grateful, but the emphasis that people place on gratitude in these baby steps is really...demoralizing sometimes. it is the government's job to protect the rights of minorities. these are my human and civil rights. we have been fighting to get them for decades. it reminds me of my experiences having to constantly couch accessibility needs in apologies, begging, pleading, etc. - when having access should (in my opinion at least) be a matter of fact issue. i understand that it makes us look bad to straight people if we're ungrateful for baby steps, and that can compromise the future of achieving more baby steps. but at the same time...i am frustrated that we have to beg, plead, and fall over ourselves thanking folks for rights that should be guaranteed to us and that straight people have had for centuries - and that we have had to fight like hell and sometimes die for.

this is what i think of when i think of gratitude and waiting.



(i must say i'm grateful for this thread and all the posts here though )

[Kätzchen]

There is such a wealth of opinion in our own community as well as in our own constellation of friends and family and certainly in terms of the community at large who are not a part of our own community here online. I’m at a place this morning where I can offer my own express opinion on the subject of marriage as framed by Lady Snow and others participating in the on-going discussion, currently at stake.

I have a ‘Love-Hate’ relationship with the subject of marriage.

I could offer a dossier of evidence culled via opinion in our own community, but I feel that offering my own dossier of opinion might add toward the discussion as it spirals and weaves throughout many social constructs prevalent in society today and hope that it adds toward the currency of Equity in terms of providing food for thought – not only for myself as I inspect my own attitudes that shape my own viewpoint on marriage but as I inspect my own system of beliefs that might keep me from seeing a much fuller and richer spectrum of available remedies we seek as a people who have little to no equity in a society that commits acts of hate upon women because we are the female of the species, but also, seemingly, because we are people who are not the Color of Water (reference to James McBride) or Indispensable (reference to Noam Chomsky) or because we seem to be saddled down with quotients of Emotional Labor (reference to Berkeley scholar: Hochschild, 1983 – The Managed Heart).

The three italicized references above speak to three social constructs prevalent in US society that seem to have more weight in social settings and provide for a glimpse into the culture of how women have been oppressed and dressed down for ages with lashes on our backs as proof of a culture (isomorphic by design) that hates on women 24/7 (et al).

I’ve mostly held a Minnepean sense of attitude (satirical by design) where it concerns marriage (Mikhail Baktin, Communication Theorist from Russia).

I believe that Miss Tick and Sparkle said it best, for me, where it concerns Marriage:

“…I think the shape of the hate and prejudice you experience twists your expectations…” Miss Tick.

“…I want my basic human and civil rights…” with the much important caveat, which speaks toward a more full spectrum issue that needs our full attention in ways that red flags seems to not get the attention it needs and deserves: “I want FULL LEGAL PARITY…” Sparkle.

I emphasized with all caps the part concerning “full legal parity” not to be taken as yelling but rather as the crucial piece to the stake at issue: the populace minority does not have full legal parity and in my express opinion, until the minority and undocumented minority are given full legal parity, we won’t be seeing much of any legal parity in the foreseealble future.
I say that because in one of my late graduate classes in Communication Law, we studied how Legal Eagles make crucial decisions at the level of The Supreme Court. Let me see if I can articulate what I want to say in the simplest terms possible because the situation is NOT distilled to a set of simple facts nor is it a situation, as we’ve seen for years now, that seems to have a solution that the majority opinion holders and voters can wrap their minds around. IF we can all influence change on any subject alone, THEN we must be willing to examine issues from the trajectory of, seemingly but not too terribly wise position of: The past is a predictor of the present (I forget which psychologist to reference for this analytical design/framework).

If we take that strand of thought for the moment, we can see how past issues have been handled from a standpoint that what has happened in the past has strongly influenced what transpires in the present. For example, one member of our community stated that in the past marriage between people of differing race was not tolerated socially and people were punished in legal fashion as well as socially, hence why after much social resistance and terrible acts of atrocity impacted the fabric of the American populace to wield a particular type of change that would afford people of color to marry people of no color. Being punished for being a person of color who is not a part of the overwhelming majority of people of no color not only caused suffering of great magnitude and lent toward a stripping of identity at social, cultural and political levels of life in America but also gave power to a people of minority status which helped change social, cultural and legal attitude. But that kiind of change did not happen overnight. It took almost a generation and a half or two for that kind of change to be found among the landscape of “The Free”. I say that with a dose of sarcasm with the impact of an unrelenting tidal wave of tsumani magnitude.

We’re not free at all in America.

We’re not free of prejucial actions and attitudes.

We’re not free of inequitable arrangements at a social, cultural (dare I say religious), and legally framed way of social order. In Communication Law, I learned that justice is served in ways that are not always judicicously applied in the best interest of the people who reside under the umbrella (rubric) of current construction of applicable law. We live in a time where archaic law guides executive decision. And in my own opinion sincerely, until a time comes where we can grow a set of attitudes that extend social equity to all rather than the select few (which seems to be the majority in our American universe), we will be not sitting too pretty at any time soon.

Even now, as I almost turn 53, I’ve been of the mindset where the only reasonable solution to me concerning marriage was I will never be able to participate in this particular social construct with full legal parity. I’ve been… “single, going steady”… for a long time now but not with anyone else but myself.

In my own estimation, until we achieve full legal parity on a number of interconnected issues (referencing Miss Ticks’ express opinion), it will be exceptionally difficult to be 'free' on any account in America.

Yours Truly,
~Dawn

[Nadeest]

I will agree, we need full legal parity on everything.

[Quintease]

This and this!

[BullDog]

Thank you for posting the articles Quintease!

Here's another one:

here

Obama's public announcement is making a difference.