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Gay Marriage

  
  

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The Tower Always Falls
03:48 / 09.03.04
Seems bcj just registered this month and has a grand total of 4 posts to their name. Anyone else smell troll meat?
 
 
w1rebaby
04:08 / 09.03.04
No... surely not.
 
 
Z. deScathach
08:07 / 09.03.04
The one thing that I question about Cameron's viewpoint is that it fails to explain bi's. If gay sex is so much more feelgood than heterosex, why do I find myself attracted to guys as well as women? To Cameron, I say, "It's AWL good......". I agree with the above viewpoints that he wants it and he wants it bad........
 
 
I am Invisible now
14:02 / 09.03.04
I was always humored by people that have told me "you choose to live this way". They are right. I got so bored one day with my life, I thought Id spice it up with anal sex and never went back...ive "resigned myself to ass"....WTF.
I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would 'choose' this....I live in georgia (enough said) and as large of a gay crowd there is here, the crap hatred still exists...
Yes, I deleiberately made a choice to like men, even though I really like women deep down inside but punish myself by having sex with men. Yes I purposely choose a life whereby I will be persecuted, hated, given unfair rights at times as well. God I must be realllly bored, right?;p
 
 
aus
16:40 / 09.03.04
I'm wondering if the intention of marriage is to provide a more stable environment for child-raising and, if so, why the heck did I get married considering we have no intention of raising rug rats?

And if the term "same-sex partnership" is to become common, why not "different-sex partnership" for us heteros? Too many syllables, I guess...

And why "pink" (in the Topic Abstract) for gay marriage? How does a color have a sexual orientation?

It's my opinion that marriage is fundamentally a relationship between two people. Although this relationship has undeniable social effects beyond the two people directly involved, no other person (including the government) has the right to allow or disallow.
 
 
Cheap. Easy. Cruel.
17:57 / 09.03.04
Although this relationship has undeniable social effects beyond the two people directly involved, no other person (including the government) has the right to allow or disallow.

Unfortunately, freakin' aus, most of the fundies (who are the opposition) don't see it that way. They see marriage as a God-given sacrament that should be rabidly protected, even provided for, by the government. To them, the idea of gay is abhorrent and should be punishable by death. So, to offer the same protections to the perverters of their sacred bond is anathema. They will go to any lengths to prevent this.
 
 
Cat Chant
18:03 / 09.03.04
Um... marriage has everything to do with the government. It is the legal registering of a particular, rigidly determined, combination of sexual, financial, and coparenting relationships between two and only two citizens (or one citizen and one provisional citizen) with the State. That's what differentiates it from cohabitation and other forms of loving, sexual, financial, coparenting relationships. That, in other words, is what it is.

Just for the record, as well:

I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would 'choose' this

[waves] I chose to be queer. I like it a lot better than being straight.
 
 
aus
18:19 / 09.03.04
marriage has everything to do with the government. It is the legal registering of a particular, rigidly determined, combination of sexual, financial, and coparenting relationships between two and only two citizens (or one citizen and one provisional citizen) with the State. That's what differentiates it from cohabitation and other forms of loving, sexual, financial, coparenting relationships. That, in other words, is what it is.

It seems to me that the definition of "marriage" is up for grabs. What you describe hasn't been the definition of marriage for very long (in terms of an historical timeline), and it might not be the definition in the future.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
19:24 / 09.03.04
So what do people think about opposition to / critiques of gay marriage as a radical queer position? The most recent example I've seen was by Craig of Makezine, here. I'll reproduce the most immediately relevant section, although the whole thing's worth read:

I recognize that people support marriage for a lot of different reasons and that people wish to get married for lots of reasons – including symbolic, emotional and material reasons. I want to think about marriage at a systemic level, not at a level of individual experience and benefits. I realize this means talking in terms that don’ t always account for how wide the range of experiences might be, but that systemic focus is important and is more complex than a lot of media coverage of this issue suggests.

I won’t spend too much time going over the critique of marriage offered by feminists, queers and sex radicals, among others, but at the level of individuals we should remember everyone who is left out of the benefits of marriage – non monogamous couples, people whose homes and families are not constituted out of sexual relationships, etc. Many perverts, polyamourous people, sex workers, s/m practitioners and activists have rejected the normative institution of marriage because of the violence it enacts on people who don’t fit and don’t want to.

We only need look at how the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund discusses marriage to see evidence of this:

Gay people are very much like everyone else. They grow up, fall in love, form families and have children. They mow their lawns, shop for groceries and worry about making ends meet. They want good schools for their children, and security for their families as a whole.

Not to go on about the obvious, but who is this “everyone else”? What gays fit this model and what does it mean to suggest that all gay people are like this? What about people who don’t own homes with lawns to mow? What about people who mow other people’s lawns for their living? People with no money to buy groceries? People who don’t want children?

Similarly, while marriage has offered access to resources for some, advocates have pointed out how through welfare reform marriage operates as a coercive institution which punishes women whose families do not fit a family ideal.
 
 
Baz Auckland
19:36 / 09.03.04
[more comic relief]

New Marriage Amendments 28-40
 
 
grant
20:48 / 09.03.04
It's my opinion that marriage is fundamentally a relationship between two people. Although this relationship has undeniable social effects beyond the two people directly involved, no other person (including the government) has the right to allow or disallow.

Well, the issue isn't necessarily allowing the relationship - people can think of themselves however they please. It's all the social privileges that go along with officially recognizing that relationship. Like being able to visit in hospital during the non-visiting hours, being considered next-of-kin, that sort of thing.

And the pink business... well, I don't make up these genderized color codes.
 
 
Lurid Archive
22:26 / 09.03.04
From Flyboy's link,

As a white queer, I feel a responsibility to reject political gains that I can access through privilege.

Like writing a article that will be available on the internet? Really, given the obscene global disparities of income, to name but one elephant in the room, it isn't remotely tenable to hold this sort of principled position unless you are hermit subsistence farmer. If you are reading this, the likelihood is that you are compromised.

While I didn't disagree with many of the points raised, I also thought the thrust of the article was tactically misguided. Though, to be fair, I couldn't work out what the writer was actually advocating. Opposing Bush whilst opposing marriage? Seems fair enough, I guess, and worth raising in its way. Though if one were to focus on this, it would probably be counterproductive.
 
 
Z. deScathach
04:05 / 10.03.04
Deva: [waves] I chose to be queer. I like it a lot better than being straight.

Agreed. To me, it is a mistake to define queerness by "not having a choice". It draws away from the real issue, which is that consenting adults have the right to choose who they will love and share their bodies with. That is what the gay marriage thing is really about, whether or not society should restrict the rights afforded to same sex relationships relative to heterosexual ones. When I sleep with other women, I do so by choice, because I want to be with that person. The question posed is one of fairness. One of the big things when my partner died of cancer awhile ago was whether I would be able to be with her in the hospital when she died, or whether a fundamentalist christian nurse would play the, "only family members and spouses allowed" card. Quite frankly, we shouldn't have had to go through that worry.
 
 
Cat Chant
11:25 / 10.03.04
it isn't remotely tenable to hold this sort of principled position unless you are hermit subsistence farmer

Ooh. Maybe we should start another thread specifically on privilege, because this is a bit of a diversion from this topic, but I get really wound up when, for example, polyamorous queers get legally (heterosexually) married: I think they/we do have a responsibility not to shore up the system of het-monogamous privilege. I think it's a bad use of a rotten privilege, which sells out other members of groups from which we/they presumably get support and energy. Actually, I get wound up when anyone gets married, in much the same way I would get wound up when someone used a race-segregated bus when other methods of getting from A to B were available to them. I don't think using the internet is comparable, because I don't think "privilege" is an absolute and invariable term across all situations.

So what do people think about opposition to / critiques of gay marriage as a radical queer position?

Me, I think gay marriage is only slightly less indefensible than straight marriage, but I hope I made my own position on this fairly clear on this thread. Hopefully the devastating unforeseen effects of legalizing gay marriage will lead to something a little more useful to those of us whose family and affective networks don't conform to monogamous cohabiting coparenting co-financial models.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:11 / 10.03.04
Start a thread on privilege so we can talk in circles again, Deva? Maybe.

I'm interested in the idea that gay marriage will bring down the institution though. Well, interested in the sense that I don't think it is remotely plausible. Gay marriage, from a structural point of view, if we mean the extension of the monogamous model to non-heteros, is a rather tiny change. A big rights issue, for sure, but I can't see it causing very much disruption.

If we want to look at a case where there has been a major structural shift in the institution of marriage, I would suggest Ireland where divorce laws have only recently been adopted. This change potentially affects all marriages and has possible consequences for the majority of people. Gay marriage, by contrast, affects the minority, and doesn't cause any serious shift that I can think of, apart from the obvious. I suppose one can argue that it assaults the heteronormative psyche of a nation, but that is to imagine a straw man version of heterosexulity, whose supposed fragility seems more like an artifact of oppositional identity politics than anything else.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:52 / 10.03.04
Why start a new thread on privilege when we have this classic?
 
 
biollante
13:40 / 10.03.04
But what about Freedom of religion when it comes to same sex marriages and the definition of marriage?

I am thinking about the Navajo Indians. Many of their creation myths include the creation of hermaphrodites (commonly as the first people) and some also include the creation of the masculine female and feminine male. They don't see people in terms of just two sexes- male and female.

These "Two Spirit" people encompassed what we would call transvestites, transexuals, gays, lesbians, and bi's.

Two Spirits were seen as completely natural- often sacred. Sometimes they were seen as Shamans.

Often Two Spirit's could marry someone of the same sex! In fact..."same sex marriage was expected of the religious practitioners who played important roles in christening children, curing fertility, or organizing funeral rituals." (Crapo, 40)

Every culture has the concept of marriage albeit in different words and forms. Also every culture has religions- though not everyone in the culture believes in them or practices them exactly.

Same sex marriages did occur in some of the Navajo and Pueblo Native American Indians. There are also places in West Africa where women could marry women.

Other people groups such as the Sambians, Etoro's, and some Peruvian and Siberian peoples held homosexual acts as social duty. The Sambians encouraged sex between the male warriors to make them more masculine. The Etoro's believed that men had a limited supply of semen and had to replinish my having oral sex with other men.

Some groups believed that true love was between men and the men only had sex with their wives on scheduled events for reproductive means.

"What you beleive is real is real in its consequences" And your culture defines what is real.

Some people practice polygyny- multiple wives (usually sisters) and others practiced polyandry- where women had multiple husbands (usually brothers).

Society won't crash with these other forms of marriage, imo.

Sources.

Cultural Anthropology, Marvin Harris. 6th Edition.

Anthropology of Religion, Richley Crapo.

Back to freedom of religion- what about certain sects of Mormons or Muslims that believe they have the religious right to polygyny? What about Navajo Two Spirits who may live off the reservations and want to marry.

If I were these Activists- I would get two gay Navajo men and have them get married in San Fransciso or a town that is doing the marriages- then if the marriages are ever deemed invalid or whatever- I would sue on basis of Religious tolerance and freedom.

Sidenote- many Mormons and Muslims believe that their religions advocated monogamy. It is beleived that Mohammed only institutionalized polygyny because many muslim men had died during battles and there wasn't enough men to protect the woman. Probably the same can be said due to Mormon Persecution etc.
 
 
grant
14:07 / 10.03.04
That religious freedom gambit (two Navajo men...) would an interesting one to see played out.

If you check out the links up my initial post, you can find some pretty convincing evidence that it's not just other cultures who have same-sex marriage -- Christianized Western Europe did too, up until right around the invention of the printing press (in all likelihood).
 
 
Elbereth
16:45 / 10.03.04
"One of the big things when my partner died of cancer awhile ago was whether I would be able to be with her in the hospital when she died, or whether a fundamentalist christian nurse would play the, "only family members and spouses allowed" card. Quite frankly, we shouldn't have had to go through that worry."
no you shouldn't have. The same right to privacy and association laws that prevent family memebers from making medical decisions that the patient doesn't want can also allow people into a patients room that they do want to see into the room. (although you must remember, sometimes family members are not allowed in all the time because nurses are putting tubes in random places or the pt is having a sezure. one women who wanted to see her partner in our hospital thought that we were discriminating against her when we were just trying to clean up a little bit.) Most of the major rights (inheritance, power of attorney, medical visitation rights) that gay couples need to have can be established by other legal means. it's the thousands of tiny ones that gay couples don't actually get ( like not testifying against a spouse and recieving post mortem awards in place of your spouse). these have been built up by societies perception of marriage for hundreds of years. the real gain would be a change in societies perception of the couple. I don't think our society is ready for it just like our society isn't ready for polygamy or polyandry. and even though other societies may have done it doesn't mean that ours should. That doesn't mean people shouldn't stop tring to change mainstream society. I just don't think it will happen for another generation or so. Also, if I could be eligible for financial aid by marrying my best friend i would do that much more readily that I would marry some woman for financial, so it probably will weaken the definition marriage at least for straights.
 
 
*
02:01 / 11.03.04
Thanks for mentioning the two-spirit topic, biollante, which reminds me-- no one has yet mentioned the implications of the so-called "gay marriage" debate for people born intersex or people who were identified as the wrong sex at birth. Transgender people can in many states in the US legally change their gender once they've had SRS, but some transgender people cannot have SRS, and some intersex people identify themselves as in between genders and would prefer not to have to pretend to be either one or the other. (I should mention that the majority of intersex people do identify as either male or female, and this may match what they were assigned at birth or not.) Gender is a very complex thing, and the US government limiting the right to marry only to couples consisting of "men" and "women" as defined by the state carries more implications than just those for gays and lesbians. Although these are important, maybe widening the debate beyond just the issue of homosexuality will make some people who are reflexively judging it on just those grounds think a little harder.
 
 
Grey Area
10:42 / 13.03.04
Apparently the supreme court of California has ordered SF to stop issuing marriage licenses, and the legal status of the 3,400 licenses issued is under review.

read about it here
 
 
Z. deScathach
10:23 / 14.03.04
Elbereth: "One of the big things when my partner died of cancer awhile ago was whether I would be able to be with her in the hospital when she died, or whether a fundamentalist christian nurse would play the, "only family members and spouses allowed" card. Quite frankly, we shouldn't have had to go through that worry."
no you shouldn't have. The same right to privacy and association laws that prevent family memebers from making medical decisions that the patient doesn't want can also allow people into a patients room that they do want to see into the room.

Yes, I did make sure to get power of attorney so that I could not be kept out of her room. My point is, why should I have had to jump through all of those hoops in order to have a right that is automatically given to a spouse? The bottom ine is that if I did not file all of that paperwork, I could be kept from visiting her. I had to make sure that I kept my paperwork on me at all times, (the social worker at the hospital told me this). If I were to forget the papers, I could be kept out. Do married couples have to go through this rigamarole?
 
 
Ganesh
11:29 / 14.03.04
Most of the major rights (inheritance, power of attorney, medical visitation rights) that gay couples need to have can be established by other legal means.

Being on the sharp end of this, Elbereth, it annoys me slightly when this point is made, usually rather airily. Yes, these "major rights" are available to my partner and me - if we don't mind accepting major hassle and, in some cases, major financial outlay, in order to establish the same degree of security which is freely available to both my sisters (one married, one unmarried, both with more legal rights than myself).

Even allowing that, hey, gay people can shell out for a lawyer (they're all wealthier than straights so that's okay, right?) there remain major obstacles to acheiving even notional social/civil equality.

One example particularly dear to me and mine is the National Health Service's superannuation scheme (stop me if you've heard this one before). As NHS employees, me and my partner of nine or so years both involuntarily put a substantial percentage of our monthly salary towards this - so it's a tidy sum. If one of my straight colleagues dies, the accumulated superannuation goes to their widowed spouse. If I die, it disappears into the ether. There is no way around this: despite being the second-largest employer in the world (after the Red Army, I believe), the NHS has no facility for same-sex partners, no matter how devoted, no matter how long they've been together, to benefit.

This annoys me. A lot. Almost as much as springing for my straight friends' naff-but-expensive wedding presents with no prospect of getting anything naff-but-expensive in return...

Also, if I could be eligible for financial aid by marrying my best friend i would do that much more readily that I would marry some woman for financial, so it probably will weaken the definition marriage at least for straights.

I suspect that, in willingly accepting the stigma that continues to surround same-sex unions - and a homosexual identity generally - merely for "financial aid", you're perhaps unusual. Since we're talking not merely in terms of anecdote but hypothetical anecdote, you'll forgive me if I find this a little unconvincing as a 'weakening heterosexual marriage' argument.
 
 
Ganesh
11:39 / 14.03.04
Deva:

Me, I think gay marriage is only slightly less indefensible than straight marriage... Hopefully the devastating unforeseen effects of legalizing gay marriage will lead to something a little more useful to those of us whose family and affective networks don't conform to monogamous cohabiting coparenting co-financial models.

I pretty much agree with all of this; I must admit that, keen as I am to access the (mostly) financial benefits afforded to my straight friends, relatives and colleagues (who, to varying degrees, present at least a facade of subscribing to "monogamous cohabiting coparenting co-financial models"), I wince whenever one of them asks, "will you and X get married?". I too am hoping that the legimising of same-sex civil unions proves to be just one step along the HomoLiberal World Agenda For Change; a phase we're going through...
 
 
Cat Chant
12:32 / 14.03.04
Cool. This has clarified something for me.

Z. de Scathach wrote:

why should I have had to jump through all of those hoops in order to have a right that is automatically given to a spouse? The bottom ine is that if I did not file all of that paperwork, I could be kept from visiting her

and I was just about to say "Well, you have to file paperwork/ jump through hoops to get married, you know: a wedding certificate is just as much a legal document as a power of attorney", when Ganesh pointed out that:

these "major rights" are available to my partner and me - if we don't mind accepting major hassle and, in some cases, major financial outlay, in order to establish the same degree of security which is freely available to both my sisters (one married, one unmarried, both with more legal rights than myself)

(This links into something I wanted to say about the limits and usefulness of 'privilege' as an analytical tool but I'm not sure I have the energy just now...)

So... I suppose what I would ideally like to see, and what I would be willing to campaign for, is a much more mix-and-match legal system, as it were. One where the range of legal rights and privileges that individuals need to protect the financial and affective networks that they have built up is on offer to anyone, and is on offer as a broken-down range of different things, not as a package that assumes that the person you fuck is the same as the person you want to coparent with, live with, and leave your pension plan to. You know, like when you can choose what vows to make in a wedding, or draw up a prenuptial agreement - you could choose a particular configuration of rights depending on what the real status of your relationship(s) were (X gets custody of the children, Y gets the house, all three of us affirm our sexual commitment to each other without pledging fidelity; 'adultery' will not be valid legal grounds for dissolution of this contract). That would be a way of addressing both Ganesh's points and my own worries. Once again, I'm ripping a lot of this off the lovely Drucilla Cornell, who wants to put in place a legal system that can, for example, allow for three women who are not in a sexual relationship with each other to register as the legal parents of a child they are raising. (In other words, why shouldn't you marry your best friend for financial reasons? What does sex have to do with your financial arrangements? Should all marriages where the spouses no longer have sex be declared invalid by the State, or only marriages where they never had sex? Etc.)

Oh - and I should say, because I've only said it in throwaway lines or parentheses so far in this thread, that I think it's absolutely, self-evidently wrong that same-sex couples should not have the same legal rights as mixed-sex ones. It's just the basis on which we should campaign for the extension or redefinition of rights that I have a problem with - cf the "Hey! Gays are just like us regular normal people!" argument cited above.
 
 
Ganesh
13:22 / 14.03.04
I think it's absolutely, self-evidently wrong that same-sex couples should not have the same legal rights as mixed-sex ones. It's just the basis on which we should campaign for the extension or redefinition of rights that I have a problem with - cf the "Hey! Gays are just like us regular normal people!" argument cited above.

I agree, in principle; I think the assimilationist case is a much easier political point to push (it's easier for straight people to accept that 'they're just like us' than it is to contemplate the legitimate uncoupling of familial/affective relationships from child-rearing, sexual monogamy, financial co-dependence, etc.) - but the older gay politicos, in particular (and Tatchell is especially outspoken on this) believe that in focussing on gay marriages, the 'agenda' of the gay community has been compromised. I'd say they make a strong point.
 
 
grant
15:59 / 24.03.04
For Deva: Oregon County bans all marriages.

At least until they can figure out who's allowed to marry who.
 
 
Ex
17:44 / 24.03.04
Fucking amazing. Startlingly pleased about that. I think I may, in the footsteps of internationally migrating nuptual queers, go to Oregon and not get married.

I think the assimilationist case is a much easier political point to push

I'm torn about the upcoming Brighton Equality Walk, for this very reason; it's a walk for equality (general cries of hurrah, caps thrown up etc) but seems to be angled towards same-sex couple rights. Unsure whether to go, possibly wearing a lurid screenprinted "Rights for single and poly people too, yer fuckers" T-shirt, or cop out.
But Mel and Sue asked me to go specially. And Gandalf.
 
 
Cat Chant
08:16 / 25.03.04
Thank you grant! Thank you, Oregon! Thank you Ex, for saying what I would have said, had you not got there first! Startlingly pleased indeed: Barbetrip to Oregon.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:25 / 25.03.04
Weird that this is top of Switchboard today, cos I just got this spam to one of my AOL screennames, which has pissed me right off.

My succint response was 'Fuck off you spamming bigoted arseholes.'

The spam was from info@worldview.com if you'd like to send them any polite messages.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:27 / 25.03.04
Ah, that link doesn't work, sorry...I'll try to find it out.
 
 
Baz Auckland
14:54 / 25.03.04
I got it in one of my inboxes today... not spam though as I'm on the mailing list...

The Dangers of Redefining Gay Marriage

...it's just more 'letting gays marriage is a slippery slope', but it's also a bad attempt at humour...
 
 
Pingle!Pop
19:53 / 17.07.04
I have a feeling there was a specific thread for the Civil Partnership Bill, so feel free to move this post if it's in the wrong place...

Anyway: I may be nearly a month behind, but according to the government's Women and Equality Unit, the House of Retards are trying to put a spanner in the works:

On Thursday 24 June 2004, an amendment was passed at Report Stage that would render the Civil Partnership Bill unworkable. The House of Lords voted 148 to 130 to allow close relatives who are over the age of 30 and have been living together continually for 12 years to form a civil partnership. This would mean parents, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces would be able to form a civil partnership and access all the rights and responsibilities associated with this new legal relationship for same-sex couples.

Now, there's perhaps something to be said for the legitimisation of incestuous relationships. However, unless more peers have a vested interest in moving towards legalisation of interfamilial sexual relationships than I'd previously thought, I find it rather hard to believe it possible that the aim of the new amendment is anything but to delegitimise any idea that same-sex relationships should be considered in any way equivalent to straight ones.

So, what do people think of the new amendment? Does it effectively rubbish the legislation and remove any symbolic victory? Will it stop the bill in its tracks? Or is it, well, pretty much irrelevant?
 
 
Baz Auckland
20:41 / 12.08.04
...and now the California Supreme Court has un-married the 4,000 SF couples...

The California Supreme Court on Thursday voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples. The court said the city illegally issued the certificates and performed the ceremonies, since state law defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.

The justices separately decided with a 5-2 vote to nullify the 3,995 marriages peformed between Feb. 12 and March 11, when the court halted the weddings. Their legality, Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, must wait until courts resolve the constitutionality of state laws that restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples. The same-sex marriages had virtually no legal value, but powerful symbolic value.
 
 
Triplets
00:01 / 19.08.04
Anal sex is still legal, right?
 
  

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