Something's been bugging me...

[johnpalmer]

Something's been bugging me for the past few days, and I decided I wanted to put it out in the open.

People have mentioned that the SCOTUS decision legalizing "inter-racial" marriage is very similar to the logic I use to defend gay marriage... that marriage is the *only* extension of family that we permit a person, and that to deny marriage is to deny a person the chance to require people to take notice of the familial bond between two people.

Well, maybe it is similar reasoning... that may be true. But the issues are *not*, by any stretch of the imagination, similar.

You see, if I couldn't marry a woman I loved, because she haddifferent color skin, different features, or whatever, that'd be terrible. It'd be an unjust infringement on a right that people have long agreed that we should have.

But, *if* I could not marry the woman I loved, I would have a choice. I could live "in sin" with her (which might not even have been possible in the bad old days, but let's pretend)... *or*, I could find another woman, and marry her. Certainly, this is not a *good* choice, but the fact of the matter is, as a heterosexual male, there are many women who I will find appealing.

I don't believe in any of the great romantic notions of "the one". This person is "my one and only; no other person could make me this happy". It's true that the love you have for one person will almost certainly be different from the love you have with another, and that the happiness you have from one person will be different from the happiness you have from another... but that doesn't make the happiness less.

Even if you do believe that there are predestined soulmates, or somesuch, most folks acknowledge that tragedy can split a couple, and a person must find another partner.

Each member of a forbidden couple can find another partner, another person they can fall in love with, when one can't marry outside one's race.

That choice does not exist for gay folks. Gay men don't fall in love with women; gay women don't fall in love with men. They can't decide their marriage is forbidden, and choose to find another partner to marry if a marriage is what they want.

A ban on inter-racial marriage merely limited choices; a ban on gay marriage *eliminates* choices.

Sigh. But, sometimes, manifest unfairness to a small enough, barely-tolerated minority is just so blasted *invisible* to so many people.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Gay men don't fall in love with women; gay women don't fall in love with men. They can't decide their marriage is forbidden, and choose to find another partner to marry if a marriage is what they want.

Weird as it may seem, I've heard a number of hard-core "defense of marriage" advocates argue exactly this: "But it's not discriminatory - gay people can get married, they just have to marry people of the opposite sex!" (with an understood "... as God intended.")

I keep trying to figure out if those who say that sort of thing are honestly that clueless, or just being sarcastic.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, one of the reasons I mention "love" so often when talking about this issue is that there are some folks who read the word as something like "homoSEXSEXSEXuality", with the repeated bit flashing and little firework-like bits flying around it.

(And, of course, those who read it as "homo*GUYS GETTING FUCKED IN THE ASS! DEAR LORD THAT IS DISGUSTING*SEX*BUGGERY*SEX*SODOMITES*SEX*uality.)


I think they're serious. I don't think they realize that love has anything to do with it.

I keep wanting to write an essay that is tenatively titled something like "Holy shit, faggots fall in love!" but I'm not sure if I can do it 'right'.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I think they're serious. I don't think they realize that love has anything to do with it.

I can't help but wonder how many of these particular critics think love has anything to do with any kind of marriage. Their own included.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you see, they are God's chosen people... they're special. No, that's not a log in their eye... it's simply that they can see the glorious godlike nature of the universe, and it looks like a log. But, you know, there is a speck in your eye, now that we're talking about this...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

>Ah, but you see, they are God's chosen people...

Nah. This isn't a God issue. Can't be. Because then you'd be talking about "Establishment of Religion."

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm referring to those who would say that gay folks don't fall in love, but good, God-Fearing Christians do all the time... not a legal argument, but a reason not to be concerned.

If gay people fall in love, just like straights do, then denying homosexual marriages is a terrible thing. But, if they are just in it for the sex, then it isn't as obviously wrong to deny them the ability to marry.

Somewhere, there's a key, I hope, that will make a man look at his wife, or a wife at her husband, and think "if someone told me *we* couldn't marry when we love each other this much..." and that will turn the tide.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I keep wanting to write an essay that is tenatively titled something like "Holy shit, faggots fall in love!" but I'm not sure if I can do it 'right'.

If/when you do, that's something I'd really like to see.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's the thing that Orson Scott Card said that made me go "Oh. Well...so much for him." Sure, the rest of his essay was horrid, but that was the bit that broke this camel's back.

I'm hoping for clueless...but I don't really believe that to be the case.

Gessi

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

I'm probably being extraordinarily stupid here - butone of the things that I Just Do Not Get is exactly HOW gay marriages are a threat to anyone. It doesn't take away any of my rights, it simply extends those rights to people who love someone of their own gender.

And the back of my head keeps coming back with - so what if I'm married, and they are married? I can't see why that is a problem for me. You can't legislate who people fall in love with. And if this is a crime, then who exactly is being hurt?

The religious arguments here fail to convince me: if you have no right to tell me what to believe (and that I would stand and fight to the death for) then the reverse is also true. So whatever a particular religious group feels about gay marriage should be inapplicable to the law, provided it meets the minimum standard of consenting adults, which applies in all cases.

Declaration of special interest: I am heterosexual and married, my brother is homosexual and not married.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I believe (and this is taking the best spirit I can from such folks) that they believe, deep down, what I mentioned earlier... that homosexuality is all about sex and hedonism, not about love. If we let "fuckbuddies" marry just to get the privileges that are supposed to go only to committed, loving, married couples, then we are diluting the meaning of what we consider marriage to be.

It's also possible for it to be a 'feeling' argument... where the person doesn't actually *have* any point to making the claim, they just expect the claim to carry itself because it 'feels good' to the speaker.

And, there are those who simply can't get past their poisonous prejudice that "homosexuality is sick and wrong", and if we sanctify something that's "sick and wrong" with the same blessing we give to "real married couples", then we're diluting what it means to have a 'marriage'.

That, near as I can guess, is what people are 'thinking' (if you want to call it that) when they say that gay marriage harms straight marriage.

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

This makes a certain kind of sense. I suppose. If it's based on 'feelings' then logic doesn't obtain in any discussion thereafter.

To quote a friend of mine - gah!