Something's been bugging me...
Jun. 3rd, 2004 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerSomething'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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-06 12:05 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-09 01:02 pm (UTC)To quote a friend of mine - gah!