Gay Marriage: Boon Or Scourge?
June 17, 2008
There are two posts up at Feministe containing some very interesting discussion of the gay marriages that are now occurring in California. The first post is a simple unqualified congratulations to those now able to get married:
Congratulations to…all the…couples today and hereafter who will be afforded the basic right to marry the person they love, regardless of gender.
The second post expresses a less celebratory view:
[T]he marriage equality movement is largely predicated on the notion that us queers are just like “everyone else,” meaning mostly white, mostly middle-class or up, gender conforming monogamists. You know, the non-threatening queers. The rest of us should apparently find a nice closet to go hide in for a while, lest we threaten the rights that are apparently meant for the more upstanding, respectable members of the LGsomeotherlessimportantletters community.
I’ll tell you what the fuck I think below the fold.
Wouldn’t it be nice if insane right-wing theocratic douchecornets would just leave normal people the fuck alone? By normal, I mean, “people who don’t want to be forced through the coercive power of the state into living their lives in some particular arbitrary way”.
I heard one of these fucking assholes spouting off on the radio this morning about the “complementarity of one man and one woman” and a bunch of other dumb-fuck bronze age mythological bullshit.
I would like to see us disentangle legally sanctioned economic relationships involving real and personal property, children, healthcare decisions, and estate succession from demented religious sky fairy bullshit. Just to be clear, I would like to see this disentanglement occur for everyone in society, and have religious ceremonies of any kind be given absolutely no legal weight whatsoever.
This would immediately obviate all that “next people will be marrying their dogs” wackaloonery.
Of course, douchecornet religious assholes would fight this tooth and nail, thus proving what fucking liars they are when they say that it’s all about “maintaining sanctity” of their relgious conception of marriage. What it’s really about is imposing their demented bronze-age mythology on everyone as a means of social domination.
JUST LEAVE US ALONE, YOU SICK SAD DELUSIONAL FUCKING WACKOS!
Comradde RisottoProffe 
June 17, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I keep telling people (like the person at Feministe) that it ain’t about buying into the patriarchy, it’s about automatic powers-of-attorney, automatic next of kin status and inheritance, getting Auntie Bea and Auntie Em the right to visit each other in the hospital and make decisions, even if Auntie Em’s tightass sister disapproves, et cetera et cetera a thousand more times (once for each right “marriage” gives you in the US that “civil unions” do not) and preventing shit like this from happening to them:
When my boyfriend of three years was in a car accident, his family kept me in the dark until after he died in the hospital. Then, I was prohibited from planning the funeral. I was allowed to attend the service but was told that the burial was for “family only.”
Three days after the funeral, my boyfriend’s parents showed up at my door with a sheriff’s deputy and removed all of his belongings from our home — including everything we’d purchased together such as CDs and kitchen items. They were allowed to take anything they claimed belonged to their son.
If that doesn’t apply to you somehow because you’re bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, or anything else, I’ve yet to see it. (Given my experience with the way my trans friends have been treated by law enforcement — one spent the night in jail for informing a neighbour of his civil rights while cops were present, for instance, basically for being a boy in a dress — you’d kind of think you’d want all your legal rights not assumed, not implied, but on paper in government triplicate with all the Is dotted and the Ts crossed.
June 17, 2008 at 2:12 pm
So where does California’s current domestic partner/civil union law fit into the overall scheme of things? I keep hearing it covers all the rights “marriage” supposedly does — but if that’s true, why is gay marriage suddenly such a big deal there?
June 17, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Nan-
California’s domestic partnership law is pretty decent, but it didn’t originally include *all* of the benefits and responsibilities that marriage does. Since it was passed it has been amended to include all of the rights that the state provides for marriage, or so says Wikipedia. Even queer couples married in Massachusetts and California aren’t eligible for the full list of rights because many of them are granted at the federal level. I think the main reason gay marriage is such a big deal in California is symbolic, both because it is heartwarming to the queers and allies and because it is downright terrifying for the conservative religious nuts.
June 17, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I heard the most awesome quote this morning from a wacko that was interviewed about gay marriage (ok, I have to paraphrase). He said that gay marriage was a sin against God and that we would all pay, not just California, but the whole country. Then he said, “Look at what’s happening to our country, all our jobs are going overseas!”. Get the logic there? Gay marriage = downturn in the economy. Un-fucking-believable.
June 17, 2008 at 10:03 pm
It’s the biggest non-issue I can think of. Pick a real issue, conservatives!
June 17, 2008 at 10:19 pm
It seems to me that god-fearing heterosexuals have already done an excellent job of ruining the “sanctity” of marriage without any help from the gay and lesbian community.
June 18, 2008 at 1:27 am
I too would like to know MUCH more about the legality’s involved.
This MIGHT be a token gesture event, if the LEGAL community don’t back it up.
And yes, property issues and partner income issues and savings are ALL at stake, still, till it’s all clarified.
Me, I’m for full rights.
What a hard fight, for all of you out there.
Best to you all, from me and mine.
Yer rights are no better or worse than mine . . .
And I’d cover your back any day if it was in my power to do so.
Bless all of you, non-straights, all of you.
I’d fight with you, if called. Any time.
Harumph.
June 18, 2008 at 6:44 am
Bug Doc, isn’t that common logic among the wackaloonery? Kind of like Robertson saying that God struck us down for 9/11 because of homosexual and other liberal behavior. These people, who hold the bully pulpit for millions, are truly clinically delusional.
microbiologist xx is spot-on.
I completely share PP’s practical justification for these legal partnerships among any two people and concur that marriage is best left separate from “demented religious sky fairy bullshit.” (I loves me that PP).
Even my little girl gets the gestalt of that bumpersticker: *heart* + *heart* = Marriage. Let’s move on and stop trying to legislate hate and discrimination.
June 18, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I loved seeing George Takei in the news.