And look what we have now: Not a perfect society, but a helluva lot better for African-Americans than before.
Why should we wait for the majority of Americans to develop a conscience?
It just really irks me to hear: “Wait. It would be so shocking to all of the bigots if we were to push for justice and tolerance now.”
Julie
Bill and Ted move to Vermont to get married. Bill works just over the border in NH. After 20 years Bill and Ted drive Bill’s pink 1965 Mustang to Niagra falls to celebrate their anniversary. Bill has a heart attack in Buffalo and is hospitalized in intensive care. Ted can’t visit him since he is not a relative according to NY law. When Bill dies the hospital will not release his body to Ted. Instead they contact his cousins in Alabama, Bill’s only other living relatives. The family does not invite Ted to the funeral and will not tell him where Bill is buried. On the the drive back to Vermont Ted is stopped because a taillight is out and is arrested when the title to the car is found to be in Bill’s name. The car is shipped to the cousins in Alabama where it is re-painted puke green and auctioned off at a charity event for Get Straight, a camp to convert teenage homosexuals. Out on bond, Ted returns to Vermont where he finds out he can’t collect on Bill’s pension or social security.
On the other hand, the sanctity of marriage has been preserved.
I am not saying that if the states take it to the courts that we shouldn’t try to win, after all, I am gay, rather I do not think it is a good idea for gays and lesbians to go to canada and get married, then come back just to try to shove the right to get married down the throats of the concervatives. some things need to be fought for long and hard, rather than just given to you by someone else to be really appreciated.
and this is a state issue, which congress should really have no part in. I think congress and the federal government has far overstepped the boundaries that our forefathers set forth for it in the constitution. and don’t even get me going on how bad the SC is overstepping it’s boundaries.
the jim crow laws were about basic human rights.
I do not think that gay marraige is a basic human right, at least not in this context. we can get married in our own eyes, and set up legal contracts in terms of most of the rights married couples have (ie. visitation rights in hospitals, living wills, wills, division of property, ect.). what these recognitions of gay marraige on state and federal levels really boil down to is tax differences for married couples.
we are starting to see a backlash against gay people because of the lawrence decision, if we try to ram marriage down their throats, it could get worse, and we will see alot more matthew shepard style murders, and not just in the midwest. but then this is just IMO
What I posted a couple of posts ago also applies here, yes, I do agree that A-A have it better now. but about 50 years ago or so, there was a vast upswing IIRC in violence and bigotry because of what the courts did. and this was on basic human rights, not something that is really not about human rights, but about legal issues that don’t really touch on basic human rights. we can love each other and make our commitments with out the holy p*ssing on by a state of federal government.
I am happy now that I can enjoy making love to my boyfriend without having the fear of possibly being arrested. but I also think that the grounds the Lawrence case was decided on were wrong(somethign for another thread).
tolerance is something that any gay man or lesbian can help out in by voting for representation that is really positive for the gay community, in any party, not just those like Clinton that gave lip service, but when it came down to it signed the DOMA into effect, and gave us that great piece of crap for the military: don’t ask, don’t tell. also, by letting people realize that those they love can be homosexual, we bring into the face of sometimes biggots, the idea that homosexuality is not a bad thing. my dad was really homophobic, till I came out to him, and he realized that stereotypes are wrong. the winning over of people like this, and by putting in power people who really want to change things for the positive, we can go a long way in making it 20 years to turn most people around. after all, most of the extreme bigots will be dead in about 20 years or so, at least one can hope.
taz
Bill & Ted actually take time to write wills naming each other as chief beneficiaries & also give each other power of attorney in the event of incapacitation or some such emergency.
It doesn’t cover the employer family-benefits issue, but it does nullify a lot of DanB’s scenario.
At a cost many, many times what a man/woman couple have to pay for a marriage license and a JP fee. What lovely equality…
Wills can and are challenged. Spouses pay no estate tax. It wouldn’t be hard to find cites of cases where hospitals have ignored gay partners and not allowed them to make the medical decisions and kept them out of the hospital room.
You know, I’ve been bypassing this thread, and I have not yet read to date, but I just had to stop and comment on this, which Dewey’s brought up before – what the hell kind of “strict constructionism” is it that allows a state to pick and choose which parts of an affirmative constitutional mandate on them they will honor, not even on the basis of statute, but on the basis of a nebulous description of some but not all matters addressed in its laws as its “public policy”? If a state chooses to regard single persons as inadequate parents, would they be justified in stopping any car passing through containing one adult and at least one child and removing the children from the custody of the adults who could not provide proof they were in a currently valid marriage? After all, that’s their “public policy!”
I’d buy Mr. Justice Field’s standards for due process before I’d buy that one!
There are a lot more issues on a federal level than just tax benefits. Spousal immigration, Social Security dependent benefits, VA dependent benefits are all tied to marriage. Qualifications for certain programs (such as HUD loans) are also different for married couples than for single persons. I can go on and on here, but I don’t feel like writing a novel.
Now, you are just ignoring what has been pointed out to you already in this thread. The Lawrence decision was caused by the state of Texas, not by gay people. If someone is arrested and fined, they have already been dragged into the legal system. The state of Texas was free to drop court proceedings at any time, amend their laws at anytime, they chose not to. They are the ones who are responsible for the Lawrence decision, not gay people.
You seem to be under the bizarre impression that desegregation was a single act of judicial fiat. It was a lengthy process that really got underway in the forties and was fought in the legislature, executive, and judicial branches on both the federal level and state level for another thirty years. This is exactly how gays are approaching their issues too. This is how any group approaches an issue when dealing with our system of government. I really don’t understand your objection.
Finally, there are always some people who are prone to violence if they don’t get there way. I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Black people were subject to enormous amounts of violence prior to desegregation and post desegregation for a number of different reasons. Desegregation did not cause violence against black people.
The US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. I don’t see why anybody should negotiate with homophobes who resort to violence. They are free to use the same legal maneuvers gay people are, they choose not to.
I recall reading recently that HUD was opening up to same unmarried/same sex couples. unfortunatley, I can’t recall when, but it was in the Washington Post (will look for cite later).
yes, the Lawrence decision was pushed to the top by Texas, but, many concervatives feel that if we just sit quietly and take what they feel we deserve (not that I am saying that we should) then the world will be better. there really is no reasoning with someone that feels that way. the only thing you can try to do is to show them that through infinate diversity, and infinate Combinations of people, we are a better world (thanks to Gene Roddenberry for those words). I think we all would like to have the utopia now, but that really is not possible. if you look at poll data before and after the lawrence decisions (I will try to look some up when I am not at work) If I recall from a snippit I saw on CNN, the numbers went up in anti-homosexual impressions.
yes, desegregation did not happen overnight. I am not completely blank to us history. but, it seems to me (key words there) that people have a tendancy to dislike things that are decided by the SCotUS against their opinion; be it presidencies, civil rights or sodomy laws. this is somethign that may never change. and although I may be putting myself in the wrong camp here, but we really are comparing apples and oranges here between gay rights and black rights. after all, as bad as I think it is to do it, homosexuals can alway hide their orientation. but then, I am out and proud, so don’t think I could hide it, even thoguht I am in my friends opinions rather butch, really bordering on straight, but do like me some men. 
as I said in a previous posting, I am all for progression of the " gay agenda", just not at the price it seems we may be asked to pay the way things sit right now.
It seems then, dctaz, that you are willing to wait for the slow road of progression to catch up and the homophobes and religious right to eventually change their minds on their own and accept you.
Are you however willing to force all the millions of other homosexuals to wait those 20 years to get the acceptance that they honestly should have gotten a long time ago? If they are willing to accept the storm of protest now, and get it over with rather than wait, are you willing to tell them they can’t?
Stick Monkey,
everyone is entitled to do what they want to do, that is the idea behind having a free country. I just am saying, in my mind, it is better to do things on the local and state levels before we attack the federal government. if we push for things in the communities, like the religious wrong do, then we will find a stronger voice overall, and beat them at their own game. why push everything into a federal court issue, when we can be just as strong, and push just as hard from the local level to get things passed. after all the DOMA is a federal law, but many states have similar statutes now. we should have fought those state statuest when they were being passed rather than waiting till they did pass, then fighting them in court. that is really what I am talking about.
This is so erroneous, I don’t even know what to make of it. Who says nobody fights these things as they are passed? Do you really think Lambda sits around waiting for laws to pass before attacking them? Just because you aren’t aware of lobbying efforts on the part of the gay community doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
dctaz, we did fight them. At the state and local levels, we organized all we could, we made our voices heard, we fought as hard as possible. In some cases, it worked. Here in Tucson, we’ve got a domestic partnership registry coming by the fall; it passed in city council chambers unanimously.
But that doesn’t happen everywhere. There are places in this country where, given the need to change laws on a local level, will remain mired in the antiquated brutality of straight supremacy long after you and I are dead. Is it right to ask the gay people living in those areas, the gay kids growing up there, to accept their fate? To tell them to keep fighting locally, when even coming out of the closet is a life and death decision for them?
We’re a minority. We have recourse to the legislative branch to achieve equality in this country. There is ample precedent to prove that this approach has worked, and can work again.
The fact that many states have anti-gay statues on the books does nothing to support your argument, I’m afraid. Rather, it makes legislative solutions on a federal level appear even more necessary. As a minority, we’re in no position to try and overwhelm the polls. The mechanism to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority is the court system, and I have yet to see any reason why we shouldn’t use that avenue to secure our future as equals.
And legislatures, in general, are less concerned with what’s right than with what’s popular. Gay rights may never be a popular goal.
Courts should, at least in theory!, be more concerned with what’s right. Many judges aren’t elected, some are in for life. That means they have a certain autonomy that you really can’t expect of a Representative in the House.
Julie
Guys,
it has been a while since I have had to deal with much on the local level. living in DC, all you hear about really is the federal stuff and all the stabbing in the back and btch fighting goining in Lambda and HRC and those groups. sometimes it seems even they can’t seem to get their acts together on what to do and form a unified front. used to have a fraternity brother that worked for Lambda, fallen out of contact with him, so not sure if he still works there or not; but he used to btch about how stupid some of their decisions on how to run things were.
and I repeat again, though this seems to have turned me into enemy #1 around here, that I THINK that relying entirely on the courts to overturn and make acceptable gay marriage is going to be about as popular with the concervatives (read not me) as the court’s decision that Bush won the elections was with everyone else.
dctaz, I’m pretty sure that nobody is thinking of you as an enemy. Most of us are just disappointed to hear the old refrain from within the ranks. “Be patient, give it time, trust the public”. I’m not. I won’t. I can’t. In that order. The public hasn’t proven to me it can be trusted to guard a bicycle, let alone my basic human rights.
And if people don’t like the decision if it comes down to a Supreme Court hearing, I say to them the same thing the Bushistas have been saying since December 2000. Tough shit, baby.
I wasn’t trying to paint you as an ‘enemy’. Hell, I’m not even gay, so like I said earlier, the decision doesn’t affect me directly. I was merely trying to make the point that some people aren’t patient, or are tired of waiting. I know that I would be if it were my lifestyle in question, or if I had to go through a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo to establish the legal rights me and my wife share by simply saying ‘I Do’ and signing a sheet of paper.
You’re not enemy #1.
My point is just this: Gay marriage is not going to be popular with conservatives. Given that:
You can depend on the legislatures who will NEVER act on your behalf (if keeping the same makeup they have now) while leaving you treated badly by ignorant bigots, or
You can depend on the courts who might act on your behalf while leaving your treated badly by ignorant bigots.
The problem with 1 is that you are expecting your actual enemies to act on your behalf. Some of these people actually want an anti-gay marriage amendment. Just how long are you planning on waiting?
Gay marriage will not be popular. Legislation gets done if it’s popular. See the disconnect I perceive? We aren’t dealing with something like sushi; “try it, you’ll like it!” We’re dealing with people who have convinced themselves that they have a moral objection to something they find squicky. In the Pit I even mentioned a radio guy who claims the “homosexual agenda” is a communist plot, for goodness sake!
Julie