Otto, and others…
I’d like to see a response to Brad_d’s link of Al Rantel.
In Rantel’s comumn he says, among other stuff; "As distressing as the state of the American family is today with the high rate of divorce and adultery, the situation is far less stable among gays. This is not a slur against gays as individuals, but rather the reality of what occurs when you have what I call the all gas and no brake environment of male/male sexuality. I should know. I am a gay male.
To say that unfortunately the gay world is in a general state of hyper-sexuality that is not conducive to relationships which marriage was intended to foster is to put it mildly. Further, almost all of the issues the gay left claims it is justifiably concerned about like property, health, and financial partnership issues have already been dealt with by many states and can be dealt with through further legislation as needed. Such legal changes would encounter far less political opposition. "
*A group of people’s supposed generalized sexual habits are not what makes them fit for marriage or not.
*By and large, the people who want a man a day are not the ones who are gonna settle down and get married.
*Even if a lot of gay guys will get divorced, so what? That’s their business.
*If he’s so into monogamy, you’d think he’d approve of something that might encourage it.
*I note he completely ignores lesbians.
*Anything besides marriage, as an ad hoc solution, won’t be transportable and is therefore unequal.
*It’s pretty cowardly not to go for equal rights because it will “encounter opposition.”
matt has already hit one the point I want to emphasize. The fact that there is a subset of gay men who are constantly on the prowl doesn’t justify denying equal rights to an individual. The Constitution protects the rights of individuals; not assigns rights based on some group membership.
I’m a gay male too, and I’ve seen MANY stable long term relationships that were monogamous, polyamorous, and every other variation. As there are many types of romantic relationship, there are many types of gay men. Not all of us are the same sexually and not all of us belong to the ‘Man of the Day’ club.
Not all heterosexuals do monogamy well, and there are as many variations on theme relationshipwise there as there are in the gay community.
What your experience is personally is different than mine as it is different than matt_mcl’s. We cannot judge the quality of gay relationships by stereotype, nor can we judge it be apocryphal oral histories.
Not all straight couples want to marry nor do all gay couples. It should be available to all as an option, and I think that the complascent gays who decide they won’t do anything about it because it doesn’t affect them are deluded.
If you fight for some rights and not others you are prone to get NONE of them. Rights are not an ala carte alfresco deal. You either fill the plate with all that should be ther and fight for real equality or you instead sell out part of your community by only joining in when it suits you. That isn’t making a committment to yourself or the community at large, it is selfish, ignorant, and self-defeating.
I don’t have much to add, but that’s never stopped me before.
His main “argument” hinges on the idea that many gay men aren’t interested in mongamous, long-term relationships. As others have capably pointed out, even if that’s true, that’s in no way just cause for denying marriage to the gay people (men and women) who are interested in monogamous, long-term relationships. It’s ludicrous.
Some of the other bits were interesting, because it’s the same stuff I keep hearing on here and elsewhere:
This is similar to what JohnBckWLD was saying, but worded with more hyperbole. The only “force” that’s going on is that gay people are being forced not to marry the people they love. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion – they work, and they’re not being threatened in any way. Conservative Christians will be every bit as free to condemn homosexuality if they wish, even after the government legalizes SSM. And everybody else will still be every bit as free to call them bigots and homophobes (not sure where “racists” came in here). Just like now.
How the hell do people get off acting as if their religion is being threatened? Or that they’re being “forced” to think a certain way? If you believe it’s okay to deny gay people the same rights that straight people have, and can offer no better reason than because it makes people uncomfortable and it goes against their religion, then that’s showing contempt for homosexuals and homosexuality. Which is homophobia, by definition of the word. It’s really that simple.
Are we supposed to keep things at they are, not work for social acceptance of homosexuality, just because people don’t like being called names like “bigot” and “homophobe”? I can’t work up a lot of sympathy for that. I’ve been called plenty of names over my lifetime, and you get used to it after a while.
Whatever the case, that guy Rantel is a piece of work, even for a talk radio host. When I first read the article, I thought it was going to be a case of those self-loathing gay men. But it seems more insidious than that. If he can compartmentalize the majority of gay men into a group of promiscuous, overly horny image-centered guys with empty lives filled with one night stands, it allows him to be both homosexual and sanctimonious. The only way he can be comfortable with it is to put himself above others. “Well, okay, I may be gay, but at least I’m not one of them.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I went through that stage, as well. But at least I got better.
That viewpoint is not an opposition to gay marriage; rather, it is an opposition to government intervention in marriage of any kind. It merely holds that marriage should be treated like any other contract between consenting adults, gays included.
This thread doesn’t have enough posts to show the same trend I notice out and about, but usually the people I come across who are most vocal in their support of SSMs are people who aren’t in a long-term, commited relationship. (As in the whole 8 yards: ceremony/reception, wedding bands, referring to one another as spouse, owning a home together, joint bank accounts, last will and testament, etc. etc.).
Just to underscore: I’m not saying people in long term commited relationships are opposed to SSM - I’m just saying that from my perspective, on a whole, they’re not as vocal in their support. There’s no need to cite Rosie O’Donnel or all the people that raced to SF City Hall a few months back - I know there are many exceptions.
But I stll have a question:
Could one reason (that same-sex couples in long-term commited relationships don’t appear to me to be as vocal in their support of SSMs) be that there’s a resentment to basically being told, ‘What you both share isn’t a real marriage and is somehow less valid’?
Cajun Man, you moved the thread, would you care to give an opinion?
So far most of the arguments seem to have been that they won’t accept ‘marriage’ because it’s not a proper recognition or that they object to all forms of marriage.Are there any gay groups who are saying that marriage should be purely man-woman and won’t accept any form of civil union,not because it’s not a proper marriage.but purely because there should be no legal recognition of any gay relationships?
DrMatrix and I had a small private ceremony in New Orleans on January 1st, 1980. We’d known each other for about ten months . . . became close friends, and began serious dating about three months before said ceremony. As far as we’re concerned, there’s no couple more married than we are.
In the event that SSM were to become legally sanctioned, would we engage in such a ceremony? You bet! Why? Just because we could.
Your roommate’s say-so would not, by itself, be capable of getting a common law marriage recognized by a court. A common law marriage requires not only the intent of the parties to be married, but also that they hold themselves out to others as married. In other words, unless your roommate has other witnesses who will testify that you told them you were Mr. and Mr. Ludovic, there’s no need to worry about a false claim of common law marriage.
How about gays that settle with the concept of civil unions between each other, and take that as a victory in of itself when even George Bush endorsed it, at the same time he opposed gay marriage? I am certain that there a few of them.