Yeah, cos no one working class ever wanted to get married, right?
Actually, I think the introduction of gay marriage greatly advances the LGBT cause, mainly because it makes gay people more visible and more normal - it shows that we’re not all hanging out in seedy nightclubs having sex in toilets. Although we only have Civil Partnerships in the UK, most people (inc. straights) call it gay marriage and plenty of straight people have now attended their friends’ and relatives’ civil partnerships and have a much more positive view.
The only thing that drives me mad about the right wing papers here is their glee at reporting the first ‘gay divorces’, as ‘proof’ that gay people aren’t up to commitment. Because, you know, straight people never get divorced.
Wait, wait, so the reason Henry VIII went through so many wives was that he was actually gay? That’s more creative than anything the best Black Legend inventors ever came up with! All these years I thought the dude couldn’t keep his pants on when in the presence of a pretty lass, and it turns out he was lusting for More.
Those people go into the same bucket as the ones who claim that “only PiV is sex” but then apparently that same definition doesn’t apply to gay males (extra points for being the kind who decide that it does apply to lesbians).
I agree with you. My argument would be that while gay marriage has no direct impact on the gay male suicide rate, for example, the treatment of gay marriage as a civil right would ultimately impact the way people feel about sexual minorities in general, thus resulting in a more tolerant society.
This is a bit of an ideological difference I have with my peers. But there are definitely people out there that feel their voice is being excluded - when we look at the national discourse in the U.S. on this issue, it really is about gay marriage. They don’t talk about the suicide rates or the ridiculous homelessness rates or the way racial minorities who are also sexual minorities are at an even greater disadvantage. They don’t talk about children being thrown out of their homes onto the streets.
I think it would be closer to a black person in the 50s saying that they are more worried about feeding their children than about racial desegregation – an argument a lot of people were putting out there that was largely ignored by mainstream white society because Martin Luther King, Jr. had this much more palatable message. From a historical perspective we tend to assume every black person thought desegregation was a laudable goal. That’s not the case. I don’t even think King was completely sold on it - he damn near resigned shortly before his assassination.
We might argue that desegregation was ultimately a good thing that led to greater acceptance of blacks, but I’m not sure it did. I think it just made it harder to prove the disparities that still exist, since officially we now treat everyone equal, but in practice we still don’t. I’m not saying, obviously, that the civil rights movement was a negative thing, I’m just saying it maybe made it more difficult to address the far more pressing concerns like disproportionate poverty rates and health concerns because now people can say we ‘‘fixed’’ racism in this country.
So I see their point.
HOWEVER, I would question at all whether we can compare gay rights with the civil rights movement or make predictions about what would happen based on what happened with civil rights in the U.S. It’s inevitable at some point in any social movement that someone’s voice is going to be excluded or someone else is going to be marginalized. The question is whether putting gay marriage at the forefront of this issue in the U.S. is going to do the greatest good.
It’s an issue I grapple with. In the end I still come down on the gay marriage side, but for totally selfish reasons. All the gay people in my life are middle class and want to get married.
Wanted to add – I didn’t really mean to hijack this thread or start a debate. I was more hoping for some reports about changes in attitude toward gays in general or improvement in those social issues mentioned such as homelessness and poverty. I was more just looking for evidence to support my own theory that this is a good thing.
I was thinking more about the claim that Prime Minister Harper did his best to prevent gay marriage in Canada, and I think that statement is erroneous. What he did was play politics to make it appear to his constituents in Armpit, Alberta that he was doing his best to prevent gay marriage, while not actually really doing anything to revoke what the previous government had put in place (he had other options to revoke it that he chose not to use, like calling for a vote of non-confidence over the issue, which the opposition parties weren’t likely to push right after an election). As a politician yourself, matt, I’m a little surprised that you don’t appreciate the subtleties of that.
ETA: Forgot my disclaimer that this is my understanding, and feel free to correct me if I’ve got things wrong.
That was my understanding too–Harper had to mollify the fine, upstandin’, church-goin’, vocal folks in Armpit, Alberta (though, in reality, he is the MP for an upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Calgary), so he made the right noises to keep them quiet and happy. And in the end, Parliament voted on a question that was somewhat similar to the first Quebec referendum: will Parliament give the government a mandate to reopen the gay marriage debate and possibly change the legislation? In other words, let’s have a vote to see if we should have a vote. No, said Parliament, let’s just leave this one alone; at which point, Harper didn’t bother going any further. I’m sure he could have pushed the issue a lot more both before and after if he wanted to, but he didn’t. In short, he made some efforts, but I’m unwilling to concede that they were “best” efforts. Maybe more like half-hearted ones.
Perhaps as a result of the passage of the legislation allowing equal marriage, here in Alberta’s Bible Belt, LGBT folks are becoming more and more accepted, married or not. At least one of our city aldermen is openly gay. And there are a few married gay couples in town who are not afraid to admit it. We’re a ways away from having an annual Pride Parade, but we’re not that far from that point–as I recall, this year, we had some sort of Pride Day celebration on the plaza in front of City Hall, so we’re getting there. Judgment Day hasn’t arrived, the sky isn’t falling, and neither are meteorites, flaming or otherwise. Life goes on.
What matt is asserting is that Harper tried to prevent the Martin Liberals from passing C-38 to begin with. And there I believe he was correct. The Tories tried to defeat the Liberal government on a confidence motion before C-38 could be brought to a final vote, but were stymied by some tricksy behavior from Martin and Duceppe. You can read about it as it happened in this thread starting about post 31.
RickJay is absolutely correct that Harper set up the “should we reopen the debate” vote to fail, but not that he didn’t try his best to prevent the gay marriage bill in the first place.
Curiously, in a very Canadian moment, I was thinking about this very issue yesterday. The woman behind the counter gave me a funny look at Tim Horton’s and when I went out to my car I realized that my shirt was on inside out. I put the coffee on the roof of the car and whipped off my shirt and put it on again - total nipple air time less than a second - and thought, ‘Hm, if I were female, I probably wouldn’t do that - but would it be legal? - and more to the point, I’d be pissed about the fact that I couldn’t do that.’
So it is legal for female people to be nekkid up above?
Besides the fact that he continually and shrilly inveighed against it from Day 1 and pulled out all the stops to see Bill C-38 defeated, with such statements in Parliament as:
I really can’t believe that my statement to this effect caused any controversy. He literally did it in front of God and everyone. Are our memories so short and is the sweater-vest so all-enveloping that we’ve really forgotten that he was the chief political voice for the movement against same-sex marriage when it was debated before Parliament?
I always remember a political cartoon from when the ruling came down, which was in mid-November if I remember correctly. It showed a parka-clad man and woman digging their car out from a blizzard, and the woman is saying, “Yes, but the point is that I could go topless if I wanted to.”
There was also a parade in 09 and 08 and the Mayor actually attended, which makes me hate him a little bit less (although I still think he’s a douche).
Regarding the most obnoxious Canadian politician regarding the issue, my vote goes to The King of All Douche Bags, Ralph Klien.
From his Wikipedia page:
Every statement the man made on the subject was revolting.
