If it hadn’t been for desegregation, at least 5 of my graduate school classmates and several dozen of my close coworkers wouldn’t have been able to attend the colleges they did. Desegregation had a direct impact on their ability to feed their children. Is everybody in your own classes, or in Mr. Olives’ shine-in-the-dark-white?
Just giving you ammo for the next time this comes up in conversation 
He made 'em speak in French. Surely that counts as at least a minor smiting.
Four hundred years early! If that isn’t the work of the Almighty…
:smack:
A good friend of mine used to organize the Gay Pride parade in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was a tiny parade in a tiny town, so we’d go help swell the crowd. The parade route was a hairpin, so we’d dash across to the other arm and swell the crowd again. The **Attackkids **were always a big hit, 'cause they demonstrated that we were ‘breeders’ supporting Gay Pride.
It’s really weird – Montreal’s is the only Pride in Quebec, whereas in Ontario, they have Pride in like, Kingston and London and Cornwall and places.
They have Pride in Iqaluit, for heaven’s sake! (I totally want to do Iqaluit Pride some year. I’m not joking. The first year they had 250 people, which is, like, 1% of the total population of the territory.)
Well, working class gay people are less likely to be comfortable with being out of the closet, making marriage a bit of a far-off dream. It’s legal to fire someone solely for being gay in (IIRC) 29 states, for example. I’m not at all sure what the actual numbers are, but I’ve seen studies showing that while overall gays are slightly worse off financially than straights, gays who are out of the closet are somewhat better off, at least partly due to the perception that being openly gay limits one’s financial security.
On balance, I agree with the remainder of your post. But there are legitimate concerns that the resources used fighting for marriage equality could be better used to help those who are bigger victims of anti-gay bias. Personally, I think it’s best to keep pressing on all fronts, and marriage equality is probably the most ambitious goal
in the current gay rights movement, and the one whose achievement would have the greatest impact on the way that gays are viewed by society in the long run.
Here in Massachusetts, we passed the six-year mark a few months ago. The rest of the US is slowly starting to catch up. It’s taking a while, to be sure, but given the demographics of the issue, it’s simply a matter of when it happens, not if.
Of course you’d say that. Yer trying to promote the country.
Whilst I agree that gay marriage is not the only cause we should rally round, I stand by my opinion that it has a huge effect on changing perceptions of gay people which, ultimately, makes for a more tolerant world for us all.
I recently went to a civil partnership in a very poor, working class town. The couple don’t have any gay friends - we were the only gay couple attending, and that’s only because my girlfriend was his boss. There were 120, pretty rough, borderline trailer park guests, probably half of whom don’t think they even know any other gay people and are exactly the kind of people you might expect to be homophobic. But now there’s 120 people who have seen, and celebrated, a gay relationship and changed their views as a result. 120 people who will report back to their friends and colleagues. If that’s happening up and down the country, that’s a hell of a start.
Of course, gay rights should also encompass other areas of law. We now have anti-discrimination laws relating to employment and provision of services, and gay adoption rights. There does need to be a multi-pronged approach to sweeping away discrimination.
And some of those are a snowball. Having gay marriage automatically brings gay adoption and coadoption to the forefront, lawmakers can’t go on with the “I can’t hear you lalala” approach when it’s staring them in the face.
Just to be clear, I agree with you entirely. I was just trying to explain the thinking of the people criticizing the push for same-sex marriage as a middle-class white issue. I wasn’t endorsing their criticisms myself.
In the US, these two issues are generally reversed in order. Only Florida and Arkansas ban any form of gay adoption (Arkansas bans adoption by all unmarried couples), although most states only allow single adoption, with joint and second-parent adoption for gay couples being banned or unclear. New Hampshire seems to be the only state that bans joint adoption but allows same-sex marriage. From what I understand, Europe is rather different in that regard.