The problem those people have is not with normalizing queer life, it’s with making a single version of queer life normal.
Ie, the idea (if I understand correctly) is that once queers can marry monogamously, any who doesn’t want to will be “weird,” sort of like I’ve spent 20 years hearing I was at risk of becoming an old spinster (now I AM an old spinster).
Ditto. If the gays in this world are tiring of being oppressed and hated, then why are they saying they don’t want marriage because it will make them normal? Isn’t that what they want?
Doesn’t “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” mean just that, we hare here now get used to it. Allowing them to marry I would assume would be us getting used to it, so then why are they all up in arms over the fact that they are finally getting what they want?
As black people make up only 6.2% of the population of California (wiki is my cite), that’s not an immense number in the grand scheme of things. The ~50% of white people, who make up ~60% of the overall population, who voted for Prop. 8, are by far the more significant number.
FWIW, there are plenty of black people - including influential politicians - who are pro-gay rights. Two that spring to mind immediately are former Illinois state senate president Emil Jones, who lobbied hard to get a law protecting gay people from employment and housing discrimination passed, and Gov. Paterson of New York, who is pushing for a bill legalizing same-sex marriage to be passed in the state legislature.
What really pisses me off is that the black community seems to have forgotten how influential the Jewish community was in the enactment of civil rights legislation. During the 50s and 60s (and earlier), there were quite a few Jewish organizations and individuals pushing for racial equality. And they have quite a few gay people to thank as well.
Because we don’t all speak with one voice. There’s a tremendous amount of diversity within the GLBT community, and just because most of us want to be considered “mainstream,” it doesn’t invalidate the minority who have a more radical position. It wasn’t that long ago when it was the radical minority who were pushing for marriage rights, and the majority just weren’t there yet.
That is exactly the author’s (Warner) point: the goal should be to get the rest of the world to agree that gay relationships are normal, rather than for gays to try to assimilate into a narrowly prescribed interpretation of “normal”. Warner is saying normalization is bad if you restrict “normal” to only one model (in this case, the hetero marriage model).
So to be fair, it is a valid theory with implications for everyone. Humans are a diverse lot, so there are all sorts of healthy relationship combinations out there. So if “normal” is too narrowly defined it’s not really great for anybody.
I’m not familiar with Sullivan or Warner, but it looks like it was part of some kind of “assimilationist debates”.
This is fascinating, seriously. When I go out next week wearing my “Marriage is So Gay” t-shirt, I expected to only get flack from narrow-minded straights!
:eek: Where can I get one of those???
:: off to Google ::
This is ironic, following up your thoughts on what The Black Community thinks of Jews.
I thought that convential wisdom was blacks don’t like gays and Jews don’t like blacks*? Never heard of blacks not liking Jews.
(*Anecdotal support: the dad in Maus, “schvoogie buttons” in jewelry stores, etc.)
You’ve never seen the SNL skit “Hymietown”? That was like 1984.
Well, you tell me where I fit in:
I am 100% for equality. My partner and I have been together for over 28 years and, despite lots of documentation, in the grand scheme of things we are nothing more than roommates with some legal docs.
I am not so wild about the institution of marriage. My older brother has been married and divorced 3 times and my younger brother has been married and divorced EIGHT times. Add to that my complete disdain for churches and organized religion, you can well imagine I am in no hurry to rent a tux and play that game.
So - I want the legal rights to go to a court house, profess my love, and leave as an official couple - with every iota of the same legal benefits of hetero couples. However, not only do I not care if you call it “marriage”, I would prefer a different name for it anyway. Give me the absolute same legal rights and you can call it any damn thing you want.
No, but now that you mention it I remember reading about Jesse Jackson’s “hymietown” comment. I was 3 in 1984 :).
When you and others say something to this effect I almost want to say it doesn’t count. Only because your opinion has nothing to do with gay marriage, it has to do with marriage. Therefore your opinion wouldn’t be valid because it’s being against a topic larger than the one at hand.
That make sense?
In fairness, I don’t think (?) you can say that the majority of gay people today are “all up in arms about getting what they want”…the article I quoted specifically said that the gay argument against marriage is hard to even reconstruct because the topic has been so radically transformed in the past two decades. Not that I’m at all in touch with gay rights groups’ platforms, but anecdotally, every single gay person I’ve ever discussed the subject with is very much pro-marriage rights.
How long ago was it Andrew Sullivan called for gay marriage and was denounced as proposing “assimilation?” There was some rather nasty name calling too if I recall.
Is this a parallel to the anti-Cochlear implant crowd in the deaf community? I’m not sure I get it. I don’t agree that government should be in the marriage business either, but if they do it for some, they should do it for all. It should be up to the individual to buy into it or not.
The gay rights movement of the 70s and 80s was far different from what we know today, much more about challenging sexual boundaries than “we’re just like you.” Randy Shilts’s book on the beginning of the AIDS crisis really drives this home.
I think most people my age (mid 20s) have forgotten the bathhouse movement.
But during National Brotherhood Week…
