Subtext behind many anti-SSM arguments

The BBQ Pit
61

Really? Where’s the legal form I fill out to be protected from ever having to testify against the man who should be my husband in court?

Actually, in the child care issue, marriage would solve the problem. When you marry someone, they receive a subset of parental rights over your children, which is not the case in gay adoptions or when gay people have kids. Their partners can often never have any sort of legal parental recognition over the child they are raising with the person who should be their spouse.

62

Truth Seeker, because you’re operating from two premises which cannot be presumed:

[ol][li]That there are significant differences in these so-called benefits as experienced by mixed-sex couples compared with them as experienced by same-sex couples. [/li][li]That whatever the benefits individuals might experience as a result of their marriage, that those benefits are something other than personal and open to outside scrutiny for the purposes of determining public policy.[/ol][/li]
Without some rational support for both of these positions, your argument is pretty well moot.

Subsidies aren’t the heart of marriage equality, but liberty certainly is. A person of hetero orientation doesn’t have anyone micromanaging their choices about the most intimate relationship in their lives. The limitations on hetero marriages are minimal and tend to serve a public policy objective – preventing the exploitation of vulnerable people being the constant across all states, as expressed through preventing the marriage of children or the mentally incompetant.

Barring marriages on the grounds of the gender of the participants serves no such greater good, no one is being protected from anything, and the objections of outside parties are no more relevant because the two people getting married are the same sex than they are when they’re two different races or faiths or of vastly disparate ages or social strata.

63

OK, no worries. I think we may not be quite on the same page, but we certainly appear to be in the same chapter of the same book :).

64

I see no pressing reason to avoid it, but people may disagree with me here.

I don’t intend to try.

Tell that to the esteemed justices on the MA supreme court.

65

I am not a knuckle-draggin neanderthal and I find the idea of gay marriage a little bit creepy.

Now, I have gay friends who have been together for 25 years (setting a damn record for longevity of relationships of any kind, in my immediate social circle), and I think that’s fine. It’s even sweet. They had a big party celebrating a quarter-century of non-marital bliss.

Other than that, my gay friends, like most of my non-gay friends, have indulged in serial monogamy (mostly), with the hope that each new relationship will be “the one.” Possibly if they could get married, these relationships would last longer; I’ve noticed that things that would have meant the end of a love affair have not (so far) ended my own marriage (although they didn’t help it any, that’s for sure).

As to what I find creepy about it, it’s mostly the idea of a man referring to another man as his husband, or a woman referring to another woman as her wife. This probably reflects my own bias. I get real pissed off when referred to, by the one person who can do it, as a wife. I have a name, he can damn well use it, and his coworkers can learn it. Or not.

I also find the idea of a big wedding kinda creepy. Two brides–creepy. Two potential bridezillas–argh!

But not as creepy as the idea that a bunch of women are going to show up in wedding dresses on TV hoping that a guy is going to pick one of them . . . to marry . . . for real (?).

And really not as creepy as getting all dressed up in white to become a bride of Christ, and then wear a wedding ring, as nuns used to do. (Do people still do that?) Anyway, not to fault Catholics or anything, but that’s ultra-creepy.

I have noticed that the breakups of the gay couples I know (the ones that only lasted seven or ten years) have been just as vicious as any heterosexual ones, up to and including custody of the children. (Despair from partner who actually conceived and bore the child, who is the one I’ve remained friends with, that she has to share him with her ex. This was an actual custody fight carried out in the courts. Think of the children: is he actually going to feel better about himself that he had two moms fighting over him instead of a mom and a dad fighting over him?)

Really it seems to me that the proponents of SSM do have an agenda, which is that society has to accept what they want, and in fact embrace it, or else that society is composed of knuckle-dragging neanderthals. I went through a list of things supposedly solved by SSM and the only advantage I could see was the privilege of not having to testify against your spouse.

So convince me SSM would be a good thing. (Oh…you’ll stop whining? Okay. I’m convinced.)

66

Why? An appeal to authority can be a perfectly valid argument. Or do you get all worked up about citing dictionaries, too?

:confused: Did he decide on our behalf what terminology we’d be using? I think the the ACLU is generally recognized as an arbiter of good taste with respect to these sorts of things.

It’s not the justices on the MA supreme court that you need to worry about.

Fine. Lovely. Whatever. Now prove it to the almost 2/3 of the American public that’s against gay marriage. BTW, there are lots of well-documented, objectively-measurable benefits to traditional marriage.

You didn’t actually bother to read through this thread, did you?

Cite? I’ve provided one to the contrary.

67

Um…it’s equality? Given that most of your post seems to revolve around your own personal view of gay marriage as ‘creepy’ (eww!! it’s like, two guys) I don’t see why anyone should bother convincing you but anyway- Maybe SOME of the rights given by marriage can be achieved by various different procedures without the right to marry. Why not make gay people’s lives a little less complicated and just give them all the benefits that straight people automatically get by getting married? Why should they have to do things differently? Why should a straight person be the one who gets to be a “lazy moron who couldn’t be bothered to look after [his] own interests.”
And I absolutely cannot stand the anti-gay marriage people who whinge about being heavily criticised by gays/pro-gay heteros.

68

Right–I think certain aspects of it are creepy. Not “Eww, it’s two guys.” I’m fine with same-sex relationships. I’m just saying this is not what it appears. I’ve been married for 25+ years and “all the benefits” haven’t added up to much, except keeping us together during some bad times when if we’d just been “partners” we would have gone our separate ways. This did not make our lives “a little less complicated,” it made them more complicated. Marriage is complicated, rights of accession are complicated, gazillions of families have feuds and longstanding disagreements about who got what when Mama died even when absolute no same sex marriages are involved. It’s not a panacea. It’s not going to solve all your problems. It’s not necessarily going to help you get citizenship for your Bulgarian spouse (one of my relatives tried for four years to get the woman he married here, legally, and was never able to, and now they’re living in Ireland).

SSM proponents are saying, “We want this, and we want to force it down your throat so you will recognize us as people with equal rights.” People who keep insisting on equal rights are obviously unequal. Quit insisting. It’s all out there, just take it, take what’s yours. You have the right to love who you want. Why is my approval important?

69

No one intends to compell you to attend gay weddings, or be in one yourself. You don’t have to embrace anything or anyone.

So if it is no big deal to you, why oppose it?

70

Why should people with families be denied access to the traditions, rituals, and forms of declaring those families publically and including them in the community?

That is, to my mind, the core of the debate: marriage is how families are declared in large parts of this culture. Gay people form families, and like a huge number of people, want to go through the perfectly normal acts that say, “I have this family. This family is mine.”

Some opponents of marriage claim that those families aren’t real familes; others claim that they’re just not good enough. Others seem not to understand the meaningfulness of the tradition, the fact that this is how this thing is done.

People will find ways of forming communities that recognise their families. This is, to my mind, a fact of human nature. If marriage does not serve to recognise families that exist, marriage will die, and that will be a damn shame. (But it’s happening in some places, among people who refuse to get married because of the bias they see in it, among people who suggest that the married folks in their communities should divorce because of that prejudice.)

71

Okay, according to your personal anecdotes which obviously apply to everyone everywhere there are no advantages to marriage at all. Why deny someone the right to it, anyway?

72

See? Marriage provides stability to a relationship and provides a bulwark against breaking up. That’s another reason why we want the ability to marry.

And we have to convince you things you consider creepy for no logical reason are not creepy? Is that what you’re saying?

Yes. Because our relationships are 100% analagous, and thus should have the same societal structure that you have in order to seek stability in our relationships.

How else would you describe a society that seeks to embrace discrimination against harmless members of its own body?

Why isn’t that enough?

Gays are mainstreaming. We are becoming increasingly an everyday part of American society. Therefore, in order to maintain society’s stability at large, it is in the best interest of society to encourage stability in gay relationships, just as it does with straight relationships.

73

Yes, I did. And I did not see where you or anyone else showed how I could avoid being forced to testify against the person I love, with whom I am spending my life, just as you can avoid being forced to testify against your wife. Care to point that out to me?

Or are you saying my relationship doesn’t deserve such protection?

If not, why not?

74

At first I thought you were merely callously indifferent to the idea of gay rights, but from the tone of your posts it seems you are openly hostile towards it. I think this argument would be more enlightening if you openly acknowledged this, rather than try to dress yourself up as some sort of crusader for majority rule.

Earlier this week, I went down to Portland and saw all those gay couples standing in line to get married. I spoke briefly with a lesbian couple that had just gotten married. They’ve been together for four years. Never in my entire life have I seen so many people so happy. I wish you were there to see it for yourself. Maybe it’d give you a new perspective on things. Or maybe not.

Strangely absent from the crowd were any substantial number of protestors. Only two were there holding up signs, and they were basing their arguments purely on their own religion. I didn’t see any “Truth Seeker” types holding up signs that say “Prove that gays deserve rights. Maybe I’ll think about it after 50 years of data have rolled in and most of you are dead and buried. Besides, you can already get many of the benefits of marriage if you’re willing to sort through mountains of paperwork and red tape, what the fuck are you bitching about?”

It’s easy to sit in a comfy recliner chair and sneer at me to prove that these people desire the same rights that you take for granted. It’s easy to be a voter going into a booth and voting “yes” on a so-called Defense of Marriage initiative. It’s another thing to have to look these people in the eye and tell them they don’t deserve to be married. That probably explains why there were so few protesters. It’s so much easier for the Silent Moral Majority types to keep themselves at a distance from the people they want to remain second class citizens.

But don’t take my word for it, go down there yourself if you can. Maybe you’ll convince them that since their relationships don’t benefit society to your satisfaction, they aren’t worthy of being recognized under the law. Perhaps, like the Grinch, your heart will grow three sizes and you’ll reevaluate your belief system. But even if you remain steadfast in your belief that committed gay relationships aren’t worthy of legal recognition, I can at least say that you have the moral courage to confront the people you are so eager to deride.

I sincerely hope that, like your name suggests, you truly do Seek the Truth.

75

Then you’ll have seen where I said that that is one “benefit” of marriage that can’t be duplicated outside of marriage. Just for accuracy’s sake, the real benefit here isn’t that you can avoid testifying against your spouse. As a practical matter, you can always do that, whether you’re legally married or not. The real benefit is that your spouse can prevent you from testifying regarding “confidential marital communications.” In other words, you can prevent your spouse from testifying against you even if s/he wants to.

76

You skipped the last part, why do you seem to think that this is okay?

(Though the answer, that you despise gay rights and gay people, seems ever clearer, as mentioned above)

77

Um…what?

Your approval? Not the slightest bit important. Your (and your society’s) not opposing it absent concrete verifiable harm is what’s important. The idea that you would be OK with denying millions of people equality under the law because the idea that two women marrying each other might be bitches during the wedding preparations is disgusting.

78

Truth Seeker, please answer the question as was posed. The constitutional difference between race and sexual orientation is a legal issue. We are talking pure logic here. Imagine you are in the 1950s: how will you prove that inter-racial marriages will benefit society before it was allowed?

79

Just out of curiosity, let’s suppose that my partner is on trial and I am called as a witness against him. How exactly do I avoid testifying against him without landing myself in jail?

80

I’m also wondering what you’re supposed to do if the person you fall in love with and want to spend your life with is the citizen of another country.
My boyfriend can apply for me to come live and work in the US legally as his future or current spouse, if we so chose. If he was my girlfriend ( and I was not fortunate enough to live in a country that realised that whether he’s my boyfriend or my girlfriend doesn’t matter a little while ago), I guess we’d just have to keep enduring the lonliness and expense of a long distance relationship until…well, until it got too hard and we gave up, I suppose. If he was my girlfriend, we wouldn’t have a future in the US at all.