Would Straight Adults Settle for the Treatment We LGBT Citizens Receive?
James Nimmo
August 17, 2007
Would Straight Adults Settle for the Treatment we LGBT Citizens Receive?
James Kirchick, assistant to the editor-in-chief of The New Republic as written an article urging the Democratic presidential candidates to shut up about gay marriage. You can read it for yourself at:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070813&s=kirchick081607
Here is the concluding paragraph:
But in the present climate, asking that presidential candidates support same-sex marriage--while serving an important moral purpose--demands a significant political sacrifice. At most, gays should expect a president to act as a bulwark against congressional attempts to limit their rights and to support congressional attempts to defend those rights. This means pledging to repeal anti-gay laws like the Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to sign pro-gay ones like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which all of the Democratic candidates have explicitly promised to do. Seeing the Democrats squirm on the issue of gay marriage may make for good political theater, but it does not make good politics.
Helpful in the fight for LGBT equality, isn't it?
I can't speak for those gay people who insist on the marriage word, but I do know what I want.
For myself, I'm willing to accept the phrase "civil union", provided it carries ALL the provisions, benefits, and privileges that accrue to the word "marriage" and that these said conditions are legally recognized in law and by the courts, state and federal, without exception or legal prejudice being applied.
To me and many others "marriage" connotes a religious observance that has become attached to the word and implies a religious sponsorship. ANY religious sect can recognize or deny any straight or gay couple it wants as guaranteed by the First Amendment, but they CAN NOT impose their religious observance on to others--be that recognition or denial--again thanks to the First Amendment, in theory. This religious magnetism, the clinging to temporal power, is the source of the resistance to same-gender marriages or unions.
But what we see in practice is that the deniers, aka bible-bangers, get their religious practices written into law, forcing others who are either religious or atheists, to kow-tow to something they should not be required to observe or PAY for, either in tax money or psychological conditioning and denial.
To paraphrase Dr. M.L. King and his Birmingham Jail essay, if not freedom now, when?
Mr. Kirchick is telling us gay people to wait for the convenience of straight people who hate us as they preach hell fire and damnation for those who disagree with them.
"Friendly" people were telling Dr. King and the civil rights marchers to slow down and wait for the public mood to catch up with their band. To lead is to be in front; to be in the back is to lag and eat the dust of what has been trampled.
This is the same crowd that splits the hairs of their biblical prophets by choosing cafeteria-style the gospel whims and proscriptions that satisfy THEIR dietary or societal selections and help distance themselves from their own insecurities and paranoias, while hiding in the closets and confessionals of churches while diddling young children and smiling at those victims's parents.
This is the same crowd that knowingly uses divisive social wedge issues to raise the mammon that keeps them in the luxurious lifestyle they say is a blessing from Jay-sus for keeping his commandments, all the while butting their noses into the private lives of others, even as their own lives are less than salutary.
Of course, I'm speaking of the smug curmudgeons that preach and exhort to the great crowd of sheeple that to be hateful is to be closer to god, only they use the euphemism of maintaining the sanctity of their blood-washed savior, lamb of the sky-god, knower of all things, who just happens to be a mind reader and fulfills what they want.
Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democratic representative, has said many people are not as homophobic as they think they're supposed to be. Yet, how are these people going to know that alternative if we gay people don't show them day after day who we are and what we do?
We pay taxes, we work jobs, we have loves and loses, we have lives and deaths, we have sweat and blood.
Would straight adults settle for the treatment we receive?
I'm not giving a single minute of my life over to those who would think me or other gay people second class.
I'm paying the ticket for a first-class citizenship and I WILL sit at the front of the bus!
James Kirchick, assistant to the editor-in-chief of The New Republic as written an article urging the Democratic presidential candidates to shut up about gay marriage. You can read it for yourself at:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070813&s=kirchick081607
Here is the concluding paragraph:
But in the present climate, asking that presidential candidates support same-sex marriage--while serving an important moral purpose--demands a significant political sacrifice. At most, gays should expect a president to act as a bulwark against congressional attempts to limit their rights and to support congressional attempts to defend those rights. This means pledging to repeal anti-gay laws like the Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to sign pro-gay ones like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which all of the Democratic candidates have explicitly promised to do. Seeing the Democrats squirm on the issue of gay marriage may make for good political theater, but it does not make good politics.
Helpful in the fight for LGBT equality, isn't it?
I can't speak for those gay people who insist on the marriage word, but I do know what I want.
For myself, I'm willing to accept the phrase "civil union", provided it carries ALL the provisions, benefits, and privileges that accrue to the word "marriage" and that these said conditions are legally recognized in law and by the courts, state and federal, without exception or legal prejudice being applied.
To me and many others "marriage" connotes a religious observance that has become attached to the word and implies a religious sponsorship. ANY religious sect can recognize or deny any straight or gay couple it wants as guaranteed by the First Amendment, but they CAN NOT impose their religious observance on to others--be that recognition or denial--again thanks to the First Amendment, in theory. This religious magnetism, the clinging to temporal power, is the source of the resistance to same-gender marriages or unions.
But what we see in practice is that the deniers, aka bible-bangers, get their religious practices written into law, forcing others who are either religious or atheists, to kow-tow to something they should not be required to observe or PAY for, either in tax money or psychological conditioning and denial.
To paraphrase Dr. M.L. King and his Birmingham Jail essay, if not freedom now, when?
Mr. Kirchick is telling us gay people to wait for the convenience of straight people who hate us as they preach hell fire and damnation for those who disagree with them.
"Friendly" people were telling Dr. King and the civil rights marchers to slow down and wait for the public mood to catch up with their band. To lead is to be in front; to be in the back is to lag and eat the dust of what has been trampled.
This is the same crowd that splits the hairs of their biblical prophets by choosing cafeteria-style the gospel whims and proscriptions that satisfy THEIR dietary or societal selections and help distance themselves from their own insecurities and paranoias, while hiding in the closets and confessionals of churches while diddling young children and smiling at those victims's parents.
This is the same crowd that knowingly uses divisive social wedge issues to raise the mammon that keeps them in the luxurious lifestyle they say is a blessing from Jay-sus for keeping his commandments, all the while butting their noses into the private lives of others, even as their own lives are less than salutary.
Of course, I'm speaking of the smug curmudgeons that preach and exhort to the great crowd of sheeple that to be hateful is to be closer to god, only they use the euphemism of maintaining the sanctity of their blood-washed savior, lamb of the sky-god, knower of all things, who just happens to be a mind reader and fulfills what they want.
Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democratic representative, has said many people are not as homophobic as they think they're supposed to be. Yet, how are these people going to know that alternative if we gay people don't show them day after day who we are and what we do?
We pay taxes, we work jobs, we have loves and loses, we have lives and deaths, we have sweat and blood.
Would straight adults settle for the treatment we receive?
I'm not giving a single minute of my life over to those who would think me or other gay people second class.
I'm paying the ticket for a first-class citizenship and I WILL sit at the front of the bus!