The right wing’s new narrative about marriage equality is that, because equality was recently revoked in Maine, the movement to legalize same-sex marriage in the United States is over. Actual events, however, have a way of contradicting the right wing’s new narrative.
In Washington, D.C., the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary just approved a bill that would legalize same sex marriage. The full council will soon vote on the legislation.
Trouble ahead for the marriage equality legislation for D.C. rests with the Democratic Party. Only one committee member voted against the bill – a Democrat. Only two members of the entire Council have not signed on as sponsors of the legislation – and they’re both Democrats.
The final step that the marriage equality legislation for D.C. needs to take is to be reviewed by the U.S. Congress, which the Democrats solidly control. The Democrats could allow D.C. to choose equality, regardless of sexual orientation, but if some right wing members of the Democratic Party decide it’s time to push their hateful agenda, they could stop the equality legislation from becoming law.
Right wing preachers are already preparing to lobby Congress to ignore the popular will of the residents of Washington D.C., and maintain inequality, using their warped logic to justify their venom. For example, Walter Fauntroy, who works as a lobbyist and preaches at the New Bethel Baptist Church, says that Congress must block the legislation because, “Marriage is an institution and you need both sexes for that. The only way you can perpetuate the species is to have both sexes with each other. Two people of the same sex cannot reproduce.”
Will the human species cease to exist if same-sex marriage becomes legal in Washington D.C.? Would heterosexuals stop having sex? Of course not. Fauntroy’s pathetic excuse for bigotry is based upon the weird idea that everybody wants to be homosexual, and it’s only the ban on same-sex marriage that’s stopping them. Fauntroy can’t possibly believe that. It’s much more likely that he just doesn’t like gay people, and doesn’t want them to have the same legal rights that he has.
Not gonna happen…gut instinct, remember…doesn’t matter what the new culture thionks it should be, deep down inside, MOST people get a bit turned off.
You mean most people get a bit turned off when people allow their religiously-inspired bigotries to interfere with the democratic process? Gut instinct? You mean that inequality makes people want to hurl?
Get off the religion thing…Not everyone who disagrees with this issue has a religious axe to grind. I have non-religious friends that just get grossed out when they see two guys loving on each other. No homophobia, it’s just a non-natural act. They have an issue with that. And that transferes over to anything that goes against an instiution like marriage. An institution that has been around for centuries. And the equality banner is a farce. Gays are NOT discriminated against in the work place nor housing or even in schools or places of buisness. It’s when the institution gets placed in the crosshairs that people, quietly, will just say no. And they will say no everywhere. And if by some chance it does surface somewhere, then other states will just lock those certificates out and not recognize them. Ever watch HGTV or shows like Brothers and Sisters? It’s an accepted fact that gays live and have a life together, but that’s it. That is accepted, but the core values and instincts of average folk won’t allow it.
Marriage in its current form has NOT been around for centuries. Marriage is a very different institution from what it was centuries ago. You want to go back to marriage circa 1700? Tell me “yes” and I’ll bring out all sorts of historical information about marriage back then that may make you quail. Tell me “no” and your appeal to history is exposed as a cover for your… what? Your “guts?”
And while we’re at it, uh, yes, they are discriminated against, in many places. There are still many places in the United States where gay people can be fired for just being who they are. There are school policies that discriminate against gay people. Gay and lesbian kids get beat up in and out of school. Gay and lesbian people are discriminated against in hospitals and employment bureaus and on the border and dozens of other places in this country.
As someone who just saw his state overrun by an anti-gay discriminatory campaign funded overwhelmingly by a small set of out-of-state fundamentalist Christian RELIGIOUS organizations, I call your bull. This is a VERY religious thing, and we will “get off” it when fundamentalist religious prigs stop trying to take their fantasy and impose it on everyone else.
Tim, driving a car is a non-natural act. Watching television is a non-natural act. Writing a comment after an article read on a computer using an electronic keyboard is a non-natural act.
I wish you would stop excusing the ugly aversion to equality held by you and your friends by claiming that it’s just an opposition to non-natural acts. It’s non-sense.
Your idea that we should justify legal inequality according to things we see on entertainment television is not a very responsible political philosophy.
Tim, when a class of people is denied equal protection under the law, that makes it an equality issue. Legal rights are meant to exist in order to mitigate the negative effects of personal prejudices. The bigotry you experience with your nasty friends is not an argument against marriage equality legislation. It is another piece of evidence that the legislation is necessary.
Both of you can stomp your feet, post pages and pages of Maine election layouts and chastize me and others all you want…bottom line…average folk will not sign on to this. Just ask the California ballot initative board. No one is sending anything up to challege that this year or next. Whic makes it dead in 31 states. As progressive as many claim to be….watching their kids play in the yard, most hope for straight kids and to one day play with grandkids. So….the less exposure to the gay life style…they scretively hope for the better….
Will you answer my question?
Do you want marriage to be what it was in 1700?
Damn…the bleed over/run on on this new layout sucks….can’t tell what’s typed what after half page….
You used the word “suck,” which refers to oral sex. Oh, you have poisoned the discourse! I feel it in my “gut” that Mary Queen of Scots would not have used such a word. My stars and garters.
I think we need to pass a law to prohibit you from being able to get married. You’re just not traditional enough! And you can “stomp your feet” all you like, but in my “gut” I know it’s true, so it must be so.
Tell me what version of what browser you’re using, and I’ll look into fixing the layout. If you’re using an old browser, consider upgrading to a newer one. Older Internet Explorer browsers, in particular, suuuuuuuch a mess.
I get it….well, I’m already married…to a woman…as nature intended…got children too…the natural way….don’t go down the nasty comments road. I was civil. I have an opinion, and am intitled to it, sorry if you don’t like it.
I’m using IE8…but since my post, I recieved an MS-IE8 update which seems to have fixed the problem….
Don’t play victim, like I’m censoring you. Discrimination is not civil.
Will you answer my question?
Do you want marriage to be what it was in 1700?
If the answer is “YES,” then your marriage and everybody else’s marriage needs to be altered to fit the old standard.
If the answer is “NO,” then you are not a supporter of traditional marriage.
Answer the question.
Jim:
I have no idea why you choose to obsess on the topic “what marriage was like in the 1700′s’. I seriously doubt anybody cares. I’d respond with a question (or 2) of my own – Can you name ONE state wherein a referendum on gay marriage has passed? Why do you think that is?
You know, it doesn’t matter to me if nobody cares about it. I care about it, and I’m making an argument, and that’s why I’m writing about it, and I hope other people care about it, but I can’t control that, and nobody’s forcing you to read it anyway. If I only wrote things that people cared about, I’d be blogging about the shape of Jessica whatshername’s bottom.
The answer to your question: because the majority of this country is bigoted and really doesn’t give two shits about equality for other people, that’s why.
And that’s why I haven’t answered your question….it has NO bearing on what is happening today. The institue of marriage is what it is…is accepted the world over. I get pretty tired of bending over for the minority. The majority wants things to remain the way it is…so be it. The wants of the many superceeds the wants of the few, or the one. NOT the other way around. yes, it’s the gay community that needs to deal with it, not the straight community.
And as for the majority of this country is biogted is just plain ignorant. Unless you have lived in a majority of the nation, then you draw your conclusions based on what you read and see in the media.
I HAVE lived all over this nation, from the smallest town to the biggest cities, from the Midwest to the Mountains to the West to the South to New England. Besides living all over, I’ve looked at public opinion polling and social science research on attitudes toward lesbian and gay people across place and time. YOU, as always, have your “gut.”
As for your contention that the “institution of marriage is what it is… accepted the world over…” No. Marriage is DIFFERENT the world over.
Marriage varies across place.
Marriage varies across times.
And THAT’s why you won’t answer the question. Because once you admit that there is considerable variation in what marriage has meant and does mean across place and time, you can’t make your “I’m not bigoted, I just go with the tradition” argument any more.
I have a new question for you:
If the standard for a society is “the majority wants things to remain the way it is… so be it,” then when Virginia outlawed interracial marriage in the 1960s and punished people who married people of other races under criminal laws, that was the “way it was” and “the majority wanted things to remain” that way. So be it? A majority of Virginians wanted interracial marriage banned. Was THAT OK?
Answer the question, yes or no.
I have a funny feeling you won’t answer THIS question straight up, either. You’re too busy dealing with the cognitive dissonance to ANSWER SIMPLE QUESTIONS that expose the inconsistent, illogical irrationality of your own positions.
I’m an “average” person. I’m a middle class straight white married woman with two kids and we live in an average sized home in an average American town. And I fully support gay marriage. I do not hope my kids are straight any more than I hope that they are gay. The only thing that I care about is that they get all the same opportunities as everyone else. Right now the only way for that to be possible is if they are straight. So I’m fighting my hardest to make sure that my kids, whether straight or gay, have the same rights as everyone else. That includes marriage.
Also, a few shows having gay people in them? That doesn’t mean homosexuals aren’t discriminated against. I know people who have been shamed out of teaching positions, people who have been rejected by their families, people who have been discharged from the military – just for being gay. You don’t call that discrimination?
The majority of PEOPLE in Maine didn’t choose to overturn gay marriage. The majority of VOTERS did – by a very slim margin. Every day there are more young people (more likely to be open-minded) old enough to vote and every day people are dying – mostly old people (who, let’s face it, probably voted to ban gay marriage). I know a lot of 15, 16, 17 year olds who would have voted NO on 1 if they had the chance. So someday it will pass, I know it will. I’m just hoping it is sooner rather than later.
To answer the questions…since you’re so hung up on the pompessness of them…
No, marriage of the 1700s was fine for them but not now. However, if it were the way society handles it today, yes. Beceause I wouldn’t know of anything different.
Was it okay to ban interracial marriages in the 1960s? If it worked in Virgina, then that was fine for Virginia. Just like gays marriages is in Massachusettes…what ever works for them. But like I said before, racial marriages and gay marriages are apples and oranges.
It doesn’t matter what I believe. The yes or no answers for ME are irrelevant.
I have lived in 16 states and 32 small to large cities and three major European cities over my 51 years of life. And I can tell you that marriage IS the same from town to town. AND the attuitude is basically the same there as well. I found the attitude in San Francisco to be more tolarant than it would be in Urban Philadelphia. But more than in Miami. Culture has a major factor.
I currently live in the south. That is an onclave that has issues of its own. However, I find the gay life style to be accepted far more than the mid-west, just as interracial marriges are. BUT not marriage. The firm beflief that marriage needs to remain between a MAN and a WOMAN. I firmly believe that and will most likely always vote that way.
Thank you for answering the questions, Tim.
Let’s make it clear, then: you DON’T support traditional marriage, since as you put it the classic form of marriage in 1700 was fine for people then, but times have changed, and so has the definition of marriage. It’s not about tradition. You just support everyone having the kind of marriage YOU like.
And you ARE happy to let the whims of majorities overrule the constitutional rights of minorities, even to let a state declare that a black woman and a white man can’t marry each other.
Now we know where you stand. I appreciate you sharing. This clarifies my understanding of you immensely.
Ooooo….careful, high horses have a tendency to buck their riders…..
Equality is snobby and elitist?
Keep on sharing, Tim. We’re learning more about you by the minute!