There is an unfortunate stereotype of the gay community (with a nod to Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy): a bunch of well-heeled folks who shop and brunch. Not exactly the look of suffering. Frankly, most Californians would aspire to that kind of suffering. I believe this is one of the reasons we lost in California. We simply didn't look like a group of people who needed rights.
I have been Out for nearly twenty years. I love my community (including those who shop and brunch) and I've worked in the gay community long enough to know the facts. It is not always pretty being gay. Let's talk about truths to gay life in America.
1. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States gay men are still the most infected group when it comes to AIDS.
2. According to FBI reports, gay men and lesbians are the third most-often targets for hate crimes, behind only racial and religious minorities.
3. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, it is estimated that gay people make up approximately five percent of the American population, but can make up to 20-40 percent of homeless youth in this country.
This is the underbelly of the gay community. This is why we want rights, marriage or otherwise. We are a community that knows pain. How will getting gay marriage rights help any of these problems? Marriage encourages principles of family and support and love and caring. I am not a therapist, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that not having these principles in gay daily life can spur the aforementioned problems.
I have worked in the AIDS field long enough to know that one of the reasons gay men get infected is because we don't feel our lives are worth saving. In other words, we feel like crap for being gay. How will marriage rights help that? It will say in the eyes of society that I am equal. My state sees me as equal. A way to help women leave abusive battering relationships, a way to help them take care of themselves is to empower them to believe that they're smart, capable women. They are equal, if not better, than the men who belittled and abused them. Feeling equal leads to a better life, period.
How will gay marriage help those who target us for hate crimes? Many years ago, I was a victim of a gay bashing. I was fortunate to get away. The image of those men who tried to jump me is burned into my mind. They were young men, some of whom wore Scapulars, religious Catholic vestments. (I was given one at my first Holy Communion) I wonder if those men would have hurt me if they knew that I was also raised Catholic and believed in the same God that they did.
I was targeted because bashers saw me as dispensable, an object to throw away. They did not see me as a person with a soul or as someone's husband or father. When any institution, religious or governmental, tells its flock or its subjects that gay people don't deserve the same rights, in essence, they are saying they don't deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect afforded to heterosexuals. And this can lead to violent acts committed against us.
How will marriage help gay homeless youth? If I couldn't grow up in a family who loved and valued me, well, for goodness sake, allow me the hope to create one of my own. When I was young, I was romantic. Maybe I didn't come from the perfect family, but, later in life, I could end up with one. By denying marriage rights, we are dashing the hopes and dreams of young homosexuals, who like young heterosexuals, have dreams of meeting Prince or Princess Charming and living happily ever after.
I am not saying that gaining marriage rights will suddenly heal all the ills of the gay community, but it's a step in the right direction. After all, the civil rights of African Americans led the way for Barack Obama.
When it was announced that the California Supreme Court would uphold Prop 8, there were wails and moans. Those deep sounds of mourning did not come from a community who saw their registries at Crate and Barrel go up in smoke, it came from a place of intense anguish. We have died of AIDS, we have been attacked and humiliated, we have been thrown onto the streets to fend for ourselves. Now, you're telling us we can't even get married?
We are not simply a faaaaabulous community wanting an excuse to throw an engagement party. We are a damaged minority seeking solace. That solace can come in the symbol of a gold ring.
Follow Noel Alumit on Twitter: www.twitter.com/noelalumit
There are plenty of straight people living together without being married and they doesn't stop them from loving each other and enjoying their lives together.. I know, . I know... "they can get married if they want to, and we can't"
If you decide to live a different way than most everyone else, you have a right to do that. But why should the rest of us have to be forced to acknowledge and approve of that choice?
I don't care what anyone else does in their private life, but please don't tell me that I HAVE to approve and that I HAVE to accept the denigration of real marriage.
The only choice in the matter is whether or not to be honest about who we are. With the other option being repression, lying about who we are, living a life of loneliness and isolation from the rest of society (because when you lie to yourself and everyone else about something this big, no matter how many friends you have, you're isolated), the choice to be out does not equal CHOOSING TO BE GAY.
So yes, you should be forced to acknowledge our lifestyles, insofar as you must acknowledge anyone's lifestyles. By just letting us be and minding your business. You don't have to pay attention to my relationship or marriage any more than you have to be paying attention to any straight couple's marriage. But you don't deny people basic human rights just because you don't understand their love. And you don't allow discrimination just because you think it's icky.
Second, this is sad, but true...how come it's OK for you to be stupid and for sane, consenting adults not to marry?
Btw, we "gays" are also inadvertently fighting for the rights of all those unmarried people because they too don't have the same crucial rights that married people do. Marriage is a contract between two people, and a business (see how much money the state makes on it), not some God ordained right for some. And please don't dump your Judeo-Christian values on me (right to freedom, remember?).
And yes, it makes a difference, a huge one, as it did in the African American civil rights movement, whether its skin color or sexuality, that no one should take away the rights of the minorities, not even for people like you.
I believe you have added something to the discussion that was missing and that is badly needed.
The land of the Sodomites, a part of Canaan afterwards called Palestinian Syria, was brimful of innumerable iniquities, particularly such as arise from gluttony and lewdness, and multiplied and enlarged every other possible pleasure with so formidable a menace that it had at last been condemned by the Judge of All…Incapable of bearing such satiety, plunging like cattle, they threw off from their necks the law of nature and applied themselves to…forbidden forms of intercourse. Not only in their mad lust for women did they violate the marriages of their neighbors, but also men mounted males without respect for the sex nature which the active partner shares with the passive; and so when they tried to beget children they were discovered to be incapable of any but a sterile seed. Yet the discovery availed them not, so much stronger was the force of the lust which mastered them. Then, as little by little they accustomed those who were by nature men to submit to play the part of women, they saddled them with the formidable curse of a female disease. For not only did they emasculate their bodies by luxury and voluptuousness but they worked a further degeneration in their souls and, as far as in them lay, were corrupting the whole of mankind.”
Oh, you can't be serious. You are? Well, I guess that device sitting next to my keyboard isn't a "mouse," since that term was already taken. Or is it that "mouse" was "redefined," making the rodent something different than it was? Or could it just be, maybe, that the definition of "mouse" was simply expanded to encompass something new, leaving the old definition completely intact and unchanged (and the rodent itself unaffected and unconcerned)?
"The use of the term marraige (sic) itself is a right...use of a term is not a constitutional right"
Make up your mind. In any case, both the Calif. and U.S. Supreme Courts have defined "marriage" as a "civil right;" one the state of California has now allowed voters to revoke.
For all the trouble that this classification causes, I have no idea why anyone wants that classification.
Can you understand that?
And honestly, I will never understand why someone can catch AIDS..don't we all know what we shouldn't be doing?
2. The phrase "hate crimes" is ludicrous on its face. How many times has a crime been considered a hate crime just because the victim was of a different race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation than the perpetrator.
3. Number of homeless can be 20-40%? Pure speculation.
Also, the cause of AIDS is a virus, one that even you can be infected with my precious snowflake!
In fact, have you been tested lately?
1. The "cause" of AIDS is a retrovirus known as HIV.
2. A "hate crime" is not determined by the status of either the victim or the criminal.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1913
3. Here is the latest work on gay youth homelessness:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/HomelessYouth.pdf
How does one deal with THAT?
How does one deal with THAT?