Hawaii Governor Vetoes Civil Unions

Why does anyone in government care about gay people being married or civil unions or whatever you want to call them? If the church you belong to doesn’t let gay people get married why worry about it? This is insane. If you don’t want them married in your church that’s one thing. But they should be able to legally marry.

Churchgoers vote. And by definition, they’re generally impressionable people.

Pandering to them makes you a more popular politician. Hence the legal blocks.

I read this in this morning’s SL Tribune and was sad that their legislators passed this and the governor vetoed it.

Shame on her for using her personal beliefs as a legal position.

Even though I don’t like/accept their lifestyle, I could tolerate it and accommodate for it legally. They need to have the same rights and privileges as the rest of us.

If you want to get down into it marriage was a contract between two people and God. These were never supposed to be recognized by a government. During Puritanical times, at least in the US, is when the push came for it to be recognized by the government. Insert the Founding Fathers and the documents they wrote, and rights are guaranteed to everyone. Clear cut. We are getting a dose of our own medicine. And a dose we so sorely need.

@Ruru

Some people don’t like gay men because they see gay relationships as betrayal. All my friendships are to men and men having sex in my mind is betrayal. Lesbians are looked on sometimes as man haters. Especially the ones like Hillary Clinton or Elena Kagan, who has chopped hair and pants suits.

Although, my prejudices towards gays are no reason to deny someone equal rights. I’m pretty disgusted at the veto.

I’m an atheist and I don’t like crazy Christians but I wouldn’t veto their ability to get married. Or do anything else that didn’t effect other peoples rights.

Thats what this Governor misses. She needs to butt out of other peoples business.

@VXbinaca

Some people don’t like gay men because they see gay relationships as betrayal. All my friendships are to men and men having sex in my mind is betrayal.

I’m really curious – why is a betrayal? Do they owe you something? I’m not trying to be insulting, (I apologize if that’s how it sounds) although I do disagree with you. I’m just really, genuinely curious as to what makes you feel this way.

I’ve always believed in a “Live and Let Live” kind of philosophy – even to the point of “Live and let others *bleep* up their own lives”. Everyone should have the right to make their own choices, whether right or wrong, and government interference is a scary and disgusting path to take.

@Paige

Because I wouldn’t do that to my friends and they’re almost exclusively male. Sex is to be saved for women. Some of the things they do are a little too much for my tastes but I don’t let that get in the way of treating people with respect and generally trying to make sure everyones equal under the law.

It’s nice not to be accused of being religious for once.

Oh, how do you get an avatar?

My favorite argument is the “What am I going to tell my kid?” argument. The comedian Louis C.K. has the best take on it:

It comes at 1:01 of this clip (probably NSFW).

@VXbinaca
That’s an awfully weird hangup to have. It sounds like you said your problem with gay sex is that it means less sex for women and more for men. Uh, no one owes sex to anyone, and no group owes sex to any other group.

To get an avatar, go to Gravatar.

It’s remarkable how discussions of non-hetero relationships always center upon the physical act of sex. The many other aspects of what makes a relationship get brushed aside because people can’t seem to get past the fact that men are having sex—gasp!—with other men, and women with women! This (rather juvenile) fixation is what’s at the root of so much of contemporary homophobia. And it’s just plain silly.

“Homosexuality is not a form of sex; it is a form of love.”

—Christopher Hitchens

VXbinaca, you seemed to imply that being gay implies some kind of intent to rape men. A gay guy is seriously no more likely to try to rape a straight male friend than a straight guy is to try to rape a female friend who doesn’t find him attractive. I can see being slightly creeped out to discover that a long time male friend is secretly attracted to me, but never betrayed. Hell, I’ve been secretly attracted to a bunch of female friends who never reciprocated. Once you confirm that the object of your affection indeed doesn’t like you, it’s a simple matter to let the attraction just boil away into space. I can’t imagine it would be much different at all for a gay man.

@Spurs Fan
You’re right. She never did. Nor has Elena Kagan commented on whether or not she’s gay or straight.

@fritzy

and constitutions are meant to increase people’s rights, not take them away.

You’re only half right. Constitutions secure rights, not expand on them. You use the courts for legal wrangling over the meaning of rights. Solid, sane, well documented and researched arguments need to be made. It’s how my side kicked the shit out of Chicago in McDonald v. Chicago.

If you want to expand what it covers, add an amendment. Good luck getting gay marriage protected by a cons. am. you’d have an easier time fighting it in the courts and – most importantly – culturally getting it accepted like the Fabians in England selling socialism to the rich.

@

If a friend of yours suddenly discovered that he was gay how does that detrimentally affect you at all?

It doesn’t and I never said it did. I don’t like electro-play in S&M culture (disclaimer: I am not apart of that culture), or cuckolds. I just don’t do it and if I don’t like something, where possible I move away from it when it’s feasible.

@miller

That’s an awfully weird hangup to have. It sounds like you said your problem with gay sex is that it means less sex for women and more for men. Uh, no one owes sex to anyone, and no group owes sex to any other group.

I never said anyone owed sex to anyone, just that I feel it’s for certain groups of people. I wouldn’t impose it on others. I’m quite meek in real life.

@Sesoron

VXbinaca, you seemed to imply that being gay implies some kind of intent to rape men.

You’re reading things into what I’m saying. You’re also not doing a good job at convincing the other side here by putting words into people mouths. That really makes me want to take off my listening cap or just not learn about them any further.

Good rock, can I type this reply without having to reply to another reply and make this reply even longer?

VXbinaca, I’m just trying to puzzle out what you mean in saying you’d feel betrayed if two men you knew were to be gay and act on it. “Betrayal” implies that the betrayed person is somehow wronged by the act, and therefore cannot trust the betrayer at least for a time and to a degree. So I just can’t figure out in what sense you’d feel betrayed if not a worry that they’d try to do something personally to you.

@JA
“If you want to get down into it marriage was a contract between two people and God”

BS! The church didn’t get involved in marriage until something like the 11th or 12th century. That’s pretty late.

Before that, marriage was strictly a property contract. One part between families. One family basically sold their daughter to another family. For one have someone to care for the daughter and also to advance their social status.
But some governments were also involved in those contracts. Early English common law for example had some pretty extensive rules about marriage.

And of course those rules changed over time. “Biblical marriage” really means a man married to as women as he can afford and with as many concubines on the side as he wants. That’s your “sacred marriage”.

As for the case at hand. People need to get into their heads that the civil rights of minorities are not up for public vote. If that were the case, women couldn’t vote and African Americans would have no rights either. If the majority can decide over minority rights, the minority always loses.

Lastly, the whole thing is especially hypocritical, because a lot of xtian politicians says “have all the rights you want, just don’t call it marriage”. So which one is it? You can’t have it both ways.

VXbinaca:

It’s funny the homophobe here has displayed most of the tolerance here. People like me are the ones you need to convince to get this to be accepted culturally. Wake up, take your head out of your ass and stop pushing out allies.

An admitted homophobe and you are breaking your own arm to pat yourself on the back? And then slam us for not praising you? As my previous comment said, I think you are testing the waters here and just seeing what our reactions our to your self-appointed opinions and positions.

That was in responce to others out-of-context replies. Not testing waters. They asked why I think they way I do and I (foolishly) replied. I’m not patting myself on the back, at least not before 3 others did. And testing the waters? No.

Lesson learned: just have an opinion and don’t give a damn what anyone else says, even those you here agree with on the Hawaii thing.

I was similarly touched by the mother who in the same office expressed anguish at the prospect of the public schools teaching her children that a mixed race marriage was equivalent to their mother and father’s marriage.

If you couldn’t say that with a straight face, you also shouldn’t be able to spew what the HI governor just did. And happily, it seems in a few decades, such statements will generally be seen as equally insane and hateful.

No extra, new rights are needed to protect gay marriage. It’s covered under Equal Protection, and I’ve never seen a coherent argument against that stance.

Personally, I think a lot of people are hung up on the word “marriage” as something sacred and the state should get out of the “marriage” business entirely and just do civil unions for everyone.

I would guess more people have positions similar to VXbinaca than we’d initially guess.

Being a pragmatist, I value his commitment to legal equality more than I take issue with his hangups pertaining to gender/orientation/heteronormative behavior. Not to say I’d pat him on the back for his position, but as long as he’s not personally advocating for something that imposes on others, it’s an irrational mental construct he’s not propagating. I.e., it impacts him and whatever gay friends he has (and they can choose to write him off if they wish), but otherwise he’s a neutral to neutral-positive agent.

Unless there’s an implication to all this that I hadn’t thought of. I confess it’s not really a viewpoint I’ve come across very much.

VXbinaca, why are you getting prickly because people merely want you to clarify a comment you made?

You said something that left quite a few people scratching their heads and they asked if you could explain further. I’m not quite sure what your ‘issue’ is with that…..

I was talking with my mother yesterday about how not allowing gay marriage is forcing her (in that context I actually used the general “your”) morals on others when she says she supports gay people but not gay marriage because “the bible says it’s wrong.”

It totally pissed her off ’cause she knew I was right.

Karen,

“If there were a god, he wouldn’t care where you put your genitalia, he would care about where your heart is.”

Although God does care where your heart is, to say that God doesn’t care how or where you engage in sex is a terribly unfortunate misstatement of the Bible and its teachings.

The bible teaches against all sorts of sexual immorality in all forms.

Steve, your comment about a biblical marriage was not directed to the legal institution. It was a dig on the scared place that the Bible holds the marriage relationship between a man and a women. Ephesians talks directly to that point on how a man must love his wife as much as Jesus loved the Church. The bible holds that marriage relationship that sacred.

And you are simply wrong that God and the church was not involved in marriage until the 11th century. Marriage was a large part of the Jewish faith in the earliest days of the Bible and continued to be so during the early days of Christianity.

The Christian church correctly views marriage far more then a property contract wrapped in ceremony. It may have been devalued in our society to not much more then that, but that is not Biblical in any sense.

This blows me away.
On July 20, 2005, Canada legalized same-sex marriage nationwide with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act.

Other than those whining about it, and those whining about those whining about it, you wouldn’t even know it happened. Their has been no break down of our society, No mass decrease in child bearing. Even different sex partners still get married and have the same 50% divorce rate they had before. Homosexuality has not become rampant. In fact as a country were fairly happy all around.

Why isn’t this ever mentioned? Why are these facts not thrown into the face of every bigot out there?
Never mind what one groups believes or another. The simple facts of the matter is this. It makes no fucking difference at all, and I mean that literally.

I said it was amazing how quickly it ceased to be an ‘issue’; which was almost immediately after it became legal. Truly, it came and went with barely a ripple.

Same thing happened back when Spain legalized gay marriage. At the time the Catholic Church organized massive protests but the legalization already had majority support. Since then I’ve heard literally nothing about it in Spanish press. Even the conservative party, which initially pledged to repeal the law, now has its mouth shut, probably detecting that many young people (myself included) will refuse to vote for them if we think they’d repeal.

A gay Spanish soldier can marry another gay Spanish soldier and they can adopt kids and no one cares.

Someday, people like Lingle will be like all those who have to uncomfortably explain and profusely apologize for their previous support of segregation. The next generations will be aghast at the unfeeling cruelty of the thing.

VXbinaca, I’ll admit that I’ve read several of your comments and I still have no earthly clue what you actually have against gay relationships. You’re my first atheist homophobe. You call men having gay relationships a betrayal, but I simply don’t understand what that means. Betrayal requires the breaking of an agreement. Its no more betrayal if a gay male friend of mine sleeps with another gay male frient than if a straight female friend sleeps with a straight male friend. Being gay, like being straight, is a biological orientation. I assume you understand that. So gay men are not in the same pool as straight men from the getgo. Likewise lesbian women.

Mind you, I think its great that you support full marriage equality. To me its what counts, but I’m totally mystified with your position. I would understand it better if you simply stated that the idea of gay sex was “icky” to you. That’s fine, I don’t much relish the idea of lesbians having sex and I don’t really suppose they have a hankering for gay male sex either. You can have a visceral reaction of that kind, as long as you recognize it as irrational and not seek to justify it by other means.

While I don’t appreciate her tendency to disparage atheists who dare to criticize religious dogma, Martha Nussbaum has written a whole book about how just about all opposition to gay rights stems from the “ick” factor. She analyzes how feelings of revulsion and disgust actually form the basis for a good deal of public policy. She posits (I’m paraphrasing liberally here) that the feeling of disgust and revulsion many people have at the idea of gay sex is actually an expression of fear—fear of contamination, and fear that the acts of others might somehow “infect” one’s own identity. It’s a smart book, one that weaves together the philosophical case and the constitutional case for same-sex marriage. I found her analysis of homophobia fascinating.

Maybe I’m jumping into a firing line here, but I’ll do it anyway.
She’s claiming that her personal beliefs don’t inform her decision to veto the policy – and that’s a lie. Even though some try, politicians can’t separate their personal agenda from their political one. The recently disposed PM of Australia was against homosexual marriage because he is an evangelical Christian, and it’s that simple.
Here’s where I’m probably going to get myself in trouble – I don’t think gay couples should be afforded the same rights as straight ones. Not because of their ability to have children, but because the intent behind marriage is to unite a man and a woman. It’s fairly black and white in my mind.
But here’s a little rant for you – because that’s what I do sometimes. A Christian reaction to homosexuality seems to be to condem people and call them sinners, which does nothing but alienate them. You will probably agree with me, if you’ve looked at Jesus’ life, that Jesus’ reaction was the antithesis of the common one today. He spent time with people, he lived life with them and loved them. So the Christian agenda shouldn’t be to immediately condemn those who are in same sex relationships, but to show them the same love Jesus did and… well, I wont jump into the nature vs. nurture argument, but I will say that there is a need to change the way someone is living… God’s intent wasn’t for man and man or woman and woman, but man and woman…

Sorry about the scattered thoughts – this morning’s coffee hasn’t set in yet.

The intent of the Founding Fathers was that only land-owning males would be able to participate in American democracy. Intent can be important to look at, but it shouldn’t be a set of shackles on our own sense of decency.

Founding Fathers are different to God. And they don’t really effect me – being Australian, and all. I get what you’re saying and understand that intent isn’t shackles. But purpose of creation is.

For the record, the bluntness isn’t me being rude – it’s me being a little bit lazy and not adding bits that make me seem nicer…

God’s got something to do with everything, whether he is acknowledged in it or not. Church and state are pretty separate, and I think I’m grateful for that (because politics make the church a mess when it’s church politics, you add state politics and whoa… problems everywhere!). But if I say God is everywhere, which I do say, I have to say that his will is for man and woman to be united.

I just lost my train of thought.

Okay. It’s back. God is involved in everything. Simple. How can any theist say that God is separate from something if they believe that he is soveriegn?

Except there has to be some form of truth. So, there is something that we’re all bound by…

In that case, Tamara, homosexuality couldn’t exist without his allowing it too so stop trying to interfere with his will. Yes, I’m being a smart ass. I just can’t see where you think your blanket assertion should mean anything, especially with it’s hinged on bigotry.

Interesting what those of you are saying about legalizing gay marriage where you live normalizing it. Just in case anyone was still wondering why gays want to marry… (which is kind of dumb in and of itself; of course they want to marry)

Don’t know why that posted twice and I’m afraid to delete the only one giving the edit options so apologies.

Anyone think Tamara’s just trolling?

Some advice for those of you who think gay sex is ‘icky’.

Don’t have anal sex. Don’t use your mouth or your fingers. Don’t use sex toys. Do not touch another persons genitals, in fact, at all. Do not, whatever you do, have feelings of sexual attraction/love/lust for anyone, no matter how straight you are. Only ever have sex with the express purpose of procreation, and never, ever, enjoy the activity. If you are unable/unwilling to procreate, never have sex.

After all, wouldn’t want you acting like those dirty filthy gays at all, would we?

/exacerbated snark

I actually enjoy trolls when they come with fresh arguments I haven’t heard before, non-circular arguments that aren’t easily refuted, arguments that make me actually question my own beliefs.

When that happens, let me know.

So… what’s the big deal about giving LGBTI folks EQUAL RIGHTS?

Seriously, WHAT is the big farking deal?

Marriage is an established CIVIL RIGHT, thus it makes NO SENSE to say “no, you can’t haz marriage” based on the gender(s) of the participants.

who owns marriage, does anybody?

is someone responsible for inventing/creating the institution? should we defer to them for an interpretation of what marriage is and is not?

is the government a reliable entity for defining such closely guarded concepts?

and rights? where do those come from?

i realize there is a “BILL OF RIGHTS” which endeavors to document them. it seems the government attempts to protect and/or guarantee them. but, honestly, where did those come from? was it socrates, aristotle, locke, kant…?

i didn’t invent marriage…can i own it? edison invented the light bulb, but he doesn’t own all of them. conversely, i own several lightbulbs, yet my ownership doesn’t give me the authority to change its definition. can i, then, take marriage and define it however i choose to, even if i could own it?

what if i think marriage should be lawful between a man and his daughter, or how about his pet turtle?

is that marriage because he says so and he loves his pet turtle, and how can anyone question that?

can something as old as humanity itself be expanded to meet a new contemporary definition? like the pyramids at Giza, marvelous structures, to be sure. we still don’t know what their precise purpose was and so, we haven’t officially defined their existence beyond that. their orignal purpose (if we knew that) would probably serve the same purpose today, even if we had advanced further technologically. still, our new technology wouldn’t change anything about how the pyramids worked to serve the original purpose.

homosexuality was practiced in ancient greece, even at the times of great philosophers like aristotle. the same guys who thought up many of the conventions which we see prevailing in modern government. i often wonder why homosexuals didn’t get married then, or did they? our federal government often creates is laws based upon precedent. is there a precedent for homosexual marriage? should we be looking for one?

i realize that i am one small human in the midst of a gigantic and seemingly infinite universe that does not care whether i live or breather another day. i can control very little in my life (epictetus, “the art of living”). if that’s true then what do i really own?

maybe, if i can’t own marriage i can’t really define it however i like.

consider that definitions exist for the purpose of defining. definitions would lose their credibility if we changed them whenever we felt like it. heck, i don’t really care for how they define computers because to me they are the lifeline of our society. let’s change that in webster’s as a matter of fact. would that make sense?

or did the inventor of marriage get it wrong and we’ve been fooled for thousands of years? i suppose if we could track him or her down we could petition for a change (ref. earlier question).

atheists think atheistically because they ask questions, brilliant, deep questions that do not have easy answers. stick to that and ask about the origins of marriage and human rights.

seek the Truth, friends, and you WILL find IT.

Wow, thanks a lot BLynam, I think I just got a bit dumber from reading your post. I can’t even put together a thought right now, it’s too late at night, but DAMN is that ever one of the stupidest things I’ve seen recently.

Living in Hawaii, I’ve had a chance to watch this whole thing unravel over the last two years. While it’s good that the legislature finally (barely) had the courage to support equal rights, legislators generally won’t do anything that would risk them not getting re-elected. And that’s what it all boils down to for the most part. Politicians are motivated by whatever will get them elected or re-elected.

In Lingle’s case, it’s not about her personal beliefs – Linda Lingle is not a devout Christian – she’s Jewish. And she’s termed out of office this year, so it’s a little upsetting that she would use her lame duck period just to cowtow to the religious right, who of course turned out in massive numbers earlier this year to try to prevent a segment of the population from having equal rights. But she’s probably planning on having some political future, and she can probably now count on having all of those people’s votes for whatever it is she does next.

They are losing ground every day. Every time gay marriage goes down, it loses by an ever-decreasing margin, and every time it wins it wins by an ever-increasing margin. It really is just a matter of waiting for the oldest generations to die out and take their bigotry with them–which sounds mean, but that really is how it works in the long run.

@ThatOtherGuy:

Seconded. You beat me to it. Just…yikes.

@VXbinaca:

I was glad to hear that you supported gay rights–including gay marriage–despite your personal feelings. That is definitely commendable and few people are able to differentiate between what they personally like/hate and what is actually harmful/beneficial. It’s hard for many people to understand that their personal distaste or hatred for any given thing is not necessarily universal and that they are not the sole decider of what is or is not acceptable in society.

That said, I have to admit I was a bit confused about the use of the word “betrayal”. This might just be a communication thing. When someone says they find homosexuality odd or icky or generally distastful, that’s pretty easy to understand. But the term “betrayal” is an extremely strange one to use and kind of comes with many more connotations than straight-up distaste. I was also confused with your clarifictions, which seemed equally odd, and the way you worded part of your explanation also sounded (to me) briefly like you thought gay men might rape straight men. I didn’t believe that was what you were saying, because otherwise you sounded pretty rational, so I chalked it up to a problem with communication, but I can see how someone might come away with that impression.

Of course, perhaps your feelings about homosexuality are odd themselves–not just a straightforward ick factor, perhaps a little more complex–and I can understand having feelings that are difficult to put into words very clearly.

That also said, you wouldn’t believe how many people think I’m a lesbian. I wear guy clothes, have choppy hair, play video games, listen to metal, am a horror-film afficianado, I can be fairly aggressive, and I study animation (which is still a predominantly masculine pursuit). Yet I’m completely heterosexual–seriously, even I wondered at some point, but try as I might, I couldn’t get interested in women. Too bad it’s not a choice, because guys tend to be scared of me. Thanks to the gender role stereotypes insisting that I’m not heterosexual if I dont’ wear frilly girly things, spend all my time and money on hair, makeup and beauty regimens, be as passive as possible and avoid typically “male” interests, I’d probably have a more successful love life as a lesbian. Unfortunately, I don’t consider having a love life as being a priority over being honestly myself, and I have no interest in having a love life that is based on my living a lie. If guys are afraid of me, so be it.

In the meantime, there are lots of lesbians I’ve met who are way more feminine than I am, but of course no one thinks they are lesbians because they fit so nicely into the neat little gender roles society has predetermined for us all.

As such, I take it with a VERY LARGE grain of salt anytime someone says their “gaydar” or “lesdar” is going off every time they encounter anyone who doesn’t bundle neatly into a strict gender role.

o forgot to add 1 thing actualy, the whole fear thing that gay people are all of a sudden going to be attracted to everyone in an almost uncontrolable way i would say again quite possibly comes from being seen soley as a sex thing (socioligists explain that much better than me though ^^) basicly though just as selective in preference hehe shallow, deep or somwhere inbetween

Guy G.

The point is that gay sex is for the most part exactly the same act as performed by straight people; and for exactly the same motivations.

It’s like saying…[redacted for hopeless inaccuracy]

Is there a difference between gay and straight sex? Well, duh, but only because of the people involved. Same as the difference between me + my partner vs. you + yours. It’s not a huge deal, and if I said I wanted to get married, I doubt that random strangers would say ok, but, ICK, you might have sex. If you’re up for equality, why point out that you also have bigoted feelings on the matter?

You do know that someone’s personal reaction to gay sex is not something they choose and is neither here nor there – it’s what they actually feel about rights & equality that matters?

You are aware that personal reactions can be modified, aren’t you? I used to think most Americans were dumb – I never felt the need to mention that to anyone before, but I went out, talked to a whole bunch of them and realised I was wrong. I do hope you’re not trying to argue that it was perfectly ok for me to have that opinion and leave it unexamined + unchallenged.

It is also very relevant to this discussion – the ‘ick’ factor is all too often the basis for someone deciding to support anti-gay legislation. Talk to a lot of people about this subject, and even many theists will eventually admit that their religious bias is just a handy explanatory layer to their general ‘ick’ feelings. It’s also a fair bet that the ‘ick’ people might support rights privately in the voting booth, but will allow most anti-gay rhetoric a free pass in public, thereby adding to the problem of a majority that thinks gay behaviour should be hidden and reviled and definitely not acceptable by law.

For those of you who have the ‘ick’ factor, but still support equality, kudos. I just have no idea why you also need to mention you think it’s anymore icky than your parents or neighbours or strangers you’re unattracted to getting it on.

ash wrote:

For those of you who have the ‘ick’ factor, but still support equality, kudos. I just have no idea why you also need to mention you think it’s anymore icky than your parents or neighbours or strangers you’re unattracted to getting it on.

Nail. Head.

When people start going on about the ‘ick’ factor with gay sex, I always think “why are you singling out gay sex? You DO realize that half the things your hetero friends do would be just as icky to you, yes?”

I was similarly touched by the mother who in the same office expressed anguish at the prospect of the public schools teaching her children that a same-gender marriage was equivalent to their mother and father’s marriage.

Why?

What if that same mother were gay and wanted the teachers to say that her marriage was equivalent to those of straight couples? Don’t teachers have a responsibility to avoid unfair judgments on the lives of their pupils or to put a child in a position where they feel socially excluded. I complained to my eldest daughter’s school when a temporary teacher said that my daughter was technically a bastard because her mother and I weren’t married. It made her feel small and it singled her out for ridicule from her peers. How much worse would a child of a gay couple feel if they had the stigma of being told that their parent’s marriage didn’t count or even that it wasn’t the same as the child of a straight couple?

Honestly being a parent or just being a decent person is about what you do and not about what labels people give you. If a couple tell me that they are together then I treat them like that whether or not they are legally married, divorced, straight, gay, bi, black, brown, white, green, mixed race, 20 years separated or wearing nothing but matching banana hammocks.

It seems that people are obsessed about how someone not even involved in their relationship might feel about them. Well fuck ’em. Its none of their business. If we treat people with the respect that they deserve, according to decent, reasonable own rules of conduct then it doesn’t matter what the law says. It’ll catch up eventually and the bigots and vote seeking morons will go the way of the dinosaurs.

I thought that the law was a code for setting a minimum level of conduct within a society and protecting citizens from exploitation and harm. I didn’t think it was a stick to bash others with or something to be used by the angry mob to keep their precious prejudices in place.

It’s so clear that the real intent of these laws is to punish same-sex couples for “choosing” to create “inferior” families.

Its partly that, but I also think in many folks its a twisted form of wishful thinking. They don’t want families like yours to exist so they promote laws in such a way that families like yours are not included. You’ll hear the anti-marriage people say that gays shouldn’t get married because “children should have a mother and a father” pretending that the only way families with gay parents can form is if marriage is legal. This is of course patently false; all that’s achieved by prohibitting gay couples from marrying is denying them rights and putting their children at a disadvantage, sometimes a dangerous one, as can happen if a biological parent dies and the blood relatives of the children take them away since the other partner has no legal standing.

In part this is why I find it frustrating when the more fearful gay rights associations, like the HRC, seek to hide the children of gay couples from sight, as if they were some dirty secret. You may want to minimize the stupid fears about “protecting the children” by pretending that no, all gays want is to marry, not raise kids, in the hopes the bigots will throw you a crumb. However I think that it would be a lot more effective to do like Equality Maine did, show happy, well adjusted kids that just want to have the same rights as all the other kids have.

my friends and I are Christian and i’d like to say we’re taking Hemant up on his challenge, but we already do post about gay rights all. the. time.

it’s an excellent way to start conversations and move the process forward.

I’ve had 2 postitive comments today regarding my post on gay marriage, and GLBT rights in general. From Christians.

Although they receive WAY less coverage than the anti-gay Xians, there are many many Xians who are open to discussion; or, are closeted supporters.

Is it perfect? NO.

Do I want them to be vocal? YES

I’ve found that being friendly (not unlike the theme of this blog) gets me, the rest of my GLBT community, and the conversation a lot further along.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful for Hemant’s and your passionate support & challenge to my fellow Xians to recognize the full humanity, dignity and rights of GLBTs.

Anna,

Love your comments! It’s rare that we hear from the children of gay parents.

If you’d be interested, I’d love to interview you for my blog, or just get some quotes from you for my facebook page.

We need to hear more from your side of the story. I think we’d open up a few more minds/hearts.

Leave a comment on my blog if you’re intersted. Hope to hear from you~ Tina

@Anna, please do the interview! I think the view from the sons and daughters of gay couples is totally underrepresented in the conversation about these issues. Simply by standing up and showing yourself to be a well adjusted, well raised obviously healthy adult you instantly refute the lie that this is being done to “protect the children”. Voices such as yours are very much needed.

*Blush* Thanks for the compliments! No one’s ever asked me for an interview before, but I’ll definitely think about it.

It’s rare that we hear from the children of gay parents.

The mainstream media is actually getting a lot better about this; however, it’s still quite common for them to publish articles about LGBT families without ever contacting or interviewing people who actually grew up in them.

But that is changing. ABC and CNN had excellent articles last year about grown-up “gayby boomers.” We’re still a pretty small minority, and those of us who are in our 20s and 30s are outnumbered by those who are much younger. The visibility is definitely heightened, though. When I first started talking about these issues online (early 90s) there was pretty much dead silence. Now it’s not uncommon to have other people with LGBT parents occasionally join the discussion.

The main lack of visibility that I see is in political discussions. Whether it’s same-sex marriage or proposed bans on same-sex adoption, certain members of the religious right pop up everywhere, spewing their misinformation and hatred. It’s like in an attempt to be fair and balanced, news organizations feel compelled to invite the most extreme organizations they can find. The Family Research Council (there’s a misnomer) seems pretty much ubiquitous, while less influential organizations are ignored. There are actually two national organizations dedicated to people with LGBT parents (COLAGE) and LGBT parents themselves (Family Equality Council), but you’d never know it by watching the news.