What the No on Prop 8 Dangerously Angry Mob Needs to Know
Why are the No on Eighters such haters, excluding polyamorists from the cause? Why LGBT and not LGBTP? Why are you "pulling a black community" on the "poly's", turning around and denying us the same rights you demand? If any "gay marriage" amendment ever passes, it BETTER include polyamory, or you've done the same thing to us polyamorists as you claim the black community has done to you. How selfish and bigoted of LGBT's to only seek their own special exception without including everyone in this alleged civil rights battle.
If we use the term Marriage Equality, it better mean Equality for ALL or we are no better than any of the others.
The maniacally narcissistic leaders and architects of the NO on 8 camp -- as distinct from the vast majority of NO supporters who are infinitely more reasonable -- thought they could just "plug in" to The Civil Rights Formula; co-opting phrases like "by any means necessary" to dangerously vicious ends at times. The raw emotionalism of the NO campaign further complicates and invalidates their cause.
Television and radio commercials have histrionically equated the plight of gays as equivalent to Japanese Internment. Internment? Who are we kidding? Slavery and lynching are equated with marriage? Who sent YOU to such a Rush Limbaugh Institute of Hyperbole? To any semi-objective observer, these are utterly emotionally hijacked non sequiturs. As LGBT, we are not by any stretch of the imagination lynched or interned; to brazenly present such absurdities has discredited and hobbled our cause; to have any effect, the cause must de-escalate to more appropriate analogical ground such as achieving equal pay for equal work. This is vastly more correct and accurate analogy. Women are not "interned" by lack of equal pay for equal work, but they are clearly out of parity.
The NO on 8 camp, in order to be viewed as intellectually honest, in order to be viewed as capable of a measure of objective introspection, in order to be viewed as credible, simply must change its long term strategy.
Let us also acknowledge that in order for those of us in the NO on 8 camp to prevail, we must not in any way turn around to men with 2, 3, or 4 wives; or women with 2, 3, or 4 gender-diverse POLYAMOROUS SPOUSES, and tell them that they don't love one other and are not entitled to be married.
How DARE YOU "pull a black community" by turning around and denying the polyamorous the same rights to the loving contract that you demanded? Logic and legal consistency mandate that if marriage is opened up beyond one man and one woman, then marriage MUST be opened up to all; anything less is the highest of all heights of hypocrisy.
One other option is to get the State out of this Church-entangled business of "marriage" altogether. This could actually be the root of the problem. The idea of marriage originated in religion and the state found this relationship helpful to its own agenda. This was a pre-constitutional breach of division between church and state. Particularly in an era of growing religious diversity, including atheism, it might do well to get the State out of the business of marriage altogether. We might have a better time of arguing that a State engaging in marriage at all, is unconstitutional. Why target pillars when the entire foundation is built on sinking sand? With the State completely out of this marriage gig, those who want to be attached to the flailing, anachronistic, 50% failure-rate of traditional marriage could then find a Church that will grant them that Church's version of whatever it wants to call marriage. In this eventuality, any who go to the State for Civil Union, regardless of gender or number, can get Civilly United.
Change the entire zeitgeist, call it something new and enlightened like Life Bonded; create an entirely new and more enlightend conception of these unions, one that is open to all and free of the historical baggage, muck, and mayhem. There, I said it. So go ahead, add me to the Black List, shout me down, uncritically call me a hater and a bigot, thereby proving the very worst the NO on 8 character to be true.
If we use the term Marriage Equality, it better mean Equality for ALL or we are no better than any of the others.
The maniacally narcissistic leaders and architects of the NO on 8 camp -- as distinct from the vast majority of NO supporters who are infinitely more reasonable -- thought they could just "plug in" to The Civil Rights Formula; co-opting phrases like "by any means necessary" to dangerously vicious ends at times. The raw emotionalism of the NO campaign further complicates and invalidates their cause.
Television and radio commercials have histrionically equated the plight of gays as equivalent to Japanese Internment. Internment? Who are we kidding? Slavery and lynching are equated with marriage? Who sent YOU to such a Rush Limbaugh Institute of Hyperbole? To any semi-objective observer, these are utterly emotionally hijacked non sequiturs. As LGBT, we are not by any stretch of the imagination lynched or interned; to brazenly present such absurdities has discredited and hobbled our cause; to have any effect, the cause must de-escalate to more appropriate analogical ground such as achieving equal pay for equal work. This is vastly more correct and accurate analogy. Women are not "interned" by lack of equal pay for equal work, but they are clearly out of parity.
The NO on 8 camp, in order to be viewed as intellectually honest, in order to be viewed as capable of a measure of objective introspection, in order to be viewed as credible, simply must change its long term strategy.
Let us also acknowledge that in order for those of us in the NO on 8 camp to prevail, we must not in any way turn around to men with 2, 3, or 4 wives; or women with 2, 3, or 4 gender-diverse POLYAMOROUS SPOUSES, and tell them that they don't love one other and are not entitled to be married.
How DARE YOU "pull a black community" by turning around and denying the polyamorous the same rights to the loving contract that you demanded? Logic and legal consistency mandate that if marriage is opened up beyond one man and one woman, then marriage MUST be opened up to all; anything less is the highest of all heights of hypocrisy.
One other option is to get the State out of this Church-entangled business of "marriage" altogether. This could actually be the root of the problem. The idea of marriage originated in religion and the state found this relationship helpful to its own agenda. This was a pre-constitutional breach of division between church and state. Particularly in an era of growing religious diversity, including atheism, it might do well to get the State out of the business of marriage altogether. We might have a better time of arguing that a State engaging in marriage at all, is unconstitutional. Why target pillars when the entire foundation is built on sinking sand? With the State completely out of this marriage gig, those who want to be attached to the flailing, anachronistic, 50% failure-rate of traditional marriage could then find a Church that will grant them that Church's version of whatever it wants to call marriage. In this eventuality, any who go to the State for Civil Union, regardless of gender or number, can get Civilly United.
Change the entire zeitgeist, call it something new and enlightened like Life Bonded; create an entirely new and more enlightend conception of these unions, one that is open to all and free of the historical baggage, muck, and mayhem. There, I said it. So go ahead, add me to the Black List, shout me down, uncritically call me a hater and a bigot, thereby proving the very worst the NO on 8 character to be true.
I'm not AGAINST; I'm FOR intellectual honesty and clarity, all around. The REAL abiding injustice we should all be fighting against is CLASS, anyway. Race and gender relations are wonderfully powerful emotional distractions that the top 5% would love us to stay embroiled and entangled with in perpetuity. Now that we have a black president, are all of a sudden all black people equal? No.
Now, maybe we can finally see that our bottom 80% black, white, and latino brothers and sisters have more in common with one another than a Top 1% black has with a Bottom 80% black, or a Top 1% latino has with a Bottom 80% latino, right? Who is REALLY in the same boat with us, someone with the same color skin as a CEO making $400M, or whitey next door struggling like us?
P.S. Just read this: "the death penalty ... cases do not represent as much of a fundamental change as Proposition 8." Holy shit, DEATH is not as fundamental as marriage? Holy shit, people.
Labels: infective.invective
posted by ftw at 1:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home