Dear Friend and Reader,
YESTERDAY, AS THE election results rolled in, Eric wrote that we have a long struggle ahead, a massive clean-up job after close to a decade of President Bush. He’s right, and as hundreds of electoral votes built up momentum in a sweeping and early victory for Senator Barack Obama, votes were counted with slightly less fanfare in Florida, Arizona, Arkansas and California.
Florida, Arizona and California voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman in their constitutions, making same-sex marriage virtually impossible to gain. In Arkansas, they banned fostering or adopting children “outside of a valid marriage.” This was imposed to prevent same-sex couples from adopting or fostering children, though it now affects cohabiting heterosexual couples, single people and anyone else who isn’t married.
In California, the decision was joined with a win for animal rights activists, whose proposition to eliminate battery cages (confining farm animals to a space smaller than two-feet squared) reigned victorious. This means that thousands of California citizens checked “yes” for animal rights and “yes” for revoking human rights.
This topic is a difficult one for me, both because I’m gay and because I devoted a year of my life towards a thesis against the institution of marriage: to condense 100 pages into a couple of sentences, I’ve researched marriage as a culture that extols one group, privileging its behaviors and mores over less traditional, but no less loving, partnerships and families. And within the institution itself comes a set of rules, based on a history of patriarchal order, that divides us into masculine and feminine expectations for work outside the home, household labor, child rearing and, yes, sex.
I think it’s time to move past marriage, to develop a form of partnership that’s inclusive of all the formations that relationships take. We should accept not just same-sex and opposite-sex monogamous partnerships, but those of caregivers and the disabled, of cohabiting friends and siblings, of people who are committed to more than one partner. These relationships exist, they don’t fit and are denigrated by the exclusive definition of marriage and they deserve equal recognition under the law.
So I’m not the biggest flag waver for marriage. But over the last year, as my graduate student days fall behind me, I’ve thought the issue over more. I met with one of my lecturers, and an amazing civil rights activist and barrister, Judy Walsh. She explained to me that, while she doesn’t believe in marriage either, she believes it should be our choice not to get married. The question of abolishing marriage may come one day, but until then we should enforce equal rights under the law. And marriage excludes same-sex couples and their children.
This seems so obvious to me as I write it, so obvious after meeting my mom’s gay friends from college that have lived together for a quarter century, whose relationship dynamics are like a mirror image of my parents’ (who are straight). I think about myself, about smaller things like Eric dreaming I was Earth Mother, and I wonder if the religious zealots are right, if I would damage my children by raising them in a same-sex household. All of their arguments, about how we’ll ruin the institution, destroy gender roles, raise gay kids or hurt them in some way, how we’ll institute a new gay order — I think about it daily and wonder if we have that power.
I try to tell myself that this is all a fear-based response, these state constitutional bans, that this is the same xenophobia that Obama’s candidacy evoked. Those terrifying Sarah Palin rallies where the audience screamed that Obama was a terrorist, a Muslim, a Socialist and to kill him, they overflowed. A river of hatred of Other, of fear to protect themselves from the unknown rushed these people to the polls. And if they didn’t get through with a president, they made themselves abundantly clear what they think of me, my friends and the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) community: do what you want, but don’t touch my stuff.
In Obama’s acceptance speech Tuesday night, he took us from slavery to Montgomery, Alabama; from the right to vote to reproductive rights; and he brought us to today, to this historical moment: our first black president, the 44th President of the United States. This was the first time that someone mentioned gay and straight inclusively in a presidential speech. Hearing that was like having a blindfold taken off.
He is, at least in theory, quietly against same-sex marriage (but not a supporter of a Constitutional ban). This is politically understandable enough in the dark ages we inhabit, when you have to be careful not alienate large swaths of the population. It is a fairly common middle of the road that most countries take But he has the guts to say gay and straight out loud, counting us as human, as Americans. We have come a very long way since June 28, 1969, when it was illegal for two men to dance together in a club in NYC, when police round-ups were a regular occurrence for my community, the Stonewall Riots happened. We barricaded the door, we threw rocks at police, we marched in the streets for gay liberation. And that was the beginning.
Sometimes, our tolerance gets tested. After eight years of Bush, the US rose up and said fuck no. I won’t take another second of this. Thirty-nine years ago, the GLBT community said we won’t be arrested anymore. We have the right to be here. Five years ago, in Lawrence vs. Texas, the Supreme Court legalized gay sex between consenting adults. (Ireland had us beat by a decade, by the way, and they don’t even have abortion rights there.) Maybe we’re not ready yet, maybe we have to wait in line for 140 years like we had to for a black president after slavery.
I don’t think so, though. I don’t think we’re going to wait that long. Soothing apathy may have spread around the Northeast with civil rights advances for Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, but our wins in the West, the Southwest and South won’t give way as easily. In a country this large, we can’t expect this civil rights battle to be cohesive. It’s going to have massive gains and, as we’re feeling today, core shaking losses. But we’ll push back, and we’ll push on because it’s about fairness and equality. We have rights, and we will gain them.
For Planet Waves, this is
Rachel Asher
PS. Yes, when you aren’t living your truth and you are not happy, I believe it does affect your children in a negative way.
So your tax dollars are supporting this system, but this system is not supporting your union. That ain’t right. If civil unions (which could eventually replace the word marriage?) were legally recognized, could the laws governing these bennies be ammended to include civil unions? I think I like the sound of civil unions for everyone better than the word marriage, especially since marriage as an institution doesn’t hold much water, as far as death do us part and all that anymore, any way. Can heteros enter into civil union under civil union laws? Perhaps a more legal sounding contract would make people more serious when entering into the contract with another rather than getting caught up in all the queen for a day stuff and the massive expenditure that that can involve. Oh woe to the marketeers to that glowing woman in white.
The definition of a contract by body parts is bothersome to me. It’s kind of like the definition of Obama by skin color when he is biracial. We are people, not trick or treaters in Halloween costumes.
I can’t claim to be an expert on the tax system, but married couples definitely get a tax break.
Here are the ins and outs of marriage and taxation from an MSN Money article:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/taxes/p48908.asp
How does the tax system pan out for couples not married? Isn’t there some kind of marriage break in the tax system? Maybe we need a new slogan related to the old “taxation without representation is tyranny” or something?
I am white, married, female and parent to four kids, and I think Arizona sucks for passing 102. I agree, lets get the state out of marriage and let the churches have it; they want it so much they can have it. Instead, let the state have civil unions that confer all the same legal stuff that “marriage” does now and the churches will be happy because they won’t be “forced” to perforn marriages for gay people. Win-win all the way and I will fight for that.
I was only 22 or 23 years old when a wonderful gay guy I worked with cried on my shoulder in the wee hours of the morning, pouring out all the years of societal and family rejection he had faced and almost screaming in his soul that he wished he could be “normal” (his word, not mine). I knew then that none of the gay people were making a “choice” to be gay. He said it so well that night when he said “I didn’t choose to be ostracised, I didn’t choose to give up the marriage, family, house in the suburbs with the picket fence, children. Why would anyone ‘choose’ this torture?” I could only have compassion for him and all the others that have been so maltreated for just being human beings. After all, can any heterosexual change what THEY are? Then why do we think gays can change who THEY are?
It disturbs me deeply that so many people still want to see gay people marginalized. They pay taxes, they vote, they consume and keep the economy going, they work, pay bills, volunteer, help others, have compassion, they are US. They are ME and I them because we are WE.
Let’s abolish state marriage and get state civil unions with all the legal rights that marriage confers now. Let the churches have marriage since they seem to want to co-opt it. We all need to fight the good fight for this.
Just imagine, two people in love go to the state and get “unified” and then arrange any sacred ceremony they choose with their friends and loved ones…in the woods if they want like my husband and I did. That would be perfect and no church to protest!
RA – so sad to see Cali go backwards like they did on Prop 8. How and why is it in fashion again to deny basic rights? Let’s hope it has a short, short life and a quick burial.
I do like the idea of civil unions for all as SG put it, “marriage” being left to houses of worship and all that. Everyone would have to get a civil union first, then the church gets their cut if they so decide.
2 cents worth from this 49 year old white heterosexual male…who is not married, never will be, and doesn’t really encourage it.
About the multi-IDs. Guilty! Months ago I used redtara – as a slightly more sexually-focused identity; and eleusis, who is my croneself. But I thought it was obvious that they were all tied to ‘mystes.’ Didn’t I registered them under the same email?
Anyway, no trolling intended, and hopefully none expressed. Just new bottles for the old wine. But I’ll be cutting that out.
It’s funny, cause I was just thinking about resurrecting redtara for another part of the PW website. Feeling the frisson around this issue, I ‘spect not…
Easy, angels…
Checking in from Tucson, Arizona,
“This means that thousands of California citizens checked “yes” for animal rights and “yes” for revoking human rights.”
Pima County was the only county in Arizona to vote NO on Prop 102 (our version of California’s Prop 8), and only 1 of 4 out of 15 AZ counties to have a majority vote for Obama. The dog protection act, Prop 401, was only limited to Tucson, but had a significantly wider margin of passing than 102 or Obama did in Pima. 🙁
Prop 102 received $8 million in financial support, not quite as much as the combined $70 million for California and Florida.
http://tucsonobserver.blogspot.com/2008/11/no-on-prop-102-disappointed-by-election.html
Youth turn-out may indicate a different result possible for the future.
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/11/05/5890
AZ unofficial election results:
http://www.azsos.gov/election/2008/General/2008_General_results_query.htm
Prop 401 results:
http://www.endtucsongreyhoundracing.com/blog/2008/11/04/good-news-tucson-dog-protection-passes-yes-on-401/
The good news is Prop 105 failed. If 105 had passed, ballot initiatives requiring tax increases would have had to pass by a majority of all registered voters, instead of a majority of people who voted.
Thanks to all the good souls who comment here.
I believe that Prop 8 was a bigger deal to the Orange County biggots than McCain was. Prop 8 was something they could sink their teeth into; the Presidential election was bigger than them. I swear, it almost felt re-vengeful – like “if we can’t have KKK in the White House, then we’ll just fix your asses right here in Sunny SoCAl.”
Yes; until we re-define “marriage” and get government out of our bedrooms AND our spiritual and romantic connections – until we separate our FINANCIAL arrangements from our HEART relationships – until we are allowed to use our legal system to provide for the ones we love and chose to lovel – we will not be able to settle on appropriate legal measures for sharing our resources with our loved one/s.
When I worked for the University of Michigan twenty some years ago – then/there I was allowed health benefits for my “significant other”. So far backwards we have gone.
Keep in mind that O.C. (Irvine) is full of KKK skinheads. I hope that now that Obama is in the White House it is THEY who decide that New Zealand looks like a better home than the USA. (Sorry to N.Z., meant figuratively.) We still need turn-around. Bigotry did not go away last night.
Rach, thanks. subG, insightfully rational observation.
This, (in here california), IS what grounded me through the Obama win (I am so freaking stoked). Bigotry is alive and well in California, still. I constantly run across people who have no freakin’ clue they’re bigots, and when “alerted” (in a kind and not so patronizing way) that they ARE bigots, they understand, and walk away very quickly digesting their fodder. (I have a way with an “ACCEPTING” smile).
I must say now, we’re beyond govt., we’re beyond “majority”. We’re the fucking shit that creates this reality. What WE say goes!! When we remember our “BIRTHRIGHT” as citizens/arbiters of this universe, we’ll scoff at these childish “laws”.
(I’ve really wanted to vent on the Ca. prop. 8 b.s.!!, that’s as gnarley as it gets now.)
The Universe is beyond law, perhaps it’s time we took the Universe into our own hands?!? (The future always comes but, now is where we exist!)
Love, fodder, Peace, and Happiness
Thank you for this post, Rachel. Did you publish your thesis and if so, would you provide the citation? (… and if not, do you have plans to 🙂 ?)
I just cannot believe this … I hardly know how to respond except to say that on behalf of everything I care about, everyone I know, I am sorry. It is insanely wrong for any one of us to suggest that gay marriage should be banned. I’m horrified and hope that we find a way around this travesty.
Notwithstanding the potential success of legal challenges to these new bans, I think there could be an ironic side-effect if they’re allowed to stand, at least in generally-progressive states.
With “marriage” having become legally defined in terms corresponding to a particular religious doctrine or custom — and I suspect hardly anyone who voted for the bans would identify as non-religious or at least non-Judeo-Christian — it is possible that affected States could choose to respect the separation of Church and State by ceasing to issue “marriage” licenses altogether, instead issuing legally-equivalent civil licenses of Union for all couples regardless of their gender assortment.
“Marriage” would thus become the de facto term only for a ceremony that happens in a church, in which the State has no business meddling or getting involved whatsoever; the State would then get out of the “marriage” business altogether and would instead only issue equivalent licenses of Union to all couples and conferring all the same legal rights and recognitions that “marriage” used to confer before that word became defined in religious terms that the State cannot enforce.
Ironically then, if all this comes to pass, the hue and cry that same-sex marriage would “destroy the institution of marriage” will have resulted in their passing legal restrictions on marriage that effectively removes the term “marriage” from the civil and legal sphere, so they will have authored their own undoing of their own cherished institution.
Letting our actions be motivated by what we dread always tends to bring about the very things we are trying to avoid — acting on fear always becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
-Tyson
Thanks for writing this post Rachel. I felt like I was the only one pointing out this dark cloud in a sky full of silver linings. Apparently, acceptance of diversity only goes so far in this country. In time, things will change.