Editor’s Note: The following article was written by Rahmana Finney in San Francisco, one of our new and vibrant additions to the Planet Waves staff. Below, she weighs in on Obama, race and Prop. 8. –RA
Dear Friend and Reader,
BETTY DAVIS IS ONE of my all-time favorite singers. She is a beautiful, statuesque, caramel Leo fireball who recorded a number of albums in the 1970s, and then just disappeared into relative obscurity. She dated Jimi Hendrix, was married to Miles Davis (who said she was just too young and wild) and had a kick-ass band backing her up which included members of Sly Stalone’s band and Sylvester doing back-ground vocals.
Sylvester was an openly gay man who could sing his ass off and did so for everyone from Chaka Khan to Luther Vandross, and unfortunately eventually died of AIDS. Betty’s music is just pure FUNK music at its nastiest and sweatiest. One of her most famous tunes is “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up”—a funk classic in the underground community of soul and funk music heads.
She wore lingerie on stage, cursed at the audience, and her album covers are some of the most erotic, sexy things ever made. She was unabashedly wild and free—long before Madonna or Britney, but little is known about her. She wore a big kinky afro and most definitely did not fit the establishment’s acceptance of beauty. But I think looking at her picture, you will agree she is the bomb.
I love Leos; especially Leo women. They are such rebels. They live by a creed that is very popular in the Black community. It is called “I don’t give a fuck.” It can be very handy in life. Very effective when dealing with cut-off utilities, racist bosses and the visual stimulation we are often assaulted by daily in our neighborhoods of crack addicts and gutted buildings. I am thinking of Miss Betty Davis as I celebrate this Leo man we just elected to be the first Black man for President of the United States of America, and simultaneously repealed the right to marriage for the gay community. Ah, bittersweet—one of my favorite words.
It applies to the first and last breath you take and every one in between. Because I toasted last night, as a matter of fact, shed tears, with black people who voted for Obama and Proposition 8, banning marriage for anyone who isn’t straight. Damn it why did it have to be bittersweet? I am amazed that these same black people who are overjoyed at a milestone in the history of this country being set, could be comfortable with such blatant prejudice. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why people care who other people are fucking. I just don’t get it! And the thought occurs to me: HOMOPHOBIA IS ANOTHER FORM OF SEXISM.
Does anyone feel me on this one? This Leo man we just voted for is tall, dark and handsome, straight and married, and a father. He is not the typical angry stereotype of Black men. He is measured, calm, sophisticated and very political. And he fits into our comfortable categories. He’s not threatening. Why is gay marriage threatening? Why are people so uncomfortable even just imagining two people of the same gender having sex?
Because it is outside of the roles that have been established for us. And it challenges the roles we have accepted that have been defined for us. Mother, father, marriage, job. Men are the breadwinners, women are the caretakers. These roles have defined men and women of every culture for eons. This is what I think: when men and women take on the exact opposite of these roles, and choose to do what they feel in their hearts, even when it doesn’t fit in with the status quo, it makes the people who decided to go along with these limiting, dare I say, stifling roles a little pissed.
You mean, I didn’t have to stay in that bad marriage for 20 years? I didn’t have to cook dinner every single night? I didn’t have to stay in that awful 9-5 for 20 years so I would be respected as a man who took care of his family? Obama still fits that traditional role, and I think that it was pointed out here on PW that we vote for who we want to be our Daddy. If Obama was gay, we would not have voted for him. Even if he had the exact same personality in every way, except that he wasn’t married to a woman.
Leo women like Betty Davis, and so many that I know, easily and effortlessly step out of the traditional roles that women have been cast in. And gay men are thrilled to see them do it. Madonna has a huge gay male following. So does Grace Jones.
Somehow, sadly, gender and race issues are still not on the table as equal contenders for equality in the minds and hearts of the majority. I guess we can only deal with one issue at a time. We have finally as a collective opened our mind and allowed a Black Man to be our “Daddy” and we have said, “We trust you to take care of us and make healthy decisions for everyone.”
I wonder how long it will take for us to not just love, worship and appreciate members of the gay community for all of the wonderful artistic, musical and diverse creative contributions they have made to our community, but also see them as parents, leaders, scholars, innovators and begin to actually trust them to be sensitive and intelligent enough to actually make decisions for and with us.
Because Betty Davis probably voted for Barack. She knows what it’s like to grow up in a world where you are pushed down for everything you are; in her case, black, female and NASTY. He represents change for everyone. Let’s help make him see how important that is for the gay community as well.
Let’s help him keep the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community in mind as he faces his own challenges as a black man trying to work within an established community of and created by people who enslaved and oppressed his ancestors from the 1600s until today.
Yes, today.
Just last summer, six black boys who were under sat in a Louisiana jail facing life in prison for getting into a fight with a white boy who, along with friends, had hung a noose around a tree in the middle of the school campus. This was done to mock them, because they had recently finally been given permission to sit under that tree, which in the past had been a hang-out only for white kids.
I plan on confronting these people who live in my apartment complex about their Yes on Prop 8 sign very soon; after a few more shared glasses of wine and slices of cake, and they don’t perceive me as threatening. I will try to be as non-sexual and detached as my 5-placement in Scorpio ass can be.
Yours & truly,
Rahmana Finney
P.S. — I wrote this article prior to San Francisco’s city officials and civil rights groups filing cases to repeal Prop 8. Thank God/Goddess for San Francisco! After reading a few articles about how shocked people are that a progressive state like California could do this, let me remind readers that THE BAY AREA is progressive; California is a very large state and there is a lot of land in-between San Fran and L.A. We should not continue to be naГЇve enough to be surprised by bigotry and prejudice. An un-prepared warrior is more likely to be caught off guard. It will take many, many more years to eradicate these attitudes and we must be vigilant and confident that each little gain is worth a thousand miles.
gaelfire: Sly Stone! My mistake . . . which i caught yesterday and just had not gotten around to correcting it. Thank you! Can you imagine Rambo in a band . . . whew
Mystes – bless you…
Are we talking about Sly Stone (of “Sly and the Family Stone”), or Sylvester “Sly” Stallone (a.k.a., “Rambo”)?
Creatif…. honey …. arrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhh
I am SO on to this shit. And I am so gonna fix it. The utter and complete IDIOCY of trying to lie to those little DNA antennae units called ‘our children’ is over, my friends. Anyone who thinks that lying to their kids is “protecting” them needs to spend a few hours in a floatation tank, with a nice fat hit of Auntie Lysergic wandering through their blood.
Kids are aware of everything. Shovelling lies at them only reduces their sense of balance and confidence in their own intuition, and weakens them for the Great Work ahead.
Now that I’ve screamed, let me just apologize to every child who has ever had to endure being treated as though they were a Fabrege egg made of milkweed and moondust.
Children –get this clearly– are MADE FROM SEX. It is the first thing they come into this world knowing about, and their innocence is a deeper, sweeter, clearer form of their own DIMORPHISM.
To intentionally surround that innocence with perverse, sad, idiotic, adult *shame* is to strike at the very core of their safety, internal balance and well-being.
Okay, I gotta go walk this off…
Ooouff.
Janes D – ‘They can spray it with a can of gold shellac all they want, the whole thing is a patriarchal property-sorting device.’
LOL. That is EXACTLY what it is! What a great description.
Marriage has never been a big fantasy of mine. My Mum kicked my Dad out before I was 5. He was a great guy, from what I knew of him, but he was too young and… well they both were. I think the idea was that he was meant to consider his behaviour, realise the error of his ways and then return to the family nest. He must have forgotten, as he didn’t return. In fact he moved away, then further away still, then to America, then…well he just didn’t come home. And there were 4 kids driving my mother out of her tree.
Not long after, she then took up with her best friends husband and my (then) best friends Dad – himself a father of 6! He wouldn’t leave his wife of course. But we all had to cover for her and LIE. It kind of ruined my friendship (I was about 6 at this point) because there was this huge lie right in the middle of it. But would you believe that they are still having an affair to this day – almost 40 years on?. She is 75 and he is almost 80. His wife knows, the kids know – no-one talks about it. And when she had her heart attack last year, he couldn’t even come and visit the so called love of his life because of all the fucking guilt glue he is stuck in. It’s all such bollocks. I love her and we are close, but I pretty much lost my ‘mother’ at 5/6 – she disappeared into 4 decades of depression from thwarted love and not choosing something else, something better. I parented her quite a bit, though it has long stopped once I got the hang os this in my early 30’s.
And the level of deceipt we were swimming around in… it’s still going on now, the deceipt I mean,; her friends, sister, mutual friends know nothing of this secret life of my mother. She will tell them (anyone, in fact) anything rather than the truth. But then, she did that to herself for all of these years.
None of my 3 sisters (including myself) are married, are planning to be married, will be married. We just don’t do marriage. But, I have an amazing partner with whom I am very, very happy and that will do me. We’re together because we want to be and as long as that is the case, may blessings continue to come our way.
Love to you all.
I was just thinking that it may be the Mormons and African Americans who’ve likely suffered the most sexual abuse (or fear of abuse) over the last two hundred years or so. If there is no father figure from whom you can draw inner strength, energy and direction, how does it impact the choices you make throughout life? Mother may produce and run the show, but it is father who sets the tone of the home – whether it will be a happy, joyful home, or a mean-spirited and angry home, or somewhere in between.
The women in my family have always been the property owners. My grandmother owned the land, and now my mother does. The indians were pretty much a matriarchal society too – you always know who your mother is but you can never be sure of the father. My daughter that I gave up for adoption has no interest in the father, but we are quite close, and she is the boss of her family too.
My spouse considers me the head of the family. he always has and always will. We’ve been married almost 36 years but he still acts like a visitor afraid of wearing out his welcome. LOL maybe that’s why it worked out ok.
Being polite to each other makes up for a lot. We have a lesbian couple who are great friends – have been for at least 30 years. They have been together as long as we have been married and they act a lot like us too. One is aggressive, friendly and open, the other is shy and retiring. They never mentioned getting married, but at this stage of the game I’m sure they would appreciate spousal benefits. I have a male cousin who is now in his 70s whose lived with a partner for what? Maybe 40 years now. What family doesn’t have a gay or lesbian member who isn’t well loved? I had a young female cousin who died of aids when it was still something you didn’t tell people about.
I worked and am friends with a lot of African American people; people I’ve known the last 39 years. They were always vocal about the gays and lesbians. My husband always said he would have hated being a black gay man, because their people give them such a hard time.
I do not buy that it is a religious reason that people voted for Prop 8. It might be linked more to fear of abuse. Otherwise, why would anyone care? We all want our family and friends to have the happiness we have found for ourselves in life.
I’m not much of a marriage person (let me say my own vows under the stars to the universe and I’m cool), it’s more of an incantation than a marriage. I think when folks realize that marriage is more of a “sacred”/”universal” understanding, and not a position of bigotry, the vibe will lighten up. Marriage is the court cards of the tarot. Constantly revolving, never ceasing, always continuing on. Folk, generally, have their heads up their asses. At least to some degree. It’s very saturnian in “our” society. Saturn is a bad ass mother fucker but, somehow we need to evolve that saturn… (uranus will help!). Saturn can be used to evolve that focused body that one is, ’cause saturn truly is an evolved coolness when utilised as such. IT’S THE BAGGAGE you speak of! History and karma are one. Flesh and spirit are one. Will we swim against the current? AND, how will we navigate that current? (It truly is good times, goin’ against the flow). At the same time we ARE the flow! That is a difficult one when we’re disconnected. Disconnected from the essence that is I!!! The point that kicks it inside, waiting to be tapped, the YOU, I, vibe/reality/understanding, the point where we work through FREEDOM, NOT programming!
Allright, my brain’s fading…. gotta…. go…. (damned a.d.d.!!!)
Jere
” So the institution of marriage was for lineage and property, while love was held to a higher standard.
Is there any chance that the GBLT community could come to understand our/their exclusion on the basis of this history? Or does that just seem atavistic?
I do wonder about the investment of energy in pursuit of this вЂ?right.’ But maybe, as I mentioned yesterday, same-sex marriage will fundamentally change the power structure built in to the arrangement. ”
These are my thoughts exactly, articulated pristinely. When I was very young I could not process how exactly love, this wild jellynet of indigo and sex juice, was going to be improved by all that hardware. I didn’t get it but I figured, well, maybe it’s something I need to take everybody’s word for and went right ahead and ruined my life anyway. I imagine one of my problems was that I never bothered to marry anyone I really loved due to a background suspicion that that would be one sure way to wreck it.
It always seemed to me that it was the lovers of any gender or combination who were the ones blessed with an unlimited supply of lovedrug and engaged in the happy activity of drugging each other. It wasn’t lost on me that the Greeks could be moved to poetry over a pretty boy but were happy to procreate within firm guidelines for the good of the state.
Marriage has typically been about wealth; most often human ownership and a deep obsession with which ram got what lamb on what ewe. It was the way in which the ancient matriarchal reality was suppressed. Instead of being the miraculous creation of the mother, the fruit of any union was instantly considered part of the estate of the *male*. That’s the root of the marriage tradition! That! They can spray it with a can of gold shellac all they want, the whole thing is a patriarchal property-sorting device.
~j
addendum…
Now that I think on this a little more, you know, it might all be just perfect. 2500 years ago a man’s �true love’ was vouched not to the wife (except in Homeric hymn) but to the erotomene, the boy-wonder. And the only authentic women in the polis were haetera, brilliant companions to powerful men, but whose true loves were often other women.
So the institution of marriage was for lineage and property, while love was held to a higher standard.
Is there any chance that the GBLT community could come to understand our/their exclusion on the basis of this history? Or does that just seem atavistic?
I do wonder about the investment of energy in pursuit of this �right.’ But maybe, as I mentioned yesterday, same-sex marriage will fundamentally change the power structure built in to the arrangement.
Insh’allah’tu.
I do agree that the married condition is a strange ‘luxury’ for women. There is the initial burst of being socially-visible (non-duplexed women are invisible at best, threatening at worst) and within easy ID, with the privilege that yields. Then comes the slow accretion of awareness: that you are bonded, really *bonded* to someone whose identity as a provider/singlesexer/paterfamilias depends on a certain complicity from your side. You provide the womb, the shape for the rest of the family to stream into; but more problematically, you provide the rationale for all of that life-beating ‘self-control.’
Karmically, this blows on so many levels you can’t even imagine…
And if a woman does take on that rationale, that’s fine as long as she is willing to put away her own phallus, but goddess help her if she ever drops a hint that she’s packin’… that her desire is as puissant as her mates. Though I hope the percentage is dropping, I would say that 80% of the men on this planet can’t figure out whether to shit or go blind in front of such clarity.
Fortunately, I just got to conjoin a real man to one of those phallic sisters, and they are going to take it to the moon. For this I live.
I do agree that the married condition is a strange ‘luxury’ for women. There is the initial burst of being socially-visible (non-duplexed women are invisible at best, threatening at worst) and within easy ID, with the privilege that yields. Then comes the slow accretion of awareness: that you are bonded, really *bonded* to someone whose identity as a provider/singlesexer/paterfamilias depends on a certain complicity from your side. You provide the womb, the shape for the rest of the family to stream into; but more problematically, you provide the rationale for all of that life-beating ‘self-control.’
Karmically, this blows on so many levels you can’t even imagine…
And if a woman does take it on that rationale, that’s fine as long as she is willing to put away her own phallus, but goddess help her if she ever drops a hint that she’s packin’… that her desire is as puissant as her mates. Though I hope the percentage is dropping, I would say that 80% of the men on this planet can’t figure out whether to shit or go blind in front of such clarity.
Fortunately, I just got to conjoin a real man to one of those phallic sisters, and they are going to take it to the moon. For this I live.
I know, right? This is like the root of all human suffering, ESPECIALLY for women. I mean, I personally like to see women without anything on them, no ring, no tennis bracelet, no anklet, no earrings, no little gold belts, nothing. I love what that means. Certainly not all fluffed out and lacquered up for a ceremonial hymen-puncturing.
It’s disgusting. It’s *primitive*. I didn’t used to think so( at least I wasn’t informed through experience) and I hate to ruin anybody’s fun, but as far as I’m concerned if you happen to be in a protected class that protects you from ten to life in the sexual gulag, by all means, stay there. Don’t let them make you give it up for anything.
“(Yes, well, I also invoked Aphrodite during the banns. Aphrodite. The Queen Slut of all sex extramarital. I get away with shit…)”
:). Ohhhh….so *that’s* how you do it…
~j
~Janes! This “They should issue these to women especially. You could apply for a license not to ever have to marry anybody, ever.”
…is weirdly prescient. While in my sarcerdotal mode back in September, someone from the wedding party asked if I would ever (ahem) ‘marry’ my principal consort. I just guffahed and said: “No, but I’d be agreeable to a ceremony in which I swore never to marry him. Or anyone.”
(Yes, well, I also invoked Aphrodite during the banns. Aphrodite. The Queen Slut of all sex extramarital. I get away with shit…)
You know, I’ve been married *alot* and I can’t say I recommend it.
I’d think it would be great to have license to bypass it. They should issue these to women especially. You could apply for a license not to ever have to marry anybody, ever. No one asks you when you’re going to find a nice fella, for example, nobody pressures you to have kids. You never have to find out the day before a frothy expensive wedding that you hate your fiance and realize you have to go through with it anyway because undoing it is such a hassle. Little bags of frosted almonds in white mesh and silver velvet ribbon at 900 dollars yard, what are you going to do with 150 of those? Might as well get married, your parents rented an entire Hilton and Aunt Maureen came all the way there with her oxygen machine.
Ah, God. The money. The waste. Vellum envelopes stuffed with cash, you need the townhouse and you need the furniture and you need the stationary and you need the matching bedspread and bedcoat and bedhat and the mighty mighty threadcount. Ugh. Two, three years, you spend just on *buying your married stuff*. Home Depot would *pay you* to get married.
The only reason people get married is because they’re tricked into it when they’re young and have a strange illusion that the reason their parents are so miserable is because “they married the wrong people. ” This is not the problem at all. They’re fine people. It’s marriage. It’s got germs that suck out your mitochondria until you can’t feel your genitals anymore.
Marriage is a *bad idea*. Whatever they told you it is, it’s not that. It’s a legal document that stops people from leaving brainmelting, soulshattering, desperate pockets of misery. It enforces *fines* on you if you end a relationship you started voluntarily. How can it be a problem to have the “government in your bedroom” when the gain in this is the legal right to draw up contracts to ensure your lover won’t fuck around?
I don’t know one person over fifty who even likes the person they’re married to. They’re so deprived of light and air that they can’t even remember how they ended up living in the same house. Most of them stay together after the kids are gone because splitting their financial assets would destroy years of savings. And: once you end the thing, you’re impoverished, exhausted, and have somehow wasted more years of energy that way than if you had just stayed where you were, staring at the wall in the living room, wishing one of you would just stop breathing.
I’m serious. Run. It’s a trap.
~j
Rahmana,
Yes, “American Beauty” is one of my favorites also, tragedy though it is.
xo!
(Sam Mendes, Dir. Kevin Spacey 1999)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/)
I’m with y’all on this: Prop 8 looks like a classic case of ignorance overcoming all. I keep feeling this is going to down in the courts as being a loss of civil rights, perhaps redefining ‘marriage’ as it were for all time (in America that is).
May the misguided see the error of their ways, and we can all rejoice in equality soon.
Gay Marriage Ban Looks to Have Passed in California, but Is It Legal?
By Karen Ocamb, AlterNet
Posted on November 6, 2008, Printed on November 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106161/
Hundreds of gay people and their allies at the Music Box in Hollywood on Election Night thundered their approval when states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio were called for Barack Obama. Like so many others around the world, gay people, anxious for change, felt the pendulum of history about to make a huge sweep in a progressive direction.
In between the election results and foot-stomping music, a steady stream of elected officials — including new hero Jack O’Connell, California’s superintendent of education, who appeared in a No on Prop. 8 ad condemning the “lies” promulgated by the Yes on 8 campaign — promised to “fight for equality” even if Proposition 8 passed. But for most, that was unthinkable. How could the people of California in 2008 vote to eliminate the existing fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry and write that prohibition into the state constitution?
When the news networks announced that Obama would be the next president of the United States, and the first African-American president, the theater seemed to shake with the explosion of joy. The cheers were even louder when Obama mentioned gays in his acceptance speech.
But as the night wore on, the revelers became more and more somber as it appeared that Prop. 8 would pass and make same-sex couples an unwanted part of history, too. By morning, while the world rejoiced at the prospect of a new beginning, lesbian and gay couples cried in despair at the profound loss of equality.
By Wednesday morning, with 95 percent of the precincts tallied, passage of Prop. 8 looked assured with 52 percent of the vote and a 400,000-vote advantage. But No on Prop. 8 leaders refused to concede until all the votes were counted.
“The fundamental fact is, the issue in this election race is too close to call, and people’s literal fundamental rights hang in the balance,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Executive Director Kate Kendell during a hastily called conference call.
Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors told reporters that the uncounted absentee ballots are not the same as those filed early by older conservative voters.
“People who do absentee and just basically bring them in that day or mail them in the day before — like me — tend to be more progressive and more likely to be with us,” Kors said. “And then there are kind of provisional ballots — which happen to a lot of new voters — which we know tend to be with us.”
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is expected to make an announcement about the uncounted ballots by Thursday afternoon.
Meanwhile, California county clerks stopped issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples based on the semi-official results and a provision in the state constitution that says that, if approved by a majority of voters, any amendment or revision should take effect immediately.
Several lawsuits were immediately filed seeking an injunction and arguing the unconstitutionality of Prop. 8 to the California Supreme Court. Attorney Gloria Allred and her partner John West filed a suit in the high court on behalf of their clients Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, who were the first lesbian couple married in Los Angeles after same-sex marriage became legal.
“Prop. 8, if it passes, conflicts with the equal protection clause (in the California Constitution),” Allred said at an afternoon news conference in her Los Angeles office on Wednesday. “We will argue to the court that Prop. 8 is a disguised revision to the constitution which cannot be imposed by the ordinary amendment process, which only requires a simple majority. We believe that then the court must hold that California may not issue marriage licenses to non-gay couples because if it does, it would be violating the equal protection clause as straight couple would have more rights, by being allowed to marry, than gay couples.”
Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the ACLU also filed a lawsuit directly with the high court challenging Prop. 8. They, too, allege that the measure is invalid because it failed to follow the proper process required to make far-reaching changes to the California Constitution — such as denying a fundamental right to a minority and prohibiting the courts from remedying abuses of that minority’s rights.
Late in the afternoon, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo joined yet another lawsuit filed by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Santa Clara County Counsel Anne C. Ravel to invalidate Prop. 8.
“Equal protection under the law is a bedrock principle of our constitutional democracy,” said Delgadillo. “Proposition 8 flies in the face of that principle and strips away fundamental rights from countless Californians. Proposition 8’s supporters won a temporary victory, but only after waging a misleading campaign based on fear and bankrolled by out-of-state interests. I am committed to using every resource at my disposal to secure the full civil rights of my constituents and all Californians. We will not allow discrimination to be written into our state constitution, and I am confident we will preserve equal rights for all. This is California.”
Late Wednesday, Attorney General Jerry Brown told reporters that he would defend the rights of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples married between June 16 and Nov. 5 but added that he would also defend the new law, if challenged.
Prop. 8 supporters, meanwhile, were gleeful. “We know God has gone before us,” said Ron Prentice, executive director of the California Family Council, in a Focus on the Family newsletter. “Tens of thousands of people were praying and fasting to give victory to California and protect marriage.” Rallies in West Hollywood and San Francisco were scheduled for Wednesday night to try to provide some cathartic release for the agonizing civil rights setback the gay community perceives is inevitable with the ultimate passage of Prop. 8.
В© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/106161/
THANK YOU mystes xoxoxoxoxoxo. I am learning so much from you all. “Opening into the other”–i am going to meditate on that. Very hard for me. Trust issues. Well, no maybe more like fear. People respond almost violently to deep insight, but i am beginning to see i am home here at PW. I have learned so much from reading my Pisces brother’s stuff here . . . i’ve also got this Virgo rising, so extra umph to that sting.
AWORDEDGWISE: Any response from me would be redundant; you put it beautifully and i agree with everything you’ve said. Have you ever seen “American Beauty? One of my altime favorite films . . .
My beautiful PW Friends (Happy, Joyful, Effervescent, Blithesome, Cheerful, Jolly and Gay):
I think we often forget that many people who elect to deny rights to others are not addressing the issue that we – and they – think they are.
While I do think that many who voted for Prop 8 were busy being grossed out by the idea of men making love to men and women making love to women — I’m more inclined to believe that more of them don’t really think about SEX and INTIMACY at all. They repel it like oil on water. And they certainly don’t FEEL ABOUT Sex and Intimacy or they wouldn’t be spying into their neighbor’s bedrooms or legal papers.
I only reiterate what others have pointed out — many people responded to Prop 8 with an effort to ‘protect’ themselves and their families from something they don’t understand. (I mean, if you don’t know about AIDS, you won’t get it, right? If we don’t teach our kids to use condoms, they won’t have sex, right? If we keep our feet on the bed, the boogie man won’t get us, right?)
This is an aspect of what we call human nature that I prefer to call Human Stupidity. I’d like to see Obama put THAT on his Agenda for Change. (no irony intended.)
Rahmana asks: “How much Scorpio do you have in you?”
Just the one, doll. Saturn in Scorp, and it is *doing* it’s job. But I have a nice leetle set of firecrackers popping away in my 8th house, which is generally ruled (ain’t it?) by Pluto.
“Cause i got a bunch! And i know many people think i’m crazy, but i think issues of sublimated sexuality are at the foundation of so many societal problems.”
Y’asm, you do. Two of my closest friends are Scorps, and my two nemeses are as well. Crazy? Nah… I feel you as *just* about intense enough. Print, and especially electronic print conveys the heat nicely.
“I know, i know, i’ve been disturbing people since i can remember. But i have 5 planets in Scorpio and i don’t even SEE the superficial stuff–and i try really hard because it’s easier to fit in that way–but my eyes seem to be only attuned to all the stuff under-neath the surface.”
Attagrrl. Hang with it as long as you can. Just remember to take in BIG cycles of the other thing that Scorp can engift: profound, vertiginous, delirious opening into the Other. That’ll take the edge off of all that Insight.
Kissies,
Auntie M
According to the exit polling, there’s enough blame to go around. Don’t forget the 49 percent of Asians who voted for Prop 8. And the 53 percent of Latinos who fell in line for it too. And then there is the white vote in support of 8. Slightly under 50% percent of them, a group representing 63% of California voters, voted “Yes” on 8. Last I checked blacks held little sway over all of those groups.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-leon-roker/stop-blaming-californias_b_142018.html
The writer of the article seems to forget that whites are a majority of voters in the state and that if the amendment to strip marriage away from same-sex couples is successful it will be because a lot of white voters voted against equal treatment under the law for gay couples. It is true that a majority of Black and Latino voters may end up voting against us on marriage, but according to the Public Policy Institute of California Black voters account for about 6% of voters in most statewide elections and Latino voters account for roughly 15% of votes cast. Together Black and Latino voters account for about 21% percent of votes. Even if every Black and Latino voter votes for Proposition 8, 21% of the vote is not nearly enough for the anti-gay amendment to pass. It would still need strong support from white voters.
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/09/black_voters_not_to_blame_if_proposition.php
NOT ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE FOR PROP 8
“WHY AFRICAN AMERICANS SHOULD OPPOSE PROP 8”
“PROP. 8 RESTS ON THE SAME LOGIC THAT PROHIBITED INTERRACIAL COUPLES FROM MARRYING A PREMISE THAT CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT CITED IN IT’S RULING IN LEGALIZING SAME SEX MARRIAGES. SLAVERY AND ANTEBELLUM WERE ROOTED IN RIGID DEFINITIONS OF FAMILY AND MARRIAGE AIMED AT PROTECTING PROPERTY RIGHTS,LINES OF DECENT AND WHITE PURITY.THIS LEGACY CONTINUES TO INFLUENCE THE GENDER HIERACHIES UNDERLYING SO CALLED TRADITIONAl FAMILY STRUCTURES AND TO POLICE FAMILIES THAT AREN’T NUCLUER OR HETEROSEXUAL.VOTING TO AMEND THE CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION WILL EXTEND THIS LEGACY.
“Although there are several California-based African-American churches that have consistently advocated for gay and lesbian partnerships, black religious fundamentalism is still the number one barrier to aligning a progressive black civil rights agenda with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) rights. Gay and lesbian families of color are invisible in the mainstream media, yet they are an integral part of communities of color. Contrary to the propaganda of black fundamentalists, gay and lesbian caregivers, parents and grandparents nurture black children alongside and within so-called straight households. As a black atheist and parent, I want my seven-month-old daughter to grow up in a culture where — gay, straight or bi — her entire range of personhood, love and commitment to another human being is not legally bound by the Paleolithic mores of religious fundamentalism. In this regard, voting no on Prop 8 is the only moral choice.”
http://www.alternet.org/module/pr…ion/105213
SPEAKING ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK LEO WE JUST VOTED FOR OBAMA STRONGLY APPOSED PROP 8!!
Oh GOD i love talking to you all!
Mystes: “and this fresh engagement also interferes with the ability to forget the extent to which desire becomes not just sublimated but actually perverted into economic and social assets. Frozen ones, might i add.”
BRILLIANT!!! How much Scorpio do you have in you? Cause i got a bunch! And i know many people think i’m crazy, but i think issues of sublimated sexuality are at the foundation of so many societal problems.
I know, i know, i’ve been disturbing people since i can remember. But i have 5 planets in Scorpio and i don’t even SEE the superficial stuff–and i try really hard because it’s easier to fit in that way–but my eyes seem to be only attuned to all the stuff under-neath the surface. I’m so sorry about that sting, but we are the sensitive ones, and we have to be AWAKE. And i love human beings, we are so beautiful and so amazing, and we all deserve to be free.
AWORDEDGEWISE: I love the purple penguin analogy. It’s crazy how homosexuality is looked at like an infectious disease that you might catch if you get too close. Let me say to the LGBT community THANK YOU. You are freeing all of us. I daresay that i think sexism might be a tougher issue to tackle than racism; that’s up for discussion–let me know what you think.
I found a great quote from a book by Suzanne Pharr called “Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism”:
“To be a lesbian is to be perceived as someone who has stepped out of line, who has moved out of sexual/economic dependence on a male, who is woman-identified. A lesbian is perceived as someone who can live without a man, and who is therefore (however illogically) against men. A lesbian is perceived as being outside the acceptable, routinized order of things. She is seen as someone who has no societal institutions to protect her and who is not privileged to the protection of individual males. Many heterosexual women see her as some one who stands in contradiction to the sacrifices they have made to conform to compulsory heterosexuality. A lesbian is perceived as a threat to the nuclear family, to male dominance and control, to the very heart of sexism.”
Rahmana… there’s something about the *energy* of your writing that makes me want to start drinking at 10 in the morning and not stop till we have re-written the Bill of Rights.
(And hear me right: I *only* drink a) to excess, and b) to celebrate, and that maybe 5 times a year. I’m kinda running behind for 2008…)
I think Queers-getting-married, reveals, in their enthusiasm and well, *newness* to the institution, the authentic meaning of connubial energy. That, I think, freaks the shit out of the sleeping herds. To marry: to declare, in a state of deep bliss, that you really, really, really want to fuck this person. A lot, in many different ways, times, circumstances. And that fucking him/her is designed to expand and propogate other kinds of creative energy.
I think this reawakened energy makes sleepwalking through conventional banns more difficult; monosexual heteros start tossing and turning in their sleep, almost but not quite unforgetting what they originally wanted to be. And this fresh engagement also interferes with the ability to forget the extent to which desire becomes not just sublimated but actually perverted into economic and social assets. Frozen ones, might I add.
***
Anyway, I lovelovelove your voice on these boards! Bring ’em on…
Same ol’ same ol’.
People don’t see their own bias’ — only that directed toward them. The fears we own are the fears we defend. In doing so we feel as though we safe to be who we are, think the way we think.
If I have a gun, it’s to defend myself – but I wouldn’t HURT anyone. If my neighbor has a gun, s/he might shoot me.
Simplified Prop 8 nonesense to my kids this way: Prop 8 is like voting to make it illegal for, oh say, purple penguins to ride in elevators. I mean, after all, my kid might get into an elevator with one and – I dunno – become a purple penguin –? To me, that’s how random the notion of no-gay-marriage is. Disturbing.
If I count to 3, on “three” will everyone put down their gun at the same time?
If I count to 8 – will the self-righteous stop looking into other people’s bedrooms? And give back the legal right just stripped away for ANYONE to provide for their loved one/s via marriage?
Point of HUGE ANGER for me — NO CHURCH should be mucking about in the definition of LEGAL marriage. The point at which any CHURCH gets into my POLITICS is the point at which I stop listening. (I know, churchs stick their noses it politics all the time — what I’m saying is ‘that is the point at which I no longer listen’.)
I PRAY the issue of EQUAL CIVIL RIGHTS FOR ALL AMERICANS makes it’s way to the US Supreme Court with Results=Equality.
marymack–I am not surprised at all that this could happen. And neither are any of the black men i know who cannot catch a cab, or the women i know whose bosses talk to them like they aren’t shit, or anyone who is aware that young men are being sacrificed for Haliburton’s profit margin. I am specifically concerned with the concept of “this day and age” because i think that there is something to this idea of “two America’s.” The people in this country who have profitted from Capitalism and who fit the status quo roles seem to be completely un-aware of just how much bigotry and prejudice are still very much alive. Because . . .
Tachikata–you nailed it. What we are talking about is changing people’s ATTITUDES which is significantly harder than changing policy. That is why i brought up the Jena 6–racism is alive and well. And so is sexism. As long as we live in a world were young girls in Africa are getting their clits sliced off, we have a looooooong way to go. Outside of whatever issues are popular to the masses at the time, the root cause of Homophobia is that people are uncomfortable with men being “feminine” and women being “masculine.”
I”m not saying positive advancements have not been made–obviously we have come a long way since “coloreds only” and “whites only” signs over the bathrooms, but i know, and most black folk that you talk to if they are really honest with you, are quite aware and experience on a daily basis the fact that racism is alive and well. I think by the same token, most women who deal with men in power on a daily basis will tell you that sexism is alive and well. I think we are living in a time where we have learned to at least make everything “look” good, but underneath the surface, it’s a different story . . .
I continue to be mystified and saddened by the Prop 8 vote, too. Makes no sense to me how this can happen in this day and age. I figure that this is explained by more than bigotry and sexism … perhaps it’s timing. People could only accept so much change in their lives at one time and the time was about Obama.
I plan on confronting these people who live in my apartment complex about their Yes on Prop 8 sign very soon; after a few more shared glasses of wine and slices of cake, and they don’t perceive me as threatening. I will try to be as non-sexual and detached as my 5-placement in Scorpio ass can be.
that is such a beautiful thing to do: to talk to people about deadly serious issues, nicely over common ground. It also burns me up that it is key (and it is) for you to be non-sexual and detached…. to talk about why everyone needs the same rights…
ah well.
oops I just tried to post this but I think it wound up in the wrong place. Let’s try this:
Soo So happy about this post. I am a HUGE Betty Davis fan, I have mars and mercury in Leo, and she is just one of my heros, and also very related to the word bittersweet in my mind. She gave so much, was scorned for the qualities that make male rockers Gods…
I have wondered this past year if the sucsess of Sharon Jones would spark an interest in Betty’s music and life, but I haven’t seen it happen. Really good thread running through this piece. Remember Betty’s song ‘They say I’m different’ Rock On.