Athletes And Bigotry
There is quite a bit of commentary, at least in the sports world, today surrounding some inflammatory anti-gay comments made by a spokesman (now former) for the NBA. I'm at a loss as to how this can be such a big deal in a society that keeps offering up anti-homosexual bills, laws and ammendments, and, more appallingly, passing them. Is it then acceptable to pass laws that actually damage a group of people just as long as you don't say that you don't like them on national television? I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem all ass backwards to any of the rest of you? Granted, his comments don't help, but isn't the bigger issue taking a bit too much of a back seat to one bigot's comments?
Perhaps I am not shocked by one person's comments because I witnessed millions of you acting together in a voice that declared a large group of our brothers and sisters to be subhuman during multiple election years. When millions of you fail your fellow man, or even actively stab them in the back, what's one more voice? Just one voice that will blow over in a week and be forgotten while hundreds of thousands have to deal with the bigotry that has made it on the books. One voice undoubtedly denounced by many of the same hypocrites that either actively helped or passively watched while these atrocities hit the books.
The reality is that he has a right to his opinion, and the right to voice it. I would strongly defend both. Even if I think his comments portray him as an ignorant ass. Even the Ku Klux Klan has the right to express their opinions. We are just sensible enough not to allow them to do it through legislation.
Is this an excessively harsh comparison? Ask the woman who sits helpless as the very decisions that might decide her lifelong partner's life or death are made by doctors who can only legally take the advice of a family that disowned the patient years before. Ask the same woman who watches all of the shared property she had with that partner dispensed by the same family as they see fit, just days after she was barred from the funeral. While she faces all of this, what do you say to her? "It was God's will?" Somehow I suspect this will not cut it. I suspect she would ask, as I myself wonder, how you could worship a god so cruel as to want people to suffer this way.
Before some of you get all defensive about that, bear in mind that I haven't pointed fingers at any religion yet.
I have heard many arguments against gay marriage and several associated rights. The only thing that allows me to retain even a modicum of faith in humanity is the strong belief that so many of you actually fail to see the significance of the issue. The HRC does not call themselves the "Human Rights Campaign" simply because it is a catchy name. It is a human rights issue, and a more significant one than many of you blow it off as being.
This goes beyond a question of who kisses who. At best it is a question of second class citizenship. At worst, as subhuman classification. When you have voted on, or ignored the many referendums and candidate positions on this issue, have any of the following aspects of the issue crossed your mind?
As a legal institution, marriage conveys many basic rights in one package. Example for NY. There are also thousands of Federal laws revolving around rights of spouses.
That refusing marriage rights to homosexuals does in effect make homosexuality illegal? 26 states still have laws against adultery (sex out of wedlock). As such, refusing homosexuals the right to marry means refusing them the right to engage in intimate relationships. Of course, that is what people are trying to do, isn't it?
What puzzles me is why. It would seem cut and dried. If you have a problem with the concept of homosexual relations, don't get involved with them. If you have a problem seeing that homosexuals exist, that is unfortunately your problem, not theirs. Racists don't have a right to enforce any laws keeping other races out of their field of vision.
The reality is that no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, your right to swing your fist ends at the other guys nose. Not approving of an activity does not give you the right, in and of itself, to legislate it away.
But what of the concept that the majority speaks in these bills and laws? It doesn't matter. Yes, in a democratic society, I just said that the majority's opinion doesn't matter. Restriction of the basic rights and equality of an entire group of people, even if everyone else agrees, is against the very principles this nation was founded on.
I did say just because. I point this out because here is where people like to throw out the questions of pedophiles, murderers etc... This is a foolish and uneducated argument. There is obviously a clear cut difference between a relationship between consenting adults, and victimization as is the case in these latter examples.
Now if one group wanted to just step up and say, "give me over one thousand legal rights, otherwise you infringe upon me" it would be stupid. That isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about equality. Out of love I went through the process of marriage. Out of practicality I signed a paper that said that it was legal. This gave me all sorts of rights I would never even think of until and unless I needed them, as it would any other man marrying any other woman. Yet a woman, with the same driving reasons as myself could not sign that paper with another woman.
Why? Because you are squeamish about it? Because it is unnatural? (Biology in regards to animal homosexuality and the basic principles of pheromones and hormones have clearly refuted this.) Because it is against God's will?
That last is between you and your God. Just bear in mind the quote from Senator James Raskin: “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible”.
Marriage has implications both religious and political. These two don't always agree. I know many legally married couples (heterosexual) whose marriages are not recognized by a church. I see no need to do this any different.
This is at the crux of the issue. If you are morally opposed to homosexuality based on your religion, fine. But without political reasons, how can you stand against it politically?
As long as this nation has not formally declared a state religion, we cannot legislate as if it has one. This issue must remain a political one.
I was informed in one conversation on this topic that the reason a person voted against the pro gay marriage candidate was that topic. When asked what impact my cousin's marriage had on her, she not only openly admitted she knew nothing about it, but that she saw no direct impact and wouldn't be likely to. However, it would have a grave social and cultural impact. She couldn't define what that impact was, just that it would exist. This is true, but then she admitted voting, so change alone must not frighten her. After all, women voting made a cultural and social impact. She doesn't seem ready to give that up yet.
Despite some of the realities I lay out here, I know the core is going to be the hard part to change. So many of you have the luxury to look at this issue as just a simple question of sexual ethics. I do not.
Many of you see a flip of a switch at the polls and a point for your side. I see the tears, the anguish, the lives destroyed. Sometimes even lives lost.
As the reports come in, many of you see numbers. I see faces and tears.
How do you sit back and watch, and help the destruction of the lives of your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and think that your god can be smiling at it?
Those of you who are married will likely lay your heads on your pillows tonight with barely a thought of this post. With no concerns of what horrors might wait around the corner that you haven't thought of and prepared for that will tear your family apart. You will lay your heads down in comfort with the one you love.
I will likely lay there, as I have many times before, rolling my wedding band around my finger and feeling somewhat nauseous at the thought that one gold band and one piece of paper crossed all of the "t's" and dotted all of the "i's" for me in barely a blink. That this was all it took for me to not only be allowed to join my wife's side when she was rushed to the hospital last week, but that is also made my presence an assumed fact.
So sleep well, and go back to ignoring the issue until the next flip of the switch or the next loudmouthed ball player puts a blip on your screen for a moment. That's just life, or something close to it.
Perhaps I am not shocked by one person's comments because I witnessed millions of you acting together in a voice that declared a large group of our brothers and sisters to be subhuman during multiple election years. When millions of you fail your fellow man, or even actively stab them in the back, what's one more voice? Just one voice that will blow over in a week and be forgotten while hundreds of thousands have to deal with the bigotry that has made it on the books. One voice undoubtedly denounced by many of the same hypocrites that either actively helped or passively watched while these atrocities hit the books.
The reality is that he has a right to his opinion, and the right to voice it. I would strongly defend both. Even if I think his comments portray him as an ignorant ass. Even the Ku Klux Klan has the right to express their opinions. We are just sensible enough not to allow them to do it through legislation.
Is this an excessively harsh comparison? Ask the woman who sits helpless as the very decisions that might decide her lifelong partner's life or death are made by doctors who can only legally take the advice of a family that disowned the patient years before. Ask the same woman who watches all of the shared property she had with that partner dispensed by the same family as they see fit, just days after she was barred from the funeral. While she faces all of this, what do you say to her? "It was God's will?" Somehow I suspect this will not cut it. I suspect she would ask, as I myself wonder, how you could worship a god so cruel as to want people to suffer this way.
Before some of you get all defensive about that, bear in mind that I haven't pointed fingers at any religion yet.
I have heard many arguments against gay marriage and several associated rights. The only thing that allows me to retain even a modicum of faith in humanity is the strong belief that so many of you actually fail to see the significance of the issue. The HRC does not call themselves the "Human Rights Campaign" simply because it is a catchy name. It is a human rights issue, and a more significant one than many of you blow it off as being.
This goes beyond a question of who kisses who. At best it is a question of second class citizenship. At worst, as subhuman classification. When you have voted on, or ignored the many referendums and candidate positions on this issue, have any of the following aspects of the issue crossed your mind?
As a legal institution, marriage conveys many basic rights in one package. Example for NY. There are also thousands of Federal laws revolving around rights of spouses.
That refusing marriage rights to homosexuals does in effect make homosexuality illegal? 26 states still have laws against adultery (sex out of wedlock). As such, refusing homosexuals the right to marry means refusing them the right to engage in intimate relationships. Of course, that is what people are trying to do, isn't it?
What puzzles me is why. It would seem cut and dried. If you have a problem with the concept of homosexual relations, don't get involved with them. If you have a problem seeing that homosexuals exist, that is unfortunately your problem, not theirs. Racists don't have a right to enforce any laws keeping other races out of their field of vision.
The reality is that no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, your right to swing your fist ends at the other guys nose. Not approving of an activity does not give you the right, in and of itself, to legislate it away.
But what of the concept that the majority speaks in these bills and laws? It doesn't matter. Yes, in a democratic society, I just said that the majority's opinion doesn't matter. Restriction of the basic rights and equality of an entire group of people, even if everyone else agrees, is against the very principles this nation was founded on.
I did say just because. I point this out because here is where people like to throw out the questions of pedophiles, murderers etc... This is a foolish and uneducated argument. There is obviously a clear cut difference between a relationship between consenting adults, and victimization as is the case in these latter examples.
Now if one group wanted to just step up and say, "give me over one thousand legal rights, otherwise you infringe upon me" it would be stupid. That isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about equality. Out of love I went through the process of marriage. Out of practicality I signed a paper that said that it was legal. This gave me all sorts of rights I would never even think of until and unless I needed them, as it would any other man marrying any other woman. Yet a woman, with the same driving reasons as myself could not sign that paper with another woman.
Why? Because you are squeamish about it? Because it is unnatural? (Biology in regards to animal homosexuality and the basic principles of pheromones and hormones have clearly refuted this.) Because it is against God's will?
That last is between you and your God. Just bear in mind the quote from Senator James Raskin: “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible”.
Marriage has implications both religious and political. These two don't always agree. I know many legally married couples (heterosexual) whose marriages are not recognized by a church. I see no need to do this any different.
This is at the crux of the issue. If you are morally opposed to homosexuality based on your religion, fine. But without political reasons, how can you stand against it politically?
As long as this nation has not formally declared a state religion, we cannot legislate as if it has one. This issue must remain a political one.
I was informed in one conversation on this topic that the reason a person voted against the pro gay marriage candidate was that topic. When asked what impact my cousin's marriage had on her, she not only openly admitted she knew nothing about it, but that she saw no direct impact and wouldn't be likely to. However, it would have a grave social and cultural impact. She couldn't define what that impact was, just that it would exist. This is true, but then she admitted voting, so change alone must not frighten her. After all, women voting made a cultural and social impact. She doesn't seem ready to give that up yet.
Despite some of the realities I lay out here, I know the core is going to be the hard part to change. So many of you have the luxury to look at this issue as just a simple question of sexual ethics. I do not.
Many of you see a flip of a switch at the polls and a point for your side. I see the tears, the anguish, the lives destroyed. Sometimes even lives lost.
As the reports come in, many of you see numbers. I see faces and tears.
How do you sit back and watch, and help the destruction of the lives of your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and think that your god can be smiling at it?
Those of you who are married will likely lay your heads on your pillows tonight with barely a thought of this post. With no concerns of what horrors might wait around the corner that you haven't thought of and prepared for that will tear your family apart. You will lay your heads down in comfort with the one you love.
I will likely lay there, as I have many times before, rolling my wedding band around my finger and feeling somewhat nauseous at the thought that one gold band and one piece of paper crossed all of the "t's" and dotted all of the "i's" for me in barely a blink. That this was all it took for me to not only be allowed to join my wife's side when she was rushed to the hospital last week, but that is also made my presence an assumed fact.
So sleep well, and go back to ignoring the issue until the next flip of the switch or the next loudmouthed ball player puts a blip on your screen for a moment. That's just life, or something close to it.
Labels: bigotry, gay marriage, human rights
posted by Wanderer at 7:28 PM
10 Comments:
The problem isn't that there's no gay marriage, it's that legally, marriage means anything. If it didn't, we wouldn't have this problem.
I love this post. I love that you wrote this post, and did it much better than I could have.
I agree with every single thing you said, and felt as though your example of the suffering woman whos partner died was from my life. My aunt is a lesbian, and many years ago her partner died. Because they weren't married, my aunt was forced to move out of her home, leave her belongings that she didn't own when she moved in, and hand over her vehicle. The worst part of her story is that she was acquainted with her lovers' family. They treated her well while her partner was alive. Their treatment of her, their total disregard for their family members wishes, was a cruel stab in the back.
My aunt's face is the face of gay rights for me, and it burns me to my core that humans no lesser than you and I are being refused basic rights just because they're gay.
Soleclaw - I thank you for your comments and the sharing of your story. I do feel sorry for you aunt, and enraged by that fact that she is one of many such stories. I honestly think that most people think that I am making scenarios such as the one I gave and the one you did are just stories. It bothers me to know that many wouldn't have cared.
Lisanocerous - "And I should still expect to have this right if, instead of a husband, I chose a wife."
I agree with this, as well as the rest of what you said, but I wonder if this comment was strategically placed with the assumption that you could get MC to agree to anything by simply distracting him with an insinuation that you might consider being a lesbian. :)
Maybe there is a useful function of marriage but could that not be attained through non-religiously-based means? Why not civil unions for everybody, plus facade marriage ceremonies for though who don't feel entitled to love unless a priest signs off on it? Kind of like if I get my degree and I pass the bar, I'm allowed to practice law whether I attended the graduation or not.
It strikes me as a tad co-dependent, too.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly gay couples should have all the same rights as straight couples, but I question these stories I keep hearing about "My grandmother's partner of 39 years got nothing." Why does nobody have a will? In case of hospitalization, why does no one have a living will? Problems solved without resorting to religiously-based institutions.
I want to make it clear to anyone who read this far, I am not against gay marriage. I am against marriage.
MC - I understand many of your positions. There are a couple of points I would make. First, marriage is not necessarily done religiously. You are undoubtedly familiar with Vegas wedding chapels and the justice of the peace theory.
The reality is that marriage allows you to effectively rewrite the relevant members of your family for legal purposes. Living wills require specific details about who can make decisions. They can also be contested. Wills in regards to post-mortem issues are so often unwritten. Few plan to die, too many don't put on paper their desires if they do.
Virtually all gray areas are decided by family, and a spouse trumps the rest of them. A marriage at the basic fifteen minutes of paper signing at the courthouse still puts in effect an authorization on your part to re-order the primary decision maker on a myriad of issues you can't be expected to consider beforehand. It is a gloss that says, "This is whom I trust with my life, my health, and my decisions in absentia. This is who I give my life to, figuratively, materialistically and literally."
I agree with you that it is all too frequently a bad idea. I don't stand fully against the institution.
Power of attorney. End of story.
Sorry, MC. Perhaps in a black and white world, that would work. Even power of attorney can fall under attack by family. More importantly, that gives legal benefits that do not include health issues. So you also need a health proxy. Already, in the simplest explanation of things, we have labeled two steps for something that could be handled in one. Efficiency drops. If that was all that a legal marriage offered, it would still be more practical in that step.
Both of those steps work for large areas of things, but then you look at the myriad of extras. Neither of the above prevents you from having to testify against the person who has granted that to you. I am not sure what document would provide that right, don't think there is one.
There are other issues, but I am tired, and my wife is waiting upstairs with my daughter. She is being cranky, and my daughter isn't so happy either.
The bottom line as far as the legal reality of marriage (whether it is sensible to enter into it or not) is that marriage is an institution that has had many ammendments in the legal coverage therein to the point of creating a near air-tight legal arrangement. There is no other single document that covers the eventualities like that license.
Power of attorney cannot be challenged by families. Nor anyone else, for that matter. The intent of it is ascertained by the laywer and notary at the time of its ratification.
Furthermore, powers of attorney come in degrees. Full powers of attorney can be bestowed, which include all decisions, health, executory, and otherwise.
Wills can only be challenged by families when intent is unclear or if demonstrable changes in circumstance can be proven via parol evidence, or when the will exerts control exceeding the decedent's rights. Challenges almost always end in failure, absent substantial parol evidence, two-bit lawyer TV shows and rumors aside.
That last clause actually applies to quite a lot of what I've said.
Even if that is the case, (Not arguing, simply stating a lack of knowledge.) that bestows decision making options but not all rights.
Again you have the confidante protection with marriage. The concept that, outside of the television drama which points only to the spouse being able to protect the guilty party, allows a protection of confidence between two people who walk through life with each other and just need to be able to be open with someone for their own mental health.
As for the practicality and efficiency, I would also point to the fact that even if an exhaustive power of attorney can cover most or all of the issues that marriage covers, the blanket nature of marriage allows for an avoidance of hours of surfing through legaleze to make sure everything is covered, including things you may or may not have thought of yet.
And yet currently applies only to straight people. So spend a few hours, and cut the endless sob stories.
You know me. I'm in favor of gay marriage and socially if not fiscally I am as liberal as you are.
You also know if there's anything in the whole planet I hate, it's people crowing about being victims when they could have avoided or solved their own problems.
As far as the confidante protection, I don't really feel that's as big an issue as you do. The simple remedy is don't commit crimes. As far as these other rights you mention, one can only assume you mean the "right" to be in a hospital room. This isn't even a logical problem, to tell you the truth. If I'm not a doctor and a loved one is in peril, the LAST place I want to be is with them, sitting there unable to do anything and totally in the way of the trained professionals.
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