I actually am optimistic. I know that we are going to have set backs. I'm not so naive to think that bad things are not going to happen; they probably will. But at some point, we have to stop being scared because being scared has gotten us no where. If we leave this to people to give us our civil rights here and there out of the goodness of their hearts for what they feel is fair and just, we will be asking for these civil rights for the next 100 years. Because, the truth of the matter is, the majority of people do not believe we should have equal rights (according to the polls), and the rest don't want to even think about us or our issues. That, by the way, works in our favor, because many are annoyed at Bush for making this an issue by raising his support for a constitutional amendment, when we have so many other problems to deal with (the economy, shipping jobs overseas, Iraq, and others….).
We have to start realizing as a community, that most Americans (2/3) DO NOT WANT US TO BE EQUAL TO EVERYONE ELSE in terms of our relationships. They want to put our civil rights out on a ballot to have a popular vote to determine if we should have equal rights. This is not negotiable. Civil rights can not and should not be granted based on what is popular.
Most Americans are against hate crime legislation. Many of the states had sodomy laws and still would, had the Supreme Court not ruled them unconstitutional. These laws were used primarily against members of our community. No one contests this fact, yet, many people didn't seem to have a problem that only the gays were targeted with sodomy prosecutions (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986). The same goes for the bar raids that use to routinely happen against our community, prior to Stonewall. It was open season on our community, and no one saw a problem with arresting and beating up gays.
So, with those statistics, it's easy to be optimistic, because the only way things could be worse is for the constitutional amendment to pass. There are so many things against this amendment, that it will be a miracle for it to pass. And I mean an absolute miracle. However negative Americans are about homosexuals and gay marriage, they are even more negative about the thought of messing around with the Constitution.
You know, I really do think that a lot of it is my age. I've gotten to a point in my life that my tolerance for bullshit is very low. Ten years ago, I would never have had the courage or cared enough to put my ass on the line and go to the town clerk in our small town and ask for a marriage license, with a reporter and photographer from the state’s largest newspaper present no less! When my place of work that I’ve been with for 15 years, told me that we as a couple couldn’t take advantage of company benefits because they didn’t honor our relationship, I turned away and said, “Okay, thank you for your time.”.
Now, I honestly don't give a fuck anymore what my neighbors, community, or my company thinks. I deserve to be treated equally, and I'm going to demand it - or I'm going to start paying second-class taxes. And, after the first state grants us a marriage license, we are going to start submitting a joint tax return. The IRS can deal with that one. If they come after us, a lawsuit will be filed. Don't be surprised if you read about us in the next few years in a lawsuit against our state. All I need is a marriage license from another state, and I'm going to push it. I'm going to hold my state accountable. They will have to openly deny these rights to a couple who holds a legal marriage license from another state, and have that recorded.
I've realized just this week how much I've changed. And, I've also learned how many friends I have. Strangely enough, most of the people who have come forward in our support are straight men. It’s strange, because I always thought that they were our biggest obstacle for equal rights. I never expected the support I’ve received from them. This has been a learning experience for me also. I have learned that we have friends we never even realized.
I hope that the gay community will come to realize that as well.
Dan said:
Wow, Bill, you are so optimistic!
I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope that we don't lose this one. The right wing WANTS a cultural war and this president might actually deliver!
I can definately see a scenerio with several states honoring Massachussets gay marriages, followed by the US Supreme Court "forcing" all other states to recognize these marriages as well.
If that happens too soon too fast, there will be violence, there will be riots! Just this Sunday Conan The Barbarian talking about riots in California if Newsom is allowed to continue. Rush Limbaugh (you can read on his site) said the following: "It's time for some civil disobedience on the part of those of us who are the ones being harmed by all this".
Obviously this is a different time. TV has changed. Work places have changed. Schools have changed. I'm surprised how many Gay-Straight alliances are in schools in places I would have never suspected.
I'm only asking whether the price of a short term revolution worth the price of the pain and suffering that some (many?) of us might encounter?
We will win and we are winning every day, there is no doubt, but I think I'd rather do it in a consistent line instead of 10 steps forward and 7 steps back.
This constitutional amendment is not really about us. It is an excuse to get the minds of Americans off the real problems that this schmuck has with his job performance.
He couldn't get Osama bin Laden so he took on Iraq. Even that wasn't about fighting terror. It was about settling an old score for the humiliation his father received for failing to liberate Iraq during his father's term as President. Before 9/11 even happened, his administration was looking for a way for us to go back to Iraq. He used the deaths of all those people who died in the World Trade Center Towers as an excuse to go to Iraq when Iraq had nothing to do with it in the first place. Think I'm wrong? Ask yourself this; did you ever wonder why we lost focus on Osama bin Ladin so suddenly once we got to Iraq? Osama bin Ladin was never the real target. But we continued to bomb the hell out of Iraq even after we suspected that he was not in the country.
I'm frankly surprised that we stopped at Iraq, with his "bring it on-go to hell UN" attitude. I'm not a great fan of the UN for other reasons, but if I were the UN and he came back asking for my help, I'd tell him to go fuck himself.
After a week or so, I predict there will be further talks with those in the right wing of his party over this amendment. Over time, they will be seen to be radical in what they are trying to achieve. He will be marginalized and seen to be mean spirited. This has happened before (remember his father's campaign when Pat Buchanan got up and gay bashed for 20 minutes?). His dad never recovered from that. When asked after his dad lost the election, an official on the Bush re-election team said, "after Buchanan, we spent all of our energy trying to convince people that we weren't gay bashers". I remember that quote word for word.
I know it's frightening what is happening, but I also know that every single time that freedom and civil rights have been challenged in this country, the foes of freedom have failed. Before change can happen, all of the ugliness that has kept us down for so long has to be aired. Only when it comes out can people see it for what it is.
It was the same way with slavery, school integration, and abortion. Freedom always wins.
Always.
Dan said:
Have we gone too far?
I am serious! Is this marriage fight going to backfire so hard we will wish this fight never started?
A Federal Constitutional Amendment, if passed, will be so hard to undo, it might take a few generations possibly!
Civil Unions, yes, not the real thing, can provide for most benefits with more and more benefits added on year by year as society evolves.
We were so excited about Vermont back in 2000, and now Mass. and California.
I don't know guys. I hope we're doing the right thing.
I actually am optimistic. I know that we are going to have set backs. I'm not so naive to think that bad things are not going to happen; they probably will. But at some point, we have to stop being scared because being scared has gotten us no where. If we leave this to people to give us our civil rights here and there out of the goodness of their hearts for what they feel is fair and just, we will be asking for these civil rights for the next 100 years. Because, the truth of the matter is, the majority of people do not believe we should have equal rights (according to the polls), and the rest don't want to even think about us or our issues. That, by the way, works in our favor, because many are annoyed at Bush for making this an issue by raising his support for a constitutional amendment, when we have so many other problems to deal with (the economy, shipping jobs overseas, Iraq, and others….).
We have to start realizing as a community, that most Americans (2/3) DO NOT WANT US TO BE EQUAL TO EVERYONE ELSE in terms of our relationships. They want to put our civil rights out on a ballot to have a popular vote to determine if we should have equal rights. This is not negotiable. Civil rights can not and should not be granted based on what is popular.
Most Americans are against hate crime legislation. Many of the states had sodomy laws and still would, had the Supreme Court not ruled them unconstitutional. These laws were used primarily against members of our community. No one contests this fact, yet, many people didn't seem to have a problem that only the gays were targeted with sodomy prosecutions (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986). The same goes for the bar raids that use to routinely happen against our community, prior to Stonewall. It was open season on our community, and no one saw a problem with arresting and beating up gays.
So, with those statistics, it's easy to be optimistic, because the only way things could be worse is for the constitutional amendment to pass. There are so many things against this amendment, that it will be a miracle for it to pass. And I mean an absolute miracle. However negative Americans are about homosexuals and gay marriage, they are even more negative about the thought of messing around with the Constitution.
You know, I really do think that a lot of it is my age. I've gotten to a point in my life that my tolerance for bullshit is very low. Ten years ago, I would never have had the courage or cared enough to put my ass on the line and go to the town clerk in our small town and ask for a marriage license, with a reporter and photographer from the state’s largest newspaper present no less! When my place of work that I’ve been with for 15 years, told me that we as a couple couldn’t take advantage of company benefits because they didn’t honor our relationship, I turned away and said, “Okay, thank you for your time.”.
Now, I honestly don't give a fuck anymore what my neighbors, community, or my company thinks. I deserve to be treated equally, and I'm going to demand it - or I'm going to start paying second-class taxes. And, after the first state grants us a marriage license, we are going to start submitting a joint tax return. The IRS can deal with that one. If they come after us, a lawsuit will be filed. Don't be surprised if you read about us in the next few years in a lawsuit against our state. All I need is a marriage license from another state, and I'm going to push it. I'm going to hold my state accountable. They will have to openly deny these rights to a couple who holds a legal marriage license from another state, and have that recorded.
I've realized just this week how much I've changed. And, I've also learned how many friends I have. Strangely enough, most of the people who have come forward in our support are straight men. It’s strange, because I always thought that they were our biggest obstacle for equal rights. I never expected the support I’ve received from them. This has been a learning experience for me also. I have learned that we have friends we never even realized.
I hope that the gay community will come to realize that as well.
Wow, Bill, you are so optimistic!
I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope that we don't lose this one. The right wing WANTS a cultural war and this president might actually deliver!
I can definately see a scenerio with several states honoring Massachussets gay marriages, followed by the US Supreme Court "forcing" all other states to recognize these marriages as well.
If that happens too soon too fast, there will be violence, there will be riots! Just this Sunday Conan The Barbarian talking about riots in California if Newsom is allowed to continue. Rush Limbaugh (you can read on his site) said the following: "It's time for some civil disobedience on the part of those of us who are the ones being harmed by all this".
Obviously this is a different time. TV has changed. Work places have changed. Schools have changed. I'm surprised how many Gay-Straight alliances are in schools in places I would have never suspected.
I'm only asking whether the price of a short term revolution worth the price of the pain and suffering that some (many?) of us might encounter?
We will win and we are winning every day, there is no doubt, but I think I'd rather do it in a consistent line instead of 10 steps forward and 7 steps back.
Dan
Dan,
This constitutional amendment is not really about us. It is an excuse to get the minds of Americans off the real problems that this schmuck has with his job performance.
He couldn't get Osama bin Laden so he took on Iraq. Even that wasn't about fighting terror. It was about settling an old score for the humiliation his father received for failing to liberate Iraq during his father's term as President. Before 9/11 even happened, his administration was looking for a way for us to go back to Iraq. He used the deaths of all those people who died in the World Trade Center Towers as an excuse to go to Iraq when Iraq had nothing to do with it in the first place. Think I'm wrong? Ask yourself this; did you ever wonder why we lost focus on Osama bin Ladin so suddenly once we got to Iraq? Osama bin Ladin was never the real target. But we continued to bomb the hell out of Iraq even after we suspected that he was not in the country.
I'm frankly surprised that we stopped at Iraq, with his "bring it on-go to hell UN" attitude. I'm not a great fan of the UN for other reasons, but if I were the UN and he came back asking for my help, I'd tell him to go fuck himself.
After a week or so, I predict there will be further talks with those in the right wing of his party over this amendment. Over time, they will be seen to be radical in what they are trying to achieve. He will be marginalized and seen to be mean spirited. This has happened before (remember his father's campaign when Pat Buchanan got up and gay bashed for 20 minutes?). His dad never recovered from that. When asked after his dad lost the election, an official on the Bush re-election team said, "after Buchanan, we spent all of our energy trying to convince people that we weren't gay bashers". I remember that quote word for word.
I know it's frightening what is happening, but I also know that every single time that freedom and civil rights have been challenged in this country, the foes of freedom have failed. Before change can happen, all of the ugliness that has kept us down for so long has to be aired. Only when it comes out can people see it for what it is.
It was the same way with slavery, school integration, and abortion. Freedom always wins.
Always.
Have we gone too far?
I am serious! Is this marriage fight going to backfire so hard we will wish this fight never started?
A Federal Constitutional Amendment, if passed, will be so hard to undo, it might take a few generations possibly!
Civil Unions, yes, not the real thing, can provide for most benefits with more and more benefits added on year by year as society evolves.
We were so excited about Vermont back in 2000, and now Mass. and California.
I don't know guys. I hope we're doing the right thing.
Dan
I have to wonder, why couldn't he have just continued to choke on that pretzel.