Quit a friendship due to political/social issues?

[CherryBlossom]

I wish that I could take this picture and metaphorically smack her in the head with it

Are we really limiting the definition of racism to the acts or beliefs of white people only? Racism is an belief or doctrine based on preconcieved ideas associated with the color of one's skin, regardless of what color your own skin is or the color of the group you have pre-judged.

I understand the point of the graphic, and agree with it in principle- that we often limit our definitions of racism to conform with our own behavior landing in the 'acceptable' range- and there is certainly the argument (nay, fact, in the US) that the most common form of racism is white judging black. But are there not numerous sad examples of genocides, throughout ancient and recent history, around the world that do not involve white populations at all?

Racism in any form- from any person or group against another- is abhorrent. Let us not overlook that any person of any group is capable of behaving so badly, and any one displaying such ignorance should be called on it.

Which, I don't think, has anything to do with being friends with people with varying political views. The key here is not what you believe, but your abilty to engage in civil discourse. Racist are racists, no matter their political stripe, and are generally incapable of calm, informative discussions because of their limited tolerance for any other viewpoints. But I will be friends with anyone of varying political views if we can have a conversation that never devolves into name calling, snide remarks, or general nastiness. In fact, my (politcally and religiously diverse) group of friends regularly has Pizza n' Politics get togethers that end with smiles, hugs, and laughter.

It's a beautifully diverse world out there, I would hate to stem the flow of information or my own personal growth by limiting my interactions to people who only agree with me.

I stand by what the graphic states in relations to racism here in the United States. Institutionalized racism has only existed when it's perpetuated by white people towards non-white people.

BTW I don't use the word "white" when talking about Europeans. I think that only people in North America can be "white" - folks w/ the same color coming from Europe cannot be white according to the historical definition of the word.

I believe that people from different racial backgrounds can be PREJUDICED towards another i.e "black girl made fun of me for being white" - but racism and being prejudiced are two different things.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the topic over the last few days/weeks and this is the definitions that work for me.

Virginia records document ten servant revolts in the mid 1600’s, culminating in the famous Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. African and English servants, free workers and farmers, demanded land and pay for their labor. They burned down Jamestown, the colony’s capital. Colonial rulers had to call in the British army to subdue the rebellion, Colonial landowning legislators responded with a series of Slave Codes enacted from 1680 through 1705. These codes legalized chattel slavery (the child of an enslaved woman would be enslaved for a lifetime) and severely restricted the rights of free Africans. The codes equated the terms “slave” and “Negro,” thus institutionalizing the world’s first system of racialized slavery.

The codes also set out the “rights” of and restrictions for “servants.” At first, servants” referred ambiguously to both Africans and English. But as “slave” became synonymous with “Negro,” (the Spanish word for “Black,”) “servant” came to mean “white,” the term which replaced “English,” “Christian” or “wench” to refer to poor or indentured Europeans. As the codes tightened the legal noose around enslaved Africans, they simultaneously loosened the legal bonds on En-glish indentured servants. English or “white” servants were granted specific forms of privilege or preferential treatment which was specifically denied to slaves, or “Negroes.” For example, the codes stipulated that servants could challenge unjust behavior of their masters in court; servants, both men and women, were entitled to specific “freedom dues,” paid in tobacco (the legal tender of the colony) when their term of servitude was over. Servants could get a small plot of land, provided they promised to guard the frontiers. Poor white males were offered the first paid jobs in the colony— on the slave patrols. They got bounties for every slave they caught.

All these “privileges” were specified as being available only to “white” people. However, if any poor whites acted in solidarity with any Africans, they would be physically branded, and their privileges removed. Thus the term white became synonymous with privilege in colonial law. In conclusion, a study of the historical origin of the term white suggests that: “White” is a political term. It was specifically created by colonial rulers to prevent oppressed people from different continents from uniting to confront their common oppressors. “White privilege” is a relational term. It is the other side of the coin of racial oppression. In the U.S. white supremacy system, they go together. White was originally a class term. Theprivileges of whiteness were first granted by the colonial ruling class only to the poor and servant class of Europeans.

Colonial rulers did not need privilege. They had power. In a few generations, the institutional privileges for the white poor would wipe out the material basis for unity with oppressed Africans, as their daily lives grew further apart. (Bacon’s Rebellion was the last multiracial revolt of the oppressed during the colonial era.)

Colonial rulers used the existence of these privileges to convince poor white people that the little they had was due to their racial superiority, rather than to preferential treatment combined with hard work. The impact of white privilege on white people’s daily lives reinforced the ideology of white arrogance and “legitimized” their dehumanization of people of color.
In summary, the system of white privilege for non-ruling class whites reinforces the system of racial oppression against people of color. And the complementary systems of white privilege and racial oppression maintain the system of white power for ruling class whites.

This web of institutional and cultural preferential treatment is called white privilege. In a white supremacy
system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin.” Non-ruling class white people are both oppressed and privileged. They are oppressed most significantly on the basis of class, gender and sexuality, and also on the basis of religion, culture, ethnicity, age, physical abilities and politics. At the same time, they are privileged in relation to peoples of color.

 

[Imdanny]

On the subject of gay marriage as a 'right', Loving vs. Virginia, which is often brought up is not a good analogy. That case was not about the very definition of marriage, which would be one man and one woman, not related to one another in ways that can be variously defined, of legal age, legally bound together. One Loving was a man and the other was a woman. It was clearly a question of racism only which was causing the state to deny that they were legally married. Making their marriage legal changed nothing about marriage.
Now if Loving (male) had wanted to marry his sister or Loving (female) had wanted to have the state decide that it was okay for her to marry her brother, that would have changed something fundamental about the law. As it would have if Loving (male) was already married to one woman and decided to bring another into the house and say that he was legally married to her, also. Or if either of the Lovings had wanted to marry a five-year old. But, granted that the Lovings are both human beings (which the original law was trying to deny, making the black wife something less than a human being), the change in law changed nothing about the institution of marriage.

Neither of the Lovings claimed that they had the 'right' to be married just because they wanted to--they were saying that they were being treated differently in a essential way since any other man and woman, not related to each other, of age in the state of Virginia could get married and they could not. I repeat, the case was about Loving (the wife) being an equal human being, since human beings of opposite sexes are allowed to marry each other.

Why are human beings of opposite sex allowed to marry each other? And why does society interfere in it at all? Because society assumes that (while not true in 100% of cases obviously), a man and woman marrying can procreate and are likely to have children--which is good for society in general because it creates a future. Becuase it creates a future for the society, the society does things to encourage it (with the selfish reason of getting something back, that is, the children). It tries to create a situation in which the children will have the most stable envirnoment possible, dealing with the facts that men have no real incentive to stay and support children, once they are conceived, without the benefits that they get from a marriage, and that women prefer to get pregnant when they are in a stable situation and tend not to do it if they are not, and also that the average woman is going to be weaker and unable to do outside work in the same way, at least in the advanced stages of pregnancy and immediately afterwards, and also because while their children are small, women need some help. these are facts,not prejudice--if you doubt them look at what unwed mothers have to deal with, and divorced mothers--the way that the standard of living goes down and how overwhelmed these women are. It is in society's interest to try to avoid this. So it meddles in marriage, not because of wanting to interfere in people's private sex lives, but because it is all about the children. A lot of the so-called 'rights and privilges' of marriage are there solely because of the special circumstances of a pregnant or child-bearing woman or a mother with very young children--to give her some protection while she is doing something that society wishes her to do so that it can continue--and something that she gets very little out of it, in real terms. As you can see from the threads popping on Pscope about people nto wanting to have children. There is really very little in this for a woman, if you think in purely practical terms. Careers get behind, freedom is lost--once women start to think about this, they are very likely to think 'what's in it for me' without some help and encouragement.

A lot of the automatic inheritance rights in marriage are so that a widow (or widower also, actually) will not be left helpless with CHILDREN or so that a woman who (as many women used to do) gave up her strongest years raising children instead of thinking of her career, wouldn't be stuck in her old age in extreme poverty as if she were someone who had contributed nothing--society was essentially saying, you gave up a great deal to do this, which is good for all of us and we are making sure that you are not thrown aside like garbage now that your child-bearing years --or your attractive years--are over. Do you know how many men would dump the wife in favor of someone younger once she was worn out bearing kids if there were not some laws to protect her?

Obviously this system does nto work perfectly, and in fact it is working less and less well but that is the reasoning behind it. And many people want to preserve as much of this as they can, because it is time-proven system that works well. Nothing else works so well for bringing up children as a stable environment with a mother and a father, if it can be managed AT ALL. And gay marriage does nothing to make society continue in the same way and the same issues are not germane--i.e., society will not get back the main thing that it wants and needs to continue, the procreation of children, from gay marriage. So there is no reason for society to create this new thing which is of no benefit to society as a whole. So far as the two gay individuals are concerned, civil unions will take care of issues like not being allowed to see your partner if sick in the hospital and so forth. No one has a 'right' to the special protections of marriage--it is a privilege that society allows.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with giving gay individuals protection from the various unfairnesses they might suffer from because of being 'different'. Granting gay marriage will not help with that one bit--that is a whole separate issue. And, as I was saying before, marriage was not on the slate of civil rights issues that blacks were concerned with. The civil rights movement was not about Loving vs. Virginia, which as I have stated above was an issue of a man not being allowed to marry a woman and not about anything else at all.

"As Loving said on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, “I believe all Americans, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. . . . I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

This is what Loving herself said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/loving-v-virginia-gives-hope-for-same-sex-marriage/2011/03/04/AGKVoWNH_blog.html

 

[iheartscience]

Great quote ImDanny-I read that article not too long ago.

Black Jade, I find the arguments you're making against gay marriage absolutely fascinating, as well as completely ridiculous and illogical. It's always interesting to read the justifications for discrimination against one minority vs. another.

Your illogical arguments don't matter, though-gay marriage will happen, very likely within the next decade. I can't wait.

 

[Imdanny]

Thanks, thing.

 

[Circe]

Er ... you can't really say "the" definition of marriage, is the thing. In some cultures, marriage is between a man and a woman: in some, it's a man and up to four women, in some, it's a woman and more than one man (so long as they're brothers). That takes us into the incest taboo, which varies from culture to culture - in some states, "kissing cousins" are charming, in some they're icky, but they still ain't got nothing on ancient Egypt. In some cultures, though I find the analogy almost as distasteful as Rick Santorum's man-on-dog analogy, it is indeed legal to take a child-bride, and 5 year olds are not unknown. Personally, I far prefer the consensual union of a man and another man.

As for the "purpose" of marriage? Well, some argue it's "for" inheritance - in the West, that's certainly a big part of the reason that the institution is forbidden to the clergy (nothing to do with "purity," everything to do with a Church fearful of splitting its holdings). Some argue its "for" the institutionalized oppression of women. But, at the end of the day, most vows roughly acknowledge it's about love. I can't recall the last time I saw somebody vow to love their spouse, forsaking all others, until the kids reached the age of majority or could support themselves, whichever came first.

At the end of the day, marriage, like all human institutions, is a fluid, changeable thing, that must needs be adapted to suit the needs of the culture. Right now, most civilized nations are slowly acknowledging that that means that marriage is between two people who love one another, period.

I have two friends. They were married in Massachusetts, during the window that it was legal. They've been married in Canada. They've been married in Holland. They're the most-married people I know, and they probably were before any officiant came into the picture, given that they've been madly in love for going on thirty years now. Damned if I can see how denying the sanctity of their union serves any purpose other than bigotry and superiority - the modern-day version of the poor white sharecropper who can hitch a finger at the poor black with his restricted rights and think, "Well, at least I'm not him."

But, like Thing said - nicely said, Thing! - it will happen. Thanks for the reminder, Thing.

 

[Circe]

I wish that I could take this picture and metaphorically smack her in the head with it

Are we really limiting the definition of racism to the acts or beliefs of white people only? Racism is an belief or doctrine based on preconcieved ideas associated with the color of one's skin, regardless of what color your own skin is or the color of the group you have pre-judged.

I understand the point of the graphic, and agree with it in principle- that we often limit our definitions of racism to conform with our own behavior landing in the 'acceptable' range- and there is certainly the argument (nay, fact, in the US) that the most common form of racism is white judging black. But are there not numerous sad examples of genocides, throughout ancient and recent history, around the world that do not involve white populations at all?

Racism in any form- from any person or group against another- is abhorrent. Let us not overlook that any person of any group is capable of behaving so badly, and any one displaying such ignorance should be called on it.

Which, I don't think, has anything to do with being friends with people with varying political views. The key here is not what you believe, but your abilty to engage in civil discourse. Racist are racists, no matter their political stripe, and are generally incapable of calm, informative discussions because of their limited tolerance for any other viewpoints. But I will be friends with anyone of varying political views if we can have a conversation that never devolves into name calling, snide remarks, or general nastiness. In fact, my (politcally and religiously diverse) group of friends regularly has Pizza n' Politics get togethers that end with smiles, hugs, and laughter.

It's a beautifully diverse world out there, I would hate to stem the flow of information or my own personal growth by limiting my interactions to people who only agree with me.

I stand by what the graphic states in relations to racism here in the United States. Institutionalized racism has only existed when it's perpetuated by white people towards non-white people.

BTW I don't use the word "white" when talking about Europeans. I think that only people in North America can be "white" - folks w/ the same color coming from Europe cannot be white according to the historical definition of the word.

I believe that people from different racial backgrounds can be PREJUDICED towards another i.e "black girl made fun of me for being white" - but racism and being prejudiced are two different things.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the topic over the last few days/weeks and this is the definitions that work for me.

Virginia records document ten servant revolts in the mid 1600’s, culminating in the famous Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. African and English servants, free workers and farmers, demanded land and pay for their labor. They burned down Jamestown, the colony’s capital. Colonial rulers had to call in the British army to subdue the rebellion, Colonial landowning legislators responded with a series of Slave Codes enacted from 1680 through 1705. These codes legalized chattel slavery (the child of an enslaved woman would be enslaved for a lifetime) and severely restricted the rights of free Africans. The codes equated the terms “slave” and “Negro,” thus institutionalizing the world’s first system of racialized slavery.

The codes also set out the “rights” of and restrictions for “servants.” At first, servants” referred ambiguously to both Africans and English. But as “slave” became synonymous with “Negro,” (the Spanish word for “Black,”) “servant” came to mean “white,” the term which replaced “English,” “Christian” or “wench” to refer to poor or indentured Europeans. As the codes tightened the legal noose around enslaved Africans, they simultaneously loosened the legal bonds on En-glish indentured servants. English or “white” servants were granted specific forms of privilege or preferential treatment which was specifically denied to slaves, or “Negroes.” For example, the codes stipulated that servants could challenge unjust behavior of their masters in court; servants, both men and women, were entitled to specific “freedom dues,” paid in tobacco (the legal tender of the colony) when their term of servitude was over. Servants could get a small plot of land, provided they promised to guard the frontiers. Poor white males were offered the first paid jobs in the colony— on the slave patrols. They got bounties for every slave they caught.

All these “privileges” were specified as being available only to “white” people. However, if any poor whites acted in solidarity with any Africans, they would be physically branded, and their privileges removed. Thus the term white became synonymous with privilege in colonial law. In conclusion, a study of the historical origin of the term white suggests that: “White” is a political term. It was specifically created by colonial rulers to prevent oppressed people from different continents from uniting to confront their common oppressors. “White privilege” is a relational term. It is the other side of the coin of racial oppression. In the U.S. white supremacy system, they go together. White was originally a class term. Theprivileges of whiteness were first granted by the colonial ruling class only to the poor and servant class of Europeans.

Colonial rulers did not need privilege. They had power. In a few generations, the institutional privileges for the white poor would wipe out the material basis for unity with oppressed Africans, as their daily lives grew further apart. (Bacon’s Rebellion was the last multiracial revolt of the oppressed during the colonial era.)

Colonial rulers used the existence of these privileges to convince poor white people that the little they had was due to their racial superiority, rather than to preferential treatment combined with hard work. The impact of white privilege on white people’s daily lives reinforced the ideology of white arrogance and “legitimized” their dehumanization of people of color.
In summary, the system of white privilege for non-ruling class whites reinforces the system of racial oppression against people of color. And the complementary systems of white privilege and racial oppression maintain the system of white power for ruling class whites.

This web of institutional and cultural preferential treatment is called white privilege. In a white supremacy
system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin.” Non-ruling class white people are both oppressed and privileged. They are oppressed most significantly on the basis of class, gender and sexuality, and also on the basis of religion, culture, ethnicity, age, physical abilities and politics. At the same time, they are privileged in relation to peoples of color.

Cherry, I'm book-marking this for the next time I need to explain racism - eloquently and succinctly said.

 

[zoebartlett]

Great quote ImDanny-I read that article not too long ago.

Black Jade, I find the arguments you're making against gay marriage absolutely fascinating, as well as completely ridiculous and illogical. It's always interesting to read the justifications for discrimination against one minority vs. another.

Your illogical arguments don't matter, though-gay marriage will happen, very likely within the next decade. I can't wait.

I've read through this thread but haven't commented yet. However, I just wanted to say, Thing2, I couldn't agree more!

 

[Black Jade]

Well, "it will happen' is not an argument in favor of anything. It's a prophecy. You can make one--I can make one--and it just doesn't matter. Isn't causative in any way.

"It will happen' also does not equal 'it is right.'

What is meant by 'it will happen' often really is, 'You might as well give in to us now, because we are so right that what we want is inevitable.'

Loving's opinion on the courtcase is also completely immaterial. I can prove this easily. "Jane Roe' of Roe vs. Wade (her name is Norma McCreevey" is now completely anti-abortion. The doctor who helped to give the medical evidence for Roe vs. Wade is also antib-abortion. Now that you all know this, does this make those of you are pro-choice change your minds? Thought not.

Nobody is saying here that gays are not a minority. Obviously, gays are a minority. The figure is sometimes given 10% but this is probably not correct, more like 3 or 4% orf the population. In either case, this is not very much of the total population. Obviously, no one should be mistreated because they are a minority (or mistreated even if they are not a minority, the case of women comes to mind, there are definitely more women than men). And everyone should have have their rights. But marriage is not included among 'rights'. As I explained, a society chooses to give this privilege to people for certain reasons. Mainly, so that the society can continue through children. The fact that other societies have chosen to give the privilege to one man to marry many women does not change this--one man and many women still can procreate, given--well given, nature. If they find that the best way to do things, that's what they find the best way. Having studied one of those societies (China in former times) in great depth, I would say that this not the optimum situation for women's rights and well-being, but that's a moot point since I assume no one is proposing that we bring that here. It is being used as an argument to support gay marriage, at which it fails, because one man can procreate with many, many women and make lots and lots of babies, if that is the society's main goal (and then the mothers can figure out how to rear them) but two men or two women do not make any babies so obviously it is not the same. A male cousin can impregnate a female cousin just fine and in societies where there is not a lot of chance of going out to meet people outside the gene pool, they end up allowing this for obvious reasons--and then deal with the increased incidence of birth defects one way or the other (when the inbreeding gets bad enough, the really ill children, at least in pre-industrial societies, are selected out because they will die). This argument has nothing do with gay marriage either. Two male cousins or two female cousins are not going to create any children together. so we are back to square one. Nothing is happening that society has a reason to want to regulate/support or have anything to do with at all.

Societies have always realized this. Societies have treated people who have sex with people of the same sex differently at different times. Sometimes there has been discrimination certainly and cruelty (and I have witnessed real discrimination against gays personally and not only don't support it but have stood up against it), but to say that there has always been discrimination and cruelty is showing an extreme lack of knowledge of history. Some societies have been extremely 'gay-friendly' and 'tolerant' to use modern terms. The Athenians in the fifth century, for example and several of the other Greek city states into the Hellenistic period. The Romans once they had the empire. At various periods in ancient China, homosexuality was not considered odd at all, also. It's a complicated subject, some societies have tolerated lesbianism but not male homosexuality, others have been tolerant of male homosexuals, so long as they were not 'effeminate' and 'passive', others have tolerated pederasty only, and others have not tolerated homosexuality at all, but can't be said to have been prejudiced against homosexuality particularly since they have had such strict rules and intolerance of of everyone transgressing what they decided were or should be sexual norms. However, in NO society, including the most tolerant of homosexuals ever (that would be the GReeks. They pretty much expected all men's real emotional and sexual attachments to be to other men, and actuallly down on those who could not manage to participate in this) has there ever been homosexual marriage. Even the aforesaid Greeks of the fifth century B.C. expected every single man to get married to a woman. The women were married as young as possible (there are stories of the little girls carrying their dolls to the wedding ceremonies), used for procreation, secluded strictly in a what you would call a harem (except there was only one wife) constantly denigrated in what was probably the most misogynistic society ever and did not expect any romantic love or even sexual attention beyond what was absolutely necessary to bear children, and their husbands' real attention was always with their 'friends'--but these absolutely determined homosexuals still married women, not other men. Which is why there are still Greeks today.

Leaving all other arguments aside, it is jsut a purely practical matter.
Which is why it can't be a 'right'.
You can't legislate rights that are impossible and make the world what you wish it was, but it isn't, and a majority of people realize this, no matter what analogies are made that seem convincing until you start thinking about them, which is why I suspect (can't say for sure, of course) that the prophecy you are all making "it is going to happen", "it will happen in the next ten years' is not going to come to pass.

 

[Circe]

I'm not going to address the "marriage is/is not a right" thing again, because, well, I hate repeating myself. I've tackled it, Danny's tackled it, Thing's tackled it, and I haven't seen any of that addressed, so ... see above, I guess.

Two things, though.

1.) Procreation isn't the end-all and be-all of marriage: not in today's world. Overpopulation is the biggest problem facing the next generation: overpopulation, and lack of resources. In reaction to that, a fair number of people are choosing not to have children at all (see, the various "child-free" threads on the board): many more are taking advantage of the various reproductive technologies available to us to severely curtail the high birth-rates that were common in previous eras. It's a source of (usually racial) panic in both the US, Western Europe, and most recently, Russia, but as more and more of the world embraces the freedom that reproductive control brings and the ways in which it eases the lives of women, the more and more we see various societies realizing the burden that enormous populations put on strained resources ... and the less and less emphasis on marriage as a procreative medium do we see.

2.) Raising the next generation? Not solely a matter of biological reproduction. The last cool parent I met was a dude who worked for Disney, who told me about how he and his partner were raising their sons. So why on earth make it tougher for them and all their ilk - all the people whose chosen loves are fellow innies or outies, as the case may be - to provide loving homes for the children who desperately need them? Population growth might be shrinking, comparatively, but our orphanages are still crammed full of needy children. The system is still biased towards two-parent households, somewhat understandably, as they provide more stability, so why deny that to tax-paying, law-abiding, morally upright members of society who happen to be, as they used to say, friends of Dorothy*?

*No offense intended to anybody by that archaic bit of slang: the first time I came across it, it tickled my fancy, so I try to resurrect it when possible. Certainly, it is not my intention to exclude the lesbian population.

 

[Black Jade]

Here is a true story.
I think it's very depressing.
I went to an Ivy League college which is of course very avant-garde in all of it's opinions and extremely liberal, socially and politically (both when it makes sense and when it doesn't--but that's another story).
when the whole issue of gay marriage first came up, I think it's almost ten years ago now, there was a lot of posturing and posing on the internet boards which were popular there for alumni at that time (now a lot less popular, technology has moved on there).
Anybody--and there were really only about three of us, who expressed reservation at even the IDEA of gay marriage was told basically that they were a dinosaur and a totally evil person to boot, the discourse was definitely not as civilized as it has been on this thread so far. they were also accused of deliberately being hurtful to gay classmates, etc. etc. In short, it really got hot and almost everyone made sure that they were on the 'right' side.
Fast forward to the next reunion.
A classmate, who I have always been quite friendly with, brings his gay husband. That was how he introduced him and probably they had been married somewhere as gay marriage was definitely legal by then at least in Massachusetts. It's some time and I don't remember exactly but I am pretty sure of that.
The classmate, a typical Ivy Leaguer, who you would not know was gay unless he told you so, was treated (as he should have been) just fine. This guy is tall, goodlooking, well-spoken and as I said before, not stereotypically in any manner of dressing or action and jsut seems, as he is, extemely WASP and upper-class. However the husband was another story. He was more flamboyantly gay, I don't mean that offensively--what I mean is that you would have known he probably was (though I have met people like him that actually weren't). He wore makeup--obvious makeup, rouge, lipstick, mascara. He had an earring--I don't mean the discreet little diamond, but like a big pirate earring. He had a very high pitched voice--well, you get the idea.
And I couldn't believe how rudely people treated him. THe classmate went off with other people, as sort of happens at reunions where you tend to go off with people you knew before and not stay with the people you know now and they can get sort of lost. I have seen a lot of other husbands and wives in that position--but I have NEVER seen them treated like this. all the same people who were all over the listserv going on about how they supported the future, which was definitely gay marriage, when it was theoretical, avoided the part of the room where he was in, looking as if they had seen a roach in the soup in a fancy restaurant and as if they were really disgusted but way too well bred to bring anyone's attention to it. I went over and talked to the guy for the most of the evening, because I was so upset that no one else would. He was a very interesting and agreeable person--as why shouldn't he be? We had a great talk. I liked him a lot. I have never seen him at a reunion again--but then again, there has only been one reunion since then. they're every five years. I felt really angry at my classmates. Later the classmate who brought him came over and thanked me for being polite to his friend--as if it was astonishing that somebody was. I thought this was very sad.
It brought some sad resonance to some of the things that came across during the previous, heated internet discussion, that I had thought people must be JOKING when they said.
One classmate actually wrote at one point, "I totally support gay marriage because I think it is important to fight against prejudice when I find it in myself and I am often revolted by gays and don't want to give in to this side of myself."
Others wrote things like, "My parents were against integration with blacks and I feel we have another chance here and I don't want to be on the wrong side of history again."
It was so sad, everyone in the room (except me), if you had asked them, would have said they totally believed they were married and accepted them as such, but they were still behaving the same way the other kids in my junior high school behaved to the one girl who had a short haircut, wore boy's clothes and make jokes about how she was attracted to other girls. Nobody beat her up or called her names or did any of those things that you hear mentioned when people talk about bullying gays, when they bring up the most exteme cases, dramatic cases. They jsut did the exact same thing after a while, acted as if there was a bad smell in the room that they weren't going to talk about, but they certainly weren't going to go near it. No one would talk to her. I had never seen anyone ignored like that before. There was cruelty in the school--people teased and beat up the fat kid--the boys made fun of the girls they thought weren't attractive, the girls had their hissy fights and wrote notes about each other and passed them around when the teacher wasn't looking--all the things kids do that aren't nice. But this was different. It wasn't a one day thing like a reunion but day in and day out with everybody sitting on the other side of the room, no one sitting with her in the cafeteria at lunch time, people just walking right by as if she wasn't there. I thought this was a really horrible way to treat another human being at that time and I'd go and sit with her and talk to her and sometimes she would just cry and cry. "Why do they all hate me?" I didn't have an answer. She left the school, I don't know what happened to her. I've always remembered her. Her name was Margarita. I don't know anything about her history or background or anything and I never saw her again. We were both 12 years at the time.

I can UNDERSTAND why someone who has been through a lot of that kind of thing would want to hang their hat on something which they feel would make them treated,not even necessarily NICELY. But just, like a human being. And how it must seem that anyone that was standing in the way, or even just not in agreement with what has come to be considered like the Holy Grail, to be able to married 'like everyone else' was just being really mean for no reason. But I don't think it's ever useful to make a pretense that something is when it isn't and I don't think the state can wave a wand and make it so that something is a marriage that isn't, something that wouldn't be serving the real purpose of marriage and also would not solve the problem of some people being cruel or clueless or, I don't even know what to call it exactly.

 

[Maria D]

Black Jade, I'm going to be honest and say right off that I don't really believe the vignette you write about actually happened exactly in the way you wrote. I think you've embellished parts of reality to create a fiction that frames your point of view -- you believe that you are totally supportive of gays and gay relationships, but that marriage is somehow defined as something that cannot accommodate two people of the same sex. Please don't take offense to this, I am a huge skeptic that thinks that most of what I read on this and other boards is embellished to some degree if not totally made up. Maybe you can remember exactly what people wrote on a listserve years and years ago or maybe you saved the posts, I don't know, but it does seem a bit far fetched. And maybe you truly are the only one at a reunion or a cafeteria that has a shred of decency, but somehow I doubt it.

At any rate, even if I were to take what you've written as truth, there's still nothing in there that conveys any understanding at all of why gays want, and should have, the right to marry. If you think it is about making up for being the outcast in junior high or being ignored at a party you really don't get it.

I have been married for far longer than you have been out of your ivy league college. That makes me an expert, in my humble opinion, on the "real purpose of marriage." As an expert, I can assure you that being of opposite sex has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.

 

[Imdanny]

I realize it's inconvenient to opponents of same sex marriage that Mrs. Loving said this, but it isn't logical to say that because Jane Doe changed her mind in an unrelated case that Mrs. Loving can't speak for her own experience- one doesn't logically follow from the other, especially because she's talking about her case in the context of what it means for actually changing the law (not a personal opinion, the law) vis a vis same sex marriage.

Another interesting thing I found in your comments, Black Jade, is that you don't personally accept 'marriage' between two members of the same sex is 'marriage' regardless of the fact that two members of the same sex might actually be married, in several US states, and in several other countries now. It's kind of hard to argue that there has never been same sex marriage when, whether you agree with it or not, same sex marriage has already been the law in several places.

I don't doubt that the alumni friends you talk about were hypocritical, but their hypocrisy really doesn't tell me anything about whether what they claim to support is right or wrong. Their being hypocritical, and unkind, is an indictment of them, not of same sex marriage.

As far as whether same sex marriage will or will not 'legitimate' homosexuality, and to what extent that would 'help,' again, I don't see where this is at issue. Society lives by the rule of law, not by special, or conventional, 'privileges.'

I don't doubt that your refusal to see two members of the same sex as being married is sincere, but to be honest, you sound like someone who is, for whatever reason, never going to change your mind, no matter what any of us says to you.

 

[Arkteia]

Coming from Russia - the word "negro" is totally appropriate and actually not racist at all. We have another word that is very offensive and unfortunately, I heard it often. It is... sorry... "Bl-as.d". It is used not in relationship to blacks, but to all outsiders whose skin color is darker than that of ethnic Russians. It can be Georgians, Armenians, who not... And as a person who is very blonde but whose first husband was of Armenian origin I used to hear it pretty often (and he had the looks of Omar Sharif!). I hate any form of intolerance, be it racial, religious, or other. Maybe I was born like it, or grew up in a nonjudgmental family.

But here is an issue regarding quitting a friendship. If only one of your friends is racist or shows other forms of intolerance, I'd say, yes, for sure! What if you have many such friends? What if your whole community is like it? What if most of your coworkers' views are totally opposite to yours? (I do not know about my coworkers' racial views but most of them are very openly anti-gay).

My husband and I chose not to mingle with our friends during elections because we were clearly not on their side (again this road of expressing your political views on the PS is slippery but you may guess). We stand out in general, but that year it was even worse.

I do not know if what I saw in my overall pretty liberal state what observation bias, but I would not be surprised if Obama was not elected by my generation. My older son's generation was very active in these elections, I watched our biggest University's rally and I was proud that young people were so politically active.

So if you are young, you probably have a good chance of meeting many people who are like you and you should drop your friend. If you are old(er) like me, I am not so sure... You may end up with very few friends.

Sorry if I am wrong here. As I said, it may be observation bias.

 

[Black Jade]

Well, Circe, very respectfully I want to say that I feel that none of YOU have addressed the question of marriage being a right. You have simply insisted that it IS because you feel that is the fair and equal thing, and you have also said that it is definitely going to happend (which I addressed in the last post), I'mDanny has said that Loving herself supports it, but I have given the reasons why I don't feel that any of these is an answer. You can't just invent a new, unheard 'right' for any of these 'reasons'. I would agree that there is no point in you continuing to repeat yourselves if you have no further reason WHY this is a right, since I have already addressed all of the points above (and am not going to repeat myself either).

I beg to differ about procreation 'in today's world'. Overpopulation is not the issue any longer, if it ever was. It was projected that it was going to be an issue in the 1970's. What has happened instead is what is called the 'birth dearth'. I have written posts about this before and you can look it up, if you don't believe me. None of the advanced nations are at anywhere near replacement rate, excdept the US which is barely there at this point. Japan and many of the European countries are actually in a crisis. China and India are not in a crisis at this moment but will be shortly (within the next ten years) because of one of the (no doubt unintended) results of 'taking advantage of the various reproduction technologies'--i.e., in China state-enforced but prevalent in a lot of other places--sex selection abortion. There aren't enough young women in China and in many states of India anymore for their populations to continue to explode--or even stay at replacement rate, in the next generation. They are dead, or adopted out of the country. This is not racial panic--it is a fact and we also are heading there.

Adoption is very nice and a good thing to do but it makes possible that children already born are taken care of, so it is not exactly procreation. There is plenty of proof that two parent households containing one man and one woman (a matter of more than an innie and an outie, sorry, sex is based on having either XX chromosomes and XY chromosones, you know) are good for children. Two parents of the same sex is an experiement. I am leary of experiments with children due to all the social experimenting that went on with the black community in the 1960's--what turned out to be nonsense about 'matriarchal' society etc and led to extreme social breakdown. The black community (at least in the inner cities is now where you find--and have found--two people of the same sex raising a child--usually a mother and a grandmother. And it is a freaking mess, the results have been horrific. 70% young men in jail, higher death rate than the rest of the population, excessive rates of criminality--none of these were true of the black community in the 1960s and before when we had two parents (different sex) households--and poverty was even higher then and then there was very real and definite racisim. But we were still much more functional.

I'm not going to address the "marriage is/is not a right" thing again, because, well, I hate repeating myself. I've tackled it, Danny's tackled it, Thing's tackled it, and I haven't seen any of that addressed, so ... see above, I guess.

Two things, though.

1.) Procreation isn't the end-all and be-all of marriage: not in today's world. Overpopulation is the biggest problem facing the next generation: overpopulation, and lack of resources. In reaction to that, a fair number of people are choosing not to have children at all (see, the various "child-free" threads on the board): many more are taking advantage of the various reproductive technologies available to us to severely curtail the high birth-rates that were common in previous eras. It's a source of (usually racial) panic in both the US, Western Europe, and most recently, Russia, but as more and more of the world embraces the freedom that reproductive control brings and the ways in which it eases the lives of women, the more and more we see various societies realizing the burden that enormous populations put on strained resources ... and the less and less emphasis on marriage as a procreative medium do we see.

2.) Raising the next generation? Not solely a matter of biological reproduction. The last cool parent I met was a dude who worked for Disney, who told me about how he and his partner were raising their sons. So why on earth make it tougher for them and all their ilk - all the people whose chosen loves are fellow innies or outies, as the case may be - to provide loving homes for the children who desperately need them? Population growth might be shrinking, comparatively, but our orphanages are still crammed full of needy children. The system is still biased towards two-parent households, somewhat understandably, as they provide more stability, so why deny that to tax-paying, law-abiding, morally upright members of society who happen to be, as they used to say, friends of Dorothy*?

*No offense intended to anybody by that archaic bit of slang: the first time I came across it, it tickled my fancy, so I try to resurrect it when possible. Certainly, it is not my intention to exclude the lesbian population.

 

[Black Jade]

Not at all offended.
But there is obviously no way for me to answer this.
I never clean out my computer (which is a fault)so I do have the posts, that's about all I can respond.
I can also respond that I never said or implied that gays want to marry because of being outcasts in junior high school or being ignored at parties. I don't have any idea why anyone wants to do anything. I can't read their minds. I am sure there are many, many different motives for anything anyone wants to do or does. What I said was that I have frequently been shocked (and I only gave two examples of many experiences) by the poor treatment that gays receive in social situations and believe that as human beings they should be treated-- well, as human beings. That's all. You can believe that or not as you please, too.

You must be very old if you have been married longer than I have been out of college which is now 32 years. But people have been married longer than that, so I don't doubt you. I don't think, however, that being married X number of years makes you an expert on marriage. And I don't get how you can assure me that being of the opposite sex has nothing to do with this--especially with nothing but your bare statement.

I mentioned all kinds of historical facts in my post that no one is addressing here, interestingly--not just you. I don't think I'm an expert either but the history of marriage is one of the things that informs my opinions. Yet all I have heard (not from you, but from Circe) is 'this is the modern world and everything is different now.' With no support for this opinion, except anecdotal evidence of her friends. I hope you are also a skeptic of whether she's embellished parts of reality to create a fiction that frames HER point of view--but maybe this only applies when the point of view is not the same as yours?

Just wondering.

If I HAVE made up my mind and am not considering evidence (which I don't think is the case) I don't think that I'm the only one doing that.

But I do appreciate the highly polite tone of discourse (unusual with this subject) and respect all who are venturing opinions here.

And I do honestly believe that all of you have it as a goal to be just and fair, and I appreciate that also--fairness is generally the best of goals but as I've said before, I think there is a great deal at stake here. Once you let the genie out of the box, it doesn't go back in, so you should consider carefully first.



By the way ,

Black Jade, I'm going to be honest and say right off that I don't really believe the vignette you write about actually happened exactly in the way you wrote. I think you've embellished parts of reality to create a fiction that frames your point of view -- you believe that you are totally supportive of gays and gay relationships, but that marriage is somehow defined as something that cannot accommodate two people of the same sex. Please don't take offense to this, I am a huge skeptic that thinks that most of what I read on this and other boards is embellished to some degree if not totally made up. Maybe you can remember exactly what people wrote on a listserve years and years ago or maybe you saved the posts, I don't know, but it does seem a bit far fetched. And maybe you truly are the only one at a reunion or a cafeteria that has a shred of decency, but somehow I doubt it.

At any rate, even if I were to take what you've written as truth, there's still nothing in there that conveys any understanding at all of why gays want, and should have, the right to marry. If you think it is about making up for being the outcast in junior high or being ignored at a party you really don't get it.

I have been married for far longer than you have been out of your ivy league college. That makes me an expert, in my humble opinion, on the "real purpose of marriage." As an expert, I can assure you that being of opposite sex has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.

 

[ksinger]

I've been reading with much interest. I have a few opinions (a shock to all I'm sure), but I am leaving the discussion to people much more passionate on the subject (which has become something other than the original topic) - on both sides.

It is fascinating to me how people who are clearly not devoid of excellent reasoning skills, can come to such wildly different conclusions. But I do very much appreciate the tone here guys. It's been a lot of food for thought, without a bunch of drama.

 

[Circe]

First post I made on the topic, I think, I said that marriage provides legal benefits that are unmatched by any other legal arrangement in terms of taxes, inheritance, social protections (i.e., being allowed access to a spouse in-hospital), and that I believed it was arbitrary and unfair to deny those benefits to a large swathe of our tax-paying citizenry, who deserved equal access to all legal benefits available under our laws. I stand by that: I think it's discriminatory. Either we need to permit marriage qua marriage to everyone, or we need to eliminate the institution as a matter of law, arrange civil unions for everybody, and allow people to hold whatever religious ceremonies they like.

Previous judicial rulings on the issue of marriage have all developed in that direction, previously on the basis of race, and now on the basis of gender: both are considered under the umbrella term of civil rights. You might disagree with those reasons - and, by all means, I am enjoying the discussion! - but they are reasons. I'll leave it to everybody else to speak for themselves.

The "birth dearth" does strike me as having problematic racial implications: the issue isn't that enough people aren't being born, it's that people of certain races are increasing their overall population, while others are holding steady or decreasing theirs. Some nations - Sweden springs to mind - are dealing with this by encouraging immigration and international adoption, and by making motherhood as easy on their female citizens as possible with maternity leave and other social equalizers. Others are panicking, attempting to bribe women into motherhood, and trying to set the clock back by outlawing contraception while playing on racial tensions to guilt their people into having more children than they can comfortably afford. I'm ... pretty strongly in favor of the former. I do agree that sex-selective abortion is an abomination and an outgrowth of patriarchy that's likely to result in some interesting sociological contortions in the years to come ... but I'm glad that international adoption has allowed a lot of the unwanted girl babies to be placed in loving homes.

I can't speak to family structure in the black community in the 60s - I haven't studied it specifically, I don't have relevant personal experience, and I wouldn't want to generalize. But aren't there an awful lot of additional intersecting factors in the 60s and onwards that might play as much as or more of a role in shaping the fates of that generation of young black men? I've read ... well, race-blind isn't the right term, but non-racially-specific studies on single parents, and separate studies focusing on same-sex households that haven't indicated similar patterns at all.

P.S. - Re; XX and XY chromosomes ... do I take this to mean you're against marriages between transfolk and their opposite-gender partners as well?

 

[Circe]

... Yet all I have heard (not from you, but from Circe) is 'this is the modern world and everything is different now.' With no support for this opinion, except anecdotal evidence of her friends. I hope you are also a skeptic of whether she's embellished parts of reality to create a fiction that frames HER point of view--but maybe this only applies when the point of view is not the same as yours?

Er ... not exactly. What I said was that the social mores of Western Judeo-Christian society did not define the platonic, immortal, and immutable ideal of marriage, while offering alternative examples. And, while I don't believe brevity is the soul of wit - as you can guess from many, many long-winded posts - all I'm saying is, I know two ladies, they've been together X years, and married Y times. I'm not really projecting any specific motivations or emotions onto anybody in that example. If you think I'm lying outright, I'd be happy to dig up some of the many similar documented relationships out there.

Reading yours, I felt terrible for the husband of your classmate ... but I also found myself thinking of the unpleasant fate of the "faculty spouse" at most academic parties. People can be awfully clubby sometimes - I'd hope they weren't such hypocrites collectively that homophobia was the reason for their response. That may be the last vein of optimism regarding human nature I have in me, but ... in the absence of anybody outright saying, "I refuse to hang out with Bob's husband, I am afraid I might catch The Gay," I'd hesitate to attribute such small-mindedness to them, especially in opposition to their stated beliefs.

 

[iLander]

Well, I haven't read any of this. My opinion on gay marriage is pretty simple: if two people in this world are lucky enough to find each other in the dumb-a$$ world, then more power to them! They should have all the legal rights that anyone else does.

But back to the original topic of quitting a friendship to social issues:

I had a close friend of mine, she's black. We were very close, she threw my baby shower, I threw her baby shower. We hung out and talked frequently, we went shopping, we were buds and neighbors. To this day, I miss her. And I'm the one that screwed it up.

She had a bad cold and was just getting over it and we were chatting on the phone.
Her; I'm feeling a lot better.
Me; Oh, good, your white cells must be kicking in.
Her; stunned silence, then; What?
Me: suddenly realizing how it sounded; You know, your white blood cells. Leukosites? You know, immunity?
Her; Umm, I gotta go.
Hung up.

She never took another call from me and when I saw her on the street and tried to explain what I was talking about, she smiled wanly and walked off. I guess she thought I was being offensive somehow. This misunderstanding is one of the biggest regrets of my life.

That was 14 years ago, we moved away a few months later, and I never really got a chance to explain.

She probably still thinks I'm a jerk.

ETA; But what do I know, maybe it was jerky in some way. I never used that phrase again, I'll tell you that. With anybody.

 

[Circe]

Also suddenly occurred to me ... it might be useful to define our terms. I define "civil right" as an ability or privilege granted by the government. Examples of occasions on which people are exempted from rights which are otherwise universal include the various things that non-tax-paying minors are prohibited from - smoking, driving, joining the army, voting, etc. ... though you could argue that's more them being protected from those things than anything else. Most other things that spring to mind are equally accessible to all participating members of society. I'm actually really comfortable with the first definition that pops up on Google, from (god help us all) the Free Dictionary:

right or rights belonging to a person by reason of citizenship including especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments and subsequent acts of Congress including the right to legal and social and economic equality

My definition doesn't have anything cosmic, religious, or universal attached to it, which might not be the case for others contributing to the thread. Agree/disagree, y/n?

 

[lbbaber]

Well, I haven't read any of this. My opinion on gay marriage is pretty simple: if two people in this world are lucky enough to find each other in the dumb-a$$ world, then more power to them! They should have all the legal rights that anyone else does.

But back to the original topic of quitting a friendship to social issues:

I had a close friend of mine, she's black. We were very close, she threw my baby shower, I threw her baby shower. We hung out and talked frequently, we went shopping, we were buds and neighbors. To this day, I miss her. And I'm the one that screwed it up.

She had a bad cold and was just getting over it and we were chatting on the phone.
Her; I'm feeling a lot better.
Me; Oh, good, your white cells must be kicking in.
Her; stunned silence, then; What?
Me: suddenly realizing how it sounded; You know, your white blood cells. Leukosites? You know, immunity?
Her; Umm, I gotta go.
Hung up.

She never took another call from me and when I saw her on the street and tried to explain what I was talking about, she smiled wanly and walked off. I guess she thought I was being offensive somehow. This misunderstanding is one of the biggest regrets of my life.

That was 14 years ago, we moved away a few months later, and I never really got a chance to explain.

She probably still thinks I'm a jerk.

ETA; But what do I know, maybe it was jerky in some way. I never used that phrase again, I'll tell you that. With anybody.

Wow, iLander...what a sad story!! With everyone being so easy to find and reconnect with on the internet these days, is there any way you can look her up on facebook and send her a message? I would hate to have a good friendship ruined permanently over a misunderstanding. I feel for you!

 

[iheartscience]

Also suddenly occurred to me ... it might be useful to define our terms. I define "civil right" as an ability or privilege granted by the government. Examples of occasions on which people are exempted from rights which are otherwise universal include the various things that non-tax-paying minors are prohibited from - smoking, driving, joining the army, voting, etc. ... though you could argue that's more them being protected from those things than anything else. Most other things that spring to mind are equally accessible to all participating members of society. I'm actually really comfortable with the first definition that pops up on Google, from (god help us all) the Free Dictionary:

right or rights belonging to a person by reason of citizenship including especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments and subsequent acts of Congress including the right to legal and social and economic equality

My definition doesn't have anything cosmic, religious, or universal attached to it, which might not be the case for others contributing to the thread. Agree/disagree, y/n?

This definition works for me, and the bolded is really what stands out for me when it comes to legalizing gay marriage.

The problem I have with arguments against gay marriage is that they are invariably religiously based (and religion shouldn't come into play when right are granted by the government) or they're ominous predictions of what will happen if you let the gays marry. An example being Black Jade's quote "Once you let the genie out of the box, it doesn't go back in, so you should consider carefully first."

What could possibly happen once you let two people who love each other get married? Growth in the wedding industry? Gasp. Gay couples already live together and adopt children and the world's managed to keep turning.

ETA I also don't believe civil unions are a fair alternative. Separate but equal never works out. I agree with Circe that the government should either make all marriages civil unions and let churches perform marriages or call everything marriage. The end.

 

[Autumnovember]

Well, I haven't read any of this. My opinion on gay marriage is pretty simple: if two people in this world are lucky enough to find each other in the dumb-a$$ world, then more power to them! They should have all the legal rights that anyone else does.

But back to the original topic of quitting a friendship to social issues:

I had a close friend of mine, she's black. We were very close, she threw my baby shower, I threw her baby shower. We hung out and talked frequently, we went shopping, we were buds and neighbors. To this day, I miss her. And I'm the one that screwed it up.

She had a bad cold and was just getting over it and we were chatting on the phone.
Her; I'm feeling a lot better.
Me; Oh, good, your white cells must be kicking in.
Her; stunned silence, then; What?
Me: suddenly realizing how it sounded; You know, your white blood cells. Leukosites? You know, immunity?
Her; Umm, I gotta go.
Hung up.

She never took another call from me and when I saw her on the street and tried to explain what I was talking about, she smiled wanly and walked off. I guess she thought I was being offensive somehow. This misunderstanding is one of the biggest regrets of my life.

That was 14 years ago, we moved away a few months later, and I never really got a chance to explain.

She probably still thinks I'm a jerk.

ETA; But what do I know, maybe it was jerky in some way. I never used that phrase again, I'll tell you that. With anybody.

She stopped talking to you after that?! Wow. ......even after you said "leukocytes, immunity?" ......

 

[merilenda]

I just want to say that I basically agree with everything Thing has said. I have yet to hear an argument against fully legalized gay marriage that I can understand.

 

[Laila619]

Why are human beings of opposite sex allowed to marry each other? And why does society interfere in it at all? Because society assumes that (while not true in 100% of cases obviously), a man and woman marrying can procreate and are likely to have children--which is good for society in general because it creates a future. Becuase it creates a future for the society, the society does things to encourage it (with the selfish reason of getting something back, that is, the children). It tries to create a situation in which the children will have the most stable envirnoment possible, dealing with the facts that men have no real incentive to stay and support children, once they are conceived, without the benefits that they get from a marriage, and that women prefer to get pregnant when they are in a stable situation and tend not to do it if they are not, and also that the average woman is going to be weaker and unable to do outside work in the same way, at least in the advanced stages of pregnancy and immediately afterwards, and also because while their children are small, women need some help. these are facts,not prejudice--if you doubt them look at what unwed mothers have to deal with, and divorced mothers--the way that the standard of living goes down and how overwhelmed these women are. It is in society's interest to try to avoid this. So it meddles in marriage, not because of wanting to interfere in people's private sex lives, but because it is all about the children. A lot of the so-called 'rights and privilges' of marriage are there solely because of the special circumstances of a pregnant or child-bearing woman or a mother with very young children--to give her some protection while she is doing something that society wishes her to do so that it can continue--and something that she gets very little out of it, in real terms. As you can see from the threads popping on Pscope about people nto wanting to have children. There is really very little in this for a woman, if you think in purely practical terms. Careers get behind, freedom is lost--once women start to think about this, they are very likely to think 'what's in it for me' without some help and encouragement.

A lot of the automatic inheritance rights in marriage are so that a widow (or widower also, actually) will not be left helpless with CHILDREN or so that a woman who (as many women used to do) gave up her strongest years raising children instead of thinking of her career, wouldn't be stuck in her old age in extreme poverty as if she were someone who had contributed nothing--society was essentially saying, you gave up a great deal to do this, which is good for all of us and we are making sure that you are not thrown aside like garbage now that your child-bearing years --or your attractive years--are over. Do you know how many men would dump the wife in favor of someone younger once she was worn out bearing kids if there were not some laws to protect her?

Obviously this system does nto work perfectly, and in fact it is working less and less well but that is the reasoning behind it. And many people want to preserve as much of this as they can, because it is time-proven system that works well. Nothing else works so well for bringing up children as a stable environment with a mother and a father, if it can be managed AT ALL. And gay marriage does nothing to make society continue in the same way and the same issues are not germane--i.e., society will not get back the main thing that it wants and needs to continue, the procreation of children, from gay marriage. So there is no reason for society to create this new thing which is of no benefit to society as a whole. So far as the two gay individuals are concerned, civil unions will take care of issues like not being allowed to see your partner if sick in the hospital and so forth. No one has a 'right' to the special protections of marriage--it is a privilege that society allows.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with giving gay individuals protection from the various unfairnesses they might suffer from because of being 'different'. Granting gay marriage will not help with that one bit--that is a whole separate issue. And, as I was saying before, marriage was not on the slate of civil rights issues that blacks were concerned with. The civil rights movement was not about Loving vs. Virginia, which as I have stated above was an issue of a man not being allowed to marry a woman and not about anything else at all.

Black Jade, I don't even know where to begin! Men have no incentive to stick around and support their own kids?! Marriage is only about procreation?! Once women are done having kids they are worn out and unattractive?! Women are not helpless creatures who need marriage to protect themselves, and men are not jerks who would leave if it weren't for marriage. I find it sad that you think these things.

As for the bolded part, what law is there to protect women from getting dumped for someone younger? As far as I know, divorce and adultery are not illegal.

 

[Circe]

I don't even know where to begin! Men have no incentive to stick around and support their own kids?! Marriage is only about procreation?! Once women are done having kids they are worn out and unattractive?! Women are not helpless creatures who need marriage to protect themselves, and men are not jerks who would leave if it weren't for marriage. I find it sad that you think these things.

As for the bolded part, what law is there to protect women from getting dumped for someone younger? As far as I know, divorce and adultery are not illegal.

Er ... call me a cynic, but I do agree with some of this. It's not all men, and it's not all women, but at the end of the day, marriage is an insurance policy. (At the beginning, I'll maintain it's about love.) Sadly, marriage was a poor insurance policy for most of its history: it's DNA testing, child support, and alimony that have filled in the stop-gaps to assuage men's suspicions and shore up women's investments in their families. Ah, progress.

 

[Imdanny]

In fairness, my first post to Black Jade was defensive and I didn't clearly respond to what Black Jade had said. I apologize, Black Jade.

 

[Black Jade]

In fairness, my first post to Black Jade was defensive and I didn't clearly respond to what Black Jade had said. I apologize, Black Jade.

There is definitely no need for an apology, Imdanny and it is beyond nice of you to give one.

 

[Arkteia]

I just want to say that I basically agree with everything Thing has said. I have yet to hear an argument against fully legalized gay marriage that I can understand.

+1. Also, 100% agree with what Circe has been saying.
Circe, I really respect your stand on issues that divide our society these days!
Coming from Europe, which is very liberal and tolerant, I am sometimes wary of openly expressing my views, but it is nice to read posts like yours.

 

[Black Jade]

My answers are in bold

First post I made on the topic, I think, I said that marriage provides legal benefits that are unmatched by any other legal arrangement in terms of taxes, inheritance, social protections (i.e., being allowed access to a spouse in-hospital), and that I believed it was arbitrary and unfair to deny those benefits to a large swathe of our tax-paying citizenry, who deserved equal access to all legal benefits available under our laws. I stand by that: I think it's discriminatory. Either we need to permit marriage qua marriage to everyone, or we need to eliminate the institution as a matter of law, arrange civil unions for everybody, and allow people to hold whatever religious ceremonies they like.

I agree that this is unfair, according to the definition which would call 'fair' treating everyone exactly alike. However, as I stated before, I do not believe it is arbitrary.
I do not, for instance, have the right to park in a handicapped parking space. Strictly speaking, in one sense it would be fair if I could, but in a larger sense it is unfair because I can walk well. The rules should not be the same for me--exact equality is not always true fairness.
While there are certain things that the state should not deny to same sex couples, such as the right to visit one another in the hospital when sick and inheritance rights, there are others which as I stated before are based on the fact that women get pregnant, women get behind in their careers when pregnant, not granting women certain things, such as maternity leave, the husband's pension and tax breaks while raising children is something it is society's interests to encourage. Marriage is encouraged for the protection of women and children. I don't see how its discriminatory not to grant a couple to whom these things cannot apply and I in fact fear that a very likely scenario in this whole matter is that what you brought up at the end will happen. Marriage will be eliminated as a matter of law for everyone and women and children will be punished more than they already have been by many of the things that were supposed to create more equality for women. After 40 years of the women's movement in this country, the situation we now have is that you still don't get the same work for the same pay, you do get the same education now but it's of no value in terms of practical things, like getting paid for doing the same job, the jobs that women end up getting, except for a privileged upper class minority are exhausting, and not especially fulfilling but completely necessary in terms of paying the mortgage; there is the double shift as the help at home is not there; and the things that society used to do to protect you as a mother and wife have been eroded. The elimination of the institution of marriage because of a misguided idea of fairness will be the last blow.

Previous judicial rulings on the issue of marriage have all developed in that direction, previously on the basis of race, and now on the basis of gender: both are considered under the umbrella term of civil rights. You might disagree with those reasons - and, by all means, I am enjoying the discussion! - but they are reasons. I'll leave it to everybody else to speak for themselves.

Judicial decisions certainly have. The question is, if they are the correct decisions and if apples are being compared to apples here.
You know my opinions, so I won't bend your ears.

The "birth dearth" does strike me as having problematic racial implications: the issue isn't that enough people aren't being born, it's that people of certain races are increasing their overall population.

The places where people are having more children--Yemen, Ethiopia and Uganda are at the top--also have high infant mortality, lower life expectancy, horrible medical care--and are unlikely to manage to overpopulate the world anytime soon. 44% of the world's population lives in places where the rate is below replacement. It is definitely a problem.

Some nations - Sweden springs to mind - are dealing with this by encouraging immigration and international adoption, and by making motherhood as easy on their female citizens as possible with maternity leave and other social equalizers. Others are panicking, attempting to bribe women into motherhood, and trying to set the clock back by outlawing contraception while playing on racial tensions to guilt their people into having more children than they can comfortably afford. I'm ... pretty strongly in favor of the former.
.
More complicated than this. See link posted below


http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9126/index1.html

I do agree that sex-selective abortion is an abomination and an outgrowth of patriarchy that's likely to result in some interesting sociological contortions in the years to come ... but I'm glad that international adoption has allowed a lot of the unwanted girl babies to be placed in loving homes.

There are already somve very interesting 'sociological contortions' going on. The 'abomination' is not just in China and India--in the United States and Canada various groups of immigrants are practicing this also. I really don't see how you can avoid this little side effect--the death of an untold number of little girls before they are even born--without passing some kind of law that restricts abortion in this way, and since any restriction of abortion is anathema to a significant amount of the people in power--but that is another subject.
Being adopted out is nice for the little girls who are lucky enough to have this happen--granted that they manage to get born in the first place--but it doesn't do much for the countries in question in terms of solving their not very far in the future demographic issues--since whether dead or adopted out, the missing young women are still not available to be married--and prevent the aging of the country and the attendant problems. china already has an aging population, it is not so significant yet but it is just going to get worse.


I can't speak to family structure in the black community in the 60s - I haven't studied it specifically, I don't have relevant personal experience, and I wouldn't want to generalize. But aren't there an awful lot of additional intersecting factors in the 60s and onwards that might play as much as or more of a role in shaping the fates of that generation of young black men? I've read ... well, race-blind isn't the right term, but non-racially-specific studies on single parents, and separate studies focusing on same-sex households that haven't indicated similar patterns at all.

I think the study of this would interest you and would certainly be enlightening. I couldn't really answer the rest of your question without knowing what additional intersecting factors you are talking about.
It's now two generations since the 60's and a lot of things have played out in very unexpected ways. This is, by the way, a really major reason why you have very few blacks who support same sex marriage. We are, from unfortunate experience, very very wary of social engineering and we know how fragile family structures are, since ours have been essentially destroyed, it seems beyond repair, in a mere 40 years. 400 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow did not succeed in destroying the black family in the U.S. but 40 years of social programs, most of them started, by the way, as misguided attempts to be 'fair' and to make up for past history, have done such a number on usthat we are very, very suspicious of this kind of thing.

P.S. - Re; XX and XY chromosomes ... do I take this to mean you're against marriages between transfolk and their opposite-gender partners as well?

I mean exactly what I said. I was not venturing into the subject of marriage here. I was just saying that a person is a man or a woman based on whether they have XX or XY chromosomes. We have another thread somewhere on this that is very recent, where I gave my opinions on this particular subject and I'm not really up for going into them here again. I'm sorry that I don't remember the name of the thread..