Gay liberal against gay marriage???

[penultimate]

I was on the weird part of the internet again and I just stumbled across this lady's website.

http://www.yasminnair.net/content/gay-marriage-conservative-cause

I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around this. At first I didn't think it was real, but it seems real. So basically it seems this woman doesn't like the idea/concept of marriage (not uncommon these days), and because of that she labels gay marriage as a conservative idea. Seems a bit whacky to me. Anyway, I never heard this argument before, so I'm assuming it can't be too common. Does anyone know of anyone else with such views? I can't tell if she is actively working against gay marriage though.

Actually, after reading a bit more, it looks like she believes there are more pressing matters than gay marriage. I guess she doesn't believe people can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

I dunno, the whole thing seems weird. Any thoughts on this? Am I missing something?

[brooklynite]

1. Marriage is one of the oldest social constructs in history...that makes it conservative

[penultimate]

2. But that doesn't mean the people wanting it are conservative pawns or wrong...

which is kinda what she and others like her are getting at.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. It is a rareity, but those wacked-out opinions do exist in the GLBT community.

I don't have the time to knock down most of the article, but, yes, opinions like hers do exist. Most of those types seem to be of the "anti-assimilationist" version. I consider her to be as ignorant, if not more so, than her right-wing peers because she attempts to use a perverted and twisted form of logic to deny equal rights.

[dionysus]

5. is that kinda similar to the people in the deaf community who are against hearing aids and

cochlear implants?

[closeupready]

7. Yes, that's correct. Acknowledgment of reality is, to some people,

VALIDATION of second-class status.

It's an argument that works on some levels and in some situations, but doesn't work in other situations. Also, it is an argument that hinges upon the prevailing mores of a specific human era.

[dionysus]

10. my alma mater has one of the largest deaf institutes in the country. there was a scandal because

the woman who was going to be the new head was not totally deaf; she either had implants, aids, or some miniscule amount of hearing left. There was enough outcry by a portion of the deaf student body that she was removed\blocked before taking charge because she wasn't "truly deaf" or some such thing.

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

13. RIT?

or CSUN?

[dionysus]

14. yes, RIT but after a bunch of googling, i discovered it was a different university where the scandal

happened.... damned memory. apparently 2006 is too far back for me to remember

maybe I remember it because NTID was weighing in on the issue in the local press...

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

17. NTID is part of RIT

We had a decent president when I went there from '93 to '96.

[dionysus]

19. i know silly, i went to school there ;) the controversy i remember, however, was at a school called

Gallaudet University. took me quite a bit of googling to convince myself I wasn't crazy and that it did happen, just not at RIT. it had to have been in the local news at the time or something...

ever party at Spring Jam in racquet club apartments?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/may/9/20060509-122258-1510r/?page=all

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

21. Yes. I remember - the scandal put into place I. King Jordan

And that was in 1988.

And he tried to appoint Dr. Jane Fernandes who wasn't "deaf enough"....

And was eventually replaced by someone I knew at NTID - Alan Hurwitz. he was an excellent provost while I was there.

[dionysus]

23. what was the NTID tower named.. it escapes me... I wish in Fish and Gleason before racquet club appt

in my day, UR frat rushes used to pull the fire alarm in that tower because it set off the strobes and the building was so tall they could see it light up from the university of Rochester!

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

24. Tower A

Is what I called it back then.

I remember Gleason - used to live there very briefly.

Fish - it was right next to Tower A?

I lived in the 6th floor.

[dionysus]

25. fish was towards tower A.. but i think gibson was closer... gleason was towards Gracies...

ah, memoriesssssss
you were finishing up there when I was starting out!
looking it up, I think tower a is ellingson now.

damn, there's youtube vids of the buildings after assholes pulled the alarms!

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

26. Yes, gracies where they had the cafeteria and the underground computer lab...

[dionysus]

27. see the edit to my post above...

I worked at gracies for 4 years!

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

28. Yeah, Ellington Towers

But we called it Tower A.

[dionysus]

29. well, pleased to meet another Tiger :)

[Behind the Aegis]

8. Yup. Similar. They want their culture to remain separate.

Good analogy!

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

4. There are those in the gay movement who feel it should not be the forefront of the rights fight

Similar to gays in the military, that it's fighting to be part of a conservative construct.

[Heather MC]

11. I feel like Adding Gays to serve Openly, and Women in combat

Is more about them planning for more wars and there is just not enough straight white guys volunteering.

I am not against Equal rights in the Military. I just see how much it benefits a Government that likes perpetual war

A lot of people are against the institution of Marriage, as I am sure you can find some blacks who are for Segregation.

[penultimate]

15. I agree with you on that..

That's just the military being pragmatic, knowing it's silly for them to limit their manpower pool by excluding people. A gay person can kill someone just as well as a straight person... or hand out aid in the case of a natural disaster.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

22. The bottom line is, whether there are not enough straight white guys volunteering....

....that there are gay men and women who want to serve their country, and have for long before the military decided to start changing the rules. I don't think it's right to toss sour grapes at their choice.

[closeupready]

6. Seems like she's self-loathing.

Windsor (the recent US Supreme Court case striking down DOMA) was about gay marriage, but almost equally about the fact that her relationship with her partner was massively penalized by state tax authorities in a situation (inheritance) where opposite-gender couples had the opportunity to avoid that penalty (and same-sex couples did not).

[OriginalGeek]

9. While he isn't gay, I work with a tea party republican atheist

he feels marriage should be solely in the domain of church so he is against marriage equality except that really nobody should have it. lol
I'm not sure I'm explaining his view correctly because I'm not sure I understand it. I THINK he feels that since marriage should be handled ONLY by religion, there is no government component that dictates rights and responsibilities and benefits for married people. It should only be a religious observance - I guess kinda like baptism...A ceremonial thing that churches are free to perform at their whim and since the only religion he really knows is the conservative one he grew up in, gay marriage isn't even on the table as none of the churches he ever heard of would do one.

Yes, he is married and his wife is religious.

I should note he grew up the son of very religious missionaries - not unlike my own religious upbringing. His led him to atheist conservatism (heavily libertarian too) while mine led me to liberal atheism.

Takes all kinds I reckon.

[penultimate]

12. I get the arguments against marriage in general

I don't know if I believe them (I may just be bitter ), but I do understand where those come from. I even understand where people come from when they marriage should just be a religious thing. I personally think it would be awesome if we totally moved the concept of marriage out of the states hands and just had it where every one had something like civil unions. Then the marriage aspect could be handled by the churches themselves. There are plenty of churches that will happily marry gay couples. Then again, there could be aspects wrong with that that I didn't think of yet. I also highly doubt that will ever happen.

But either way, I don't understand the desire of these types to not want others to get married if they want to. I just hope they are not out there actively trying to prevent gay marriage just because they don't like the idea of marriage being a legal thing. Seems like their time and effort would be better spent trying to get rid of marriage in general and not tying it to just gay marriage.

[OriginalGeek]

18. "...I don't understand the desire of these types to not want others to get married..."

Pretty much what I told him once. I don't understand why he would expend any energy at all fighting marriage equality.* His way takes a basic civil right away from people. My way doesn't force anyone to do anything they don;t want to do and lets others be free to marry whoever they love.


*I have no idea how much real energy he spends fighting equality. I can only say when the subject is brought up he expends a lot of energy being mad at it. Seems to me the libertarian, freedomest way would be to let everyone do what they want? but on top of everything else, he listens to Limbaugh so I guess Rushie told him to keep on fightin'.


At least he isn't as bad as the (now ex-)co-worker who actually said out loud that gay marriage would lead to animal marriage. Glad the PTB fired that dip-shit. I had heard the idea floated many times as an abstract but he was the first person I ever heard actually say it. He was a newly born-again though so probably still flush with godly powers and listening to everything he was told.

[markpkessinger]

20. I've met a few of those types . ..

. . . I usually point out to them, however, that leaving marriages as strictly a religious matter creates some serious legal problems. Marriage is, after all, a civil contract, with significant legal ramifications concerning inheritance rights, debt obligations, tax liabilities, child care responsibilities (where applicable), etc. And it is up to the courts to enforce these contracts, and to mediate disputes arising from them. So the state must have a way of formally recognizing valid marriage contracts.

It's also kind of bass ackwards from a historical perspective. Marriages were recognized by civil government long before the Church ever got into the marriage business. In fact, for approximately the first millennium of its existence, the Christian Church didn't even have a marriage rite. People would get married according to whatever the local custom was, and then would present themselves at the local church for a blessing (no big ceremony, and most likely these were done either privately or in the context of a Sunday mass).

(Side note: as a theological matter, the Christian Church does not perform the sacrament of marriage (something many opponents of gay marriage don't seem to grasp). The 'celebrants' of the sacrament of marriage are the couple themselves. It isn't like the Eucharist, where the church holds that a priest is essential to the sacrament in order for it to be a sacrament. In the Eucharist, the priest or minister is the celebrant who performs the sacrament. In a marriage ceremony, the clergy person is nothing more than an officiant (albeit an authorized one). From the Church's point of view, he functions, on behalf of the wider Church, as the Church's official witness to the sacrament; from the state's point of view, by signing the marriage license, he is also the state's official witness to the execution of the marriage contract -- which I suspect civil governments began allowing as a matter of convenience, both for the couple and the civil authorities.)

[JI7]

16. maybe she has a girlfriend who wants to get married

and she doesn't want to so she came up with this nonsense.