Must read about the gay experience
Bookworm on Mar 20 2009 at 9:31 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve been very, very conflicted about the fact that I’ve come to the point in my life where I feel as if I’m looking over a giant chasm when I speak with my gay friends from my youth (or read their input on Facebook). I grew up in the Stonewall era and the Castro Street era, and never had a problem with gay liberation (although I always had a problem with excess). I had more gay friends than you can possibly imagine and loved them dearly (and still deeply mourn those who died). I thought theirs was a righteous fight over a visceral and often cruel discrimination.
I guess I started having problems during the AIDS era. Actually, I had one specific problem: I was deeply troubled by the fact that the gay rights movement put political ideology above what I believed were legitimate public health concerns. I’m speaking, of course, of the bath house wars. Those bath houses were disease vectors, just as the filthy, typhoid-ridden drains in mid-19th century London were disease vectors. The gays’ fight to keep them open and operating meant that AIDS was able to spread with dramatic rapidity. This stand gave the disease a solid foothold in America and, not coincidentally, contributed to the infection of thousands of gay men who might have avoided dangerous practices in a less salacious atmosphere. (And believe me when I say I really know about this, because owing to a job I had in a local hospital, I was one of the first people in America to know about AIDS.)
The insanity of the bath house fight didn’t diminish the tragedy of so many deaths (or, as I said, the loss of friends), but it made me realize that there were two dimensions to the gay movement: One dimension was the individuals trying to live their lives. The other dimension was a gay rights movement that was trying to power through an agenda regardless of the fallout from that agenda (including deadly fallout within the movement’s own community). The libertarian and the human in me accepts completely the first dimension; the conservative in me rejects the second.
I’ve also had huge problems in the past eight years with the fact that, barring a few brave souls, the gay movement has clung reflexively to the Left. This has put homosexuals in bed (figuratively, of course) with the same Mullahs who believe gays should suffer the worst kind of death just for being gay. And those aren’t just figures of speech. In places such as Iran and Palestine the treatment meted out to gays goes beyond appalling. Again, the movement has blinded itself to anything but the movement itself, and I don’t like that. That’s a kind of stultifying Leftist mind control that damages everyone and everything it touches.
It turns out I’m not the only one feeling that the gay rights movement has lost its soul. Charles Winecoff, a gay man who grew up in the same era I did, states “I hadn’t left the community, it had left me. When did the gays get so mean, anyway?” He then proceeds to write a thoughtful, fact-filled post about the political changes that have overtaken the gay rights movement in the last twenty years, changing it from a movement intended to allow people to live their lives in the open, without fear, into a far Left, very angry movement — with the anger intensifying the more the rights increase.
And as to that, have you noticed how often, once a group achieves its original goals the group, rather than achieving political bliss and peacefully dying away, morphs into an anger monster that becomes ever more irrational? Just cast your mind over the history of the original Civil Rights movement, the feminist movement and, of course, the gay rights movement. All started by enthusiastically demanding that the fetters binding blacks, women and gays be removed. All ended by becoming angry, anti-American, impractical, mean-spirited, overreaching movements, still trading on the good will their original goals engendered in the fundamentally decent American population.
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Different tune, same drumbeat. Communism – planted so many years ago that those who are following the beat today don’t even know its roots. Find _any_ political activist movement, infiltrate and divert the purpose to suit the communist political agenda. Find any discontented group and nurture their discontent. If they can’t divide by class, then they’ll find any group they can and eventually they’ll unite because Voila! what a miracle! they share many of the same goals!!! How could that happen! Of _course_ we can work together to overthrow the present system and install our better system.
Besides – they still have to destroy the nuclear family so that the State becomes the sole indoctrinator of all Future Citizens. We still call them children, and have the politically mistaken idea that they belong to the family unit. Not so – in the glorious future, they will belong to the State, and parents are entrusted with their care – but just until they are big enough for the State to step in.
Although “Brave New World” has beat out “1984″ hands-down as the more prescient of the 20th century’s dystopian visions, there is one element from “1984″ that has made the cut.
In the interrogation of Winston Smith by O’Brien, O’Brien tells Smith what is the Party’s ultimate motivation: Raw, pure, unrelenting, unadulterated power, exercised forever and ever. O’Brien asks Smith to imagine a boot endlessly kicking and crushing a human face. The Party’s triumph, crows O’Brien, is that it is the first totalitarian movement in history to come clean about its motivation. It does not pretend to exercise power on behalf of the good, it exercises power for the sheer sake of it.
Behind the sweet masks of the left is the sociopathy of folks like Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dorhn, Medea Benjamin and Mike Klonsky. Even as they will grant us a Brave New World of endless sexual thrills and mindless diversions, they will require payment in the form of mass murders and endless violence.
One dimension was the individuals trying to live their lives.
I replied to Charles’ very interesting post when I saw it there, and I won’t repeat that here (it’s also on my blog here), but I want to follow up on your mention of people living their lives even if I do risk repeating myself a bit.
I’m one of those just trying to live my life…and a major part of my life is my 22 year monogamous relationship in which we’ve built up some amount of assets and in which we’ve had to deal with sometimes serious medical issues.
My family rejects me because of who I am, which is fine (I reject them right back), but even at 40 I must live in constant fear that if I am incapacitated they may have the ability to take over my medical decisions and our mutually built up nest egg. Even if California’s domestic partnership rules might prevent that (or might not), today I’m on vacation in another state, and if something bad happens here, I am probably out of luck, since partnerships/civil unions don’t travel from state to state. This isn’t theoretical…it happens to gay couples all the time, and devastates their lives.
I’m no longer liberal. I abhor the majority of the gay community’s allegiance to the brain dead left. I want nothing to do with them.
But I also want to live my life peacefully. After 22 years I think my relationship deserves the stability and peace of mind that the guarantees of civil marriage provide.
I am very concerned that the understandable reaction to those on the extreme causes people to overlook the growing number of people in my situation…gays who have grown up, joined the real world, contributed to society, have no interest in overturning anything, but just want to be left alone to live our lives. And sometimes to be left alone, you need some recognition from the state and the same assurance that any straight couple has available to them.
Given your concerns, why don’t you each carry a notarized power of attorney for the other?
Ronald:
You’ve raised a very good issue, but I think you’re also making my point for me. Wouldn’t it make sense right now for the GLBT community to focus on a nationwide system of laws that recognizes civil unions from other states? I think the vast majority of Americans would support that. Instead, though, the GLBT community is jettisoning a very practical issue about individuals living their lives, and instead expending all of its capital on an explosive issue that involves changing the definition of an institution that’s been around since recorded history. This latter is an angry, uphill battle, that is much less likely in the short term to achieve legitimate, realistic and humane goals.
Given your concerns, why don’t you each carry a notarized power of attorney for the other?
We do, but that is only the tip of the iceberg (you need another one for health decisions, and other things to deal with property rights and inheritance, etc). To be truly safe you have to engage in a whole series of legal items, at a non-insignificant cost, and even then you can’t guarantee that in the heat of the moment they will be honored or that they apply in all states equally.
Plus, it’s possible for a family to go to court and puncture those…even if they don’t succeed, it’s a nasty and time-consuming legal battle. Meanwhile, marriage simply takes care of all that.
As Penn Jillette said in discussing Proposition 8, he doesn’t believe in marriage himself yet he is married, because after consultation with lawyers it was the only guaranteed way he could protect their rights over their children.
Wouldn’t it make sense right now for the GLBT community to focus on a nationwide system of laws that recognizes civil unions from other states?
Perhaps it would be the best tactic. I don’t know.
Personally, when there’s already an established mechanism for exactly what people like me need, I think it’s easiest just to apply the “separate is not equal” concept and flip the switch.
Somehow I suspect a whole new legal mechanism will take decades to settle out, as opposed to simply applying the mechanism we have to all adults, especially when the end result would presumably be exactly the same.
I’m not qualified to say what is the best approach. But I hope you’ll understand my frustration at being thrown under the bus because all people can talk about are extremists I have nothing to do with and don’t care about in the slightest.
I strongly believe that moderate and conservative gays are on the rise and that there are already far more of us than anyone knows, and I see evidence of that all over on the web (GayPatriot being a great example, as well as multiple posters on Big Hollywood). It would be nice to have a single conversation about gay issues that didn’t devolve into people linking to Folsom Street Fair as if that somehow settled the issue and fairly represented an entire community. It’s worse when it’s not just a matter of internet debate, but on a human rights issue that directly impacts me and others like me, those who conservatives should be courting instead of losing in the crowd.
Please don’t take any of this as direct criticism — I’m just venting a bit at an association and a situation that is driving me nuts. Just imagine on any item of importance to you — religion, gender, profession, whatever (and some don’t have to imagine, for sure) — that everyone could only seem to associate you with the worst extreme minority of people in your community and that’s all they talked about. It’s galling.
Doesn’t the Domestic Partnership cover those issues?
Doesn’t the Domestic Partnership cover those issues?
There is no consistent definition of domestic partnership, and the rights of such a partnership don’t transfer to other states.
I’m in another state now on vacation…if I walk outside and get hit and end up in a hospital, whatever rights I have in California are out the window and meaningless.
There are even weird things like…you get a domestic partnership, then one partner splits to another state and you want to sever the relationship and…then what? Marriage has a massive amount of established law that handles all this. We can spend years and lots of resources recreating all that, or we can just acknowledge that two consenting adults should be allowed to marry and even that most people probably want them to have all those protections (even when they don’t want to call it “Marriage”).
This is why it bothers me when even other gays at GayPatriot or Big Hollywood (sites I follow fanatically and quite enjoy) pull out the “Marriage gains a gay person nothing” trope — it’s just not true. Not even close to true.
Ronald Hayden has made perhaps the strongest case for “gay marriage” as a civil rights issue that I’ve seen, and I commend him for that.
And Ronald, with his monogamous union lasting decades, and the concern over financial issues, is one of those who can most be hurt by the lack of gay marriage.
I’ve several times indicated my opposition to gay marriage, though I am gay. I’ve phrased it as: “I’m against gay marriage, though for me, the issue is actually one of six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other. It’s not that important to me.”
The main problem is that most gay people are hostile towards marriage itself: its purposes, its existence for thousands of years as a civilized institution. They don’t want marriage for the purpose of belonging; they want it as a trophy in the culture wars. (I believe the excellent article by Winecoff makes that point, and I’m stealing it.) This is not true of Ronald, but it is true of the vast majority who are exercising the leftist “gay agenda”. This is a huge problem.
Take a camera to a group of activists promoting gay marriage and start talking, in sarcastic withering tones, about “breeders”. You’ll get PLENTY of agreement. All a part of the big problem. Yet for straight people, the main purpose of marriage is to raise children.
The other huge problem lies in tactics and strategy. The correct way to win a battle such as this is to convince the people. That takes decades. The gay marriage movement has chosen to rely on judicial activism: Relying on judge decisions and ramming this, absolutely smashing this, down peoples’ throats. (And yes I get the negative imagery of that.) The disastrousness of choosing this leftist route is so important it is almost beyond words.
I would have said there were only two states out of 50 where the people were sympathetic enough to support gay marriage: California and Massachusetts. Now I take California off the list, and I’m not too sure about Massachusetts either. So you may be at ZERO of fifty states where the effort to win peoples’ minds and hearts has been successful. What a terrible, disastrous mistake, to take the activist judge route. I am utterly, completely opposed to that route.
Finally, you are modifying one of the most critical social institutions, one which has existed for thousands of years, that supports the very idea of civilization itself. Such a change might or might not be worth it, but if worth it, it clearly is not a battle that is to be won easily.
When the vast majority of proponents of gay marriage actually want to tear down the institution of marriage itself, you’ve got a problem in that movement that lacks a solution. That leaves people like Ronald and his loved partner in a terrible situation.
To which I say, Mike and Ronald, I agree with you both completely.
Marriage has such institutions because societies, by necessary and by time hard work, built them up to fill a need. Since there has been no need for monogamous gay relationships historically, people are starting from scratch right here and right now. While it may look more convenient on the face, to simply adopt a pre-existing institution that seems to provide what is needed, the fundamentals don’t point to such a conclusion in my view.
Marriage was not a solution crafted for human rights or legal equality. That is a result of political reforms or greater societal standards. As such, if you seek legal equality, then it is the law you must seek it from. Marriage will provide a solution only intended for what it was used for in the past.
And as much as you tout the benefits of the institution of marriage, those benefits were only accrued through tradition, hard work, and multiple levels of build up. In order to derive those benefits for your relationship, you would have to modify marriage. But the very thing that makes marriage so all pervasive as an institution of societal standards and legal applications, will also make it extraordinarily hard to change. If you want more immediate results, you would do better to create a new law encompassing and integrating other laws to create a unique effect. That isn’t based upon marriage or the laws of marriage, but upon the US Constitution, for example.
Gays were convinced that marriage was the solution to their woes by two primary aspects.
1. Manufactured Crisis. It was not enough to simply highlight gay relationship difficulties or obstacles. No, the Leftist agents had to stoke up a crisis which they then would present themselves, and marriage, as the solution. Thus we saw in 2004 and various incidents before then. They could not acquire the grassroots support or the funding/media attention without such tactics. For they had no interest in solving problems, only in getting power by making them worse.
2. Group identity politics, aka slavery though creating a victim class. There are many classes. The rich, the poor, the slave, are 3 amongst em. In Rome, there were the equitus class, the Senate class, and various minor titles of nobility in between. By slotting you into a class, by slotting gays into a victim class, the Left has successfully rendered them into the Left’s own perpetual Palestinian refuge camp. An endless source of political capital and justifications. In order to sustain this class, they must sustain the condition of victimization, else that class would get out of the hole and that would be intolerable. Thus the Left’s methods must necessarily keep their focus on making the problem worse and feeding grievances. By linking the identity of gays with the politics and political activism of the Left, they ensure that the public can no longer separate the political agenda from the actual individuals being affected. Once that has been accomplished, you are then able to say that resistance to the GLBT agenda is discrimination and hatred of gays, rather than a refusal to accede to extortionist and exploitive strategies of power. Of course, the other side of the equation is that whatever policies the Left promotes for gays will necessarily be seen as coming from the gay community, even though that is not necessarily true. By linking politics with people’s personal identities, you create group identity politics. It allows for better offensive support, as it allows you to attack opponents on the justification that they are attacking your own people. And it allows for better defensive support of the political policies, as it provides every activist with a purely egotist and selfish oriented motivation. For example, if the political platform is part of their group’s identity, then protecting that platform is the same as protecting one’s own identity.
If you take Iraq as an example, not even the United States military could do anything for the Sunnis (which we may use as an analogical construct for gays) until those Sunnis rejected their partisan and religious fanatics, the foreign AQ members. The US military tried with Fallujah, but it was only ever temporary stability until the Al Anbar Awakening.
Gays have been given the benefit of an equal protection under law equal to no other nation, here in the US. It is either theirs to use or their master’s to abuse. One or the other.
Choose your destiny. As the Sunnis chose theirs, be a lapdog of AL Qaeda or an ally in human progress with America.
And yes, people will see gays, just as they see blacks and Jews, as being wholly owned by the Democrat subsidiary politics. Just as Americans saw Sunnis as “freedom fighters” and “insurgents” up until they allied with Americans, and then they were “militias” and “death squads”.
It is battles that give clear definitions to political movements and the members of those movements. Not all Sunnis were radical or anti-American, yet their course was chosen by their tribal leaders when they boycotted the American sponsored Iraqi elections in 2005. It is unavoidable.
So far, there have been individuals that have fought fake liberal agendas concerning gays, but no real battles to distinguish the sides. No real bloodshed. Partially cause the quiet gays want solutions while the more vocal gays want power and control. Between such a contest, it is the loud ones that get the attention and the ones that get to decide the destiny of their group-identity.
The more vocal gays can always character assassinate any dissidents, like Corporal Matt Sanchez. You see, theirs is the movement while their opponents are simply “individual cranks” that can be eliminated. This is a disadvantageous tactical situation for those gays that seek real solutions.