Gay marriage

I turn on the news, and so in California, they have just passed the right for gay people to marry…….again.   As a single, gay person, who plans on staying single………this is really bugging me.  Aren't gay folks falling into the same paradigms with gay marriage rights?   If I go on a cruise, I pay double and THEN SOME to have a single room.  I buy small amounts of food, I pay more.  I cannot insure a second person, irrelevant to who they may be (how about my best friend, a 60 year old straight woman, that I live with?).  I pay more taxes.  I pay more into the pool for married folks and their kids insurance.  The list goes on and on, and no one ever talks about this.  If you want to stay with someone for the rest of your life, that's great.  But do you really need to have it recognized by THIS government?  And get special privileges for pairing off?  And if you want kids, should'nt you be prepared to foot the financial bill?  Is anyone out there going to pay for my kitty litter?  These babies of mine are quite expensive. 

In other words, aren't we just creating a new dominance paradigm.  Now it will be, ummmm, what in maybe ten more years,…….fighting for single people equality?  In other words, this is not a step forward.  I'm amazed that this is never even discussed.  Remember the first time, wasn't it a coincidence that it was election time?  Or is it?  More distraction and folly and arguments, but still not creating equality.  So in the news piece they show Rosie O'Donnell on the court steps from last time “This is about equality FOR ALL!”.  No, it is not, in my opinion, and I would like to hear from others on their thoughts about this.

Re: Gay marriage

Thanks, Bartholomew.  You're a prescient voice in the wilderness.  Although my partner and I have been together for 33 years, and being recognized as a married couple would entitle us to benefits, we've discussed this very issue and agree with you that it would be institutionalizing a new set of unjust penalties for single persons.  So we're not going to opt into marriage, no matter how the issue shakes down.  Yes, you're right–it is totally amazing that your point of view hasn't been expressed in the lesbian/gay community.  Why do you think that is? 

Re: Gay marriage

Wow, I'm so thankful to you for being honest and expressing ANY opinion on this.  I was becoming a bit jaded about Zaadz over this, I wrote a few folks about this in private dialogue, and dead silence after that, no more chats.  Funny huh?  After living in the radical faerie community, which split my head/soul open in a way….and then moving on, I've realized how so many folks learn to break the paradigms that are convenient.  I think there's a few reasons for it.  One, people really do want to be “recognized”, even if it's an old system/paradigm, some kind of comfort in it, or right an old wrong, the way we grew up as gay folks in America, or any other place for that matter.  By you asking me, why do you think that's so, I guess I just thought of that, and a glimmer of compassion popped out.  Hmmmmm.  Since I've posted here, I've gotten myself into a tizzy, because no one in my life seems to care enough to question whether that's another paradigm……except my MOTHER.  Ba-dum-pum.  LOL.  The reason I'm laughing is because my mother watches Bill O'Reilly and reads Ann Coulter.  Go figure.  And when I spoke to her about it, I now vaguely remember a conversation as a child, (10 years old or so?), about this very same subject, but concerning “traditional” marriage then.    Well, I guess I said WHY people would hold onto it, but I didn't address what you asked, why we don't talk about it.  Forgive me, I'm not connecting dots well right now, I just played tennis for 4 hours, I'm pooped.  I think maybe the realization it will take a long time for the masses to question the validity of state sanctioned marriage in the first place.  That would be my reason if it was in my sub-conscious only.  Am I making sense?  I should nap before I write anything else.  

Re: Gay marriage

Yes, I think you've hit the nail on the head.  People DO want to have the comfort of an old paradigm, even if they  know it's screwed up.  It's the world Hollywood invented where the wedding scene is the climax of the movie.  Even when we know it's the model itself–heterosexual marriage–that's messed up in the first place, it's been held up to us for so long as the ne plus ultra of Happy Endings before we had any kind of resistance to it…so that's what we embrace, too.  Anything to fit in!! 

I had to laugh about your Ann Coulter-reading mother.  My family is fairly liberal, but of all people, it's my Rush Limbaugh-listening, National Rife Association standard bearer brother-in-law who actually has the best sexual politics of anyone in my family with regard to women's equality and lesbian/gay rights…go know! 

I certainly don't claim any exemption for all this, either.  My brain has been as thoroughly washed as anyone else's.  When Stonewall happened, I remember feeling threatened (!!) by the news of the uprising.  I'm very ashamed to admit that now but I'm committed to truth telling…and, of course, I soon got radicalized.  

A lesbian friend of mine recently said in talking about the lesbian baby boom, “I really don't get it.  I thought one of the PERKS of being a dyke was that you didn't have to deal with the little buggers.” (Of course, I'm glad we're winning the right to adopt but here again, I wonder if the same kind of anything-to-fit-in brand of self-hatred doesn't play a part.)

Anyway, good talking to you, Bartholomew.  If you can pass along the name of the book by that lesbian professor, I'd appreciate it.

Re: Gay marriage

I really like your brain, buddy.  Anyhoo, your last writing just triggered a thought I had a while ago, but somehow forgot.  The powers that be, the shadow self of us all, whatever conspiracy theory you wish to pencil in here…..really likes the idea of all of us pairing up in two's, hiding under the crawlspace together, me thinks.  LOL.  Okay, I'm taking it a step further than necessary.  But on one of my acid trips, I thought, life is eternal, we've always existed, I've been or am being here many times (wink, cause time doesn't exist), so I have many wife/mates/husband/lovers/f-buddies, and I'm running into a lot of them……and sometimes they are not in the birthday suit that suits me, at least not in this life.  That's fine, different exchange.  But what of the many that are?  On a purely sexual level, why limit?  Disease is all I could sort-of agree with.  Emotionally?  No way.  I know I'm taking this out of the initial legal-stuff conversation, but how does it work for those (like yourself), who are in it together for the long haul?  The comfort of one's best friend, I hope.  I guess I branch off here because the old paradigm tries to sell the whole committment kaboodle, but I really don't think that is natural male human nature, and even if there was a spiritual element to the limitation, maybe even the point, it puts such a large limitation on the personality.  I read Camille Paglia more for a laugh than anything, I'm more of a Riane Eisler style feminist, but in one book she brings up the point about straight married men who have the occasional urge to be with other men.  I've never dated one, I wouldn't anyway, for other reasons, but I'm not sure if it's healthy for the soul to suppress that urge.