My thoughts on Prop. 8
I am equal.
I am just as good as you.
I am gay.
It’s been over two weeks since California and many other states across the country have banned gay marriage. California, specifically, has received the most attention for banning gay marriage because, I think, everyone was so shocked that such a liberal state would ban something like gay marriage.
I don’t want to be one of those people who compare the oppression of gays to that of blacks during the civil rights movement, however, I want to get married someday, and if conservatives keep me from doing that, then, yes, I feel oppressed.
It kills me to see people who are so adamantly against my getting married. Things like this They’re Coming to Your Town just break my heart.
My getting married does not infringe on anyone’s rights, but when you voted “yes” on Prop. 8, you infringed on mine. When you said I am not allowed to get married, you were supporting hate.
And for some reason, mormons from Utah felt the need to get involved. What Utah mormons have to do with the definition of marriage in California is beyond me. I am not going to come to your state and tell you that you can’t marry multiple people. I mean if anything is sacred it’s being a man with multiple wives, right? You did not have a vote in California, you had no business being there.
This video makes me sick:
Despite what these paid actors say, if I were to ever get married, it would in no way affect you. It wouldn’t change your marriage, it wouldn’t change your life. Your marriage wouldn’t be any less valuable.
Gay marriage is just a way for two men or two women to commit their lives to each other.
We just want our relationships to be treated equally.
“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
Michel Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” talks a bit about how we are not friends with our friends because of their sexual preference (that is, you tend to have other things in common: classes, activities, etc.), and yet we often treat “the others” as such because of their sexual preferences. He questions when we started caring about who people fell in love with and why we assume that all gay relationships are the same (usually taken to the extreme: flamboyant, obnoxious, void of commitment, etc.) when it is quite clear that all straight loves are not and cannot be the same. The inconsistency is proof our our ignorance. There will always be good and bad relationships, but “good” and “bad” cannot and should not be synonymous with “straight” and “gay,” respectively.
Individuals have used tradition–biblical, individual, and national–to justify all kinds of atrocious acts: slavery, genocide, and unjust wars, among others. In fact, just in our country we have used biblical and national tradition to justify slavery, the denial of equal rights for black people, the denial of equal rights for women (namely a woman’s right to vote), and now we are suffering the same dilemma, but since color of skin and anatomy of genitalia are off the table, we choose to discriminate according to the type of people others fall in love with. Change is constant? Unfortunately, this is hardly the case.
P.S. Welcome back to the blogging world.
[...] beat in my head: “My thoughts on Prop 8” – some interesting thoughts on whether gay marriage really creates any victims, and a scary [...]
California: Tocqueville’s nightmare come true « Nachspiel at Polemarchus’ said this on November 21, 2008 at 11:30 am |