National Coming Out Day

[desertvixen]

 I'm pretty sure everyone has figured this one out, but I'm a straight ally.

 I'm a wife who does not feel threatened by the idea of gays receiving the same legal benefits my husband and I am entitled to.  The gay marriage movement is not about forcing churches to sanction behavior they don't agree with - it is about gay couples having rights.  It is about people in committed relationships with people of the same sex not having to deal with the fear of being barred from a dying loved one's bedside because of family disapproval.

 I'm a mother who does not fear the idea of gay couples raising children, whether they were born to one of the couple, or adopted.  There are so many kids who could benefit from a loving couple - why should it matter if they have two mommies or two daddies?

 I'm a woman who loves men, but who doesn't want to ostracize women who love women, or men who love men. 

 I don't believe being gay is a choice.  It's the way they were made.  They can choose not to act on their feelings, just like the rest of us.  But they shouldn't feel they have to.

 I believe gays should be able to serve openly.  To anyone who thinks we don't have them in the military, you are wrong.  Some of them I count among the finest soldiers and airmen I have worked with, and among the most caring, decent people I have known.

 DV

Comments

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Except for the bit about the element of choice (I was born with a flaming temper: does that mean I'm not required to moderate it, almost to the point of non-existence, for the good of society) I agree with you about all of these things.

All of which can be managed by reforming family law without re-defining marriage to mean something it never has in all of human history.

I admit: some of this may well come from my (well-founded) loathing of verbicide. Every Orwellian dictator, every would-be thought-police stalinist starts by attacking the meanings of words. So there may be some knee-jerk-ery going on. Mea culpa I try to listen to the rational and the self-disciplined (like mosellegreen) rather than... well, the not.

Gay "marriage" doesn't threaten my marriage: it threatens my daughter's and grand-daughters.

By deconstructing what marriage has always been, by attempting to override the millennia-old biological underpinning of human societies, it takes an already threatened and fragile institution and puts it further at risk. Most of the people who advocate for gay marriage (as opposed to family-law reform and/or the legal recognition of non-marital unions) do so in order to destroy and invalidate the oppressive and evil institution of marriage.

They are not themselves involved in the Grand Project of raising a new generation of citizens and worse, much, much worse, they openly despise the breeders who are. Their tolerance of sober and level-headed gay couples who are is entirely based on these peoples utility and attractiveness as transgressive elements.

I have work, and have worked (much more so in the past, where in lived in wealthier communities with higher rates of divorce, sexual ah... diversity and the like rather than the poor, socially (but not economically! Washington has always been populist :-) conservative communities I now serve) with damaged teens. Seriously. Messed up. Teenagers.

If I could swop out "gay marriage" for "no fault divorce" I would do it in a heart-beat. The damage that gay marriage would cause to a healthy institution which would be able to fold the outliers into it structure is minimal.

The damage to an already weakend structure is likely to be fatal.

Let's see what happens to Canada in a generation or two (they've got more cultural capital: they may not crash and burn as Europe has) before we try the experiment here.

Or, to put it another way: Remember how well the blacks were served by the "civil rights" movement? It never fails to raise my worst, most cynical hackles to note that the agitation for family-law reform is virtually non-existant relative to the "let's redefine marriage" movement... despite that the latter would do gay families a world of good and be fairly easy to achieve.

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

By deconstructing what marriage has always been

And just what would that be? For the bulk of Western history, marriage has been an economic contract (and a political one as well if you were well-born). Royal marriages were always defined by treaty. Aristocratic marriages were about preserving inheritance rights. And peasant marriages sure weren't about chasitity -- not with droit de seigneur being accepted aristocratic right throughout large swathes of Western Europe.

The current conception of marriage is largely a modern construct (that is, post-Renaissance).

I don't doubt the sincerity of your beliefs, but for one who laments "verbicide," you are awfully glib about using "always" to define a relatively recent phenomenon historically.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thank you for coming to my aid, oh fellow historian.

DV

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

For me to practicing verbicide on the word "always" would require me to use it in a way which encompassed "not-always" as a part of the meaning so that it could then mean "sometimes" if I liked. Using it to describe something which I believe to have existed eternally [*] but which, in fact did not, is merely me being wrong.

The former is Orwellian and deadly dangerous to a liberal society. The latter is just individual error.












[*] technically, throughout recorded human history--but that is mere quibbling.

Re: I do not think that word means what you think it means.

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

Orwell also pointed out the dangers of using grandiose terms such as "always," "never," "forever," and such. Look at how "eternal" enemies of Oceania, et al. quickly became allies. Look at how the pronouncements of Animal Farm quickly became modified as circumstance warrant. While it may well be individual error on your part, the tendency of demagogues to use "always" and the like in political discourse was a problem that Orwell made much of in his novels decrying totalitarianism.

Now to actually address your point

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

For the bulk of human history, marriage has been an economic contract, and a political contract. It has included various definitions of chastity. To this day, marriage includes greater or lesser elements of these.

But it has always been between men and women, biologically and socially driven to continue the species and the civilization. This is my "current" conception.

I don't doubt your historical expertise, but here you write like the birder who insists upon the obvious and vital distinctions between the song sparrow and the fox sparrow to someone who is complaining about trying to include archyopteryx within the defintion of "bird."

Re: Now to actually address your point

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

Except that for most of history the vast majority of people did not get married. Peasants owned no property to pass on to any heirs, so there was no reason to perform a legal ceremony to continue the right of property to a second generation.

Quite simply, peasants were able to continue the species outside of the bonds of holy matrimony. Indeed, most peasants never formalized a union in a church. Nor did slaves.

In Asian societies, peasants often "married" in religious ceremonies but that was because the ancestor worship common to many Asian cultures placed an emphasis on knowing who one's ancestors were. Again, the emphasis was not on "continuing the species" but rather on knowing with some certainty whose ancestors were whose.

All marriage has served as historically is a way of legitimizing births -- it is not about propagating the speices. Yes, it's been between men and women -- but propagation has nothing to do with it. You don't need to be married to have kids. You do need to be married for the kids to be legitimate. Recognizing parentage and legitimizing inheritance is the issue, not procreation (pardon the pun).

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Except for the bit about the element of choice (I was born with a flaming temper: does that mean I'm not required to moderate it, almost to the point of non-existence, for the good of society) I agree with you about all of these things.

I was thinking about expanding that, but all the attempts were clumsy. I was thinking more of the people whose opinion seems to be, "It's okay to have homosexual feelings, just don't act on em".

Obviously, we all have to control some of our feelings. It's part of that whole adult thing. But having to control or deny something as basic as sexual orientation (provided your sexual orientation is not harmful to others, as in pedophilia) seems harsh and unrealistic.

I would support a split between the civil and religious aspects of marriage. In fact, we did just that - had the courthouse ceremony to keep the Army happy and keep me covered legally in case something happened to Brian in Iraq, then had our religious ceremony and celebration at a later point.

Family-law reform would be worthwhile, on that we agree. I think we disagree on what exactly should be reformed. I don't agree that no-fault divorce is a great evil. I think that it is far more destroying to force people to stay in a marriage so that they come to hate each other, and their marriage. I also don't think that trapping people in marriage raises the level of respect for marriage. I would prefer to see more emphasis on making the right marriage, for the right decision, with consideration and planning.

However, as oilhistorian points out, marriage through most of history has not been about love, and raising children, but about uniting families and money.

DV

[raeyn.livejournal.com]

One could also add that marriage as an institution is pretty much destined to failure based on how idealized it's becoming in society - everyone seems to think they've found their Happily Ever After in whatever latest lustfest they've indulged in, get married, have a kid or two, divorce, repeat ad nauseum. I blame Disney and their Princesses, 'cause you know better than I that it takes a lot work, communication, and open expression of feels and problems.

...

Sorry this is so run-on sentency - I've been awake less than 10 minutes, and my thoughts are actually semi-coherent on my thoughts about this sort of thing :D

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Hmm... You find that sexual orientation is "basic" but natural agresssion levels are somehow superficial? I disagree.

The thing is (I should have been more clear, I apologise) that the argument from "it seems harsh and unfair to require that anyone control X inclination or drive" can, if you start filling in "X" with nearly anything other than "gayness" lead to all kinds of a-civilized horrors.

It does lead to them, as any of the yahoos who would have to believe that either high levels of natural aggressiveness don't exist, or that requiring children and teenagers to control them is "harsh and unfair"

Since I do not believe that "gayness" is fundamentally horribly a-civilizational, I find the argument not only problematic for not being a valid one (a purely intellectual thing) and mildly repugnant.

Family law reform

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

I suspect we do agree on what ought to be reformed: that any people who have joined together to raise a family, and are doing so competently (for values of "competent" that equal "not some child-slavery ring or the like") are a family and ought to be treated as such under law whatever the marital relationship of the parents involved might be.

See my note to oilhistorian about the disengenousness of writing that because marriage had been deeply concerned with families, politics and money it wasn't about raising children. Pfft. The "about love" business is irrelevant: Twooo LURRRVV is not a conservative concern.

I also think that you've assumed a false dichotomy that between, staying in a marriage for duties sake and growing to hate your husband or wife. There is a perfectly sensible middle ground, which, when taken, usually results, not in couples who hate each other, but happier and more content people. It's a tribute to the lousy state of marriage in the West that this route is pretty much invisible to most people...

Finally--the reason it's called "no fault" is that rather than letting people out of a "trap" (This is what "for fault" divorce is for.) it merely lets people out of their commitments--thus making marriage itself a mere bagatelle.

Re: Family law reform

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Finally--the reason it's called "no fault" is that rather than letting people out of a "trap" (This is what "for fault" divorce is for) it merely lets people out of their commitments--thus making marriage itself a mere bagatelle.

The difficulty being, I don't wish to go back to what it replaced, and I'm not sure you do either, if you come to stare at it for awhile.

You can't actually stop people separating; you can only make it harder for them to regularise their situation and provide for the fair division of property and the support and care of any children.

Anyone under any 'at fault' system can get themselves an apartment, come home just often enough to stymie the desertion provisions, and leave their spouse stuck with all the hassles of a divorced person plus no way to detach their affairs.

The only thing to be said for 'no fault' divorce is, it is generally the least ugly process, and produces the least ugly outcomes, for the *innocent* partner, even moreso than the "guilty" one, because if you make divorce stigmatised and difficult, jerks will work the system and laugh at the stigma and good people will get screwed.

"At fault" divorce laws, if lax, tend to produce casual divorces with a side of perjury. If strict, they tend to leave people legally bound to those who abuse them.

I'm less persuaded than you are, obviously, that we're seeing an endlessly declining trend. If anything, over the last 25-odd years in Canada -- from, say, my parent's divorce until when my friends started getting them -- there's far more of an acknowledgement that if you have a child together your obligations to that child are completely unrelated to your marital choices.

Which, yes, is also redefining marriage, but I think that ship sailed long before we queer types got involved.

And it's not all bad: do you know this is the first time in Western History that I can think of when a parent's obligation to their child could not be interrupted short of renouncing the child for adoption, and even that is extremely hard to do unless said child's future is assured without you?

Marriage may be in a very odd place in Canada, but family law reform touching on society's interest in the raising of children is in truly excellent shape.

Re: Family law reform

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

No, we do not want to go back to those days.

DV

Re: Family law reform

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

My feelings on divorce are shaped by the divorces in my family - my parents, both of my stepfather's sisters, as well as the divorce that SHOULD have happened, but didn't.

My parents married because it was the "right thing" to do when you got your girlfriend pregnant (dad was 28, mom was 19), and divorced 3 years later. My mother ans stepfather will celebrate their 25 year anniversary this coming year.

I would like to see a decline in divorces, but I would like to see it happen because people are making better choices about marriage in the first place.

I think staying in a marriage for duty's sake is wrong. You should stay married to someone because you love them. (Part of the problem with this, of course, is getting people to understand that how love feels can change over time, but that's not an issue we can fix with laws.) You can be divorced and still have a commitment with the partner TO the child.

DV

[recalcitrant.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I realise this is an old post, I clicked on through to DV's LJ via rockahulababy.

I'm curious, how does gay marriage "threaten[s] my daughter's and grand-daughter"?

I'm a daughter and a grand-daughter and the last I checked no marriage, be it gay, straight or two legged, threaten myself or any of my fellow females who are daughters/granddaughters?

If you mean that if two gay guys getting married threatens my chances of marrying one of them, well then why would I want to marry a gay guy>?!!! If they're gay they are NOT going to be interested in me.

Marriage historically was nothing more than a business contract for fathers to increase their property/land. This whole love./religion bullshit is a new-ish concept.

Homosexuality is as old as humans have been formed. In ancient times, such as in Greece, they were bi basically. Julius had a whole court of young boys to "lay" with.

Besides, plenty of straight people are happily fucking up the concept of "marriage" all on their own.

[recalcitrant.livejournal.com]

PS i'm straight, have no interest in marriage but if i did, i won't be breeding. Straight people don't neccesary want children either, even those who are married

[raeyn.livejournal.com]

Amen, sister :) I know when my 'gaydar' kicked back in about 9 months into my time at Monterey, I was thrilled to realize I'd been serving as a fag hag without even realizing it ::giggles::

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

DV

[raeyn.livejournal.com]

Heh... I was raised in a gay-friendly manner... my (bitter)sweet 16 party was held at a gay hamburger joint in Dallas... where we somehow managed to eat all the whipped cream in the joint.

And I did go to Art school ;)

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

On the one side, there's a bunch of people who want to serve in the military, get married, raise kids, and be Scout leaders.

On the other side, there's a bunch of people who view the first group with horrified alarm, desperately try to STOP them from doing all those things...and call themselves conservatives.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that was nicely put. Me, but shorter.

DV

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I cannot claim authorship. I got it from Marna long ago, and IIRC she was quoting someone else.

OR--------------

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

On the other side there are people who view the first group with a mixure of liking, distaste and even horror (sorry, gay activists are still activists withall) dislike, pity, irritation, amusement, admiration, affection...

And want, with varying degrees of concerned approval to allow the military, the institution of marriage, and family and the Boy Scouts to continue to be effective and succesful institutions, even if some individuals must participate less fully in them than they would like.

And the field of "some individuals" includes me and mine

Because we're NOT a part of the "me first" generation, we call ourselves "conservatives"

Re: OR--------------

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that participation in the military or the Scouts by homosexuals is their downfall.

Gays are in the military, and a lot of them are doing a damned fine job.

As for the Scouts, they are a private organization, and have the right to make their own rules. I would not wish to take that away from them.

I would, however, be unlikely to have a son who is a Scout because of that viewpoint. It's a question I'm conflicted on.

DV

Re: OR--------------

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that participation in the military or the Scouts by homosexuals is their downfall.

No. You don't. But the institutions do. They may be mistaken. They may not. Making the argument to convince them of their error is one thing. I whole-heartedly support that. Forcing them to do so because You Know Best.

Not so much...

I am more in sympathy with the Boy Scouts, for what it's worth, than the U.S. military (for "participation in") and I share with them, for example, their total unwillingness to allow women to be Scoutmasters beyond the Den Mother/Cub Scout stage (for which I would also approve gay parents, by the by, though the Scouts would not). It's just d--n stupid to pretend that human nature doesn't exist.

I think similar difficulties apply to the U.S. Military, but I don't want to go into that with you--I'm less concerned by gays than I am by women.

Despite what it may seem to you, I really don't go out of my way to torque people's shorts. It's just that the culture wars have gotten so heated, polite discretion is misinterpreted as whole-hearted support--and, since I move in waters where such support would win me kudos--and lack of same despite--I am really torn about when to speak up and when to be silent.

Re: OR--------------

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the no women Boy Scout leaders, because I would be heartily offended if I walked into a Girl Scout meeting and the troop leader was male.

I don't support DADT, but I also understand from being inside the military that another solution may be tricky. But the gays are there, and they are working, and the Army hasn't stopped yet. I also understand, however, that the MI field is quite different from the rest of the Army.

As far as women - that question has been answered. In my experience, the "problems" of women in the military have just as much to do with men as they do with women.

I do hope that you don't feel this journal is a place you need to keep silent. While I disagree with your opinions on a fairly regular basis, you are capable of expressing them in a rational manner with no namecalling - and I appreciate that.

DV

Re: Belated reply

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Still playing catchup!

I agree with you that "the "problems" of women in the military have just as much to do with men as they do with women" That's just it, however: until we have Cetagandan-style gengineering we aren't going to overturn billions of years of evolutionary biology and cultural condition in one go. Sometimes life is neither fair, just, nor reasonable.

I do hope that you don't feel this journal is a place you need to keep silent. While I disagree with your opinions on a fairly regular basis, you are capable of expressing them in a rational manner with no namecalling - and I appreciate that.

Thank you! I shall endeavor to remain so.

[beckylblair.livejournal.com]

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

DV