MARRIAGE: THE GAY SHAME
You see those words in stenciled spray paint on the occasional San Francisco sidewalk. I'm happy to see that some remnant of the progressive queer movement that defined our preoccupation with liberation from legal inequality persists. I'm happy to see that there are queers who have no interest in assimilation. I'm happy to see that someone somewhere remembers that marriage inequality has nothing to do with marriage by itself, or legal inequality by itself, but with the government-sanctioned comingling of the two.
It doesn't take much of a brain to figure out that the government and marriage do not mix Constitutionally. Since 21st century Americans -- particularly their carefree representatives who regularly spurn the U.S. Constitution -- don't seem to give a shit about how much power government has in our lives, I'm not surprised that queers scream, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Fuck them. Cowards and losers. Why would you spend your precious political capital on something as banal as marriage equality. Straight people love their marriage rituals for all kinds of reasons, some of them moving. Most of them, unfortunately, are rooted in religious tradition. Since the Constitution makes no provisions for the comingling of religious tradition and the function of government -- and in fact abhors such union -- I guess you could argue that hey, that's the way it is, so adapt.
But so much more is at stake here. If queers decide that a traditional Christian tradition and fealty to ever-expanding government power are the intersection at which equal rights are contested, we will forever bend our wills toward ends that have nothing to do with being queer, and everything to do with being normalized by a politically entrenched majority that doesn't give a rat's ass about anything but itself and its ends. The largely un-gay mainstream moves the target, queers scamper trying to figure out where it went and how to hew to it.
Queers using the wrong instrument to achieve the right end disappoint me. They're lazy. Section 1 of the 14th amendment is unequivocal in its intent: no person born or naturalized in the U.S. shall be denied equal protection of the laws. What's so hard to understand about that? Marriage as recognized unconstitutionally by feds and state governments is not the right battleground. The higher contest involves attacking the foundations and buttresses of government meddling in issues (like a contract between two people) that are none of its business. That's where blood will get spilled. All else is wound dressing.
It doesn't take much of a brain to figure out that the government and marriage do not mix Constitutionally. Since 21st century Americans -- particularly their carefree representatives who regularly spurn the U.S. Constitution -- don't seem to give a shit about how much power government has in our lives, I'm not surprised that queers scream, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Fuck them. Cowards and losers. Why would you spend your precious political capital on something as banal as marriage equality. Straight people love their marriage rituals for all kinds of reasons, some of them moving. Most of them, unfortunately, are rooted in religious tradition. Since the Constitution makes no provisions for the comingling of religious tradition and the function of government -- and in fact abhors such union -- I guess you could argue that hey, that's the way it is, so adapt.
But so much more is at stake here. If queers decide that a traditional Christian tradition and fealty to ever-expanding government power are the intersection at which equal rights are contested, we will forever bend our wills toward ends that have nothing to do with being queer, and everything to do with being normalized by a politically entrenched majority that doesn't give a rat's ass about anything but itself and its ends. The largely un-gay mainstream moves the target, queers scamper trying to figure out where it went and how to hew to it.
Queers using the wrong instrument to achieve the right end disappoint me. They're lazy. Section 1 of the 14th amendment is unequivocal in its intent: no person born or naturalized in the U.S. shall be denied equal protection of the laws. What's so hard to understand about that? Marriage as recognized unconstitutionally by feds and state governments is not the right battleground. The higher contest involves attacking the foundations and buttresses of government meddling in issues (like a contract between two people) that are none of its business. That's where blood will get spilled. All else is wound dressing.
posted by Andrew @ 3:21 PM
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