2003-12-21 
 

the cloak holders

G's been reading to me about a recent NYT poll that shows that we, as gay men, are still very much second class citizens, and that most people wish we'd just go away.

"The latest New York Times/CBS News poll also found unease about homosexual relations in general, making the issue a potentially divisive one in the 2004 election."

We're talking civil unions here too. While opinions on that issue are more evenly split, slightly over half the respondents felt these unions were somehow threatening to their way of life. Why?

"I want my children to grow up and be normal people like me and my father and my grandfather was," said Ziad Nimri, 41, a salesman and a Democrat who lives in Spokane, Wash. "I don't want my children to start getting ideas. They see it's out in the open and you see men kissing men on television these days."

Mr. Nimri said he was also worried that if gays were allowed to marry, they would get other rights too, like tax benefits. "Because they're a minority, they're going to start actually giving them more privileges than normal people would have," he said. "Minorities always tend to get more than your average person does."

Let me be clear here. I don't want any special rights. I want the same rights that anyone else gets when choosing a life partner.

The fact that it was 1967 before the Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation laws doesn't give me too much hope right now. Back then (all of 36 years ago), they decided that the freedom to marry whom one chooses is one of the "vital personal rights" protected under the 14th Amendment. That worked for interracial couples, but the truth is that many people don't think we gays belong with the persons mentioned in Section 1 of that amendment. In fact, if it weren't for the 15th Amendment, some people would still argue that any races other than Caucasion were inferior. That's my point. If it took nearly a century for the courts to make the logical leap from the amendment to actually supporting equal treatment, how long will it take before gays get the chance? We don't even have an amendment granting us any rights, let alone special ones.

Marriage can be seen as both a religious union and a civil one. If it's only the former, then there should be no civil liberties granted to any couple joined by the church. If it is truly also the latter, then there should be no discrimination based upon the gender one chooses to partner with. The only stricture should be that the parntership is between two consenting adults.

Period. End of story.

BTW, anyone who isn't outraged by the fact that gays are still considered morally inferior folk and yet thinks of me as a friend, I have only this to say. "Hey Saul, have fun holding those cloaks!"

Labels: dose of mikey, g, linkage, politics, the gay

* posted by me at 7:46 PM

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