Selfless agenda
Because I have frequently criticized the terrible selfishness of today’s gay and lesbian community, I thought it important to lay out what I think would be a selfless gay agenda, one I could readily endorse and promote wholeheartedly.
1. Relationship recognition. I have demonstrated why it’s wrong to meddle with marriage, but that doesn’t mean same-sex couples don’t have legitimate concerns that need to be addressed. Rather than focus on the ego boost from having the government treat us as exactly equal (even when we’re not), the LGBT community should promote national, state, and local versions of the Salt Lake City plan, which allows all unmarried adults to appoint one person to receive a set of benefits. We should ask for a broad variety of benefits including hospital visitation, custody, and health care. Rather than using the relationship recognition issue to call attention to how special we are for having same-sex conjugal relationships “just like marriage,” we can be broad-minded and make sure non-conjugal relationships, like best friends and roommates, are included as well.
2. Nondiscrimination. The selfish gay community has put tremendous energy into passing state and federal laws that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and sometimes gender identity as well. But our nation’s nondiscrimination laws are a mess. Groups get protection because they can afford lobbyists to pass laws protecting them - which means the groups who need protection the most are left in the cold. Rather than cry “me too!” the LGBT community could lead a national conversation about how to write nondiscrimination laws that balance a business owner’s right to run her company how she wants, and the rights of people to do their jobs without being afraid of unfair treatment because of who they are. We can also try to come up with a single clear, coherent way to determine who gets covered by nondiscrimination laws, and who doesn’t.
3. Hate crimes. Laws should never try to regulate people’s thoughts, instead of their actions. So sentencing enhancement because the victim was gay or transgender (but not if she was a communist or overweight) is another sign of LGBT self-centeredness. Instead, let’s focus on toughening penalties for the kinds of crimes gays often face - but apply the penalties to everyone. Battery and assault, for starters. Prison rape, for another.
4. “Anti-bullying laws.” The latest trend in pro-gay legislation mandates indoctrination in pro-gay attitudes under the guise of preventing bullying. But America’s populace has lots of different attitudes about homosexuality, and insisting that LGBT attitudes get taught while other, equally legitimate attitudes are declared “bigotry” is, once again, selfish. In younger grades, homosexuality doesn’t belong in the curriculum at all - it can be taught at home, if at all. In older grades, let’s encourage lessons that respect everyone’s views, including but not limited to our own.
5. Not blaming the victim. In the 1980s and 1990s, the gay community responded strongly to the challenge of HIV, and worked assiduously to comfort and protect people who contracted AIDS, usually through gay sex. Now, more and more LGBT people are saying that the people getting AIDS today (usually poor black men who have sex with men) don’t deserve our sympathy and attention now that “everyone knows” how to avoid the virus. I disagree. I think the gay community should put more resources into education, research, and treatment for a variety of LGBT people in need - gay and bisexual men with HIV, lesbians at a higher risk for alcoholism, transgender women who are overrepresented in prison.
6. The military. I believe that gays and lesbians should serve openly in the armed forces. But I’m not an expert at whether out gays would help or harm the military’s primary mission - to win wars. I’ve heard some selfish gays say that even if it would have caused America to lose World War II, it would have been worth it to let gays serve openly. Well, I’m sorry, but there are some things more important than gay self-esteem - like, um, beating the Nazis. Let’s focus our energies on convincing the generals that ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will help them, not hurt them, in their main objective. Once the generals are on board, Congress is sure to follow. One more thing - we shouldn’t be afraid of a piecemeal approach, especially if that’s more sale-able politically. So if we can lift the ban on non-combat personnel, or lesbians, or language specialists first, we should take that as a preliminary measure.
7. Fighting homophobia. The FDA does not allow men who have had sex with men in the last 20 years - even if they are HIV-negative and celibate or monogamous - to donate blood or even to be tissue typed to see if they can save someone’s life. This too, should be a priority for the gay community, but barely gets any attention by our national organizations.
8. Adoption. We must overturn the bans in states like Arkansas on adoption by lesbians and gay men. The policy hurts children and insults the parenting ability of an entire class of people. If straight people in Arkansas were adopting all the available children, that would be one thing, but to keep children orphans when there are good homes waiting for them is just wrong. We should also undertake a massive campaign in the gay and especially the lesbian community about the joys of adopting. Unfortunately, an increasing number of same-sex couples are creating babies from scratch rather than adopting, which means rather than giving a child with no parents two same-sex parents, they’re deliberately bringing a child into the world without both a mother and a father. Such an act is selfish and cruel, and even worse since they’re victimizing their own child. While same-sex baby-making cannot and should not be made illegal, the LGBT community can do a lot to make adoption “cool” and baby-making less so.
Either way, **** ALL of the gays who are against “marriage”.
Guess what?! IT IS ALL NOT ABOUT YOU!
The millisecond the first same sex couple began raising their child is the moment it is ALSO about CHILDREN’S rights. Remember? Children’s rights are only as good as their parent’s rights? Or was it still just ALL ABOUT YOU?
But this freakin’ “debate” makes me cringe.
If church and state were TRULY separate instead of this Disney-esque fantasy we cling to, there would be NO DEBATE about 2 human beings civil right to civil marriage. We’d simply marry the person we love, because anyone spouting ANY objection to same sex marriage OUTSIDE OF RELIGIOUS CONCERNS would be dismissed as the fool he or she is.
We are ALL idiots for not only allowing this blatant discrimination (which harms our families & children), we allow states to VOTE on a minority’s FAMILY RIGHTS.
CRIMINAL! STOP THIS INSANITY NOW.
Jon Stewart’s phrase comes to mind:”having to make the case”.
Queers will surely experience depression and psychological harm over the longterm (from subtle to disabling) if they LIVE A LIFETIME having to MAKE THE CASE that their families deserve what other families deem essential - FAMILY RIGHTS. Had enough yet? I have.
[equality tax protest 2009]
Interesting comment John. You know, the same-sex couples with children didn’t have them my accident — they chose to form these families, knowing full well that they would be disadvantaged by doing so. Still, they went ahead.
Society owes them nothing. They were adults who knew exactly what they were getting into. They could have chosen otherwise — they could have chosen to form families with equal status and equal participation by both sexes. That they didn’t choose to do so is a liberty excercised, not a right denied.
I’ll be honest here, I don’t have the time or will to read everything on this web site but I just did a search on the subject of Gay Marriage and wanted to leave a comment from someone who really doesn’t know the big picture, who is just a hetrosexual guy watching this whole gay marriage thing on the news.
Personally I am a traditionalist who thinks marriage should be between men and women but I also believe being gay is not a choice its something your born with and I don’t have any problems with that or your lifestyle.
What I don’t understand and I think a lot of people like me don’t understand is why don’t you just call it something different like a “Legal Union” and go for that “Legal Union” to have ALL THE RIGHTS AND BENEFITS of a married couple. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that. I think the real problem is gays insisting on calling it a “Marriage”, that is what gets the religious and anti gays up in a roar. Get your rights and call it something else on paper, call it marriage when you introduce your partner … Seems too easy to me ?
I take issue with your objection to the FDA’s ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with men (even once) since 1977. I think the main reason they do this is that it simplifies things, however unfair this may be. I don’t know if you’ve ever made a blood donation, but the screening process is already quite probing and invasive. If the ban were lifted, they would likely still have to ask male donors this question. If answered affirmatively, they would then have to ask even further probing questions related to the prospective donor’s sexual history in order to screen those who may at a higher risk for certain blood-borne diseases. I think our focus should be on reducing the levels of HIV/AIDs and other STDs/STIs among MSMs, which are unfortunately still much higher than those of the population as a whole. A lift on the ban will be a natural result of this. People who were born in or have ever lived in Africa are also on the permanent deferral list. Ditto for people who have spent a significant amount of time in Western Europe since 1980. You don’t hear Europeans and Africans complaining of discrimination because of this.
As a gay man who is for gay marriage, I’m surprised that I find myself agreeing with a great deal of the agenda here. That the gay communities priorities are out of wack is obvious - in the state that I come from, you can still get fired for being gay anywhere, and here we are talking about marriage. Who wants to get married when your wedding ring means you’re fired? I think the opinion on the military is a little naive - pretty much everyone I know in the service (and, where I come from, that’s a lot of people) is tired of DADT, they know it leads to alcoholism and drug use (read: escapism), and they know there are already tons of gay people in the military and it doesn’t make a difference. But still, yes, we should convince the generals of this… that would be the right way to go about it.
I for one would love it if we could follow a lot of this common-sense advice and readjust our priorities towards more pressing topics - like AIDS prevention and outreach, homophobia laws, adoption, and get out the hate-crimes law business. Crimes are already crimes… let’s just enforce the laws we already have.
Here’s the problem with civil unions though.. and the reason why the states that have them (or had them, in the case of Vermont), are still going for full marriage rights anyway. It’s not about the public-sector rights - it’s about how your marriage is treated in the private sector. If a hospital wants to allow visitation rights only for heterosexual marriages, they still can, even if you have a civil union that is supposed to be equal. You don’t always get to choose the hospital you die in. Health plans can still block you - they’re private too, and your employer doesn’t have to grant health care to civil union partners. I mean, the government can incentivize and tax all they want but they haven’t forced them to date. The whole point of making it separate is to treat one group of people as better than the other.
I didn’t choose to be gay, and I didn’t choose to be born here either. Now, I think we have a lot to do before we get to marriage yet, and we kinda jumped the gun. Perhaps. But that shouldn’t stop our long term goal of attaining fair and equitable treatment, and unfortunately, unless you’re going to tell me you’re going to revise every federal, state, county, and local law, every private charter and contract, every policy which in some way addresses marriage to instead address both marriage and civil unions, they will never be even close. Why go through all that expensive, gut wrenching revision when we can just acknowledge that our relationships, being every bit as much God’s plan for us as heterosexual relationships are God’s plan for heterosexuals, are as deserving as equal treatment in the non-religious sector as everyone else?
I’m a good person. I donate, I volunteer, I help out anyone who asks. And I think it’s unfair, and particular unfair coming from another gay person, for someone to tell me that somehow, the relationship I’m in and the contribution we make to society, especially as we go on to adopt children as you advocate, is somehow less than that of a similarly situated heterosexual couple, or I should just have to accept laws to this end because it aggravates straight people too much to think otherwise. How can I look my neighbor in the eye knowing that in the law he is forever above me and preferred, merely for the way I was born? America was founded to eliminate the divides of blood and establish religious tolerance and freedom. And I think, some day, when we have cleared up all the more important priorities we have before us (and stop worrying about hate-crimes laws), we should continue to make equal recognition in marriage, and equal treatment of the growing number of religions which support marriage equality, our ultimate goal.
It is not a hope made from selfishness - it is a hope made from the dignity and mutual respect I think we should all share for each other.