The Federal Prop. 8 Trial / Gay Marriage Catch-All

Phoenix Rev:

That's not quite right. No one's been able to prove empirically that gay marriage has a deleterious effect on the marriage sociopolitical institution, but battling it does have logical foundation; and I think Blankenhorn does an okay job of summarizing the core objection in his statement.

Spoiler for tangent

Spoiler:

Since you don't seem to have an idea, I'll try to expound a bit as I understand it.

Blankenhorn's opposition to gay marriage is founded, as I've seen it, on the evolution of the marriage institution as a government sanction for what should be a private arrangement. There is no strict need for this other than to combat the widespread and destructive hate many people have for LGBT in general, and arguably that should be its own battle altogether.

Previously, marriage was a foundational institution meant to protect procreation, socialization, education, and what ought to have been the normative building block of society itself. Objection to gay marriage, in this view, is no different from objection to single parenthood, divorce, or persistent widowhood; though the latter three are somewhat less objectionable for a variety of reasons.

I believe that LGBT people have advanced a strong counter in the proven viability of LGBT-founded families, and that's probably why Blankenhorn is willing to seek a new social contract rather than promote an agenda that's been overtaken by hate and persecution.

And Larry, those logical arguments make sense only in a world where survival is paramount. The world population is more than seven billion people. Our own little piece of that population here in the US is not in danger of stagnating because of a slow down in reproduction. Logically, those no longer hold up. I know you're not saying they do, but I'm just pointing out why.

They're not illogical; it's just that the assumptions may no longer be relevant. This is an important distinction. Blankenhorn isn't saying that his previous stance is illogical; he's admitting that some of his previous assumptions could be negotiated. It's important to bring up the right objection if our goal is to convince.

Remember, Larry, you don't lose rights under the law by being a single parent, divorced or widowed. You do if you're gay in the US. It's not the same thing.

That's an interesting point, but I think further discussion of that should move private.

So when Oreo, a subsidiary of Kraft, posted this on their facebook page:

IMAGE(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/661438/thumbs/o-OREO-GAY-PRIDE-570.jpg?5)

People got mad and whined about it.

Best response I've heard yet was "You're gonna boycott Oreo because they support gay rights? Good. You don't deserve America's most delicious cookie."

Seth wrote:

Oreo!

I saw a great response (on Reddit, IIRC) to the hate that struck home. It suggested that the cookie-boycotters should also boycott all things Apple, Google, possibly Microsoft, and computers in general due to various corporate policies on partner benefits and Turing's orientation.

During our office's quarterly all-hands meeting they showed the company's It Gets Better video, and followed it up by bringing the director of a local queer resource centre on stage to talk about her organization and about some of the problems faced by LGBTQs. These meetings are usually really boring so this was a rather pleasant surprise.

Can I mention one, offhand remark? I wish they hadn't picked "Questioning" in the LGBTQ thing. That is not a very popular letter and if I assumed it meant "queer" for a month or two, I have to assume other people made the same mistake.

From what I've heard, it can refer to either questioning or queer. In any case, "queer" seems to be the new favourite catch-all term (at least here in BC, I don't know about elsewhere) since it's broad enough to cover anyone who isn't a cisgendered heterosexual.

It almost reminds me of the joke my boss makes about Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. He refers to them as "CSNEIOU and sometimes Y."

Seth wrote:

Can I mention one, offhand remark? I wish they hadn't picked "Questioning" in the LGBTQ thing. That is not a very popular letter and if I assumed it meant "queer" for a month or two, I have to assume other people made the same mistake.

I agree with that. Another thing - I don't get why the T fits in there either. I see those as two completely different things.

SallyNasty wrote:
Seth wrote:

Can I mention one, offhand remark? I wish they hadn't picked "Questioning" in the LGBTQ thing. That is not a very popular letter and if I assumed it meant "queer" for a month or two, I have to assume other people made the same mistake.

I agree with that. Another thing - I don't get why the T fits in there either. I see those as two completely different things.

I'm guessing that "questioning" was added for the same reason that itgetsbetter.org includes it. Not just for teenagers who have figured themselves out, but for teenagers who just don't know, and are getting bullied. I remember back in my Men's Glee Club days, when many of my really good friends were gay, it was a very funny pastime to debate at what stage the "new guys" to club were. Our resident Queen (full-on flaming Liberace gay, grad student in Library Sciences, one of the funniest, sweetest guys ever) would comment on the various new guys: "Okay. He is...he isn't...he isn't...ooooh, I wish he was....give him a year...give that one 2 years...okay that one isn't...oh honey, with hair that great, you can't be straight..."

It was somewhat common for a guy who pretty much everyone knew would eventually accept himself and figure himself out, to come up to you a year or two later, and say something like "I'm not sure if you're going to still want to be my friend, but I just wanted you to know that..." "What? You finally figured out you're gay, right? Of course you're my friend." "Wait a minute, you knew?!" "Yeah buddy, for the last year and half..."

When society bombards you from day one with what you're supposed to be, and you're not supposed to be gay (could it be better on campuses now than back when I was in college, in the early 1990s? I hope so), many guys just could not face themselves. So I like the idea of "questioning" in the sense that it gives permission to ask the question in the first place.

Oh, and as for T. Back in Glee Club we had an expression. It was called "getting on the clue train." As in the new guys who didn't think anyone in the world could be gay, much less the President of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club (a very awesome guy). To which he would reply, "Oh man. Let me take you down to the Clue Station, buy you a Clue Ticket, and get your sorry ass on the Clue Train." When you actually get to know A LOT of gay and lesbian folks...you get a clue. And it's very different from any attitude you had before. I've gotten to know some transgender folks and what they've gone through. The T is just fine there, as far as I'm concerned...

Hypatian wrote:

It's different, but there are similar stigmas. The historic conflation of cross-dressing, homosexuality, and gender dysphoria means that there's some common cause here, even if different people have different problems and priorities.

I think it can potentially be much harder to come out as transgendered than it is to come out as gay. In a lot of places, people nowadays have a pretty clear understanding of what it means to be attracted the same sex. There might be some awkward situations in which you're attracted to someone and aren't sure what their orientation is, but if that awkwardness bothers you it's possible to try to meet people in places where the normal expectation is that people there are homosexual. (And of course, this varies from place to place and situation to situation. It's certainly not always easy to come out as gay to your family, and there are certainly a lot of places where being openly gay can be very uncomfortable.)

Someone who's transgendered but straight doesn't have the same problems wondering whether people are sexually compatible with them, and whether things are going to get awkward if they ask someone out without being sure. But, they potentially have a lot more problems down the road. Consider a guy who meets this wonderful woman who seems to like him, and they hit it off... but he knows that if everything goes well then somewhere down the road he'll have to explain to that really wonderful woman that he really wishes he had been born a woman... and that sometimes when he looks at her he's filled with tremendous envy and it makes him want to cry.

People in support groups for people struggling with their homosexuality will certainly have some understanding of the kinds of stresses this experience will put on a person.

And this is what I wished I'd said, with adding "and after you've sat down and talked with someone who is transgendered, you are often reminded of sitting down with one of your friends who is gay, describing the incredible amount of sh*t they went through."

It's different, but there are similar stigmas. The historic conflation of cross-dressing, homosexuality, and gender dysphoria means that there's some common cause here, even if different people have different problems and priorities.

I think it can potentially be much harder to come out as transgendered than it is to come out as gay. In a lot of places, people nowadays have a pretty clear understanding of what it means to be attracted the same sex. There might be some awkward situations in which you're attracted to someone and aren't sure what their orientation is, but if that awkwardness bothers you it's possible to try to meet people in places where the normal expectation is that people there are homosexual. (And of course, this varies from place to place and situation to situation. It's certainly not always easy to come out as gay to your family, and there are certainly a lot of places where being openly gay can be very uncomfortable.)

Someone who's transgendered but straight doesn't have the same problems wondering whether people are sexually compatible with them, and whether things are going to get awkward if they ask someone out without being sure. But, they potentially have a lot more problems down the road. Consider a guy who meets this wonderful woman who seems to like him, and they hit it off... but he knows that if everything goes well then somewhere down the road he'll have to explain to that really wonderful woman that he really wishes he had been born a woman... and that sometimes when he looks at her he's filled with tremendous envy and it makes him want to cry.

People in support groups for people struggling with their homosexuality will certainly have some understanding of the kinds of stresses this experience will put on a person.

Edited to add:

Full disclosure: I'm not gay, so I can't speak to that side of things. But I am TG. And I have been in similar positions to the above, although never looking towards marriage. And even though my gender dysphoria is something I've come to terms with and can live with, it hurts. I've never told my family, although it might explain a few things I did when I was a teenager if I told them. I don't generally tell people I know, even close friends, unless something comes up in a conversation where my first-hand experience matters (like this conversation, which is eased by the sense of at least partial anonymity I get from using a handle on this site.)

I don't talk about it partially because it's not something that people need to know: They can't do anything more about my situation than I can. And there's not much I can do that I'm willing to do--testosterone had its way with me long ago. I can wish that I'd both understood what I felt and had the resources to do something about it when I was much younger. But wishes won't buy you much of anything.

Anyway, because of that it's very possible that I'm underestimating how hard it is to be gay. But being TG certainly isn't a cakewalk.

And to clarify - this is my weakness, not the community's. It would've been easier for *me* if instead of Questioning, the community had settled on, say.....

Okay I can't think of a better word.

Regarding the difficulty trans people face...It may be different, but it seems to fraught with at least as much ignorance and confusion that manifests as intolerance and anger. A trans friend of mine who came out about 6 weeks before starting her HRT was so hurt by certain members of her group of friends that she literally moved across the country. It was astonishing to see some of the drivel posted on her FB page by people who actually thought they were being supportive.

Tangentially related: the repeal of DADT did not include discrimination against trans people.

To be clear, my comment is not a judgement. I just think that the two issues are separate and that it muddies the water to discuss them as one. For me, sexual identity and gender identity are not totally related.

SallyNasty wrote:

To be clear, my comment is not a judgement. I just think that the two issues are separate and that it muddies the water to discuss them as one. For me, sexual identity and gender identity are not totally related.

A large part of it is that, historically, the two communities have stood up for each other, beginning, actually, with a transgender riot.

Yeah, I didn't think you were criticizing. Just trying to explain the why.

I think it does muddy the waters, but that it helps more than it hurts. Someone coming to terms with having a "non-normative" sexual or gender identity is going to go through some similar feelings of confusion and doubt. Someone who's trans might not even have heard the term TG before. They'll likely wonder "am I gay?" at some point, before maybe figuring out that it's something else. That's part of why that "questioning" thing is useful, if an awkward way to phrase it. It's also definitely helpful to the TG community to have strong ties to the gay community—because the TG community is a smaller minority. Having gays and lesbians there to help stand up helps.

And, on the darker side of things, that help is not certain. I encountered some negative reactions at my university when talking with people while trying to figure out what the heck I was. "You're a guy that's attracted to girls? WTF are you doing here, then?" isn't exactly a supportive reaction—although I can also understand why some lesbians who've had very negative experiences with men in the past would freak out at a guy who's attracted to girls wanting to join their group.

So I'm totally happy that GLB groups now almost universally explicitly embrace TG folks as well. They don't *need* to do it, but it helps. It gives TG people a broader community that they can feel part of, and it means that people just joining the community will have a better idea about what TG is, even though it might be outside their experience—at the very least, a member of a campus LGBT group will have some idea that TG people exist and have a reason to want to join their group. (And like I said, that wasn't always something you could expect.)

Seth wrote:

Can I mention one, offhand remark? I wish they hadn't picked "Questioning" in the LGBTQ thing. That is not a very popular letter and if I assumed it meant "queer" for a month or two, I have to assume other people made the same mistake.

In my experience (and corroborated by all the LBGT folks I know, including one who's doing her PhD in a gender studies field), "queer" is really a catch-all for LGBT, and includes "questioning" in that.

Sorry for the derail, but I really appreciate your commentary Hypatian. It has given me a lot to think about. Stuff like this is why I love P&C.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/OdKwF.png)

I was in the Pentagon this last Tuesday when this occurred, but was too busy to attend unfortunately.

The Pentagon holds its first gay pride event.

Wonder if all those people boycotting Oreos and other "homo friendly" companies will boycott the entire United States Military?

KrazyTacoFO wrote:

Wonder if all those people boycotting Oreos and other "homo friendly" companies will boycott the entire United States Military? :)

They'll just push for another war to kill some of them off.

Hyatian,

Are you concerned that you can't pass as a woman because you look too masculine now? If so, is that because of how you feel you ought to look for your own peace of mind, concerns about how you'll look to others or a % split?

FWIW we touched on transgender characters in games in a podcast; I have a letter
from a trans listener I still have to read out.

NSMike wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

To be clear, my comment is not a judgement. I just think that the two issues are separate and that it muddies the water to discuss them as one. For me, sexual identity and gender identity are not totally related.

A large part of it is that, historically, the two communities have stood up for each other, beginning, actually, with a transgender riot.

That is one thing that I like a lot, as all too often in our (human, not US) history the different minorities have turned on each other and in general been hypocrites. "Hey guys, all of this discrimination against Irish people is messed up, it's not like we are blacks or Chinese."

Future humans: *FACEPALM*

1Dgaf wrote:

Hypatian,

Are you concerned that you can't pass as a woman because you look too masculine now? If so, is that because of how you feel you ought to look for your own peace of mind, concerns about how you'll look to others or a % split?

I had mentioned being TG before on these forums, in the thread in EE about what if people could swap genders. There, I described myself as having "mild gender dysphoria". What I mean by that is that for the most part, I'm "okay" with what I look like, and how people perceive me. Part of that, I think, is that I'm the kind of person who lives a "life of mind" more often than not. While our minds are bound quite strongly to our physical shells (the structure of our brains, our bodies, our hormone systems, etc. etc.), I feel that people transcend that as well. That while we cannot (currently) escape from our bodies, we need not let our bodies limit our selves. Short story: I'm more than just a meat puppet, and when nothing is seriously drawing my attention to my body, my body isn't a major part of what I think of as my "self".

On the body front... well. My body is pretty tremendously far from feminine. I would not look out of place in a group of Bears. My shoulders are very broad. The distribution of my musculature is undeniably masculine. I am very hairy. The progress of my male pattern baldness was noticeable by the time I was 17, and pronounced a year or two after that. It would require a miracle for me to look even remotely like a woman.

And, of course, I'm not immune to all of the body image stuff we've talked about in threads about feminism, sexism, gender bias in media, etc. etc. When I dream about what I would be "happy" looking like, I don't require any kind of culturally-bound perfection... but those images are still there, in the realm of "oh, if only I could be..." And the non-body image stuff, too. (Been thinking a lot about this stuff lately, watching the feministfrequency videos and such.) All of those harmful historic gender-bound stereotypes about what women ought to be, how a woman ought to act? Yeah. They're part of me, too...

Anyway, I guess my position is this: I cannot imagine looking even vaguely passably like a woman unless we enter some kind of crazy magical nanotech world where we can re-sculpt our bodies at will. And anything within actual reach of where I am now with modern techniques... I think I'd move from being annoyed and dissatisfied and wishing I'd been born a woman to [em]actively[/em] hating my body. As it is, I should probably pay more attention to my body to be more healthy (eat better, exercise more, etc.), and part of why I don't may be related to "I don't see the point, since I will forever be a world away from my ideal body image". That's not a super healthy attitude, but at least I'm not actively doing things to reject my body--just not doing as much as I should to take care of it.

So... I keep myself in this ground of "I do not like my body, but what can I do?" and live my life the best I can despite it. It is a source of mental discord, but not an overwhelming one. In some ways, I think the very impossibility of doing anything I would find satisfactory helps me not stress out about it too much. Sure, there are times when it hits me hard. There are times when it dominates my thoughts, and I cry myself to sleep. But there are also times when... I just don't worry about it.

I just live the best life I can with what I have, and it's mostly good enough.

Honestly... I am saddest when I think about how my feelings are so mild compared to people with stronger gender dysphoria. My bad times aren't so bad, but they're not trivial. I can't imagine how hard it must be for people who feel this much more strongly. If I felt like that... I don't know if I'd be alive today.

Hypatian, thanks for being so candid and open.

KrazyTacoFO wrote:

I was in the Pentagon this last Tuesday when this occurred, but was too busy to attend unfortunately.

The Pentagon holds its first gay pride event.

Wonder if all those people boycotting Oreos and other "homo friendly" companies will boycott the entire United States Military? :)

So awesome. Thanks for posting this. It makes me feel like this year of "firsts" might really add up to something real for LGBT rights. First sitting president and vp to support same-sex marriage. DADT overturned. Gay pride event at the freaking pentagon...just wow.

edit: also this link turns out to be a great way to mess with everyone on FB for me. I seem to have conservative high school friends and family, and very progressive more recent friends. I basically posted this and said, "You all catch up and get together between Support our Troops, and Support Gay Rights." Cause previously, I would not see these two messages coming from both groups...