i'm sad (and embarassed) to say that i have trouble imagining myself taking a politically active stand on this issue.
i love love love the fact that people are starting to use the correct rhetoric for the situation — putting this in the context of the civil liberties movement of (a mere!) 30 years ago — but i just can't personally convince myself that i'm a second class American citizen because i'm not allowed to legally marry a man.
i don't see the institution of marriage as having anything to do with love, so i don't feel particularly deprived of anything meaningful. i've yet to encounter one single real life example of love between a married couple (straight or otherwise, legal or not).
i feel like if i jumped on this particular bandwagon, i'd have to acknowledge the "sanctity" of marriage as an institution.
i'd have to give up my complete lack of interest in what i see as an empty, formal, failing institution to say that i feel like less of a person because i can't get married.
currently, i don't want what "they" have.
i do hold out the slightest hope that should the federal government ever decide to uphold my constitutional rights and allow marriage between homosexual couples, perhaps then i will find deep within myself some belief in love, the way that i found a long forgotten sense of patriotism when Barack Obama was elected.
all that said, any time i am given the chance to vote to keep or abolish any of my, or anyone elses, constitutional rights, i will vote to keep them.
shame on every single person in this country who has ever done otherwise.
It's never really been about marriage. It's always been about making "us" go away. Marriage says we are just like them. And in that you are right... maybe being just like them isn't something to be so proud of. I do know that either way we should be, at the very least, equal in the eyes of the law. As much as Obama has made me feel proud to be an American again after so many years, I find that I am now an accidental activist overnight as well. I just can't imagine letting another generation of kids grow up like we did... afraid of feeling inside how we knew we really felt because of what others around us might think or do. Not when we have the first chance we've had in years to do something about it. But that's just me monkey man. BTW, nice new blog you have.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong- i feel guilty about not feeling the "pull" of this cause.
ReplyDeleteI was (still am) proud of my involvement in working for legislation to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in the workplace.
But this whole marriage deal doesn't seem to have a hook in me.
In a society full of religious fascists touting the importance of "family values", the institution of marriage is a mockery of love, regardless of orientation.
Deep, deep, deep down, i think there is a chance that if the narrow minded folksies allowed less "traditional" couples to legally participate in the institution of marriage then maybe we would bring some of the sanctity back to it.
I love this idea.
But my inner pragmatist tells me the sad reality is that gay weddings lead to gay divorce, gay custody battles, gay sham marriages.
i suppose we should have the same legal right to degrade what may once (in theory, if not only in our imaginations) been a sacred and joyous symbolic union of two people in love.
i would NEVER vote otherwise.
I just can't rouse the spirit to fight for something that feels so empty to me.