OP
OP
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
what are these political and public expressions of homosexuality?
on one hand, i suppose you could say that my entire life is a political and public expression of homosexuality. from purchasing a Mac to going to the gym this morning to making the decision to replace rice with quinoa.
so i'm still at a loss here.
right. insofar as we understand that many of these practices -- like, say, crime in the african-american community -- are rooted in deep histories of prejudice and discrimination, not to mention shame and self-loathing. also, plain old gender. and that's also not to say that there weren't then (and aren't still) plain old irresponsible gay hedonists just like there are plain old criminals who are african-american.
the issue, as i'm sure you can understand, being one who is perhaps rightly quick with the "elitist" label, is that one must demonstrate a level of understanding, nuance, history, and acknowledgment of a complexity of circumstance and a multiplicity of factors that contribute to anti-social, dangerous behavior. once this is demonstrated -- and, rightly or wrongly, it's often demonstrated by simply being a member of said group -- then one's criticisms have weight and heft and merit.
and no one has done more to regulate and control the sexual impulses of the gay male than other gay males.
(though marriage would do wonders as well -- it's genuinely conservative, no?)
as a world-wide plague, i'm not sure you're going to find something comparable to AIDS, and i don't think that there's a direct correlation to be made between the above health afflictions. it is kind of grotesque to think that one disease is more worthy than another -- are you going to argue that breast cancer is less worthy than prostate cancer?
what i personally find irritating is that we'll have people -- even in FYM -- quick to fault gay men and their sexual practices in order to make them seem somehow less "worthy" as victims, and yet take a laissez-faire attitude towards smoking, or, say, diet and exercise in regards to stroke and heart disease. in fact, i'd say the southern diet is probably riskier than having unprotected sex once in a while.
but that's beside the point.
i can appreciate how the pace of change can feel a bit like whiplash, but it's also a bit audacious to ask someone to stop and wait for everyone else to warm up and get comfortable when there are very real, very tangible rights at stake. should an interracial couple in 1967 Virginia have had to slow down and wait for the rest of the state to catch up? should Vivian Malone and James Hood have sat out another semester or two so the white students at the U of Alabama had some breathing room to get used to the idea, so that desegregation should be debated on it's merits? after all, if desegregation actually is a good idea, then it should be able to stand some public scrutiny, right? there were perfectly good colleges for African-Americans, why did these particular students *have* to go to the U of Alabama? there were plenty of other options for them, there was nothing standing in the way of their getting their degrees. less than 100 years after the Civil War, was it too much to ask for these students to stop and take a breath and really figure out what the social impact of their enrollment at the U of Alabama was really going to be?
as i've said before, i have yet to see an argument against same sex marriage that wasn't, at it's core, homophobic. people have argued about essentialist notions of gender, or not to tamper with the traditions of society, but ultimately they are making a comparison and a judgment -- that a heterosexual union is, always and in all ways, preferable and superior to a homosexual union.
that is homophobia. and what i think many people don't understand is that homophobia, like racism, isn't necessarily intentionally pernicious. there are many subconscious expressions of racism that i think even the most progressive of us still demonstrate in our lives. race does matter. it does affect our lives in subtle ways. likewise with homophobia. what i see is the inability to recognize the humanity of a homosexual union as being equal -- in merits and in faults -- to a heterosexual union.
one of our most eloquent posters in here has pointed out that he knows several gay couples who have found ways to love and protect one another and that there were many tools available for gay people to solidify their relationships.
and yet, he's married. so, clearly, the options available for the gays weren't enough for him. this is precisely the issue and what i'm talking about when i talk about homophobia in this context. this isn't a Fred Phelps "God Hates Fags" insanity, just like the KKK isn't representative of the racism that makes a white lady clutch her purse just a bit tighter when she passes a pair of black male teenagers on the sidewalk. this is recognition of the social barriers that exist between us all, and that we are all, in a sense, victims of, in one way or another.
i won't even touch the "judicial fiat" -- we all know what the results of Brown vs. Board of Ed and other such fiats were.
