A point about gay marriage

[womzilla]

Gay marriage isn't about fucking.

Gay people can fuck that now, and they do. Heck, in the United States, right now, I'm pretty sure it's not legal to stop gay people from fucking. Civil unions, domestic partnerships, marriage--they're completely irrelevant to the question which tab goes in which slot (or no tab, as the case may be).

Gay marriage isn't about fucking. It's about what people do with their lives when they're not fucking. It's about home ownership and wills and health insurance and visitation rights and parental rights and leaving messages for their honeys at work and just saying "I'm his husband" and having people understand what that means.

It's about people taking care of each other because they don't just want to fuck, they want to live their lives together like human beings.

Those of us who support gay marriage, we're going to live like human beings. The rest of you: Go fuck each other. It's apparently all you can understand.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's not legal to stop gay people from fucking.

Actually, it is. There are sodomy laws (http://www.sodomylaws.org/) on the books in many places. Yes, they apply to married hetero couples too, though somehow enforcement in this area is a lesser concern.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

From that site (http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/usa.htm):

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that sodomy laws are unconstitutional on June 26, 2003..

You're correct that the laws are on the books, but they can't be enforced until the Supreme Court decides that Griswold isn't precedent. But given that Anthony Kennedy was on the right side in the Lawrence decision--he wrote the opinion--I think that Lawrence is safe for at least a little while.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Nonetheless, the sphincter conservative's crusade against gay marriage is at least partially about the fucking. And sodomy laws aren't the only way to stop (or slow) it down. Many laws on the books now are aimed at a black underclass (eg most of the drug laws, and how they're enforced). Similarly, many laws are about the physical contact between same-sex lovers (eg "Don't ask, don't tell").

The same people who claim to value "individual freedom and opportunity" are the quickest to condemn anyone who acts differently than they do. It's pathetic, but they passed laws that are still on the books.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, Dave, opposition to gay marriage is about the fucking. Thank you for explaining that to me like it had never occurred to me. However, I have actually lived in the United States for more than two minutes, so the concept that some people really, really don't like the idea of queers getting it on had actually been brought to my attention once or twice.

My post was making what you might call the opposite of that point. Marriage isn't about fucking. Fucking is about fucking, marriage is about all sort of other things. And the people who think that marriage is about fucking need to have their faces rubbed in the fact of their own idiocy, of their own blinkered ignorance.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Ah, preaching to the choir; sorry I wasn't expecting that. Since we agree on the issue at hand I won't further trade comments, but share my favorite pithy quote on the subject.

"Marriage is not what you do in bed. Marriage is what you do when you get out of bed." -- George Burns

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Ah, excellent quote. It should be better known.

[redbird]

Thank you. You're absolutely right. My girlfriend and I can fuck just as well here or in Wisconsin as we can in Massachusetts, where the only legal impediment to us getting married is that I already have a legal spouse, not that we're both women.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Yup.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Well stated.

My own feelign is that we should just get the government the fuck out of the marriage business, which belongs to churches, synagogues, social clubs, families, whatever group a couple or triple or fortyfoursome feel identified with. No license should be required for that.

What government ought to be doing is issuing licenses to form a kind of economic arrangement called a "domestic partnership," something like a limited liability partnership, with no limitations on who can participate.

[rredhead.livejournal.com]

On an episode of West Wing some Senator came into Josh's (Bradley Whitford's) office and said, "I'm proposing a bill to oppose marriage." Josh said, "You mean GAY marriage." "No, marriage," the Senator explained, "Get the government out of the whole business."
I've often thought that's a great idea. I think you would need a law about minimum age before someone can be married - to protect 14 year olds who's parents are a little nutty and want her to marry a 41 year old - but other than that, who cares?
Frankly, as long as polygamists were required to tell their other spouses and children about one another, I have no problem with that choice either.