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Bob Herbert's column today in the NY Times — "Bliss and Bigotry" — made me cry. It's a good column, but it did not provoke my sadness and anger so much as allow it. I keep surprising myself with how much the issue of gay marriage means to me. Every day I find it means more.
When I was a young a-hole in the '70s, my line of grad school patter said that homosexuality is an inferior form of love because the sex carries no risk. (Yeah, those were the days.) Homosexuals sex acts lack the existential possibility of creating new life, I'd maintain, affecting my best Norman Mailer-esque pose. This gave me sufficient cover for my homophobia even with my gay friends. But, as I became an older a-hole and saw those friends form relationships as loving as the best of my straight friends, I stopped spouting that particular form of stupidity. I shut up, and was a better person for it. Funny how often that works.
I thought my patter was cocktail-party interesting, but it was just a spin on the mainstream bigotry that pinned itself on the "promiscuity" of "the gay life style." No commitment. No love. Just sex sex sex.
So, now we have gay couples standing in line to foreswear promiscuity, to embrace commitment and love. But it turns out that it's not just their way of having sex that's unacceptable to us. Even their love isn't good enough.
Well, God damn a country that turns away love, that would diminish love, that would deny love. What purer gift could we be offered?
Aren't we commiting the very sin that brought God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? It sure wasn't because their citizens were just too deeply in love with one another.
History may give Bush a pass for his doctrine of preemptive war, because the country was traumatized by 9/11. It may chuckle ruefully at the brazenness of his oligarchical partisanship. But I do not think history will forgive George W. Bush's attempt to turn our Constitution against the love our children have for one another.
And if history will, I won't.
It's a shame that John Kerry is once again taking a position that's politically convenient. We could use a leader right now.
The U.S. Constitution was never created to institutionalize discrimination, to divide us as unequal, but to protect our differences, and unify us one people; simple as that. Dave, that was moving, reflective, and sincere. Thanks.
Posted by Peter on February 27, 2004 08:02 PM | Permalink to CommentI don't understand it. How anyone can look at the pictures or read the stories of couples who flew from around the country, waited for days in the rain, then finally got the chance to declare their love and commitment to each other and have it recognized by society, and say that their love is "disgusting" or that it should not have legal sanction.
I started writing an entry about it, and the more pictures I saw and stories I read (and linked to), the more moved I was at the courage of these couples, and the angrier I was at the people who want to condemn their love. I wrote and believe that "to enshrine the damage that our society currently inflicts on people who love people of the same gender in the Constitution would be an obscenity, almost as bad as the original Constitutional obscenity of defining African-Americans as property."
The more I think about it, the sadder and madder I get. Thanks for writing what you did, David.
Posted by Tim on February 28, 2004 04:37 AM | Permalink to Comment
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This is way over the top. The constitution doesn't dictate who can love whom, how they do it or when they do it. The status quo with respect to marriage and family is for the government to offer support and encouragement to those who marry, form families, and raise children but not to those who don't. Just as the child dependent exemption doesn't apply to those without children, the various status things that accrue to marriage doesn't apply to gay couples, never has, and some folks believe never should.
The fact that George W. Bush and the majority of Americans don't agree with you on this issues doesn't make them less moral and perfect than you, and to assert that it does is to burrow into your echo chamber.
Posted by Richard Bennett on February 27, 2004 05:11 PM | Permalink to Comment