Here’s the latest zooming-around-the-interweb Cool Thing. (I’m sorry to say there’s nothing I can do about the ads…sometimes life is just like that.)
Many thanks to all the folks who gave their time and energy to this! You rock (or I guess you “musical,” if you want to get technical.)
And if anyone you know actually believes that the right to get married will somehow result in schools teaching first-graders about sodomy, please educate them, okay?
Fucking hysterical . . . completely made my day. Thanks Kelley!!!
The thing is, I don’t believe that Jack Black know what Jesus wants or thinks either. And even if they did, gods don’t determine the law of the land in this country. I agree with Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax, in Lords and Ladies,
âI donât hold with paddlinâ with the occult,â said Granny firmly. âOnce you start paddlinâ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are youâre believing in gods. And then youâre in trouble.â
âBut all them things exist,â said Nanny Ogg.
âThatâs no call to go believing in them. It only encourages âem.â
Hah, isn’t that the truth (about the believing part)?
Gods may not determine the law here, but their representatives on Earth seem determined to change that wherever they can. But that’s an old fight, one of the oldest.
Yes, it’s an old fight, but I see it the other way around: people have always just assumed that Someone was qualified and entitled to tell them what to do. It’s taken a long time for a relatively few people to get rid of that assumption. It isn’t easy.
But Jack Black, cute little butterball that he is, isn’t God’s representative either. And what I notice about the whole same-sex marriage thing is how many gay people have civil and religious marriage confused. I’ve run into a fair number of gay people who say that what they want is a big church wedding — but civil marriage won’t give them that. It won’t make their relationships more “spiritual.” Churches will be under no obligation to recognize the marriage licenses of same-sex married couples, and the State neither can nor should do anything to change that. I was really creeped out when I learned that during the brief period when Mayor Newsome let same-sex couples marry in San Francisco, many couples asked the clerk to bless them. I suppose I can understand why they felt that way, but it was a wholly illegitimate request, and it shows that gay people and our allies need eddicatin’ about the issues no less than our opponents do.
Have you read, or heard of, Nancy Polikoff’s book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Kelley? She does a good job of sorting out the issues, especially the way that gay-marriage activists have let the Religious Right set the frame of the discussion, so that marriage is the only acceptable relationship, the only one that deserves respect and support. Very interesting book.
Thanks for the book recommendation.
Interesting to think about the religious/civil blurring of the lines. I haven’t been religious since I was 10, so it never occurs to me to think of marriage as anything but a civil/legal relationship.
I have the same problem, having been a-religious ever since about the same age. I was really gobsmacked when a gay boy on one of our GLB panels told a human sexuality class that he’d wanted a big church wedding ever since he was little. But then, that would be one of the ultimate drag fantasies, wouldn’ t it? And then a few years later, someone said in an online forum that the government ought to force the churches to let Us marry. (I explained the First Amendment issues, but I’m not sure it sunk in. One effect of so many of us growing up in religiously reactionary environments is that we never really outgrow the early conditioning. I, happily, largely escaped that, for which I’m grateful to my parents.)
The irony is that gay weddings are, as far as I know, not illegal anywhere in the US. It would be fairly easy to overturn any attempt to make them illegal, since that would be a government intervention in religion. If two people want to solemnize their relationship with vows and ritual, there are no legal barriers to their doing so. They may not be able to do it in the church of their choice, or with the blessings of clergy, but if it matters to be married before their god, that should really only be a problem for Catholics, I should think. Protestants have the priesthood of believers. And the fact that so many people asked city clerks to bless them in San Francisco shows that they don’t really think they need clergy either. If a random city clerk would do, then any queer-friendly clergyperson, or a respected friend, should suffice as well. (I learned about the clerks being asked to provide blessings from Mark Jordan’s “Blessing Same-Sex Unions,” which is also quite a good book, written by a gay Catholic theologian.)
Polikoff documents how same-sex marriage advocates have bought into the right’s marriage agenda. But I also saw (and blogged about) the blurring in this online article, which got a lot of gushing praise from people who also evidently think that civil and religious marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Which is why this little musical clip bugged me, I guess: the advocates of same-sex marriage, no less than its opponents, need to be reminded to keep religion out of it.
I loved this video; for once I didn’t even mind the ads. All of the things they are saying in that video are playing off of what really happened – the stuff the yes on 8 people were saying/doing. And I am glad that the Prop 8 campaigns are over. Living here in So Cal, I have experienced all of this first hand. And I got really sick and tired of hearing about how bad and sick they think homosexuality is.
I know people who have gotten married in churches, in county clerk offices, in judges chambers, on street corners, on beaches, and in back yards. They just want the same rights that straight couples have. They don’t want any churches to be forced to marry them. Plenty of churches have been doing same-sex commitment ceremonies for many years. People can consecrate their commitment to each other any way they want.
What we are taking about and protesting about with this issue is equal civil rights. Including financial benefits with pensions and taxes and inheritances, and other rights having to do with stuff like medical rights, and having children with parental rights, etc.
I do believe that the people heading up the no on 8 campaigns here made some mistakes. I think they listened to bad political advice. And I think they tried to play the game the way the religious yes on 8 people set it up, and that was a mistake. But I don’t think they did it because their religious views or any blurring of religious vs civil marriage. I think, as I said, that it was a poorly chosen political tactic.
And as someone who has marched in three of the major protests, I didn’t see anyone who wanted any church to force them to marry them. They just want religion out of their business and out of our constitution. I put together a video showing what it was about at aquestionoflove.net.
Prop 8 won, and same sex marriage is illegal in CA. It is also illegal in 41 other states. And with the passage of the DOM act in 1996, the federal government ruled that federal law does not recognize same sex marriage. And here is another link for people who would like to be informed about why same sex marriage matters.
“Equally important, as defined by the United States Supreme Court, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” Every American deserves fair treatment under the law and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the very rights our country was founded on.”
I think this video is an excellent way to point out in a light-hearted manner how truly stupid the yes on 8 arguments were/are. Sometimes we all just need to laugh at/with ourselves and each other.
And the thing is that this is about so much more than the freedom to marry. It is about the basic acceptance of each other as fellow human beings that deserve equal treatment and love.