Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

let's all meet in Delaware

Voters in Washington did the right thing and passed the "everything-but-marriage" civil union referendum. Maybe people are just better here. Go us!

There is a difference between "let's vote to create something separate-but-'equal'" and "let's vote to say these different types of relationships should be treated the same way".

if you are a bigot tick this box: [ ]

Ugh, disappointed by my state! Except for guy in the clip above.

who is that person and did i vote for them

He's Steve Simon, the state Rep for Hopkins/St. Louis Park. So... no.

^^^Just checked, and he's the rep for my mom's side of town. YAY.

A majority of Americans favor legal gay marriage, sez Gallup.

I'm ready, guys!

op-ed in the times today urging gays to decline straight friends' wedding invites:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/opinion/22benjamin.html?_r=1

Giving serious consideration to that already.

Of course that's letting the enemies force me to hurt my friends. Which just seems like the absolute worst thing to do.

Seems odd on one hand to tout marriage as primarily a personal (not political) thing and on the other to boycott friends' marriages for political reasons.

Also, plenty of vegans go to pig roasts, if they're friends with the people holding the pig roast. (They just bring along not-dogs or eat beforehand.)

weddings are so fun tho

Yeah, I'm not unsympathetic to his frustration, though; planning my own wedding has made me feel uneasy sometimes about the privilege I have in doing so.

yeah, i'm torn about this issue myself. i'm going to a friend's wedding this afternoon and i am happy to take part in the festivities. at the same time i pretty much never want to hear my straight friends talk about how great the married life is. but also max OTM and i hate hurting my friends' feelings.

i think he was citing the personal reasons people give, accepting them as reasons he wants marriage too, and then noting the disconnect between people who cite them but think gay marriage advocacy is just playing politics. the author was just not accepting that disconnect.

one of my teachers, in his seventies and married forever, asked his wife a few years back if she didn't think they ought to get unmarried since enjoying the privileges of marriage while gay marriage wasn't allowed, was unjust. but she wasn't having any of that.

jay, why shouldn't you feel uneasy! you're straight up committing an injustice and probably have nothing to say in your defense but 'it's personal'.

and then noting the disconnect between people who cite them but think gay marriage advocacy is just playing politics.

I think this is a good point, and if it's true for the guy who invited him, then the boycott makes a little more sense to me. But not all participants in heterosexual marriage think of same-sex marriage as strictly a political thing.

Most weddings are not fun for me. Too many people.

well, their wrong should be more obvious to them. i take it that the guy mentioned in the editorial was being called out for not being able to put the pieces together. the friends who DO (and then just have their weddings and feel bad about it) would still deserve boycotts for the same reasons, though.

my former boss posted this article on facebook and said that he's only gone to one wedding in the past 30 years (his niece's) - he declined every other invitation

Well, shit.

(Not re: your boss, just in general.)

My idea for a note in the program feels kind of lame now.

Weddings are great if you're a groomsman.

In any case I wouldn't boycott a friend's wedding. My friends would line up to attend any wedding of mine (my family, on the other hand...).

Yeah, what Alfred said. My friends and family (generally) would be all too happy to attend some crazy, hypothetical wedding I was in. It's a moot point, but if there was ever a situation I was in where I wanted to get married, then, well, damnit, I'd get married. We're all just about living in parallel but separate universes by this point anyway.

A poll last month showed Americans are split on same-sex marriage. A narrow majority, 51 percent, supports it, while 47 percent do not. Though Zach falls into that slim majority, he scolds me for being “peevish.” He says he resents me for blowing off his special day, for putting political beliefs ahead of our friendship and for punishing him for others’ deeds. But screaming zealots aren’t the only obstacles to equal marriage rights; the passivity of good people like Zach who tacitly fortify the inequality of this institution are also to blame.

OK, this guy is a halfwit.

'why don't you want to celebrate my happiness on the most important day of my life?'

"I'm going to counter your ostensibly self-absorbed statement with my own example of swinish, dickish behaviour."

the only one of those silly comparisons he made that is even close to being equivalent to a gay person attending a wedding is the vegans at a pig roast, and vegans go to pig roasts all the time ime.

That said, I understand dudes feelings and wouldn't begrudge his non-attendance at a wedding. But I'm not sure that calling for others to do likewise would do much more than hurt a lot of feelings, gay and straight.

I don't see how acting like an asshole will change friends' minds about gay marriage. It WILL, however, change friends' minds about the columnist.

If he'd written about the loneliness of attending family events to which you must go alone, I'd have willingly granted my sympathy. I've just come off a debilitating string of Easter, Mom's Day, and First Communion parties.

well yeah. and I'd hazard that most ppl that are in the habit of inviting their close gay friends to their weddings are, you know, in that slim majority and don't need to be convinced of anything!

but they DO need to be convinced if they're still holding the weddings.

you mean convinced that as long as gays can't marry, every straight marriage is an injustice?

yeah

I've never been (personally, rather than as part of a family unit) invited to a wedding. I have, like, no married friends in town.

one of my teachers, in his seventies and married forever, asked his wife a few years back if she didn't think they ought to get unmarried since enjoying the privileges of marriage while gay marriage wasn't allowed, was unjust. but she wasn't having any of that.

wait -- was your professor joking? That's like saying, "There are starving Ethiopians, therefore I will consider skipping dinner tonight."

That's the most priggish behavior I've ever heard. Does he want a golf clap?

tell me how it's right to enjoy the advantages of an unjust social arrangement, particularly when you have no need to and you actually acknowledge that it's unjust.

I don't need to eat chocolate, and I know the chocolate trade is built on an unjust social arrangement, but I do anyway. ¯\(°_o)/¯

That's really not even a fair analogue on my part. Straight people getting married doesn't directly or indirectly stop same-sex couples from getting married.

giving up an enterprise that you entered into freely just to make a point is token at best, at worst the height of arrogance. all it shows is that he's incredibly self-centered. It helps no-one & draws attention to him, not the cause.

now imagine jaymc including a special notice in his wedding invitations:

'dear gay friends,

it's wrong that you can't get married but my getting married doesn't stop you from getting married. enjoy the reception.

best wishes,

jaymc'

Being mad that straight people can get married just seems like an entirely unproductive response to marriage inequality. Should you be mad that you can't marry? Totally! I am! But the former response is totally misdirected and will probably just result in turning you into a bitter asshole like our columnist.

what's with all the projection in this thread? my teacher, for example, didn't make a big deal out of this. it was an issue he broached with his wife and that he happened to talk to some of his students about, privately, when we were discussing marriage equality. he wasn't trying to stand out, or strike a blow against the system, or anything. just looking to act in the right way. and the columnist doesn't seem bitter, and if you think he's an asshole for expecting married people to own up to the full significance of their acceptance of marriage, then ok, but that judgment seems like it doesn't regard marriage inequality as an actual injustice.

the question is, how is it right for straight people to be married if it's not right for gay people not to be able to be?

It's not wrong for straight people to marry. It's wrong that gay people are not able to.

It's an injustice, but straight people staying unmarried on principal (whoop-de-freakin-do) serves no purpose. If a straight friend wanted to marry but was holding out on principal because I can't, I'd tell him to stop kidding himself and go for it.

I know who my enemy is and it isn't my friends who want to marry someone of the opposite sex.

With this kind of logic in mind, I'm thinking that maybe white people should get jobs that pay proportionately less...

ahahahahaha otm. I think all us men should take a paycut, too.