Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

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.

If straight people boycotted marriage en bloc as a protest against inequality, then, theoretically, great. But if if the overwhelming majority of straight people came to support gay marriage then it would likely be legalised by then anyway. The mere fact of being willing to vote for it is the important factor.

I should tell the married straight peeps I know who are actively involved in fighting for marriage equality that their marriage is an affront to me.

I agree that not getting married out of solidarity is a pointless gesture, but it does highlight the larger issue, which is that the status quo won't change until straight people start really caring about the injustice of it. The question is, how do we facilitate that?

At this point I don't have any great hope that Minnesotans will vote differently than the residents of the 31 other states that have put amendments on the ballot, despite changing attitudes.

not getting married out of solidarity is a pointless gesture, but it does highlight the larger issue

isn't that the point of solidarity?

but boycotts have to be organized and en masse to be effective. if I boycott mac and cheese I'm not going to bankrupt kraft on my own.

The question is, how do we facilitate that?

Well, to answer both your question and j's absurd points, you help "us" by hanging out, drinking, and realizing that we're not caricatures. In other words, do little to nothing that that you don't already do. Look at the poll I cited last week. Its most important thing: not the number of people who think gay marriage is okay, but that the numbers keep rising, with no end in sight. This will change soon, folks. Soon we'll realize how boring -- for better or worse -- marriage is.

i think it is fine and admirable for ppl to make common cause and suffer privation in order to "make a point." however, to suggest that every straight couple entering into marriage is ~committing an injustice~ against ppl they may know and love is...noxious. it may not be untrue, or logically inconsistent, or what have you, but if you're concerned about, you know, solidarity, you might want to consider strategies that bind ppl together, not push them away.

xp alfred otm

http://www.minnpost.com/minnclips/2011/05/23/28533/rep_john_kriesels_full_speech_on_the_same-sex_marriage_ban_amendment

Republican MN State Representative John Kriesels making a speech re: the same-sex marriage ban amendment.

(from Cottage Grove btw)

hot damn

The CEO of Focus on the Family says of winning the younger generation on gay marriage:

We're losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age—demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that. I don't want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.

It's a bizarrely almost reasonable statement. His follow up not as much, but still.

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'

― j., Sunday, May 22, 2011 4:16 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Yeah, I don't think this is necessarily what jaymc is talking about. I have straight friends and family who are passionate about LGBT issues who have gotten married in the U.S. who have made a point of including a special notice like this and it's usually to the effect of encouraging or asking guests to donate to Marriage Equality organizations, etc. etc. Again, I'm not saying that this should be mandatory, but there are plenty of ways of acknowledging straight privilege and trying to use it for good that aren't as pointless callous as you imagine.

I'd rather my straight friends do something to productively advance queer causes than symbollically flagellate themselves for having the temerity to be straight.

And, again, blah blah blah is marriage equality even desirable, blah blah blah homonormative citizenship blah blah models of domesticity blah...

as a prerequisite for this entire discussion, but since in the U.S. marriage is so strongly tied to access to benefits of the social welfare state, the option of marriage is probably necessary (at the very least pragmatically) for advancing health coverage, poverty issues, etc. etc. etc.

I missed j.'s post. Alex OTM.