marriage equality backlash

[rm]

As most of you know, there's been some great strides on the gay marriage issue in the last week.

As perhaps fewer of you know (but most of you can surmise), opponents of marriage equality aren't happy and are putting more money, more time, more rhetoric into opposing equal rights for LGBTQ people.

To be frank, I haven't had the time or the fortitude yet to watch the commercials their currently putting forward. I have read the transcripts, though, and I have read the reports that the people claiming to be regular citizens are in fact hired actors.

But I am alarmed. And concerned. And offended.

Regardless of whether you are queer or not, regardless of whether you are an LGBTQ who has any intention of ever taking part in marriage (is it assimilationist? does it fit with our unique cultures? -- these are valid, serious questions) -- this measure of legal equality needs to exist.

But even more than that, the fear-mongering and the anger of people of privilege discovering that they can no longer control the discourse or the lives of others, must not go unaddressed.

I'm old enough to have experienced and witnessed harassment and violence because of the orientation and identity of my friends and myself. It's barely a reality anymore in many places in this country. But it's still real. It still happens. Here, at home. And also, in terrifying measure, abroad.

I want to believe change can come without violence. But I see the rhetoric from the self-proclaimed defenders of so-called traditional marriage, and it's hard, really hard for me to believe that.

I came of age during the ACT UP protests. I wore a t-shirt that showed SILENCE=DEATH in ASL.

Speak.
Speak.
Speak.

bodlon does here with links to the offending campaigns.

Comments

[forioscribe.livejournal.com]

Listen, these people--most of them Neocon fascist swine who were repudiated in the last election--are getting DESPERATE, which is clear proof of the utter moral bankruptcy of their "ideology." And I use quotes because it isn't ideology at all, it's rather institutionalized hate and ignorance, nothing more than empty propaganda spouted daily by assholes like Rush Limbaugh.

There's a definite political and social sea change that's going on right now, and it's led by the large group of under-30s who will soon displace the old fucks who cling to those old prejudices. There's no future in their ideas, that's why they're making so much noise right now.

I see the whole thing as a positive shift of the tectonic plates of our culture. And there's not a fucking thing the fascist swine can do about it.