Anti-Prop 8 Protest This Saturday

Um, shouldn't these types of protests have occured BEFORE the vote?

This is stupid and pointless.

Also: We have absolutely no business meddling in another state's affairs.

I would totally go to a pride rally, but this is ridiculous.

I agree grandma with yo dry old yellowed wrinkly a$s. And heck if the gays are stupid enough to get married, Gawd bless em. And let them adopt as well, but only American kids. Hell fire, they seem to make better parents any with they gay a$S

Gawker had a good article on this up the other day and it basically said "the California liberal establishment was too laid back, expected this to pass based on people's sympathies and sat back and did nothing to stop the Mormon machine from soundly defeating it".

Prop 8 is bad policy, bad politics. I won't do the work for a bunch of lazy, rich Californians who should have made this a national issue six months ago.

Al:

Totally agree with you. I think it is pretty shameless the way gays have appropriated use of the black Civil Right's movement to help their cause when clearly the discrimination of each group exists on different institutional levels.

Christ. I hope everyone re-reads their comments in 40 years and feels sick that we even debated this. America's inability to fully integrate gays into our society will not age well.

See you at the protest.

Ali,

Yes Blacks were arguing that they were in fact equal, and deserved equal rights and equal access etc. B/C aside from skin pigment, at a genetic level we are the same.

Marriage defined as being between two people of the same sex, or two people of the opposite sex is different, i.e. not the same.

If you want marriage to be defined DIFFERENTLY, giving the new definition access to the same privileges, you have to decide as a society to change that definition.

Right now (assume for a moment we are not in Cali), Gays have equal rights regarding the way our society has defined marriage. Meaning they can go on marrying people of the opposite sex until their hearts consent. The question we have to decide is whether to change this definition. It's not at all the same argument as Civil Rights.

I always thought we had a seperation of Church and State in our government.

Isn't "marriage" itself a Religious Institution?

If we really want to enforce the Constitution, then marriage between anyone should not be part of our government.

Keep marriages in the church with peoples own religion.

I say, keep marriages completely out of government. It has no place.

Only then will we ALL be created equal.

Isn't "marriage" itself a Religious Institution?

The problem is, it was. When civil rights and privileges became attached to marriage, it became a civil act.

If we really want to enforce the Constitution, then marriage between anyone should not be part of our government.

How do you figure?

Keep marriages in the church with peoples own religion.

I say, keep marriages completely out of government. It has no place.

I agree that the government should have never gotten into the business of marriages, but it's too late for that. The cat's out of the bag. If you think the religious right is pissed about this, how do you think they'll feel if now their marriage isn't even valid in the eyes of the government? (Frankly, that would piss me off too.) Marriage equality is the only solution.

Clarification: "I say, keep marriages completely out of government. It has no place." were Irishman's words, not mine.

Al,

I think you would find that during the civil rights movement that marriage between two people of different color would be illegal. Marriage was legally redefined then as homosexuals hope to redefine it now. I think you would find your argument quite offensive if anyone were to say prior to the civil rights movement blacks had the same rights as whites because they could marry other black people. We've already established that a) discrimination against minority groups is wrong and b) separate is never equal. That is what makes the civil rights movement a corollary to the modern day gay rights movement. True, the segregation and discrimination that gays endure is not the same that occurred prior to the civil rights movement, but any discrimination is worth fighting against regardless of extent.

At the core of this issue lies the truth in how many Americans view gay people. Though willing to "tolerate" and be friendly to those different than themselves, many do not truly see GLBT people as equal.

What I find interesting in this whole debate is the extent to which people will fight to deny rights to others based on reasons that really have no affect on their own lives. If a gay person gets married, what straight person does that hurt? Keep in mind, this *is* keeping religion out of the question. There are two kinds of marriage, religious and civil. A civil marriage is all that is being fought for. A civil marriage ensures that gay people have the right to visit their partner in the hospital, that their inheritance rights are protected, in some states the ability to adopt, along with countless other rights that are otherwise denied. At no point has this argument been to force a church to afford marriage to homosexual couples. I think everyone can agree that decision should be left to religion.

Why does Prop 8 matter in Illinois and why are people protesting something that happened in California here? Well there are multiple reasons. Prop 8 set a precedent for the US: that laws discriminating against minorities are ok. Aside from the consequences that has for gay marriage throughout the country, it has chilling consequences for minority groups in general.

Saturday's protest isn't just a protest against something that happened in California, it is a protest against what is happening all over the nation. True, it took something horrible to awaken people who care about the issue. I think everyone expected Prop 8 to fail. Gay groups raised unprecedented levels of funds and fought hard but ultimately the campaigns run by pro 8 interests scared enough people to vote yes. It isn't too late to affect change, though, and now enough people are ticked off to make this big.

Slap,

Good points. I agree, lets keep the emotion and the religion out of this.

So why cant you marry a man? B/c of our current definition of the contract, no? If society feels the need to change the marriage contract to give you the right to marry a man, so be it. Let the democratic process allow for such change.

Its different than civil rights b/c nobody is arguing that you are in fact less than a man mentioned in the legal contract we are talking about changing (as was the case in the civil rights movement). We can all participate in this debate and decide whether to/or not to change the definition of marriage, Civil rights was about fighting against one groups right to participate based upon the belief that were lessor human beings.

Selma to San Francisco?

Same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue. by SHELBY STEELE
Saturday, March 20, 2004 12:01 A.M. EST

It is always both a little flattering and more than a little annoying to blacks when other groups glibly invoke the civil rights movement and all its iconic imagery to justify their agendas for social change. I will never forget, nor forgive, the feminist rallying cry of the early '70s: "Woman as nigger." Here upper-middle-class white women--out of what must have been an impenetrable conviction in their own innocence--made an entire race into a metaphor for wretchedness in order to steal its thunder.

And now gay marriage is everywhere being defined as a civil rights issue. In San Francisco, gay couples on the steps of city hall cast themselves as victims of bigotry who must now be given the "right" to legally marry in the name of "equality" and "social justice." In the media, these couples have been likened to the early civil rights heroes whose bravery against police dogs and water hoses pushed America into becoming a better country. "I don't want to be on the wrong side of history," a San Francisco radio host said about gay marriage. "Maybe we're looking at thousands of Rosa Parks over at city hall."

So, dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights has become the standard way of selling it to the broader public. Here is an extremely awkward issue having to do with the compatibility of homosexuality and the institution of marriage. But once this issue is buttoned into a suit of civil rights, neither homosexuality nor marriage need be discussed. Suddenly only equity and fairness matter. And this turns gay marriage into an ersatz civil rights struggle so that dissenters are seen as Neanderthals standing in the schoolhouse door, fighting off equality itself. Yet all this civil rights camouflage is, finally, a bait-and-switch: When you agree to support fairness, you end up supporting gay marriage.

But gay marriage is simply not a civil rights issue. It is not a struggle for freedom. It is a struggle of already free people for complete social acceptance and the sense of normalcy that follows thereof--a struggle for the eradication of the homosexual stigma. Marriage is a goal because, once open to gays, it would establish the fundamental innocuousness of homosexuality itself. Marriage can say like nothing else that sexual orientation is an utterly neutral human characteristic, like eye-color. Thus, it can go far in diffusing the homosexual stigma.

In the gay marriage movement, marriage is more a means than an end, a weapon against stigma. That the movement talks very little about the actual institution of marriage suggests that it is driven more by this longing to normalize homosexuality itself than by something compelling in marriage. The happiness that one saw in the faces of the newly married in San Francisco seemed to come primarily from the achievement (if only illusory) of ordinariness. After all, many of them had lived together into old age. Love does not require marriage but, for gays, ordinariness does. And happiness for these couples was in the imprimatur of ordinariness.
But marriage is only one means to innocuousness. The civil rights framework is another. To say that gay marriage is a civil rights issue is to imply that homosexuality is the same sort of human difference as race. And even geneticists now accept that race is so superficial a human difference as to be nothing more than a "social construct." In other words, racial difference has been made officially innocuous in our culture, and its power to stigmatize has been greatly reduced. Evidence of this is seen in the steady, yet unremarked, rise in interracial marriage rates for all of our races. So if gay marriage, like race, is about civil rights, then homosexuality is a human difference every bit as innocuous. Thus, America should treat homosexuality like it treats race and give gays the "right" to marry as it once gave blacks the right to vote.

So gays benefit from the comparison to both race and civil rights, and this has provoked hostility and even outrage in black America. Black leaders as liberal as Jesse Jackson have distanced themselves from the gay marriage issue, and among black churches an actual movement against gay marriage is unfolding. There is a religious dimension to this, but more broadly there is a simple resentment at having blackness implicitly compared to homosexuality.

The civil rights movement argued that it was precisely the utter innocuousness of racial difference that made segregation an injustice. Racism was evil because it projected a profound difference where there was none--white supremacy, black inferiority--for the sole purpose of exploiting blacks. But there is a profound difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality. In the former, sexual and romantic desire is focused on the same sex, in the latter on the opposite sex. Natural procreation is possible only for heterosexuals, a fact of nature that obligates their sexuality to no less a responsibility than the perpetuation of the species. Unlike racial difference, these two sexual orientations are profoundly--not innocuously--different. Racism projects a false difference in order to exploit. Homophobia is a reactive prejudice against a true and firm difference that already exists.

Institutions that arise to accommodate these two sexual orientations can never be exactly the same. Across time and cultures, marriage has been a heterosexual institution grounded in the procreative function and the responsibilities of parenthood--this more than in either love or adult fulfillment. Marriage is simply the arrangement by which humans perpetuate the species, whether or not they find fulfillment in it.

The true problem with gay marriage is that it consigns gays to a life of mimicry and pathos. It shoehorns them into an institution that does not reflect the best possibilities of their own sexual orientation. Gay love is freed from the procreative burden. It has no natural function beyond adult fulfillment in love. If this is a disadvantage when children are desired, it is likely an advantage when they are not--which is more often the case. In any case, gays can never be more than pretenders to an institution so utterly grounded in procreation. And dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights only consigns gays to yet another kind of mimicry. Stigma, not segregation, is the problem gays face. But insisting on a civil rights framework only leads gays into protest. But will protest affect stigma? Is "gay lovers as niggers" convincing? Protest is trying to hit the baseball with the glove.
The problem with so much mimicry is that it keeps gays from evolving institutions and rituals that reflect the true nature of homosexuality. Assuming, as I do, that gays should have the option of civil unions that afford them the legal prerogatives of marriage, isn't it more important after that to allow quiet self-acceptance to lead the way to authentic institutions?

The stigmatization of homosexuals is wrong and makes no contribution to the moral health of our society. I was never worried for my children because they grew up knowing a gay couple that lived across the street, or because several family friends were gay. They learned early what we all know: that homosexuality is as permanent a feature of the human condition as heterosexuality. Nothing is gained in denying this. But neither should we deny that the two are inherently different. The gay marriage movement denies this difference in order to borrow "normalcy" from marriage. Thus, it is a movement born more of self-denial than self-acceptance, as if on some level it agrees with those who see gays as abnormal.

Mr. Steele, a fellow of the Hoover Institution, is author of "A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America" (HarperCollins, 1998).

@Slaphappy...great points.

You asked:

"If we really want to enforce the Constitution, then marriage between anyone should not be part of our government.

How do you figure?"

I say that because the idea of marriage is a religious idea. The Constitution keeps seperate the Church and State.

With that, if we were to really toe the line of the Constitution, then the idea of marriage should be thrown out the window completely.

Marriage was not ivented in the 1780's when the Constitution was written.

Really, marriage was "invented" by the church.

@ Navin...I'm actually saying the opposite.

Get marriage out of our government.

Al, I can't explain it any more clearly -- disallowing one consenting adult from the civil act of marrying another consenting adult based solely on gender is gender discrimination. Plain and simple, end of argument. That makes it a civil rights issue, and you can't put minority civil rights up to a popular vote.

If they were really concerned about "Protecting" marriage, then why aren't they fighting to outlaw divorce?

Right, that's why this is such a farce.

As for civil rights, it's simple.

One tax paying citizen isn't being allowed the same rights as another tax paying citizen. That's a violation of civil rights and in this case it's based on bigotry.

Well then we're basically saying the same thing.

Navin...fair enough.

:-)

"To me, there is a clear parallel."

yea if you are a lincoln park Trixiode

@Al

The author's main point seems to be that it doesn't count as civil rights because of the concrete difference in sexual action between straights and gays. Totally bogus argument from a legal standpoint.

First of all, there are a lot of straight couples who aren't fucking. Some don't even love each other. Some only got married to acquire a green card or employer-based health insurance. The reasons for marriage, and the actions taken or not taken during marriage, are completely immaterial. Limiting a potential marriage partner to only one gender makes as much legal sense as limiting a potential business partner accordingly.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the bitterness that practically drips from the author's pen (or in this case, keyboard). "How dare those queers equate their push for marriage with my people's struggle?"

P.s Al
I hope you stick around! Chicagoist is white like Howard Beach! With the exception of Navin and Albanyparkour.

p.s but I'm disapointed that you like KFC! I mean you're from New York! You get to eat at Sylvia's in Harlem, take out and dine in! I mean I could see you slumming at Harold's, but KFC????? Hummmmm maybe you are not really Al Sharpton???

"Shelby Steele", what's next should we start qouting self loathing gay's who think prayer can "cure" them. I thought Geeks were smart?

gay marriage right is clearly a civil right issue. anyone that says otherwise is clearly deluded or simply has an anti-gay agenda.

Oh Get over yourself Market Days.
No body said it wasn't a civil right. Its the stupid (blank) stupid (blank) comment that its the "most crucial civil rights issue of our generation" Unless that is your world view is as long as three blocks of Halsted Street. Your types ruined Gay Pride parade. Its now so Gay

p.s my bad Chicago Geek you are a true official Geek- as in smart. Now gimmie your lunch money!

Chicago Geek even though I aint Gay( admittedly I do have remarkable style and have been known to make gay men cry on the dance floor, do allow me to play Bill Cosby and Barack Obama and kick a minority group a.k.a. Gays when they are down. At least they are not poor and still rooted in slavery/jim crowism. And at least I ain doing it to win curry favor with conservative white males.

Any way, my point is don't blame California, blame Gay white men. After hard pressed struggles to win hard pressed rights in the 1970s, what happened? Get a little lazy did we? A little cozy with the white male power structure? All the parties? Gay rights activism reduced to massive pride parades to ogled and make uncomfortable pandering politician walk the dancing shimmering gay gauntlet? Oh lets not forget activism to silence and discrimination against progressive Lesbian women while spending so much time trying to be excepted by hetro white male republicans by working for politicans like Daley including the one in the California state house. The blame rest with them. Maybe they will wake up and start acting like "minorities" again instead of part of the majority dominant white male culture, which of also means building alliance outside of the mainstream demoratic and republicreature party. You feel me Geek?

Good question Rev. Sharpton, well the first thing that's gonna happen( when we bury white male supremicy) is a huge collective sigh of relief from humanity and then its a world wide celebration b*tches! I'm talking a Rick James put yo boots up and kick the white couch and slap Charlie Murphy type cold blooded celebration.

But on the real Al, call me Paulo Freire, but while oppression certainly happens In history it doesn’t Have to be of history. So tossing off the yoke of white male supremacy means tossing out the window all ideologies( racism, sexism, classism, etc) that deny ones humanity, as they are really the same. Like Humpty from Digital Underground sang "all around the world the same song)

I mean homo hate mongers like Rev. Sen. James Meeks are nothing but a brown spider leg of the white male status quo so naturally they can't fit into a new multicultural epoch. I mean they will be there, but as an Archie Bunker like relic and reminder of times passed. Feel me?
Same with homophobic policies and hate in places like Jamacia, Africa and the middle East. Is it a wonder that sh*t like that comes more from oppressed countries?

In other words like Harold Washington demonstrated in his all too brief term of mayor,
the real oppressed don't have to assume failed ideologies, but will in a multicultural climate reject them.

Yes indeedy like graffiti we are living in much more interesting times.
Course the Chinese call that a curse but I beg to differ.
Now Al, did I tell you how much I love your du! And if I see you out on the town in your sweat suite and fat gold chains baby the dinks are on me!

I would like to think one day in my life time Dearborn Michigan will be more concerned with making sure thier kids are accessing college than over who Bessie Sue Smith marries. See history is in flux it can go backwards, but seems like it might be going forward and any one who has "heard me write" knows I didn't support Obama and I would't have expressed such guarded and I say guarded hope three weeks ago

right now, people like to say they're preserving the sanctity of marriage, yet we see all over that the institution of marriage is often very fragile and sort of a joke.

also, the idea that there was credence to the black civil rights movement because we were equal aside from skin pigment, but that the gay civil rights movement is *not* the same, is faulty, i think. BUT, in order to believe that, you have to believe that people don't "go gay," or choose to be gay or that it's some purposeful alternative lifestyle. if you believe, as i do, that people are born gay, then it's something inherent in them, just like our skin color is. and by denying gays the right to marry, you are in effect saying they are not equal to straight people. not because of their lifestyle (whatever that means), but because of something they were born with.

and re: civil unions ... if they were the same as marriage, then why don't straight people have civil unions? and, it definitely smacks of "separate but equal." except, it's separate but not equal.

sigh.

Spook, each of your comments seems to grow less coherent than the one before it.

smussy, lack of capitalization aside, is pretty much right on.

By the way, this post was linked to from nbcchicago.com, along with the quote "the most crucial civil rights issue of our generation".

ok i stopped reading these comments after the second one.

just so silly.

civil rights are the rights that a nation's inhabitants enjoy by law PERIOD!

the use of this term does not belong to anyone group of people but all people (see definition again)

i am a black woman and a gay one at that and i was at the rally.

its called solidarity.

and just so that the clueless might even grasp one iota of the concept, i will say it in the simplest terms:

a victory or a defeat in any state affects us in all states.