You gotta give it to homophobes, they succeed in getting "homosexuality" connected to "anti-family" every chance they get. Not that they've succeeded in getting that connection to stick in the heads of decent, caring people. And yes, I've just demonized homophobes as indecent and uncaring, because frankly no matter how good someone is in the rest of their life, homophobia puts a big ol' stain on them, just as racism or misogyny would. Yes, I'm saying homophobes are almost as bad as Nazis, and just as bad if they believe in killing people for being gay.
I've been thinking of this whole "anti-family" crap lately. It was an article on Brokeback Mountain winning a Golden Globe that prompted me to writing this, but it's an issue in the current federal election here in Canada. If the Conservative Party wins, and unfortunately that's starting to look like a possibility, Stephen Harper would like to repeal the same-sex marriage law with a free vote, hoping there'll be enough support to overturn it (because we are a democracy you see, and putting minority rights to a vote is always such a grand idea that could never, ever go horribly wrong, and I'm horrified that anyone thinks voting on minority rights because it's "democratic" is in any way a good thing because tyranny of the majority is still tyranny).
The terms "anti-family" and "pro-family" haven't been bandied about as much as terms such as "pro-marriage" and "protecting marriage" have. I'm really hoping to get a call from the Conservative candidate in my riding so I can ask him if he'll do his best to protect marriage. If he says yes, it'll make me happy because I can then tell him I'm glad to hear that because it would be a bad thing to see people lose the marriage rights they fought so hard to obtain. Ah, I want that to happen. I want to hear the reaction. I really hope there'll be sputtering! Sputtering would be great!
It's time for supporters of gay rights to start laying claim to the terms "pro-family" and "pro-marriage" as we are the ones who are truly in favour of families and marriages as inclusive of far more human beings than those who would like to exclude large portions of tax-paying citizens. As we know it's not really about protecting families and traditional marriages anyway, but about hatred of homosexuals and the desire to marginalize them as much as possible (and spare me the "loving the sinner, hating the sin" crap as the homophobic rhetoric shows a lot of hate towards homosexuals). Seriously, listening to homophobes for a while will make you think that the collapse of society is at hand, and it's all them gays' faults.
I did find it ironic during the arguments leading up to the legalization of same-sex marriage that the social conservatives got all freaky over protecting the rights of churches to not have to perform same-sex weddings. Religious freedom you know. The irony came in two delicious parts. One, the vast majority of arguements against same-sex marrage were based in religion, which makes religious freedom an apparently one-way street. "Don't force us to do something against our religion, but we want to force you to abide by our religion!" That is such fucking hypocrisy. Sorry for the language, but it pisses me off. Anyway, the second deliciously ironic part is the whole slippery slope thing. You know, if we allow same-sex marriage now, the next thing people will want are polygamous marriages! Considering how many polygamous relationships are based in religion right now, particularly Islam and offshoots of Mormonism, they really weaken their own religious freedom arguments.
Frankly I have no issues with polygamy as long as everyone involved are adults and were in no way coerced into the relationships (which sadly isn't the case a lot of the time, but that's a whole other issue than allowing polyamourous relationships). In fact, now that I think about it, legalizing polyamourous marriages might be a good step in weakening cults that cut themselves off from the world to practice polygamy and protecting girls who are being coerced into these relationships.
posted
by Tabby at 1/18/2006 12:49:00 p.m.
