Cons from “Pro-Con Gay Marriage”
Excerpts, minor edits by Carolyn Bennett
Ideas, sensible reasoning, thoughtful reflections interest
me. I think these are.
Antiwar dot com Editorial Director Justin Raimondo, August 4, 2011:
[I]f ‘gay pride’ means anything, it
means not wanting, needing, or seeking any sort of acceptance, except self-acceptance.
Marriage is a social institution
designed by heterosexuals for heterosexuals: why should gay people settle for
their cast-off hand-me-downs?
McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law Founding Director
Margaret A. Somerville, April 29, 2003:
[Though it] is … argued by those
advocating same-sex marriage that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is
the same act of discrimination as prohibiting interracial marriage, [the
latter] which has rightly been recognized as a serious breach of human rights ─
the argument is incorrect.
An interracial marriage between a
man and a woman symbolizes the procreative relationship [and] its prohibition
is based on racial discrimination, which is wrong.…
Not extending the definition of
marriage to include same-sex couples is not based on the sexual orientation of
the partners but on the absence of a feature of their relationship which is an
essential feature of marriage.
National Organization for Marriage President Maggie
Gallagher [Srivastav], May 22, 2009:
Same-sex unions are not marriages…
That’s Revolting!:
Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation author Mattilda Bernstein
Sycamore, May 27, 2008:
...[T]he push for gay marriage has
shifted advocacy away from essential services like HIV education, AIDS health
care, drug treatment, domestic violence prevention, and homeless care -- all
crucial needs for far more queers than marriage could ever be. And this pattern
will undoubtedly continue, as millions of dollars will be spent fighting an
anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment … at a time when social services are
being scrapped across the country, and especially in California.
The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues --
like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the
never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.
While many straight people are reaping the benefits of gay liberation and
discovering new ways of loving, lusting for and caring for one another, the gay
marriage movement is busy fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence ‘we’re
just like you’ normalcy. And that’s no reason to celebrate.
Sources and notes
“Should Gay Marriage Be Legal?” Pro & Con Quotes,
Readers’ Comments (1664)
Pro-Con Gay Marriage, Last updated on: 11/7/2012 3:42:17 PM
PST, http://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001607
Raimondo
Self-described ‘conservative-paleo-libertarian,’ Justin
Raimondo is an American politician, author and the editorial director of
Antiwar.com. His books include Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993,
reissued in 2008); Into the Bosnian
Quagmire: The Case against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996); Colin Powell and the Power Elite (1996);
An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray
N. Rothbard (2000); The Terror Enigma:
9/11 and the Israeli Connection (2003). In the 1980s and 1990s, Raimondo
ran for public office: California State Assembly and the U. S. House of
Representatives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Raimondo
Somerville
Australia-born Margaret Anne Ganley Somerville (AM, FRSC) is
founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, Samuel
Gale Professor of Law at McGill University, and professor in the university’s
faculty of medicine. Honors received by Somerville include Member of the Order
of Australia ‘for service to the law and to bioethics’ (1990); Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada (1991); and first recipient of UNESCO’s Avicenna Prize
for Ethics in Science, a selection by international jury (2004). She is author
of The Ethical Canary: Science, Society,
and the Human Spirit (2000); Death
Talk: the Case against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide (2001); The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the
Human Spirit (2006) [AM: Member of the Order of Australia; FRSC: Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Somerville
Srivastav
Margaret Gallagher Srivastav (better known by as Maggie
Gallagher), is an American writer, author, syndicated columnist, socially
conservative commentator; and president of the Institute for Marriage and
Public Policy, a nonprofit organization which lobbies on issues of marriage
law. Her books include Enemies of Eros:
How the Sexual Revolution Is Killing Family, Marriage, and Sex and What We Can
Do About It (1989); The Abolition of
Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love (1996); The Age of Unwed Mothers: Is Teen Pregnancy the Problem? : A Report to the Nation (1999); with
John Corvino, Debating Same-Sex Marriage
(2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Srivastav; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Gallagher
Sycamore
San Francisco-based author, a novelist, and activist Mattilda
Bernstein Sycamore is a leading critic of “assimilationist” trends in gay
culture. She is author of
Tricks and
Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (2000);
Pulling Taffy (2003);
That’s
Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (2004);
Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on
Surviving (2004);
Nobody Passes:
Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (2007);
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (2008);
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to
Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (2012);
The End of San Francisco (2013). Sycamore
was involved in ACT UP in the early 1990s and Fed Up Queers in the late 1990s;
and is one of the instigators of Gay Shame in San Francisco, launched in 2000
and became ‘a year-round direct action extravaganza dedicated to exposing all
hypocrites.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattilda_Bernstein_Sycamore
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Exemptional Exceptionalism Why sixty years after Hitler attacked Poland, NATO attacked Yugoslavia without provocation or cause?
“What is one to make of this insistence on American
exceptionalism (and exemptionalism), which has long since stopped bordering on
delusional and crossed right over into Behind-the-Looking-Glass land?
“…… Those
who landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 weren’t fighting and dying
for an American Empire, or the world revolution – but for an America defined by
those who rebelled against King George and absolutist monarchy.
