So, Proposition 8: What now?
Nov. 19th, 2008 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHaving been goaded into posting on the matter, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks says on face, what would be antithetical to the current homosexual-equality movement: Stop being so loud about it. With a little drilling and some context, though, what that really turns into is: Stop playing the game on your opponent's home ground, by their rules. Because, when you do, you give them grounds to complain about being a persecuted minority, declare the media is biased against you, and rouse the culture warriors even more against you. (Warning: At this juncture and beyond it, I am representing what I think to be the correct position. I may not be. Always check the source material to make sure.)
Big protests and campaigning on the issue of marriage is the surefire way to get the populace to turn against you, apparently. It gives the churches license to say “They’re trying to take away our sacred institution and force us to have sinners married in the eyes of God, and we’ll all be punished for that!” It gives the bigots license to believe that there are “uppity homosexuals” who aren’t content with the fact that the government doesn’t exterminate them as soon as they start showing homosexual tendencies, buoyed by the “ex-gay” ministry and the argument that homosexuals are unnatural, childless, and thus don’t deserve the benefits of marriage unless they’re willing to deny who they are and look like everyone else. You know, the “special rights” argument, because “Hey, if they wanted the benefits of marriage, they could marry someone of the opposite sex!” And, quixotically enough, the big reason is that people start shotuing, “Think of the children!”
Naturally, the response is not to sit down, shut up, be invisible, and hope that the majority decides in magnanimity to vote you equal rights or that a court decision is met with a collective “Meh.” by most of the population, although Mr. Hicks would use that collective Meh as a barometer of sorts to decide whether or not to go ahead with the decision, that the fight over it is continuing because it was a decision triggered too early, before the consensus was in place, and thus all the reactionaries felt like they had enough momentum, and people on their side, to fight it. (They may yet, but I do wonder how many of those numbers are people who that way because they haven’t thought about the alternatives, have been presented no alternatives, or otherwise have active interference in letting them come to the apparent majority conclusion themselves) With the matter of “gay rights”, according to Mr. Hick’s projections of historical trends, there has been a lot of progress going on as judges applied the law in places where it was going to have to be applied to prevent other undesirable outcomes, like children. On those, the populace said “Whatevs.”, and let committed parents, of whatever stripe, continue to adopt.
So, as it is now, the whole marriage thing, whether you think it should be called marriage, everyone should have marriage, or the government should GTFO entirely and only handle the legal and contractual parts, like inheritance, power of attorney, et cetera, and leave the religious ceremonies to the religious, is apparently a big source of You’re Doing It Wrong. The suggested idea of Mr. Hicks is to change tactics away from “Equality now! Including the religious ceremonies and the blessing of the State!” to letting it go for a while and letting time take its course. When prodded a bit further about how being told to sit down and shut up would make most people bristle, he suggested the following technique, “Look. You know these people, they’re your friends. They also happen to be homosexual. That mean law they passed? Stops this highly mediagenic, nonthreatening, typically American couple from marrying and having children. This couple? Well, they can’t adopt and be sure that someone won’t call Child Protective Services on them and have the child removed because two moms or two dads is an unfit parenting household, in their opinion. These people can’t be sure that if one of them gets sick, their family won’t insist on keeping him out of the hospital, because he’s not family or married, insist on a burial totally against their wishes, and fight for every last possible inheritance bit they can, because his partner isn’t married, and thus doesn’t have those rights. See what kind of hurt you’re doing to these otherwise normal Americans?” And that, one after another, after another, these mediagenic, clean, non-embarrassing, no dirt possible partners show up on television, on radio, in your lives, and people talk about them and come to the conclusion that these guys aren’t so bad, and maybe it would be okay to let those people marry, because they’re decent enough folk, if a bit confused about their gender preferences“. (Okay, significantly more brief than that, but that’s the gist of it - stick an angel in front of the camera, get people to feel for them, then as their discussion dies, stick another one there. Lather, rinse, repeat.) In that way, the number of people convinced and swayed by knee-jerk rhetoric about collapsing families and destroying institutions gets smaller and smaller, as they start ascribing names and faces and lives to the people who were an abstract hate. By bringing them into the Monkeysphere, most people would stop, or so the reasoning goes. And then, when the collective barometer reaches ”Meh.“ or ”Okay.“, then the courts knock over the discriminatory laws, or Legislatures get enough pressure to strike them from the books. It’s expensive, it will take time, and it has none of the ideological satisfaction of having met the enemy on the field of high battle and kicked his sorry ass all the way back to his stronghold, but it’s the solution that has a high probablilty of working without major fighting and bloodshed. And if someone says that you should think of the children, you can nod and say, ”We are. We want healthy, happy homes, just like you. So we need to have committed and devoted parents be able to marry, so that their children can be assured the continuity of their parents.“
In an ironic sort of way, the best way to go about it is through children and adoption and all of that, tugging the heartstrings all the way. It has none of the glory, nor any of the ”This Ends HERE!“ glamour that will make for great movies, or any ”enlightenment awakenings“ happening. Just steadily making sure that the populace always knows someone, if only by news programs, that has been hurt.
What do you guys think? Where do people go from here?
bradhicks says on face, what would be antithetical to the current homosexual-equality movement: Stop being so loud about it. With a little drilling and some context, though, what that really turns into is: Stop playing the game on your opponent's home ground, by their rules. Because, when you do, you give them grounds to complain about being a persecuted minority, declare the media is biased against you, and rouse the culture warriors even more against you. (Warning: At this juncture and beyond it, I am representing what I think to be the correct position. I may not be. Always check the source material to make sure.)Big protests and campaigning on the issue of marriage is the surefire way to get the populace to turn against you, apparently. It gives the churches license to say “They’re trying to take away our sacred institution and force us to have sinners married in the eyes of God, and we’ll all be punished for that!” It gives the bigots license to believe that there are “uppity homosexuals” who aren’t content with the fact that the government doesn’t exterminate them as soon as they start showing homosexual tendencies, buoyed by the “ex-gay” ministry and the argument that homosexuals are unnatural, childless, and thus don’t deserve the benefits of marriage unless they’re willing to deny who they are and look like everyone else. You know, the “special rights” argument, because “Hey, if they wanted the benefits of marriage, they could marry someone of the opposite sex!” And, quixotically enough, the big reason is that people start shotuing, “Think of the children!”
Naturally, the response is not to sit down, shut up, be invisible, and hope that the majority decides in magnanimity to vote you equal rights or that a court decision is met with a collective “Meh.” by most of the population, although Mr. Hicks would use that collective Meh as a barometer of sorts to decide whether or not to go ahead with the decision, that the fight over it is continuing because it was a decision triggered too early, before the consensus was in place, and thus all the reactionaries felt like they had enough momentum, and people on their side, to fight it. (They may yet, but I do wonder how many of those numbers are people who that way because they haven’t thought about the alternatives, have been presented no alternatives, or otherwise have active interference in letting them come to the apparent majority conclusion themselves) With the matter of “gay rights”, according to Mr. Hick’s projections of historical trends, there has been a lot of progress going on as judges applied the law in places where it was going to have to be applied to prevent other undesirable outcomes, like children. On those, the populace said “Whatevs.”, and let committed parents, of whatever stripe, continue to adopt.
So, as it is now, the whole marriage thing, whether you think it should be called marriage, everyone should have marriage, or the government should GTFO entirely and only handle the legal and contractual parts, like inheritance, power of attorney, et cetera, and leave the religious ceremonies to the religious, is apparently a big source of You’re Doing It Wrong. The suggested idea of Mr. Hicks is to change tactics away from “Equality now! Including the religious ceremonies and the blessing of the State!” to letting it go for a while and letting time take its course. When prodded a bit further about how being told to sit down and shut up would make most people bristle, he suggested the following technique, “Look. You know these people, they’re your friends. They also happen to be homosexual. That mean law they passed? Stops this highly mediagenic, nonthreatening, typically American couple from marrying and having children. This couple? Well, they can’t adopt and be sure that someone won’t call Child Protective Services on them and have the child removed because two moms or two dads is an unfit parenting household, in their opinion. These people can’t be sure that if one of them gets sick, their family won’t insist on keeping him out of the hospital, because he’s not family or married, insist on a burial totally against their wishes, and fight for every last possible inheritance bit they can, because his partner isn’t married, and thus doesn’t have those rights. See what kind of hurt you’re doing to these otherwise normal Americans?” And that, one after another, after another, these mediagenic, clean, non-embarrassing, no dirt possible partners show up on television, on radio, in your lives, and people talk about them and come to the conclusion that these guys aren’t so bad, and maybe it would be okay to let those people marry, because they’re decent enough folk, if a bit confused about their gender preferences“. (Okay, significantly more brief than that, but that’s the gist of it - stick an angel in front of the camera, get people to feel for them, then as their discussion dies, stick another one there. Lather, rinse, repeat.) In that way, the number of people convinced and swayed by knee-jerk rhetoric about collapsing families and destroying institutions gets smaller and smaller, as they start ascribing names and faces and lives to the people who were an abstract hate. By bringing them into the Monkeysphere, most people would stop, or so the reasoning goes. And then, when the collective barometer reaches ”Meh.“ or ”Okay.“, then the courts knock over the discriminatory laws, or Legislatures get enough pressure to strike them from the books. It’s expensive, it will take time, and it has none of the ideological satisfaction of having met the enemy on the field of high battle and kicked his sorry ass all the way back to his stronghold, but it’s the solution that has a high probablilty of working without major fighting and bloodshed. And if someone says that you should think of the children, you can nod and say, ”We are. We want healthy, happy homes, just like you. So we need to have committed and devoted parents be able to marry, so that their children can be assured the continuity of their parents.“
In an ironic sort of way, the best way to go about it is through children and adoption and all of that, tugging the heartstrings all the way. It has none of the glory, nor any of the ”This Ends HERE!“ glamour that will make for great movies, or any ”enlightenment awakenings“ happening. Just steadily making sure that the populace always knows someone, if only by news programs, that has been hurt.
What do you guys think? Where do people go from here?
