Great Day In The Morning, Victory Is Mine
#equalmarriage #equalrights
While I rarely do this, I should prefix this entry with two warnings :-
Firstly – there are good odds some of you will be offended by most of what I’m about to write. But, quite honestly, after all the bigoted hate-filled crap that has been spewing out of our seat of government today, the idea of offending a few people definitely has its merits.
Secondly – this might be somewhat ranty because I am pretty much writing this as I go, rather than thinking it through.
Here’s the thing – if you feel the need to prefix your comments with "I’m not a homophobe" or "I’m not a bigot" then I am sorry to break it to you, but there are very good odds you are actually both.
Parliament has been debating the legalisation of gay marriage today, and quite honestly – if I were a gay man sat at home listening to some of the comments spewing from the right side of the house, I would be utterly depressed, very angry and utterly disgusted with the way that "the upstanding members of Parliament" viewed me and the rest of the nation that shared my sexuality.
This is not an important matter
A fair number of MPs have said that this is not an important matter. That it is not a priority.
Now – imagine you had spent your entire life being spat on, bullied, beaten up and abused because you were gay. Imagine your entire life had been spent hiding your sexuality because you knew if you admitted the truth, your life would be pretty much over. Imagine if you had spent your entire life in fear because of who you loved.
And now – just imagine hearing someone tell you that your fight for equality "wasn’t important". That your right to be treated equally "wasn’t something the House should concern itself with".
MPs – people who are there to stand up for you – are telling you that you should just sit down and shut up. That they don’t think your right to be treated equally is as important as some other matters – such as voting on their own pay arrangements, or spending two hours yelling at each other about who is to blame for the state of the country, or deciding whether an as yet unborn child can become queen ahead of another as yet unborn child.
Yes – that’s right. Today we have had MPs saying that the future of the foetus currently growing inside on of the most privileged and pampered women in the country is more important than your right to be married to your life partner, just because you and your life partner are the same sex.
The MPs that are making this argument claim they are not homophobic, but I really don’t see any other explanation. If they think that the rights of a three month old foetus are more important than the rights of the thousands of gay couples across this country then the only explanation I can see is that they don’t think much of gay people.
Which, to me, makes them homophobes of the highest order.
It is against my religious beliefs
Well – bully for you. I am glad you have something to believe in so passionately that you are willing to say so in public.
But they are YOUR beliefs.
So why should YOUR beliefs be allowed to influence how they live THEIR lives? They aren’t going to enforce their lives on you. They aren’t going to make you marry someone of your own sex. They aren’t going to come and have marital relations in your bed without your permission. They aren’t going to force you to watch them go at it like rabbits on your lawn.
In short – nothing they do is going to affect you and your beliefs.
So – if you think YOUR beliefs are more important than the lives of someone else, then you must think you are more important, and they are less important. That their right to live their lives is less important than your right to think what you want.
In short – you think that their lives are less important and of less worth than you. Otherwise why would you feel the right to dictate how they should live?
And thinking that someone is less worthy than you just because they are gay? That kind of defines homophobia to me.
Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman
Letting gay couples marry will destroy the institution of marriage
"Marriage is deinfed…."
By whom?
By God? I’ve already explain the religious angle in all of this. And since the book was written by man, and translated by man a few dozen times before we get the version we have now – how can anyone be certain that the book that so many people are hell-bent on using to suppress the rights of thousands of people across the country is actually what God thinks? (Side note – I have seen five different translations of "The Bible" in to English. Which of these is "the word of god"? I would like someone to give me an answer to that, if you can).
By the state? The state used to define a lot of words differently.
Gay, for example, used to mean "happy" and now it means "homosexual".
Tablet used to be something you took when you were sick, or a piece of stone, and now it is a type of computer.
Words change and evolve as society changes and evolves. Things change – if society never evolved, we would still be living in caves and hunting and gathering. (And – incidentally – not defining marriage as anything, because I am pretty sure the concept didn’t exist back then).
"Marriage is the commitment that a loving couple share and one they announce to the world as theirs"
"Marriage is the act of one person committing to another, and asking the world to share that commitment with them"
"Marriage is a state of union between two people who love each other very much and want that love to be recognised by their family, friends and society"
Three definitions of marriage that describe the situation we are in today, and – the gods be willing – we will be in tomorrow. The definition will not change, and it will not affect the straight people who are married now and who want to get married in the future.
But if you think that a gay couple getting married will alter what marriage is then you must think that their love and their commitment isn’t as true and as valuable as yours.
Which, to me, suggests that you don’t think gay couples can be as committed to each other as straight couples.
Or that you don’t think they are worthy enough to join your little club of married people.
And again – thinking that gay people are less worthy than you are, just because they are gay, smacks of homophobia.
Marriage is about having children, and gay couples can’t do that
This has been one of the more common arguments because – from a certain point of view – entirely unrelated to the gay rights issue. It is a matter of simple biology.
Well – setting aside the idea of test-tube babies, and surrogate mothers and sperm donors, and adoption – the statement is a lie.
Men and Women get married at the age of 60/70/80. They are clearly not going to have children,
and yet there is no one in the government, no one in the country, who thinks that they should not be legally allowed to marry because they are not going to have children.
When a man and a woman plan to get married, the state does not go round to their house and demand whether they are going to have children or not. They don’t force them swear on the pains and penalties of perjury that they will have children. And if they refuse to swear this or, say that they won’t, their marriage isn’t prevented by law.
If a man and a woman find they can’t have children, their marriage is not automatically dissolved by the state because it is not going to lead to children.
So clearly marriage – as it exists now (I am watching the news and the vote has not yet been completed) – is not only about having children – it is not even a fundamental part of it. Otherwise why would we let people who can’t have kids marry and stay married?
So – since that is clearly not true, then anyone who uses that argument must have another agenda behind it. And since they are focusing on gay marriage, I can only assume that they just don’t think gay people should marry, and are finding any excuse to rationalise their view.
Which – as I might have mentioned before – is pretty much the definition of homophobia and bigotry.
I am a pretty smart guy, and fairly good at seeing the other side of the argument and seeing other points of view.
But after around ten, fifteen years of thinking about this, I can not find an argument against gay marriage that doesn’t basically break down to "we hate the gays and we don’t want them to have equal rights".
Every single argument – "it’s not the right time", "It’s against my beliefs", "It changes the definition of marriage", "If they let the gays marry then next they’ll be legalising sex with children and animals", "We shouldn’t have to put up with this puffs forcing their beliefs on us" – comes down to the fact that the person making it doesn’t like gay people and just doesn’t want to admit it.
"If a couple love each other, the state should not stop them getting married unless there is a good reason. And in this day and age, being gay is not a good reason"
(Here’s the point where we traipse more into the part that is more offensive)
There is a fear that this bill will lead to Churches being forced to perform weddings against their beliefs, or that registrars will be punished
Quite honestly – I wish it would. If you are employed at a job then you should be required to do that job without fear or favour. I sometimes have to put up with people I think are utter tosspots and the scum of the earth, but I’m not allowed to refuse to deal with them just because I don’t want to deal with them – I would be sacked on the spot.
And by the same token, listening to some of my customers espousing the most horrifyingly racist and bigoted views I have ever heard in my life makes me want to smack them and to tell them to piss off and never come back. They offend my beliefs to my very core, and being exposed to them is quite honestly painful and sickening.
But they are customers paying me for a service, and I am not permitted to discriminate against someone just because their beliefs don’t match mine.
And so if you become a registrar and your duty is to marry people, then you should be required to marry anyone who comes before you unless there is a very good reason not to ("and in this day and age, being gay is not a good reason"). And if you refuse, you should be sacked.
And can you imagine the outcry there would be if a gay registrar refused to marry a straight couple because it was against his beliefs? The entirety of Middle England would be on the warpath and demand his head on a pike. And rightly so – if you are employed to do a job, you either do it, or you quit.
The Church is a slightly more grey area, but given that homosexuality has been decriminalised, legalised, had the age of consent lowered three times and been written in to law with civil partnerships – and despite all the The Church has not ceased to exist, I say that they should be forced to fall in to line with society, and not the other way round.
We either have the rule of law – defined by the democratically elected government – or we have a religious state ruled by the self-appointed and unelected moral guardians of the church.
Me? I want democracy. And anyone who wants their own exclusions from law just so they can be allowed to hate and discriminate to their hearts content should be told to go **** themselves up the arse. (And yes – that choice of phrasing was deliberate, given the topic at hand).
As I have been writing this, Parliament voted to pass the bill by 400 to 175. I do wonder about the other 75 – are they ashamed? Did they arrive late? Did they get lost? Do they have no real opinion on a topic that is apparently dividing the nation?
But on the bright side, it is a vast majority, which shows that while the right wing might still be a bunch of bigoted homophobic morons, there are at least enough decent human beings in Parliament to ensure the country moves ever forward to where it should have been twenty years ago.
The "I am not homophobic" bigots have been defeated once more – life is good.