As a heterosexual white male, I feel it is my duty to warn you: I have stood in the mainstream and it’s kind of, well, all wet and chilly and pushy. The mainstream only flows in one direction - down, but so often the marginalized want in anyway. They want to be stroked by the hand that slapped them.
Look at all the women who want to be rabbis, priests, and ministers. Christianity and Judaism are rooted in times when women were held to be lesser, much like Islamic countries today. In the case of Judaism, with which I am more familiar, all the yarmulkes and prayer shawls that women may or may not don doesn’t change the fact that every wise man of old they will ever quote believed them inferior for their gender. And what is religion but a call to remembrance?
Apparently, the more flawed and exclusionary the institution, the more the marginalized just can’t stand being left out. Perhaps the biggest of these clubs is that of bigotry itself. You know you’ve arrived in American society when you too can deliver, as a community, an election vote that expresses a fundamentally intolerant view of another segment of said society, which is what blacks in California did when they uniformly supported Proposition 8. Welcome to the mainstream.
If it saves gays from the institution of marriage, then perhaps they were done a backhanded favor. But will they have the vision and fortitude to see their blessing, or will they fall for the seduction of inclusion like all the rest?
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Look at all the women who want to be rabbis, priests, and ministers."
Reminds me of the great Fark headline: "Church of England debating whether to allow female bishops. Critics say move won't help women to move forward, only diagonally"
2 - Dr Dreadful
Matt, I'm glad I finished my coffee before I read that!
3 - jj
Not all gays have rejected marriage! We don't even have the choice to get married in the USA, "land of the free", let alone get some friggin respect in general.
Marriage is not by default failed, and I've seen marriages work, and I want the same rights that we've been denied since forever.
4 - chutney
You must be man without children, or you would see the flawed logic of your argument. If you were the one without rights (like I am), I think you would feel differently. Say, for example, I die. My wife cannot get my social security to help take care of our children financially, and that, in my opinion, is discrimination purely based on the fact that my wife and I are the same gender (which in turn boils down to us having similar genitalia... ridiculous!)
It is always so easy to say how lucky someone else is to not have the rights you have... don't be so naive! Most of us want the same economic protections that you and the rest of the heterosexual world just takes for granted! We are not idiotic romantics... give me a break!