Atrios says this, but I don't believe it:
in 20 years just about everybody who lifted one finger to fight same sex marriage will wonder just why the hell they cared
— Atrios (@Atrios) December 19, 2013except the grifters, of course, they'll remember it paid for the house
— Atrios (@Atrios) December 19, 2013I don't think it's going to be that simple. What's more likely is that right-wingers are going to start talking about gay rights the way they talk about black civil rights these days.
Surely you've noticed that the overwhelming majority of right-wingers now praise Martin Luther King to the skies and insist that the civil rights movement righted a great wrong. You've noticed wingers trying to make King one of their own and attacking the Democratic Party as a historically racist institution.
You've also noticed that right-wingers feel aggrieved anytime a non-white person points to a present-day racial injustice. They feel that pointing out a racial injustice is the worst possible act of racism -- racism against white people.
That's probably how right-wingers are going to talk about gay rights in the future. They'll agree in theory that rights must not be infringed; in practice, everything that goes gay people's way will be another example of reverse discrimination against heterosexuals. They'll agree on marriage and joint benefits and so on, but they'll scour the news for every possible example of what they already call "LGBT fascism."
Basically, the second part of this is true now: over here we have a local talk-radio guy on Fox News comparing Phil Robertson to Dr. King, over there we have right-wingers angrily recounting the rather-too-perfect story of a straight male gym teacher who says a lesbian boss at a Manhattan private school fired him for being heterosexual and married.
Atrios thinks, I guess, that the anti-gay grifters will just cash in and move on to something else. Not really. They'll stop trying to deprive gay people of equal citizenship and just concentrate on trying to persuade straight people that they're sexual Alan Bakkes -- the people who really deserve to have anti-discrimination laws protecting them. The war won't end -- not anytime soon.
I don't think gay rights are going to be like civil rights, an endless wound and a touchstone or a thing which right wingers say "was necessary once but now we've gone too far"like they do with affirmative action. For a very simple reason: there are going to be a lot of conservative gay (male) voters and a lot of conservatives are going to have married gay children and co-workers.
ReplyDeleteThe color line in the US was an absolute bar to the intermingling of conservative whites and the majority of the AA population. And where they did come into contact with black people it was either because the white population was falling in terms of class and wealth, or because the AA populationw as rising. The first created massive and ongoing rage and anxiety due to block busting, loss of housing values, integration of schools etc... The latter let people imagine that since Jim Crow was over nothing more needed to be done.
Gays are just going to seamlessly integrate into society. Sure, some old people are going to keep bitching and moanint but the truth is that old people loved "queer eye for the straight guy" and don't really care except when they are told to care. A few creepy evangelical churches are going to keep beating the drum, a la Duck dynasty patriarch, but the majority of people are going to end up konwing someone who is out, gay, married, and totally unsacary and bourgeois. And that person is going to be of their own race/class/town and even family.
Conservative POV:
ReplyDeleteSTOP POINTING OUT, AND BEING INTOLERANT, AT MY INTOLERANCE!!!!!
aimai and others.
ReplyDeleteWhat Americans generally and specifically the "right winger" don't understand is that by treating or allowing the issue to be treated as a separate group's rights rather than human rights they are facilitating division. e.g.“well it doesn't involve me” mind set or I'm so good because I showed my goodness by giving lip service to somebody elses' concerns.
The psychological import of this is that the average person is 'in favor ' but not committed enough to be aggressively involved i.e. make it a voting priority. Or joining a party to change it from with in etc. Consider the difference if it was about a 'mainstream' issue involving your children say a paedophile teach Your children.... all hell would break loose.
There are two issue here firstly any country (including USA ) isn't simply a battle between two camps but in reality a myriad of small localised personal groupings. Family, locality, town /city, gender, disability, wealth color/race, weight etc.
Because the spin doctors (propaganda psychologists) know this it is easy to simply isolate them as a minority as being not one of us, a threat to us, our rights ( advantages etc). This is presented as replacing one prejudice (?) (standard accepted view) with a prejudice against us and our freedoms/ advantages.
My argument is and always has been that the best (only?) way to address this is like MLK jr did by making it 'civil (all of us) rights' as opposed to “black rights”. This folks was the context of discussions between him and Malcolm X and his more violent approach.
Yes Aimai it is my schtick but it is much much more … a lesson from history rather than the insanity of repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different result.
(PS I was there and I was there ( involved) in America and later more involved when Australia accepted the right of their aborigines to have the vote. The organizers of both successful campaigns used the same concept)
To me laws are designed to facilitate social co-habitation for the most possible rather than right for separate groups . The ratbag right in Aust attack a minority of successful aborigines on the grounds that they were half breeds who (ab)used positive discrimination i.e. special educational funding to raise up “real” Aborigines. They and the US right wing nuts use the same reasoning attacks against feminism and social security “sponges”, long-term unemployed, single moms, teenage moms and disadvantaged people. The argument goes I worked hard and never got help so why should they. (translation: They're different...not like me AND they got something I didn't...that's unfair)
All the rest stems from this.
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