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by punkpink

5 comments

1 peter_g { 10.11.08 at 12:43 pm }

Is that the only choice when we consider how to react to this historic event?  I hope that you're not suggesting that we're limited to yes/no answers.

I've read (most) of the Supreme Court decision and it does not break new legal ground in its analysis.  It is in many ways the same analysis that has been applied in important "equal protection" cases of the past, from Brown v. Board of Education right on down the line. The Supreme Court justices were not thinking about equal rights differently than they did ten or twenty or thirty years ago.

The difference was the objective social reality.  Briefly stated: lesbian and gay people exist in the United States today in a way that they did not exist at any previous point in our history.  By that I mean that it is only in the very recent past that the queer community has come to define itself, instead of being defined by the majority.  The decision is a recognition that it is no longer possible (or at least not rationally possible) for the majority and the institutions of the majority to identify LGBT people in terms of their acceptability, tolerability, morality, or deviance from the norm.

That change in social reality is the fruit of every step forward and backward and sideways by the LGBT community over more or less the last half century. Mostly it is the result of social and political struggle and personal struggle multiplied by millions.

I suggest that the significance of recognition of same sex marriage by the Connecticut Supreme Court should not be measured in terms of the desirability or undesirability of marriage, or of "acceptance" by the legal system or by the ruling class.  It is better measured by the inability of the dominant culture to define the queer community as an "other" that is not entitled by right to full participation in society.  The question of whether or how LGBT people exercise, settle for, or seek to expand those rights is in your hands, not the Court's. 

2 richard { 10.11.08 at 8:28 pm }

Let's hope this is not the last step toward equality as some in the Lesbian and Gay movemnet have declared. Marriage is a handy right to have but there is more to life than a bunch of I-doing monkey see, monkey do. Now the pressure will be on couples to wed. Well some of us just can't and won't embrace the conventions of homonormantivity. Already my box is full of "when are you and Tim going to do it?" It seems that straight friends and family members are more excited by this than we are. We have already been together 30 years so if any of you insist just send cash!

As far as my faith in this system restored, no not at all. The courts, the govenment will have to do a hell of a lot more than grant gays and lesbians the right to marry. It didn't impress me in the least yesterday to see all the democrats (DOMA doers, on the civil union bill), religious leaders(praying and swaying and proselytizing), heads of non-profits (aren’t we great anyone for musical chairs) and the other powers that be paraded out on the stage.

But yes I do see this as a great historical day for those in the Lesbain and Gay community who wish to marry. Yes, I see it as a great day as far as my fight is concerned to give a slap in the face of hetro convention and straights tellling me and my people what we can do and can't do, who we are or are not. Yes, I see it as another brick torn out of the wall that the patriarchs have errected to keep me out.

So now what will some movement people do? Many will just fold up their tents and go home to the picket fence, and live happily ever after in middle class la la land. Their movement will is done. But some of us will continue on the road, joining in coalitions with others who are oppressed and  working damn hard to build a new world that doesn't include the state or anyone else telling me what I can do or who I am.  Indeed this is a strange victory. 

3 T.E.D { 10.11.08 at 9:05 pm }

While it is very good to finally have the option of choosing marriage and with it all the rights and the responsibilities with which it comes, we should avoid any tendency to hold it up as some sort of ideal to which everyone should aspire.

When all is said and done regarding this court decision I was happy not to have to take my Kangaroo suit out of moth balls.

4 DanDee Lyon { 10.13.08 at 12:35 am }

just one more step towards assimilation and the death of queerness.  i hope we can see that ALL privileging of long-term monogamous kinship structures over other ways of living is a fundamental act of assimilative  violence that excludes the majority of queer people from the right to survive.  marriage is a human right? give me a break.

5 richard { 10.13.08 at 7:55 am }

Hey, Dan Dee Lyon send us a posting. I like where you have gone with this. Thanks.

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