I swear I'm going to hop off this gay marriage meme one of these days.
In the meantime, I want to issue a challenge, and the challenge is to show me where the denial of rights and privileges are affecting gay lives. I expect some real answers but I also am begging the question of the literal currency of marriage.
In ten years of marriage, I've never had to show my marriage license. A driver's license with the same last name, or a SSN is all I've had to show. The actual license is somewhere in my garage. In fact, my marriage license has the wrong date on it because a a bureaucratic foulup in the City of New York. That has never caused me any pain.
So I'm trying to determine where it is on the ground that documentable marriage makes or breaks and agreement, right or privilege, because all this time it has very easy for me and the spousal unit. Where is it legal and where is it social, this discrimination against gays? Again, I raise the question in the form of the most poignant analogy that I can.
If gays are being denied public accomodations, and I use that phrase purposefully, why must they be married to exercise recourse under existing equal protection laws? My answer is that they are not being denied rights, but privileges. I believe this society is quite willing to grant equal protection of rights and privileges if activists for the gay cause will simply leave the M word out of it. And since they are privileges, society is reasonable in asking.
Is it too much to ask? Apparently so, for all the moral posturing. This is the case where asking permission is easier than asking for forgiveness.
I also want to note in passing how much ignorant intolerance of the religious beliefs of 'phobes is flying through the air right about now.
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