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Original post by BerwynIrish
This not a slam on those who hold the position, but it's important that this be acknowledged. The fact is that the real-world path to equal rights for homosexuals in regards to marriage is going to be legalization of such marriage under the current system. Period. It isn't going to be your position or "get government out of marriage" because nobody is fighting for these ideas, whereas there has been and continues to be a strong fight for legalization of gay marriage. There's nothing inherently wrong with simply holding these other positions, but what is offensive is that the stating of these positions is never coupled with an acknowledgment of this reality (Dredd's latest post excepted, but that was a direct response to my observation about this very lack).
I have actually considered fighting for the idea at the upcoming Pride parade, but I'm afraid of being shouted down and/or misunderstood.
You're talking about fighting for government getting out of marriage completely? Well, you didn't, and if you had, it would have been the first such instance brought to my attention. So that count still stands at zero.
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(And if I may engage in a bit of dickery for a moment, the irony is not lost on me that many of the same people who offer "get gov out of marriage" as a solution can be quite vocal about how they live in the real world as opposed to their ivory-tower opponents)
No idea what you're talking about here, sorry.
It's an unimportant tangent, but what I was saying is that the "get government out of marriage" people tend be self-proclaimed libertarians and generally minimal-government people. It is not uncommon to hear these people deriding others who put forth liberal ideas (or ideas they perceive to be liberal) in other discussions on other topics as living in an ivory tower and out of touch with the real world. But on this subject, to put forth "get the gov out of marriage" as a solution (I emphasize, not as an ideal, but as a solution) is naive. There's the irony.
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but it is remarkable that the real-world context is always absent and that this absence is never commented on. The cumulative effect is to draw support away from the only real-world activism that is actually making progress in gaining gays equal rights
Are there that many GooMers that the trend is really noticeable? Strange. As far as I can think of at the moment, I never met any others before this thread, and had only seen one example of political writing that might be construed as pro-GooM.
I searched gamedev for "gay marriage", and
here is page 1 of the first thread to pop up besides this one. I'm set to the default 20 or 25 (whichever it is) posts per page, and on this first page of the first thread there's two posters who hold this position. I'm not saying this in a snarky way, but are you really paying all that much attention to the subject? But more importantly, at that point I was talking about the GGOoM guys plus the "government should allow gays to marry and at the same time rename their end of the deal 'civil union'" group.
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Of course, it should be noted that "gaining gays equal rights" has to do with a lot more than marriage. There are parts of the world where it's a struggle just to protect them from grossly disproportionate amounts of random violence.
Of course. I did qualify "equal rights for gays" with "in regard to marriage" earlier in that post, but not in this instance. I apologize for the sloppiness.
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The toolishness aspect is also disturbing. That was my point in another post about pointing out that GGooM only comes up in relation to gay marriage, and never in regard to heterosexual marriage or in regard to discussions about the role of government.
I'll give you "role of government", although recently the conversation there has been much more focussed on financial matters. But when does "heterosexual marriage" ever get spontaneously discussed?
Engagements and weddings.
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It's not a political issue because "heterosexuals can marry" has really never been questioned. It's just the status quo.
"Get government out of marriage" is just as applicable to straight marriage as it is to gay marriage. Their proposal would supposedly have the side effect of eliminating discrimination in marriage, but it is not directly concerned with this. A government-sanctioned straight marriage should be just as unpalatable to them as a government-denied gay marriage.
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A GooMer would effectively have to start a conversation out of nowhere with "you know, this whole marriage concept in our current system is a complete sham, etc. etc.", and have a motive for doing so.
He can correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Way Walker just post that he did something along these lines? And why not? It isn't rare for people to voice opinions about their principles with minimal provocation. You need merely observe how the GGOoM guys and gals use the subject of gay marriage legalization to introduce their tangentially-related opinion (and before anybody points it out, I know the original subject of this particular thread was not gay marriage, about which - no way). And as I said, the fact of engagements and weddings destroys the necessity for "out of the blue."
[Edited by - BerwynIrish on April 9, 2009 11:10:12 PM]
