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How Gay Rights are Different
stonespring
Shipmate
in Dead Horses
As an affluent white queer man, something irks me about wealthy white cisgender gay men acting like they are just as oppressed as any nonwhite, cisgender female, trans or non-binary, or economically underprivileged person. They aren’t.
Being gay can compound the oppression that people of color, women, trans, non-binary, poor, etc, people face. Intersectionality matters.
And even otherwise privileged gays do still experience some legal and de facto discrimination in the liberal West along with some threat of violence anywhere at any time. Of course in much of the rest of the world gays of all kinds are still treated
horrifically.
All this said, though, I feel that quite a few well to do white liberal minded people in the West gravitate towards gay rights issues because, even if they are straight, they can imagine having a gay child or other family member, if they do not have one already, and so supporting gay rights does not require
the more difficult and uncomfortable work of dealing with the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and both local and global economic injustice that help maintain their comfortable lives.
Of course gay rights are hugely important. But even if some governments and corporations give lip service or perhaps more than lip service to liberating other oppressed groups, it seems to pale in comparison to how enthusiastically they wave pride flags all over the place. Is there any equivalent flag or symbol for another oppressed group that, in liberal cities and countries, is so uncontroversially plastered all over the place? (Despite the Trump administration’s recent efforts to reduce its display at US Embassies?
How is it that gay marriage, which seemed unimaginable just a decade or two ago in so many countries, became such a safe and cuddly thing for us well to do liberals (and quite a few conservatives) so fast while movements like Black Lives Matter and #metoo still make a lot of bleeding heart affluent white liberals much more uncomfortable (even if they won’t admit it)?
Are people like me who live on the backs of the oppressed and don’t do much about it (also like me) hiding behind our pride flags?
Being gay can compound the oppression that people of color, women, trans, non-binary, poor, etc, people face. Intersectionality matters.
And even otherwise privileged gays do still experience some legal and de facto discrimination in the liberal West along with some threat of violence anywhere at any time. Of course in much of the rest of the world gays of all kinds are still treated
horrifically.
All this said, though, I feel that quite a few well to do white liberal minded people in the West gravitate towards gay rights issues because, even if they are straight, they can imagine having a gay child or other family member, if they do not have one already, and so supporting gay rights does not require
the more difficult and uncomfortable work of dealing with the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and both local and global economic injustice that help maintain their comfortable lives.
Of course gay rights are hugely important. But even if some governments and corporations give lip service or perhaps more than lip service to liberating other oppressed groups, it seems to pale in comparison to how enthusiastically they wave pride flags all over the place. Is there any equivalent flag or symbol for another oppressed group that, in liberal cities and countries, is so uncontroversially plastered all over the place? (Despite the Trump administration’s recent efforts to reduce its display at US Embassies?
How is it that gay marriage, which seemed unimaginable just a decade or two ago in so many countries, became such a safe and cuddly thing for us well to do liberals (and quite a few conservatives) so fast while movements like Black Lives Matter and #metoo still make a lot of bleeding heart affluent white liberals much more uncomfortable (even if they won’t admit it)?
Are people like me who live on the backs of the oppressed and don’t do much about it (also like me) hiding behind our pride flags?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Because marriage is a very traditionalist structure, one familiar to and beloved by a lot of people across the political spectrum. In other words it conforms to a pre-existing and widely accepted social norm*.
The idea that there is a lot of needless police brutality directed at black people, on the other hand, is something a lot of white people simply would not accept prior to the widespread existence of smartphones with cameras. Even after video evidence kept being produced it routinely gets dismissed as a large series of isolated, unrelated incidents. The idea that there is systematic racism in various power structures, like policing, cuts against the comfortable view a lot of white people have of the society in which they live.
*Interestingly this is largely due to straight people redefining marriage in the early twentieth century, changing it from a hierarchical relationship with clearly defined gender roles to a loving partnership of equals. It was this change which made same-sex marriage philosophically possible and may be part of the reason that there's so much overlap between opponents of same-sex marriage and those who adhere to a hierarchical gender-role view of marriage.
I will readily acknowledge that the crimes against blacks and immigrants make middle ground seem untenable, but a great deal of our demand that people side with our views is much less existential and more willful than that.
Once you've split off white cisgendered gay men, you've actually done something that is part of this consumerist version of identity politics I really hate. Reassemble the rainbow - don't fracture it - leave us together. It's as if eceryone has forgotten that "divide and conquer" is a recipe for oppression in this context, not for liberation.
I think you meant 21st century.
Nope. I'm talking about the era in which women got the vote, nominal political equality with men, coverture laws were overturned, the same right as a man to file for divorce, etc. There was a (not entirely complete) revolution in gender relations in the early 20th century.
I was discussing white cisgendered *affluent* (or at least economically, educationally, and socially (in terms of one's societal and cultural connections) comfortable and secure) gay men like myself. My gayness does not take away from the fact that, in the West and quite a bit of the rest of the world, the economy, politics, and culture are all designed with someone largely like me in mind as the default. My gayness might get me beaten or killed because nowhere is truly safe, and even in bastions of liberalism some discrimination against gays remains, but in my day to day life, even if I worked hard (which I don't) and maybe earned some of the comforts I enjoy, I'd still be living off the fat of most of the rest of my community and the world.
Gay people in less tolerant jurisdictions (and less tolerant cultural groups living within liberal jurisdictions) do experience more visceral oppression. Pride should be more about them than it is about me, but people like me tend to co-opt the control and image of it anyway.
I agree that identity politics as it appears in mainstream and social media - as opposed to on the ground where activists given the "identity politics" label are working - tends to leave out class divisions, and that poor, working class, and economically struggling white cisgendered men, gay or not, need to be part of the broader conversation about liberating the oppressed.
But, if we're going to have a party of liberation even if people like me are invited, it is only as guests. I need to shut up and let the truly oppressed have the spotlight. Instead, Pride each year seems like a big fat present to my privilege wrapped in a rainbow ribbon.
A church purports to offer guidance. For something as fundamental as how one regards salvation, anything other than a definite statement misses the mark.
A problem is that white, cisgendered gay men have dominated the conversation until recently and, as a group, have minimised the rest of the alphabet. And it is not as though the community does not contain racism and transphobia even now. Some of those under the LGBTQ+ umbrella as still pushed towards the edges.
The division comes as much from within as without.
I agree that unity is a better strategy, but that unity does not preclude the acknowledgement that some members suffer far more than others and that the suffering is not excursively caused from the outside.
One: I did not start the tangent.
Two: You are continuing it
Three: What is your point?
As to the proclamations, it was you that was complaining about a lack of definite statements:
Is your problem that nothing except a "definite statement" is good enough, or that what you see as "definite statements" aren't in line with your views?
As to gratuitous swipes at vestments, nobody in our church wears anything distinctively different from anybody else in terms of office or ministry.
Again, are you looking for "definite statements" about how the Church regards salvation, or are you looking for "definite statements" on any issue you care to raise? Because it looks like the latter:
With equal marriage, there are only two positions; Yea or Nay. WHilst I will not pretend to like the nays, at least they are honest. And individual not being certain of their feelings is understandable, for a church it is not acceptable.
If it helps take at least one twist out of your knickers, I say the same about monk's robes. I am not a fan of uniforms. There is no difference. Church guidance is about getting the password for the Pearly Gates and any admonition is about that goal. The church disapproving is proxy for God's disproving and a threat to not making the final cut.
They are two very different things, even if they conflate in your perception.
No there aren't. Simply in terms of the law of the land where I am, rights on adoption, filiation, etc. are different.
And even if one is pro equal marriage in law (which I am) that is not the same as a church sanctioning every sought-for equal marriage any more than sanctioning every sought-for straight one would be. Any church worth its salt for which marriage is a blessing and not a civil action will give some pastoral guidance to potential spouses, but this is not at all the same thing as laying down the law.
If a position on an issue is going to be worked out, it should be about more than just feelings. And being unsure of one's position in a rapidly-changing social context is entirely acceptable to my mind. Would you like my church to issue guidance on electric cars? I'm really not sure what I "feel" about them at this point.
I'm genuinely sorry that's your experience of church, if that really is what your experience of church is. Personally, I think those most likely not to make the final cut are the hypocrites.
Slanderers are on the list too.
To my mind any church worthy of the name is going to take any issue of discrimination seriously and deal with it with empathy and humility.
Personally, I'm not afraid of putting my neck on the line to address blatant injustices with which I have a personal connection, whether it's people denied marriage because their best man is gay or Muslims banged up in solitary confinement for six months because they have been falsely accused of being radicalised, and in the latter case I don't just mean a Hell thread, I mean potentially putting myself on my country's intelligence service radar.
But if some random militant association decides to weaponize some useful idiots and a body of people in which I have responsibility simply to further their cause because they think that body offers a promising target, if not for the success of their agenda then for the publicity they will attract, then they can expect a very different response.
Empathy, however, isn't capitulating to those unwilling to change. It is not putting all of them in the same basket as those who actually hate.
The middle ground, where I think tbcass was heading, is capitulation and certainly is not empathetic to the LGBTQ+.
Anyway, should you wish to continue this tangent, start another thread to discuss it as I am done with it on this thread.
Those movements are addressing different sorts of problem.
The campaign for gay marriage is/was a campaign for legal equality. Gay couples did not have the same right to marry that straight couples had. Unless you think that there's a fundamental moral difference between straight and gay people that the secular law should care about that was an obvious case of simple unfairness - the rules governing one group of people were more restrictive than those governing another group.
With BLM and metoo, the argument is about a different sort of unfairness. Black people have the same formal legal rights as white people not to be shot by the police. Sexual assaults against women are already notionally as illegal as sexual assaults against men. The fact that the disadvantaged groups are more often subjected to these things because of race or sex depends on more complicated factors than procedural injustice - and will therefore be far harder to fix. There will be legitimately different views of what the problems are and how they can be fixed even between people who share the objective of complete racial and sexual equality.
If it were as simple as passing an Act to give women and minorities the same legal rights as white men already have, then most liberals and many conservatives would be as supportive as they were about gay marriage - but it isn't.
It is the same reticence which took so long for any particular law to be passed that is behind the very uneven enforcement. Fear and people latching onto the fear for power.