So I published that same piece written by the queer children of queers on okc...

This is one particularly sTOOpid segment of the comments that are unfolding in the wake of that posting...

InternetPredater-
I think this is the dumbest, most pretentious and judgemental thing I've ever read on this site. Ignoring institutionalized discrimination makes the gay community stronger? You're too cool to accept the help of middle class gay and straight people unless they accept every other bit of your extremely narrow agenda with its laundry list of grievances? Way to go. If these are your standards for inclusion your coalition will fit neatly inside a phone booth


hellskitten1-
It's an interesting set of arguments and it's refreshing to get a different perspective that is sort of from the gay community, i.e. children of gays and lesbians, who are not necessarily gay themselves.

That said, I can't say that I agree. I see the gay marriage issue as being about basic human freedoms and civil liberties. IMHO, fundamental liberties transcend practical concerns.

Of course, I say this as someone who sees marriage as an outdated and misguided idea.

atropa777 - Someone please reassure me that internetpredater is a sockpuppet for trolling.


Eurrapanzy - Having never been gay, I don't know that I can speak from experience, but having been black for more than two decades, I don't think ignoring discrimination eliminates it, and I don't think there is truly a single cure-all solution to that kind of problem. Every solution that has a positive impact is one worth pursuing, and so long as allowing gay marriage is not mutually exclusive to your solutions, there isn't really a strong reason to oppose it. Attention and political might can be devoted to multiple solutions.



i wrote - Just a few quick comments:

LookoutLoretta, it is.

InternetPredater, I think predatER is actually spelled predatOR.

hellskitten, these are queer children of queers not straight children of queers not straight children of gays and lesbians.

Also, marriage isn't about basic human freedom it's a business contract between two people usually of different genders with the state.

Basic human freedoms are where you get to have whatever kinds of relationship configuration you want, whatever kind of family you want and not have to worry about the state taking away your children, not have to worry about your children being turned away from school or harassed because of who you and your partner(s) are or how you love, not have to worry about whether you'll be imprisoned because of how people are taught to understand the skin you're in, not have to worry about whether you will be able to have wounds or diseases treated or be fed sufficient good quality nutrients because of how much money you have in the bank.

Those are basic human freedoms that these people are attempting to offer as they explore what is problematic about a majority white middle class gentrified conservative gay and lesbian drive to have the privileges associated with marriage in this day and age.

I don't think marriage is outdated. It serves a purpose for those who are allowed to access it - monetary and social protection based in privilege. And it seems that privilege never goes out of style.

atropa777, hey. I suspect he may be.

Eurrapanzy, maybe we're not reading the same piece of writing. These people are trying to incorporate a deeper and broader analysis of privilege into the gay and lesbian marriage debate.

They are questioning how it is that the right to marriage ended up completely overshadowing all other issues effecting queer communities.

This includes communities of colour and Diasporic African communities where queers are present and always have been.

How does the right to wear wedding rings, walk down the aisle, get tax rebates and refer to someone as your husband or wife take precedence over whole communities being targeted as criminal? how does it end up ranking over the issues of whole communities where children have been stolen and given to other people because the stresses, lack of resources, lack of education and lack of understanding associated with poverty and/or race has allowed others to define them as unfit parents whose children need to be taken away?

How does a socially validated attention feed aka wedding in white or pink or rainbow colours or whatever take precedence over pressing issues that are about other forms of oppression facing queer people?

How does the social validation of people who just want to fit in and who, besides not being able to marry, CAN fit into existing power structures quite nicely, as long as they make sure that people understand that they're nice suit wearing, gym membership bearing car pooling expensive wine drinking gays and lesbians, not like THOSE undesireables who are so SCARY, not like those loudly protesting, taking to the streets raucous half naked queers, not like those leather wearing pierced tattooed perverts, not tho unemployed runaway street kid queers, not like those big black dick bangee boys hanging on the corner...

Nope, nice these are white, conservative families headed by people with medical and dental who just want to get along, how do their concerns end up defining a whole community of people even as they do not give a flying fuck about most of their supposed brothers and sisters and would disown them, are disowning them so as to better fit in.

Run on sentence. Majorly.

sigh...In any case, I don't think anyone is saying that the conservative beige gay people who want to live in a house with their one nice smiling quiet well behaved husband or wife, with a garage with their 2.5 straight acting children shouldn't be allowed to.

I think these people are just saying they shouldn't be allowed to lead because their leadership, due to their unearned privilege and power, their tunnel vision and their obsessive, unhealthy need to fit in and be considered just like heterosexual couples with families makes their commitment to any real change completely suspect.

I agree with them, wholeheartedly.

Queer communities and their agendas ARE being hijacked. HAVE been hijacked.

The nice, proper, well behaved, middle management caliber, conservative, hide the toys and deviance under the bed until no one is looking, want to be seen as just like everyone else beige gay people?

I can't stand 'em. I don't feel comfortable around them. I try not to spend time with them or being tiny rooms or meetings with them. I decided a good while back that I didn't want to follow them. They're not trustworthy. They're also not particularly smart. The right to marry will not transform queer communities anymore than the right to marry officially in churches tranformed the nature of racial oppression for the vast majority of Black people.

The right to marry only puts the cherry on the ice cream for people who are already shielded from oppression by class privilege. For everyone else? Nada.

Their agenda. Their ONLY agenda, is a self serving, limited, thoroughly narrow one.

That's my opinion. I stand by it.



freak_flag - Just scanning through this, I had to post something. What about leslie feinberg? She/he has not stopped the fight/revolution and lived through Stonewall. With respect to gays 'selling out' with respect to AIDS and having children- having lived through the AIDS epidemic in the 80's and 90's in the gay community in DC- I saw a lot. Fought a lot and buried a lot. AIDS is very real and with the help of medical break throughs has increased the life span. Those people with AIDS now have treatments and meds to substain their lives a lot longer than the year long death sentence they had before. Generations of people grow and some have families and settle down- passing the torch so to speak to those younger. I have met and talked to a lot of young gays and lesbians who do not know their history- not even stonewall! If you do not know your history, you are damned to repeat it. It is our responsible to keep that torch burning! I have and I do! I will never forget meeting leslie feinberg and being so honored for what she/he fought for and I thanked him! With respect to InternetPredater...the spelling is not wrong- he considers himself 'old' and PREDATING the internet and NO he is not a troll. I know him very well. He is a very opinionated person who sometimes speaks his mind TOO freely. He is also married to a lesbian and knows from her personal experience how hard it was for her. We are making progress...I see that progress and yes more can be done. Please, go out side- educate, speak, teach...No one is stopping you! I support the rights of all people. Regardless of their race, creed, color or sexual orientation. We live in a country that allows that. Do I still take the streets? No, not really- but that does not mean i am sell out. Pass the torch sister- take to the streets. Harvey Milk did, leslie feinberg did and got her ASS beat for it. I did in 89 after being jumped by 3 marines...I started the circulation of the gay paper after a lot of shit and people trying to stop me, at my university. I started organizations that are still run to this day. what have you done? talk is cheap- freedom of speech, is not



atropa777 - Eurra, I don't think this article is advocating ignoring prejudice. Sincerely.

I read it as an objection to the acceptance of marriage as the path to rights. There used to be a strong contingent in the gay & queer communities that wanted to dismantle marriage as an institution that conferred legal rights. There are still radical leftists (myself included) who feel that marriage as a legal institution is inherently discriminatory, and by the mainstream gay community focusing on marriage rights, they're alienating themselves from potential allies who also seek to dismantle marriage - poly & non-monogamous people and single mothers, for example, are two groups that would stand to also benefit from sanctioned non-traditional family structures.



i wrote - freak_flag, you confuse freedom with the marriage agenda. you confuse resistance with fighting for marriage rights. you also make assumptions about what it means to grow old confusing that inevitability with "settling down". again - this piece of writing argues against a gentrified gay and lesbian agenda that excludes the realities of many. it demands that community agendas remain broad and inclusive of the rights and needs of many. your argument is based in reaction and emotion demanding that i back down based on your reading. it seems to say "who the fuck do you think you are to question the gay and lesbian marriage agenda". it seems to ask "what have you done?" answer to the first question? I am a queer who believes that the movement need not be defined or led by those with sufficient privilege that marriage is the biggest thing on their minds. answer to the second question? i dont have to defend my past work or my future agendas to you in order to voice my opinion. but it's very privileged of you to demand and expect that i should. in terms of my response to internetpredater, my response was purposeful. his tone deserved nothing more. him being married to lesbian and approaching me with such ire speaks droves about his (lack) of analysis as your tone does about yours. be well, freak_flag and go with gawd.



i wrote: atropa777, exactly.



InternetPredater - @ DarkDughta - You wrote, "The nice, proper, well behaved, middle management caliber, conservative, hide the toys and deviance under the bed until no one is looking, want to be seen as just like everyone else beige gay people? I can't stand 'em. I don't feel comfortable around them. I try not to spend time with them or being tiny rooms or meetings with them. I decided a good while back that I didn't want to follow them. They're not trustworthy. They're also not particularly smart." I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but this is exactly what's been wrong for liberalism for too long. The self-righteousness, the inflexibility, the haranguing and denigrating of people who don't agree with you on every issue and thus aren't ideologically pure enough to attain the exalted status you reserve for yourself and the tiny fringe of the left of the left who agrees with you. Call me a troll all you want for pointing this out, but I can just imagine your response if I wrote on my blog that I can't stand black people and don't trust them or think that they are particularly smart. Maybe you are comfortable with ranting about how intolerant other people are while writing really judgemental and prejudiced things at the same time, but again, this is the kind of rank hypocrisy that led to the word "liberal" being removed form the language of nearly every political figure in America. Oh, and one last thing. ALL successful political movements require mainstream support. The Civil Rights movement never would have achieved its goals without the support of those very same people you openly despise. If they waited until everyone was ideologically pure enough to meet your ridiculous standards black people would still be sitting on the backs of buses.



i wrote - What I always appreciate about Liberals is their ability to accuse anyone who speaks out against oppression as being the ones who are discriminatory. I especially appreciate white liberals who have the added benefit of feeling perfectly comfortable attacking anyone who does not frame their arguments or opinions in a way that they find familiar and comforting. This sounds like you, internetpredater. And just for future reference? Don't cite the civil rights movement as a way to call me out or hold me to task. When you cite it, it seems as if it's a way of saying I should be grateful for what I have, that I should just shut up or at least be more courteous, that I should definitely go along with what you think because clearly, if you can reference one segment of the fight for Black people's liberation on top of believing that the right to marry is of supreme importance when stacked up against so many other pressing, life threatening concerns in queer community...not only does your relationship to a lesbian seem to give you the inherent right to call me out, but your memory and ability to write re: one leg of Black people's struggles to free themselves also gives you moral authority over me. Wow! You're pretty damned amazing. I yield to your superior analysis.



i wrote - Well, I mean...you can cite queer history until you're blue in the face and you can site the history of a christian based Black civil rights movement until you're purple, if you so choose, but your arguments will just come across as manipulative and based in your reliance on your own privilege as a white liberal. White liberal married to a lesbian.


allgoode - The self-righteousness, the inflexibility, the haranguing and denigrating of people who don't agree with you on every issue and thus aren't ideologically pure enough to attain the exalted status you reserve for yourself and the tiny fringe of the left of the left who agrees with you. Call me a troll all you want for pointing this out, but I can just imagine your response if I wrote on my blog that I can't stand black people and don't trust them or think that they are particularly smart. Maybe you are comfortable with ranting about how intolerant other people are while writing really judgemental and prejudiced things at the same time...


THIS!!! So hard and so much! But, honestly, IP, don't waste your breath; darkdaughta don't do discussion or debate. She preaches the truth according to darkdaughta and there be no disagreein'!



i wrote - I need to go warn bugsimianboy and papi that if they EVER get into an argument about queer agendas with a queer woman and attempt to utilize their location as my partners to bolster their egotistical right to speak disrespectfully from a place of constructed knowing, I will publicly humiliate them and then gut them. Anything less would be embarrassing and directly lead to me not having any cred as a supposed politicized being whatsoever. Yup.



i wrote - Allgoode! You changed the name! The last time I heard from you was during the beginnings of the obamarama fiasco when I was saying he was a lying snake oil salesman and you told me I should just stick to what I know and go breastfeed. Who's laughing now bucky? ;) heeheehee ;)

if you don't mind throwing up occasionally, the rest is here...