I think you’ve discovered the secret of monetizing political action:  give the opinions away for free, sell the jokes.  You don’t get caught in the trap that the Times was in during its paywall days, where nobody reads your opinions unless they know they’ll like them (e.g. already convinced) and you lose influence.

I’d love to comment on this, but as Californian, I just found out I have to report to a government-run re-education camp where I will get gay-married to a man of the government’s choosing (they have Gay Boards to determine this), and then there is a week-long training course in the finer points of sodomy, followed by a week-long course on bestiality. 

I never took all those Mormons, Catholics, and other Religious Right figures seriously when they condemned gay marriage.  I even fought against Prop 8.  I guess I should have paid closer attention.  My wife is gonna be pissed…

I thought the opinion—the parts I read/heard anyway—was a rather bracing defense of the progressive potential of marriage.  But I also thought radfems I have known would find the whole thing to be muddleheaded because it depicted marriage in too flattering a light and decoupled it from patriarchy entirely too completely.

Spouses aren’t legally distinct anymore, so there’s no reason to say they have to be different genders.

This.  The only gender distinction I can think of in law is that in divorce, some states may still have a presumption that children will be better off with the mother.  Many states, I know, are neutral on the question, and many have a preference and presumption for joint custody.

I’m not convinced this will change marriage at all, actually. The people who believe in very macho gender roles haven’t been convinced by feminism or the sexual revolution; why are they going to be convinced by gays and lesbians?

What it will do, however, is accelerate the societal change in attitudes regarding gays and lesbians. Within 10 years of whenever gay marriage is ultimately legalized, business owners are going to want to be selling flowers to them, nobody’s going to find it weird anymore when someone introduces a same-sex spouse, employers will be used to this and will have no problem administering benefits, more and more churches (though certainly not all) will start holding marriage ceremonies, and it will just “normalize” gays and lesbians to a greater and greater percentage of those who currently still think there’s something deviant about them.

And that, of course, is one more very good reason to have same-sex marriage.

Normalizing relationships in which there is no inbuilt gender-based power differential is a very, very good thing. I can’t wait till the days when the self help books start coming out - “The Gay Straight Marriage”, “Married Like a Lesbian” etc. Straight people (well, women mostly) will want to share this new understanding of what it is to have a committed relationships where the roles need to be genuinely negotiated and everbody’s needs are taken equally seriously.

Gotta watch those demon horses. They’ll throw you off, then kick you.

“I guess I should have paid closer attention.  My wife is gonna be pissed…”

Nah. She’ll be getting some of that amazing lesbian action. She’ll be fine.

Stimulating post, Amanda. Gay marriage proponents have cited changes in straight marriage over time (e.g. child marriages and political marriages are no longer mainstream) to point out that today’s “traditional” straight marriage fetishized by reactionaries has not been The Way forever. But your post adds an insightful forecast about how gay marriage itself may further change marriage for the better—some points that we proponents may not tend to realize.

If you look at clueless patriarchalists, even the well-intentioned ones, there’s a lot of “who’s the wife?” style questioning. Slowly but surely this will ebb.

The other thing, though, is that married gay couples will be in a much better position to bring suit against many of the patriarchal-marriage assumptions still embedded in various benefit programs. Judges and administrators won’t be starting from the assumption of unequal income, education, life expectancy and so forth.

There also seems to be a relationship between christian denominations that accept women clergy tend to later accept gay marriage. It happened with methodists then episcopalians and i think that the ECLA Lutherans are moving in that direction.

I’d love to comment on this, but as Californian, I just found out I have to report to a government-run re-education camp where I will get gay-married to a man of the government’s choosing (they have Gay Boards to determine this), and then there is a week-long training course in the finer points of sodomy, followed by a week-long course on bestiality.

This explains the move by the secular-feminazi-islamosocialists to have California coinage changed to read “In dog we thrust”.  I heard it from Glenn Beck; it must be true.

I’d like to echo the post title.  Thank you, gay marrieds, if it weren’t for the attention to all the legal bennies granted by marriage, I might be hesitant to enter into it, since the patriarchal bad things are otherwise so overwhelming.  If you don’t have to be married to live together, raise a family together, live happily ever after, etc., why bother?  The attention brought to the next-of-kin type benefits that gay couples are denied made me aware that they even exist, and are valuable in time of crisis.  So, thank you, for showing that marriage is still important, even if you don’t have to do it in order to get laid.

I think that economic pressures have had far more influence on “traditional marriage” than same-sex marriage will.  I may be the last Marxist, but I think economics usually dictates most (not all—I’m not discounting social movements entirely) societal changes, and then we theorize about it afterwards. 

Working class men thrown out of jobs in this recession whose wives still have jobs will stay home and take care of their kids because that is what will make the family survive.  When some of them discover that they are more competent at childcare, cooking, etc., than they thought they would be, or, who knows, maybe even enjoy it more than they thought, then something within the men changes, and society catches up.  Gender roles become more flexible because the cost of maintaining the old ones is too high.

Gay and lesbian people are a fairly small minority, and not all of them will choose to marry, so I’m not sure how influential they will be on the average straight couple.  There are probably more married Mormons than potential married gay couples, and I sure hope they’re not influencing what the rest of us do.

Sort of the inverse of women discovering that they really enjoyed the Rosie the Riveter role in WWII?  Discovering that being forced to do something outside of traditional gender roles can sometimes be freeing, though it may be horrible circumstances that led to it.

I’m not convinced this will change marriage at all, actually. The people who believe in very macho gender roles haven’t been convinced by feminism or the sexual revolution; why are they going to be convinced by gays and lesbians?

it’s not about the super-macho ones; it’s about the middle-ground, where many women basically pick their in-marriage battles and go along with a lot of very traditional stuff. Having 100% non-traditional marriages mainstreamed might very well make it easier for these women to win these battles, and therefore they can fight more of them; and some of them might maybe disappear in a poof of next-generation-incomprehension by themselves :-p

bad Jim @17, where do you get the idea that “the overwhelming majority of humans are heterosexual”?  However they choose to label themselves, humans have an enormous range of sexual preference and activities. The idea that just about everybody is 110% hetero except for some outliers is fiction. Of course, living in a culture that severely punishes homosexual attraction can mask this.

I wish to learn more about these gay re-education camps. MUCH more.

One thing about Walker’s opinion that concerns me is his acceptance that our sexuality is a fact of biology. I’m sure that nearly all of us accept that, but I don’t think it was the consensus of psychologists a few years ago (I checked with my sister, a therapist with a fairly recent master’s, and a niece with a newly minted BA). Why the overwhelming majority of humans are heterosexual doesn’t seem to be well understood.

This shouldn’t affect the debate over gay marriage one bit, but I suspect that just as the old “homosexuality is a choice” argument is too reductive, “homosexuality is inborn” is probably also too reductive. If you listen to “Loveline”, you’ll hear these lesbian and bisexual strippers call in and many turned out to be sexually abused as children. It’s impossible to believe that this sort of thing doesn’t have some manifestations in terms of one’s adult sexuality. And when you see someone make a late in life decision to become gay after having many relationships with members of the opposite sex (e.g., Carol Liefer, Cynthia Nixon, Kelly McGillis), who knows how much of that is genetic and how much of that is environmental? Plus, you have phenomena such as bisexuality, lesbians until graduation, the down low, etc. Sexuality is really, really, really complicated (which is a really fine reason why heteronormativity, including in marriage, is so terrible). I am sure it has both genetic and environmental components, and elements of personal choice as well.

There’s a really important political reason why the gay rights movement had to take the position that it’s inborn. And I don’t doubt for one moment that for many, many gays and lesbians, it clearly is—from their earliest sexual attractions, they always were attracted to members of their own sex. But when the political fights are won, I suspect that this subject will be explored in the richness and complexity that it deserves.

#14

I may be the last Marxist

MadLibrarian, I know it can seem that way, but you aren’t, not by a long shot.

@MadLibrarian #14, that is a wholly unfounded extrapolation. Anecdotally, there is evidence to suggest that men who are laid off actually starts doing less around the house as they become depressed and disassociated from their families. On a wider scale, it’s easy to see that women’s participation in the worplace, which rocketed astronomically in the second half of the 20th century, did not lead to an equally rapid devolution of domestic labour away from them or to an equalisaiton of wages.

The increased participation of women in the official economy can and should be read in Marxist terms: wage erosion, emplyment instability, the rising costs of living and the gradual winnowing away of the welfare state made that an economic necessity. But the status of women in society and the burden of domestic responsibility are governed by parallel cultural norms that don’t respond to economic pressures in the same way.

Marx himself was critical of marriage on the grounds of it being a strongly ingrained social system that will forever deny women full equality as workers because of the disproportional weight of in-the-home labour and the low social status it has.

That’s why gay marriage legalisation is so important: it will hopefully provide a template for family and interpersonal arrangements where the patriarchal power imbalance is not taken as an implicit constant and help undermine the inequalities within the hoe through a mechanism that is non-economical in nature and interacts better with people’s individual personal choices.

Dilan, the way that Dr. Drew exploits child abuse to mask his own prejudices is something I really hate about him.  He asks if someone’s been sexually abused, and he’s going to be right a great deal of the time, because 25% of women of college age have experienced rape or attempted rape.  I treat his “were you sexually abused?” question as seriously as I do when a psychic says, “I’m feeling a loved one of yours behind the veil; they say they died of something in the chest region.”  You’re probably going to get a hit enough for people to be like, “Oooooooh.”  But it doesn’t say anything about a causal relationship.

Dilan @ 5:
If MA is any indicator, it wont take a decade for most people.  The ones for whom it will take a decade or more are never going to accept it.

I started in the workforce at around the same time gay marriage was legalized in Canada, and while it took a couple more years, it has finally gotten to the point where introducing your spouse at a work function won’t raise anyone’s eyebrows, even when it’s Heather’s wife or John’s husband. The religious right up here (thankfully less voiciferous than those in the US) finally went quiet on the issue when it became apparent that they didn’t have to marry anyone they weren’t comfortable with.*

So I guess that’s just my anecdata that after a few years, no one in the corporate world** of the big city really has problems with same-sex marriage, or at least realize that it reflects badly on them if they do and so keep their mouths shut about it…

*I know a minister of a very picturesque church, he told me that he had far more encounters with non-religious persons who want a church wedding to please parents or grandparents who were outraged that he would not marry them (due to matters of faith) than with gays or lesbians demanding that he marry them now that it’s legal to do so (so far… none…)

**I work with bankers and lawyers, but have also worked in insurance (proprety) and HR.

I’m of the opinion that most people fall along a scale from fully hetrosexual to fully homosexual with most of us somewhere in the middle where we may be turned on by the one not our main attraction, but want one or the other far more.  In otherwords, I think more of us are bisexual, to some extent, more than anything else.

Perhaps. I’m always skeptical of the “everyone is bi” argument, since in my experience it’s always been a prelude to skanky dude trying to convince his miserable girlfriend into a totally unwanted threesome.

#26

In otherwords, I think more of us are bisexual, to some extent, more than anything else.

Yeah, this has been my experience in life. Always have been aware of my attraction to both genders, but my attraction to women is much stronger. I’m told this makes me strange, but I sorta suspect that lots of others are the same way, but don’t want to think about it.

And I don’t like threesomes either….

I told em! I told ‘em all back in 367 BCE! You let plebeians marry patricians and the world will go strait to hell!

#27

Gavel Down, I honestly think that some people are just gay, some people are just straight, and some people are more bi (not to mention, some folks are honestly asexual). I just think the ‘bi’ contingent is larger percentagewise than has been previously appreciated. And I also think that these four categories are less like “bounded regions” and more like regions that slowly fade into each other.

For those of you who found J. Walker’s 138 page a little lengthy for casual reading, the NYT has a good summary of his analysis here (and the bind in which it potentially puts the SCOTUS): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/us/06assess.html?emc=eta1

MikeEss, I will volunteer to be your gay husband.  I think I love you.

purpleshoes #24 - So what formal titles do my husband and I use since he took my last name? Would “Mrs. and Mr. Cif Weltr” be appropriate? I’m fairly informal so generally I use my full name or just my first name, but the doctor yesterday called me “Mrs. Weltr,” which I assume is correct as I am married and my last name is the same as my husband’s. Just curious!

I’m also of the belief that most people are somewhere between 1 and 5 on the Kinsey scale, but I have some theories about those who are most likely to have acknowledged same-sex attraction and their exposure to non-procreative sexuality at an early age (such as, regrettably, child abuse). In a heteronormative culture that links sex to babies, folks will grow up with a narrow definition of sex (which can hopefully later be expanded to include healthy happy fun sex). Whereas kids who see sex as separate from babies know that that sex partners don’t necessarily have to be co-parents. That separate understanding of sex may come from unhappy things like child abuse or just from parents who support healthy happy fun sex and birth control. Thus abuse and bisexuality don’t have a causal relationship, but there may be a correlation for other reasons.

“Mrs. Sally Husbandsname”

As I understand it (and this in no way changes the “recent construction” idea) this was the correct styling for a divorced woman. That was how you knew she was divorced rather than still attached to Herbert. Couldn’t have her labeled as a new product - something had to indicate she was previously owned, if only for truth in social packaging.

(Wikipedia says this was the traditional form in the UK, but eventually became common in the US)

What ticks me off most is that bible thumpers are plenty welcome to have that “traditional” marriage of their choosing, with all the hefty patriarchy they desire. 

In fact, I have a evangelical fundamentalist friend with a preacher husband and 13 kids who is also friends with a couple of our married gay high school classmates and this doesn’t bother her because SHE GETS IT!  Her lifestyle and marriage and family are seriously alternative in the modern world, too ... only she retains the mental capacity to realize that.

Purpleshoes, my husband ultimately sent his mother a Miss Manners column, and now I’m Dr. Kate and he’s Mr. Hisname Lastname, instead of the insulting Mr. and Mrs. Hisname Lastname.  I tolerate that from his 99 year old grandmother because it isn’t a fight worth fighting.

And when you see someone make a late in life decision to become gay after having many relationships with members of the opposite sex (e.g., Carol Liefer, Cynthia Nixon, Kelly McGillis), who knows how much of that is genetic and how much of that is environmental?

My explanation: This doesn’t really apply to Liefer, Nixon, and McGillis, but elderly women are vastly more attractive than elderly men. They’re healthier, they’re more active and they don’t expect you to cook and clean for them (1). Homosexuality may not really a choice, but it’s well worth considering (IMO) as you get up there.

___
(1) Also: You can be with someone who actually likes that you can take your teeth out.

This has been an argument in favor of gay rights forever—-the horse of “traditional marriage” has been let out of the barn and shot dead by feminism (thank god; it was a demon horse),

Well, shot dead by feminism, but the door had already been opened ever since people started realizing that marriage has never been “traditional”.

Consider the various royal families around the world.  A few centuries ago the idea that the crown prince or princess would of course choose their spouse, marry out of love, and be faithful would have been looked at in amusement.  Sure, it happened, but by and large the marriages were for diplomatic reasons, economic reasons, political reasons, or to pick the best stud or mare of the right social class to pump out the next generation (and after that was done, no one really cared about the marriage).

I share the hope that the example of same-sex marriages will kill off the stubbornly surviving patriarchal elements in opposite-sex marriage. And it seems pretty obvious that the bible thumpers see this too, and are deathly afraid of it. Joe and Jane Average, meanwhile, will continue to ask in puzzled tones “but who’s the wife?”; however, their kids’ generation will get it.

@8:

I wish to learn more about these gay re-education camps. MUCH more.

I’m one of those unlucky people who’s only ever felt attraction to one (the opposite) gender, and it seems a pity to be incapable of being sexually attracted to half of the species. Maybe I should sign up!

Steve, I love that take on it.  That it’s a pity to only be attracted to half the population, rather than it being weird to be otherwise.  Thanks for that.

Me, I find myself more physically attracted to men, more emotionally attracted to women, and have been partnered up with a woman for almost 20 years, so I’m outta the game anyway.

yeah, I’m with Steve. If going to camp could teach me to be gay, or at least bi, I’d be packing my bedroll right now. So tired of only being into guys.

Dilan, the way that Dr. Drew exploits child abuse to mask his own prejudices is something I really hate about him.  He asks if someone’s been sexually abused, and he’s going to be right a great deal of the time, because 25% of women of college age have experienced rape or attempted rape.  I treat his “were you sexually abused?” question as seriously as I do when a psychic says, “I’m feeling a loved one of yours behind the veil; they say they died of something in the chest region.” You’re probably going to get a hit enough for people to be like, “Oooooooh.” But it doesn’t say anything about a causal relationship.

Amanda, I think you are absolutely right about the offensiveness of Dr. Drew asking that question, but nonetheless, I also don’t doubt that it is true that a lot of people in the sex industry identify as lesbian or bisexual and were abused as children, and even though Dr. Drew is too reductive (just like everyone else in this debate!) he’s probably not wrong that those sorts of traumatic sexual experiences can affect one’s identification and orientation later in life.

I just wish that this particular issue wouldn’t matter so much to people. There are lots of people out there who seem to think that the case for gay rights turns on how inborn one’s sexual identity is. Not only is this not correct, but the case for a libertarian view of sexuality is strengthened, not weakened, by the fact that these issues are so complex and cannot be reduced to any one input alone.

I’ve lived and worked in the SF Bay Area all of my adult life and count dozens, if not 100s, of gay people as friends. Some of them as closest friends and confidants. However, I don’t agree with them about redefining marriage based on sexual preferences. (Although one older gay friend, in a 40-year relationship, agrees with me on this).

The gay people who I tend not to affiliate with are those who enjoy flaunting their sexual preferences for shock value. You’re gay, so what? I’m not a hater, just can’t stand rudeness.

The main reason I don’t agree with same-sex marriage is because I believe it cheapens the sanctity of the event and that it’s only a matter of time before marriage is allowed between people and their pets. I can hear the eyes rolling, but think about it. People truly “love” their pets, they have serious financial ties with them (insuring them, putting them into their wills, etc.) and some even have sex with them. So why not take it one step further?

Get this: ‘allowing gay marriage appears to reduce the divorce rate.’

“those states which have tended to take more liberal policies toward gay marriage have tended also to have larger declines in their divorce rates. In Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2004, the divorce rate has declined by 21 percent and is the lowest in the country by some margin.”

http://gay.americablog.com/2010/08/science-duck-says-allowing-gay-marriage.html

“On the other hand, the seven states at the bottom of the chart all had constitutional prohibitions on same-sex marriage in place throughout 2008. The state which experienced the highest increase in its divorce rate over the period (Alaska, at 17.2 percent) also happens to be the first one to have altered its constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, in 1998.”

That’s right, boys and girls: for some reason, gay marriage seems to strengthen heterosexual marriage.

Or, at the very least, keep those heteros from walking out the door…

While it may be ostensibly true for those stating it, something about the wistful desire to be bisexual or gay is wildly irritating. If you wanted to be, you would be.

Last week a (white) friend of my teen son posted on Facebook “I wish I were black because some positive stereotype or other”. Your wishes remind of that - you mean them in a complimentary way but they come from a pretty juvenile and appropriating place.

Hrm…Slugger’s comment.

“Many Gay Friends” Check
“But only the GOOD gays” Check
“Absurd Slippery Slope that presumes that animals can sign legal contracts” Check!

And after animals, people will be able to marry their nine year old children! I mean, hell, children have an even greater capability to agree to a legal contract then animals can. Many can even write! And then…the dead! And after marrying the dead…

“That’s right, boys and girls: for some reason, gay marriage seems to strengthen heterosexual marriage.”

Maybe opposite-sex couples are staying married to prove they can beat those damn same sex couples?

“The main reason I don’t agree with same-sex marriage is because I believe it cheapens the sanctity of the event and that it’s only a matter of time before marriage is allowed between people and their pets.”

Show me a pet capable and legally allowed to sign a contract, and then we can discuss it.  Until then, keep your fears (or fantasies) about bestiality in your own fevered brain and out of a discussion between reasonable adults…

#45

The main reason I don’t agree with same-sex marriage is because I believe it cheapens the sanctity of the event and that it’s only a matter of time before marriage is allowed between people and their pets.

Or appliances, don’t forget appliances. For instance, I love my toaster. I might want to marry it.

Or appliances, don’t forget appliances. For instance, I love my toaster. I might want to marry it.

That’s under Proposition Infinity, not Proposition 8. 

Like Bender says, legalize robosexual marriage!

It’s just plain odd to think that a man marrying a man is MORE LIKE a man marrying an animal than it is like a man marrying a woman.  And saying that only opposite-sex marriage has “sanctity,” and making that the reason why it’s better than same-sex marriage, is pretty much a textbook example of “begging the question.”

I’m sure your friends love to hear about how their love cheapens anything it’s associated with, like some sort of demeaning or toxic influence. This queer person is not your friend. Nor is Sparky, who takes on the bullshit “but I have (some marginalized group) friends” defense http://sparkindarkness.dreamwidth.org/2010/03/07/

The main reason I don’t agree with same-sex marriage is because I believe it cheapens the sanctity of the event and that it’s only a matter of time before marriage is allowed between people and their pets.

Absolutely, as soon as an animal can step forward and say “I love my human and I want to marry him/her”, and read and understand the paperwork, and sign it, I will be in favor of human-animal marriage. There is no reason whatsoever why a genetically engineered sentient dog who can talk, holds down a job, and is legally empowered to sign contracts shouldn’t be able to marry a human if both human and dog agree they wish to marry.

However, in the real world… animals can’t talk, can’t consent, can’t sign contracts, can’t even understand contracts… which makes human-animal marriage fundamentally akin to man-woman marriage in supremely patriarchal cultures where women have no legal rights as human beings and are considered to be owned by their fathers or husbands, but not at all akin to same-sex marriage in egalitarian cultures where both parties to a marriage are expected to have equal rights.

Since the slippery slope never brought us man/sheep marriage out of man/woman-who-is-legally- defined-as-chattel marriage, I’m guessing that making marriage *more* about a connection between equals is not going to make that scenario any more likely.

Alara, it is odd that all of these “his society/religious leader forced him to marry the animal he sodomized” stories come from parts of the world where women are chattel.  Chattel, cattle, same difference ...

Slugger brings up another way that feminists have helped make gay-marriage possible: consent. Clearly slugger up their does not understand that animals cannot consent to be married and thus animal marriage is a non-issue. If anything, the old school women as property “buying the cow” style marriage is more similar to beastiality.

I also really like how so many of the “booga booga slippery slope” type homophobic arguments are actually arguments for aboliting marriage all together. Afterall if it weren’t for hetero-marriage, there wouldnt be gay-marriage.

or, what alara said.

@mir

Yep, “a pretty juvenile and appropriating place.”  Not, y’know, such a seemingly essential part of human nature that it is neatly condensed in a proverb.

I understand what you are saying, and agree that there are perhaps good and bad ways of expressing this sentiment.  I get why basing that “I’d rather be” emotion on a stereotype would be offensive (stereotypes themselves are), but is bisexuals are attracted to men and women a stereotype?

When I was a kid, I really wanted brown hair.  Not because brunettes are smarter than blondes, but because I thought I personally thought it was prettier.  When I got older, I dyed my hair and became one.  Is sexuality really like THAT?

I honestly think that some people are just gay, some people are just straight, and some people are more bi (not to mention, some folks are honestly asexual). I just think the ‘bi’ contingent is larger percentagewise than has been previously appreciated.
Comment 31—atheist

As you said (or at least as someone said), it’s hard to tell, since gay people are still urged to claim to be straight, and bi people, especially bi people who aren’t very close to the center, are urged to “pick one or the other.” If it were possible to get a truly accurate map of sexual orientation and we determined that a realistic definition of bisexual applies to 90% of the population, that wouldn’t make actual monosexuals freaks or wrong.

I consider myself provisionally hetero; just because I haven’t met the right guy doesn’t mean I won’t, but I’m not going to be disappointed if I never do. That’s not a wistful desire, and I suspect I’m straight, just, descriptively.

“That’s right, boys and girls: for some reason, gay marriage seems to strengthen heterosexual marriage.”
Maybe opposite-sex couples are staying married to prove they can beat those damn same sex couples?
Comment 51—The Erl

I suspect at least part of the effect is illusory, since different-sex couples rarely wait decades to get married but (some) same-sex couples have had to.

A,AF@61, think not so much greener grass and more Katy Perry. The stereotype is that bisexuals are more morally pure and open-minded and evolved and exotic than mere monosexuals.

@62

But that wasn’t what (IMO) the commenters expressed.  They seemed to say that they would like to be bisexual because then there would be more people (in total) that they would enjoy having sex with.

I am specifically attracted to quite a few different “types” of men, and would enjoy having sex with an even greater number (even if they wouldn’t be LTR potential).  If I were sexually attracted to women AT ALL, it seems like there would be at least one more person (and probably many, many more people) that I would enjoy having sex with. 

Saying that I would enjoy having more sexual options than I currently have is different than claiming that I would be a better person if I had those options.

God loves heterosexual couples because, thankfully, women don’t have “poo-poo holes.”

Lonnie is probably one of those people who believe that semen is incredibly dangerous and so we must all be very careful where it goes, but vaginas are somehow safe because…magnets?

Is there any evidence that lonnie isn’t taking dictation from a four-year-old?

HAHAHAHAHAHAH

OMG Lonnie this issue is totally settled forever now.

Also Lawrence v Texas put the stamp of approval on pee-pee in poo-poo hole sex several years ago, but its cool that you are at least down with lesbian marriage I guess. Baby steps.

I don’t know about the government, but I put MY stamp of approval on anal sex! Especially lesbian anal sex! (ok so I’m not a lesbian. But I approve it anyway!!)

I’m also curious if you’d support gay marriage between men if they promised to never stick their pee pee in their poo poo hole?

Personally I only support straight marriage if the couple promises to never have sex in the shower. That is dangerous!!

I think we need to just create a list of government approved places to put a pee-pee.

Who-has, yes.
poo-poo holes, no.

What about the gobble gobble face-hole? Lonnie, we are dying to know!

God loves heterosexual couples because, thankfully, women don’t have “poo-poo holes.”

Trust me, they do.  This is apparant when they have a habit of putting beans in their homemade soup.

@71

Pssh.  All right-thinking people know that is an illusion created by demons to test your faith in God.

Of course, since there is now some evidence that you (a man) know what happens in a kitchen (the place of and for women), it is obvious that you are in fact a Nazi Communist Socialist Muslin Atheist with intentions to destroy DOMA and, by extension, America, our hypothetical border fence, and…um…other things.

Of course, since there is now some evidence that you (a man) know what happens in a kitchen (the place of and for women),

[Raises an eyebrow]

It’s not the kitchen where the evidence shows up.  It’s in bed…

(and the giggling doesn’t help either)

You know better than that.  That sort of cause and effect thinking holds no truck with Real ‘Murkins.

I just don’t think we Americans should be forced to put our stamp of approval on anal sex. Men putting their pee-pees up other men’s poo-poo holes is not right!

So what lonnie is essentially saying is that only lesbians should have a right to marry.  You can’t trust straight people not to stick it in the ass, and 30-40% do just that.  Even more gay men—-though certainly not all—-have anal sex.  But lesbians can’t have anal intercourse, except with a strap-on, and that’s certainly not someone sticking an actual pee-pee into a poo-poo hole.

Conclusion: the state should only allow lesbians to marry.

I just don’t think we Americans should be forced to put our stamp of approval on anal sex. Men putting their pee-pees up other men’s poo-poo holes is not right!

And once again lonnie displays his fascination with hot man-on-man anal sex. You might think it odd, but many vociferously straight males (like Rekers, Haggard, Craig, etc.) do the same.

OK lonnie’s gotta be a parody troll right? Someone please say yes.

<blockquote>The main reason I don’t agree with same-sex marriage is because I believe it cheapens the sanctity of the event</blockquote?I’m pretty certain that the existence of Las Vegas, and Nevada as a whole, has sucked any “sanctity” it may have ever possessed out of marriage.

I blame the blockquote fail on the weather

I blame it on the gays.

A bit of a non-sequitur, but close to the topic at hand: I was checking Conservapedia for their take on this, and, aside from a brief news item trashing Arnold for his go-ahead, I can find no mention of it at all. The only reference I can find in the “same-sex marriage” article is “Same-sex marriages were legal for a brief period in the state of California, but the people of that state voted to repeal the law in the fall of 2008, through a ballot initiative known as Proposition 8. “

The article is locked. Think Andy’s just taking longer than usual to generate the official grass-roots response, or think they’re just hoping their readers will never know it was legalized?

@Comment #46: judybrowni on 08/06 at 02:16 PM

I think the more liberal states had lower divorce rates before any of them allowed gay marriage in the first place. Probably because of the feminism.

I think the more liberal states had lower divorce rates before any of them allowed gay marriage in the first place. Probably because of the feminism.

probably true, but doesn’t explain the hilariously ironic DROP in divorces since introduction of gay marriage

and count dozens, if not 100s, of gay people as friends.

Shaddup. No one has hundreds of friends. Real life =/= Facebook.

This post has so many stereotypical anti-gay marriage talking points crammed into a couple of paragraphs, I actually think this person is joking, however.

On the title thing, my spouse’s aunt, who will be 92 this fall, is not only a retired professor with a doctoral dgree, but a retired dean.  She never married.  She is still as often addressed as Miss H as she is Dr. H.  We call her Aunt B.

They seemed to say that they would like to be bisexual because then there would be more people (in total) that they would enjoy having sex with.
Comment 63—Atheist, A Feminist

I have a problem in general understanding what it means to want to want something. I have no objection to the idea of finding men arousing, but I feel no loss from not doing so; mir put it well with “if you wanted to be, you would be.” It’s probable that if I were a woman, or were living in a society in which normative male sexuality included attraction to men, I would want to be normal, but even then it wouldn’t be the same as wanting to be attracted to men.

I’m talking about things like:

I love that take on it.  That it’s a pity to only be attracted to half the population, rather than it being weird to be otherwise.

... though on rereading I suppose it may be no more than a countermeme to the idea that bisexuality is wrong or disgraceful. But like a lot of those countermemes, it comes across as demeaning to people who aren’t in the category.

And some of the comments do have a whiff of supposedly positive othering along the lines of “Asians are smart.”

I just have a real problem with “if you wanted to be, you would be.”

That, to me, is the same thing as claiming that any gay person could be straight if they just wanted it enough. 

I personally, don’t think I can be anything other than straight.  Both my boyfriend and my sister are sexually attracted to women and it would be nice to really understand that attraction.  I think it would be arousing for my boyfriend and I to be able to talk about people/physical characteristics that turn us on and to share them.  I don’t, though, and I don’t think I can change my sexuality by wishing really hard.

@83 jadehawk - Oh they’ve dropped? That is interesting.
Who knew marriage equality would lead to happier marriages. Craziness!

I just have a real problem with “if you wanted to be, you would be.”

That, to me, is the same thing as claiming that any gay person could be straight if they just wanted it enough.
Comment 87—Atheist, A Feminist

I got the opposite; I read it as “if that were really what you wanted, you wouldn’t be wanting it, you’d be it.” Gay people have been told they should be straight and see straightness presented as normative and (understandably) want in on that, but I doubt many people want to be sexual orientation Q in the sense that whenever they see someone of whatever gender presentation Qsexuals are into they feel a stirring for a stirring.

Wanting, to me, is about external things. I want to be taller, say. I don’t happen to think my life would be happier* if I were bi, but in any case sexual desire is such a purely internal thing that it’s an odd thing to want. It’s sort of the opposite of Clarence Darrow on spinach.

*or less happy

I don’t think that “internal things” are odd to want.  I’ve tutored math, and I hear over and over again people wishing that they enjoyed math.  Their thinking seems to be that if they enjoyed math, they wouldn’t get as frustrated, would enjoy hearing about it and practicing it and so would be better at it.  They could just wish for being better at math, but that is actually much less common IME (maybe because doing something easy or that comes naturally is not the same as enjoying that thing and we primarily want to be happy).

I also just described to you that I, as a straight woman, experienced such a “stirring for a stirring” because I think my sex life with my boyfriend would be much more awesome if we were turned on by more of the same things.

While it is much less sexual, I enjoy talking to my sister about “hot boys” and our mutual attraction to them.  When my sister talks with me about “hot girls,” there is no mutual attraction.  It would be nice to have that.

Spinach again. I don’t wish I were bi. This is not because I would want to not be bi, but I also think that if I wanted to have sexual urges directed at men (not, saw a practical reason to have sexual urges directed at men) that in itself would be such an urge.