BronxBombshell said:
I have a migraine, and I'm off to bed. But I knew I'd forget to post this if I didn't do it right away.
Stronzo, I hope you'll forgive a slight breach of our agreement. I'm sure you will as I come here actually on the same side of the argument, for once.
Here's what I want to say. The most important thing here is to not lose sight of the main objective. Stronzo, you seem to be almost in despair in your early posts in this thread, and that's not like you. Clearly, the next step is to do just what the court suggests and approach the legislators. If I'm not mistaken, (and I could be) most of them are up for re-election. Now is the time to apply the pressure, now before September primaries. Get those petitions and letters out. Organize disruptive, performance art-like demonstrations. Put on your marching shoes. The court says the state constitution has to be changed. Do not despair. Get it changed.
I'm going to go back to ignoring you now. :wink:
Breach away. It's fine. You've nailed my mood precisely. But please believe me our respective causes are light years apart in evolution so I find less support generally in mine than you do in yours as easily seen in our respective threads. Perhaps a generation from my own it'll be different. I hope so. But now gay rights are still in their infancy in any practical way.
I have a migraine too. And your critique of me is correct. I'm rarely in a defeat mode but this thing's pretty big. You see where I live I don't witness, at least firsthand and by overt action, the sort of feelings "COLJohn" speaks of in his good post about preconceptions in the mid West. I was raised in a household that valued the individual immensely over the group. Trouble is I still, naively, think everyone if given the opportunity, will take the high road. Even in my own pretty enlightened family group I was never subjected to stereotypes about limp wrists and lisps. So I come at this from a place of astonishment on a pretty primal level.
Indeed knowing I was gay as early as I can recall, I found it pretty easy to make the pronouncement to all my family members once I had my footing and was confindent of my place in the sexual continuum. So when I see this business like what happened in Albany I still see it as entirely unbelievable of a real gut level.
I've never been one to stoop to the "common mentality" so with the abuses of our Constitution being quasi-permanent by court mandate I become increasingly sobered to a distortion of reality. It simply defies decency to me this business. So I'm left thinking that the human race is, of necessity, a rather superflous and not-terribly-bright lot.
That's really the source of any despondency you read here.
I rally. I always do.
But this thing's taken a monstrous toll on my fellows (term used inclusively) in my beloved Massachusetts and especially in the gay neighborhoods of Boston and at the tip of Cape Cod (Provincetown) where my boyfriend and I have so many good gay friends. The mood's markedly changed and before we all rally to the "call" I suspect there will be a sobering time of this reality setting in (where you find me now) in which we regroup over the next few months.
I've just finished watching the local news here on the Boston channel and the New York decision has made the Massachusetts one come to the forefront again. The pro amendment bunch (read anti-gay marriage) has been bolstered and the present status of gay marriage will come up for public vote in November of 2008. It's pretty obvious to me that this vote will overturn the State Supreme Court's decision to allow us to marry.
Indeed putting gay marriage up to popular vote is synonymous with giving the denizens of Selma, Alabama the right to popular vote on Civil Rights issues in the mid-1960s. There are some things in this democracy that have to be instituted it appears. My friend "dong20" has written me privately and this is what he had to say about our Constitution and this issue. It bears posting and I suspect he'll not consider it a betrayal of our private discourse if I do so:
dong20inprivatepmtoStronzo said:
The problem with the Constitution is that while it was a masterpiece of it's age, that age is not our age. One can see that as there is no explicit right to same sex marriage written into the Constitution and the remit of the judiciary is to uphold the constitution the judgment may be legal in that narrow context. But the fact that there is such variance of opinion means it is coming down the courts making ruling based on personal morality judgments, and that is a very steep and slippery slope.
However it would be fool to believe that the intended effect of the 14th and 15th amendements was not to deny those rights but simply to elucidate those deemed most vital or obvious at that time, and, as times change so must your Constitution.
And so it must.
Thanks for weighing in BronxBombshell. I was glad to see your support here.
Stronzo.