Re: POLITICS - pointless debate about second-class citizen

[Guest guest]

Anton wrote:

> Why are you guys wasting your time debating the meaning of a

> completely vague and for-extremely-subjective-rhetoric-only term

> like " second-class " ??? Nobody will win the debate. This

> whole " framing the issue " nonsense is just playing games with grade

> school set theory using English instead of mathematical notation.

> All the members of the union of sets A and B that are not in set B

> are in the complement of the complement of A... Like, who cares?

Because I think it's stupid to try to advance a legitimate cause with

bogus arguments. If the best argument you can advance is a questionable

(at best) allegation of " second-class citizenship, " then the easy

conclusion to jump to is that you don't have much of a case.

Furthermore, it trivializes the mistreatment of those who actually have

been second-class citizens. You're right, though--I have better things

to do. While I'm somewhat sympathetic to the issue of homosexual

marriage, I really don't care about it all that much, and I think that

its importance is wildly overstated by both sides.

[Guest guest]

>> While I'm somewhat sympathetic to the issue of homosexual

marriage, I really don't care about it all that much, and I think that

its importance is wildly overstated by both sides. <<

" Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among

his hungry brothers in the dust! " ( Dickens)

Christie

[Guest guest]

> >> While I'm somewhat sympathetic to the issue of homosexual

> marriage, I really don't care about it all that much, and I think

that> its importance is wildly overstated by both sides. <<

>

> " Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too

much life among his hungry brothers in the dust! " ( Dickens)

>

It sounds like the events in San Francisco this weekend are a joyful

celebration of the human spirit. I feel like I'm missing something

that I can't see it.

Marty

[Guest guest]

Christie wrote:

>>> While I'm somewhat sympathetic to the issue of homosexual

> marriage, I really don't care about it all that much, and I think that

> its importance is wildly overstated by both sides. <<

>

> " Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much

> life among his hungry brothers in the dust! " ( Dickens)

So how has your life been made worse by the government's refusal to

recognize your marriage to a woman? As a heterosexual, I see no

compelling reason to enter into a government-sanctioned marriage, and I

may very well choose not to. The greencard thing I'll give you--that's a

very real problem, and something should be done about it, but only a

very small percentage of people are ever affected by it. That doesn't

mean that it's right, but it does mean that it's not an issue for the

vast majority of homosexuals. Everything else that I've heard so far

seems pretty specious. That so many people apparently think that they

can make their marriages more meaningful through a stamp of governmental

approval is disturbing to me.

[Guest guest]

>> So how has your life been made worse by the government's refusal to

recognize your marriage to a woman? As a heterosexual, I see no

compelling reason to enter into a government-sanctioned marriage, and I

may very well choose not to. The greencard thing I'll give you--that's a

very real problem, and something should be done about it, but only a

very small percentage of people are ever affected by it. <<

, I am at a loss how to answer this. You appear to want to know how it's

impacted me personally, which is utterly irrelevant.

I am glad you see the green card problem. It impacts more people than you

realize. There were many of us who never saw Tim again, and were not able to

help or support him in any way as he was dying. And since some of our friends

from those days who also had HIV are still alive, it cannot be ruled out that

Tim, had he been back in San Francisco and getting the kind of medical care they

did, might also still be alive. There's no way to know, because of course, many

of the people I know from then who had HIV are dead despite being in San

Francisco. So everyone is impacted who loved or cared about Tim, from his

parents and siblings in Wisconsin to his friends in San Francisco, to all his

friends and loved ones in Italy.

And certainly Tim and Pietro were not the only couple who faced this bitter

choice.

I have another friend, Jay, who nursed his lover through AIDS. During the years

before his lover died, his lover's parents never once contacted him or took any

responsibility for helping care for him or made any effort to be in his life.

But when he died, having left his whole estate to Jay, the family swept in, had

the will challenged in court claiming that the very fact that Jay was the

caretaker for their son was undue influence, and the judge agreed and threw the

will out. Many comments were made in the ruling that indicated that the " nature "

of Jay's and his lover's relationship was intrinsically exploitative - not their

personal relationship, which no one had any evidence of and which was not

discussed in any way during the case, but simply the fact that they were both

men. They were not far apart in age and Jay had fairly substantial resources of

his own and was not some floozy out to rip off his lover. Nursing someone with

AIDS, which I have done, is not a walk in the park and not the kind of thing you

sign up for just to get a condo.

Once the will was thrown out, Jay lost everything that he and his lover had

together. He was literally nothing anymore - not spouse, not common law spouse,

not heir, nothing. Even just the little things like his lover's clothing were

taken away from him. I don't know if you've ever lost someone you deeply loved,

but sometimes those little things, like the clothes they wore that still smell

like them, or the last book they read, mean incredibly much when they are gone.

I cannot count the number of men I know or knew who came home from their lovers'

deathbeds or funerals to find the locks had been changed on the home they had

shared, sometimes for many years, with their partners. Even in the face of

wills, many judges simply let their own aversion to homosexual relationships be

the deciding factor in how they ruled - especially for those who were not in San

Francisco.

Families who flew in at the 11th hour and threw all of us out of the hospital

rooms of our friends. And no one could do anything about it, because all the

months and sometimes years we had been caring for these people, we were legally

nothing. Had the lover been the legal spouse, or even the common law spouse,

they would have had immediate legal standing to say who could be present in the

hospital or at the funeral, to make medical decisions.

Families who came in after someone had AIDS dementia and simply swept them away,

because they had the legal right to do that and the partner did not.

Yes, people did start getting powers of attorney and other forms of legal

protection. Some of them couldn't afford to get a lawyer, some of them could.

Some of these legal documents worked, some didn't - some hospitals and courts

just wouldn't enforce them or threw up so many obstacles it was like starting

from scratch every single day. I laughed when I saw someone suggest these types

of documents as the " solution " for gay partners for medical and inheritance

scenarios. Been there, done that, doesn't work.

I really could go on and on with heartbreaking personal stories, but I also feel

that there is an additional issue here. I understand that you and others have a

certain degree of scorn for anyone who wants societal approval of their personal

relationship. I'll be honest that my head used to spin when I'd hear other

lesbians and gay men talk about the right to marry and the right to serve openly

in the military - why, I thought, would anyone want to be a part of these

oppressive institutions? To me, focusing on these issues was a step backward.

But as I've gotten older, and my friends have gotten older (or died), as my

edges have gotten a bit softer, I've come to have a lot more understanding of

the symbolic value of these two last bastions of institutionalized homophobia.

Despite my own personal wish that the government would get out of the marriage

business, that is not the world we live in. In the world we live in, the

government is very much in the marriage business. Maybe I personally would

choose to boycott that institution. Maybe not. But I can't make that choice for

others. If a gay or lesbian citizen wishes to marry the person they love, then I

believe they should be able to do it, in the same way a heterosexual citizen can

marry the person they love. It's something important to them that is available,

freely, to heterosexuals in their same circumstances, and denied to them.

And while I may not have felt this way 25 years ago, the things I've seen in

those 25 years have made me feel it today, that this is an enormous injustice

that needs to be rectified.

Christie