Ya know I get that words are not legislation. But it is also true that you cannot legislate acceptance. Therefore it is also useful to have people in the public eye, especially respected individuals, advocating acceptance. Yet we do need the legislation. However to get the legislation before the acceptance is not without its own set of difficulties. I imagine you could pass a law making bigotry of any type illegal and you would not have any less bigots just more criminals.
Still laws need to change, however when they do it does not guarantee much of anything except exactly what the law allows. If you are allowed to marry then that’s exactly what you will get. No more, sometimes less, like when someone refuses to marry you because it’s against their religion, or if you can afford and want a wedding some will still be able to refuse to plan your wedding or allow you to hold your wedding in their establishment because of religious concerns. Perhaps because they advocated enthusiastically for the preservation of their particular version of human rights.
When humans are not allowed to exercise what are considered human rights there needs to be a law in order for many of us to have any recourse, because clearly human rights are not a guarantee for all human beings. And for many of us humans they are non-existent unless specifically legislated.
Legislation won’t change the fact that some people will still hate queers of any ilk (or hate some particular ilk much more energetically and emphatically than other ilks) and wish us nothing but pain and misery and even participate in various activities geared toward ensuring that we suffer pain and misery abundantly. But it will make certain activities geared toward creating specific pain and misery against the law. It will also add a small measure of protection in the form of consequences for breaking the law and trying to withhold the specific human right a specific legislation has granted us. And whether we personally want that right or not it’s still in all our best interests that we are validated legally as being worthy of a specific human right. I get that doesn’t mean diddly squat in regards to the plethora of basic human rights many of us are still denied.
It also won’t change that some of us can and some of us will choose to join mainstream society. It won’t change that some (queer republicans come to mind) willfully, even cheerfully participate in their own oppression because they realize that the oppression of the rest of us, even if it means that they are also minimally oppressed in one aspect of their lives, is of more financial value to them than personal freedom and that equality in any form simply means less for them.
It won’t change that some of us are myopic and see the world through a very privileged lens. It won’t change that some of us only have interest in what personally affects us and when we get what we want we go back to apathy, beer and baseball or whatever entertains us. It won’t change much, but it will require one particular human right to be available to one group of human beings previously denied it. And to me this can never be a bad thing.
I guess I am trying to understand what exactly is being said here. If you are against gay marriage could you explain specifically what gay marriage will do to oppress certain segments of the queer population? Is it that it drains too much energy from various movements? Or is seen as the only legitimate movement? And if you are not against gay marriage per se, could you explain what you are against surrounding gay marriage.
I have to add that the fact that without Canada’s federal recognition of same sex couples rights to immigrate Truly Scrumptious and I would not have been able to live together and that might make it difficult for me to understand another point of view. Neither of us are occupationally or financially privileged so we would have had no way to circumvent the immigration laws in the US. Family class was the only possible avenue open to either of us for immigration. So without Canada’s immigration laws it would have been exceedingly challenging, probably impossible, for us to be together sharing our lives every day (at least legally). I get that kind of relationship is not for everyone but it is for some of us and I doubt that sexual preference, class, race, gender, sex, intelligence, or even mental health dictates the existence of this need in an individual. Besides I don’t believe human rights are rights because they are popular or because everyone wants to exercise them.
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