Opinions

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by aishah

my comments were on the attention given to the gay marriage issue as a whole, not just the president's speech, because i was addressing other issues brought up in the article snow posted. these were my comments specifically about the president's speech, in case you missed them:



if i'm wrong, i wish someone would explain to me how this statement actually makes any meaningful difference in terms of getting gay marriage laws passed. obama still doesn't believe it's a federal issue; he still believes it's a states' rights issue. as we've seen in the civil rights movement, that basically means fuck all for equality. i'm touched that he gives a damn but...his 5 minute statement doesn't make much concrete difference in the current state of gay marriage in this country.

it's sweet but people are seriously acting like he passed gay marriage for everybody himself, based on the responses to it. he didn't actually DO anything. and my point was not that he can't multitask, it's that this is the ONLY relevant issue he's voiced ANY opinion on. fuck cece mcdonald being in jail. fuck trans women of color being murdered. obama will never speak about that because gay marriage is the only relevant political issue for him.

Deep breath. I'm guessing you're much, much younger than I am, and that you have no memories of just how oppressively anti-gay the entire U.S. was just 30 years ago. I'm guessing that you weren't even born yet, so how would you know what it felt like to live in a world where young lesbian and gay people killed themselves, or were killed, with depressing regularity and impunity? When a gay person was sexually assaulted and/or killed, it didn't even make the news. Ever. It happened FAR, far more often than it happens now, but there were no news personalities publicly lamenting the end of a promising young life due to bullying, because NO ONE believed that a gay man or lesbian could have a promising life. No one wore special purple clothes in solidarity, and NO ONE ever even admitted publicly that the reason why a kid might have killed themselves was because they were, (gasp), homosexual. That was because most people, including and especially the families of lgbt kids and adults, were relieved to have lost the shame of having someone who was 'like that' in their families. There were a few unpleasant whispers, and then everyone went about their business. If we were ever portrayed in any movie we were venal, sinister stereotypes. Lesbians in particular either turned to men, or they committed suicide. Every fucking time. There were NO lgbt people on TV. EVER. No one even said the word 'lesbian'. It sounded... dirty.

I remember the huge leap forward when it was no longer an invitation to be fined, boycotted, and/or censored to say the word, and news orgs actually agreed to report that a person was a h-h-homosexual. Except it wasn't much of a leap because a person who came out of the closet was either an 'admitted homosexual', or an 'avowed homosexual'. I remember when the owner of the New York Times declared that the paper of record would NEVER replace 'homosexual' with 'gay or lesbian'. My cousin and his partner have miraculously been together for nearly 40 years. For the first DECADE AND A HALF of their relationship, Bill had to invent an imaginary female partner so that he didn't lose his job. For the first decade of their relationship they both could have been institutionalised had a malicious person said something to the wrong authority. And that was in New York fucking City. It was far, far worse in the rest of the country.

I'm not talking about ancient history. I'm talking about the 19 freaking 80s. Perhaps that seems like ancient history to you, but it's pretty flipping recent to those of us who lived through that shit. I'm about to turn 50, and my friends who are a decade older tell stories that turn my lesbian blood to ice. If you had said 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, that I might see marraige equality in my lifetime I would have hurt myself laughing.

Why am I ranting now? Because the President of the United fucking States just said out loud that he supports marraige equality. Perhaps the office of President isn't very impressive to you, either. Perhaps you haven't noticed that we in the U.S. have ALL the money and ALL the power. For better or worse, we're the 2000 pound gorrilla in the room full of puny little lemurs. Like it or not, the President of the US has at least twice as much real power, (financial, military, diplomatic), than the leaders of all the countries in the E.U., plus all the countries in the Middle East put together. And then some. That person just made a monumental statement about those of us who lived through institutional shit so bad that many still can't talk about it. That statement says, "You are equal, and your relationships are equal". That carries a huge emotional weight as well as real political weight.

In case you never studied civics, the President of the U.S. is in charge of a lot more than just signing bills into law. Among other things, she or he can push legislation through Congress, and can signal Congress about the bills she or he won't sign. That means real power over real legislation. In other words, Obama's word carries more real weight than the word of any other person on earth right now.

Am I pissed off? Obviously. That's partly because the myopia of saying that marraige equality is an issue that only affects middle class and wealthy people is infuriating. How many elder lesbians have to live in extreme poverty before anyone notices that they're poor because they're not entitiled to their late partner's Social Security benefits? WTF? And, by the way, is there something wrong with benefitting middle class people? Are we not supposed to care about the welfare of middle class people as well as people of all other income levels?

I'm going to take another deep breath and stop ranting now, because I feel tempted to say something rude. I will say, if you can't figure out why this was an historic moment, perhaps you should read more history.