Sunday, February 29, 2004
One of us! One of us!
Part of me is happy to see the gay marriages going on in San Francisco, and New Mexico, and probably Massachusetts, and maybe even Chicago. What's not to like, right? The masses of people rising up and giving a big, adorable, "fuck you!" to homophobes. But it's not quite that simple. It's never quite that simple.
It's the old integration versus separation argument, though that's excessively simplistic. But the marriage thing seems to be demonstrating that what queer folks really want is to merge with mainstream society and not be opressed by it. Which is good, so far as that goes. Given mainstream society, oppression bad.
However, by engaging in that society, they encourage it. And maybe that's what they want. For most people in America, American society is seen as good. For someone like me, who sees American society as more negative than positive, however, it is difficult to cheer on the inclusion of more people.
Anyway. There's a similar article in the Nation about this.
Part of me is happy to see the gay marriages going on in San Francisco, and New Mexico, and probably Massachusetts, and maybe even Chicago. What's not to like, right? The masses of people rising up and giving a big, adorable, "fuck you!" to homophobes. But it's not quite that simple. It's never quite that simple.
It's the old integration versus separation argument, though that's excessively simplistic. But the marriage thing seems to be demonstrating that what queer folks really want is to merge with mainstream society and not be opressed by it. Which is good, so far as that goes. Given mainstream society, oppression bad.
However, by engaging in that society, they encourage it. And maybe that's what they want. For most people in America, American society is seen as good. For someone like me, who sees American society as more negative than positive, however, it is difficult to cheer on the inclusion of more people.
Anyway. There's a similar article in the Nation about this.