JackRiddler wrote:FourthBase wrote:What about the venue Nordic specified, Facebook, the private-ish public sub-discourse among liberals and other leftists who trade political articles and memes, the word of mouth news feed grapevine?
You mean the sphere of voluntary dissemination by individuals making their own choices?
I'm not going to accept that news about the possible recognition of the rights of a large proportion of mankind - of people who have been stigmatized, oppressed and murdered as a lower caste - somehow constitutes a distraction from the simultaneous news of yet another unlawful consolidation of the corporate dictatorship. That's bullshit. It's an odious false dichotomy.
For starters, I'd figure anyone saying that isn't gay and doesn't feel much empathy for those who are. Due to my own experience, my own loved ones and my own principles, I could never see it that way.
There are a billion highly usual distractions going on, and the historic (likely) developments around "gay marriage" (which actually signify an end to all federal discrimination against gay people as a class) are not a distraction from "Monsanto."
Right, I just wanted to point out that it's not just about corporate media anymore. An attempt to distract today cannot be judged to have occurred only if what was being distracted
from would have otherwise been covered by official mainstream or mainstream-alternative media. This is
not to accept this Gay/Monsanto thing as an example. But, for the sake of argument, do note that the demographic of people who might normally raise a social media shit-fit about Monsanto overlaps quite a bit with the demographic of people which has been in jubilation/agitation overdrive for about a week.
Also, as wonderful as marriage equality would be, there are a few reasons to maybe curb one's enthusiasm.
- Bisexuals. To quote myself from social media, as to why I hadn't changed my profile pic:
I support gay marriage. Of course. Death to Prop 8! Death to DOMA! But...
I resent the politically-expedient exclusion from the discourse by the gay-rights advocacy culture, of the wholly-worthwhile subjects of polyandry and polygyny [should have just said polygamy], the smearing of such subjects as beneath civil discourse, as just the red herring of right-wingers intent to reduce gay marriage to the absurd and reprehensible level of marrying animals or children. Have some backbone, homosexuals. Stand by your bisexual brethren's rights, even if rarely exercised or desired. If not, then remove the "B", please.
The genetic theory of same-sex vs. opposite-sex love logically presupposes for the born-bisexual a capacity for both-sex love. At minimum, the bisexual should have the right to partake in both of those loves at the same time, for life. The maximum number of participants in such a marriage arrangement is [to fulfill the logical obligation], depending on the nature of each participant, 3 to 4. No more, no less. Two males, one female. Two females, one male. Two females, two males. So, to fulfill the requirements of born-bisexual both-love, one need only add to the three arrangements already recognized: Three more. One could still, fairly, prohibit multitudinous polygynous harems, for example.
(Obviously, I'm even here guilty of hand-waving away the complications that would arise with hermaphrodites. My apologies to them.)
Yeah, strategically-speaking, I can't *really* blame them either. If I were a cutthroat PR hack, it's what I would recommend for them. But, I expect much from my gay brethren. I hold them to a higher standard of principles and moral excellence.
- "Let them eat diversity"
The assimilation of minority identities and civil rights into the elite of a pre-existing system of injustice and oppression, would be no great victory, in fact it may just be the next logical step in preserving and perpetuating the status quo, the status quo that means the most, the economic one. Small injustices anywhere may not be as big a threat to justice everywhere as you may think, and remedying them may perversely only reinforce a broader, deeper, viler injustice everywhere, especially if we get too caught up popping tiny bottles of pink champagne in jubilation to notice, say, the peasant wage-slave sweeping up the thrown-rice.
A link that cannot be posted enough:
http://jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/(For good measure:
http://prospect.org/article/trouble-diversity )
Glenn Greenwald at his best, balancing a tightrope of "Hallelujah" and "Wait a minute, not so fast", finding true cause for an optimism that eludes a doom-queen like Hedges:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -defeatismI don't want to overstate the lesson here. There are reasons why such radical change on this issue is easier than on many others. Social issues don't threaten entrenched ruling interests: allowing same-sex couples to marry doesn't undermine oligarchs, the National Security State, or the wildly unequal distribution of financial and political power. Indeed, many of those ruling interests, led by Wall Street and other assorted plutocrats (including Obama's donor base), became the most devoted advocates for LGBT equality. If anything, one could say that the shift on this issue has been more institution-affirming than institution-subverting: the campaign to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" continually glorified and even fetishized military service, while gay marriage revitalizes a traditional institution - marriage - that heterosexuals have been in the process of killing with whimsical weddings, impetuous divorces, and serial new spouses (as Rush Limbaugh might put it: I'd like you to meet my fourth wife). And these changes are taking a once marginalized and culturally independent community and fully integrating it into mainstream society, thus making that community invested in conventional societal institutions.
- The privileged solipsism of the happily oppressed
Imagine, a new "gay cancer" spreading metastatically across the country, ruining lives, draining bank accounts, leading to deaths (thankfully not as many as the last one, or as certain, but grimly, there is still time), ignored and outright denied by the scientific community, starved of research funding, sufferers left to fend for themselves in terms of homeopathic or holistic remedies, a social stigma as people avert their social eyes and sufferers find themselves lonely against the void...
Oh, wait, did I say "gay"? My bad, it's just Lyme disease, nevermind. My brother's ex-boyfriend was HIV-positive, for many years, the picture of health, literally. Still is. But, not if he had Lyme disease. If deer ticks only bit gay people, how many fundraising extravaganzas and "Silence = Death" rallies, you think?
