| Dear Reader, This is an opinion article printed in an “off-broadway” L.A. newspaper called the Garment & Citizen. http://www.garmentandcitizen.com/category/archives/archived-news-stories/2009- 03-06-0_2456.php The chain of emails it set off (Jack [me], Kevin, and the Ed), starting with my answering letter to the editor (not published) has me reeling, not about what is in my head but about my ability to share. It minds me of two television sets turned on and set facing each other. Skip to the letter The Final Draft printed in this font at the end of this file if you want a quick read. Enjoy… |
| Article, Garment & Citizen 3/6/09 GUEST VIEWPOINT Why Gays Fight Prop 8 By Tom De Simone On the steps of City Hall, a middle aged man recently told a crowd of young gay rights activists what it was like to live in the era of Harvey Milk: “We felt like we were so close to full equality,” he says, “like we could reach out and grab it.” Yet 30 years later, the passage of Prop 8 reminds us that progress can be slow. For young people who believed that we grew up in an era of seemingly increasing acceptance, Prop. 8 has been a shocking and brutal assault. Prop 8 invokes more than same-sex marriage; in many ways it is a litmus test for society’s tolerance toward gay people in general. Take the television commercials that ran during the campaign. Supporters of the initiative threatened that legalized same-sex marriage would somehow endanger children. This insinuation revived the archaic misperception of homosexuality as a learned and shameful behavior. Many people oppose gay marriage because they believe homosexuals choose their lifestyle and society should not reward such behavior. Not only is this belief a fallacy, it is also an affront to our individual liberty. In the California Supreme Court’s original decision to allow same- sex marriage, marriage itself was only part of the ruling. The Court reiterated that gay people are fully entitled to all the rights and responsibilities which every group of society is granted. The Court thus determined that discrimination based on sexual orientation was just as nefarious as discrimination based on race or sex. Yet in passing Prop. 8, for the first time in history, a bare majority overturned a court’s granting of full equality for a minority and enshrined discrimination in our constitution. While many voters saw this initiative as a matter of opinion— another question on their long ballots—gay people saw it as a direct attack on their full social inclusion in the nation’s most diverse state. This is why gay people will not settle for second- class terminology, such as civil union or domestic partnership. Yes, it may be easier to accept almost all the same rights under a different name, but the reason for severing the name from the rights is to separate one group of people from another. As history has proven, separate is never equal, and to deny same-sex couples the word marriage is to condone inequality. The California Supreme Court planned to once again hear arguments regarding the right of same-sex couples to marry in California on March 5, as this newspaper went to press. It can only be hoped that the court will reject Prop 8 and restore same- sex marriage. Not doing so will set the dangerous precedent that minority rights are forever at the mercy of the beliefs of the majority. That would undermine the entire reason for constitutional rights. No matter how the court rules, the battle over same-sex marriage will likely continue. But if the aftermath of Prop 8 is any indication, gay rights activists are unwilling to relent in their struggle for full equality, no matter how far we must reach out to grab it. De Simone is Downtown Community Vice President of the Stonewall Young Democrats |
| My letter to the editor Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 10:51:04 -0800 From: xj@yahoo.com Subject: Why Gays Fight Prop 8 To: editor@garmentandcitizen. com; xbj@msn.com; xphomo@aol. com; xme@hotmail.com; xian@earthlink.net; xfrank@earthlink.net; xBK@mac. com; xbja@earthlink.net; xspi@hotmail.com; xjimnk@comcast.net; xto@anyworldgrafiks.com Editor, L.A. Garment & Citizen Response to Guest Viewpoint 3/6/09 "Why Gays Fight Prop 8" Dear Ed, I am ambivalent about writing this response because I believe in individual freedom and think this country would be better off if every individual paid more attention to it. However, freedom stems from‚ responsibility. When a gay activist invokes the trampling of his rights, comparing himself to black freedom riders of the nineteen- fifties, without paying even lip service to responsibility, this begs the question (old definition: slyly inserting an assumption into the posing of a question. The assumption turns out to be the beggar's desired answer, e.g., "Have you stopped beating your wife?"). I raised two daughters, and as I made my poor battered way Through these people's teenage years, I was thankful that I and every last adult member of my community believed in, and taught by example, the concept of marriage (even to the extent of tsk-tsk-ing the inevitable shacking up and divorcing). My kids breathed it in almost from birth, without it being forced upon them by lectures or onerous classroom study. Everybody knows that this is about getting the young to at least THINK about what the effect on their lives would be of postponing sexual activity from age 14 to, say, age 24. I demand that gay activists abandon the hidden assumption that they are being discriminated against analogously to black-skinned individuals and other disadvantaged minorities, that is, because of appearance. They are being discriminated against because of behavior, and however much (or little, guess which) I feel gays should be discriminated against for their behavior in private, the dilution and obfuscation of marriage with a free license to do so, is very much a PUBLIC behavior of an ADVANTAGED minority and is, in my humble opinion, deserving of castigation and condemnation and proscription, not protection. Jack B Nimble Echo Park redundant extra jab (50's civil rights, after all, was only asking for the removal of discrimination based on appearance: they didn't have the nerve, say, to ask that black- skinned individuals who were on trial for embezzlement get a mandatory innocent verdict.) |
| Kevin responds first --- On Sat, 3/7/09, xme <xme@hotmail.com> wrote: Actually, the gay marriage thing is as much about responsibility as for anyone else! As for the "appearance" bit, actually, it wasn't appearance that was the issue. It was discrimination for being what they were born as. Gays contend they were born gay -- and are being discriminated against for that. They say their conduct is the same and as meritorious as anyone else's. |
| I answer Kevin Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 18:19:39 -0800 From: xj@yahoo.com Subject: RE: Why Gays Fight Prop 8 To: xme@hotmail.com my letter was a response to an opinion piece (which I sent later) and could have been titled "why straights fight gays fighting Prop 8". Your picky pickies totally ignore my core concept about the how and why of the damage that broadening marriage will do to civilization—the civilization that everyone including gays have to live in. It's a cutting off your nose to spite your face argument that I expect all but the most foaming at the mouth gay activists will eventually subscribe to. READ THE GODDAMN THING AGAIN! nimble |
| Kevin comes back --- On Sat, 3/7/09, xme <xme@hotmail. com> wrote: You did not make an argument about "broadening marriage will do to civilization-- the civilization that everyone including gays have to live in." That was not in your argument, although having spoken with Susan over the hears, I was looking for it. Had it been there, I would have said that it is preposterous, it will have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on civilization! And to make that your argument would require implicitly that all gays be stamped out and eliminated – or converted -- as it is the conduct that that argument gets at, not marriage. Marriage is about taking on responsibility -- they thing you argued gays should have to do! |
| Me back at Kevin Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 23:02:54 -0800 From: samplej@yahoo.com Subject: RE: Why Gays Fight Prop 8 To: sampleme@hotmail.com; samplebj@msn.com; editor@garmentandcitizen.com Dearest Kevin, The argument is in my having raised two daughters, and is obvious to anyone who has (tried to) parent teenagers: try to imagine yourself in my position (as I can empathize with young fathers who are coming after me), and you will find the viewpoint easier to love; the clearness of the definition of marriage, heretofore, was and is important to me. Please at least try this thought experiment: pretend that it is your view of reality that marriage is not only about protecting babies by affecting the behavior of young parents, but also about protecting young teens from becoming parents too young by affecting THEIR behavior in a measured, gentle way. Can you pretend you have this worldview for at least a moment? It's not that it isn't valuable to have gay parents being all nice and responsible, but the effect on the majority population has much greater weight in the mind of a father of teenagers who is deprived of the support of this institution. How, you say, is he deprived? Marriage doesn't any longer connect-- in the mind of his teenager-- with the teenager's contemplating the long range consequences of his sexual activity! Why? Because it now equally (and more tenuously) applies to any two people tickling each other's fancy! It puts off the connection with babies and responsibility for them from the age of 14-- the age at which boy-girl couples start being in the greatest danger of being babies having babies-- to let us say 24—the age at which paired straights contemplate marriage and paired gays contemplate adoption, etc. In my humble opinion, the psychological need of the far greater numbers of boy-girl couples in the earlier age range outweighs the desires of adult gays to fit in. If foaming-at-the-mouth gay activists continue to harp on this as EXCLUSIVELY "the majority stepping on the minority", deliberately refusing to acknowledge that there are other POTENTIALLY VALID viewpoints out there which have to do with a society not letting itself descend into chaos, then they are either a) very crazy or b) very selfish (in my humble opinion). And don't tell me that we have perfect contraception and that this (purported) fact makes all arguments about humans controlling their moral lives moot, and don't tell me that our science is so good that it can cure any ills that may crop up as more and more humans decide to let it all hang out and explore their animal sides. nimble |
| Over to you, Kevin --- On Sun, 3/8/09, xme <xme@hotmail. com> wrote: You're just using a smoke screen. The two things have absolutely no connection. If you're not gay, you're not gay, and just because someone you never even heard of gets into a gay marriage is not going to make you gay. That's an incredibly rediculous argument. You're arguing that everyone deep down really wants to be gay and that we all have to fight that urge! That aside, just talking about writing and communication, your issue in writing tends to be that you presume everyone else has the same things in their head as you do so you don't need to say that that is, just need to make a mere reference to children and everyone with children as no thoughts of their own, all walk in lock stop, so just say the word and everyone knows everything in your mind. If so, why make the argument if everyone already knows it! No, you have to say what is on your mind because everyone -- even if they have children – have completely different things in their mind. In fact, you will find that many people with children are not thinking the same thing you are, and at any rate, are not going to PRESUME that you are thinking what they are. You need to say what you are thinking. If is NOT obvious to anyone, whether they have children or not. |
| Me Again From: xj samplej@yahoo.com Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 23:02:33 -0700 (PDT) To: xme@hotmail.com, editor@garmentandcitizen.com, xbj@msn.com Subject: RE: Why Gays Fight Prop 8 Dear Kevin, I didn't mean seeing someone in a gay marriage would make my teenager gay. I meant it would make them straight but out of control. Why? Because it would make marriage exactly one-third as meaningful and compelling as it has been for thousands of years. To everybody? No, just to straight teenagers who represent the biggest damage to a society if you cut them loose from this moral compass. I can believe that childless old you would read my words with such extreme prejudice, but again, just realize that parenting is a sometimes daunting experience and it ties a lot of us together. Do we have the final say? I don't know, but this is a broad societal issue which should be discussed by the whole population and not decided in judges' chambers with lawyers talking abstruse legal technicalities. And I think, gay gene or not, that this is indeed beyond a genetic endowment issue, and that, as with all us humans, gays are not robots and at some point even they would have to admit that they are b-e-h-a-v-i-n-g. The issue then becomes, do you care more about getting your entitlements as an abused minority or whether you may be damaging YOUR society. And make no mistake: exhibiting black skin is not really a behavior, although freedom riding is. The difference between gay rights and black-skinned rights is that, while black-skinned individuals would be expected to demand a clause in their rights-giving laws to allow them to continue their behavior of exhibiting black skin, they would not be expected (assuming they received total equal treatment from then on) to demand a statute giving them the right to continue to create civil disturbances any time they wanted. p.s. I hope it's ok with you that I've been sharing this exchange with S and J. nimble |
| Kevin Redux On Tue, 3/10/09, xme <xme@hotmail.com> wrote Whether a same-sex couple gets married has absolutely NO effect on ANYONE else's marriage. A marriage is between the couple being married, not between them and the rest of the population. 1/3? How do you make up such numbers?! Children are not going to be out of control because someone else gets married - that comment is insane. Someone else's marriage has NO effect on teenagers actions. In fact, teenagers won't even give it another thought -- unless YOU drum it into them and seek to brainwash them. The issue would not be whether gays get married but what you scream to the teenagers about it. That would mean that you are the problem, not the gays getting married. Also, parents have no monopoly on knowing about children. That's just pompous -- and a very unknowing statement. I'll tell you, many parents know nothing about children. |
| The editor responds to my original letter --- On Thu, 3/12/09, editor@garmentandcitizen.com <editor@garmentandcitizen.com> wrote: Jack, I tried editing your Letter to the Editor (see below), but I'm not sure point has been rendered clear and correct. I held it from the issue on March 13, but would like to get it in next week. Could you take a look and see if this accurately represents your thoughts? I don't think, by the way, that gays in general claim to be singled out because of the way they look. I think they concede that bias against them is based on their behavior. They do claim kinship to African/Americans, casting their efforts as a matter of Civil Rights--but I don't hear gay folks denying or going around the fact that the matter is behavior based in their case. In any case, I think that you have to clearly state that you find gay behavior abberant, and make if plain that you endorse discrimination based on such behavior. Ed Editor: I am ambivalent about writing this response to the recent column urging the legalization of gay marriage [Guest Viewpoint, “Why Gays Fight Prop 8,� issue of March 6]. I am ambivalent because I believe in individual freedom and think this country would be better off if every individual paid more attention to it. However, I cannot accept gay activists' claims that their rights are being trampled, or or their efforts to compare themselves to the African/American Freedom Riders of the 1950s. African/Americans have been discriminated against, in large part, because of their appearance, or physical characteristics. Prop 8 does not discriminate against gays because of their appearance or physical characteristics. It does so based on the behavior of gays. The granting of rights to marriage would condone such behavior, which, in my opinion, is not worthy of constitutional protection. Jack B Nimble Echo Park |
| Jack v. Ed From: xJ samplej@yahoo.com Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:39:14 -0700 (PDT) To: editor@garmentandcitizen.com, xbj@msn.com, xme@hotmail.com, xtkm@dslextreme.com, xian@earthlink.net Subject: RE: Why Gays Fight Prop 8/from Ed Dear Ed, It is interesting watching one's words go out and come back not having created the effect one desired. I'm glad you didn't print it. I don't know if I can come up with a small enough column-inches, even eliminating all the yada-yada-yada about how we rely too much on the notion that we have great contraception or even great mental science to deal with the ills that were once exclusively the province of social-moral indoctrination (or pointing to the bedraggled girl in the gutter and saying "this could be you if you don't mind your 'p's and 'q's"). And the remarks about how Hollywood personalities have already done for marriage and so what is the big deal? And I have seen at least two people interpret my arguments concerning my kids' perception of sex to mean I was concerned that gays were out to somehow artifically goose up their fertility rates, someday to become a majority perhaps. If I said that, then in the words of George Harrison, "I din't know wot oi wuz dewin' !" Let me start out with a non-letter form and see if you agree that there IS a clear idea here and maybe we can work up from there to a presentable piece. CORE ARGUMENT: My daughters were taught gently (from birth, by the unspoken assumption of all the adults around them that there was this big deal called marriage) to view their relationships with boys (biggest payoff to be at onset of puberty) as special (important, tagged, flagged, dangerous, interesting). This gentle, effective training, without reading assignments, without classroom regimentation, without FATHERLY LECTURES, is a powerful aid to the shared goal of all of us who live in and contribute to this society-- even gays-- of lessening babies having babies. This fundamental social contract issue needs to be brought up when gay marriage advocates cry "civil rights being trampled here!" and seem to be able to "statutorily" trump all other considerations. EMPATHETIC IMAGE: The poor father is having a rough time with his increasingly uncontrollable teenagers, and tunnel-visioned civil rights lawyering has now taken this civilizational aid called marriage away from him, because his straight teenagers now no longer comprise the totality of the marriage "story", but they are now only one-third of it, being required to share with boy-boy and girl-girl. (and does this churning have any payoff with gay teenagers? how many gay teen pregnancies will be prevented?) I don't need to bash any gay behavior to make this argument other than the gay behavior of demanding that they be anointed by this civilization by the sacrifice of a simply defined institution called marriage. Gay marriage sucks not because of gays being married, not even because of whatever gays do in the privacy of their homes, but because it attenuates the business end of the "old" institution (or is it the "real" institution), which, in the example above, is the effect on the minds of the unmarried straight couples when they contemplate their relationships and the effects of these relationships on themselves, on their potential offspring, and on the civilization that provides a past and a future and is now giving them a fairly unharried present without 24-hour scrabbling just to survive. Am I ascribing too much mojo to marriage? Maybe. But I deeply believe that this is an issue that needs to be reviewed by broad public discourse as opposed to being decided in judges' chambers by lawyers juggling legal technicalities. nimble |
| Editor comes back at Jack --- On Fri, 3/13/09, editor@garmentandcitizen.com <editor@garmentandcitizen.com> wrote: Jack-- You have a giant gap in your logic: Consider this, from you: I don't need to bash any gay behavior to make this argument other than the gay behavior of demanding that they be anointed by this civilization by the sacrifice of a simply defined institution called marriage. Gay marriage sucks not because of gays being married, not even because of whatever gays do in the privacy of their homes, but because it attenuates the business end of the "old" institution (or is it the "real" institution), which, in the example above, is the effect on the minds of the unmarried straight couples when they contemplate their relationships and the effects of these relationships on themselves, on their potential offspring, and on the civilization that provides a past and a future and is now giving them a fairly unharried present without 24-hour scrabbling just to survive. I take that to say that a married couple serves as a model for the institution, passing along a tradition and a beneficial social norm to their children--preferably by example rather than inculcation, accordign to your stated ideals. Meawhile, gays want to get married, and their arguments for the right indicates that they also see great value in the instituion. Gays right now are forbidden marriage, but can adopt children. They want to gain rights to marriage in order to achieve entree to the benefits the institution that you cite. So they agree with your premise about the value of marriage. Your point is that they don't merit the right to marriage. So you have to delineate clearly why they don't merit the right. You have no argument with them over the value of marriage. You simply maintain that they shouldn't be permitted access to marriage. You have to say why not--and the best I can figure from your writing is that you would forbid gays marriage because of their behavior, and I assume you mean their sexual behavior. You've explained your view of why marriage is valuable to society. You've explained your view of the difference between discrimination against folks based on the color of their skin as opposed to bias based on behavior. You haven't said clearly that you believe it's the behavior that should exclude gays from the rights of marriage. It seems to me that gay behavior, in your view, amounts to "content of character," or lack thereof, as opposed to color of skin when it comes to discrimination. Some tend to forget that not all discrimination is illegal. Employers discriminate when they only consider hiring workers who can read, or those with a college education. That discriminates against the illiterate or folks who didn't go to college, but it's not illegal. Employers discriminate against folks who have been convicted of theft--a content of character matter. You have to explain why gay behavior merits a veto on marriage based on content of character. Also, it seems to me that if you forbid gays marriage based on these arguments you would intellectually obliged to forbid any two people who present the possibility of becoming parents—through offspring or adoption--from living together without marriage. |
| Jack to Earth (Editor) RE: Why Gays Fight Prop 8/from Jerry From: "xJ" xj@yahoo.com To: editor@garmentandcitizen. com Cc: "b" <xbj@msn.com>, "xIan" <xian@earthlink.net>, "kevin" <xme@hotmail.com> Dear Jerry, Thank you for the extreme amount of care you have lavished on my effort to popularize my "killer" argument against samesex marriage. Again, I don't need to make arguments that are prima facie offensive to gays or even skeptical about gays' ability to form successful propagational groups (though I reserve the right to examine statistical evidence in the years to come). The slant on this is not that my straight teens' moral indignation about cornholing is what keeps them from fucking (or performs the absolute good of delaying this by whatever years, months, or minutes), if you can excuse the greek. It's that their straight relationships are special. How special we won't know unless and until this society ultimately anoints samesex marriage as totally equivalent to 'regular' marriage. Backing into it by debating ad infinitum the benefits of marriage per se is the cerebral trap I'm trying to divert people from when I talk about a fundamental "social contract clause" and the benefit it's now providing by affecting the mindset of people who are not even married, nor soon expected to be and whether society wants to experiment, for whatever group's perceived benefit, by jerking around with its essence. Its essence is that boys and girls are a special combination. Further, its essence is that boy-girl couples GET IT, and they won't GET IT as effectively if they find themselves now in a clubby atmosphere of three: along with THEIR no-longer- exclusive combination, there are now boy-boy couples and over here we have the girl- girl couples. I of course have no statistics and will not have until we, at the behest of the gays, perform this experiment. As before, my closing of the communication about this viewpoint would be to sound very reasonable and merely request that we consider this in wide public discourse and urge that we DECIDE this in the same way, casting as much doubt as possible on the validity of it being handed back, ever, to a wise elite such as the Calif Supreme Court. If you couldn't glean all this from my original effort, can you please tell me why so I can be more effective. All you've done for me so far is show me that I failed to get it across (of inestimable value so far as it goes). Now can you tell me what went wrong so I can put something in or take something out or be cuter or less cute or assume tacit agreements with my audience or kick myself for such assumptions. xbj P.S. Don't kill yourself, I think I have ample food for thought about a revised letter now. Just if some simple bell suddenly rings, let me know. P.P.S. Get this: "CFC (www. CaliforniaFamily.org) is also taking action to protect children in public schools. Right now, California Family Council is joining with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a religious liberty law firm, to oppose Senate Bill 777 on legal grounds. SB 777 has re-written the definition of gender in our public schools. It allows students to self-identify as male or female (on any given day) and disallows any school activities or class instruction that opposes this new definition! Today in the Los Angeles City School system, teachers are encouraged to approach children, asking them if they prefer to be called boy or girl, he or she!" |
| The Final Draft Dear Ed, Nothing incenses me more than hearing the loud crowing of "Boo Yah!" out of gay activists and their allies after they invoke "Trampled Civil Rights". All other philosophical approaches to the matter now "thrown out of court: irrelevant and immaterial". What about the rights of parents of straight teenagers-- and these could be straight OR gay parents-- who thank their lucky stars that this ancient societal agreement still holds for a while longer. And what about its reason for having come into existence: the fact that babies' making of babies is detrimental to the society's ability to have its culture last through more than one generation (as opposed to the ability to produce ever higher totals of two legged creatures running around with no more sense of themselves than animals). My gay teenager was quite docile in this arena, and anyhow, his particular gender outcome was never a worry in the procreational arena, for obvious reasons. My straight teenager, however, when she wasn't simply beating me about the head and shoulders mentally, was quite independent, and I was glad that she had been exposed from birth to the mental attitudes around her. I'm talking about the picture of marriage that everyone she came in contact with had in his head. By the time she hit puberty, there was no chance that she would come home pregnant simply because she didn't take her relationships with members of the opposite sex seriously. I hope that her children, if she has any, will continue to receive this subtle instruction that our society has heretofore practiced. My point is that the removal of marriage's function of making fertile young couples aware of their importance in the scheme of things (yes! at the expense of gay couples' feelgood needs!) should not be considered lightly; should be considered in broad public discourse; should not be allowed to be decided by lawyers juggling narrow technicalities. (this fictive account expresses my feelings better than my actual life could in a brief letter) Anonymous Echo Park |
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