[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: So you believe a gay member of Congress can serve with the same kind of sexual restraint expected of a heterosexual member?Don Sherwood. Henry Hyde. Ted Kennedy. Newt Gingrich. Bob Woodward. Bob Dole. And that's just in the last 10 years.
I've stipulated before and will again that I am basically opposed to gay marriage, that I have my doubts about lifelong monogamy, and that I consider it naive in the extreme to posit male homosexuality as heterosexuality-but-with-men. Same-sex sexuality is different. It's a foolish sort of moralism--unintentional, but moralism nonetheless--to suppose otherwise. I've stipulated before and will again that I daily question the impulse to turn sexual predilection into characterological essential. I caper on about my faggotry, and surely my sensibilities, aesthetic and otherwise, have the gay in them, but I consider myself many ways otherwise before I consider myself a gay man.
But what a drag it is, day in and out, to find the identification about which you yourself are conflicted dragged out to set the curve on the primitive moral rubric of American public discourse, to find once again, years after you thought the issue had been put to be, the same unlearned public babblers questing after the fine sexual distinctions which do or do not permit a person to serve reasonably on the school board, in the Congress, as a gas station attendant. Thank god Mark Foley didn't infect some kid with HIV; we'd be in camps by now.
I want to say that I don't mean this as alarmism. If I end up behind barbed wire, it's far more likely to be for what I write here than for what I do with my cock. But there's a weariness that comes in making the same arguments again and again, responding to the same tired lines about the same projected moral decline. It's tiring. It's childish. That we live with a legislature full of men who condone the torture of innocent human beings and their secret, inexorable, unappealable imprisonment and must suffer through hearing the question asked: Can fags serve properly . . . that, I fear, is a bridge too far, or a chasm too deep, however you want to look at it.
5 comments:
Personally, my gay member shows little restraint.
Maybe time to get a firearm? You know, just in case.
I'm less entitled to speak for the gay community than anyone, but I frame this marriage business as more about the denial of social priveleges than the demanding of them. If some gays convince themselves they really want to get hitched, then why the hell not? On the other hand, there's one excuse right out the window, so I feel for you there. (Oops, projecting!)
But those other associations, those are offensive to anyone who can envision a world beyond their own tiny head. And I'm sorry to have seen it from people who do think.
K (well not Chris Matthews, but you know what I mean)
There is no rational basis for denying gays the panoply of legal benefits conferred by the state upon entering the state of matrimony. Consequently, I don't think gays can be denied those benefits anymore than they can be denied the right to vote or own properrty. Consider that under certain circumstances, the government can take away our property, our children, our freedom and even our lives. But you can look high and low in all the lawbooks of the land, and you will not find one single case in which the government has dissolved a valid marriage without the consent of one of the parties. Marriage is the ultimate bulwark against government interference, and I think gays, no less than anyone else, should be able to enter that institution and claim sanctuary.
There are other fascinating arguments that can be made pro and con regarding the vitality of marriage as a social institution. But as long as the government is ladling out special privileges to the married, it cannot deny those privileges on the basis of who puts what where when the lights go out.
Roxtar, thank you. I had honestly never considered that before. Is it really true that marriage is the single indissoluble contract in our governed state? What an idea!
Well its dissovable as long as one side desires it to be dissolved, and it is dissolvable if the original marriage didn't meet the legal requirements (think Mormons), but beyond that, the State really doesn't have much of a dog in the fight.
And the outrage that would take place if it tried to even place bets on one of the dogs, would be stupendous.
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