What the hell is up with the Marriage Defense Amendment?
So, liberal little me is listening in the car to KPFA, our local libby station, along with my husband. They have a show on, which I cannot remember the name of for the life of me. But the issue was the lovely, Dumbya-endorsed, Defense of Marriage amendment that may soon be making its way to your local state legislature if there are enough rabid right-wingers in Congress and the Senate to get that dawg passed. While the idea of defending marriage sounds great, (I keep envisioning a knight in shining armor standing guard in front of me and my husband, keeping all of the fundies away from us), I can't help but wonder how in the hell keeping gays and lesbians from marrying is going to further the cause of marriage throughout the land.
I mean, think about it: if you're in favor of defending marriage, and keeping it as a functioning social institution despite an over 50% divorce rate, shouldn't you be encouraging
more people to marry, rather than restricting the field of potential couples to get married? And if you're up in arms about supposed
gay promiscuity, shouldn't allowing them to get married cut down on it? Hello, the answer should obviously be
yes.
But then again, I'm logical. And I didn't understand the fundamental issue at stake. It's not about gays or lesbians getting equal economic rights and benefits, it's about something far more sinister. The KPFA show had quoted some talking head from one of the big
"pro-Family" organizations. The idjit was rambling incoherently about how his son and daughter growing up next to a gay married couple in the house on one side of theirs, and a lesbian married couple in the house on the other side. The daughter would wonder what was up with Mommy and Daddy, after seeing two Mommies and two Daddies. Here comes the kicker: she and her brother would then think
Gender is unimportant. Yep, the clincher. Gay and lesbian relationships essentially prove that gender constructions in society are unnecessary and unimportant.
I mean, think about it. If two men can have an equal married relationship together, it will indicate to a poor, impressionable young girl, that the sexist gender roles that play out in her own house are unnecessary for a functional relationship to occur. Or if she sees two women in a happy, and joyful relationship, then she will realize that women don't necessarily need to be subservient to men. The religious right has been up in arms for years about the "detrimental" impact that feminism has had on society. And functional same-sex married relationships, in which neither party has a gender power advantage, is the proof that a feminist needs to show that women do not need to be the "givers" or the "nurturers" or the "sacrificers" in any relationship.
Think of what this means to the religious right, which runs scared at any thought of women truly realizing their own power... It means the death of everything they hold sacred. That the man is the breadwinner, the supporter, and the ultimate authority in each marriage and relationship. The woman does not need to surrender to the husband as the final authority in the marriage. She can, instead, have an equal place in the relationship. The right-wing males have been running scared since the 1980's, afraid of their ultimate loss of power in society. Equal married partnerships between two men and two women would just serve as another nail in the coffin to male supremacy. And they just can't stomach that!
I guess you just have to feel sorry for people that insecure... But I don't. I just despise them ;-)
