Ugh

[pameladean]

I'm going to talk about the Minnesota Anti-Marriage Amendment.
I am not feeling kindly about the people who support it or their entire outlook and worldview. Anybody who skips what's behind the cut tag is probably very sensible.



The Minnesota House, that bastion of idiocy, has passed the amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that would define marriage as yadda yadda, you know the drill. Now it's in the Senate. I've just sent email to everybody on the committee that the amendment is currently festering in, as well as to my own senator. I can't believe this nonsense. These people are crazy. They have no evidence of any damage whatsoever. They make things up. If I were like them, I'd lobby for the outlawry of fundamentalist Christianity, and I'd actually have some scientific studies to back myself up with, too, about the increased risk of various kinds of dysfunction caused by the application, or possibly misapplication, of that general area of philosphy. But you know what? I'd never dream of such a thing even at my most exasperated and vindictive and allergic, because it would be unjust and even, dare I say it, un-American. I hate the people pushing this amendment, the people standing by the line of gay couples waiting to get married in San Francisco and taunting them with signs like REPENT OR PERISH, the politicians who really believe the amendment is a good idea and the ones who just don't care enough to fight it. I think they're evil. I think they do terrible harm to themselves and others. And yet I'm not out there amending the constitution to make their lives miserable.

What I said to the senators was mostly that, if the Minnesota legislature was seriously interested in helping marriage, they might want to take a look at what people found particularly stressful in marriage -- the birth of children and financial trouble are two of the big stressors, according, to, like, you know, actual married people who are actually asked about the matter -- and think about what the state could do to ease these burdens. As if.

If you want to write to senators about this, the easiest way is probably to go here:

http://www.outfront.org/

and follow the directions of the Action Alert on the right.

Thanks to cakmpls for posting this link originally to Natter, and to aliera_ for suggesting I put it into the entry.

Pamela

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

That was perhaps the most reasonable and polite thing I've ever had someone suggest I should skip over in that way.

I agree with you save that I doubt I have it in me to be so restrained, either in what I would advocate or how I would advocate it.

[pameladean]

I have far more vehement opinions than the above, but I had to tone them down when writing the senators, in order to have any chance at a hearing. I also know one or two sane fundamentalist Christians and don't really want to upset them more than necessary.

Pamela

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

I also know one or two sane fundamentalist Christians and don't really want to upset them more than necessary.

My thanks. :)

Not all of us agree with the REPENT AND PERISH school of thought, nor even the REPENT OR PERISH school of thought.

For one, I'm with you 100%, *as* a fundamentalistic Christian.

Gosh, who was it that said, 'All ye who are without sin, cast the first stone--'??

[logane.livejournal.com]

civil marriage is changing on lots of fronts. All of them bad changes, in my opinion. Georgia is considering an ammendment to their divorce laws that would require a couple to wait six months to finalize a no-fault divorce. Even couples with no children. Aren't they shoring up the wrong end of marriage? You can go to Vegas and get married inside of an hour of making the decision, then have to wait six months to divorce?

I hope you don't mind my commenting. I added you to my friend's list yesterday after discovering your journal. I'm a long time fan of your work.

[pameladean]

No, not at all. If I didn't want random people commenting, I wouldn't make the entries public.

As for shoring up the wrong end of marriage, well, yeah. I don't know if you've read Orson Scott Card's hysterical rantings on the subject, but it really seems that a lot of people who oppose same-sex marriage truly believe that heterosexual Christian marriage, while the Only Right Way, is so hard for people to do that any possible incentive to do anything else will tempt them from the path and must, therefore, be removed not only from their paths but from everybody else's. This is really insane. If Christian marriage as they conceive it is so difficult, maybe there's something wrong with the concept. I don't see how anybody can exercise free will or actually be virtuous if they are so caged in by law that only staying in one form of marriage is possible. And I don't see where they get off thinking it's all right to completely warp society so that they don't have to work hard at their chosen path. And I don't understand why people who tend to support such legislation never want government to actually do anything to help marriage. I'm not sure I want it to, either, but their position seems foolish if they believe what they say they do.

Pamela

[kiya]

I suddenly wonder . . .

Suddenly wonder . . .

"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

If it is not difficult, if it is not a thing that they must struggle not to fall away from, if it is not a narrow, narrow way, then clearly it is not what they are looking for.

Neh?

So if to make their way narrow they must strive, strive most vigorously to condemn those who take other paths, because that is the only way that they can make their meanderings sufficiently steep and rocky to meet the standards of righteousness that come from difficulty . . .

[pameladean]

It's a pity they don't decide to embrace a really evil secular non-Christian society as the only way to make their gate strait enough. Because they're trying to make it easier for themselves. Illogical, I call it.

Pamela

[kiya]

I'm not sure I can get this to come out right; I have a grasp on the mythology involved, but it's all under language.

These folks believe that the "really evil secular non-Christian society" exists, that it stands opposed to all things good and godly and Christian and all like that there. It's a conspiracy theory myth, with all the catch-22s of provability involved.

So they're engaged in battle against this myth. The myth is huge, it's overwhelming, it's trying to destroy their way. Because it doesn't exist, it is a perfect enemy: it cannot be refuted, because evidence of absence is evidence of extreme devious cleverness and thus inflates the threat. The act of putting that Commandments monument in the courthouse translates not as a majority's attempt to throw its weight around, but as a brave, embattled man desperately trying a last-ditch attempt to shore up a collapsing, narrow path to righteousness.

Their strait gate is embattled by nightmares. All that's needed to give tangibility to those constructions is the existence of a few people who actually do hate Christianity, because that lets them slot the construct all in together as the people who are willing to admit to their crusade, the people who agree but do not have the guts to say so, and their legions of dupes.

I think they -have- embraced a really evil secular non-Christian society as the means to making their gate strait; the unwavering faith in its existence seems utterly central to their behaviour to me, far more so than any other religious tenet.

I see the shimmering hints of story somewhere in the image of the narrow way eaten away on the sides by the constructions of nightmares given flesh by the need to have the way be narrow. I wonder if I'll ever do anything with it.

[pameladean]

That's very plausible and extremely discouraging.

If you do get a story out of it, at least something good will have come of the whole mess.

Pamela

[ckd]

The "this is both evil and so tempting that everyone must be protected from it" mindset among some conservative/fundamentalist/etc groups is both strong and long-standing.

I vaguely recall a story from a few years back about a state Republican conference or something where they had the hotel disable the in-room adult movies for all the attendees' rooms.

Er, these are adults, right? There weren't any 12 year old delegates to this conference? They couldn't, you know, just not order any?

[pameladean]

*eyeroll* And they have the barefaced gall to say they're the grownups.

And they whine about the nanny state. It's okay to be the nanny party or the nanny church, apparently.

Argh.

Pamela

On the subject of Mr Card...

[thrasher543.livejournal.com]

thank you, thank you for this comment. I can't tell you how crushed I was to discover his rantings about Marriage- as a long time fan of his work I felt somehow betrayed. I am also a long-time fan of *your* work, and it pleases me to no end to be able to be a fan of the author as well as her body of work :) I can freely purchase all your books and not feel as though I've just contributed to the livelihood of my enemy. (Which is how I feel about buying anything from Mr Card) Congrats on the new book deal, btw, I'm so looking forward to that!

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[pameladean]

I was crushed too. I used to admire Card tremendously. I feel he has permanently disgraced himself; if I believed in damnation, that's what I'd say he has done, squandering his inventive and intellectual gifts on a strenuously deliberate set of evil lies.

I like the work of a lot of writers whom I disagree with, but I think most of them are at least honest. Card isn't, not any more.

I don't know how many of my previous entries you've read, but I perhaps ought to have disclosed when I wrote the entry above that I am a member of the group that people like Jerry Falwell use as a stick with which to beat representatives of, say, HRC; I'm part of the slippery slope down which all people, he alleges, will go if gay marriage is made legal. I'm polyamorous; I have three partners. I just can't tell you, it is so much fun to watch both sides of this debate scrambling to distance themselves from my terrible evil pursuits.

Pamela

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rant. It's scary how this reactionism is mushrooming all over. That essay is the sort of thing that makes me ashamed (I am a more-or-less non-practicing Protestant, if there be such a category).

I am in a heterosexual monogamous marriage, but I'm puzzled as to why some advocates of same are so vehement in their opposition to alternate family arrangements among sane consenting adults. (I suspect you're saner than I am, at any rate.) Are their own ideal(ized) relationships so insecure that the mere existence of alternative arrangements poses that great a threat? Or is something else at work? Very puzzling.

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[pameladean]

I don't think you have anything to be ashamed of. These fringe idiots damage Christianity, or the perception of it, along with everything else they damage.

It was your link to yonmei's dissection of Card's rant that finally made me read the rant itself. I knew it was out there, but I would read a few lines and recoil exactly as if somebody had stuck something into my eye or thrown acid on me. I read it after I read the dissection; once it was dead and pinned to a card, I could read it. I suppose I should tell the dissector so.

Pamela

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I think what made it readable for me, despite twitching hands, was that it seemed so far out there, and the arguments often so specious, that I had trouble taking it seriously. Which is another problem, I suppose, because there seem to be people who do take such arguments seriously. I can't blame you for your reaction, though, it nearly being mine.

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I just can't tell you, it is so much fun to watch both sides of this debate scrambling to distance themselves from my terrible evil pursuits.

If you mean this sarcastically, yep. It makes me cry.

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[pameladean]

Yes, very sarcastically.

Pamela

Re: On the subject of Mr Card...

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Card disgraced himself in my eyes a decade and a half ago, with this infamous essay. His current rant annoys me but doesn't surprise.

Re: the slippery slope

[thrasher543.livejournal.com]

I'm a bisexual poly girl myself, w/ two partners of my own, so I proudly stand with you on that precipice :) I live in Massachusetts, where this firestorm is brewing, and I can't tell you how agonizing it is when people tell me I can't help advance the cause of Gay Marriage because I scare the straights into thinking Gay Marriage will lead to multiple marriage, and "everyone knows that's just ridiculous"
Sigh. When are people going to realize that marriage, while a loaded word, is merely a legal arrangement between adults? And who really cares if my girlfriend wishes both myself and our boyfriend to visit her in the hospital, etc?

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I can freely purchase all your books and not feel as though I've just contributed to the livelihood of my enemy. (Which is how I feel about buying anything from Mr Card)

Let me commend to you the virtues of libraries. Sudden thought strikes. If you live in a civilized country where the authors get paid royalties for library readings never mind. If you live in the USofA you can read those books from the library without contributing as above.

MKK

Libraries are wonderful!!!

[thrasher543.livejournal.com]

And I do visit my local one as much as possible, but I'm also a book fetishist of the highest order- I own multiple editions of all my favorites, just because I like arranging different bookshelves in my home. I need nice hardback copies for the living room, trashy paperback copies for reading at the beach, and interesting cover artwork is it's own draw... especially the Thomas Canty ed. of Tam Lin that I have :) It's both one of my favorite stories and also one of my favorite pieces of artwork all in one!
I do ramble on, I'm sorry :) I get carried away by books! But YAY for libraries!

It's a difficulty of belief

[(Anonymous)]

You know how some of the people with rabid anti-gay opinions might be described as not believing in heterosexuality?

Not, alas, all of them, but the really twitchy ones, the ones who really believe that everyone would be gay if they could, if it was at all moral? (Presumably because their own inclinations run so, counter to their philosophy.)

A lot of the 'defense of marriage' folks seem to have the same difficulty of imagination, only with fidelity instead of heterosexuality. They don't believe that anyone would wish to be married, if they didn't have to be, were not compelled to be.

That, this being the case, perhaps they ought not to be, however logical as a next step, does not seem to be a place they are willing to go.

-- Graydon

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[kiya]

I've encountered the theory that many of the people who promote "Homosexuality is a choice" are likely bi, and thus having a scope of possibility that they have chosen to close themselves away from and unable to imagine that that is not a universally available range of potential.

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[pameladean]

The inability to believe that other people are really different from oneself is fairly widespread in the population of those making large public statements against gay marriage. It doesn't make anything any easier.

Pamela

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[kiya]

No, no it doesn't.

And it's depressing to boot.

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[pameladean]

Well, better to marry than to burn, and all that. If what you say of this subset of the anti-gay contingent is true, it sounds as if they are completely trapped in a set of contradictory instructions, further complicated by that instruction set's very limited sense of reality. I feel sorry for them, but rather as one might feel sorry for a mad dog.

Pamela

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[pameladean]

Feh. That was supposed to be a response to Graydon, but it didn't indent properly. Subject line? Who looks at THAT?

Pamela

Re: It's a difficulty of belief

[(Anonymous)]

I found I managed well enough. :)

There's surely a whole lot of people having blind reactions to the idea of changing social rules they learned as children involved.

The trapped in contradition -- fidelity must be compelled, that isn't fidelity (couples who have stayed together forty and fifty years, despite the barriers society has placed before them, are a difficult argument to dismiss), marriage has always been this narrow custom, pattern trap -- is I think a real thing, too, but not the only thing.

There's a whole lot of change coming, in biotech and nanotech and medicine, against which the Pill is going to be pretty trivial. If that happens, the last vestiges of sense in a form of social arrangement developed due to the consequences of the mechanization of agriculture (transfer of labour to non-agricultural tasks, decoupling of land tenure from common prosperity) go away, and change, big lasting permanent social change, becomes inevitable.

That permanent social change gets rid of the social plausibility of the general practice of American Protestant Christianity; the folks who so practice are perfectly aware of this, and a big chunk of them would rather not have the progress -- would rather die younger, be less healthy, not have the better medical care, quality of life, and contraception, than undergo that social change.

I don't think that has quite come into the conscious front of their thoughts, but that's what the policies they support are designed to accomplish. I could wish that there was a great deal more emphasis on this.

-- Graydon

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

I'm a fundy, admittedly. However, I oppose any sort of ammendment about marriage. What is considered a marriage within my scope of religion shouldn't be legislated to the body of a nation by the government. Furthermore, I don't consider differing definitions of marriage and/or family as threats to my personal definitions.

My favorite cousin is engaged to his boyfriend. As a licensed minister, I wouldn't feel right conducting the ceremony, but I'll sure be there to throw rice and wish them well!

Then again, I married outside my faith, too. Okay, so maybe I'm not a fundy. I did get told to be quiet a lot when I was working for a church...

[pameladean]

I expect you know more about the nuances of being a fundy than I do! However, if you don't want to subvert the entire mechanism of the state to force people to behave as if they were fundies whether they are or not, I bet I don't have much of a quarrel with you.

I know it isn't a vice specific to fundamentalist Christians to wish to so subvert the state, but hereabouts, right now, those who are doing it by far the most loudly and with the most vehement hatefulness are fundamentalist Christians. It's a pity.

Pamela

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

Yep. Down here in Texas, too.

I'm a very sad little Republican, I want you to know.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Here's the letter I sent to the senate committee and my senator:

"My husband, J___________, and I are a straight couple married for
nearly 25 years, parents of four (ages 21, 20, 17, and 13). All six of
us--including 4 voters--believe that all people should have equal access to civil marriage. If the marriage of committed people is good for society, then it is good for society irrespective of the sex of those people. We oppose attempts to amend the Minnesota Constitution to deprive people of their right. Civil marriage is a civil right."

Notice that I wrote "all people," not "all couples."

[pameladean]

I appreciate that. A lot.

Pamela

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

To me, "marriage"--like "family"--is defined by the participants.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Agreed. But, while not for a moment claiming to speak for all three-person couples, I personally can wait indefinitely for gay marriage to destroy the fabric of society to the point where we can get official permission. Two people of the same sex should be permitted to marry one another because two people of the same sex are capable of loving one another.

[ivorychopsticks.livejournal.com]

Fabulous letter.

And if there are any other Minnesotans reading this entry, I'll post the following PSA (hope it's okay--you can delete if not!)

Subject: Rally against anti gay marriage amendment

Out Front Minnesota, www.outfront.org, is sponsoring a rally from noon - 1, Thursday, March 25 at the State capitol in support of Gay rights and against the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment to MN constitution.

Poor Orson. Having been immersed in Mormon-ness for most of my formative years, I can see the origins of his convoluted "logic." But he's twisting and turning in the wind, believing his personal feelings about a specific religious ceremony have anything to do with what should be a civil contract between two consenting adults and the state. Sad sad man.

[pameladean]

No, that's quite okay. I'm sorry to think that the people showing up probably got soaked.

I think you have summed Card up quite adequately. Alas.

Pamela

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yipe, and I missed it!

[ivorychopsticks.livejournal.com]

I missed it, too. For some reason I thought yesterday was Wednesday, and was making plans to take a long lunch today, which I thought was Thursday, but which is Friday. And it's so much more beautiful today. Oh well. I'll just have to look for media coverage. Sigh.

Utterly silly

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

The Minnesota lege, noting that under Minnesota law, same-sex marriage isn't legal, spends a lot of time arguing not whether or not to change that, but to put forward a Constitutional amendment that will, well, make same-sex marriage not legal.

Forgetting for a moment what should be the case, it's pretty bizarre to spend time and political capital working on re-stamping the status quo.

Gets sillier at the national level. There isn't the supermajority necessary to get the amendment out of the Senate, so it doesn't much matter that there isn't the supermajority of states necessary to put the proposed amendment into the Constitution.

Just ordinary-for-our-time get-out-the-base demagoguery, of the sort that both parties engage in.

Re: Utterly silly

[pameladean]

I don't care. They're not just shoving little pebbles around on a board, they are proposing to mess up people's lives. They should be ashamed of themselves. They should be ashamed of themselves about a lot of things, and indeed a lot of people are calling them on various of those things. This particular thing is something I can speak to. I don't see why they should get away with proposing evil nonsense just because to do so is also a little ritual political dance. Nor should they waste their time with such garbage when there are actual real issues to be dealt with, that they are happily ignoring.

Besides, I really do think that it is fundamentally more evil and stupid, and harder to undo if, however surprisingly, once done, to go about amending constitutions with this tawdry frippery.

Pamela

Re: Utterly silly

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Well, of course it would be hard to undo if a constitutional amendment were to be enacted. It's a good thing that the Constitution, state and federal, are hard to amend.

Which is why it's a good thing that the bill didn't even make it out of the Senate committee, and is dead, with no possibility of it reaching the floor of the Senate.

Me, I'm not sure that that's a good thing; as long as the lege is going to waste its time with this nonsense, it would be a good thing to see it definitely voted down on the floor.

[mudandflame.livejournal.com]

The Senate Judiciary Committee just killed it, 5-4.

I hate the people pushing this amendment, the people standing by the line of gay couples waiting to get married in San Francisco and taunting them with signs like REPENT OR PERISH, the politicians who really believe the amendment is a good idea and the ones who just don't care enough to fight it. I think they're evil.

I keep thinking "couldn't we just let them have St. Paul?" But I guess it's that kind of creeping accommodationism that leads to Senator Norm Coleman.

What I said to the senators was mostly that, if the Minnesota legislature was seriously interested in helping marriage, they might want to take a look at what people found particularly stressful in marriage -- the birth of children and financial trouble are two of the big stressors, according, to, like, you know, actual married people who are actually asked about the matter -- and think about what the state could do to ease these burdens. As if.

You mean like this?

R.

[pameladean]

Hooray! Thank you!

Norm Coleman IS a creeping accomodation.

As for the link, yeah, that's a nice start. I wonder how far they'll get with it.

Pamela

[(Anonymous)]

Just wanted to pop in and say that this stuff makes my head spin around and my eyes roll into the back of my head.

The world is falling apart around us, and people are angry because some folks are....in love? commiting to each other to stand forth against the world? Some people won't be satisfied until the rest of the world is as miserable as they are.

Anyway. Sometimes I feel very alone in being baffled and enraged. Thanks for your post, and thanks very very much for the link to yonmei ripping Mr. Card's bigotry to shreds. I felt much better after reading its toasty little destruction.

There's lots of prejudice against bigotry.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Me, I try to understand it. In this case, I can understand that some people think that marriage law is an institutionalized expression of their (and others') religious beliefs, and don't wish for that to be changed.

In the long run, they're losing. Society is, more and more coming to terms with the notion that a "marriage" is a secular agreement. And that includes, by the way, quite a few homophobes; many people who support such silly things as DOMA have friends and family who are in what they treat as marriages even though, legalistically, they aren't.

As I wrote in "The Lesbian of Darkness" some years ago, society and the law are going to have to play catchup in the long run, and in the interim, I'm not going to be surprised or terribly shocked if people with strong feelings about the issue are bothered by the pace.

Re: There's lots of prejudice against bigotry.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes.

I don't think the people who are out there opposing these changes are idiots. I don't think they're sadistic, and I don't think they're insecure about their own sexuality. People don't take this kind of desperate action from such inadequate motives. Besides, if you judge those people that way, you have to call almost every society that pre-dates our own idiotic, sadistic, insecure.

Someone upthread said "Marriage is just a legal arrangement between adults." That's *exactly* what religious conservatives fear it will become. To them it is more. It is the foundation of society. They are often suspicious of government, partly because governments come and go, so the civilizations which endure through all of the revolutions must be based on something else, some other organizing principle. They believe that organizing principle is family. Clan, tribe, kinship group... They think civilization exists because enough people give up doing exciting things to settle down, marry, and provide for children. Think of Tarzan before and after Jane. In Hindu tradition, and possibily also in some computer game I once played, society is sustained by "householders."

Okay, so the industrial revolution changed all that. Now we have six billion people in the world. Now we can provide for kids via cell-phones and laptops. But the changes have been too fast. Especially in rural parts of the country (of the world! Karen Armstrong in The Battle for God talks about how rapidly Muslims were forced to Westernize, guards with guns tearing off veils, so that they feel modernization not as a liberation but as a brutal assault) where the old social roles still persist. Try to look at them from an anthropological perspective -- in a way they're natives of another time. Their society really is being destroyed by urbanization and secularism and all the rest (gay marriage is a symbol as much as anything.) We don't see anything so bad about the culture which is replacing it, but then, we're natives of that culture, we internet-dwellers...

-Mary Messall

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Every time there's a major change in Twin Cities bus routes,
I can count on two kinds of letters in the Star Tribune: 1)
I bought this house because it was on a bus route, and now they're taking my bus away! 2) I bought this house because it wasn't on a bus route, and now the buses will be going right past my house!

People disturbed by these changes don't invoke God or the Founding Fathers or Karl Marx or the Barons of Runnymede.
But people do make a moral issue of various other changes they don't like. Businesses downtown aren't thriving the way they did before WW II? Something must be done! People aren't listening to the music you learned to love as a teenager? Rock deserves the same kind of funding as classical music!

The people who believe that everyone should live according to their interpretation of the King James Bible aren't nearly as ridiculous, in my view. Though most of them seem to have skipped such bits as "Love the sinner, but hate the sin." But I really think their children should be required to learn that 1) King James was homosexual; 2) King James was rather lacking in Christian humility as compared to most monarchs; 3) with the possible exception of Episcopalians, he would not have tolerated Americans of any Protestant denomination. (Or, of course, Mormons.)