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News & ArtsMonday, October 26, 2009
Politics / Homo What Would Be The Harm?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 9:27 AM
Via the New York Times:
In a San Francisco courtroom two weeks ago, a prominent lawyer opposed to same-sex marriage made a concession that could mark a turning point in the legal wars over the purpose and meaning of marriage.The lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, has studied the matter deeply, and his erudite briefs are steeped in history. He cannot have been blindsided by the question Judge Vaughn R. Walker asked him: What would be the harm of permitting gay men and lesbians to marry?
“Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know,” Mr. Cooper said. “I don’t know.”
Although it's not at all clear that this is in fact good news for the gay rights movement—as the article says, many people have said this lawsuit is "the wrong claim in the wrong court in the wrong state at the wrong time"—it reminds me of something.
Back in 2004, after the U.S. census counted cohabitating same-sex couples for the first time, I set out to test another part of the argument that collapsed in that San Francisco court room two weeks ago.
The census had found gay couples living in almost every single county in the United States. Which, to extend the conservative argument to its logical conclusion, would mean that those few counties with zero gay couples causing harm to the culture would be... utopias, right?
Wrong. Of course. But The Stranger sent me to gay-couple-free counties in deepest Texas, the panhandle of Oklahoma, and eastern Colorado just to be sure. The story is HERE.
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Unsurprisingly, most of my close family is from out yonder.
I don't have any tips for being a non-Texan and dealing with those sort of attitudes, but a gay Texan in that environment would simply be accused of "queerin' things up" and they'd still make their patently homophobic jokes.
The worst type of person you have to deal with in Texas is the Loveschild sort, irrational and blatantly un-texan in their unwillingness to live and let live. They're the same stock that drags people behind trucks to their deaths because nobody snapped some sense into them about letting other folks do what they will.
As you probably gathered from being out there, your main crime was not being queer (they likely pegged you within seconds of meeting you), but being a reporter from out-of-state and being someone from the big city (obvious from 90 miles away to these folks).
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November 7-8
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nwsocialistconference.org
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Participate in the LGBT Equality Rally with Sherry Wolf & Northwest LGBT activists, & discuss strategies for liberation at her Workshop on the new book Sexuality and Socialism.
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Workshop topics include:
How Can Socialism Liberate the Oppressed? • The Democrats: A Critical History • From Crash to Recovery? The Economic Crisis Today • Imperialism in the Obama Era • Sexuality and Socialism • Why We Need a Revolutionary Party • Capitalism and the Ecological Crisis • Socialists and the Trade Union Movement • The Future Socialist Society • A People's History of Seattle • and much, much more!
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