Nobody’s There…

I’m not all that keen on marriage.

Don’t get me wrong, I like weddings and I’m all in favor of civil unions, but I’m quite prepared to continue to accept that it is churches that oversee marriage, together with all the silly rules that they have about it. I also think that, as the Roman Catholic church does, they should be allowed to oversee the divorces that so often occur because of the ill founded basis for these matches.

That’s why I prefer the European concept of the civil union. A state supported registration of the intent of two people to live and work together with common aims. Civil Union allows lesbian and gay couples the same, exactly the same, benefits and impairments that heterosexual couples receive. You get the same health and insurance benefits, you pay a little more tax.

For thousands of years marriage has been a contract between two families to put their financial affairs together and, by uniting a childbearing couple, prepare for the future. During all that time marriage has never been about love, indeed it still isn’t in many cultures. Marriage has historically been between families not individuals. There’s nothing wrong with that. Even I am concerned about just who is going to look after me as I slip into late old age. Marriage between families solves that problem.

Pointing this out to many people causes eye boggling, which is the outward sign of mind-boggling.

In a few weeks time my partner and I go back to the UK to register our civil partnership. We have been a loving couple for thirty years.

Have looked after our parents.

Helped to raise children.

Fostered the needy and supported the inform.

We, and people like us are the basis of society, not the religiously “married” couples we see around us.

We and people like us do more for society, give more to charity, involve ourselves more in the community, remain a refuge for the refugees of society.

Married people seem to go to church, inculcate children, try to deprive others of well-being.

I don’t want to join their ranks!

So let’s get this straight (if you’ll pardon the pun.)

We don’t want to step on the toes of those people for whom the religious management of marriage is of primary importance. Their involvement in marriage negates any value it has to us.

We are quite content to let the deists own marriage.

We, together with millions of other Europeans, choose the far more loving and meaningful action of Civil Registration.

Civil unions for the civil.

Marriage for the religious.

We don’t want to get married!

It was “Gay Pride” here in Key West Florida. The floats were lined up in the car park behind the Post office. The tram company had put on a vehicle and was filled with the elderly and disabled. Our Mum has to choose, should she sit on a chair on top of the local church’s float or go with her Jewish friends on the tram? It’s the tram.

Behind it the local leather and levi club was swinging flags, up front the business guild was dressed as chickens - our local wild bird. It’s not a big parade, maybe twenty floats and cars. Most people want to watch and, as we exited the park onto Whitehead street the crowd roared. 

There are families with small children, Elderly Moms and Pops with beach-chairs (they’ve been there for more than an hour so as to be sure of a good place at the front.)

We’re throwing out beads and candy, leaving the condoms for the adult area of the march on Duval Street.

But wait, who’s this, way up the street, with the banners, screaming bible quotes at the parade. Why it’s Mr Phelps and family - or if not they’re cloned themselves.

The crowd acts rather strangely. The move in front of the protesters. More and more of them, after all they have got one of the best spots, and someone starts using a compressed air horn to drown them out. By the time we get there the people are five or six deep in front of them. I can hear annoyed people turning round and telling the banner carriers to stop shouting, go away.

They do! As we pass they regroup further back and walk off.

Near the end of the parade they turn up again, on another corner. Upstairs on a balcony a young woman is watching with her friends. She sees the Christians below her, hears their shouts, reads their banners and phones the police telling them that she is concerned that they may be in danger. Freedom of speech is all very well but this could lead to a civil disturbance. 

The protesters are moved on and away from the parade.

Earlier that week the largest and longest gay flag was unfurled along Duval street. There weren’t enough people to carry it and tourists, visitors, family shoppers came out on the streets and asked if they could help. The whole community, 2000 of us stood with a flag a mile and a quarter long dipped into the Gulf of mexico at one end and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.

And we all though, “This is how it should be!”

Greymalkin at Eating Fish has posted a long diatribe about GLBT people.

It’s a typical response from a typical guy - one of the “good guys” in fact. 

But it makes my blood boil!

Ok. Lets go for it. Here’s my response to his post 

“Gay Rights” is a phrase mostly used by the right wingers. They use this phrase, rather than the one GLBT people use - “Equal Rights” - to fool people. It’s quite effective. It fooled Greymalkin, Sengdroma, and Ramblindad.

Marriage is something you do in a church. It’s called a “Civil Partnership” in Europe and it’s registered through the local community via the Registry Office. It’s the same place you go to register deaths and births. They run a great service with rooms available and totally non-deist ceremony. But when you run a political campaign you always have to ask for more than you want. That’s why there has been almost no problem with church groups in, for exaple, the UK.

Oh yes, and unless you are a fag don’t use the word. It’s the same rule that applies to white people and the “N” word, men with the “B” and “C” words and Jews with the “K” word - and one day (we hope) by Christians with the “C” word.

So I google for images of “Gay Lifestyle.” What do I get? The first six pages are nothing like what you describe. The few “ half-dressed men and women” are magazine covers.

What Greymalkin is asking me to be is AVERAGE. Well, dammit, I’m not. Normal? That’s just creepy!

Parading in silly clothes is what the Irish do on St. Patrick’s day, South Americans do at Mardi Gras, and Straight people do at Weddings. Gay people do it at Pride.

Stop asking me to be like you. I won’t do it. I could, but I won’t.

Lets try cutting out the word “Gay” and replacing it with “Black” shall we? No, lets not. It would be wicked.

I don’t want to  “ win over the hardcore gay-hating Christians…” I want my rights! I want people like you, all of you, to march with us instead of sitting on the sidelines “tut-tutting” and saying “If only they could be more like us!”

You’re good people!  Try and accept and celebrate diversity not just similarity.

So, let me deal with the concluding paragraph.

…”gay people should cut the ‘extravagant lifestyle’ bullshit, religious nutjobs should leave them alone and give them equal rights in all aspects of life.”

Part A “…gay people should cut the ‘extravagant lifestyle’ bullshit…” NO WAY!

Part B “… religious nutjobs should leave them alone and give them equal rights in all aspects of life.” NO WAY! Religious nutjobs can’t give me any rights. They’re mine already. When they try and take them away I  demonstrate, march, prevent them any way I can. By myself if I have to. In business suit at Congress, in a swim suit at the beach, in jeans at the universities, in a green jumpsuit on St. Patrick’s day , dressed up like a chicken at Mardi Gras and n a tuxedo at my civil partnership.

You’re invited.

Stonewall is one of the best agitprop organizations out there. I joined their Facebook Cause  some time back.

This has to be one of the slickest and sexiest poster campaigns ever.

Get the full sized one here, get out the glue and get papering your community!

He who excuses himself, accuses himself.
  [Fr., Qui s'excuse, s'accuse.]
      - Tresor des Sentences GABRIEL MEURIER (MEURIR OR MURIER)

Flemish educationist, philologist and writer.(1530 - 1601)

Having predicted that Monique Davis would apologize to Rob Sherman  I’m about to claim the official title of “Atheist Psychic.”

But her half hearted “sorry” with excuses really isn’t enough. Qui s’excuse, s’accuse!

In anger, when drunk or under the influence of drugs we often say things that lie quietly at the centre of our view of the world. Things that we know are unacceptable but still lurk there.

I have them. My response to a badly executed maneuver on the freeway by a driver allows me to latch on to dreadful racist, sexist feelings that still live inside me - even though I try to expunge them. Still, the conscious effort to quell them makes me feel like I’m fighting the good fight. There’s no getting away from it though. I’m a racist sexist bastard… but a repenting one.

Think of Mel Gibson’s anti-semitic tirade, Julian Tavarez’s homophobic response to being booed and so on. It’s usually men, but no always.

What Monique Davis opens a window on her internal world. Despite all the experiences she has had with being silenced, dismissed and bullied out comes the same silencing, bullying and dismissal when she gets angry.

She apologized for saying it, not for thinking it. She excused herself, and others excused her,  because she said it was “triggered by learning shortly beforehand…that there’d been another Chicago Public School student killed.”

This is her excuse.

She said that “it was wrong for her to take out her anger, frustrations and emotions on me, and that she apologized…” but she still thinks that “You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.” 

Ms. Davis needs to make the right apology. Something like “No excuses! I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t have thought it. I was wrong”

Thanks to Know Thy Neighbor it’s possible to look up everyone who signed the petition.

Who signed?

There are just 5 in Key West! Go here to find out who they are.

Here’s the CNN report on the subject.

…and here FOX news (FOX NEWS!!!) shows how the Massachusetts petition workers make up to $1200/day stealing signatures. Here a whistle-blower exposes anti-gay marriage petition fraud in Massachusetts

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