:: Closing Time ::

:: Monday, October 21, 2002 ::

Fast notes, since I don't want to spend forever on this:

The comparison of the gay rights issue to the black rights issue is flawed on several levels. While yes, they're equal in that gay marriages should be recognized as interracial marriages had to be recognized, that's basically the only issue I can think of off the top of my head where there's a -legal- issue with gay rights. Blacks were first legally enslaved, and then legally segregated to lesser facilities, and basically legally disenfrachised. Something had to be done because the governments were enforcing it.

Gays can legally run for political office. Gays can legally go to any school, use any public facilities, go anywhere, with equal protection under the law and by the police force that heterosexuals have. Blacks in many areas STILL can't do this. Blacks still get racially profiled as criminals, killed by police in snap judgements of prejudice, and stereotyped (at least from what -I- personally see) even more than gays. If this was supposedly a success... well, I guess failure would still be segregation. But gays are starting desegregated. I guess this is where we'll just have to differ on opinion, but I really think this time the right course of action is subtlety. When people get used to somebody being gay as normal, and not as part of some fucking alliance - when certain gays stop trying to label themselves with the stereotype as some kind of pride in the matter (shit, if you like wearing pink triangles be my guest - but don't do it BECAUSE you're trying to take a stereotype as your own), when being gay stops pointing itself out, only then, in my opinion, will there be equality. Because the only way for people to see it as normal is for it to STOP presenting itself as abnormal.

It's fucking counterproductive.
:: Peter 2:22 AM [+] ::
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