Someone is putting way too much money into opposing R-71 (domestic partnerships), and I really wonder what they possibly have to gain by it. "Ewwww, queers" is one thing, but who has thousands of dollars to spend on that sentiment?
Anyway, here's the radio ad that just drove me insane:
*kindergarten class noises*
TEACHER: Okay, kids, put away your instruments. Music time is over and now we're going to hear a story. This is a very special story. Instead of a mommy and a daddy, this story has two daddies.
KIDS: *Gaaaaasp.*
And then the ad just sort of ends and a narrator says "Vote against R-71."
What's supposed to be the problem here? Does it somehow go without saying that this would be a terrible thing? These ads are apparently targeted at people who think "well, if they want to get married that's one thing, but telling kids about it, that's crossing the line." I guess the idea is that being gay is explicitly sexual, and somehow there's no way to say that Billy loves Robbie without bringing buttsex into it? That's my best guess here. Either that or being gay is really shameful and harmful, like being an alcoholic, it's the sort of thing that happens and you don't hate alcoholics, but kids shouldn't be told it's normal to drink Thunderbird at 9 AM.
Shit, there might be a kid in that class who has two daddies. He better not tell anyone, that would be totally inappropriate.
Rightly or wrongly (okay, wrongly), there's still strong disagreement in the US over whether "the gay lifestyle" is a desireable thing. A lot of people think of it similarly to alcoholism: it's possible you were born genetically predisposed to it, and if that's the way you wanna live they figure it's your life, but they don't really want their kids to turn out that way, and wouldn't be happy about the schools teaching that nightly JD binges are just ducky.
ReplyDeleteSo they have some (not unfounded) concerns about liberal school systems trying to do an end-run around the folks who disagree with their social beliefs by going after their kids.
Me, I think it's fairly retarded that there's any question of whether a loving family has to be boy-girl to be a good thing... But there _is_ that question. And even where I'm 99% sure I'm on the right side of a passionate debate, going after your opponents' kids is a shitty thing to do.
But nobody IS "going after" their kids, that's what gets my goat. Gsy people don't want to 'promote homosexuality' because they recognise it's not a fucking choice - what we're talking about here is the denial of straightforward rights to a significant minority of society, with absolutely NO argument in favour of denying them which stands up. If I want to get hitched to someone of my own gender, how does that posibly have any negative impact on anybody else?
ReplyDeleteElmo_iscariot - No one's going after the kids, though. The vote actually has nothing to do with education, it's just about whether gay people can be legally partnered (not even married).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I know that this could probably be twisted to an issue I don't agree with, but I don't think that teaching kids about a type of family that exists and that they're likely to encounter (or belong to) is exactly political indoctrination.
It sounds as if they're trying to suggest that allowing civil unions will interfere with childrearing. After all, those of us who support it also want goatse to be mandatory material in all kindergarten classrooms.
ReplyDelete"The vote actually has nothing to do with education, it's just about whether gay people can be legally partnered (not even married)."
ReplyDeleteI understand that, but unfortunately gay rights activists are often their own worst enemies. After Massachusetts extended equal protection under the law to gay couples, several MA school boards--not knowing how to pace a social movement--started pushing _hard_ to represent gay marriages as normal and desireable to their kids through books, activities, and even field trips to same-sex weddings. When the essentially similar Prop 8 was before California voters, opponents of equal rights used the Mass cases to show a "slippery slope" from gay marriage to indoctrination of children. (Remember the "Gathering Storm commercial? "I am a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that gay marriage is OK.") The gay marriage meme has been successfully connected to the indoctrination of children meme in the minds of many people who're opposed to or on the fence about marriage equality, and not completely without basis.
Understand that I'm in favor of marriage equality for gay families, without reservation (hell, I'm in a polyfaithful triad; I understand how much it sucks not to be able to marry your partners because you aren't the kind of family most folks are used to). I'm just trying to answer your question about where this particular anti-gay marriage idea comes from, not to defend the idea.
That's oddly relevant to my area of study (censorship in picture books) right now. Do you have a link to the ad?
ReplyDeleteAh, also:
ReplyDelete"...I don't think that teaching kids about a type of family that exists and that they're likely to encounter (or belong to) is exactly political indoctrination."
I look at it with the "letting the KKK demonstrate to preserve my own freedom of speech" lens. Essentially, I think the schools should stay out of politics as completely as possible. Butting heads with creationists is unavoidable if you're going to teach biology. And when higher grades get to teaching sociology and the history of American politics, they'll have to present the facts of "controversial" relationships. But "teaching tolerance" with the goal of shaping young minds into an ideology more attractive to the school administration is completely unacceptable, particularly when dealing with kids too young to meaningfully dissent.
I may agree with the particular point of view being pushed in this case, but I have to oppose the pushing on principle: If I support POV-pushing here, I lose any moral high ground to object when it decides gun gontrol or anti-polygamy is the next enlightened social perspective that my children should be taught to embrace.
I agree with elmo. In favor of full marriage equality (but more in favor of government butting out of marriage altogether), and I personally think it would be a better world if kids DID accept all healthy, consensual relationships as normal and a good thing, but he's right about what the exact fear is.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for "no one's going after the kids"... one acronym: NAMBLA. The part where people who ARE explicitly after the kids have an actual activist organization, even if it's universally loathed, kind of makes that point easy to make and that fear easy to stoke.
Oh please, get real, what school has a music program anymore?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the basic prejudice against gays. I am a straight male and I think for every guy out there chasing others guys that just improves my odds of meeting a willing woman. And if I think that some woman is HOT, how can I be upset when someone agrees with me?
ReplyDeleteGay? Who cares? I've know both sides of the spectrum... 'gay' couple who's kids are nice, polite, and can cope... and a het couple who's kids are asshats. Sex doesn't matter, who you're screwing doesn't matter, it's who you are that does matter.
ReplyDeleteI don't care who you fuck... its what is in your heart and mind that matters.
Right, OK, but to someone who sincerely believes his religion forbids homosexuality, it makes no difference that you don't see anything wrong with it. God doesn't like it, and that trumps you.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not that uncommon at all for public schools (or individual teachers) to have political agendas which are communicated clearly to the kids. The famous ones are the ones who end up on Youtube--the ones dumb enough to have their kids chant Obama's name as an invocation of the spirit of goodness, or tell a kid while being filmed for a documentary that her parents voted for McCain because they're greedy.
There's a reason people are concerned about schools, and it's not all paranoia. I know; I work in them.
Don - My culture forbids pork. Lots of schools serve pig-based lunch meals. What do Jewish parents do? They pack their kids' lunches, they homeschool, or they pony up for Jewish private school. They don't try to get pork banned for everyone at the school, let alone in the entire state.
ReplyDeleteYou can ask that teachers don't overtly politicize kids in either direction, but you can't require that the curriculum be customized to your beliefs.
(Also, note that I eat pork anyway, because on a deeper but less politically defensible level, it's just a food and there's nothing fucking wrong with it.)
Elmo_iscariot - After Massachusetts extended equal protection under the law to gay couples, several MA school boards--not knowing how to pace a social movement--started pushing _hard_ to represent gay marriages as normal and desireable to their kids through books, activities, and even field trips to same-sex weddings
ReplyDeleteIt's really hard for me to be objective about this because I just want to scream "BUT THEY ARE NORMAL AND DESIRABLE!" I just can't accept this as an "issue" that has two even sides and deserves a lot of ponderment and chinscratching. It's like if they put "should we set puppies on fire?" on the ballot and we were required to give both sides equal time and not unfairly bias anyone against puppy-burning.
I know that's not how politics is played and I know people on the other side could probably say the same to me, but it's how I feel about this one, and it makes it hard for me to accept weird compromise solutions where we'll let people marry but we'll be really quiet and embarrassed about it.
But "teaching tolerance" with the goal of shaping young minds into an ideology more attractive to the school administration is completely unacceptable, particularly when dealing with kids too young to meaningfully dissent.
I disagree here. I think that there are certain kinds of tolerance--racial, religious, disability, and yeah, sexuality--that are just not "political" issues but human ones, and tolerance is something you should start learning around the time you're getting into sharing your toys and waiting your turn.
Again with the chinscratching: "I'll decide whether or not to teach my own kids that blacks are inferior!" just doesn't strike me as a reasonable political difference. And I don't think that forbidding schools to mention blacks at all is a great compromise.
LabRat - I don't think NAMBLA gives a shit about gay marriage, not as long as it has age requirements.
ReplyDelete(I googled "NAMBLA + gay marriage" and all that taught me was to never google those terms ever. I need to wipe the rabid froth off the inside of my monitor now. But I also checked nambla.org and no, they don't mention it.)
I don't think they do either, I just offered it as direct evidence that there are, in fact, people whose actual, real agenda is to normalize the idea that it's okay for a kid to have gay relationships with adults and would like kids to not be alarmed at the idea. That's not the same thing as saying that's what anyone would teach, but it's the kind of thing that people are afraid of when they already think that gay relationships in general aren't normal or healthy but have been normalized anyway to a large extent. I actually take this as evidence that we're winning, and ultimately will win more by the end of my life.
ReplyDeleteThey're not afraid of gay marriage specifically, is the thing. They're afraid of the normalization of what they see as perverse behavior that would lead to a lifestyle that would hurt their children and they want them to avoid, just like they want them to avoid, to use a previously stated example, alcoholism.
I think they're wrong and their attitude is hurting gays and straights alike. But knowing what they're actually thinking rather than believing they have some crazy evil-person logic does make their reactions make more sense.
LabRat - Yeah, I do know it's not just pure evil, I just disagree so strongly that I get emotional.
ReplyDeleteRrrgh.
Holly, just think--this is what the whole world looks like to Twisty Faster.
ReplyDelete"It's really hard for me to be objective about this because I just want to scream 'BUT THEY ARE NORMAL AND DESIRABLE!'"
ReplyDeleteI agree. But public schools are agents of a local government that's supposed to represent its people--people who're trusting that government with their children (and who, IMO, often have little choice in the matter since universal tax-funded public schooling would force them to essentially pay two tuitions for private school and has driven most of the working-class private schools out of business anyway... but that's probably an argument for another day. ;) )
What matters is that there _is_ a controversy, and we can't just say "but we're _right_, dammit!" and use the power of a supposedly representative government to force our (often minority) values on the children of parents who disagree with us.
"And I don't think that forbidding schools to mention blacks at all is a great compromise."
But back when we didn't have a strong consensus about race in this country, it would've been inappropriate for equality-minded schools and teachers to take it upon themselves to try to indoctrinate their opponents' kids into their own political values, even though we now agree that they were right. It isn't that they shouldn't mention that black people exist, it's that they shouldn't say "there's this debate out there, but _this_ is the correct side", or worse yet, not mention the debate and just present a "correct" answer.
Schools should be teaching our kids knowledge and skills, but really shouldn't be involved in politics until later grades where social history and political philosophy are the subjects of the classes, and the kids can meaningfully dissent. These are debates and consensus-building exercises that should be happening between adults on either side, not between adults from one side and children from the other.
If it helps, there are pragmatic reasons for these highfalutin' philosophical sentiments: this kind of activism often does more harm than good for your cause. Prop 8 passed in part based on people's fear and disgust when they heard about the curriculum changes in Massachusetts. Maine just narrowly struck down marriage equality, and some of the same rhetoric was thrown around there. Consensus-building takes time, and it requires enough understanding and mutual respect among moderates on both sides to drown out the hystereia and impatience from the fringes of both sides. A politically savvy unified campaign for "everything but the name" domestic partnerships could have already gotten real-world relief for gay couples and been a stepping stone to greater acceptance and full marriage equality down the road, but it's largely been derailed by the hardcore, uncompromising attitude that we're right, dammit, so we deserve everything we want right now!
Gay Americans _are_ right in this case, and they _do_ deserve marriage equality right now. But that just isn't the way a representative, consensus-based political system works. Meaningful change takes patience, and being right, by itself, isn't good enough.
Don - Ouch.
ReplyDeleteElmo_iscariot - Actually, I think the gay marriage movement has been more crippled by weak sauce. Every time a vote comes up, it seems like the anti people are screaming and frothing and shamelessly manipulating in campaign ads and public discussion, and the pro people are more like "no, no, we're very unthreatening, we won't call it marriage, we won't tell the kids, we won't get all gay in your face."
If you want to play politics rather than rightness, it seems like the most effective thing would be to run a really vicious campaign about how gay marriage opponents hate love and families and probably puppies too. The meme "our opponents eat babies" seems to stick a lot better (or at least faster) in undecided minds than the meme "we're very nice and just want a little fairness please."
I've never seen the headline "does pro-gay-marriage ad go too far?" on the news, and I'd like to.
"Every time a vote comes up, it seems like the anti people are screaming and frothing and shamelessly manipulating in campaign ads and public discussion, and the pro people are more like 'no, no, we're very unthreatening, we won't call it marriage, we won't tell the kids, we won't get all gay in your face.'"
ReplyDeleteAnd the pro people are _winning_. We have full marriage equality in five states--two of which actually put it through their legislative processes rather than getting it through the courts on state constitutional grounds*. NY and DC recognize same-sex marriages from other states. We have civil unions with varying degrees of protection in another nine states plus DC. Most of these marriage and civil union policies have been passed in the last five years--nearly half in the last _two_ years. And public referenda on full equality are being defeated by razor-thin margins. Yes, there's a long way left to go. But real change takes time, and recent progress has been outstanding. Who would ever have believed only twenty years ago that we'd have come so far in such a short time?
I'm inclined to think that social movements have a natural life cycle: first you grab people's attention with sign-waving and slogan-shouting, drawing their attention to the worst, most flagrantly unignorable injustices (like racist poll suppression, denial of a married woman's right to own property, or police savagely beating and arresting people for patronizing gay clubs). But once you get past the really big issues and into the subtler ones, you have to transition your message and your methods to suit the new context. Movements that can't make that transition stagnate or even lose ground. Brutal institutionalized physical intimidation and repression just for _being_ gay is on an entirely different level of severity than, for example, being able to live and raise a family openly with your partner but being denied a legal marriage. They're both wrong, but use the same rhetoric and volume for both of them and you'll gain more eyerolls than allies. Frankly, I think that's a big reason the anti-equality side has lost as much ground as it has.
[* - Four at the moment; NH starts marryin' up the homos on the first of next year. I'm told to expect the sun to turn black as a sackcloth of hair, and the moon red as blood.]
"The meme 'our opponents eat babies' seems to stick a lot better (or at least faster) in undecided minds than the meme 'we're very nice and just want a little fairness please.'"
ReplyDeleteI think this sums up my novella up there: "our opponents eat babies" sticks faster. "We're very nice and just want a little fairness please" bears out over the long haul.
You win a referendum by demonizing your opponents, but lose a bit more credibility each time you do it and people end up seeing later that no baby-eating is actually happening. If we're going to keep up this struggle through the 55 remeining states, constance and integrity will be much better allies than scare tactics that undermine our credibility. Again, this is a big part of why I think the bad guys are slowly losing.
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ReplyDeleteThis is a very special story. Instead of a mommy and a daddy, this story has a Daddy and an Alien Creature ...
ReplyDeleteelmo_iscariot: What are the other 10 "states" you are referring to? U.S. protectorates in the Caribbean, or middle eastern countries which haven't been conquered yet? ;-p
ReplyDeleteI miscounted. It's nine "states", _including_ DC.
ReplyDeleteNew Jersey has a state law granting civil unions and requiring them to be "equal" to marriage.
California offers domestic partnerships that have most of the protections of marriage.
Washington DPs have most of the protections of marriage, and the bill to provide full protection just passed a referendum test.
Oregon DPs give all protections of marriage.
District of Columbia DP benefits have been built up over time to the point that they're almost indistinguishable from marriage.
Maine DPs primarily give gay partners next-of-kin status (which addresses most of the most important issues) and apply domestic violence laws to them.
Hawaii extends a limited number of specific rights to all couples that can't marry in the state, including protection of inheritance and medical visitation and decisionmaking guarantees.
Colorado is similar to Hawaii, but adds a few extra specific financial protections.
Maryland is similar to Colorado and Hawaii, but heavier on the medical decisions than on the personal finance.
Like I said, varying degrees of protection. They ain't nohow good enough, but they're a hell of a lot more than any reasonable person could've expected us to have by now.
"Me, I think it's fairly retarded that there's any question of whether a loving family has to be boy-girl to be a good thing... But there _is_ that question. And even where I'm 99% sure I'm on the right side of a passionate debate, going after your opponents' kids is a shitty thing to do. "
ReplyDeletePlease do not use the word 'retarded' as an insult. There's no need for ableism anywhere.