By the time you read this today, America may be on fire, with blood running in the streets. At least that’s what blogger Sara Robinson suggests as the California Supreme Court rules today at 10am on whether or not to keep the Prop 8 ban on gay marriage:
“…if Prop 8
is overturned by the courts, the backlash from the right is likely to
be far more ferocious and intense than anybody on the left reckons
right now.”
I fear she’s probably right — while gay people are the ones getting basic human rights stripped from us, conservatives cry oppression. If the Supreme Court rules in our favour today, based on the US Constitution and legal precedent, you’ll be hearing shrieks about “liberal activist judges” more than you ever imagined possible before.
As columnist Jonathan Rauch says in an insightful interview, “gay people are the canary in the mine shaft where civil liberties are concerned. First the gays, then..”
Then….women. I hate to get all Gloria Steinem on you but it always comes down to women — gay men are hated for the perception that we are like women or choose to be like them. The ban on gay marriage, says the unusually honest right-wing nut Sam Schulman, is simply a necessary part of keeping women in line:
“This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in
virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular
manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about
who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes
an adult, and is also about how her adulthood–and sexual
accessibility–is defined.’
That’s right, this Thursday is Ladies’ Night! Free chastity belts to the first fifty women! Schulman continues:
“This most profound aspect of marriage–protecting and controlling the
sexuality of the child-bearing sex–is its only true reason for being,
and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage.”
So there! Argument over, fags! And to think Schulman does all this before he starts talking about how it’s actually his mother he loves. Canaries in the mine shaft, indeed!
Why you can trust Xtra
