Gays
are still denied full rights
Jessica
Post
The
fact that Jason Garthoffner's article ("Respect
gays, but not gay marriage") of blatant
discrimination was even published in the
On-line Forty-Niner is, to say the least,
discouraging. Garthoffner states, "If
I were Rosa Parks I would be angry with
all the 'progressive' liberals and gay activists
comparing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom
to her." This statement within itself
is utterly absurd. Garthoffner is a white
male, and could never begin to understand
what a woman of color would or would not
feel.
Also,
contrary to the statement in the article,
gays are not "totally accepted members
of our society." As a bisexual woman,
there is a monumental difference in the
levels of social acceptance I get when I'm
out with a man than when I'm on a date with
a woman. Unless we seclude ourselves to
the very small area of West Hollywood, holding
hands, cuddling, and any other "simple"
displays of affection are greeted with comments,
stares, judgments, and at times, violence.
I
went to dictionary.com to see what their
definitions for "rights" and "privileges"
are. A right is defined as "something
that is due to a person or governmental
body by law, tradition or nature,"
or as "a just or legal claim or title."
A privilege is defined as "a special
advantage, immunity, permission, right,
or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual,
class, or caste." A privilege is also
"such an advantage, immunity, or right
held as a prerogative of status or rank,
and exercised to the exclusion or detriment
of others."
So,
in reality, the "right" to marry
really is a "right." It is a privilege
that is afforded to some and denied to others.
The notion that allowing gays to marry each
other would spark a flame that would eventually
permit marriage between a woman and her
cats is quite possibly the single most ignorant
analogy I've ever heard. Here we are, at
good ol' Cal State Long Beach, and we're
supposed to be educated, yet this is the
level of critical thinking to which we're
graduating students and sending them off
to the world?
These
analogies remind me of other American paranoid
propaganda. Physicians wrote "credible"
journal articles about how if women were
to receive a higher education, the blood
from their reproductive organs would flow
up to the brain, thus damaging their capabilities
to reproduce. The United States was set
on the idea that if Vietnam "fell"
to communism, the domino effect would spread
communism all over the globe. Pro-slavery
activists believed that ending slavery would
be the worst thing to occur in our nation's
history. What were their reasons? Black
men in an animalistic fashion would chase
after all of the white women--raping, pillaging,
murdering.
Of
course, now we look back at these idiotic
notions and think to ourselves, "How
could we have possibly believed this? It's
a good thing we're more advanced in our
thinking nowadays." But we're not.
The
truth is, it doesn't matter what the all-knowing
people of California, Massachusetts or whatever
think. If matters were eternally left in
the hands of the majority of the people,
blacks would still be enslaved, women would
still not have the right to vote or the
right to higher education and racial segregation
would still abound.
These
freedoms have never been "given"
to the minority. A small percentage of dedicated
people had to fight with utmost determination
against the majority who suppressed them.
So if California law says that marriage
is between a man and a woman, this can be
legally overturned by a supreme court. This
is how segregation in schools was banned
in Brown v. Board of Education.
The
movement for gays to marry isn't about ruining
the "sanctity" of marriage as
we know it. It is about no longer tolerating
the discrimination of a specific group of
loving, responsible and consenting adults.
Jessica Post is a Women's Studies major
at CSULB and a volunteer at the Women's
Resource Center on campus.
|
