Marriage Equality Calif. Calendar of Events for this Week

Marriage does not equal "equality." Someone must stop this violent equation. Fighting for "gay marriage" to be recognized by the State simply supports all the violences the State produces in its multiple forms of oppression. And Gavin Newsom is no "gay saint", he is a heterosexual, wealthy business man who knows NOTHING of queer struggle or lived experience. He is using this issue for his own political gain and at the expense of all those he contumely exploits.

You can rail on about how gay marriage is really a bad thing--but the gay community is united. We stand together against those who oppose gay marriage--whether that be due to the "gay" part, as with the Bush regime--or the "marriage" part, as with corrosive hacktivists like yourself.

Our cause is just, and we shall unite, fight, and win.

I virtually love the sneering self-righteousness of those pro-marriage activists who trounce on anyone willing to question their agenda and its priorities within the community. It makes me feel like I'm back in the midwest, dodging fagbashers and other suburban-coyboy bigots with their social autokill lasers set on high. Hey, I may be dying of lack of access to the healthcare system, under some bridge hiding from the roundup of homeless by a more caring, compassionate police response to poverty, but all I wanna know is can i marry my boyfriend while I'm at it? Maybe I can just hang on for a rich one who will get me on his healthcare? Oooh, now there's a solution to the humanitarian crisis that is amerika.

I'm sorry, "rail on", I almost forgot this isn't about me, it's about you you you. Again. As always. Well. You keep on singing your song about your self-righteousness. You don't represent me, as a queer or as anything else. You are not my leader, and your cause is not mine. As a faggot, I stand with the oppresssed of the earth in whatever attempt can be made to survive this nightmare system, nothing more nor less.

You go be equal, but leave me out of it. How dare you call me names for not lining up behind your agenda!! Your arrogance will be your undoing, and that of anyone who is willing to be bullied into silent acquiescence of your hegemony in what passes for a gay "community." Good riddance, I say.

Hack hack hack. Buh-bye. Enjoy your gay post-traumatic stress disorder, your gay divorce, your gay custody battle, and your gay suburban-cancer-cluster experience. Me, I can't wait to miss it all-- at least until the gay atom bombs start falling from gay world war 4. Then, at least I'll rest assured that we died equal. What a load off my troubled mind.

I hope I've been snide enough to make myself perfectly queer er clear.

Another brick in the wall--that gets toppled onto queer families. You are nothing more than damaged goods, looking to hold down everybody else who actually gives a damn or can succeed in this world you can't adjust to.

Second class is good enough for you? Okay. There you go, it's yours. Now wasn't that easy? No risk of failure in your dream, no sir.

I tend to agree that you are probably trying to divide the queer nation more than help us achieve the kind of power that we need before we could ever transform society.

Aaa-mazing, the audacity of these people. how dare i have a contrary opinon? i must be a threat to the nation (on indybay no less, imagine), and we know what happens to those. next stop, a sort of queer gitmo maybe...

> Another brick in the wall--that gets toppled onto queer families.

Hey buddy, don't you give me any lectures about queer families struggling to survive, you dont have any sort of monopoly or patent on that. What have you done for mine lately??

> You are nothing more than damaged goods, looking to hold down > everybody else who actually gives a damn or can succeed in this > world you can't adjust to.

a) I am not a commodity, though your use of the euphemism speaks volumes about your class baggage. b) what have i done to hold you or anyone down or back. questioned your agenda? maybe the problem is your reductionism. for my part, i'll claim the failure of not asking enough tough questions before we got to this pathetic point... c) am i so wrong, or is it the world? have you read anything at this site other than your own precious marriage thread? let me suggest the one on the war. stolen elections? bloodbath in haiti? maladjusted-- feh. i sure hope so!! what right do you have to be well-adjusted to the human horror show going on all around you?

tell ya what, go try to take care of your queer family on "care not cash," and get back to me on that, ok? or are you an innocent victim of the recession?

> Second class is good enough for you? Okay. There you go, it's
> yours. Now wasn't that easy? No risk of failure in your dream, no > sir.

"well i don't know a lot about what ya call class, but the upper and the middle can all kiss my ass..." it is you who have cut our dreams down to managable size, queers used to talk about a revolution, of the limitless possibilities of love. now you'll settle for a tax break on your joint return. well bully for you. go live in your tiny little cage. i'm still daring to want it all...

> I tend to agree that you are probably trying to divide the queer
> nation more than help us achieve the kind of power that we need > before we could ever transform society.

oh god, or whomever, forbid, there should be a diversity of opinion in "the queer nation." you know, i know people who founded that group. and i told them at the time that the nationalism model was going to be problematic down the road. at least they had the decency to have the militant black movement in mind... what's your excuse? the way you talk, i'll bet you even rally behind the president during wartime, because "he is our president, after all," and i'm sure you're not too good to "support our troops" while you're down there. but do you help lynn cheney monitor those who dare to question the american nation out loud in such a trying moment, hmm, do you?

and speaking of the power you need, just what exactly is that? is it reflected in the gay community as a niche market? happy suburban families? blech. well, i reply with a sing along:

Damaged goods
Send them back
I can't work
I can't achieve
Send me back
Open the till
Give me the change
You said would do me good
Refund the cost
You said you're cheap but you're too much
Your kiss so sweet
Your sweat so sour
Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you
But I know it's only lust
The change will do you good
I always knew it would
You know the change will do you good
You know the change will do you good

I'm kissing you goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye......

repeat ad nauseum...

Why the hell would you think that someone who is fighting for equal rights for gays, whether that be marriage rights or whatever, must automatically support Bush? That's not "questioning" somebody, that's psychotic projection. "Support gay marriage when I don't? You must support all the other things I don't."

The gay community is more united than I have seen it since the early days of AIDS. The threat of a Constitutional amendment officially declaring gays and lesbians second class citizens forever--yep. That's why. Not that you care, but we do. We care.

Queer nation--I was in Queer Nation for about six months in 1990. Big deal! A lot of activists go to the point at the front where we can do the most damage to the machinery of anti-gay discrimination, and right now, the marriage war is that place. You probably wouldn't understand, though. Like Bush, you don't want rights for middle class gays and lesbians.

Hey "No Way",

> Why the hell would you think that someone who is fighting for
> equal rights for gays, whether that be marriage rights or whatever,
> must automatically support Bush? That's not "questioning"
> somebody, that's psychotic projection. "Support gay marriage
> when I don't? You must support all the other things I don't."

Not what I said, in fact or effect. My point was that the logic and rhetoric being used against me, as someone daring to question the official line in public, is the same logic and rhetoric used by the president against those who question his agenda in public, especially at those "hot" moments like going to war, for oil or for marriage. Used against me in the same manner, and to the same ends. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Why on earth would I want to see such an agenda achieve all the social power you seem to think it needs? I'm talking about underlying and long term effects, about collateral damage. You're just rushing off headlong into a quagmire.

What effect is your war going to have on other people and the environment? What about the children?! What, for example, if you just got Bush reelected? Maybe you didn't, but maybe you did. Gee, Thanks Gav!! I dont think he could have done it without ya.

Seriously, go back and reread the statement in question, to which I was responding. (Or did you actually write it?) I would reiterate that I've done doodly-squat to interfere with anyone's marriage. I just don't think it's going to get us where we want to be, unless we want to be raising kids in white-flight suburbs and paying for american-trained deathsquad-led coups in Haiti, &c &c.

American society is a global "lose-lose," and gay marriage misses the grander social critique necessary for any subststantial and meaningful social change to make it not so consistently murderous to most of the people, most of the time. It is an assimilationist tactic-- at best. Go ask the Cherokees how far assimilationist tactics got them, if you can find any of the few left.

Yes, gay marriage, like gays in the military. Another real barn-burner, that one. Remember that "war," no way? I sure do. Where are they now? DADT, and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and gulf war syndrome, and life is worse for most queers in the military to boot-- because of not despite all the "progress" we made with our "friend" Clinton. And that's just on the american side, that's not counting the unsung atrocities we've perpetrated on Iraqis all these years and decades now.

Look, the poster I was responding to characterized it as a Nation, and you yourself (you are someone different, right?) used a war metaphor. Well, personally, I got a big problem with the idea of nations at war. Bourgeois gay leadership likes it just fine though, and then goes and commits everyone who falls under their proprietized leadership to an at best silly (i.e. marriage) and at worst dangerous (i.e. pro-militarism) agenda. That's not a functional path to liberation. Behold: the totality of my critique. Why *do* you take it so personally?

I thought I'd been snide enough to make myself clear. Sheesh, talk about psychotic projection. Why is it that anyone who dares question anything the gay leadership arbitrarily sets as a collective priority is subjected to this, hmmnh? Well from here, it reeks of other people's bourgeois privileges, and no I won't shut up about that. So there.

> The gay community is more united than I have seen it since the
> early days of AIDS. The threat of a Constitutional amendment
> officially declaring gays and lesbians second class citizens
> forever--yep. That's why. Not that you care, but we do. We care.

Thanks for caring, and for sharing. I would invite you to stop for a moment and reflect on the role your self-righteousness and self-centeredness play in um empowering your own opposition. (free clue: i don't mean me.)

> Queer nation--I was in Queer Nation for about six months in 1990.
> Big deal! A lot of activists go to the point at the front where we
> can do the most damage to the machinery of anti-gay
> discrimination, and right now, the marriage war is that place. You
> probably wouldn't understand, though. Like Bush, you don't want
> rights for middle class gays and lesbians.

Well, not only did I not introduce the subject, but neither was I in QN, because I disagreed with their nationalistic frame of reference. But hey I'm no bigot-- some of my best friends were in it. Apparently, you came and went without such a qualm even occuring to you. I hope you bring a little more thoughtfulness to your current efforts. Lack of same killed QN, leaving long-term activists to suffer the damage and pick up the pieces.

Meanwhile, as far as my opposition to bourgeois leadership of the gay agenda goes, well, yeah, but that's not anti-gay or even anti-marriage. Let me turn it around though: what's in it for me? I mean, "equal rights" is one thing, and "equal rights for middle class gays" is quite another, now isn't it? I will stand by my basic critique, namecalling and all, and as far as psychotic projections go, I'll let yours speak for themselves.

I will project this though: Enjoy your gay divorce, your gay custody battle, your gay midlife crisis and your gay high blood pressure management regimen. Your three gay heart attacks by 50. Your gay layoff, gay foreclosure, the end of your gay unemployment benefits and your gay homelessness. Yes, marriage has made hets so free and secure and happy, let's dare to be equal!

Seriously though, I truly hope your "equality" brings you the happiness you think seems to lurk therein. It wont bring you freedom though-- you either are that or you aren't. I maintain there's something much darker under the shiny happy surface of the American soul, and I can't imagine why you want to be equal with what you seem so ready to settle for. You never do address that one, you make it about me again, so it can be about you again. about your caring. about your pragmatism. about your control of the agenda.

If it were truly a rising tide, it would lift all boats, not just yours. I remain suspicious, and while only speaking for myself, maybe just maybe I'm indicating a deeper problem in the queer homeland, eh? Or at least in your strategy for securing and defending it.

Say, here's another chance for gay marriage advocates to address some of those class issues, that have some of us less than enthusiastic.

Oh, I mean "hating ourselves."