All or nothing at all
Posted By: A.Nonymous on 2009-05-06
In Reply to: If we all we're being so stubborn about this - Trigger Happy
First, please understand that I do not have a dog in this fight. I have no personal stake in the legal decision one way or the other. Second, I understand very well the concept of compromise.
The gay-rights movement has often been compared to the civil-rights movement and I'm willing to work with that concept a bit. During the days of segregation, blacks could ride the same bus as whites but were relegated to separate seats at the back. If the coloreds-only seats were filled, they were expected to stand, even though tired, pregnant, elderly, etc., even if there were plenty of whites-only seats available. And if a black person was thirsty, there were separate drinking fountains for them. Too bad if there was no coloreds-only fountain in sight, they could not drink from the whites-only fountain, no matter how parched. Same with schools, and where they were allowed to live and work. Nobody said they could not ride the bus at all, or have access to drinking water. This was all called 'separate but equal.'
Why on earth would a black person want to make trouble demanding identical rights to a white person, when they had their own separate but equal rights? Sure, slavery had been abolished, but didn't they realize it was God's plan to separate the races, otherwise why would they have been designed to look different?
I am not black, nor gay, and as I said I have no personal stake in this debate. But I do believe that sexual preference is as much a part of who we are as is race. I could no more be 'deprogrammed' from heterosexuality than a gay could be from homosexuality. I can avoid having sex at all, but not whom I am attracted to.
I have a sense of fairness which is offended by the proposal: You can have 'civil unions' with most of the rights pertaining to marriage. Why on earth would you want to fight over using the M word?
Some gays will be so happy with this compromise that they will jump at it, simply to stop having to struggle to get 'something.' Some gays will demand the whole enchilada: Front of the bus, same water fountain, etc. And some anti-gay-marriage folks will remain just as entrenched in their belief that civil unions are wrong, let alone gay marriage. This is what I mean by both sides stubborn. So yes, somewhere between all and nothing at all, there could be an area of compromise but I don't expect everyone on either side to embrace it.
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