msagara | Memeage

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Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage/relationship (or if you think you might be someday), and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

I am of the opinion that if other people living their own lives can easily threaten your marriage, there are issues that need to be worked out that have little, in the end, to do with said other people. I don't really understand -- I truly don't -- why this is such a big issue for people. It's not like having legal gay marriage is somehow going to force you to suddenly switch your sexual preference. Look, on a purely pragmatic level, happy, committed couples are more likely to have a stake in the community in which they live. Happy people usually want other people to be happy. They are just much more pleasant to have as neighbours.

So...do the people who hate this idea so much live in a crabby, enclosed little space in which they're unhappy enough to assume that everyone should suffer?

I know that some people point to children as a reason why gays shouldn't be allowed to marry (they can't, on their own or without intervention, have them). But no one seems to care if a heterosexual couple chooses not to have children, and I fail to see how this is fundamentally different.

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Actually, some people are of the opinion that if you are married and don't have children, then somehow you're selfish.

But opinions are like certain parts of anatomy. Everyone's got one, and sometimes I wish they'd share *less*.

I also don't understand how people can take umbrage to something that is none of their business--religious crutch or otherwise--especially, as you say, when it doesn't affect them directly. People are people are people. We all deserve to be happy and free to be able to pursue that happiness.

As someone not married, nor likely to be, I find the whole gay marriage issue ridiculous. If any two people are happy together, more power to them. There is little enough happiness in the world as it is. Why try to keep anyone from enjoying that which they can find, providing of course that it doesn't impinge on somebody else's freedoms. (That whole Declaration of Independence thing, you know.)

I have friends that are hetero and friends that are homo all in long term relationships. I don't see any differences to their relationships other than an arbitrary government ruling based on a religion that isn't supposed to be attached to government in the first place. I'm just happy that they are happy.

Quite frankly, I say, let them get married.
Or hell, even if they aren't married, if they're at least a committed couple, and maybe want to adopt, then have at it, my friends!
I point to ovirginsaint's comment that some people call you selfish for not having children even in a heterosexual marriage: why, when there are millions of unwanted children to adopt?
I say that gay couples, if they choose to adopt at least one child, are doing the world a favor.
Really, who wants another mouth in the world to feed when there are so many already going hungry?

So...do the people who hate this idea so much live in a crabby, enclosed little space in which they're unhappy enough to assume that everyone should suffer?

-->Alas, I think you've hit it right here. I've seen very little from that end of the political spectrum that can be seen as even vaguely positive and happy. It's always fear and anger and impending apocalypse.

Historians will note that it's not dissimilar to past religious social crusades: the perpetrators feel secure in the righteousness of their views, and feel that they are saving souls by saving society. There's a basic belief that the Almighty will condemn the community if it has an "impure" person within it (for varying definitions of "impure" through the ages).

All this palaver about "real" Americans and preserving "real" family values is, at root, a colossally misguided attempt to sort the Righteous from Everyone Else. If people just fall in line, they too can be part of some imagined Utopia; but as long as Heathens exist, they're fucking it up for everyone.

It's crazy. It's the exact thing that happens when people are actively discouraged from self-reflection, from thinking about where their ideas originate.

It isn't just sorting the "Righteous " from everybody else- it is a passive aggressive way of punishing those "evil" people who aren't "just like us". It is sorta scary how how these "oblividiots"(intentional sniglet) think everything they think or do is okay because they are "right". this "right" is what some other idiot told them was right! Fanatics of all kind are mentally and emotionally retarded-they refuse to grow up and mature-its like they are stuck at a certain level of development. So of course they won't examine the belief system that they were fed- why, they might have to think for themselves-and, oh no!., they might actually have to look at things they may have done or said-and even worse, they might have to admit they were -gasp- wrong? or at least admit they don't know? I think the basis for much of this is fear of the unknown-not having an answer or ideology handed to them leaves a lot of people at a loss and they would rather stick to the someone telling them what to think than having to think themselves.

Okay, so I friended you because I love your books. Now I can add that I friended you because you're kinda awesome. :) (and while it's rather sad what this may say about my standard of awesome, I've had a crappy week on this front.)

Yes on 8 (for an amendment to CA state constitution BANNING gay marriage) adverts have been running and certainly seem like fear mongering:

2nd. Graders will be taught about gay marriage and parents will not have a say-- or be able to withdraw their kids from class--it's happened in Massachusetts!!!

Churches will lose tax-exempt status!!!

People will be sued over their religious beliefs!!!

Ads are paid for by out-of-state money from Mormons in Utah and Knights of Columbus in Connecticut. (They had more money for a while until Apple recently tipped it the other way.)

No on 8 donors were sent letters threatening that their names and businesses would be published and circulated unless they gave equal donations to Yes on 8... (it's next to extortion, but legal).

Meanwhile, the sky has not fallen and people have been quietly getting married here. I'm hoping reason and tolerance will triumph over bigotry and discrimination, but who knows? We'll see how it goes on Election Day, I guess...

2nd. Graders will be taught about gay marriage and parents will not have a say-- or be able to withdraw their kids from class--it's happened in Massachusetts!!!

The parents are always free to add their own words of advice or their own take on the issue. They may not be comfortable doing this, otoh.

I've had any number of people ask me "what if your children were gay", and honestly? At the age they are now, I can't tell either way. I'd kind of like them to have a chance to be happy with who and what they are, regardless. If they are, and I was trying desperately to close off any avenues to a life that has otherwise made me happy, that would say a lot about me as a parent.

And I kind of like none of it.

As a newlywed from MA (holy crap it's almost been a year :D )I am one of many many hetero couples who think that slippery slope line is complete BS. My gay friends who are married don't affect my marriage any more than any other joe schmoe, it's a weak argument. And my kids (when I have them...eventually), well, I hope schools are free to teach them about ALL the many differences between peoples. Race, culture, sexuality, etc. If hearing that some people do things differently than one's own family is threatening to the kid, well that's shortsighted.

I hope Californian's can win this one, for themselves and everyone in the country. The more states who put down these proposals the better.

about the kids part. Many hetrosexual couples can't have kids either. They get help, same thing applies to gay couples. I know several of both. (I hope that came out right)

about the kids part. Many hetrosexual couples can't have kids either. They get help, same thing applies to gay couples. I know several of both. (I hope that came out right)

It came out perfectly right. I guess the point for me is that the No people aren't trying to add misery or deny happiness to heterosexual couples who don't have children, regardless of the reason. I don't understand why the expect me to feel threatened by a the happiness of total strangers.

Unless they expect that somehow part of my happiness is based on a sense of superiority, which I will legally lose. In which case, that's beyond sad.

Bug huge DITTO - exactly what you said coming from me!
It must cost the politicians and big CEOs money somehow. That's the only reason they ever truly get worked up over anything ;)

"do the people who hate this idea [...] ?"

I don't know, but I've seen bits of (so-called) logic that work something like:
- They believe gay people are evil, therefore anything that makes them happy or makes their lives more comfortable must be opposed.
- They feel that only by being completely different from the way the hets are, can gay people be tolerated at all. Anything that blurs the lines must be opposed. (i.e. It's not so much a threat to their marriage as a threat to the evidence their marriage presents about their own sexuality.)
- From a less specific point of view, there are people who generally act as if *everything* is a scarce resource and the more someone else has of it, the less remains for them.

doesn't mean someone else will be.

You're talking about defining community by inclusion; everyone who has a stake in the community should be able to contribute/join, and only things very directly relevant to that participation should be considered.

Most of the folks freaking about about legitimization of being gay (or the idea that their money will go to pay things like survivor's pensions for the not-dead half of a gay couple...) define community by exclusion; there's a list of rules you have to follow. If you don't follow them, you're a heretic, and no decent person wants you around.

As a model of social organization, community by inclusion is clearly superior, or at least obviously and demonstrably way better at getting people to co-operate in groups (and larger groups). It won't support a moral-superiority model beyond a sort of vague smugness at how enlightened everyone is, though, so there's a basic primate security ("I am not the guy who the band will feed to the lion so the rest can get away") issue it can't address.

That there are other ways to address this specific insecurity management issue isn't obvious to the folks who want to be standing far away from the heap of heretics in case the Lord starts to feels some smiting coming on, and they're generally using a world view that references difference from absolute, ideal, abstract types, rather than the -- merely factually accurate -- model that assigns qualities to populations based on statistical measurement of what happens to be present at the moment.

This shows up in the arguments about gay parents; one groups is going "that's wrong!" (it's a violation of the abstract type "parent", and probably of the abstract type "gay", too, even if the "gay" type isn't equating "gay" and "pedophile") and the other group is hauling up the available statistics and going "no, no, look, see, gays tend to be better parents than the population average, it's all right" and communication fails to occur, most of the time. (If it didn't occur some of the time this wouldn't be a controversy and being gay would still be a crime.)

So, rawly reduced, the folks freaking out have heads that are running a system with very strong type checking, and they're throwing a compiler error; if this lead to fact-checking the type definitions by default, all would be well, but it doesn't.

I did not follow the above train of thought, but felt the urge to voice my opinion. I'm from CA and I agree with all of you. From my frame of reference, this proposition did not have a chance of passing. . . and now it has.. unbeleivable. The propaganda supporting it was also unbeleivable. Do people really beleive there is a connection between gay marriage and what children learn in school?
Is the train of thought "Oh! Those gay people can marry so now they'll be teaching our children that in school tomorrow!" If they can manipulate the masses with something so rediculous, we should all be gravely concerned.

Mrs. Sagara,
I have absolutely enjoyed "The Chronicles of Elantra," your books have pulled me back into the crazy world of sci-fi. These stories were made even more important to me when I got a resistant staph infection on my face just before I came home for thanksgiving from college. I was in quarantine and isolated from my huge loving family for four days, unable to touch anything without using extreme measures of Lysol, and the only thing that made it bearable were the books (your series) that I had snagged from my mom. Not only do I adore how human the character is but I was pulled into the story. I cannot tell you much your books mean to me and I just want to let you how much I enjoy your writing.
Thank you, sincerely,
Cassie Robinson

For a while there I didn't really want to read your books. They would sit on the shelf at the local main-stream bookstore staring at me and I think I knew I would love them before I even read them. But I am a stubborn person so I didn't indulge, for MONTHS!!! and now I have read all four books in less than a week and can only wait on pins and needles till the fifth one is released. *sigh*

And having read some of your blog I must say it gives me one more reason to enjoy reading your books. With so many people walking around with their head shoved up where the sun don't shine I'm glad to know you're not one of them. ^_^

BTW are you on My Space or Face Book?

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Memeage

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family values?

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Just because you're being reasonable...

Re: Just because you're being reasonable...

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One more reason....