By Mark Simpson (Guardian CIF, 30 April 2009)
Who would have guessed the dainty opinions of a Miss America candidate would have been taken so seriously by gays and liberals?
Miss California, a practising Christian, was last week denounced by Miss America judge Perez Hilton on his blog as ‘a dumb bitch’ and unworthy of the Miss America crown because she gave the ‘wrong’ answer to his chippy question about gay marriage. Like most Americans – including the current Democratic President of the United States – she believes that marriage is ‘between a man and a woman’. Boo! Hiss! Rip her to shreds!
It wasn’t just the famously bitchy gay gossip-monger Hilton casting stones, however. For honestly and somewhat courageously answering his question Miss California was roundly condemned as a ‘bigot’ by hosts of gay and liberal bloggers, and was even denounced by the directors of the Miss California pageant who declared themselves ‘saddened’ by her views and that they had no place in the ‘Miss California family’, whatever that is. Most now agree with Hilton’s gloating claim that her answer cost her the crown.
Candidate Obama expressed the exact same view during the Presidential Election: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. You know, God’s in the mix.” Instead of being scorned as a bigot and a dumb bitch, Obama was handed the Mr America crown by liberals and probably most gay voters. But I suppose that being President of the United States is a rather less important title than Miss America.
Branding Christians and traditionalists ‘bigots’ for being Christians and traditionalists and thus none too keen to fundamentally revise the definition of marriage is a highly unattractive exercise in liberal self-righteousness that makes Miss America look quite sophisticated. Not to mention sounding a lot like pots and kettles rattling. It’s faintly absurd to have to even say this, but it isn’t bigoted to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s just being conventional. And after all, marriage itself is convention and tradition tied up in a big red bow and covered in confetti and sprinkled with Holy Water. Which is exactly why lesbians and gays should have nothing to do with it.
Today’s out and proud same-sex relationships are very unconventional and a very new kind of phenomenon. And so are in fact many of today’s cross-sex relationships in a brave new world of gender parity. Marriage on the other hand is an antiquated, failing institution based on inequality and traditional roles. Much like Miss America.
Marriage is, whether you like it or not, also based on religious sentiment: ‘God’s in the mix.’ Especially in a very religious country like America. And I have a hunch, based on millennia of violent opposition to sex that doesn’t produce more Christians, that God is not going to sanctify ‘sodomy’ any time soon.
New ways of living and loving require new institutions. Or in the words of the famously unmarried Galilee carpenter and fisher of men: put new wine into new wineskins. And keep the flippin’ Pharisees out of it. Or else you’ll end up with a tacky mess.
It needs to be said out loud that full civil unions with the same legal rights and privileges of marriage at both the State and Federal level, supported by President Obama and many Republicans and even some right-wing evangelicals – and the large majority of American voters – are not only much more politically achievable in the US than gay marriage, they are also a better fit for most same sex relationships. What’s more they represent an entirely dignified way of side-stepping this endless, unsightly domestic between liberal and conservative, secular and religious, metropolitan and rural America.
But instead, gay marriage zealots, many of whom admit that they themselves don’t wish to get married, insist on characterising civil unions as ‘second class’, ‘social apartheid’ or ‘riding at the back of the bus’. I’d like to think it was merely a ploy to make fully-recognised civil unions more achievable, but many really seem to believe their own shrill propaganda. Worse, they’ve made even more of a fetish of the word ‘marriage’ than the religious right they rail against.
In the UK, where nationally recognised same-sex civil unions with the same legal status as marriage – called civil partnerships – were introduced in 2004 there is little or no appetite now for gay marriage. In my experience few lesbians or gays feel they are ‘riding at the back of the bus’. Maybe because in many ways they’re actually riding at the front. It’s probably only a matter of time before gay civil partnerships in the UK are made available to all, as they are in France – where the vast majority of applications are now made by cross-sex couples disenchanted with traditional marriage.
What’s more, fully-recognised, open-to-all civil unions are a fully-fledged secular institution that helps to shore up a fragile secular society. And make no mistake, it is secularism on which most of the – historically very, very recent – freedoms enjoyed by lesbians and gays are based, along with those of women.
But so far the gay marriage crusade in the US doesn’t seem very interested in any of this or lessons it might learn from the experience of other countries. Instead it seems too busy proving itself holier-than-thou. And less sophisticated than Miss America contestants.
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Keep in mind the U.S. has a bad history with “Separate but Equal”. It just doesn’t seem to work here. The LGBT community doesn’t seem to want to have a repeat of that historical failure. Understandable.
Already, we’ve seen cases where ‘civil unions’ have been held to not have the same legal standing as marriage, despite the best intent of the civil union legislation. Case in point: A judge who ruled that alimony must continue because civil union isn’t the same as marriage. http://bit.ly/16GHng
Given the rabid hatred against LGBT peoples by many segments of the U.S. population, it is vital to form the strongest legal protections possible. In this case, that appears to be nothing short of marriage. Without full equality, the haters will continue to work tirelessly to find ways to oppress us.
With full equality, the haters will continue to work tirelessly to find ways to oppress you. Let’s face it, a law means nothing when classed with bigotry and hatred.
But all this talk of “equality” and no “separate but equal” only works if being same-sex attracted is a genetic or congenital condition. It also follows that this almost wholly American “mindset” – to link a person’s sexuality as a condition akin to race.
So failing any proof – despite the efforts of many researchers – to link same-sex attraction to a specific “cause”, ultimately we seem fated to have our sexualities unexplained. And as Mark’s recent spate of articles on bisexuality show, much to the disgust of the gay and lesbian mainstream a person’s sexuality is complex, changeable, and highly dependent on many extrinsic factors.
So where is the equality in assuming that every person has a “right” to committ to a monogamous, highly co-dependent arrangement such as marriage – especially when the men and women who do get married are destined to leave it in droves? Why is the monolithic Gay and Lesbian Lobby pushing such a failed institution when it does nothing but promote a very limited, middle-class conservative mindset?
And where is the equality for those people who don’t want or need a significant other; or people who are in polygamous relationships or those who have changed or non-gender specific identities? What about two heterosexual friends who live together, are emotionally dependent on each other but do not have a sexual relationship?
There is a myriad of ways that people can form relationships – something the original Gay Movement recognised. It is a great step back to now have a Gay and Lesbian movement that only sees a traditional marriage as the be-all-and-fucking-end-all, especially when it leaves most of us with separate but not equal status.
Respectable gays and lesbians want to ride up the front with the respectable heteros and leave us poofs and dykes and trannies and perverts up the back. I’m not prepared to just have the “back of the bus” moved further back so some people can have legiticimacy.
Much better comment than my original article.
What Sisu said.
I would be all in favour of the gay (or any other) community taking the tack that the state needs to stop discriminating on the basis of your relationship (or lack of). How come people who have the luck/nous/stamina to share their lives, finances, procreation and in-laws have more “rights” in most jurisdictions than happy and sad singles alike? Me thinks it’s time to abolish any privileges attached to your relationships and make us truly equal before the law.
Given that the U. S. Constitution was written almost solely by men who were products of the Enlightenment, they were nearly to a man atheists and agnostics. Only one person of 39 even went to church at all. These men were inspired by many of the people responsible for the French revolution.
The Constitution provides Americans with a legal structure, a Bill of Rights and guidelines for a democracy all of which is secular. These laws eventual which governed a population of religious extremists, slaves and indentured servants accommodated as much as they could the various groups regardless of their often strange beliefs and even their dislike for democracy. The rules of the constitution and the many religious communities were often at odds and effort had to be made to keep the Civil authority separate from religious authority. Even though the Law itself is supposed to be secular, when it was used carelessly to buttress church law, as such, it was abused, and remains so, still obfuscating church and civil law. That remains the case, unfortunately..
if it was not gays would not then be challenging the religious principles which happen to overlap with marriage law. Marriage laws were originally made to regulate sexuality for religious people, to control women and to see to the breeding and raising of children. This has come to correlate with the governments’ work. Gay people have no need of the kind of sexual constraints which apply to people breeding children. We don’t reproduce ourselves and we already have our own sexual and social habits which differ from those required to.
Gay people are therefore fighting an unnecessary religious battle, by engaging in a scuffle for marriage which should not be part of the civil laws in the first place, many knowingly so. They are trying to force their sexuality on mom and dad and all the religious extremists in the U.S., which is a vast majority by making the government allow their nonreproductive sexual activity the status of a religious sacrament.
Moreover, and most important to Mark’s concern is that in the argument which the same sex proponents use to assert a right, the ‘separate but equal clause’ which was used originally to make miscegenist marriages legal. It is not at all clear that these are the same issue. They are not since marriage has been defined as a reproducing agreement between a man and woman, no matter what color according to the law.
However, it is not at all clear cut that this is the same thing, if ‘marriage’ is defined as the union of a man and a woman the “separate” referred to color, not nonreproductive sex.
If this constitutional matter was clear, then there would be more reason to criticize someone who differed, that fact is though that it is not clear. And to berate someone who disagrees on their religious grounds, or simple legal grounds is intolerant. Of course no one would want to accuse Perez Hilton of good judgement or clear thought in any case.
[...] Mark Simpson on the wrong fight for gay marriage. [...]
Marriage has been around a lot longer than Christianity and it wasn’t until 16th centuries after Christ that the Catholic church decided that a priest had to be present to make the marriage a done deal.
Christianity has no exclusive rights to the term “marriage” and no right to tell others that they can’t use the term.
Donald Trump has ruled that Miss California can keep her tarnished crown….echoing the words of Mark Simpson he acknowledged that Miss C and President Obama have the same view on marriage being between a man and a woman. Gay blogs and BBs are going mad with the frothy delight of calling Miss California every type of bigot…
But when it is an important issue such as this, and said by such a public person as Miss California (and the runner up for Miss USA no less), no amount of vitriol is too much. Good thing that being President of the United States is such a low profile, unimportant job, because then the Pro-Gay-Marriagers would have to take Obama to task as well.
I love the smell of hypocrisy on the intraweb.
There’s something really quite disturbing in the venom and crazy fury the gay blogs have shown Miss California – even claiming that she didn’t deserve her crown because she did a topless photo shoot! It’s official: gays are the New Puritans.
I would go further: the Puritan approach is inevitable given the Gay Cause is a religious Cause, with saints and demons and a liturgy that demands a heterosexualised public face and private hypocrisy. The gays dare not expose the fact of how downright icky gay sex can be – what with those drugs and orgies and sex clubs and multiple partners and taking it up the pooper – so it is important that gays become divorced from sex.
Am I the only one to imagine the level of adoration had Miss California giggled out a gay-affirming answer supporting the holy grail of gay marriage?
There seems little doubt that the yen for gay marriage by American gays is at root a religious one – even and especially when it’s espoused by people who think of themselves as anti-religious. They want sodomy to be sanctified, but as you say, in order to do that they have to distance themselves from… sodomy. And likewise, Miss California is WHORE! and a SLUT! and BITCH! because she doesn’t endorse their crusade.
But, interestingly, President Obama – who as you pointed out espouses the same viewpoint as our very dear Miss C – cannot be a whore, or a slut, or a bitch. Maybe because he is a minority, which Miss California clearly is not (although the peroxided, cosmetically enhanced is a minority…but a desirable one). Or maybe because Miss California is a clay pigeon easily shot…whereas Obama is just too much for the Good Gays to digest. The untouchable President and his views against the holy Gay crusade is the elephant in the room, and perhaps is symptomatic of the reluctance of other minorities to embrance the Gay Cause…and feeds into the Victim Complex without which no bona fide religion is complete.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact he’s black, but I suspect it’s mostly because he’s powerful. And male. So they vent their spleen on a powerless beauty queen instead, in language shot through with hatred and envy of her sex.
Right, Mark. All of the American gay bloggers supported the Democratic candidate! They would just look more stupid than usual, turning on him.
Beauty queens are just a pretty easy target for abuse: considering the superficiality of the culture they could just be jealose too.
Ref.Gauise(above): monogamous mating may have been around for quite a while. As far as I know, “marriage with all the pomp and circumstance: the thing that American gays want is the holy sacrament which connotes that they are not freaks. Historically, if you know anything about gay history over the past 15 years
it is intimately tied to normalization and the death of gay liberation.
And President Obama is emerging unscathed from another (and more important than same-sex marriage) Cause – that of gays and lesbians serving in the US military. Not sure about bisexuals, is there a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Get Confused Because They Don’t Fit Into A Stereotype” policy?
It’s easy to shoot clay pigeons like the ever-so-lovely Miss California, whereas both the President and the US Congress keep the DADT policy despite election promises. I wish the gay and lesbian lobby would grow some balls.
What a great piece. If I had the tits I had twenty years ago I’d send you a topless photo.
You are so right, Mark. You are coming from a logical place and a lot of people here are clear;y speaking out of emotion. The case is clear. The LGBT community has NO reason to be attracted to marriage as long as they get the same civil rights married couples get.
But as Mark says, it is an exercise in liberal self righteousness. You think everybody has to come around to your way of thinking right away, without stopping to think that every once in a while, the minority is wrong.
GO GAY MARRRRIAGE !(:
Yes, and the sooner you go, the better for all of us. Go! As far away as possible!
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