12/5 Reflection

Now that I'm in the final stages of my essay, I thought I would use my final post as a way to reflect on all of the things I learned this year in my research on social dynamics on the LGBT community.
I had a suspicion that we as a nation were in the midst of legalizing gay marriage, and that we were definitely in a transitional period, but I realized that we are in a full-blown revolution at this point, and I love it.

We are now in a time where the homophobic opinions of the past are now being drowned out by the voices of people wanting equality for all in this country, and in the amount of time it took to legalize, the paradigm shifted as well. I think this was a beautiful change that our country needed, and I'm glad that I am alive to see it.

On that note, I did want to add that I was stunned to see how homophobic these contrary opinions were. I thought that this kind of hatred towards gays was at least closeted, but now I realize that the people that don't want this change to happen are backed up against the wall so hard, they have no recourse but to scream their hatred to listening ears.

At the beginning of this course I had no conception of the powder keg we had been sitting on as a nation, and I'm glad that I am rallying for this change, now that it seems all the more worthwhile to do so.

12/4 What Does the Ideal Look Like?

One of the main things that I will be including in the final draft of my paper is what I think the U.S. will look like in the future after these laws are enacted. For this, I decided to look towards a country with a reputation of being very LGBT friendly, with complete national legalization.

Given the fact that they were the first country to do this, and I have been there many times, I chose to look a little more in depth to The Netherlands. My dad is from there, and luckily for me, one of my uncles is a gay resident of Amsterdam. As such, he has been able to enlighten me as to how he is treated there.

It seems to be that for the Dutch, the treatment of gay people has completely shifted. Before 1973, they had considered homosexuality to be a mental illness. Now they boast one of the highest gay acceptance rates in the world (90%).

For them, religious "ideals" about preserving the stereotypical family unit are superseded by civil rights, and they made the realization that the law of the modern country they live in has to protect all people.

12/3 "The Cootie Effect"

In my ongoing debates with people in the UB environment, online, and in other organizations I have taken rank with, there is a disgusting cop-out taking effect for those without any conventional arguments against gay marriage.

What is this cop-out? It's simply paraphrasing the following sentence.

"Because you support gay people, you must be one of them."

It's effective because there is nothing I can say without insulting gay people or dare I say "incriminating" myself. Being gay is a trait that nobody can see, and with the complex spectrum of sexuality in nature, it is one of the rudest ways to say "agree to disagree".

To me it sounds like "The only reason you believe in this is because it affects you directly, it's not because you have compassion for other people and what they may want, it's just because this is a right that you think YOU should have."

I've dubbed this "The Cootie Effect", because it is an infantile way of discriminating against allies for their beliefs. It's not fair.

12/1 The Crime of Being Gay

There's something to be said about the cumulative change in the human perception of gay marriage. Even though countries have been legalizing for years, and the U.S. is on the fast track to join them, we have to understand that he fight is nowhere near over globally, and may not have any measurable path in continuing forward.

In some nations, such as Uganda and Iran, engaging in homosexual intercourse is one of the worst crimes one can commit, entailing almost immediate death the prosecuted.

These nations cite religious works as their basis for enacting these draconian measures, but once again we are left with the question, why is being gay a crime in the first place?

I'm not just talking about the religious context here, but what's within it. Why do religious works see gay sex as a crime? Why is something two consenting parties engaged in illegal? There's nobody being hurt, there's no safety risk, and it's not draining the nations resources. This is baffling.

11/28 Why is "Marriage" Such a Sacred Term?

While doing more research on the tie-in with Religion in Gay Marriage, I found one parallel that runs along all major organized religions of today. There seems to be either an ambiguity or pure condemnation of the term "marriage".

A lot of religions (Reform Judaism, Episcopalian Christianity, Hinduism) allow gay couples to unite under the doctrine of their religion, or perhaps are missing the clause not to. However, there is one complete problem with their institution of "marriage", and that's the fact that they don't even reference it as such.



I'm really confused as to why this is happening, because these religions have gone to all of this trouble to make marriage work. Why does a word mean so much to them? I'll have to do a bit more work to figure this one out.

11/23 Irony is the Only Thing Holding Us Back

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gop-lawmaker-thanksgiving-reminds-us-oppose-gay-rights



I came across this with total disgust and anguish. Around this time of year, we think about what we are thankful for, and to remind those that we are close to that we love them. However, this article as proven that there are those opportunistic enough to use a time of celebration to spread hate, something I cannot stand.


However, beyond the typical anti-gay rights movement (the whole "our kids will be corrupted" yadda yadda") this guy did something that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. He tried equating the Republicans "fight to keep sexual morality" or whatever, with the fleeing of Christians from England to the U.S. aboard the Mayflower.

He says something like "We were persecuted for our beliefs then, and once again we must take action....". However, as the institutionalized religion, calling the shots for the other 30% of this nation that doesn't identify as Christian, it seems more that the gays are the ones fighting and fleeing for their right to live in the way that they want to.

10/18 Change is Out of Control!

               In my experience appraising how fast gay marriage will come, I could have never seen what has just happened coming. Over the month of October (so far), the wave of states legalizing gay marriage has taken a complete turn into overdrive, sending six more states to legalize. I would have been more than happy if six had legalized in the entire year of 2014, but these states came out of NOWHERE. Here they are.


Nevada: Considering the liberal influence of "vice industries", and considering that many of the states around it have converted, this one wasn't as big of a shocker compared to the rest. It still came early though.

Idaho: This one shocked me to my core. This was the state that in April refused to let a lesbian VETERAN to be buried next to their wife. (http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/04/24/3430609/idaho-lesbian-veteran/) I have no idea how this one happened.

West Virginia: I have no idea how this one happened.

North Carolina: I have no idea how this one happened.

Alaska: I have no idea how this one happened.

Arizona: I have no idea how this one happened.

Wyoming: I have no idea how this one happened.

If you're getting a theme here, you'll see that the majority of the October legalizations make no sense to me. These were states I would have figured may not have legalized within the decade.

I guess the end of 2014 is my new prediction? I have no idea at this point, especially considering that many elections and initiatives are being enacted on the eighth. Fingers crossed!

10/6 Realization About My Arguments

             




                  Luckily as a student at UB, I have gotten the chance to collaborate with a variety of different perspectives and contexts on the majority of hot-button social issues facing the country today. Gay Marriage is one of the most pertinent and omnipresent issues for discussion, and therefore has allowed me to interact with people that disagree with my perspective. Outside of the sheer frustration of debate, I think these perspectives have enriched my knowledge of the opposition, and have given me a really accurate view of what I am up against as a LGBT rights supporter. Typically, the first place my opponents hide is in arguments about religion, and when I have deflated all of the concrete biblical elements of their argument, they turn to subjective and rather abstract arguments, something that is quite hard to rally against. I think the main problem is that I can't say that Christians aren't for the institution of the "typical American family" and all of the "wonder bread" plainness of their ideals.


                  But then, I made a realization that haunts me, and actually changed my perspective on how to argue this issue. Everyone I had talked to said that it would be unfair to legalize gay marriage out of freedom of religion, and how it supposedly goes against the Christian teachings to promote Gay Marriage. However, I think there is a solution that meets in the middle. What if we legalized it clerically and left a loophole for churches to legalize?


What if we granted churches the right to refuse gay marriage, instead of granting them the right to institute it? This way, any gay couple (whether agnostic or relgious) can be married in a church that is liberal enough to perform the procedure, while allowing conservative parishes to refuse it?

I have yet to see someone go against this.

9/27 Momentum is Building (Post 2)

One of the main points I really want to argue in the shift of gay marriage is whether there is even a shift to speak of. That is to say, I need to show that there is momentum building in national opinion, and this is somehow leading to legislative results. I came across a site called "Freedom to Marry" recently, and I saw that there is DEFINITELY a momentum shift in legislative clout for gay marriage.


In between 2003 and 2008 there was two lasting legalizations of gay marriage (three if you count California, but that was quickly repealed). In between 2013 and September 2014 there was ten, and that's not counting the 5 or 6 that happened between 08' and '11. I will definitely have to include a chart in my report that shows this upward trend and create some kind of mathematical estimate as to when this will become nationally legalized.