Well that’s odd
Peggy is rightly upset about Bush’s stance on gay marriage. In fact, one of my favorite quotes from her site:
George Bush, I will not be your post-modern nigger.
Good for Peggy. Oddly, Kerry gets a pass from Peggy. On her main page, I counted three instances of the word Kerry (nothing dealt with him having the same position on homosexual marriage as Bush: marriage is between man and woman) and sixteen instances of Bush.
Odd how Kerry seems forgiven by gay groups in general.
February 25th, 2004 at 11:39 pm
I agree that Kerry gets more of a pass than he deserves. But to say that he has the same position on gay marriage as Bush does is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Bush is in favor of a Constitutional Amendment to forever ban gay marriage everywhere in the US. Kerry is not. Kerry supports civil unions, and Bush does not. I fail to see how this amounts to the “same position.”
Kerry and most of the prominent Democrats (typical of politicians) are playing both sides of the issue: I oppose “gay marriage,” but I support “civil unions,” which are in effect the same thing with a different name. Bush, on the other hand, is playing only one side of the issue.
February 25th, 2004 at 11:42 pm
If they’re the same thing (marriage v. civil unions) then kerry is more hypocritical. Separate but equal is just as bad because it’s typically the former and not so much the latter.
February 25th, 2004 at 11:55 pm
Uncle,
First, I don’t apologize for my attitude toward our President. It is one thing to oppose same-sex marriage (as yes, both Kerry and Edwards do), but it is quite another thing to call for an amendment to the Constitution that would ban it. (Wow, there’s a ‘states rights’ Republican stance, eh?)
You also know full well, from participating with me and others in discussion of this issue over at Bubba’s, that I do not begrudge the Dem candidates for not taking this bait. The issue is too hot, and that is exactly why Karl Rove, oops, I mean President Bush wants to make it some sort of new referendum on patriotism, and or national security, since, after all, “America’s a free society which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions,” (George Bush, 2/24/04), so we’d better all keep a close eye on them good freedoms, and them other freedoms, and be damn straight (pun intended) about the difference, eh?
February 26th, 2004 at 8:06 am
I never asked you to apologize. I said you gave kerry a pass. Kerry is supporting a marriage ammendment to ban marriage too so long as it calls for civil unions.
It makes you seem partisan.
February 26th, 2004 at 10:36 am
I am partisan! Kerry & Edwards both disappointment me on this issue, but Kerry does support civil unions, which is miles away from the fundamentalists’ (to whom Bush kow-tows) attitude.
February 26th, 2004 at 10:43 am
And the prosecution rests. :^)
February 26th, 2004 at 11:15 am
but Kerry does support civil unions, which is miles away from the fundamentalists’ (to whom Bush kow-tows) attitude.
I like how you assume everyone who voted/may vote for Bush this year as a fundamentalist. There are those of us on the right side of the fence that dont give a rats ass about gay marriage and think anyone should be able to marry. But then again your “partisian” and damn anyone who doesnt agree with you as niggers and or fags. Class act Peggy.
February 26th, 2004 at 11:19 am
that should have been “fag” haters. (dripping with sarcasm)
February 26th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
I didn’t at all say that everyone who voted/may vote for Bush is a fundamentalist. I said that Bush kow-tows to fundamentalists.
If sensing that my very being & dignity are under attack by these people makes me “partisan,” then yes, I am.
And I don’t need to cuss to get my viewpoints out, Justin. Who’s the ‘class act’ here?
February 26th, 2004 at 12:30 pm
And, Justin, my use of the word “nigger” was not directed at you or other Republicans. You’re not being a careful reader.
February 26th, 2004 at 1:32 pm
Uncle,
I forgot to mention this before, but I think you might be referring to that quote of Kerry’s where he was actually answering a question about a proposed amendment to the Massachuessetts constitution, not the FMA. (His remarks were widely mis-reported as having been made about the FMA.) He is on record as supporting civil unions, and he is one of few Democrats who voted against Clinton’s DOMA.
February 26th, 2004 at 1:50 pm
After all justin, fred phelps (the godhatesfags.com guy) is a registered democrat.
February 26th, 2004 at 3:22 pm
Peggy: using the n-word in this context is every bit as offensive as using it in its traditional sense. Want to support gay marriage? Fine, defend gay marriage on the merits. But don’t hijack Jim Crow era terminology unless you are prepared to show a history of gays being enslaved, sent to substandard gay-only schools, told to drink from gay water fountains and use gay bathrooms, etc. etc.
February 26th, 2004 at 5:04 pm
Xrlq, I used the word metaphorically, to represent treatment of gays & lesbians that I think is in fact very reminiscent of the second-class status that blacks endured in this country, even decades after Lincoln freed the slaves. Gays have not been literally enslaved in America; they have ‘only’ been forced to endure job discrimination, public humiliation, scorn, and the occasional savage and fatal beating (Matthew Shepherd, and others). We live our lives, pay our taxes, and raise our families but endure sub-standard legal protections when it comes to custody of our own children, and even when trying to adopt children whose own parents have shuffled off to foster homes or orphanages. We drink from a different insurance-benefits fountain, and though we can write wills and powers-of-attorney granting our loved ones control over our financial assets and over medical decisions (should we become incapable of expressing those wishes), those documents are currently subject to challenges by blood relatives. So there I might be some day, crying in the gays-only bathroom, down the hall from the intensive care unit where my loved one lies, plugged into a machine that she did not want to be plugged into.
If you are black and my use of the n-word thus offended you, I apologize. If you are not, and you do not agree with my metaphorical use of it, so be it. As I said, I think it is the best ugly word to describe what I see as the same kind of ugly bigotry that drives people who dare to codify second-class status for gays and lesbians.
February 26th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
The word “nigger” is strong, yes. It offends. It stirs us to our core. It evokes passion in us, because language has a way of reminding us where we have been and who we are…both collectively and individually. Try saying the word slowly ten times with your eyes shut. The images in your mind’s eye will appall you as well they should.
Now try saying “faggot” ten times slowly.
No slave ships. No chains in your mind’s eye. But do you see the body of Matthew Shepherd strung along the barbed wire of the fence posts that line the parade route of the pride parade as the cameras focus in on the drag queens passing by? Or do you hear the cries of the other young boys beaten in locker rooms, their faces shoved in toilets? Or the sobs of the mothers of the numerous teens who each year commit suicide because they are afraid and ashamed of their awakening gay sexuality? And do you hear the words of the other angry young men who load their guns and kill their classmates, who they invariably claim they were repetitively called them the post-modern word for subhuman…”faggot.” I’m not blaming the victims here. I’m just pointing out that “faggot” is considered one of the most hateful and hate-filled insults in our culture.
And now the current leaders of the same country that once defined blacks as 3/5th of a person…my country…are masking their own bigotry in terms too familiar to me as a Southerner. States Rights and separate but equal. I’m old enough to remember and too old to allow their politically correct rhetoric to fool me. Lester Maddox and George Wallace were champions to many. Today, that makes us queasy because revisionist history is ever so much more pleasant. At the time, they were not the only bigots in the country. And if alive would not be the only bigots in America today. Would this be their cause now? Would they be in favor of amending the constitution to protect yet another of our great institutions from…
“them”.
The “them” changes, of course…from Nazi Germany to James Earl Ray. And perhaps here is our best politically correct, milk-toast way of saying it: “George Bush, I will not be your post-modern ‘them.'”
Personally, I applaud Peggy’s courage in speaking in words that make is uncomfortable and yet make us think.
February 27th, 2004 at 12:23 pm
I don’t applaud anyone for making wild, over-the-top analogies. Want to argue that current marriage laws are unfair to gays, and should be changed? Fine, make the case. But get one thing straight: today’s gays and lesbians are not now, and have never been, treated like blacks in the slavery and Jim Crow eras, Jews in Nazi Germany, American Indians in the frontier days, etc., and pretending that they are is offensive in the extreme.
Idle speculation that George Wallace or Lester Maddox would oppose gay marriage is simply lame. Maybe George Wallace and Lester Maddox liked vanilla ice cream, too. So what?
February 27th, 2004 at 3:17 pm
In Nazi Germany, homosexuals were tattoed, placed in concentration camps and gassed alongside of Jews.
While no one is arguing that gays have suffered a parallel experience with American blacks, the metaphor in reference requires abstract thought…as do all metaphors.
February 27th, 2004 at 3:22 pm
Oh, and your notion that George Wallace or Lester Maddox might have endorsed gay marriage…now, that’s a knee-slapper if I ever heard one!
February 27th, 2004 at 1:41 pm
Words Mean Things
The Language Police appear to be AWOL right now. Time for a few citizens’ arrests. The following three individuals are hereby placed under arrests for crimes against the English Language. Kerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of the Georgia Association of…