Translate

Friday, March 4, 2011

A Lack of Solidarity

Responding to something written by Peter Heck, Travis Gulbrandson throws polyamorous people and consanguinamorous people under the bus with his lack of solidarity.

He concludes his column with the warning that when one group seeks to “undefine” (his term) marriage, it will open the door for others and eventually lead to “the legalization of every form of sexual activity, from polygamy to incest to bestiality.”

Hogwash.

For starters, the idea that a normal homosexual relationship between two consenting adults could be compared with examples such as these is a grotesque insult to the estimated millions of gay men and women who live in this country. Polygamy, incest and bestiality are all forms of abuse based on the exploitation of a weaker party.

Is the writer simply uninformed? Many adults have freely consented to and enjoyed polygamous relationships and consanguineous relationships (sometimes, as one in the same), including as marriages. Abuse is not involved.

They are crimes, pure and simple.

In some places, they are. In some places in the US merely a few years ago, same-sex relationships were, too. None of them should be crimes.

Why, oh why, Mr. Gulbrandson, couldn’t you have stood up for full marriage equality and written that child abuse, animal abuse, domestic violence, and rape will still be illegal if we allow adults to marry each other? Instead of throwing other people under the bus, how about calling out the bigots by asking them to explain exactly what is wrong with full marriage equality?
— — —

No comments:

Post a Comment

To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.

If you want to write to me privately, then either contact me on Facebook, email me at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, or tell me in your comment that you do NOT want it published. Otherwise, anything you write here is fair game to be used in a subsequent entry. If you want to be anonymous, that is fine.

IT IS OK TO TALK ABOUT SEX IN YOUR COMMENTS, BUT PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY AS I WANT THIS BLOG TO BE AS "SAFE FOR WORK" AS POSSIBLE. If your comment includes graphic descriptions of activity involving minors, it's not going to get published.