Translate

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

TLC Getting People Talking About Equality

TLC has been getting more people talking about polygamy with "Sister Wives," and now with "My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding," they are getting more people to talk about gay couples and consanguineous couples marrying. As I have talked about before, the Gypsy show has a cousin wedding. Gawker.com has some coverage of the issues by Rich Juzwiak.

The two couples profiled on last night's episode of TLC's cultural curio spotlight My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding provided an ingenious bit of contrast. There were first cousins Annie and Josh, whose incestuous relationship is apparently permitted in their Romani culture. And then there was the lesbian couple Ana and Linda, whose love is taboo.
Love is love. Both relationships should be supported.
So what's the problem?

It's always dangerous to judge an entire culture by reality TV, and acceptable behavior often ranges from family to family, anyway. As American Gypsy Oksana Marafioti wrote on Slate, "People know so little about us and yet think they know so much." And if we survey American culture as a whole, first cousins are allowed to marry in 25 states: that's 19 more than those that allow gay marriage. This episode provided a working example of all kinds of cultures' hypocrisy.
Yes. We need full marriage equality. An adult should be free to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with any consenting adults, without prosecution, persecution, or discrimination. Family should be supportive. You don't have to understand it or want it for yourself... just support your family member's sexuality. There is enough hate and misery in the world. Support happiness!
— — —

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.