My del.icio.us links: 18th May to 29th May
- Until Logic Did Them Apart – Definitive Case Against Gay Marriage Critics – Chait: “these arguments rest upon simple tautologies. Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others. … i.e., women’s suffrage makes voting less special for men.”
- Undercover – Recover a lost or stolen Mac or iPhone.
- Create iPhone ringtones using iTunes 8
- a little bit of future goes a long way – iPhone apps for using buses in London.
- A Field Guide To Freeway Interchanges – Fascinating description of motorway/freeway interchanges. I didn’t know they all had names. The Maryland Braid is my favourite.
- Visible Tweets – Twitter Visualisations, perfect for events and venues, I should think.
- The Book of Sand – Borges story in a pazzle, hyperlinked format.
(Generated by Postalicious)
I think I can see both sides on the gay marriage front. I wonder if there can be a solution that gives equivalent legal rights to gay partnerships, without glossing over the cultural differences between straight and gay, that seems to so offend some people.
I think a relevant analogy is the idea of calling MTF transexuals women. Speaking as a woman, I have somewhat of an issue with this, in fact I find it quite offensive, though I can see that for a MTF transexual, that would in turn be quite offensive. But where there’s mutual respect, there has to be a middle ground.
I think it boils down to value judgements. If gay partnerships were viewed as having equal validity and status as marriages, then they might not feel the need to be subsumed into the majority category, and inflict the redefinition of that category on those who currently reside well within it and define themselves to some degree as being distinct from homosexuality.
What doesn’t seem to be given much regard is that being straight is as important to a straight person as being gay is to a gay one. I think if you called it a partnership and not a marriage, but had the exact same legal rights and equal cultural validity then the problem should be solved. Unless gay people don’t think that straight people have a right to a separate identity and history.
Negotiations between equals is the only way forward, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.
This is a much debated subject that I’m not sure I can address here and now, but my objections, were I to expand them, would fall into the following areas:
First, “separate but equal” is problematic as a doctrine.
Second, I’m not sure it is value judgements so much as definitional issues. Worrying about the gender of the two people in the marriage places too much emphasis on procreation and procreational sexual intercourse, and not enough on partnership, love, family building (even if its a family of two), commitment, and sex-as-recreation.
This follows onto your point about MTF transexuals. If you have issue with them calling themselves “woman”, then I think you’re placing far too much emphasis on the X chromosome and not enough on the cultural, societal, anatomical and visual elements that go into the definition of “woman” – all of which are criteria that MTF women meet. Coming from you, this surprises me.