I apologize for the high number of off-topic posts this last 48 hours but I felt we could use a new thread on which to discuss this nonsense about “one-sex marriage.” With a simple Google I found Concerned Women For America have made use of this new term(*).
Here I’ll get it started; The term “same-sex” might be uncomfortable for anti-family organizations because of it’s flagrant use of the word “same” in proximity to gay people. We all know anti-family organizations like to pretend gay peoples’ marriages are vastly different (aka not the “same”) than real marriages. As for “one-sex,” my gut reaction earlier today when I first read it is an attempt to cast a tone of selfishness and exclusion. Imagine marriage is a cookie and only one group gets it and the other group gets zero cookies. Dobson’s on record for saying gay people wish to “destroy marriage” which I’m equating here with selfishness and somehow taking it away from straight people which is of course hyperbole.
Now discuss. Whoever wins the argument gets a big cookie which they don’t have to share.
I believe it’s true that the term “same-sex” sticks in the craw of your average religious-righter. (It’s one reason why I recommend Will Roscoe’s new book, Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, for the religious homophobe on your Christmas list; the title alone pushes so many buttons.) I also see “one-sex” as meant to imply incompleteness and insufficiency: “one is the loneliest number,” “it takes two to tango,” etc.
Interestingly, the Concerned Women for America article tries to scare readers by warning that their children’s textbooks may someday “portray two men as a marriage.” I guess that means lesbian marriages are okay? Slips such as this one only confirm my belief that it’s the whole idea of sex between two men that really puts the “phobe” in “homophobe.”
Where’s my cookie?
*applause* i will give YOU a whole box of cookies Regan 🙂
Just to let you know, Margaret Marshall, the chief justice of the MA Supreme Judicial Court and the author of the Goodridge decision made it clear. There is no such thing as “gay marriage.” There is no such thing as “same-sex marriage.” There is marriage.
Margaret Marshall grew up in South Africa, so she was well aware of Apartheid.
To reiterate, there is no such thig as “gay marriage.” There is no such thing as “same-sex marriage.” There is marriage.
I think there are two motivations:
1. Spitefulness. We use “same-sex” so they have to use something else.
2. The second reason I think goes to the focus. When we use gay marriage or same-sex marriage we are emphasizing that real people, gay people, are being excluded. The phobes want to publicly get away from the fact that they’re excuding us (although in their own groups that’s the entire focus). So one-sex (not being a recognized term) takes the focus off people. It has more of a foreign sound and seems more like a “redefinition” of marriage. And the phobes are always glad to fool whomever they can.
Tollhouse with nuts, please.
It’s all semantics. Like the anti-abortion/pro-life vs. pro-abortion/pro-choice camps. Control the language and you can control the debate.
Personally I find the terms “one sex” and the reasoning behind it laughable and just begging for a LOTR parody. :p
I really do like the idea of “Equal Marriage” and even the Marshall idea of just “marriage.” You eliminate the exclusions all together.