Jesse Jackson: Gay marriage rights are not civil rights

[Meldread]

Well seeing as how this post was locked in the General Discussion folder because I mentioned Al Sharpton in passing (although I don't feel that this post belongs here), I'm reposting here where the Moderator said it is more appropriate. (Unless of course Jesse Jackson is running for President, in which case I certainly was not informed.)

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This article is just disappointing. How can a self-proclaimed "civil rights" activist be anti-gay marriage? Even Al Sharpton supports Gay Marriage. Sure, gay people weren't slaves they were just locked up into mental institutions because while Segregation was going on, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. Sure the KKK wouldn't mind burning a cross on a gay couples yard just as much as a black person's yard. But hey, look gay people, 'My struggle for equal rights is still more moral, better, and more justified than yours.' Sad. Simply sad. Here are some excerpts from the article:

In Massachusetts, the state that's served as one of the main battlegrounds over same-sex marriage, the Rev. Jesse Jackson declared Monday that the fight of gays and lesbians wanting to marry should not be compared to the fight African Americans faced for civil rights.

"The comparison with slavery is a stretch in that some slave masters were gay, in that gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and in that they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote," Jackson remarked in an address at Harvard Law School.

-snip-

But Jackson reiterated his support for the heterosexual definition of marriage, saying, "In my culture, marriage is a man-woman relationship."

Jackson's comments stood in sharp contrast to those of state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, who sat next to him during his Harvard appearance.

Wilkerson shed tears before the Legislature's constitutional convention last week, as she shared her experiences growing up black in Arkansas, where her mother was not allowed to give birth in the public hospital.

"I know the pain of being less than equal, and I cannot and will not impose that status on anyone else," Wilkerson said, explaining why she would not support an amendment banning same-sex marriages. "I was but one generation removed from an existence in slavery. I could not in good conscience ever vote to send anyone to that place from which my family fled."

Read it all here.

Just sad and disappointing.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

1. I think this is his thought process

"Gays already can get married - to a member of the opposite sex - just like straights can. That is by definition equal rights. LGBT are defined by behavior - and if they do not do certain acts, they are not discriminated against. African Americans were and are discriminated against because of who they are, not what they do."

I'm not saying I agree, but I bet that's the thought process.

[BearFlagDemocrat]

3. Analogy

As long as African-Americans kept to their water fountains and their back half of the bus and their public schools then everything was peachy. As long as LGBTs want to marry someone of the opposite sex, then everything is peachy. :eyes:

Discrimination is about taking away rights that people desire, not giving them "rights" that they DON'T desire. African-Americans had the "right" to sit in the back of the bus (at least they weren't forced to crawl wherever they wanted to go, right?), but equality is all about letting them sit wherever they damn well please. Equal rights is all about letting gay people marry whoever they damn well please.

[Meldread]

14. This is a good analogy. -nt-

[HFishbine]

6. Your premise is a factual innacuracy

"Gays already can get married..."

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. no, it's not

It's 100% factual, and pretending otherwise is probably why Dems lose this debate. LGBT is an "identity" that anyone can choose or not choose for themselves. It's a completely self-referential statement. Saying that you were "born that way" doesn't change that fact. The fact that homosexual behavior is engaged in by many people, whether they label themselves as straight, or gay, or anything else, shows that the labeling is rather arbitrary.

In order to believe that homosexuality is an inherent characteristic similar to skin color requires you to believe certain things about free will, the "nature vs. nuture" debate, and the moral equivalence of different kinds of sexual activity. Most people simply don't.

I'm voting for Kucinich, who is 100% pro-gay marriage, so...

[David__77]

12. So are you saying that, according to this thinking...

...that being gay is more like a religious affiliation? That it is not an immutable characteristic like ethnicity, but rather a behavioral thing like being a Christian or a Muslim, since they can always cease being such if they choose?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

16. sure

I don't think it's religious as much as cultural. Depends on how you want to define it. I've never seen anything suggesting that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic - in fact, human sexuality seems quite mutable, and humans have adapted sexually to different environments.

How come we are pushing for "gay marriage" instead of "domestic partnerships"? Well, according to what I have been told, it's supposed to be about "affirming" homosexual relationships, not about making sure someone can visit their partner in the hospital. If that's what it was truly about, we'd have national domestic partnerships right now, where the sex lives of the partners don't enter into it. But that won't do anything to mainstream homosexual relationships, so instead we're pushing gay marriage, or "civil unions".

In either case, social acceptance doesn't come through law, nor should it. Fighting it out in the churches will do that.

[tishaLA]

24. I've seen very little talk of

"affirming" homosexual relationships in the gay marriage debate. Most of the discussion, to my mind, has been about rights that are denied LGBT citizens, not about affirmation. The notable exception is in right wing discussions about LGBT marriage, which is frequently interested in how marriage would affirm "homosexuality" and scar "our" children.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

27. well, that's all I've heard

in California the idea that two people not having sex could become domestic partners was ridiculed, since it was said that the LGBT had "fought hard" for domestic partnerships to "affirm" their relationships. Not my words, theirs.

What rights are denied to gays that are not denied to straights? Both gays and straights can get married to members of the opposite sex.

As I've said, Kucinich and Sharpton are the only ones who support gay marriage. (I'm voting for Kucinich)

[tishaLA]

30. I thought you were discussing marriage

And that's what this quotation indicates to me, although the referent for the "it" is somewhat ambiguous: "How come we are pushing for "gay marriage" instead of "domestic partnerships"? Well, according to what I have been told, it's supposed to be about "affirming" homosexual relationships, not about making sure someone can visit their partner in the hospital."

So I thought you were discussing marriage, not DP. The new law in CA--Davis signed it in August, IIRC--actually provides broad sweeping rights and responsibilities to LGBT couples, which most DP laws did not.

Marriage, of course, confers many rights to couples they cannot have without the contract.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

33. what rights are those?

"Marriage, of course, confers many rights to couples they cannot have without the contract."

Gay people can and do get married to members of the opposite sex all the time, just like straight people do. If you are talking about allowing gay people to marry members of the same sex, that means redefining a cultural institution that's been around forever. Maybe it needs to be done. Perhaps that's the only way LGBT people will be treated fairly in society.

[tishaLA]

37. Of course it needs to be done.

And that's what I have been saying. LGBT people frequently don't want to marry someone of another sex and "pass." That's why I find that argument about LGBT people being able to marry members of the opposite sex not a particularly helpful one.

[David__77]

Doesn't marriage "affirm" heterosexual relationships?

If so, why shouldn't homosexual couples have the same affirmation?

If not, and it's merely a legal-administrative device, then why not open it to same-sex couples?

[David__77]

35. But the inverse question is: why keep marriage separate in law?

Why have a separate category for woman-man versus man-man or woman-woman? If we afford rights to to all these couples, what is the reason you would give for maintaining a legal distinction in name?

[diamondsoul]

2. There goes my respect-

WOOSH! Right down the toilet.

[truthspeaker]

4. Jesse Jackson...

...can suck my heterosexual dick.

[Monument]

5. Black America does not support homosexual marriage

and that is why the Massachusetts, California, and Vermont situations will do more to damage the Dems politically. The repubs will rally against gay marriage, and the Dems will be split. I personally fully support gay marriage, and I'm a happily married hetero man myself.

[FDRrocks]

7. That seems, to me, to be painting with a very broad brush...

Where did you acquire this knowledge of "Black America?"

[HFishbine]

8. Of course it is

and on its face, rejects the notion that there are black homosexuals.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

18. no, it doesn't

"and on its face, rejects the notion that there are black homosexuals."

How so?

[HFishbine]

22. Accepting the reality

that there are black homosexuals (d'uh), negates the possibility that "black America" is some monolithic group of a single mind.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

29. he said "Black America"

obviously meaning the majority of African-Americans, wouldn't accept gay marriage. I think that statement is correct, at least at this point in time.

[ecstatic]

21. Again, Black America, like the rest of America, is becoming

more tolerant towards gay individuals. There are many many black gay homosexuals.

[truthspeaker]

25. then this would be the perfect opportunity for Jackson to lead

instead of pandering to bigots.

[ecstatic]

28. But he IS for gay rights

But states, correctly, that you cannot compare the African American civil rights movement to the gblt rights movement.

[tishaLA]

9. I'm of two minds on this

One: I understand him not liking the analogy between LGBT causes generally and African American civil rights. While I think it is applicable analogically for a few things, like interracial marraige as an analogue to same sex marriage, I resist the sweeping analogy between LGBT civil rights and the African American civil rights movement. (I am saying this in response to this statement: "The comparison with slavery is a stretch in that some slave masters were gay, in that gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and in that they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote," Jackson remarked in an address at Harvard Law School.) I have a few problems with that statement, though, specifically about his anachronistic assertion of identity, but that is not worth wasting key strokes.

Two: I don't know that Rev. Jackson is informed enough about his culture if he thinks that "in my culture, marriage is a man-woman relationship." I think it is a wildly phobic response to the issue and one that glosses over the differentiation within the African American community, which has many LGBT members--some of whom would like to marry people of the same sex..

[David__77]

13. I agree 100% with your comments.

I think somewhere in this Black lesbians and gay men are being lost.

[gottaB]

23. anachronism

I don't have a problem with Jackson's "anachronistic" assertion of identity. The dehumanizing project of American slavery continues. To argue otherwise would be to see every new instance of disempowerment, brutality, disenfranchisement and belittling of African Americans as occaisioned by some new social force, to see each and every gesture of symbolic violence towards African Americans as divorced from this well-documented systematic injustice. It's not plausible. Take down the Confederate flags. Let people vote in peace. Stop racial profiling. Prosecute civil rights violations in the banking industry. Pay reparations and make amends--no backsliding. Let one generation reach old age and say, in retrospect, racism is something we never experienced. When that day comes, you can talk about such anachronistic assertions of identity and I won't waste any keystrokes disagreeing with you.

On Jackson's homophobia, I agree with you. It saddens me. But you know his views on the matter are hardly unique. There's a lot of work to be done.

National Black Justice Coalition.

[tishaLA]

26. The anachronism was

calling slave owners "gay," an identity it would have been impossible to inhabit any time before the end of American chattel slavery. There may have been slave owners who engaged in sodomy with slaves, but to call them "gay" contradicts all the scholarship about sexuality from Foucault to the present.

[gottaB]

32. missed your point, sorry

do you think his argument is fundamentally flawed? How would you make the case?

[tishaLA]

34. This is why I said it wasn't worth wasting keystrokes

It's not important, really, but it's just factually wrong and intellectually sloppy. To my mind, his argument is both flawed and correct, as I said above. I just hate when people talk about sexual identity pretend there is something transcendant about it.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

36. so what makes someone gay then?

"calling slave owners "gay," an identity it would have been impossible to inhabit any time before the end of American chattel slavery. There may have been slave owners who engaged in sodomy with slaves, but to call them "gay" contradicts all the scholarship about sexuality from Foucault to the present."

If it's not homosexual sex that makes someone gay, what is it? If it's strictly an identify, a self-affirmation, how is it different than a religion?

[tishaLA]

38. Sorry, I don't want to play this game today

please look at Foucault's History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction (100-102 and 42-25) as a primer on this. Judith Butler has also written some of the most important work on this subject.

[HFishbine]

11. Is Jesse Jackson on the down low?

J.L. King -- good-looking, standing 6 feet tall and cleanshaven with cocoa colored skin -- is used to turning heads. He gets hit on often. By women and men. He's cool with that.

What he's more anxious about is the attention he expects to get in February when the West Loop educator-turned-author releases a book, On the Down Low.

He helped popularize the phrase "living on the down low" or "DL" when he used it in 2001 to describe men like himself: those who have sex with men but do not consider themselves gay or bisexual. They are not effeminate and often have girlfriends or wives who are unaware of their double lives.


more: http://www.suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-nws-insight04.html

Here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767913981/qid=1077125076/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-4316216-8487300?v=glance&s=books

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

20. good question!

Let's say that Jackson is having sex with men on the "down low" - yet he identifies as straight, and in fact has affairs with multiple women.

Does that mean his "true" sexual orientation is polygmous, and he's just in the closet about it by hiding out in a "monogamous" marriage? :evilgrin:

[QC]

15. If Jackson is concerned about the sanctity of hetero marriage,

perhaps he could help the cause by being faithful to his wife.

:eyes:

[littlejoe]

17. It amazes me that Jackson would even thing something that

smacks of discrimination.

[ecstatic]

19. you heard his comments out of context

He is pro-civil union; he is a reverend, and was honest when he said where he comes from, marriage is between a man and a woman.

Also, he says (and I agree) that the gay rights movement, while similar, is not the same as the civil rights movement. Gays have never been treated like 3/5ths a human; they were never sold and traded like cattle. They were not tortured by the KKK for decades. Please don't jump to conclusions. This was all aired out on Bill O'Reilly last night (a representative of Jackson's was on the show).

[adriennel]

31. Sorry, MrJackson

You're wrong on this one. The issue of gay marriage is indeed a civil rights issue. Civil rights for gay people is not the same as civil rights for African-Americans, but they both have the ultimate goal of equal protection under the law.

I don't know what country you are living in if you think that homosexuals have not been subject to second-class citizen status. Homosexuals in the US face discrimination and violence everyday, and many have died simply because they were homosexual. If this is not a civil rights issue, I don't know what is.

Finally, I supported Mr Jackson when the unfortunate news of his illegitimate child broke into the media. Now I'm pissed. How dare he claim marriage is only between a woman and a man? Apparantly in his own life, the "sanctity" of marriage is defined as between a man and a woman and another woman. hypocrite.

[mac2]

40. Judge not least ye be judged!!

[mac2]

39. Jessie believes marriage is a religious ceremony?

Who cares what Rev. Jessie's religion thinks about marriage. Some religious groups approve others don't. If the word "marriage" means under "their God united..blah..blah..blah", then let it be so.

All same sex couple should be able to have a contract under the state. It is good for society to have stable relationships. If the couple break up, get sick, die, etc., they have legal rights.

If I wanted to belong to a religious group and worship as I please and there were none..I'd form my own. God didn't say which organizations he would accept into his kingdom.