NYT: For some gays, a right they can forsake (marriage)

[pnwmom]

WHEN Bill Dobbs sees the heartwarming photographs of gay couples cuddling, grinning and holding dogs and children, accompanied by pious remarks about how many years they have been a couple — “five years,” “eight years,” “24 years!” — in news releases and newspaper and television reports about the fight for gay marriage, it turns his stomach.

Mr. Dobbs’s reaction is, he admits, probably not that different from the one he imagines that the anti-gay forces feel. But Mr. Dobbs is gay, part of an intense strain of gay activists who have fought against the idea of gay marriage from the beginning and who think that the escalating pursuit of it is a mistake, especially in light of legal setbacks like the decision on Wednesday by the Washington Supreme Court that lawmakers may restrict marriage to a man and a woman.

To these activists, the fight for gay marriage is the mirror image of the right-wing conservative Christian lobby for family values and feeds into the same drive for a homogeneous, orthodox American culture. The Stonewall confrontation and early gay rights movement, after all, was about the right to live an unconventional life, and to Mr. Dobbs and others like him, marriage is the epitome of convention. He said that he does, however, support civil unions for all as a replacement for civil marriage.

“For those of us who are single, there is this constant drumbeat,” said Mr. Dobbs, who went to college during the last years of the Vietnam War and became a crusader for gay and antiwar causes. “You must be coupled to be really fulfilled, for us to treat you as a full person.”

CUT

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/fashion/sundaystyles/30MARRIAGE.html?ex=1154404800&en=9f3dd120f657e6b8&ei=5087%0A

[Allenberg]

1. He does have a great point.

I'd be all in favor of eliminating civil marriage.

[MuseRider]

2. The RIGHT to be married

does not say that Mr. Dobbs HAS to get married and give up his unconventional life.

There must be equality before there can be choice.

Almost every GLBT friend I have longs to be married, a few don't but most do. They must have that choice and as long as they want it I will work for them to have it.

Edit to add that I respect his point of view and as someone who is not GLBT I don't know the history well enough to understand totally.

[mitchtv]

3. Nice for him

I however , prefer certain rights and protections offered by "marriage"

[tocqueville]

4. in Scandinavian countries where gays since long ago

have the same economical warranties than others (taxation, social security etc...) marriage isn't frequent, even if it's totally legal since many years. That show that gays follow the "straight" pattern (marriage isn't THAT important in Europe), plenty of people live together without being married or/and have a simple legal contract for common goods. In France where there are other "marriage" contract-type (PACS) applying to everybody, it's a lesser issue. I think Mr Dobbs is right.

[dsc]

5. I just want to be the author of my own story

I would really love to find a person to marry. I may never find that. But I want to be the decider of my own life. I remember growing up and coming to terms with being gay and figuring I would never be married. If he wishes to live his life the way he describes good for him. I should have the same right.

[idgiehkt]

6. Sounds like a gay Bill Maher.

But no one is writing articles about how Bill Maher feels heterosexuals shouldn't have the RIGHT to marriage. This angle is crap, and offensive, and NYT should know better.

[foreigncorrespondent]

7. Gee...

...yet another queer who shits on all of us, because of what he doesn't want. Thanks for the support dickhead (Dobb's that is.)

[GodlessBiker]

8. There is no such drumbeat. He protests too much, if you ask me.

[sui generis]

9. zackly

there is no drumbeat.

I just want the recognition of family and property that civil marriage conveys. I'm uppity like that.

[pnwmom]

10. The irony is that when the fundies oppose gay marriage

they are really encouraging gays to live the "lifestyle" -- promiscuous, that is -- that the fundies supposedly oppose.

[zcflint09]

11. Too bad, Mr. Dobbs.

Sorry you can't find someone to love, but don't ruin the righht for those of us who want to get married to someone we've been with for decades. It sounds like Mr. Dobbs is supporting promiscuity instead of marriage--take that at what you will.

[readmoreoften]

12. For some straights, marriage is a right they can forsake...

Yeah so what! Some straights don't marry either. BFD. I get really irritated with these your marriage is oppressing our polyamorous lifestyle crap. I usually hear it from the college kids (who proclaim themselves as nonmonogamous by nature... I was born poly!... all at the ripe old age of 22.)

Who cares if they're called "marriages" or "civil unions" the point is that they need to be EQUAL in law to what the straights have. And if they do not have the SAME WORD they will be SEPARATE by law. Marriages for all, civil unions for all, whatever. The point is equality and the reality is we ain't getting all the heteros to be civilly unioned instead of married.

[closeupready]

13. Who is this guy, anyway?

Is this Dobbs supposed to be someone I've heard of? Because I haven't.

And how old is he? The article doesn't say.

I think that's really all anyone needs to know.

[pnwmom]

14. The article quotes a number of people besides Dobbs, with varying

backgrounds and points of view.

For example,

"Yet dissenters like Sarah Schulman, a playwright, novelist and English professor at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island, see a more subtle form of regression coming out of the movement, a return to the values of the 1950’s. As a teacher, she said, she sees a lot of younger gay people, especially women adopting the heterosexual fantasy that even Barbie has distanced herself from — “that someday they will meet the right person and they will get married and they will have children.” She fears that lesbian mothers are embracing a “poverty model” and taking themselves out of the running to be the next George Sand or Emma Goldman."

[closeupready]

16. Good point.

(I didn't mean to imply that he was the only gay who rejected gay marriage.)

:hi:

[moose65]

15. This is about the CHOICE to marry!

No one is gonna make him get married! Sheesh. This is the same attitude the right-wingers have: to validate myself, I need to make sure that others don't get the choice! I really can't get inside the head of someone like this. He can still live his "sexually generous" lifestyle if he so chooses. Looks like he is trying to protect the sanctity of his lifestyle. Sound familiar??

[Boomer]

17. Screw him, the miserable SOB

My partner has MS and no goddamn medical insurance because I can't get her covered with my medical policy from work.

So screw these hateful self-centered gays who shudder at the threat of "conventional values" and are so obsessed with being unconventional that they would deny me the basic right to protect my family.

Mr. Dobbs is more than welcome to bow out of the fight for civil rights on this issue, but actively fighting against it makes him as loathsome to me as a RR fundie.

[NMMNG]

18. What a twit

I have no interest in getting married, but I fight for the right to do so along with my peers because it's the right thing to do.

[Misunderestimator]

19. I'm so tired of selfish people...

Especially selfish, intelligent people. So quick to rob all of us who do want equality simply because it is not their agenda. I'm pro-choice even though I have never and will never be pregnant... I'm flabbergasted by someone who doesn't care about others' rights. Since it doesn't affect him, he doesn't give a shit. Ass.