NYC Gay Marriage

[AdamSmith]

Damn this thread got hijacked.

Piddling hijacks like mine are no match for your substantive contribution here to put it back on track.

[BiBottomBoy]

The hijacking is fine. It's just interesting.

For me the idea of entering into a gay marriage seem off putting, because marriage is such a traditional role.

One of the things I like about gay sex is that it is rebellious and naughty. The idea of state sanctioned gay fucking seems less hot to me.

That said, if people want to get married they should have the right to.

But I always thought marriage was something girls seduced dudes into and that without that feminine pressure to marry and breed that we'd be free of that pressure.

[Guest StuCotts]

Civil unions are infinitely better than nothing. But as one of the hard core, I see a couple of things they don't do that marriage does.

First, the symbolic. Civil unions reek of segregated drinking fountains. I don't see how any such separate-but-equal formulation can escape the pernicious implication that this is a privilege granted, rather than a right asserted.

Second, the pragmatic. Civil unions don't engage the federal constitutional guarantees that state-conferred rights are portable throughout the nation, in the way that recognition of marriage rights incontestably historically does. To be sure, we have DOMA despite this. But as I say over and over, it seems inevitable to me that DOMA must sooner or later fall because it violates the full-faith-and-credit clause. And now challenges on due-process grounds are also starting to be conceived.

The more states recognize same-sex marriage, the more likely that courts will have the courage to rule the right way as they hear challenges to DOMA and to individual states' refusal to recognize other states' same-sex marriages.

It seems we both agree that a full loaf is better than half, and half a loaf is better than none. The half would be good enough for me for the concrete benefits it would bring and as a step in the right direction.

Not to be morbid, but I don't expect to live long enough to see what you visualize come to fruition. There is too much entrenched and determined power willing to do whatever it takes, within or without the Constitution, to keep it from happening.

[BiBottomBoy]

Yeah, personally I'd be happy with any situation that allows me the same tax and health benefits of marriage, no matter what they want to call it.

That said, I'm very glad I didn't marry my last partner, because if I had I suspect I would have been taken to the cleaners.

It's much easier to say "fuck off" when a relationship is dead if it doesn't have legal sanction.

[AdamSmith]

Not to be morbid, but I don't expect to lie long enough to see what you visualize come to fruition.

Agree about the ranged powers of darkness. But then I was a bit shocked with the Massachusetts supreme court's pronunciamento in 2004. Mass. is iron-clad leftist in its national politics, but neither the SJC nor state-level politics are entirely reliable that way.

Suspect it will all hinge on the Supremes, whose balance will in turn hinge on Obama or McCain. One more reason to sacrifice some chickens in hope that all goes right (that is to say, left) in November.

[BiBottomBoy]

I suspect most states will get in on it eventually, simply because it makes money for flower sellers, caterers, bakers, city hall, divorce lawyers, etc.. and as far as I can tell when you can bring in money to a state or town eventually the government gets behind you.

Cash is king.

[AdamSmith]

I suspect most states will get in on it eventually, simply because it makes money for flower sellers, caterers, bakers, city hall, divorce lawyers, etc.. and as far as I can tell when you can bring in money to a state or town eventually the government gets behind you.

A study by the New York City Comptroller says there will certainly be an uptick, but raises questions whether it will be big enough to change many people's minds.

NYC sees money in gay marriage

KAI RYSSDAL: Here's an unusual argument in favor of gay marriage that'll be music to the ears of state treasurers everywhere. New York City's Comptroller has released a report that says the Big Apple would net $142 million during the first three years of legalized gay marriage. New York State overall would get $184 million, mainly from the uptick in visitors attending the nuptials. Ashley Milne-Tyte looked into whether cash might carry the political day.

ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE: The report says same-sex couples planning to marry and spend the night in New York State would spend about $60 million in the three years after gay marriage became legal. Friends and family would spend millions, too.

David Birdsell is dean of public affairs at New York City's Baruch College. He says the report's numbers are pretty conservative.

DAVID BIRDSELL: They assume that gay and lesbian marriages will spend less per marriage than the average heterosexual couple marriage.

On the flip side, the report also states that some businesses would have to pay more in health care costs if gay marriage was legalized.

Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce says gay marriage would bring more tourist dollars to New York. But, he says, gay marriage is about more than just money.

MATT FOREMAN: The much larger picture is not about money, and not about tax revenue, and not about income streams to hotels. It's really about protecting families.

That is, giving gay couples the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual ones. But could the money angle sway lawmakers?

Baruch's David Birdsell says gay marriage would only bring in a fraction of the tourist dollars the state and city already receive.

BIRDSELL: So I think that this is unlikely to be the hinge that will change many people's opinion. But it certainly buttresses the notion that this is consistent with sound public management.

Birdsell says that the better you treat people, the more money they'll spend. And the more often they'll return.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display...n_gay_marriage/

[AdamSmith]

For me the idea of entering into a gay marriage seem off putting, because marriage is such a traditional role.

One of the things I like about gay sex is that it is rebellious and naughty. The idea of state sanctioned gay fucking seems less hot to me.

I meant to remark: This point of view always surprises me.

Of course one of the fascinating existential aspects of being same-sex-attracted is the opportunity, to say the least, to live on the social frontier. Indeed, to help construct it. In western society, this has been true going back at least to the Provencal troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, who to my knowledge were the first subculture marked by same-sex attraction to self-identify as "gaie."

But, all that said, I can conceive of few more profoundly subversive developments than for mainstream western societies, most especially this one that emanated from Cotton Mather et al., to begin moving toward overt acceptance of marriage between same-sex couples.

[BiBottomBoy]

How is it subversive?

[AdamSmith]

How is it subversive?

Well, you know. "Subvert the dominant paradigm," like the graffiti says. Too pooped to get my thoughts together much, so let me cheat and use Wikipedia as a crutch.

"Subversion refers to an attempt to overthrow structures of authority, including the state. It is an overturning or uprooting. The word is present in all languages of Latin origin, originally applying to such diverse events as the military defeat of a city. ...

"Recent writers, in the post-modern and post-structuralist traditions (including, particularly, feminist writers) have prescribed a very broad form of subversion. It is not, directly, the governing realm which should be subverted in their view, but the predominant cultural forces, such as patriarchy, individualism, and scientific rationalism. This broadening of the target of subversion owes much to the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, who stressed that communist revolution required the erosion of the particular form of ‘cultural hegemony’ in any society."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_(politics)

Of course the other side of it that you note is a valid point too -- the likelihood that now gay people & gay culture will be coopted into all the mundane materialist property-based pressures that straight society inherited from the everlovin' Victorians and before.

Of course, to what extent has that not already happened, even without benefit of gay marriage?

But (taking off on a 3rd vector) that seems a fair risk to take, in order to get the benefits of what looks to me like an epochal advance in civil rights and human rights.

[lookin]

To think my perversion helps foster subversion!

[BiBottomBoy]

All perversion is subversion.

"For every prohibition you create you also create an underground."

Jello Biafra

[Guest StuCotts]

I meant to remark: This point of view always surprises me.

Of course one of the fascinating existential aspects of being same-sex-attracted is the opportunity, to say the least, to live on the social frontier. Indeed, to help construct it. In western society, this has been true going back at least to the Provencal troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, who to my knowledge were the first subculture marked by same-sex attraction to self-identify as "gaie."

But, all that said, I can conceive of few more profoundly subversive developments than for mainstream western societies, most especially this one that emanated from Cotton Mather et al., to begin moving toward overt acceptance of marriage between same-sex couples.

The gay component in the troubadour tradition is enough to make me wonder whether all the carrying-on about the Grail that so many of them were into wasn't just an elaborately constructed disguise for the real story, which was about the quest for the ideal dick.

[AdamSmith]

The gay component in the troubadour tradition is enough to make me wonder whether all the carrying-on about the Grail that so many of them were into wasn't just an elaborately constructed disguise for the real story, which was about the quest for the ideal dick.

Mais bien sûr! Displacement has ever been the mode. That which even then dared not speak its name.

And so Bertrand de Born was the first of the West's great walkers? And the high-born ladies hanging on his every syllable, our proto-fag-hags? (Dreadful term, but still.)

Shades of Castle Agghh... http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/gay.wav

P.S. Gratuitous nod to the Republicans among us: http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/grenade.wav