Politicians in particular pander to their base, which is evangelical, Southern, and convinced, as are their pastors, that God hates homosexuals and wants them dead.

The homosexual Agenda:

Saturday

9:00: Get up and get dressed.

915:Eat breakfast and drink coffee
9:30 Go to the gym

Noon: Eat lunch

12:30 Buy Salem one hundreds and some diet coke.

1:00: Watch episodes of Buffy

2:00 Watch Rent

4:30: Walk the dog

5:00 Eat a snack and watch tv.

6:00 Go out with friends

10:00 Find a musical

2:00 am: Go home and sleep.

Sincerely,
Rose

Yes this is based on one of my lost weekends

An interesting idea/dilemma you raise, DaveW: what role does acceptance play in legal rights? I liked the way Corvino said it in the body of his column: “political battles don’t track objective value. They track public opinion.” That’s kind of where we’re at, both as GLBT people and as a collective nation of people: having our rights determined by our fellow citizens. You are absolutely correct in the statement that: “…in America mob rule is not supposed to block access to rights.” What the law in America is intended to do is grant freedoms *from*, not freedoms *to*. The problem is that because there is no legal safeguard against active prejudice, the law is all too easy to interpret as favorable to discrimination. (This idea is hard to discuss because while DOMA is still enshrined in law, discrimination is still actively enforced, but the recently-passed Matthew Shepard Act has made violent discrimination [for lack of a better phrase] a federal crime. I see there being a conflict of interests, to say the bloody least, as well as a total lack of coherent or consistent definition of legal protections.) Yeah, we should have our legal equal rights regardless of popular public opinion, but I still want to know how that’s possible. The law in America is meant to be interpretive, and this is, in itself, a double-edged sword; this is why –up to this very moment in time- GLBT people have been denied equal protection under the law.

This following idea is, again, very difficult to express or discuss because of its interpretive nature. Opponents to equal rights for GLBT people often cite criminal behaviors in their defense. This is to say that the opposition tends to promote the idea that legal equality for GLBT people will somehow promote bestiality, pedophilia, incest, male-on-male rape, general public indecency, and a total breakdown of society’s moral values. This is a fallacy, but one that is very precarious to define because of the almost lustful nature of homosexuality. Unlike heterosexuals, we don’t have a technical fallback such as procreation; homo and transsexuality force us to acknowledge and debate the meaning or purpose of love and lust in our lives in ways that heterosexuality simply does not, simply by virtue of it not having that technical fallback. All sorts of people tend to view lust as regressive, as harmful, and not as a natural reaction or inclination. I still wonder how many straight people think about pregnancy while they are making love. (If the idea of making babies turns you on… eew!) Tying this all in to the idea of acceptance, we as GLBT people need to develop a definitive message of our intentions; we are NOT trying to normalize criminal behaviors like those mentioned above, nor are we trying to normalize libertinage or lust for the simple sake of lust, we are trying to normalize the ideas of love, communication, and physical and emotional sexual responsibility.

I still think that a huge part of social acceptance is behaving in a socially acceptable manner. I still flash back to this clip of New York’s PrideFest in which a man wearing body paint and a feathered head-dress said, “We just want the same rights as everyone else,” and my first reaction was, “No, you don’t! You want to not HAVE to participate in society while still enjoying all of its benefits!” We as GLBT people cannot showcase ourselves (even if only once a year) in fetish gear, body paint, and costumes and hope to be taken seriously by the rest of society. (That’s what Halloween is for.) We cannot parade our private sexual expressions up and down city streets and then claim that we want to keep these expressions behind closed doors. We cannot exploit ourselves and then condemn others for also exploiting us. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes, and so it is with legal equality for ANY group; equality is a compromise, especially in a democratic system. If we want legal equality, we have to act as equals, for better AND for worse. We must rise to society’s challenge of living within certain standards of decency (i.e. indecent exposure, public sexual displays) while simultaneously demonstrating that lust is not indicative of a total lack of respect for oneself or for other people.

A quick word about the aforementioned exploiters: having been/being maligned by society at large simply for existing created/creates a kind of backlash by such people. “If you want a reason to hate us, we’ll give you a reason!” sort of thinking. This response is entirely natural, but also totally antithetical toward long-term social progress. We need to be honest about who and what we are, including those of us who really don’t want to have to pay the price for equality, which is civic participation and (the gods of punk rock forgive me for using this word) conforming to certain standards of decency. Just because we’re not heterosexual does not mean that standards of decency don’t or shouldn’t apply to us (again i.e. indecent exposure, public sexual displays). The idea of a picket fence as a cover for the dungeon… may be accurate for as many heterosexuals as for homosexuals.

So yes, people’s feelings about same-sex couples raising children is a major hurdle to be addressed in our fight for marriage equality. But it’s an unavoidable hurdle. And I think the advertisements that the ‘No on 1′ campaign in Maine have put out are spot-on in that they highlight actual families who need the protection that marriage equality would provide. Unlike in California, Maine is tackling that issue head-on, which is the only way we’re going to succeed.

The most likely answer to your question is, that Americans (collectively) are a bunch of tight-assed idiots.