Friday November 17, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 46 |
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Friday, Sep 05, 2008
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General Gayety by Leslie Robinson |
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| The ban bandwagon | ||
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Let's banter about bans, shall we? We just endured the latest round of them, as voters in eight states decided whether to chisel disapproval of us into their constitutions. Two years ago approximately 67 states passed same-sex marriage bans. Would we be kicked to the curb again in 2006? No. The door may've slammed on our fannies, but we didn't get as far as the curb this time around. On Election Day, seven of those eight states passed constitutional bans. Arizona did not. It's the first time in go-rounds in 28 states that voters have said no. Now, I don't want to make too much of this single victory. The hell I don't. Yahoo! Hurray! Do you hear that muffling noise? That's the sound of a relentless drumbeat of loss being silenced. Sit back and enjoy the quiet. Oh, I know, observers say Arizona's proposed ban was so harsh it doomed itself. But in 2004 Ohio's ban was over-the-top-any Gay who looked at another would have his eyes put out--and it passed. So the question is, was the Arizona result an aberration or a harbinger? Likewise, should we be giddy that in most of the other states the races were much closer than in the past? For social conservatives bent on preventing Gay marriage, will the election of '06 prove to have been just a hiccup, or the moment their viral pneumonia began? The day after the election I received an e-mail from Amber, a reader who hails from one of the seven states with newly fashioned constitutions. Her note was a poignant reminder of what life is like in a state where the passage of the ban was as easy to predict as the demise of Britney Spears' marriage. "Not that I'm surprised," Amber wrote, "but South Carolina passed a ban on Gay marriage yesterday. This ban is on top of a law against same-sex marriages. So now an entire group of people are both outlawed and banned." Yes, you know you're truly special when one law against you isn't sufficient. Amber continued, "What did manage to find its way through my ever-thickening exterior, however, is the fact that nearly four out of five voters supported the ban. When you hear a statistic like that, you find yourself looking at all the four out of five people around you in an entirely different light. I was driving home in my little Toyota Corolla today, and I suddenly felt very alone and isolated." When the political is personal, it can also be terribly painful. She managed to close on an up note: "Thank goodness for the sweet escape from reality my latest bookstore acquisition provides." Of course I had to ask what her literary escape was. Travel? Science fiction? An Archie comic book? Much better. She's reading a Lesbian mystery called Idaho Code, which she said has "just the right amount of romance in it." Way to go, Amber. When your neighbors have shot down Gayness, an entirely fitting response is to revel in something resoundingly Lesbian. Funny that Amber's literary escape takes place in Idaho, one of the other states that robustly passed the same-sex marriage ban on Election Day. Perhaps a baby dyke in Boise is escaping her state by reading about lusty Lesbians in Charleston. In a later e-mail Amber wrote, "In word and deed, I can still have a marriage, even if it isn't recognized by my country. We lost a political battle, but that always tells me that we simply have more one-on-one work to do." Wow. She escapes for a few pages and returns rejuvenated. That Lesbian sex is strong stuff. Leslie Robinson fervently hopes the Democrats won't be as arrogant and corrupt as the Republicans. E-mail her at LesRobinsn@aol.com, and read more columns at www.GeneralGayety.com. |
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