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07/28/2009
Yet we're the spiteful ones?
"...they don't have the commitment that married couples have or anything like that."
To the Culture And Media Institute's Colleen Raezler, the above is just a flippant comment. One talking point of many that she surely writes in a day. Working for the far-right CMI, gay stigmatization is a big part of her job description. So she throws out a flawed fact here, tosses in a impudent aside there -- it's all in a day's work.
But to someone like yours truly, a married gay man who'd take a bullet for his husband and then encourage him to continue to use my lifeless body as a shield after I've taken my last breath, waggish quips like the above are dripping with nothing less than cold, heartless, inhumanity. It literally stops me cold to know that there are young people like Ms. Raezler who not only feel this way about my life and my love, but who actually collects a paycheck to disseminate this same disrespectful attitude to the public at large. Seriously: It chills me to the frickin' bone.
Even on my most fed up day, I have never and would never disparage the evangelical community's commitments. Even on the day following the Prop 8 abomination, I didn't show such callous disrespect for any one community's capacity for love, even if I felt that certain groups were failing to demonstrate that love for their gay brothers and sisters. But our opposition doesn't really seem to have that filter. They don't tend to display any reasoned consideration of the cheap generalizations that they hurl forth. After all, it's not human beings that they're decrying: It's a band of "immoral" culture war opponents who their faith has told them to stand against in "love." And all things are apparently palatable through Jesus.
Well, Ms. Raezler: I will stack my marriage and my commitment against yours any day of the week. But at the same time, I would never deny you of your own capacity to love or commit. That is not something I have even an iota of desire to do. Because ya see, Colleen: I don't think I'm better than you -- I think know I'm as Good As You. And the difference in my egalitarian mindset and your side's constantly demonstrated bouts of holier-than-thouism is a (if not the) defining difference between our two sides.
*Colleen's lil' quip and further offenses: Clear objective: 'Change hearts, minds' re: homosexuality [ONN]
Your thoughts
Every time I hear comments like that I think of my co-workers (gay men) who have been together 25 years. And that's without legal protections and benefits.
Posted by: Sandy | Jul 28, 2009 4:04:07 PM
"...they don't have the commitment that married couples have or anything like that."
What commitment is that, exactly? Is it the 55 hour Britney Spears, commitment? The serve your wife divorce papers, while she's in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment, commitment, of Newt Gingrich? Or maybe it's the commitment that the recently exposed Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign had to their marriage vows.
I think were damn lucky, that we don't have the "commitment that married couples have or anything like that". Because let's face it...the "married" couples that she's referring to, don't have such a great track record, when it comes to commitment. That divorce rate thing is a statistic which she seems to be avoiding.
Posted by: Taylor | Jul 28, 2009 4:21:35 PM
Supremacists, pure and simple. That holier-than-thou translates into: we are worth something, and you are worth nothing. We are excellent, and you deserve ridicule, debasement, and ire. It's the cheapest way that religion works. And it's one of the lies that religions have been based on throughout history.
Posted by: Dick Mills | Jul 28, 2009 5:37:08 PM
I had never seen your wedding pictures before. Cute! Thanks for sharing them!
Posted by: Pomo | Jul 28, 2009 5:53:48 PM
So she's criticizing the committed people she doesn't want to see married for not being committed through marriage?
However does she find the time between lambasting discharged soldiers for not serving their country, and berating rejected would-be parents for not adopting more kids?
Posted by: PM | Jul 28, 2009 6:23:01 PM
Those wedding pictures are wonderful! I dig the sneakers with the seersucker suit! Right ON!
You are a cute couple, and I love it that you shared with us.
Yes, I think of my friends too. Those who have been together 10, 20...30 years and raised wonderful children WITHOUT the legal tethers.
Imagine what could be accomplished WITH all the legal protections.
I want to scream every time someone dismisses gay love and sex as insignificant or not as good as or somehow threatening otherwise.
Yeah, right.
People in love, who care so much about being honest about it, and sharing it with their extended families...right, we should be REAL afraid of gay people in love.
Posted by: Regan DuCasse | Jul 28, 2009 7:33:18 PM
With a divorce rate of 50%, rampant adultery (often by those "protecting" the "sanctity" of marriage, infidelity, spousal abuse, child abuse, chemical and alcohol abuse, and fewer and fewer wanting to commit, heterosexuals have absolutely no room to criticize anyone else's relationships. I'd say anti-gay activist Raezler is living in a glass house and should stop throwing rocks.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 29, 2009 6:46:26 AM
Shes an ugly cow.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/27/MNG1H59R5Q1.DTL
Posted by: krissy | Jul 29, 2009 9:41:37 AM
Would it be possible to sue this woman for defamation of character?
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Jul 29, 2009 10:33:11 AM
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