More on gay sodomy:
An opinion piece from a Virginia newspaper discusses one of the harsher consequences of anti-sodomy laws: in the 13 states that still have them, such laws are sometimes used to presumptively brand gays as criminals. In one example (Bottoms v. Bottoms, a name I ridiculed last week), the Virginia Supreme Court in 1995 allowed a child to be taken away from her lesbian mother, in part because “conduct inherent in lesbianism is punishable as a Class 6 felony.”
This is important, people.
[via SCOTUSblog]
Jeff — U need to talk to Chris @ Uffish.
Although i truly consider civil rights for homosexuals, transgenders, et al hugely important, there’s something to be said for tending your own gardens.
More important long-term is the gay community’s misaligned value system. I don’t have to go into detail about this, just goto Splash some nite and listen to the conversations.
Any civil rights we gain will, ultimately, be squandered if we don’t get our value system in shape.
.rob
Pleasure-centric systems always fall, be they individuals or communities.
That any persons rights should be predicated on the conduct or conversations of people from the same group congragating at a bar is a bit beyond my comprehension! I can’t imagine anyone suggesting that civil rights for african americans should have waited until those loud black men on the corner stopped congregating there. Jeff’s example, a lesbian denied custody of her child because of a law banning homosexual sex – she should wait to get her child back until the queers at Splash act or talk more “appropriate”??? and WHO gets to decide what that would mean? The government? The “good gays”?
I’m not speaking of pre-conditions. I’m speaking of rights (potentially) gained, only to be squandered by our culture’s lack of good values.
African American culture, it could be argued, has squandered many of their meager civil gains. The lack of family, and so on, can all be said to have mitigated any gains they made on the legal front of society.
But, you know, the difference between American Gay Culture and African American Culture’s value-problems? One source comes from within (gaydom) and one from without (African Americans).
We’re our worse enemy, never mind the bubba’s found on the 700 Club.
“Play less and do more politics” should be gays’ moto for the next 50 years; That’s how revolutions really happen.
.rob
While not as staunchly condemning of gay cultural practices as rob, i do recognize his point… and can’t help but think that if gays spent half as much money on politics as they do on booze and cover charges, we’d probably have a lot more civil rights being upheld, and a lot fewer hangovers.
I think one weakness with the above argument comes from using comments taken from a random sampling of gay men at Splash as indicative of the value systems of the larger mass of gay men and lesbians in the United States. Not all towns in this country have clubs that charge cover…or even bars that recognize gay patrons. Look outside your own backyard! :-)
The other weakness, IMHO, comes from assuming that the majoritarian (ie “straight”) value system is indeed an ideal or a valid way for legitimate, lasting political gains. This is a larger and longer argument for another time.
Yes, annecdotal reasoning ain’t so hot (i.e., spying on Splash convo’s).
Huh. Maybe i am wrong.
Maybe gayculture isn’t heavily pleasurecentric. Maybe we’re obsessed with relationships, civil rights, and forwarding the concept of a universally tolerant culture — and not about drugs, music, tv, movies, clubs, clothes, and chatroom hookups. I could be very, very wrong.
The majority of us just might be doing other stuff, that i can’t see.
Not.
This isn’t about emulating Str8 Culture. It’s about examining *our* values, regardless of what other cultures may see as fit or unfit. Indeed, gay culture is distinct enough, strong enough, and old enough in America to arrive at conclusions wholly indepedent from those cultures that we reside within.
Part of a culture’s maturing process is critiquing where we’re heading And, in my opinion, our direction is corrupt and vacant of substance, for the majority.
There was a time, on an island called Manhattan, that being queer meant being a thinker and a creator, not a clubber. But, that was a long time ago, when we talked about issues that mattered — and didn’t say “that’s for another time.” This is the time.
“Abandon shopping all you who want to be free.”
.rob
It seems you are presenting an opposition between pleasure and maturity as if it is a given, that we will “outgrow out childish pleasures” to paraphrase the Bible (and Thackery). Why is that?
Additionally, I think that you’ll find that any number of interesting, brilliant queer artists and thinkers from that “once upon a time” you mention were just as slutty as any chatroom Chelsea-boy…and in many cases were even more sexually aggressive. Check out Michael Warner’s recent book “The Trouble with Normal.” He does a great job of charting how the “maturity” argument surfaces every 20 years or so, starting in the 1950s when the Mattachine Society transformed from a left-leaning political group that argued against entrapment laws and for sexual liberation into a mostly assimilationist group of “good” homosexuals who just wanted to fit in with “normal” Americans.
As someone who has oft had multiple sexual partners, simultaneously, in and outside relationships, i see this as a trait of our subculture that has, unfortunately, become a core, community-defining value — and that’s wrong and destructive. It’s fine is healthy measures, but not as a core value.
That i engage in open sexual relationships doesn’t, necessarily, mean i’m pleasure-centric in my values. That merely means how i choose to conduct my sexuality.
Now, if this were my primary goal in relationships, if this were what i thought, wrote, and planned constantly, then that’s a weighty value, that would be one of my core values. But, trust me, getting some monkey love is a priority, but by no means a big priority.
What i’m pointing out is that gay culture’s *core* values are, very rarely, quality things, things that would further our notions of what a “righteous” community would be like. Instead, those things we value most are, for exmp: tv, movies, chatroom hookups, music, clothes, clubbing, drugs, shopping, and all other pleasure-centric endevours.
These are values i, too, hold, i just believe that they should not be our core values, those things that define us as a community.
But, they have become just that.
.rob
It’s the middle way that is holy, and the two extremes that are evil.