How forumites have evolved (or not) on equal marriage

[minionofmidas]

That post is a satirical comment on the one above it. It caught my eye too...

I haven't evolved on this issue, I think. I've always been at give them full benefits / I don't care whether it's called marriage. All that's changed over the past twenty years is the viability of the proposition - but even when I first formed an opinion there were European countries that already recognized gay marriages even though it was still completely unthinkable here in Germany with Helmut Kohl at the helm.
Oh, and mild bemusement at the speed with which things have happened and at that becoming the litmus test of a progressive. Not that I disapprove of the outcome, but let's fight the economic battles again, people. So infinitely much has been lost there while this battle was being won - thanks in part to this being an issue on which media assistance was much easier to get. Which should tell you something about relative importance. (Now... the battle on legality of gay sex... that's something different entirely. But that was before my time here in Germany, though not in Texas. Incidentally, in Germany as in Britain discrimination over the age of consent continued into the 1990s - the difference being that the repeal of the unenforced paragraph in 1994 happened without any kind of political brouhaha or much of the country even noticing, merely as a by-product of the merger of the East and West German criminal codes. Though the GDR itself had only abolished the last vestiges of discrimination on that issue months before the wall came down.)

[minionofmidas]

Baby seals are an abomination that ought to be eradicated by hakapik.

[minionofmidas]

Look, the vast majority of people who now support gay marriage either:

a) are younger than 25, or
b) have "evolved" on the position.

Note the second phrase. Also note that nowhere was it stated that the evolution had to occur since 2004 - most of these kids (the ones not raised in downtown major metros anyways) evolved in their first term in college.

Ninja'd.

[minionofmidas]

Wrong thread, Mr Most Anti-Inks' Rights Person on this forum.

[minionofmidas]

I know I have. But that's what we do when we are young and stupid.

Evolve?

[minionofmidas]

I hate that acronym SSM. I've hated it with unnatural passion ever since I first laid eyes on it, which was only a few weeks ago. It makes me think of BDSM and of the Euro Crisis at the same time.

[minionofmidas]

Would you like to engage in some SSM with me, Lewis?

Maybe polyandrous threeway SSM.

[minionofmidas]

That post is a satirical comment on the one above it. It caught my eye too...

I haven't evolved on this issue, I think. I've always been at give them full benefits / I don't care whether it's called marriage. All that's changed over the past twenty years is the viability of the proposition - but even when I first formed an opinion there were European countries that already recognized gay marriages even though it was still completely unthinkable here in Germany with Helmut Kohl at the helm.

Thinking about this... when I first formed an opinion (that was mostly "ah, look just how progressive it is possible for countries near us to be. Not ever happening in this f**ktard country") the option of not calling it marriage - what we eventually got/will get* here - would not have occurred to me, and thus that part is evidently of later age. How much later? I cannot say; I have no recollection. All this was fifteen to twenty years ago and not of personal relevance to me.

*we got civil unions that everybody calls marriage colloquially. They're not equal in benefits yet, but we're getting there. It is purely a matter of time by now, and probably not very much time. Life of the next Parliament. Yet because of the way events unfolded in this country, that is what we will get - we're not going to officially rename it marriage anytime soon.

[minionofmidas]

I think it was only around the 2004 US presidential election did I understand it was an "issue"

Yeah, it was weird.  Nobody gave a damn about it before that.  Not me, not my straight friends, not my gay friends.  No one.  Then, all of a sudden it was everywhere.

It wasn't really snowballing until then, but the issue did come up a bit in the 90s, with the Hawaii Supreme Court decision and DOMA.  But before *that*, it was really nowhere on the political radar.  That's what many in the younger crowd here might not get.  How different things were not that long ago.  When I first started following politics as a teenager in 1992, you could have asked even a tolerant who otherwise supported gay rights about gay marriage, and they would likely have told you that the concept sounded weird.  Not that they were necessarily against it, or that gays didn't deserve to be married or that it was immoral, but that the whole idea sounded strange, and that it wouldn't have necessarily even occurred to them that gays wanted to be married.

And in fact, there were many on the LGBT activist side who thought that the marriage issue was a distraction, and even some who were outright opposed, because they saw marriage as a tool of the patriarchy

They have a point.

[minionofmidas]

I guess we should start saying same-sex marriage.  I'm not normally very politically correct, but gay marriage is so 1995 and equal marriage has a creepy, Orwellian quality.  I'll try to remind myself to type same-sex marriage.  Or maybe just marriage.  That will be the day of arrival.  When we just say marriage and it means any marriage.  No qualifier necessary.

Monogamous Marriage?

[minionofmidas]

I think everybody should be compulsed to be married to everybody else.

[minionofmidas]

I think everybody should be compulsed to be married to everybody else.

compelled.

No, that would be too drastic.