@Nabisco: ::SNORT::

@homo limeyensis: They’ll probably kick your ass for driving a Prius alone. Dixie don’t play that.

As You-Know-Who put it: “Comparisons are odorous.’ Queers cut across all economic and social strata: we are everywhere (Except for the Republican party). We are nothing special. That’s what this struggle is about. After Stonewall we were special: marriage makes us ordinary.

Perhaps you’re right morally but what concerns me most is long-term care: for us both. And the ability to hang on to what little we’ve managed to acquire so that I can perhaps help pay for my godson’s college. I would hesitate to link my own privileged life to those who were tortured in my behalf. That is a different discussion calling for a whole new wardrobe.

I think we must try to understand that, apart from the obvious exceptions, the people on the other side act as much on principle as does, say, the HRC. Perhaps we should try to embrace their objections and in that way defuse them. I don’t know. I’m not an activist. But I would repeat: I would be thrilled to get a civil union that gave us equal rights. If we accept the fact that ‘marriage’ has changed over the years (as it has) why can’t one of those changes be calling the same thing by two names?

With luck, they’ll assume you mean Stonewall Jackson and you’ll make a lot of new friends. If not, well, perchance this is the summer of Freedom Rides through the south? We could call them “Rainbow Rides”.

But I get tired of the circumstances my life becoming fodder for the indignation of absolutists of all stripes. While it’s galling to have to listen to the vile nonsense being spewed about my life and habits from our religiously challenged brethren and sistren, I find it just as dispiriting to have to listen to the high-minded indignation of the left. After all, we can live without marriage. We’ve managed it so far. I would personally be very happy with civil unions that gave me the same rights as marriage. Given the shit-storm this cause has provoked the idea of marriage has lost much of its allure. I’m most concerned with social security, inheritance, hospitals, etc. and I don’t much care what that’s called. Plus, Obama might throw in his support; he’s declared his support for civil unions.

We do the Volcano eruptions, though.

HA! I was wondering where you were.

I have to second JNOV in this. Comparing civil rights struggles creates a straw man; all pain and oppression is individual pain, individual opression. Therefore, comparing them is false argument- you will always be comparing apples and oranges no matter what.

There is only one way in which civil rights struggles It is wrong to deny full citizenship to a class of citizens on the basis of an immutable characteristic. You can slice this issue any way you like, it will always come back to that question, and that question, when you get down to the final analysis, is not a moral question so much as it is a practical one: Can our society afford to allow discrimination to flourish and deny the central tenet of its foundation? Will there be justice for anyone if we can selectively deny justice to a despised class for no other reason than that they are despised?

This issue and the torture issue are intertwined, and as I’ve said before, the resolution of these issues will determine whether or not the grand American experiment in Democracy has failed. A democracy ultimately is only as strong as its defense of the its weakest or most despised members. We can continue on the path to becoming a just representative government, or we can collapse into an Oligarchy that merely sustains the status quo, and rewards rights to those who can pay for them, or to those whose sheer number makes it impossible to do otherwise.

Having said that, darling, it is good to see you. I miss you when you are gone too long.

Are you for real? One of the things that makes me cross-eyed is when people start to rank injustice and argue over whose persecution was worse than whom’s. It’s a dumb mental exercise and a ridiculous way to view bigotry and prejudice.

I’m sure you were being facetious, but to even joke that you have to travel under the cloak of darkness for your own protection should inform you that there is a very serious problem here.

Wanna see how the Af-Am civil rights movement and the GLBTQ civil rights movements are similar? Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4T2ohbtvg