thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2009-05-28 01:42 pm
thessalian) wrote2009-05-28 01:42 pm
The Dark Ages
Oh, what. The fucking. Fuck?
The above article is talking about how being against gay marriage is not the sole domain of religious zealots and homophobic bigots. No, he's quite right. Apparently, it's also the stance of misogynist arseholes who take their ideas of marriage from a couple of centuries back.
He talks about the 'kinship system', and I have no fucking idea what that's supposed to mean. There's talk about how marriage is supposed to protect a woman from rape and degradation, which makes no sense to me because frankly, it's not like any would-be rapist is going to care that the woman he's about to take by force is wearing a wedding ring. As to the degradation, given that he's talking about the days when women were more or less handed over as chattel to any suitable man who could afford the dowry like a cow being sold at market? I'd say that's pretty fucking degrading, wouldn't you? He talks about how there are no guidelines for who gay men may or may not get involved with, whereas marriage traditionally carries the responsibility of having to marry the good [insert religion and race here] guy from the next farm over so that they can be merged when both sets of parents die. Oh, and protecting the children from bastardy; that's apparently a really fucking important part of marriage. It's not about people loving each other and that kind of thing. Oooooooooooh no. Marriage isn't about love; it's about chains. Or at least, so this fuckbake says.
I should point something out at this stage: I am, technically speaking, a bastard. My parents weren't married when they had me. They did get married, but they did it a fair bit after I was born - in the wedding photos, there's a shot of me toddling around Mum's room with her pearls clutched in my little fist with Mum bending down, laughing, to take them back. Point is that my parents got married because they wanted to; they didn't do it for me. They'd been living together for years before they got married, so all the 'kinship' crap or whatever had obviously been taken care of. Even the name issue was dealt with before they got married; my mother had her name changed by usage because she wasn't overly keen on her own surname. (It's kind of clumsy, so I don't suppose I blame her.) Anyway, being a bastard didn't exactly hurt me. It's not a massive stain on my name. I don't really care, and neither does anyone else these days. Being born out of wedlock? Whoop-de-do. We're not living in the Dark Ages, people. We don't have to get married to have kids or marry some guy we may not even like to consolidate our parents' agricultural interests. And it's not about a man sheltering a woman from the big bad world!
These days, the responsibilities of marriage are very different, simply because of the changes that have taken place in the world. Marriage is about legal bulwarks for the future. It's to allow the person you love and trust most in all the world to make the decisions you would want made in the event that you can't make them yourself (DNR orders and other medical issues). It's to allow your best friend and love of your life to be able to handle your estate if you predecease them. (We had issues with that one about a decade ago because my grandmother was only common-law married to my (step-)grandfather and when he died, Grampa's son-in-law got greedy and it was a mess.) It's about all those things that this moron isn't even considering. While he's looking at marriage from a fifteenth-century point of view, some of us are here in the 21st century. You know, where we all live?
I don't know whether it's good or bad to see that there's more to the people who voted Prop 8 than bigotry-spurred dog-in-the-manger tactics or the intolerance only religion can breed. It'd be nice to know that it was limited to that, but instead we live in a world that still reduces women to chattel. Moooooooo. I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO.
*sigh* To quote a magnificent bastard, "I hate it here".
The above article is talking about how being against gay marriage is not the sole domain of religious zealots and homophobic bigots. No, he's quite right. Apparently, it's also the stance of misogynist arseholes who take their ideas of marriage from a couple of centuries back.
He talks about the 'kinship system', and I have no fucking idea what that's supposed to mean. There's talk about how marriage is supposed to protect a woman from rape and degradation, which makes no sense to me because frankly, it's not like any would-be rapist is going to care that the woman he's about to take by force is wearing a wedding ring. As to the degradation, given that he's talking about the days when women were more or less handed over as chattel to any suitable man who could afford the dowry like a cow being sold at market? I'd say that's pretty fucking degrading, wouldn't you? He talks about how there are no guidelines for who gay men may or may not get involved with, whereas marriage traditionally carries the responsibility of having to marry the good [insert religion and race here] guy from the next farm over so that they can be merged when both sets of parents die. Oh, and protecting the children from bastardy; that's apparently a really fucking important part of marriage. It's not about people loving each other and that kind of thing. Oooooooooooh no. Marriage isn't about love; it's about chains. Or at least, so this fuckbake says.
I should point something out at this stage: I am, technically speaking, a bastard. My parents weren't married when they had me. They did get married, but they did it a fair bit after I was born - in the wedding photos, there's a shot of me toddling around Mum's room with her pearls clutched in my little fist with Mum bending down, laughing, to take them back. Point is that my parents got married because they wanted to; they didn't do it for me. They'd been living together for years before they got married, so all the 'kinship' crap or whatever had obviously been taken care of. Even the name issue was dealt with before they got married; my mother had her name changed by usage because she wasn't overly keen on her own surname. (It's kind of clumsy, so I don't suppose I blame her.) Anyway, being a bastard didn't exactly hurt me. It's not a massive stain on my name. I don't really care, and neither does anyone else these days. Being born out of wedlock? Whoop-de-do. We're not living in the Dark Ages, people. We don't have to get married to have kids or marry some guy we may not even like to consolidate our parents' agricultural interests. And it's not about a man sheltering a woman from the big bad world!
These days, the responsibilities of marriage are very different, simply because of the changes that have taken place in the world. Marriage is about legal bulwarks for the future. It's to allow the person you love and trust most in all the world to make the decisions you would want made in the event that you can't make them yourself (DNR orders and other medical issues). It's to allow your best friend and love of your life to be able to handle your estate if you predecease them. (We had issues with that one about a decade ago because my grandmother was only common-law married to my (step-)grandfather and when he died, Grampa's son-in-law got greedy and it was a mess.) It's about all those things that this moron isn't even considering. While he's looking at marriage from a fifteenth-century point of view, some of us are here in the 21st century. You know, where we all live?
I don't know whether it's good or bad to see that there's more to the people who voted Prop 8 than bigotry-spurred dog-in-the-manger tactics or the intolerance only religion can breed. It'd be nice to know that it was limited to that, but instead we live in a world that still reduces women to chattel. Moooooooo. I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO.
*sigh* To quote a magnificent bastard, "I hate it here".