Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCT: October 19-23, 2009

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JD:

--- Quote from: ChristKnows on 23 Oct 2009, 18:47 ---Have to say as accepting of gays I am, I have mixed feelings about gay marriage. I agree that homosexuals deserve all the rights of married heterosexuals but in the end the church are the ones offering the service of marriage and if they don't want to offer that service to a particular group of people then that sucks but it's their right, especially given that there are alternatives (civil partnerships) that offer all rights of marriage.

--- End quote ---

Married people have more rights than civil unions.

Mr_Rose:

--- Quote from: maddness on 23 Oct 2009, 21:24 ---I believe that every religion has it's own right to decide whether they can perform a marriage between same-sex couples. I may think it sucks if they don't, but as a religion, the state has no say in whether they do or not.
--- End quote ---
Right. But who has been telling any particular religious organisation who or what they can marry? It has been pretty much exactly the other way around ever since the topic first came up.
No state institution I have ever heard of has ever tried to tell a church or other religious outpost that they must perform a ceremony for such-and-such classification of couple - mostly it's the churches that have been trying to tell the states that they aren't allowed to issue licences to gay couples because it "violates the sanctity of marriage" or some such.

Near Lurker:

--- Quote from: ChokingOutTheRadio on 23 Oct 2009, 23:34 ---I don't have any protest against gay marriage, but this comic has jumped the shark. Ooooh lets get a reaction but pushing a hot button item. Boring.

--- End quote ---

The thing is, I don't think anyone was actually expecting a reaction to the issue.  This is kinda weird.

JD:
Mostly killbot's fault

Edit: I wasted my 3000th post

Ravenswing:

--- Quote from: Fenriswolf on 23 Oct 2009, 16:53 --- It has made me feel suicidal that I will always be seen and perceived as a woman no matter what I do, that every "masculine" thing I like and do (almost everything) will have to be proven, that any time I want to play with femininity I have to accept being treated as a "girl" ... So yes, if gender roles went away, if people accepted sexuality, interests and behaviour as a spectrum then I would be happy in my skin. But that will never happen. And the fact that despite not coping at all with being female sometimes I don't actually feel I AM male (if it was easy I probably would change my sex) means I really respect that some people do.
--- End quote ---
Which suggests that substantively, you agree with me.

It's a hard thing to wrap our heads around, because we're so wedded to gender identity that even now, even in circles you'd think would be progressive enough to believe otherwise, we have this rigid concept of what behavior ought to be exhibited by whom.  As you say, you're likely to be pigeonholed no matter how you act, no matter your interests, but that's because damn near every activity and personality trait that exists has a traditional pigeonhole.  It even comes down to tiny little things you'd think wouldn't matter ... that, for instance, a difference I really appreciate between my first wife and my second is that Amanda is comfy with giving me flowers, something I quite like, but that (cough) Gurrrrls aren't supposed to get for Boys.

Will this ever change?  Probably not in what's left of my lifetime, no.  But c'mon.  I'm from Massachusetts, and if you had told me as recently as six years ago that I'd not only see single-sex marriage in my lifetime, it'd be celebrated in my own community within a year, I'd have advised you to lay off the hallucinogens.  This in a state - one so strongly identified with liberalism that it's used as a slur nationwide - where I grew up in an area so lily white and Pleasantville-ish that I went until my fifth birthday before I ever saw a black person in the flesh, gay bars lacked signs for safety reasons well into my 20s, and to be a "faggot" was the worst thing in the world when I was a kid, even if we didn't have any clear idea what that actually meant.  If that was ostensibly liberal Massachusetts in the 1960s, heaven alone knows what backcountry Mississippi was like.

The world's changing in front of our eyes at a staggering rate, and that's a comforting thing.  I certainly won't live to see the day when none of this will matter.  You may.

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