Gay Marriage: At Long Last, Dignity

One of the constant goals of the less than godly Christians who oppose gay rights is not only to dehumanize LGBT individuals but to depict us as a diseased scourge and threat to decency and society.  This agenda, as I have noted before, sharply parallels the Nazi campaign against Europe's Jews nearly 80 years ago.  Don't believe me?  Take a look at the Nazi propaganda campaign against those of Jewish descent in 1930's Germany and substitute the word "gay" for Jew" and you will be stunned.   It will quickly convince you of where the Christianists and professional Christian crowd got their game plan against gays.  And one of the things that most cuts against this foul game plan is the spread of gay marriage.  Why? Because civil marriage represents a recognition of our humanity and the dignity of our loves and relationships.  It is anathema to the agenda of the Christofascists.  A column in the New York Times looks at how same sex marriage affords dignity - dignity that the "godly Christians" would deprive LGBT citizens from securing.  Here are column excerpts:

If you live for 80 years, Chuck Bennett told me, you see things you never imagined. Crazy, fantastical stuff.  . . . . And on Nov. 6, if the polls are right and his hope is fulfilled, the people of Maine may pass a referendum for same-sex marriage, which no state has adopted by popular vote before. 

“That’s equally amazing to me,” he said. Ten minutes later, he circled back to say it again. “I would like to reiterate how amazing it is.” 

Bennett was born in 1932 and grew up in Brooklyn without anything but slurs and clinical terms to describe his attraction to other men. In the late 1950s, he was forced out of the Navy for being gay.

He never found a long-term romantic partner, thwarted in part by a disapproving society with no obvious role models for him, and he bought his dream house on the ocean here 15 years ago with two close friends, because he didn’t want to grow old alone and didn’t expect to meet anyone special, not so late in the game.

“You know that old saying, Born 50 years too soon?” he asked me. “I think I do feel something of that.” 

Maine is one of four states with same-sex marriage on the ballot on Election Day, a crucial moment for advocates and opponents alike. . . . . . Advocates are most optimistic about Maine, and I traveled here last weekend for a sense of what victory would mean to someone who’d known and braved a much different world. I found my way to Bennett, a courteous man with a soulful gaze and a precise way of speaking that reflects his long career in academia, first as a college English professor, then as a dean. 

He recalled that during his teenage years, his only assurances that there were other people like him were newspaper stories about men arrested on Fire Island for “obscene” or “depraved” behavior. 

For Bennett, the marriage focus of the Maine referendum is almost beside the real point, which is validation.  “I see it as something of profound significance,” he said. “Whether anyone winds up getting married in Maine, I don’t care. I care that they can get married.” That right means that gay people are equal to straight people. It recognizes their dignity. His dignity. 

“I’m inclined to look back not in anger, as John Osborne once said, but with some degree of sadness,” he said. “Everyone could have been happier. Everyone could have been more fulfilled if they hadn’t been burdened with this prejudice.”  

It is precisely this validation and dignity that the Christianists seek to keep from LGBT Americans.  Nothing makes them more content and fell more self-satisfied that inflicting inequality and unhappiness on others.  To me, such a mindset represents a pervasive sickness.  There is nothing truly Christ like about it.  Indeed, Christ - if he truly existed - would likely be horrified to see what the "godly Christians" have done to his name.