Sexual Weirdos

12 Comments

1. 

   DaveW on May 24, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   It’s not about how you treat them, it’s about the Blood. Which the uneducated call genes, which of course do not exist, since that would imply there might be evolution. Gay couples are not able to fulfill the divine purpose of marriage, which is for the male to plant the homunculus in the empty vessel.

2. 

   Zandar1 on May 24, 2009 at 1:22 pm

   Sooner rather than later, the substantial differences between marriage and gay marriage will cause gay marriage, as a meaningful and popular institution, to fail on its own terms. Since gay relationships exist perfectly well outside the kinship system, to assume the burdens of marriage–the legal formalities, the duty of fidelity (which is no easier for gays than it is for straights), the slavishly imitative wedding ritual–will come to seem a nuisance. People in gay marriages will discover that mimicking the cozy bits of romantic heterosexual marriage does not make relationships stronger; romantic partners more loving, faithful, or sexy; domestic life more serene or exciting. They will discover that it is not the wedding vow that maintains marriages, but the force of the kinship system. Kinship imposes duties, penalties, and retribution that champagne toasts, self-designed wedding rings, and thousands of dollars worth of flowers are powerless to effect.

   Translation: “Same-sex marriage will eventually fail completely because marriage is in and of itself a “nuisance”, so why should we even bother to let same-sex marriage exist since it’s doomed to fail?  Let’s save time and money and just outlaw the practice.  It’s better for our gay and lesbian friends in the long run, you see.”

   • 

     corvus on May 24, 2009 at 11:12 pm

     Maybe it’s just me, but it always seemed that the important part of the quest for gay marriage was recognition of gays as social equals and access to the important benefits of legal marriage, of which health insurance, child custody, and right of survivorship are the main concerns, not entry into the “kinship system”.

     I know that this is probably impossible for the herd-following-by-nature conservative clique to understand, but not everyone thinks extended families are such a hot deal, which is why they have largely disintegrated as the dominant social institution. For the rest of the population, “family”, like “tradition”, has a neutral — at best — connotation by default. As the author of this fucked up article says:

     Kinship imposes duties, penalties, and retribution […]

     Exactly. You can’t choose your relatives, but you sure as hell can avoid them in favor of more pleasant people to whom one is unrelated.

3. 

   Steven D on May 24, 2009 at 2:15 pm

   Shorter version.  Because I’ve been divorced by three  women in heterosexual marriages, gay marriage won’t work.

4. 

   aarrgghh on May 24, 2009 at 2:42 pm

   “weirdo” is too kind a description:

   “the sodomized virgin exception”

   lazaro: napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” he insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. i asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

   napoli: a real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. the girl was a virgin. she was religious. she planned on saving her virginity until she was married. she was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. i mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

   certainly, we know that if she wasn’t a virgin, she was asking for it, so she should be punished with forced childbirth. no lazy “convenient” abortion for her, the little whore. it goes without saying that the victim who was saving it for her marriage is a good girl who didn’t ask to be brutally raped and sodomized like the sluts who didn’t hold out. but even that wouldn’t be quite enough by itself. the woman must be sufficiently destroyed psychologically by the savage brutality that the forced childbirth would drive her to suicide (the presumed scenario in which this pregnancy could conceivably “threaten her life.”)

   someone should ask this man about this. he seems to have given it a good deal of thought. i suspect many hours have been spent luridly contemplating the brutal, savage rape and sodomy (as bad as it can be) of a religious virgin and how terrible it would be for her. it seems quite clear in his mind.

   “giving women freedom”

   unruh: i’ve been that woman. there is no freedom after an abortion. you carry an empty crib in your heart forever. there’s no freedom.

   hinojosa: and so, when you hear people saying, “someone like leslie is trying to actually take away women’s rights and taking away their freedoms —”

   unruh: i’m giving women freedom. we are giving back the women what they really want. this is true feminism.

   and from the same post:

   hinojosa: last friday night, young girls from around south dakota came to sioux falls for a spring ball. this one is called “the purity ball” it’s a yearly event run by leslee unruh’s abstinence clearinghouse. the idea is that these young women come with their fathers. to celebrate their sexual purity.

   unruh: we think that its important for fathers to the be the first ones to look into their daughters eyes and to tell her that her purity is special, and its ok to wait until marriage.

   hinojosa: it might have all the trappings of a regular prom … but this one ends a little differently.

   girls reciting pledge: “i make a promise this day to god …”

   hinojosa: the young women here all make a promise to their fathers that they wont’ have sex until the day they get married.

   girls reciting pledge: “… to remain sexually pure … until the day i give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. … i know that god requires this of me … that he loves me. and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.”

   you have to see it to believe it. they are all dressed up like prom goers, the dads in tuxes and the daughters in evening gowns looking all grown up. they dance, they laugh, they giggle. and then father and daughter stand up, holding each others hands, staring into each others’ eyes and the girls make these vows as if in a wedding ceremony.

   as i watch it occurs to me that this is why they don’t have an exception for rape and incest. it’s one of the creepiest things i’ve ever seen.

   (via digby)

5. 

   Guthman on May 24, 2009 at 3:05 pm

   I love it. What a nightmarish vision of human relations and marriage! There is no question that the institution of marriage comes with a lot of historical baggage, sexual too, but not only sexual. And this baggage is all that seems truly definitive about marriage to the very articulate Mr. Schulman. In a through-the-looking-glass sense, I suspect a lot of “progressives” at least partly agree with Schulman — which is why they steadfastly refuse to get married. Following Schulman’s Hieronymus Bosch vision to its logical conclusion though, I guess becoming a hermit is really the only way out.

6. 

   boran2 on May 24, 2009 at 3:43 pm

   Apparently this author just simply hasn’t come to grips with his bigotry against gays.

   • 

     dada on May 24, 2009 at 4:20 pm

     nor his relationships with women…this dud’s creepy.

7. 

   on May 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm

   The gay couple in my extended family were family. It didn’t take any effort, the lesbian who was not my sister-in-law by marriage was accepted as part of the family. The whole family. No big deal. Their relationship, they were forbidden to be married, did break up… a couple of years after my marriage.

   By the way, was there a directive to rapists to not rape married women? Or that it’s okay to make unmarried women concubines? What planet did this douchebag come from?

8. 

   sjct on May 24, 2009 at 6:08 pm

   I can tell from the other comments that I don’t want to read the “weird article.” So I’m responding to your “merging of families” comment: My daughter is a lesbian and married but her wife is partly estranged from her family because of her orientation. So in as much as she doesn’t get along with her own mother and father, she doesn’t seek out a relationship with me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a meaningful conversation with her. We do live 3000 miles apart so that’s part of the problem… maybe if we had more direct contact, she’d feel more comfortable with me. I would venture that some gay people come with emotional baggage that conflicts with family merging.

   But, this is NOT entirely an aspect of gayness. I don’t have meaningful conversations with my step-daughters either because they have conflicted feelings about their father that predisposes them to disliking me. For example, he gets along best with his son and somehow that adds up to my having good relations with that son and his soon-to-be-wife. She and I have a great friendship!

   Merging families is complicated and doesn’t often work out as well as it should…

9. 

   Colman on May 25, 2009 at 6:29 am

   Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband.

   WTF? You could spend a lifetime unpacking all that is wrong with just that sentence.

   • 

     melo on May 26, 2009 at 4:32 am

     no shit…

     i’m glad i read it, and a lot of it resonated, the history of marriage, womens’ role as bargaining chip or concu-slave, the doom-fraught ‘honour’ credos and mafia-like clannishness that still is the rule in far too many places, he described that well enough, illuminating in fact.

     when he got to trying to sum up gay marriage, he really doesn’t have the merest of clues, and reveals the contortionate thinking his poor brain is wrestling with…

     he’d like to have the relaxed approach he imagines gays have to fidelity and freedom, but in his hetero life.

     and he’d love to feel real guilty about it, that’s my take-away.

     look at the comments, you can tell a man by the company he keeps.

     marry-who-you-wanna!