From: los@coos.dartmouth.edu (Charles Dubuque)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,talk.politics.misc
Subject: "Special Protection" (was Re: NEWSWEEK POLL: Plurality of Americans support GAY RIGHTS)
Date: 10 Sep 92 17:15:56 GMT
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

In article <12194@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>Most Americans support Equal Rights for homosexuals, myself included.
>We don't support homosexuals getting special protection, which is what
>the homosexual community is so anxious to have the government
>grant them.  There's a big difference.

What is special protection? Where does gay rights ask for special
protections? We have always asked for equal rights, nothing else.

How do you define special protection? Protection for job
discrimination? Housing discrimination? Services discrimination? The
right to be married? The right to raise children? I know many people
who consider giving these rights to gays and lesbians "too extreme."

But what some may see as special rights I see as equal rights.

A person should be protected from being fired or harrassed on the job
because of something that is completely unrelated to their performance
of that job. That is equal protection. If a gay man can do his job
well, then he should not be fired just because he is gay. The same with
housing and the right to be eligible for the same paid services as
straight people are. And most people seem to be in agreement with that.
Banks do not mind same sex couples opening joint bank accounts. Most
people think it is wrong for a lesbian to be fired just for being a
lesbian or a gay man denied housing just because he is gay.

However, when we get into the arena of marriage and raising children,
straights tend to hedge. Why? Because this is the domain in which they
enjoy special privileges. Straights have the right to get married. And
they enjoy special protections given them by church and state: tax
incentives (joint filing is less expensive than single filing),
inheritance rights, automatic power of attorney rights, spousal
benefits from insurance companies. Plus there are societal benefits:
weddings and anniversaries are celebrated (usually with economic
benefit), people get to talk about their spouses and their families,
and their spouses are often assets in social engagements, especially
those related to work.

One of the biggest benefits straights enjoy is the right to raise
children, even if those children are not their own biologically. And
the state supports raising children through dependent deductions on
income tax. Having a child is a symbol of a family's legitimacy.
Lesbian couples are often able to have their own children, using
artificial insemination to conceive, thus removing the father, and
counting on the societal construct of the mother-child bond to ensure
at least laissez-faire acceptance. Lesbian and gay couples are heartily
discriminated against in both the arenas of adoption and foster
parenting, and often sexual orientation, not parental suitability or a
child's wishes, will be the deciding factor in a post-divorce custodial
battle.

So why does the straight power base separate gay rights into "equal
rights" (economic parity) and "special rights" (social parity)? I
believe that it comes down to insecurity. In a society that does not
like to talk about things, especially related to sex and lifestyle, a
great many people follow the scripts set before them by society without
questioning them. Society tells them that it is "right" and then
showers them with benefits for following the "right" way. Some cynical
people may realize this for their own economic gain, using marriages of
convenience for tax purposes only, etc.

Discrimination against gays and lesbians in the social arena is not a
moral issue, although the language of religion and the bible is often
used to justify it. Giving equal rights (what Cramer and others call
special rights) to gays and lesbians, sanctioning gay and lesbian
marriages, allowing gay and lesbians to adopt children would place the
same blessing that society places on straight unions and straight
families on gay unions and gay families.

Straight society bases itself on the notion that straights are better
than gays. Straight society says that gays can never be happy, they can
never have sustained loving relationships, that they have chosen not to
have children, that they are child molesters. And straight society
makes its own pronouncements come true by denying gays the stable base
of marriage and by denying them the right to raise children, sometimes
even their own. Straight society says to be straight, and if you are
straight, you can be happy, because you can get married and have children.

But many straights are not happy. Divorce rates skyrocketing, abused
children, stressed-out parents, spousal abuse and elder abuse all
attest to this. Most do not even live in "traditional families," with
husband, wife and kiddies. So, society has learned to adjust, and
former stigmas against divorcees, new family configurations, etc. have
lessened. But the "traditional" family is still held as an ideal above
all other configurations, which tend to try to mold themselves into
being as close to a "traditional family" as possible. Many still
believe that only true happiness can be acheived in the model of the
family sanctioned by society. Therefore, there is resentment both in
the "tarnishing" that would result if gay and lesbian families were
sanctioned and in that gay and lesbians might be able to attain
happiness that is unavailable to straight society (if I am unhappy,
everybody must be unhappy).

The ideal of marriage and of raising children is one of those
sacrosanct unquestioned and unquestionable fixtures of our culture. And
they are only available to straights because being straight is the
right thing to be. This is another unquestionable tenet.

But what if gays and lesbians started getting married? What if they
were allowed to adopt children just like straights are? Would that mean
that they are just as good as straights? If this line of questioning is
followed, an entire chunk of our culture comes away. When gays and
lesbians, "outsiders" to a system that rewards assimilation and
conformity without question for its "insiders", can get married and
raise kids, it brings into question their outsider status. And this
brings into question straights' "insider" status. It may even bring
into question straights' own sexuality. And this is what they fear.

Allowing gay and lesbian relationships/families/marriages to become
legitimized will bring into question the mandates that many straights
have aimlessly followed, which they may be unhappy with, yet unwilling
to question because society says that "this is the way" and believing
that and denying their doubts is the only way to hang on to that belief
system. One plank questioned and the whole foundation falls.

I hope this makes some sense.
Glad to get this off my back.
Chuck

Next week: the contradiction of discrimination against gays and
lesbians and the denial of "minority status" and subsequent legal
protections.