#queers against gay marriage

[queerplatonicpositivity]

"Same-sex marriage should be legal" and "Same-sex marriage does not fix many of the problems with legal rights and marriage" are two concepts that can coexist.

[historyofmemes]

News everyone! Greece is now the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize civil same-sex marriage!

The same bill also gives same-sex couples full parental rights!

[strangesickness]

i am doing some research for an essay and am reading an article about richie being gay in IT 2019 and the person writing the article is acting like richie coming out would have no impact on his career whatsoever because he's a comedian in los angeles in 2016... like did we watch the same movie?

like for me personally when i saw richie get up on stage and tell a joke about jerking it to his girlfriends sisters facebook or whatever my first thought wasn't "oh yeah i bet his audience is on their way to a drag show after this" i got a very clear image of a a 35-45 year old white guy who watches fox news and refers to his wife as "the ol' ball and chain" and thinks richie is a hero of comedy because he "isn't giving into the woke liberal mob who doesn't understand what dark humor is". i know this might be shocking but that type doesn't typically like it when their entertainers are queer :0

like... what? i am just very confused. like did we expect richie tozier, guy who grew up in a small town during the AIDS crisis and was tormented by a clown who threatened him with the knowledge that he was a homosexual, and now has a career that relies on a group of people who are largely at least somewhat homophobic, liking him, to be out and proud? did we watch the same film?

[crimsiin]

//crim

[weirdcharacter]

Heartstoppers spoilers below

Weirdly enough (or not), the scenes that had me crying and/or feeling the most emotional in Heartstopper were the scenes involving parents.

Seeing how... Normal. They were. Charlie's dad clearly is ready to defend his son, always telling him "if you need anything, call me", "if any of these boys say or do something nasty, you call me", always trying to keep the dialogue open with Charlie and telling him it's okay, he's here for him.

We didn't see much of her mom, but she seems pretty chill about Charlie being gay and bringing over male friends (and in the graphic novel Charlie says all of his family is chill about him being gay so that's good too)

And even his sister is like, she's teasing and supporting him like a big sis, she's here for him and she makes it clear that she cares for him and his well-being.

As for Nick, his coming out scene to his mom had me crying. Because I also came out to my mom (mom only in the family) and while she was supportive and told me "you know we don't care if you like a girl or a boy, as long as you're happy" (and I am grateful for these words), I didn't get the full on "hug you and thank you and sorry" reaction Nick's mom had. (Again, i still am grateful for her reaction because she didn't dismiss my bisexuality and we even got to talk more about it and other things so it's cool)

I have a supportive mom, and I have other people who say they are supportive but the words and actions don't really follow the discourse, so yeah. Seeing how accepting Nick's mom was, it kind of reminded me I don't have this unconditional acceptance from some people.

What I'm trying to say is, this show is healing and painful, because it shows me and other people the experience of being queer, figuring things out, having to Google stuff like "am I gay" "what is bisexuality" "bisexual test", having to figure things out and overthink everything; it shows us, it shows me an experience that is similar to the one I had when I was a questioning teenager.

And it shows me what I could have had. What it could have been for me, if I had more queer people around me. If I had that one queer person who liked me and would have been here to support me and stuff.

I had to figure all of this on my own, alone behind my screens, scrolling through google and tumblr blogs and screenshots on pinterest; I had to read in that one "teenage book guide" I had, and had to take like a hundred online tests to make sure that yes, I am bi. I did most of that alone, and the only person who knew at the time was also figuring it out so we were just. Not really able to guide each other through that.

Heartstopper is great, because I relate to Nick's "figuring things out" story, to his bisexuality, to his journey toward accepting himself and how he feels. And I relate to Charlie, who probably had to figure things out by himself, who felt very isolated at times, who wonders if he's ever gonna find someone who loves him, truly.

Anyway, just to say that I love the parents in the show, and I overall love the adults (Art and Sport teachers, I see you). And I love the support the kids have and give to each other.

[tyrannuspitch]

okay this is my last post about people being annoying about the word queer i promise. but.

rip to that person i saw a few months ago gushing about baz pitch using the word queer because it was sooo great to see characters who didn’t feel the need for labels like there’s soooo much more than just gay and straight urgh. like. sorry my friend but in about ten pages you’re going to discover that that boy is a homosexual

[s1mpl3sp0ng3]

sometimes i watch golden girls and i just tear up remembering everything each cast member did for the queer community

estelle getty lost her nephew to AIDS and moved in with him during the last months of his life to take care of him. she started a foundation that cares for people affected by AIDS that's still there to this day. she saw one of the writers on her show was queer, walked right up to him and said "you're one of us!" and promised to protect him. she put her career on the line to become an outspoken ally of AIDS patients at a time when it would've been career suicide

bea arthur was a staunch gay and trans ally who donated a lot of her time and money to helping homeless lgbt youth. when she died, she left them thousands of dollars to stay afloat after she was gone. she was incredibly socially active in the queer community!

rue mcclanahan was a staunch advocate of marriage rights for gay couples and openly devoted her time and money for the fight for equality. she also openly participated in queer spaces and loved the community with her entire heart. she was intimately aware of gay mens' particular love for her character blanche and she fully embraced it

everybody knows by now about betty white's activism, but i'll say it anyway. not only did she join the fight for marriage equality, but she was a great mother to her lesbian stepdaughter. she participated in anti-bullying campaigns specifically against lgbt youth. she accompanied liberace to events because it wasn't safe for him to be out. she loved us and she fought for us just like the others

all four of them did SO MANY amazing things for us, and it makes me happy that we had people like them -- that we still do in people like dolly parton! we didn't deserve them. i wish i could've met all of them and told them how grateful i am!

[moonlightsapphic]

Releasing Nimona on the last day of pride month 2023 was such a great move because it’s a really needed piece of media right now. Lots of countries that legalised gay marriage years ago have been grappling with this rising TERF narrative of “if you’re gay it’s whatever but if you’re trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming in some way you’re a PERVERT! A MONSTER trying to GROOM CHILDREN!” The outrage against simple things like pronouns and drag events, and the movement against gender affirming healthcare have reached a terrifying peaks for contemporary times.

So a kid’s movie set in a fictional country with controlling government officials with personal agendas, with an openly gay couple but also a shape-shifting kid who cannot even be afford to be out is our reality in the US today. Nimona’s feelings about her vibe, body and form, her insistence that she is only “Nimona” no matter what she looks like and her aversion to “small-minded questions” together forms such a beautiful allegory about trans, genderfluid individuals.

Ballister asks her to be a girl, but for whose sake? It’s only for the comfort of people who refuse to understand her, and would rather see her die than let her be herself. And it’s this widespread rejection and loneliness that has eventually made Nimona indifferent to pain, that makes her feel suicidal.

In the end, it is another member of the LGBTQ+ community that truly sees and accepts Nimona for who she is. And that should be a reminder that we cannot let them divide us. Trans people stood up for the rest of us and made historical change happen, and we need to do the same for them. Besides, cis queer people are only the “good ones” until they’re done with trans people and then will turn on us.

[queerplatonicpositivity]

Hellooo I’m just asking can cpps platonically have sexs, marry and have Kids? These sort of stuff just seem like things to do with a romantic partner so im just wondering /gen :3

Hi, Anon!

Queerplatonic partners get to include or not include whatever they decide. Queerplatonic relationships can involve sexual interactions. There are lots of reasons people (not just queerplatonic partners) might get married; marriage isn't always about romance. (There are a lot of legal protections that are either only possible through marriage or greatly increased through marriage, such as custody arrangements if the relationship ends, and those are only one small aspect of why people might choose to get married despite not viewing themselves as romantic partners.) Queerplatonic relationships can definitely involve having and/or raising children together, too.

I think the heart of your questions is really: how can you tell whether things people do together are romantic or queerplatonic? And the answer is that the people involved get to decide. If they say it's romantic, it's romantic. If they say it's queerplatonic, it's queerplatonic.

I hope this helps!

P.S. - The legal protections that come with marriage is one of the many reasons why so many queer people have been frustrated with the narrative of "we're just like you, so please let us get legally married." It's not that we don't want fellow queers to be able to get legally married. It's that we're concerned about letting the government decide which relationships are "worthy" of access to those legal rights. We know that current "gay marriage" leaves out a whole host of queer people, including polyamorous people, and we want to be having different conversations about how to secure our rights.

[vaspider]

An important definition of terms:

As far as I'm concerned, an assimilationist is someone who believes that queer people must assimilate in order to advance the cause of queer rights. An assimilationist creates a dress code for marches like the Mattachine Society did, fights against queer self-expression at Pride because "it holds back the movement," and believes that the only way for us to move forward is for all queers to live as cishet people do, but with little rainbow flags taped on.

An assimilationist is not "someone who wants the functions and institutions of cishet society to be available to queer people." It's someone who believes the only way to live is assimilated into cishet society, and anything else "holds us back." It's someone who wants Sylvia and Marsha to march at the back, and who prizes cishet aesthetic over practical liberation.

A liberationist is someone who believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity.

Let me repeat that, so we're absolutely clear: a liberationist believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity. ANY IDENTITY.

That means a sufficiently cishet identity and a sufficiently "respectable" identity, but it also means a sufficiently radical identity. If you actually believe in queer liberation, you don't just believe in liberation for people who look, act, and believe like you. You believe in liberation for people who genuinely want to get married, have babies by IVF and live in the suburbs as well as for people who want to live childfree on an anarchist trans commune/Llama farm.

I hear people use the term "Assimilationist" and "Assimilationist Victories" to dismiss as meaningless those victories that are insufficiently radical for their tastes, and that to me is only proof that those people are not actually liberationists in any meaningful way. In liberation, there must be room for people who actually do just want to get married and live quiet, content lives going to their kid's baseball games.

The difference between Assimilationist thought and Liberationist thought cannot be simply replacing "we need to blend in" with "we need to stick out." It cannot simply replace "we must be integrated into cishet society" with "we cannot ever integrate into cishet society and anything which permits us to do that if we so choose is insufficiently liberationist." That's the organizational equivalent of yelling YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD, and I'm fucking over it, y'all.

My liberation doesn't have to be your liberation. Your liberation doesn't have to look like mine. What matters is that we are helping each other up the mountain and making long-term plans to get to where we can, and that we recognize that every choice we make is going to leave someone behind, and we account for that and plan for that so we don't leave them behind forever.

We cannot regard gay marriage or gays in the military or instituting a nationwide right to transition or any of our future goals as an endpoint. They are only goals part of the way up the mountain.

We don't get to the top until we are all free to live as we choose without government or societal interference or sanction, and without having to perform an identity for those rights and respect. The freedom to be ourselves must include the right to "blue hair and pronouns" but it also must include the right to "your kid's school plays and a duplex in a suburb." The latter is not an assimilationist lifestyle unless you try to enforce it on everyone.

I'm so, so tired of people acting like they're radical thinkers for poo-pooing the civil rights advances that the community has achieved through literally decades of work as "assimilationist victories." That's not clever, cute, or correct. Every. Single. One. Of those victories is written in tears and sweat and blood. Every single one is wrapped in the funeral shrouds of people who died fighting for it. Every single one was achieved not by assimilationists alone, but neither by people who think the only true victories are the ones sufficiently pure in their leftist credentials.

It is extremely possible and indeed likely that if you judge queers by their aesthetic, you will miss partnering with some of the most radical people and shackle your movement to people who cloak regressive politics in radical language. I've heard some truly noxious words come out of mouths framed by snakebites, and I've known extremely radical thinkers who look like your grandma. And I gotta tell you, in those local elections which keep school boards free from Moms For Liberty? The latter are useful people for liberationists to know and have in our camp, those people who think like liberationists but look like your grandma or your auntie.

Enforcement of aesthetic as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It doesn't matter if the assimilation is to pink hair and tattoos or polo shirts and khakis - enforcement of aesthetic and philosophy as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It's just replacing one kind of demanded conformity with another, and when we say "none of us are free until all of us are free," that also means free to be fucking boring if we want to, full stop.

We talk a lot about how much work goes into being disabled, how much work we have to put into making appointments, and fighting bureaucracy, but this is also true of queer life. Freedom comes with ease, with being easily able to update paperwork, with being easily able to find employment and housing, with being easily able to create the family structures we want to live in. When all of us can wake up in the morning assured of security in our beds, food in our bellies, meds in our med trays as needed, and a day ahead of us filled with chosen purpose and chosen meaning, which ends with us back in the bed of our choice at the end of the day, fulfilled in purpose and secure in our homes and chosen families, then we are free, and not before.

You may notice a seeming contradiction in this, in that my liberationist philosophy has room in it for the very people who are currently annoying the fuck out of me by demanding allegiance to a leftist aesthetic over practical liberation (that is, a movement based in harm reduction and long-term strategy over adherence to leftist purity of thought).

This is not a contradiction.

It is not a bug. It is a feature. My liberationist ideals mean that people have to have the right to be wrong without their liberty hinging on being right, that's all. :)

[happypotato48]

This Is A Gay Asian Rant About BL Comments Made By Some Queer Westerners I See Sometimes.

So you know of those gays (usually white) that made dumb tiktok dancing to list of countries that legalized same sex marriage and list of countries that discriminate against LGBTQIA+ poeple as a way to say something racist. yeah i kinda got the same vibes from some comments regard how asian BL is homophobic just cause they don't live up to queer western standard. look, i'm not saying that some BLs and their creators don't deserve criticism regard how they capitalized/exploited queerness for an easy cash grab.

But people need to understand that Asian countries despite recent progress are still very much culturally conservatives. so when people says that thai bl is homophobic and all the characters looks like bunch of straight guys, which is true for some olders thai BLs i'm not gonna denied that. but after all this time and newer BLs generally being very queer and most of creators being out queer themself and poeple still making these comments, i'm annoyed.

And don't get me start on the actors. you don't know them! why are you making assumption and calling them queerbaiter just cause they acts in bl. like maybe they're straight, maybe they're not but what they're definitely doing is making queer content for you know, queer people here. so when you made halfass comments about their sexuality what do you think that made other queer people who still in the closet feels. and when you add the nationality to that, "these thai bl pair are this and that, this korean actor is so ungrateful for his bl past", etc. when our societies are still very much still in progress regard LGBTQIA+ acceptance. it make us living here feels fucking awful like somehow we're lesser queer than people in the west just cause we don't have citibank at pride or some shit.

And the shittiest in my humbled opinion are comments regard censored chinese bls. people do know like, that the creators making these bls are risking their livelihoods for this. that these shows getting make at all are miracles. yes it sucked that they're censored but they're still very much queer shows making by queer people who want to express thier queerness despite the chinese government being the chinese government. when people dimissing these shows as not belonging in queer media, you're also dimissing their creators and audiences as not belonging in the community.

Look what i want to say is that we're trying our best over here, and maybe our best are not up to your liking. the ways we talk and express our queerness maybe still can be perceived as problematic by western queer standard. but these media are our house and you're the guests. for people aren't shitty we appreciated that you're here engaging and loving our media, this is your home too and you're welcome in it. i can speak for myself that i very much love being here on tumblr and interacting with people from all over the world who love BL. but for people who are being shitty sometimes about asian bl.

YOU'RE THE GUESTS, BEHAVE!

[rthko]

I used to get insecure when reading radical critiques of "born this way" narratives, but I understand it differently now. I'm reading early defenses of homosexuals that concede that their "invert" pathology is worthy of sympathy, and that straight society ought to allow them to have sex (in the right circumstances) so they don't have to be miserable. They go on to claim that while some people who commit homosexual acts are victims of their circumstances, the real perverts are ontologically straight men who commit them by choice.

If I asked every LGBT person I know, "did you choose to be queer," virtually everyone would say no. I have never, to my knowledge, met anyone who would say yes. But if I asked them if they would turn straight/cis if they could, I believe that most, including people who have gone through great hardships on account of their identities, would still say no. The phrase "gay lifestyle" is considered politically incorrect, and indeed there is no one gay lifestyle. But we have also developed culturally distinct circles associated with pleasure as a virtue, creativity, individual dignity and collective care. Many of us learned to look at the straight world not with envy but with relief that we're not part of it.

There are characteristics of our queer identities or behaviors that are a choice. I did not choose to be attracted to men, but I did choose to be promiscuous. I did not choose to be uncomfortable with "male" gender roles, but I did choose to challenge them through gender expression. An emphasis on innateness would imply that the only characteristics of my identity and behavior worth defending are those that are inevitable. It would ask why I still insist on living the way I do when my sexual desires can now just as well be satiated in a legally recognized monogamous marriage.

The subtext of this question, a choice or not a choice, is whether a person is worthy of support. Much like the elusive "gay gene," some trans advocates are searching for the definitive proof of "male brains" and "female brains" that will validate the existence of trans people once and for all. If gender becomes medically or scientifically "provable," perhaps science would then validate trans people. Or, perhaps a brain scan would determine who should or should not consider themselves trans, and create new rationalizations to misgender on "scientific" terms. We need only look back to the sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, often gay themselves, who developed scientific rationalizations for queer behavior in good faith only to have them reapplied to nefarious ends.

Many will insist they support LGBT people in the abstract but not the specifics of queer culture. These are the tendencies that don't have a scientific or metaphysical explanation. It is less often we hear claims that one is born to be flamboyant, promiscuous, left wing, kinky or polyamorous, so these tendencies are superfluous. There is a platonic ideal of a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual or a trans person who follows their natural proclivities and not a step further, and you're not it. So arguments against born this way narratives are not just in defense of those who see themselves as having chosen their gender or sexuality--for what it's worth, I have not knowingly met any. It's that this is a flimsy claim to legitimacy, one that has been used against us, and one that can only be taken so far. I'm not interested in determining who is "faking it." I understand more and more that everyone's body belongs to them, and the steps they take to experience joy and mutual pleasure need no explanation.

[chemicalarospec]

bro I’m fking dying homosexuality was decriminalized in CHINA before the US (nation-wide). y’all’s racism in seeing China as a “backwards” country has really gotten to me smh.

[ineffectualdemon]

What I got from the Hbomberguy video and from Todd in the Shadows video beyond that James Somerton is a liar and plagerist and misinformation and plagerism are rampant on YouTube and need badly to be cracked down on is that James Somerton is also:

Really weird and kinda racist about Asian people. Neither Hbomberguy or Todd said this but that's what I felt listening to his own words and seeing his facial expressions

Very misogynistic. Especially against straight white women but he also isn't afraid to shit on queer women

Except he also wants to crawl up JKR's ass and make everyone believe she used to be a really good ally to trans people (no she never was???? What the fuck)

He knows nothing about the politics of attaining gay marriage and what it meant in the 90s nor why not wanting to be murdered or lose your job if you were outed while in the military might be important to some people and in general this topic is infuriating

He really really thought the Nazis were hot and gayer than they were which is uh, kinda a red flag my guy

I'm that fry meme about his transphobia. I don't know if he hates all trans people or just non-binary people and/or trans men. But I doubt he's nice about trans women either. I just don't have any evidence because I am not watching that man's videos

His line delivery is shit full of weird pauses. I don't think he bothers to even pre read or practice the shit he steals

[dolokhoded]

with greece legalizing gay marriage and everything i'm so tired of people diminishing queerness in greece to "oh your ancient greek ancestors would be proud ! alexander the great would be proud ! achilles would be proud sappho would be proud plato would be proud" etcetc.

queer rights progressing in greece wouldn't make our "ancient greek ancestors" proud because they had an entirely different concept of marriage than us, viewed women as objects to be sold and traded and only accepted homosexuality between men, or even more likely, a man and a literal underage boy.

gay rights in greece aren't benefiting some people who died a few thousand years ago or are Literally Fictional. greek queerness isn't just some ancient dionysian fantasy of feeding each other grapes and reciting poetry to each other by the sea. actual greek people who do benefit from this still exist. it doesn't honor some ancient guy who condoned slavery. it honors greek queer people who were out there protesting at the controversy this law raised with the church and actually made the effort to win this fight.

ancient greece isn't the epitome of queerness, not even close. absolutely in no way when it concerned exclusively just gay men. the epitome of queerness is the trans kid from my hometown who insisted on cutting their hair and dressing masculine even within their transphobic high school environment and strict orthodox family, or the woman who taught me programming who was married with children and realized she was aromantic fifteen years into marriage, or the gay punks who kept cops out of the university's anarchist hotspot.

greek queer people aren't history or mythology, and ancient greece isn't the queer utopia you make it out to be. we're still here, and we're fighting against the exact ideas our ancient culture perpetuated.

[ominous-sunshine]

In the world of TLOU, same sex marriage was never legal. We are talking time stopped in 2003- the most visible queerness was Will and Grace and the like. They didn’t get to see themselves in that world like we can sometimes today.

Bill and Frank’s marriage is even more meaningful in that context.

Edit: Some additional context- in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act ( DOMA) became law of the land in the United states. DOMA defined marriage as a the union of one man and one woman, and it further allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states, areas.

On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage but against the back drop of DOMA there were of course complications. Other states such as Vermont had civil unions.

A supreme court decision in 2013 found DOMA unconstitutional and in 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges found that states must license and recognize same-sex marriages. Bill and Frank were probably very aware of the debate in the early 2000's and they absolutely were alive for the AIDs epidemic. There is a lot of history here- much more then I intended to get into with this post. Also, to be clear, the government does not need to be involved to validate anyone's love. What I really wanted to say is that Bill and Frank exist in a time when gay representation was extremely limited. They didn't get to grow up seeing themselves in media. When you saw a gay character on screen it was often a caricature. The world stopped for them fall 2003 and at that time, gay rights were very much a hotly debated thing. To make one of the last things you do in your life to get married in light of the world *they* grew up in just hit me hard.