So, I'm riding my bike to work the other day along the river in Georgetown and there's a bumper sticker on the back of a car that says "Marriage=1 man+1woman". My first thought was "homophobe". Thankfully, acivities like biking allow for deeper processing than the first reaction. So, as I made my way towards the Lincoln Memorial, I started to think about progess. Lincoln himself, by today's standards, would certainly be considered a racist, but in his day, he was very much a progressive. This had me thinking about the owner of this car, and a desire to not give him/her a piece of my mind, but to instead maybe ask a few questions.
Here are two perhaps most clarifying questions:
1. Is the origin of the bumper sticker related to same-gender marriage, polygamy, or both?
2 (and really, the more important, as far as dialog goes and assuming that the bumper sticker is really a statement about the sanctity of marriage, prop 8, etc) would be questions that seek to identify where this person stand on glbt rights in general. People as diverse as Barack Obama, Jim Wallis, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps (of www.godhatesfags.com fame) all stand against "Marriage=1 man+1man" (or woman+woman), but the clearly have very differnt takes in the bigger scheme of things.
What I am really starting to appreciate that we all draw lines in the sand on issues, but perhaps our most important allies are not those on our side of the line, but those just on the other side. I suspect that the leaders of movements recognize this, and often moderate messages to try and garner a 51% split. This is why there is so much yelling about gay marriage, and so little talk about couple's rights.
So, back to my bumper sticker friend; were I to first engage him/her, it would probably have been with an edge. But, given time to reflect, and to be still within, I am pretty confident that, given time, we could have a wonderful confersation. I'd hedge my bets that the person might be very much for most rights for the glbt community, if we had the chance to talk and get to know each other. Of course, in our drive-by bumper sticker culture, a beep of the horn and flip of the finger may also be part of the norm. I'm just not sure that this kind of venting helps advance the cause of peace.
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2 comments:
Hi Brad, thank you for raising these questions. I agree it's important to remember that people who we might dismiss as "opponents" are usually folks seeking to work for what they perceive as good and just, and that we may have more in common with them than we might at first assume. However, I often feel a tension between seeking common ground by proposing my minimum acceptable position and talking about what I truly want (my ideal position). The latter has the advantage of feeling both more authentic/truthful and of "moving the center" of the conversation. This obviously has an application beyond individual conversations as well: one (arguably) good reason for liberals/progressives to be talking about same-sex marriage rather than "couples' rights" is that by making marriage the liberal position it makes couples' rights the centrist compromise position.
Hi, Laura; I saw Milk last night. What a great movie, and also one that is a challeng to current issues. One of the things that I think is to be celebrated is that gays and lesbians can speak up with not one voice, but many. Interestingly, some of the strongest voices against gay marriage come from within the gay community, and it seems to be from two very different arenas. There are conservatives in the gay/lesbian community who believe in the sanctity of marriage; some of these folks believe in celibacy; others in some alternatives to marriage. But then there is another element in the community that sees marriage as a sell-out to the straight community. I encountered some of this when I got married under the care of my Meeting. All to say, there are many voices all over the spectrum, and for some, gay marriage is actually the conservative stance.
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