{"id":150,"date":"2012-10-04T14:01:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T14:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bisexualwombat.wordpress.com\/?p=107"},"modified":"2012-10-04T14:01:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T14:01:59","slug":"the-dangerous-idea-of-two-parallel-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2012\/10\/the-dangerous-idea-of-two-parallel-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"The dangerous idea of two parallel lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

The great thing about being bisexual is that the stuff we care about and campaign for and everything benefits not just us but you too, even if you’re not bisexual.<\/p>\n

Prime example: there’s increasing talk lately of gay marriage.\u00a0 Or, as we bisexuals (and others) like to call it, equal marriage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is a personal bugbear of mine; I try to correct people who say “gay marriage” (sometimes I just make faces though).<\/p>\n

It bugs me because I am married — I was able to move to a new country when I got married; it was a pretty big deal for me. And I was able to do that because I got married to a man, so that allowed the visa paperwork and the wedding in my mom’s church to go ahead smoothly.<\/p>\n

If my transatlantic relationship had been with a woman, I couldn’t have gotten married in that church, I couldn’t get any kind of legal recognition for the relationship in the beloved state of my birth (where such same-sex civil unions are not only illegal, but voters will be asked next month about a constitutional amendment to guarantee they’ll never allowed), and there would’ve been no way to satisfy both the requirements for my visa and my family’s desire to be at my wedding.<\/p>\n

Marriage isn’t equal.<\/p>\n

But marriage isn’t straight either.\u00a0 Marriage hasn’t traditionally, universally been “between one man and one woman” as conservative Americans keep telling me.\u00a0 Relationships don’t have sexualities<\/a>, so marriage isn’t straight and we’re not after a special dispensation to make it gay.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to see some people\u00a0 realizing that they’re having to defend inequality.\u00a0 The other day I read about<\/a> the executive director of a homophobic group talking about the importance of logos because he’s just given his new group a logo.\u00a0 He said “When I moved to Washington I noticed these small blue stickers with two yellow lines permeating the city. They were on cars, t-shirts, and lamp posts. It wasn\u2019t long before I Googled \u201cblue sticker yellow lines\u201d and discovered it is the logo of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation\u2019s largest gay rights organizations.”\u00a0 This guy, Slacktivist says,<\/p>\n

\n

is surely aware that two parallel lines make an equal sign, he just can\u2019t bring himself to say<\/em> it. He won\u2019t allow the word \u201cequality\u201d to be spoken, or even thought.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It reminded me of a previous example of the dangers of the E-word, which I remember from the Sociological Images blog earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\n

Gov. Christie says he will veto it.\u00a0 The bill is a \u201cmarriage equality\u201d law.<\/p>\n

The governor is in a bit of a squeeze.\u00a0 As a Republican with ambitions beyond New Jersey\u2019s borders, he can\u2019t very well be for gay marriage.\u00a0 But if his opponents can frame the matter their way, he now has to come out against equality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The author of that post<\/a> sees “equal marriage” as a bit of a sneaky trick by the proponents of same-sex marriage, but I guess (I would say this though, wouldn’t I?) to me it isn’t just spin.\u00a0 it isn’t about sounding good or winning people to our cause — though of course I think those things are awesome too.\u00a0 It’s really what it feels like to me.<\/p>\n

We really are having to live in inequality.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great thing about being bisexual is that the stuff we care about and campaign for and everything benefits not just us but you too, even if you’re not bisexual. Prime example: there’s increasing talk lately of gay marriage.  Or, as we bisexuals (and others) like to call it, equal marriage. This is a personal […]\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-just-semantics","category-marriage-equality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}