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A surprising amount of people feel like gay marriage was the final thing to implement for an equal society. There's an argument that equal treatment under the l

A surprising amount of people feel like gay marriage was the final thing to implement for an equal society. There's an argument that equal treatment under the law results in equality in practice, which is of course incorrect, even if we did have equal treatment under the law (some things disproportionately affect minority groups, so just saying "we do it to everyone" doesn't help).

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
True, and it's actually worse than that--we finally have a national marriage equality law, but we don't have national employment or housing equality, which should be even more fundamental. And God help you if you happen to be trans. There's a great deal of bitterness from poorer GLBTs that they've been essentially thrown under the bus by the gay rights movement. Marriage is important, but there's a lot of fair-weather activists saying "mission accomplished" when the basic survival needs of millions of people are still completely unprotected.
- Spivak 10y ago
  > bitterness from poorer GLBTs that they've been essentially thrown under the bus by the gay rights movement This one seems weird to me as someone who is part of that community; the two issues seem orthogonal unless we're talking specifically about things like discrimination against LGBT employees and LGBT kids that are thrown out of their homes. I guess the best explanation is that some people base too much of their identity on their sexuality and forget that they can also be active in more general human rights issues.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    > This one seems weird to me as someone who is part of that community; the two issues seem orthogonal unless we're talking specifically about things like discrimination against LGBT employees That's what we're talking about. I mentioned employment and housing protections. It is a fine and wonderful thing that bigots can no longer prevent you from getting married, but they can take away your job and your home at will, in large parts of the USA. That seems like a backwards way to go about it. > I guess the best explanation is that some people base too much of their identity on their sexuality That's kind of a nasty thing to say about people who are legitimately worried about their survival.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

True, and it's actually worse than that--we finally have a national marriage equality law, but we don't have national employment or housing equality, which should be even more fundamental. And God help you if you happen to be trans. There's a great deal of bitterness from poorer GLBTs that they've been essentially thrown under the bus by the gay rights movement. Marriage is important, but there's a lot of fair-weather activists saying "mission accomplished" when the basic survival needs of millions of people are still completely unprotected.

Spivak 10y ago
> bitterness from poorer GLBTs that they've been essentially thrown under the bus by the gay rights movement This one seems weird to me as someone who is part of that community; the two issues seem orthogonal unless we're talking specifically about things like discrimination against LGBT employees and LGBT kids that are thrown out of their homes. I guess the best explanation is that some people base too much of their identity on their sexuality and forget that they can also be active in more general human rights issues.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  > This one seems weird to me as someone who is part of that community; the two issues seem orthogonal unless we're talking specifically about things like discrimination against LGBT employees That's what we're talking about. I mentioned employment and housing protections. It is a fine and wonderful thing that bigots can no longer prevent you from getting married, but they can take away your job and your home at will, in large parts of the USA. That seems like a backwards way to go about it. > I guess the best explanation is that some people base too much of their identity on their sexuality That's kind of a nasty thing to say about people who are legitimately worried about their survival.