The Bleeding Edge

brevoortformspring.tumblr.com

brevoortformspring:

“I know this is three years ago, but I have to ask: Why did you have to give Northstar a gay marriage with none of the X-Men objecting to it? Surely some of them have to believe that marriage is only for men and women. And don’t give me that crap about them being more enlightened then I am and…

I’ll argue that it’s pretty similar to racism, and let me tell you why…

The idea that seems to be on display here is the “love the sinner not the sin” sort of thing, criticizing the behavior of homosexuality but acknowledging that homosexuals can’t control who they are attracted to. Now, here’s why this is a fucked up argument, and how it 100% dovetails with racism.

The Lady and I are a mixed ethnicity couple. I’m white, she’s not. Up until 1967 (1967, really America? My mom is older than this) there were still anti miscegenation laws on the books. Now, those laws had nothing to do with good old fashioned hetero sex, because everyone was totes ok with (pardon a crass metaphor here) some spicy sausage on taco action. But some folks were squiffed out out by the notion that whites and blacks (and other races) would be intermingling even though such a thing had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THOSE PEOPLE. It’s not like the moment those laws were struck down by the courts all whites had to suddenly divorce their same-ethnicity spouses and take up new ones. It simply let the folks who loved each other and wanted to build families do so with the same set of rules that other couples did.

Now I hear you crying out “But this is totally different! This isn’t sweat, spicy sausage on taco action!” yeah, sure it’s not. But there is one key way in which it’s exactly the same… it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH YOU. I don’t give a damn how squiffed out you are by a gay couple any more than I give a damn about the random race-purity loving shitheel who gives me and my Lady a snide look. And just as I’ll call out that person as a bigot I’m gonna do the same to you, because the safe, legal love life of consenting adults is none of your goddamn business. 

Edit: The above should not be construed as to negate intersectionality issues, as there are plenty of people who suffer both homophobia *and* racism. I’m merely pointing out they are both forms of marginalizing and bigotry. Likewise, the two are connected in my mind because legal arguments against inter-racial marriage and gay marriage are virtually identical (some slippery slope moralistic argument usually based in scripture).