Strategy & Tactics: Defending Marriage with the Power of the Majority

[Ian David]

Strategy & Tactics: Defending Marriage with the Power of the Majority
by: Trickle up
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 09:22:06 AM EST

(Just the kind of innovative thinking that is needed. - promoted by Bob)

The anti-marriage minority is committed to a proposal to amend the Massachusetts constitution in either 2008 or 2010. It is locked into the exact wording of this amendment; this is an important vulnerability.

A large majority of the legislature, meanwhile, opposes the anti-marriage amendment, reflecting general public acceptance of universal marriage rights.

This majority is not big enough to defeat or amend the amendment. But it has tremendous power to change the legal and political context that will obtain on election day. This is nothing less than the power to change the meaning of the anti-marriage amendment to the voters.

Friends of marriage rights should exploit this strategic imbalance to the fullest during this legislative session. Some examples of what the majority can do follow the flip.
Trickle up :: Strategy & Tactics: Defending Marriage with the Power of the Majority

More:
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6000

[Deep13]

1. Just to be clear, pro-marriage includes gay marriage right?

Sometimes opponents of gay marriage claim to be pro-marriage too.

[Ian David]

2. We're trying to re-frame it that way, yes. Pro-marriage can mean pro-marriage-equality

Now, both the anti-gay people and the pro-equality people are using "pro-marriage" for their sides.

[Deep13]

3. Somehow, limiting marriage seems "pro-marriage" to them.

Go figure.

[Ian David]

4. They're afraid that if they let gay people get marriage, it will become gentrified...

and then nobody in Appalachia will be able to afford to get married unless they sell their banjo.

[Deep13]

5. Yeah, they'd have to settle for being cousins.

Oo, that was totally unnecessary.

[sui generis]

6. another strategy addendum

Opponents believe that just because they enact a law, that gays will therefore no longer live together, will no longer have gay families; will just throw in the towel and marry someone of the opposite sex. Maybe the more closeted think that gay culture will return to the seventies; bath houses and parks and illicit assignations on the down low.

If what they want is a stable society, then don't outlaw what you can't stop. Gays are still going to live together, when they choose, because we're adults and make decisions about our own lives. We are still going to have sex, and hardest of all for them to er, swallow, is that we will still be queer!

Jayzus. Their laws go a long long way out of the way to do nothing. They inconvenience us. They want it to "hurt"; it doesn't hurt. It's just annoying. It doesn't change anything, and we need to rub that in their shiny righteous nasty little faces as often as possible.

That being said, gays aren't the only people with skin in the marriage game. Our friends, our siblings, children, parents, extended families, our coworkers, the people who care about us and the people who maybe don't even (realize they) know a single gay person, who just believe in equality for all Americans; all of these people give a damn and are on our side because it's the right thing and the decent thing to do.

So these few people who quote scripture and tradition have no impact on reality. We have traditions too. Make your own choices, exercise your freedoms over your own life, pursue happiness. Very American, and any American who thinks we shouldn't be making those choices about our own lives is just another medieval third world cretin with the good fortune to be born within our borders.

We need to take choice over our own lives back from them, and rub it in their face.