Foxx

It would be strange to me if I didn’t at least comment on the overturning of Proposition 8 in California on August 4, 2010. And while it is a great victory for equal rights for the GLBTQ community, it certainly brings the naysayers out of the woodwork. This causes me some stress, and I start to review my beliefs on the matter yet again.

From all of the Facebook chatter on the subject, there have been a few points that I’d like to address for my own sanity, and in my own space. First, the argument that the government revoked the voting rights of seven million people shows that this country’s system of power is corrupt and imbalanced, and, Second, that here we go arguing over the definition of marriage again. These two points irk me especially much, and have caused me much thought.

So, while I was waiting for the decision to be released, I was watching some videos of the two attorneys who spearheaded this case with the California State Supreme Court. They reviewed the legal history of marriage in the United States and some notable Supreme Court cases that had to do with marriage, and were answering questions in a interview about overturning the voters decisions. They remarked that this was how the Judicial system was set up – to overturn laws passed that were not constitutionally sound. They said that if we had left it up to the people to vote on it at the time, the laws the prohibited interracial marriage likely would have never been confounded. They also said that public opinion followed the results of that law, eventually, and they expected the same to happen here.

After the decision was published, I found a comment from, unsurprisingly, one of my old missionary companions that said he thought this was not the way a government for the people, of the people, and by the people was supposed to be run and that this is not what the USA was all about, and how dare they revoke the rights of millions of voters their constitutional right to vote for laws they agree with.

On this, I cannot believe the twisty-turns of the brain to make it all right to prevent equal rights of millions of people by passing laws that are based on fear and misinformation, but not all right to overturn that law when it breaks the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution!

Okay, and the second point has me more involved, really. It really tried to boil down the issue into a changing the definition of marriage question. And while the definition he is referring to is the man/woman definition, I just wanted to say a few things. Firstly, that is not the only, age-old, definition of marriage. Marriage has been defined in quite a few different ways across cultures and across time. And I think that what same-sex couples want is more than the title of marriage for equality sake. There is a lot more to marriage than a certificate and a package of legal rights that are currently unavailable to same-sex couples in most states.

I read through the Wikipedia entry on Matrimony, and interestingly enough, it and other dictionary definitions do not define marriage as being between a man and a woman. That definition was primarily contemporary in nature and religious in origin. I would like to present marriage as an idea, a word with connotation, and an experience that can and should be shared with all men.

Some notable quotes about marriage from the Wikipedia entry, which incorporates cross-cultural definitions:

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found.

People marry for many reasons, including one or more of the following: legal, social, emotional, economical, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged marriages, family obligations, the legal establishment of a nuclear family unit, the legal protection of children and public declaration of commitment.

Marriage practices are very diverse across cultures, may take many forms, and are often formalized by a wedding. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved. Almost all cultures that recognize marriage also recognize adultery as a violation of the terms of marriage.

Marriage is usually recognized by the state, a religious authority, or both. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.

Specifically, I would like to focus on the social aspects of marriage. I keep asking myself this question: What does marriage mean to us as a society? If I can say that I’m married, what personal and social status is inferred by that statement? If I meet someone who talks about his wife, what do I infer about their commitment, their relationship, over some other title such as partner?

I think it’s important to acknowledge that for something that most people take for granted, marriage is a lot more than a social and legal contract. It is a social prestige class. And to those who can’t get it even if they wanted to, it’s an elite group to which they are not entitled, legally, through no fault of their own, and are therefore left feeling like a lower class. Like they are not good enough to be accepted by society in that way, no matter how much they try. They don’t qualify, and can never take on those terms of respect: marriage, husband, wife, spouse, ceremony, matrimony, wedding. They are left with these: living together, partner, civil union, boyfriend, domestic partner, roommate, friend. Linguistically, the connotations of these words and phrases are definitely less than those associated with matrimony. I feel that pain, I really do.

So it makes a lot of sense to me that even if, as some have said, in California, I can have a domestic partnership with all of the same legal rights as a state marriage, it is still not the same thing by a long shot. Besides, if there are two equivalent (read separate but equal) institutions which provide the same benefits to different groups of people, should it not also be named the same thing? Math says so: if a=b and b=c, then a=c.

So why is there such protectiveness against the name? Why is it so important to keep the gays out of marriage? The standard homophobic responses aside, I found something else in the Wikipedia entry that caught my attention. This may be one unconscious reason for it:

Many of the world’s major religions look with disfavor on sexual relations outside of marriage. Sexual relations by a married person with someone other than his/her spouse is known as adultery and is also frequently disapproved by the major world religions (some calling it a sin). Adultery is considered in many jurisdictions to be a crime and grounds for divorce.

In other words, marriage is religion’s way to sanction sexual activity. If homosexuals are allowed to marry, and I think this gets to the “destroying marriage” argument, then by association, gay sex is legitimized. Legally legitimized. Made equal to heterosexuality.

Heterosexuality cannot and must not be equal to homosexuality, it never has. This is their silent mantra.

If marriage is their last bastion of power and same-sex couples infiltrate it, their grounds for discrimination are legally stripped. Their power and authority over the “sexual deviants” and miscreants become unjustified, and they will have to find a way to live in a world where we are as respected as they, and in the same ways. But they do not look forward, and they do not remember the foundation on which this country was built:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If we are indeed created, then there can be no difference between them and us. We are one diverse race, one country, and one human family. Segregation and discrimination will fail, with time, as the world comes to believe this truth. My love and my feelings are as natural and as primal as yours, and my wish is for that sameness to be as recognized and as celebrated as your own.

So it’s not very often that I have yet another coming out experience, but today was interesting if brief.

It’s my first day off since the vacation, and I wanted to do a few things around the yard. Matt and I had picked up some replacement heads for our sprinklers, and I was in the process of messing with one of them when I hear from behind me, “Hey! Hey!” I turned around and there were two young men carrying hula hoops. The one of them asks if I’m gay.

That’s a peculiar question for anyone to start with, especially with someone they don’t know, and I was far from prepared to discuss my sexuality with anyone in the neighborhood, but the penchant for direct honesty won out and I replied in the affirmative. The two boys went on their way up our street and I went about my sprinkler fixing.

Two things about this experience strike me as odd. First, being asked by someone you don’t know if you’re gay, and secondly, what I could have said to make the dialogue more impactful. Who walks up to you and asks you that question? I assume there has been some wondering about us around the neighborhood, what with us not going to church and there being no women about or children in a family community. It must have been the only thing they wanted to know about me. My response, which was a simple yes, could have been something like, “Yeah, so what?” or “Yep, but who cares?” I could have responded with a question of my own like “That’s an interesting question. Who do YOU sleep with?” Eh, regardless, what’s done is done, and hopefully the consequences are only positive.

I know it’s late, but something’s been on my mind for a long time, and it has been brought to the fore by some nice documentaries I’ve been watching on Netflix for Xbox. This isn’t meant to be a concrete set of ideas, but more theories in the making. I’m trying to get a handle on them and the connections between them.

I want to review three or four things that seem to be unrelated, but may not be: hippies, energy, corn and television among them. Loosely speaking, I have come to wonder what ingredients were present in the late 1960s and 1970s that encouraged the volatile shifts in how people viewed society and the then-radical steps they took to ensure their freedoms were secure. It’s almost as though there was some kind of catalyst at the time that allowed people to make the leap to not only fight for their ideals, but to go out and live them. Looking around at the world today, that kind of impassioned fight for freedoms is simply gone. Vanished. At least, not where I can find it. There are no stories about backwoods communes of people living out their kind of Utopian society. There are no mass protests for the inalienable rights for those groups still oppressed by the current norms of society.

The question that I ask is this: what has changed in society since that time that inhibits us from making that leap?

While I do not know what life was like at that time since I was born over a decade later, there are things that I notice about life today that seem to be pointing me in a direction of sorts. One of the things that has surely changed is this obsession about energy. I know it has changed because I have seen it within my lifetime. In the documentary King Corn, I learned that the US corn subsidy program changed during this time period, encouraging corn growers to grow as much as possible rather than paying them to reduce production to keep the cost of food stable. As a result, the overall surplus of corn grown plummeted the cost of corn per bushel. Then, in 1977, tariffs and taxes were placed on sugar imports, encouraging the development of a new, less expensive sweetener. The resulting product was the now-ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup.

High fructose corn syrup is not just another kind of sugar. It is corn starch combined with specific chemicals to break down the starches and recombine them as fructose and glucose, creating a sweetener. More importantly, a sweetener made from a product already subsidized by the government. No imports required, just a little chemistry. Between 1975 and 1985 corn syrup replaced sugar in every major soda pop and is now found in nearly every sweet product you can buy. Since the introduction of corn syrup, soda has become so universal that some people can’t have a meal without some kind of carbonated, sweetened beverage.

Just go to any restaurant and observe what people order. It’s easier to order the meal than the sandwich by itself anymore, and is only a few dimes more to get the soda if you’re getting the fries with it too. Of course, you don’t have to get a sugary drink with your meal, but since you paid for it…why get just water? Corn syrup and soda lead me to my second item, energy.

Sugar and its derivatives generate an energy high. It doesn’t last long, but it works. The problem is that once your insulin kicks in, your blood sugar levels drop and you feel drained and tired. Like a mildly addictive drug, your first inclination is to soak up some more sugar, which starts the cycle over again. Since soda has been so relatively inexpensive, you could literally drink soda all day every day. Some people do. My point is that with soda having become the obvious choice as your meal’s complementary beverage, we get stuck in this trap because it tastes good. It does. So you go to your favorite restaurant and you are given five to ten choices of drinks. I bet that 75-90% of your options are caffeinated. So once again, you are not only getting a sugar boost, but an adrenaline boost from the caffeine which expands the energy effect. And now it seems like you choose the caffeinated options because you want that benefit.

I realize that caffeine has been around for centuries. Coffee has been a staple of workplaces nationwide since who knows when. But here’s the catch: kids love soda. LOVE IT. Because it’s sweet and tasty. Mountain Dew tastes like a melted Otter Pop for crying out loud. How soon to they have their first soda these days? How many of those sodas include caffeine, deemed by the Pure Food and Drug Act as a “habit-forming” and “deleterious” substance that must be included in a products ingredient list?

Now add to this culture of soda an increasing hunger in the culture of business for productivity. The 9-5 business day becomes 8-5 or 9-6. The economy goes sour after the housing crisis and the pressure not only to go to work but to give a supernatural performance so that you can survive the layoffs. You go to the University where you are in classes for six hours a day, you have four hours per day of homework, and you have five roommates in the dorm that you want to have on your good side or that play Rock Band to all hours of the night even though your first class starts bright and early. College is a party, you know. Anyway, the point is that these minor shifts in our culture all increase the stressors on our body. And guess what? The solution is in the 24-hour Wal-Mart super store across the street in the beverage aisle. It’s called a Red Bull or a Rock Star and these drinks become the fuel of our civilization in a perfectly imperfect world. We have created within our culture a natural energy deficiency and have replaced it with stimulants to make up the difference. And that difference is unsustainable in perpetuity.

The last thing is television. Television is our link to the world of entertainment. In the documentary titled “Stupidity,” the film discussed the content provided and how even though we live in the information age, the allure of ignorance is even stronger than in the past. They presented the idea that because content is based on consumer preferences, the networks create programs aimed at the lowest common denominator. This gets them the largest response and the most money. They present nonsense that everybody will watch, some just so they can stop thinking altogether when they get home from their busy day at work. Or so they don’t have to deal with the realities of their life. I’m fairly certain that the television programs from the 1960s differ greatly in content and in number from what is available on basic cable today.

We have so much to distract us, so much to help us escape, and most of us don’t even deny that’s what we’re doing. But what is it that we have to be distracted from? What is so bad that we must escape it? Why, rather than get an extra hour of sleep do we spend our money on stimulants to get us through the day? Whatever the reason, I think a majority of people practice this kind of domestic numbing. It’s cheap and it’s easy.

We live a life of stimulants and of depression. The modern life has taught us that it is better to treat the symptom than to diagnose and address the underlying issue. This, I think, has sapped our society of the will to fight back. I still have no evidence of whether this is was intentionally imposed on us by some mastermind or if it was just an inevitable part of our path for the desire to live the good life combined with our semi-free market system. I don’t suppose it really matters. It makes me want to drop the TV service, though, and read some books again. It makes me want to find a cause and fight for it. It makes me want to live somewhere away from the cultural influence of media. I miss the days of free love and utopia and protests, but I was never even there in the first place.

Peace.