As far as the question of ducking the difficult issues: to my mind, part of the purpose of the gay-marriage movement is to face the difficult issues head-on and overcome them.
I should note here that, should it not be possible for the gay-marriage movement in the short term to "overcome them" - which I am reading here as "overcoming the resistance to gay-marriage, and the various real-world implications of it" - this could be a huge mistake from a tactical point of view. This battle has very much been one of influencing public perception. If the public perception suddenly of their demands changes from reasonable (e.g. equal status) to unreasonable (e.g. unmerited special treatment), for instance, people who are content to have a "live and let live" attitude will suddenly start to rethink their approval. (Some of this is discussed in the article I wound up confirming my memory of the poll on last night.)
Of particular interest in this regard: despite the targeting of "Fundamentalist Christians" as the big bad boogeyman preventing the full societal accommodation and validation of homosexuality, my (admittedly limited) experience is that (broadly) people who endorse "traditional values" and/or ar doctrinaire right-wingers are strongly against it, people answering roughly to the description of "liberal academic" and/or are doctrinaire left-wingers are strongly for it; most other broad categorizations of people may have leanings to one direction or the other, but fail to register as a unified bloc.
It is one thing, tactics-wise to depict religion as bigoted, judgmental, intellectually inferior or what have you - this has been happening with various degrees of desrvedness since at least as far back as Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" - but it is another thing tactically speaking, to depict Joe and Jane Sixpack this way when they have reservations they feel are legitimate.
I can see why it would be ideologicaly superior for the gay marriage movement to take the "total victory" approach, but the fact that this approach allows for little if any public difference of opinion as legitimate may be too big of a hurdle for it to overcome.
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Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 10:35 am (UTC)I should note here that, should it not be possible for the gay-marriage movement in the short term to "overcome them" - which I am reading here as "overcoming the resistance to gay-marriage, and the various real-world implications of it" - this could be a huge mistake from a tactical point of view. This battle has very much been one of influencing public perception. If the public perception suddenly of their demands changes from reasonable (e.g. equal status) to unreasonable (e.g. unmerited special treatment), for instance, people who are content to have a "live and let live" attitude will suddenly start to rethink their approval. (Some of this is discussed in the article I wound up confirming my memory of the poll on last night.)
Of particular interest in this regard: despite the targeting of "Fundamentalist Christians" as the big bad boogeyman preventing the full societal accommodation and validation of homosexuality, my (admittedly limited) experience is that (broadly) people who endorse "traditional values" and/or ar doctrinaire right-wingers are strongly against it, people answering roughly to the description of "liberal academic" and/or are doctrinaire left-wingers are strongly for it; most other broad categorizations of people may have leanings to one direction or the other, but fail to register as a unified bloc.
It is one thing, tactics-wise to depict religion as bigoted, judgmental, intellectually inferior or what have you - this has been happening with various degrees of desrvedness since at least as far back as Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" - but it is another thing tactically speaking, to depict Joe and Jane Sixpack this way when they have reservations they feel are legitimate.
I can see why it would be ideologicaly superior for the gay marriage movement to take the "total victory" approach, but the fact that this approach allows for little if any public difference of opinion as legitimate may be too big of a hurdle for it to overcome.