Before I forget, there is Zazen tomorrow (May 30th) at Hill St. Center. I just updated the page about it & realized I had not listed that date. Sorry!
A funny thing happened. I looked at the comments to the most recent posting and it was a pleasant experience. The comments were mostly intelligent, even funny. Maybe I should look in there more often. So I thought I'd run with the whole gay marriage thing for just a bit longer.
In response to a couple of those who commented; I don't think Japan is free from anti-homosexual prejudice and I don't think gay marriage is a completely trivial issue.
I've never really studied Japan's attitude towards homosexuality. But I was surrounded by that nation's attitudes towards everything for 11 years. What I've gleaned is mostly through interested observation rather than study. The main thing I wanted to point out is that gay bashing is pretty well non-existent in Japan. Homosexuality has never been regarded as sinful behavior there. There is no history of people being burned alive for the crime as there is in Europe. There is no precedent for shunning homosexuals or beating them up.
Which is not to say everything is open and free either. It's just that what prejudice does exist (and it does exist) comes from a very different place, and is expressed far more mildly. But if you really want to know the details there are certainly better sources than me!
As far as the importance of the issue, I agree it is a civil rights matter. I heard one person here in California say that a good compromise would be to just make all marriage -- gay or straight -- illegal. It's an interesting proposition.
One argument you hear a lot in California is that homosexuals are already allowed to enter into legally recognized domestic unions with most (though not all) of the same rights and privileges as marriage. Again, I am a poor source of information on this. Still it seems the main thing that supporters of same-sex marriage want is for their unions to be recognized by the state as marriages.
It's certainly fine by me.
I don't know if I really understand the anti-same-sex-marriage argument. It certainly doesn't seem to be well presented in the media here. The stories I read in the LA Times over the past few days don't do much to explain the reasons anyone would want to keep same-sex marriage illegal.
The opponents of Proposition 8 (which made same-sex marriage unconstitutional) largely characterize the supporters of Prop 8 as being hateful. I don't think that's really fair. There must be something else...
Now here's where I'll get myself in trouble. Cuz I went to that pro-same-sex marriage rally the other day and, frankly, what I saw there made me sorta kinda maybe understand why people oppose same-sex marriage. Much of the rally seemed almost as if it were calculated to annoy anyone who would be opposed to same-sex marriage. I know it wasn't. But if it had been consciously designed to annoy them it could not have done a better job. Because, and may Jesus have mercy on my soul for admitting this, it sort of annoyed me. And I support same-sex marriages!
Dig. You had parents come up on stage with their children saying, "I want to teach my little girl that if she wants to marry a girl when she grows up, she can." You had a pair of 14 year old girls saying they wanted Prop 8 overturned so they could be married when they grew up. You had high school boys pledging their love for one-another and dancing together. And you had Jerry Rubin, for God's sake! Jerry Rubin!
All of this is exactly what scares the opponents of same-sex marriage. If they wanted to inflame the hearts and minds of their supporters they could just have video taped that rally and put it on YouTube without comment. Maybe they did!
Now, I believe everyone should have the right to live as they want to as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. But what these folks are fighting for is a to be recognized by the society as a whole as OK, safe, not threatening the established order. You can't win that kind of recognition by giving your opponents precisely what scares them the most.
This is an example of people being too idealistic. I'll say it again for anyone who can't read very well -- I support the rights of same-sex couples to legally wed. I want to see the law changed. But at the same time, the flaws in their approach are so glaringly obvious I can't comprehend how they cannot see them.
I don't have any suggestions, really. And even if I did, I don't think anyone's listening to me on this issue. But it was interesting to me to see the way an overly idealistic approach will always fail. These folks need to try and understand their opponents and make their opponents understand that they are not scary, freaky people (again, again, again, they are not scary or freaky to me, but it's not people like me they need to convince of that).
And that's all I want to say about that!
