Ignorance + Discrimination = MassResistance!

Jesse Sparks is a Mormon wordpress user who has so interestingly engaged us in the comment section of the “Traditional Marriage?” posting. In our back and forth on the comment section of one of his blog postings, he guided me to the MassResistance! website, which he claims shows that “many of these consequences [of same-gender marriage], however, have started to become visible in Massachusetts.” To be fair, he did link to this section of the MassResistance! website, which contains simple, blatant homophobia as ‘reasons’ that marriage equality should be denied. MassResistance! is also classified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Nonetheless, the real gems are on the MassResistance! mainpage:

1) Hideous gay fascist-like Prop-8 “protests” across USA. Phony attempt to replicate Civil Rights movement.
2) Homosexual activists hold angry anti-marriage rally at Boston City Hall.

Need we even deal with the tone and factual incorrectness of these misstatements? “Hideous gay fascist-like protests?” A bit exaggerated, no? Aren’t we having more ‘fabulous communist-like protests?’

Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Marriage: A Bad Phraseology

Leading LGBT-rights groups keep referring to this issue as “same-sex marriage,” again playing the game in terms of the opposition. Both same-sex and gay marriage add unnecessary qualifiers to the word ‘marriage.’ Slightly reminiscent of colored bathrooms and white-only counters, no?

Opponents of marriage equality most often use the term same-sex marriage. It conjures up thoughts of homosexual bedroom antics. This is the way homosexuals have been defined for decades, and some would continue to have us be defined as such. So we have to phrase our battle in terms of our ownership of the struggle, and not let the opposition write any more rules.

One of Human Rights Campaign’s Facebook causes is called Legalize Same-Sex Marriage. This phrasing asks that they, whoever they are, legalize something for us, as the other. One better name would be “Enforce Marriage Equality,” i.e. our rights are protected by s/he above (the government), and they have no say in it.

This struggle has gone on for far too long in the wrong direction with the same people running it, and the onus is on us to re-define the rules and plays of the game…if we are to succeed.