Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Calling in gay
Today is this "Day Without A Gay" protest, and I suppose that as an openly bisexual woman I should be calling in gay right now.
I guess this whole thing was dreamed up after a couple of homos read Lysistrata and noticed that the Day Without Immigrants got a lot of press attention. Specifically the "H8" that this jam is protesting is proposition 8, the California voter initiative banning gay marriage, and all the douchebag losers who support it under the pretense that civilization will crumble if gays are allowed to get married. I mean, if gays can get married then they will be TEACHING IN SCHOOLS that gays are equal citizens entitled to the same rights as everyone else! Furthermore, if perverts like the hommasekshuls can get hitched, so can anyone! People will start marrying their siblings! Or pets! As Dr. Peter Venkman once said, "Dogs and cats, living together...MASS HYSTERIA!" At least these are the dire consequences that the pro-prop 8 people are suggesting necessitate their attempts to strip the gays of their basic human rights. Anyone with half a brain can tell that proposition 8 is not about "protecting marriage" so much as providing homophobes with legal justification for discriminating against us.
I'm all for saying a great big "fuck you" to the intolerant dickbags that want to spend so much time trying to keep us queers from having the same basic civil rights as everybody else, but I'm just not sure "calling in gay" is the way to do so. For one thing, if I "call in gay," the only thing I'm interfering with is my own progress through graduate school. I have no idea if my PI (boss) knows that I'm bisexual, as I've never formally sat him down and said, "Oh, by the way, I like snatch sometimes." He certainly wouldn't care one way or the other, but he'd also probably be confused about why I was taking the day off even if I explained it. He knows how much work I have to do before I graduate, and since I'm not planning on marrying anyone of either gender anytime soon, the only thing I should be doing is a fuckload of mouse experiments. Although I'm pretty sure that here in fag-friendly New York I'm not in a state where I can be fired (or, more accurately, expelled) for my sexual orientation, I still can't really take the day off from lab to go volunteer somewhere. Also, I can't alternatively refuse to spend any money today. I spend as little money as possible anyway because I'm ridiculously poor, but I have to get coffee. That isn't an option.
I'd be happy to educate people about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act or contact Rep. Charles Rangel or Senators Schumer and Clinton (and Caroline Kennedy, if necessary) to voice my support for said bill, as the Day Without A Gay website suggests I should do in lieu of playing hooky for gay marriage. In spite of my selfish desire to go work today, and my generally cynical attitude about life, I do feel very strongly about gay rights and equality. Gays seem to be the one group that it's still legally and socially acceptable to withhold civil rights from, primarily because a bunch of religious types want to impose their beliefs on everyone else. Granted, these same religious types like to claim that gays are doing exactly that by fighting for marriage rights, although I would argue that according to the U.S. Constitution and judicial precedent, this fight is about rights that we already have on paper. In 1967, the Supreme Court invalidated laws against racial intermarriage in Loving v. Virginia, noting that marriage to the partner of a person's choosing is "one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness." The last time I checked the Constitution, the "pursuit of happiness" was described as an "inalienable right." I interpret this as meaning that marriage to anybody–including someone of the same sex–is protected by the Constitution and any state laws prohibiting it should be invalid. Of course, I assume that until the Supreme Court throws down on this issue, that's all up for debate.
Although I'm not calling in gay today, I'd like to do something that for me is equally rare: encourage activism. Normally I think social activism is for hippies and annoying Smith girls, but I don't think these religious cocksuckers should get to decide which of my civil rights should be imposed upon because they don't want their children to learn tolerance in schools, or because they are somehow threatened by gays being afforded basic human rights. I resent being told that "protecting marriage" is somehow different and more admirable than "God Hates Fags," or that being gay is somehow undeserving of equal treatment under the law. My lazy ass is even going to write a letter to my elected representatives about it (although I will try to avoid using terms such as "cocksucker", "douchenozzle", or "dickbag" in my correspondence). If you can't call in gay, I strongly recommend you do the same.
Labels: assholes, lezbollah, politics, vulgar display of faggotry
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