Reply #69: Now, we've come around to my position... [View All]

[whoneedstickets]

vis-a-vis the Democratic party.

Establishing normality, the social construction of what is normal human variation, is a social process. Ultimately it must be engaged in the popular culture before it is encoded in law. The idea that blacks were just as human as whites and deserved the same rights (as obvious as it seems) was a concept that simmered for decades or centuries before it was entrenched in the US constitution. The fight for equal recognition of homosexual rights has to be conducted at the social level, not enforced through political power. The regrettable anti-gay marriage amendments are a clear indication that the process of the social construction of homosexual relationships as 'normal' hasn't occurred yet.

Nevertheless I think the party should quietly move ahead, wherever possible with civil union style legal efforts to grant a defacto marriage status as the public by-and-large supports this while dodging the marriage question. I hope the less radical members of the gay community may accept this.