fandomnumbergenerator | Entries tagged with marriage equality

"Like the disappearance of gay institutions of interclass contact that coincides with [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom’s promotion of the institution of gay marriage, the survival of San Francisco’s racial diversity camouflages the loss of its class diversity. Before his decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses, Newsom had generated controversy with his inhumane proposals for reducing the city’s homeless population. The festival of gay weddings early in 2004 made getting married feel like an act of civil disobedience, as if privatized intimacy via government-sanctioned nuptials heralded the birth of a new civil rights movements. Media images of all those joyful newlyweds bamboozled liberals everywhere into seeing nothing but sexual progress in Newsom’s San Francisco. However, the price of these weddings will not be Newsom’s political career but erotic diversity, relational possibilities, and a whole social fabric of interclass contact that, as I have tried to suggest, makes urban life worth living."

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Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on The Subculture of Barebacking by Tim Dean (2009)

So, yeah, after a lot of ambivalence about the push for gay marriage, I had to admit that I wanted to have kids and it seemed foolhardy to give up all the protections that government-sanctioned nuptials offered. And it seemed incredibly hypocritical to hold my nose and take advantage of all the things that marriage offers without fully supporting other people’s right to do the same thing.

But, I think it’s absolutely true that Newsom’s media circus of gay marriage (which apparently ended up causing a lot of headaches for the very limited number of people who managed to get married) really overshadowed his very conservative vision of San Francisco.