GayPatriot

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The absurdity of the “Legalize Gay” slogan

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Playing on the “Legalize LA” T-shirts and signs once ubiquitous in the Southland, some gay activists, in the wake of the passage of Prop. 8, created a “Legalize Gay” T-shirt, like this one seen at one of HRC’s two booths yesterday at LA Pride:

What makes this T-shirt so absurd is its suggestion that it’s not legal to be gay in America today. To be sure, we still need laws in more states recognizing our unions.

Even, however, without that recognition, gay people who enter into such relationships, even those who call such relationships, “marriage,” aren’t been hauled before federal magistrates (or state courts for that matter) and asked to disavow their romantic inclinations; they’re not being forced to live apart from their partner nor to move to another jurisdiction nor are they being incarernated for living openly with individuals of the same sex. And they’re not being forced to undergo “conversion therapy.”

Simply put, it’s not illegal today in American to be gay. People aren’t being arrested and threatened with a loss of liberty for freely expressing our sexuality. I mean, heck yesterday at Pride, the county sheriff was not closing down our celebration, but was instead helping facilitate it, guaranteeing our right to assemble peaceably.

Let’s not make things seem they are worse than they are — and acknowledge (as most of us do) how much progress we have made.  It’s not illegal to be gay in America.  Indeed, gay people in the United States — and other Western societies — are more free to live our lives openly than they have been at almost any point in human history.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Az Mo in NYC offers:

As far as the original post goes, I never thought I was illegal, or a second class citizen, until people started drilling it into my head that I was….people on the gay left. One day I said, “wait a minute,” looked around, saw wealthy gay men and women, homosexuals in congress, and on TV and realized that just wasn’t the case. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks of me just as it shouldn’t matter to them what I think of them.

Comments

  1. “Let’s not make things seem they are worse than they are…”

    Asking Drama Queens to abstain from being drama queens is like asking a leopard to change its spots. Good luck with that 🙂

  2. But ‘Legalize Gay’ sounds so darned nifty, and t-shirt slogans are easier to come up with than well reasoned arguments and accurate assessments of situations. Besides, being reasonable doesn’t seem to be very marketable in this day and age.

  3. It’s no more absurd than a “gay conservative” or “gay Republican.” But keep advocating for positions and people who want to take away all those rights you say we have. I could have used you when a hospital denied my right to visit my dying husband a few years ago.

  7. Eric, please offer specifics on why you find the expression gay conservative and gay Republican so hypocritical.

    And please tell me where I — or any other gay conservative — believes you should have been denied that right. I do hope you sue that hospital and support you in that suit. If they did that, it was not just wrong, it was malicious.

  8. Not only is it absurd in its suggestion that homosexuality is illegal, but it also absurd in that the slogan does not make sense grammatically. Looking like an idiot probably does not help their cause.

  10. “Legalize Gay” just sounds strange because the definition is ambiguous since it could mean many things. My response is Legalize Gay What?

  12. Legitimize what? California has a gay speaker of its state house, a solid partnership law, and a gigantic community. So yeah, I’d say it’s pretty legitimized already.

  13. #6, I am a trainer in what has got to be the gayest gym (World Gym palm springs, ca) on the planet and I see that shirt frequently. That slogan, when I see it, makes me think about what it might actually mean to the person wearing it. When people wear slogans on their shirts they are usually trying to convey a message, so don’t tell Daniel he’s taking it too literally. That’s just a copout. That’s exactly what the shirt wearer wants. Defend the slogan you’re wearing on your chest as best you can, but don’t tell me not to take it literally because that’s just taking me for an idiot.

  14. “You’re taking the expression ‘legalize gay’ a little too literally, [B.] Daniel.”

    I disagree Vinci. Many of the gay men wearing look-at-me slogans would identify as victims (if history is any pointer). In any case, being gay isn’t illegal, so even a “joking” T-shirt falls flat.

    I’ve worked in Third World-like conditions, and see why leftwing and white middleclass gay men need to find a new cause. It’s unattractive.

    Three suggestions if orientation is your focus:

    Focus on persecuted men and women in the Middle East (accused of homosexuality).

    Focus on gay victims of domestic violence. A lesbian is more likely to beaten by her lesbian lover than a Southern Baptist Youth Group.

    Focus on the abortion industry (aka the killing of future gay people).

  18. So stupid it hurts. My eyes involuntarily rolled back so far in my head it took several minutes before I could roll them back forward enough to read the piece.

    Shame month.

    I am simply ashamed to be associated with these pussy ass cry-babies, demanding that they are victims when they are not. Everything wrong with the country wrapped up in one neat little bundle of estrogen-fueled entitlement.

    But I gotta lump you in with that group when you say stuff like this, Dan:

    To be sure, we still need laws in more states recognizing our unions.

    No, it’s not sure. It’s just as absurd as the shirt. I believe you think you need it. But WHY? I sure don’t. Tons of committed gays & lesbians don’t. Why do you need it, Dan?

    I need food, water, shelter, family, & my God-given unalienable rights.

    I think the pro-gay marriage/civil unions crowd haven’t come to terms with being different. So they have decided tolerance isnt enough and are demanding endorsement and validation. Thats what its all about.

    I dont need that. I’ve actually come to terms with being gay, unlike the vast majority it appears. I have everything I need. I have equal rights already.

    So please dont presume to speak for “we”. Nobody elected you to represent gays. As much group-think as there is among gays, “we” are not a homogenous group, and you are not the Gay Al Sharpton.

    You are helping to turn an essential institution into just another meaningless entitlement for adults–actually making it the most meaningless of all. Not to mention doing so at a time when the entitlements we already have are killing the country. This is EXACTLY the kind of entitlement mentality representing the death of individual responsibility and rugged individualism that is destroying the country. Please don’t do so in my name by presuming to speak for “we”.

    I’m ashamed to even be associated with it.

  22. rusty,

    I find it sad actually. I *am* a fat 39 year old white male from Columbus (Dan can vouch for that :P) I assume everyone ‘here’ is who they say they are. Why the need to pretend you’re something you’re not for credibility?

    (Even more ironic, since ‘Paula’ was arguing for the right of people to be themselves).

  23. “Legalize Gay” is yet another example of left-leaning gays who think they’re clever, but they’re not. Which makes them a joke. They’re living in the past. Gay was legalized nation-wide in 2003, and their catchy slogan might have been helpful, oh… sometime before then.

  26. So LezGetReal was never… Real. Oh, well.

    If you happen to be reading an old GP comment thread and you see Paula Brooks, say, calling someone names like this:

    Racist asshats

    Then you can think to yourself:

    Pathetic hateful, phony left-wing male who stole his wife’s name for his hoax and lied to her about it

    For the record, I am exactly what I have always claimed: a supporter of laissez-faire capitalism.

  28. Let’s set up a committee that says what t-shirts people should be allowed to wear!

    Typical left-winger.

    And: Yet another example of left-leaning gays who think they’re clever, but they’re not. Which makes them the joke. You see, I’m sure Tim’s defense is that he was being ironic, making a reverse-slam at we who have pointed out the stupidity of the “Legalize Gay” shorts. But Tim wasn’t being ironic. Because setting up committees to control what people do and say is what left-wingers actually support, in example after example. So Tim’s irony is actually not at all ironic – and I expect Tim is probably too thick to get that, too thick to know what I’m talking about.

  31. Vince, I am trying to get to work here, but real fast – heard of Speech Codes? or the Harvard president who was pilloried when he pointed out there are fewer female math geniuses than male? or of the school that banned the term “Easter Eggs”, saying they must be called “Spring Spheres”? or of the New York City Democrat last year who wanted to ban restaurants adding salt to their food? (LOL… bread tastes like crap, without it) Or of Obama killing incandescent light bulbs via regulation? Or of his NLRB trying to tell Boeing that they can’t manufacture jets in North Carolina – after the plant has long since been approved and built? or a gazillion other instances of government regulation, Nanny Statism and/or Political Correctness, promoted usually – not always, not entirely, but more often than not – by left-wingers? I think others can add examples if they want, I really need to run.

  33. I sent Dan an email the other day expressing my support for same-sex couples to get a marriage license and one of the things that I explained to him was one of the reason why I have so been hesitant was that I didn’t want to be put in the same category as others you support it too and this is why. Some of these same-sex union supporters like to partake in silliness. The notion that people are criminalized for being gay is ridiculous at best and disingenuous at worst. And what makes this so funny is that the people who buy these shirts are probably the same ones who want to silence those with whom they disagree. Who the hell comes up with these types of slogans is beyond me.

  34. American Apparel believes that sexuality should be celebrated, not condemned. When California voters passed Prop 8 in 2008, we let our community know we would support whatever stand they wanted to take. American Apparel believes in freedom, expression and equality, things that are inherently condemned in the prohibition of gay marriage. After printing a few hundred Legalize Gay t-shirts for a rally near our factory in downtown Los Angeles, the company received thousands of requests from people all over the world who asked for us to expand it.

    http://americanapparel.net/legalizegay/

  35. Rusty, you mean freedom of expression of ideas that toe the gay left party line? Expressing the belief that marriage is between a man and woman is not acceptable freedom of expression to AA. Freedom to express that the AIDS epidemic is a result of promiscuity in that gay community is not welcome either, I suppose? So do you really support freedom of expression and equality? Are the Mormons free to express their ideas on marriage and homosexuality? What about the radical Muslims? Are they free to express that they murder homosexuals and Jews?

  36. As far as the original post goes, I never thought I was illegal, or a second class citizen, until people started drilling it into my head that I was….people on the gay left. One day I said, “wait a minute,” looked around, saw wealthy gay men and women, homosexuals in congress, and on TV and realized that just wasn’t the case. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks of me just as it shouldn’t matter to them what I think of them.

  37. AZ MO please note that this is the statement of American Apparel

    BDB started this post with: Playing on the “Legalize LA” T-shirts and signs once ubiquitous in the Southland,

    some gay activists,

    in the wake of the passage of Prop. 8, created a “Legalize Gay” T-shirt, like this one seen at one of HRC’s two booths yesterday at LA Pride

    Chat with them.

  41. I think Rusty forgot to put quotes around the statement. The word ‘we’ was in his post because the whole block of text was taken from AA’s site.

    The internet tends to make it difficult to understand who is saying what though, so I could be misinterpreting what was said or what was asked.

  45. And actually, leftist gays like Tim are already trying to dictate what T-shirts people should wear.

    The more you’re around liberal gays and lesbians, the more you realize that these people are in fact ANTI-equality. They do not believe in equal protection under the law, equal treatment, or anything of the sort; they believe in using the law to shut other people up and allow them to do whatever the heck they want.

    This is why they are drawn to the Obama Party. This is also why they project onto everyone else the fascist tendencies that they display on a daily basis. They themselves want to regulate what goes on T-shirts, so they naturally assume everyone else does the same thing.

  46. You know it’s possible to have a wide range of political views and assuming that people with different ideas most be in opposition to you is the sign of ignorance and xenophobia. Take for instance capitalism. I’m a big fan I make a lot of money, I do what I like I buy what I need. However consumerism as we practice it is 100% unsustainable. Therefore accepting that capitalism or consumerism is only a bridge to get us to the next step is fairly logical that doesn’t mean I hate the system, it means I’m a realist. Our attempts at monarchies, democracies, fascism, Oligarchical communism, radical returns to agrarianism and several other forms of government have not been as successful as republics with a capitalist socialist blend. Does this mean it’s we stop here? Are we at a pinnacle or just a slope? Do we choose to lap up the propaganda from both parties or do we think for ourselves?

    I’m creating a drinking game based on your responses. Naturally ND30 saying “leftist” is a big part of it. It’s a good thing we only have two parties in this country he’d go insane if there were more options to have to pigeon hole people into.

    Fun new political parties
    Imperial socialists
    Transcendentalists (Green)
    Transcendentalists (Gold)
    Planetary Federalists
    Stone Masons (reformed)
    and let’s bring back the Whigs!!!

  47. Take for instance capitalism. I’m a big fan I make a lot of money, I do what I like I buy what I need. However consumerism as we practice it is 100% unsustainable.

    Then stop practicing it.

    That’s what makes you really funny, Timmeh. You and your fellow leftists scream about consumption and unsustainability from the decks of your $7 million yacht on which you are dodging taxes, the seats of government jets, stocked with liquor and chocolate-covered strawberries, which you demanded be moved closer to your second home and vineyard so you don’t have to drive so far, all at taxpayer expense, and the pool of your energy-guzzling mansion.

    And you, of course, the classic example, bragging about how much money you make while screaming how unfair it is that the government doesn’t take care of your parents for you.

    You do not want to modify your behavior. You want to use government to force the rest of us at gunpoint to change ours while you just go tripping merrily along.

    Your idea of government ideology is a revenge fantasy, Timmeh. You and your fellow Obama Party members want to use governmental power to punish anyone more successful than you or who disagrees with you.

  48. @ND30 I could of course mention that I’m not a democrat but at this point everyone knows and the fact that you don’t accept that just adds humorous dimension to your increasingly paranoid and fascist rants.
    So now I’m a pedophile, yacht owning democrat, who hates the free market system, and doesn’t recycle or care about gas mileage?

    nice burn I’m hurting so bad

  50. @ND30 I could of course mention that I’m not a democrat but at this point everyone knows and the fact that you don’t accept that just adds humorous dimension to your increasingly paranoid and fascist rants.

    Actually, what everyone knows is how much you keep repeating that you’re not an Obamabot while a) supporting everything Obama does and b) attacking everything Republicans do.

    It’s sort of the same issue you and Roman Polanski have with the word “consent”.

    Which leads us naturally into this.

    So now I’m a pedophile, yacht owning democrat, who hates the free market system, and doesn’t recycle or care about gas mileage?

    Again, it’s all about your elastic definitions.

    For instance, when gays and lesbians have sex with fourteen-year-olds, you call that natural and normal, but when heterosexual Republicans have sex with eighteen-year-olds, you call that pedophilia.

    It’s hard to say what you are, Tim, because every time you speak, we have to figure out the definition of every word that you are saying. For example, your definition of “free market” apparently includes governmental redistribution of wealth, price controls, and orders on what to produce and where to produce it, which would not qualify under any common definition of a free market.

  51. However consumerism as we practice it is 100% unsustainable

    If that’s true, then the market will solve the unsustainability problem on its own without the need for elites to dictate to us what and how much each of us may consume.

  52. However consumerism as we practice it is 100% unsustainable

    If that’s true, then the market will solve the unsustainability problem on its own without the need for elites to dictate to us what and how much each of us may consume.

    Exactly. If it is true (or when it becomes true): then the market will be forced to raise prices. Consumption will be reduced that way. The rest is just a bunch of greedy (for power – or possibly for grant money) fascists trying to scare people into submission.

  53. as a muslem i believe in God and i know that all what he have forbid its really harm in a physical or moral way
    sex is not a target in this life its a need for continuing the human race otherwise perversion will bring the agly face on the long term unfortunately many look only under thiere foot and for the moment
    life without God is nonsense and it seems that a lot of people do not seeing or realize how beautiful to b in God’s side and how it will bring happines in this life and after life as well . sex is not forbid . God never forbid something essential to the human kind thats why thats why he create us in two sex not only one .

    please it not helping the humankind to play with words if we gonna using word’s argumentation in every thing then i can say that mouses is better than human race . its illogical its like you saying lets leave thives as they are laws say us right from wrong but gaves as freedom .

    then it will not matter with you the man marry a dog or chicken

    there’s no infinite freedom when it effects others generation