Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 4th, 2011
A New York newspaper has endorsed the push for marriage equality in New York State:
Homosexuality is a human reality. Most New Yorkers have a friend, colleague or relative gay. It’s time to give these people the opportunity to develop family and community building. Our government should not be in the business of telling people who fall in love or marry.
We expect our senators to act boldly this time, to put their religious beliefs and political interests aside, and really work for all New Yorkers. Our children and grandchildren will remember this legacy and will be grateful.
A bit old hat, really. And is it all that surprising that a NY newspaper endorses same-sex marriage?
But this endorsement is different. Because it actually reads:
La homosexualidad es una realidad humana. La mayorÃa de los neoyorquinos tienen un amigo, colega o pariente gay. Es hora de darles a estas personas la oportunidad de desarrollar familia y construir comunidades. Nuestro gobierno no debe estar en el negocio de decirle a la gente de quien enamorarse o con quien casarse.
Esperamos que nuestros senadores actúen valientemente esta vez, que pongan sus creencias religiosas e intereses polÃticos a un lado, y que realmente trabajen para todos los neoyorquinos. Nuestros niños y nietos recordarán este legado y se lo agradecerán.
and comes from El Diario La Prensa, the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in New York City. And it comes a week before State Senator Rubin Diaz holds his rally of Hispanic evangelicals to demand that gay couples remain disadvantaged.
Diaz has tried to appeal to identity politics in his fight for inequality, seeking to equate Hispanic ethnicity with anti-gay animus and give it a sheen of defensibleness based on culture. El Diario’s editorial destroys that illusion.
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enough already
May 4th, 2011
The simple fact of setting the rally for the date and location he chose makes clear just how far his “Christian” love extends.
Hatred, pure, unadulterated hatred – carried out on the back of the victims of Aids.
TampaZeke
May 4th, 2011
BRAVO El Diario La Prensa!
Shannon
May 4th, 2011
Not really that surprising the newspaper would publish that, from what I’ve seen hispanics usually are very accepting of homosexuals.
Lucrece
May 4th, 2011
Diaz didn’t try; he succeeded already. Or were you not present when he brought thousands of Hispanic evangelicals to protest in the same time the same sex marriage bill was sunk.
Gay people constantly tend to overestimate their supporters, and try to pass off opponents as fringe instead of a rather sizable group of people with full capability to blackball equality.
Not only that, but this newspaper isn’t anything new.
Down in Miami, FL, El Nuevo Herald recommended a “No” vote against amendment 2. Miami is pretty much a mini-Latin America so the recommendation from a highly respectable paper is parallel to this one.
And yet, Amendment 2 passed by a whopping 62%, and a 52% of the youth vote approved it.
People are gonna vote their “That’s gay” machismo-induced prejudice regardless of what some newspaper tells them.
You can bet it’ll be the same with the Bronx. Street subculture is a world of its own and the thugs that prey on gay people are unaffected by some voice they deem as feminine intellectual outsider. Newspapers are “soft” and against tradition.
Soren456
May 4th, 2011
My limited experience with Hispanics suggests, to me, a rigid machismo that isn’t much dented by endorsements like this. And I’m talking about persons in their teens and 20s, not the older generation.
Machismo has many aspects that work together as a point of view; to effect change in one aspect (gays) you need to tinker with the whole structure. Endorsements like this are surely forward-looking and, in aggregate, will help erode anti-gay sentiment. But an appeal to fairness, which is all that this editorial is, doesn’t go far to that end because it offers no reason to think differently.
I’m also skeptical that positive editorials in this community will, in any measurable sense, counterbalance the inevitable negative dictates of religion, particularly the Catholics. I understand that younger Hispanics are not as responsive to the church as their parents. But I’ll believe that only when I see it.
Stephen
May 4th, 2011
Who cares. All that matters is DOMA. The NY vote is meaningless. Go to Canada and get married. Means as much. This is all nonsense.
MKYLL
May 4th, 2011
I get mixed feedback about how much Hispanics/Latinos are cool with same-sex relations. Some people have told me they’re general hostile to it, but some polls I’ve seen show them as equally accepting as Caucasians (in one NYC poll they even beat white folk as far as accepting gay marriage). So I don’t know. Of course “Hispanics/Latinos” are vast and varied, depending on the country of origin, the financial status, education, blue collar/white collar, etc, etc., so..that might account for mixed feedback.
MKYLL
May 4th, 2011
Soren : I have found that Catholic Hispanics, especially younger ones, are like Catholic Caucasians : not nearly as homophobic as the new Hispanic Protestant evangelicals. (Though I also know that might be because the only Hispanics I know are through Catholic high schools where the standards to get in are high. You have to have a working brain just to start with).
enough already
May 4th, 2011
Stephen,
I’m legally married in Europe, but still fight for our civil and human rights in the US.
Every single state which recognizes us as fully human is another step forward.
Courts don’t decide in a vacuum. Lawrence vs. Texass wasn’t decided on the basis of what is fair, it was decided because even the Supreme Court knew the country, at least the part where men really are men and sheep aren’t afraid, had moved past this nonsense.
Actually, DOMA is not enough. We need comprehensive reform in several areas, all bolstered by law and court decisions.
Every bit is to the good even the separate and unequal civil unions. They codify that we aren’t fully human in the US, but that also ultimately helps make our argument that our civil and human rights have been abrogated.
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