Gay marriage &c

keyholez criticizes Heather Love for not being happy about gay marriage. (Just read it. I'm not going to explain my references.) I think he’s wrong. I’m not an academic, and I’m not "short gays" in any way that I’m aware of, but Heather Love’s message resonates for me.

It’s not obvious to me that the opportunity to engage in state-sanctioned monogamy is a universal advantage for the group to which that opportunity is offered. In fact, it’s pretty clear that, in and of itself, it’s a disadvantage to those members who don’t want to take advantage of it – for the same reason that the availability of widely-used recreational drugs is a disadvantage to young people who prefer not to use them. We don’t live in a world where individual choice can be made without any social consequences. If gays are allowed to marry, being gay will no longer be considered a good excuse for being single.

Of course the availability of widely-used recreational drugs may be an even bigger disadvantage to those who do choose to use them. (That’s presumably why most of them are illegal.) Arguably that’s also true about marriage.

More generally, the de-marginalization of certain groups (monogamous gays) increases the stigma associated with being part of a still-marginalized group...

...and so on, I don’t have time to finish this right now...and by the time I do, I will probably have lost interest...