OmegaMom

Big City has a proposed ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.  Today is the city council review, with a public comment period.  Big City’s Big Preacher has bussed in bunches of folks from Suburban Alaska to oppose the proposed ordinance.  There are hundreds of people there; the streaming media of the session is overwhelmed; and there is commentary on the Big City Newspaper’s article on the affair.

Amongst the comments are a bunch akin to “Hey, I don’t care what you do in private!  Just don’t flaunt your sexuality at me!”

No doubt, they’re really against overt PDAs, but I also think they count “normal” behavior as “flaunting” when it’s applied to homosexuals.

If I were to walk down the street hand-in-hand with OmegaDad, no-one would think I was “flaunting” anything.  If Joe and Jim, in a gay relationship of equal length to ours, were to do the same thing, they’d be getting the hairy eyeball about “forcing your sexuality on others!”

If I drop my husband off at work, peck him on the cheek, and say, “Bye, Babe!”, no-one in the parking lot there would bat an eye.  If Lois and Louise, in a lesbian relationship of equal length to ours, were to do the same thing, they’d be considered to be “flaunting their sexuality”.

If I put a picture of me and my husband at our wedding on my desk at work, it would be an opening for (a) people to say “Oh, what a lovely daughter you have!” (this actually happened to me once, grrr), (b) people to ask where we got married, (c) people to ooh and ahh at how cute we were, (d) requests for advice on weddings.  Bill or Bert, having married in New Hampshire or Iowa, are often afraid to do the same thing for fear of being fired.

If I call OmegaDad’s office and someone else picks up the phone, I can leave a message for him to call home, or have him say “I love you” to me in closing without any repercussions.  A gay or lesbian couple can’t do the same thing, for fear of responses from homophobic coworkers.

The folks who rant about homosexuality being a sin and a perversion, anti-discrimination ordinances being “special rights”, gays holding hands to be “flaunting” it, and homosexual marriage “devaluing” normal marriage just don’t get it. 

First off, I’ve said before, and will say again, that I think people who are afraid of promiscuity and the instability of modern households should be all for homosexual marriage–they’re settling down, they’re promising to love each other and cleave unto each other.  Wouldn’t that promote stability?  Doesn’t the desire for marriage for homosexuals imply that marriage is something special to them that they would cherish?  Aren’t two-income families better for the economy?  Don’t they have more disposable income?

As for “special rights”.  Sheesh.  All they want is to be able to do normal, everyday things–things that every heterosexual takes for granted so much that it isn’t even noticed, without being fired, or banned, or shunned.

And the “flaunting” question?  My god.  Homosexuals are faced every day with evidence of heterosexuals’ sexual relationships–in-your-face evidence. Few heterosexuals consider it “flaunting” unless it’s homosexuals doing the same thing.

I think that the people who were bussed in to protest it should be allowed to speak, but their opinions shouldn’t count in council members’ considerations of the ordinance.  They’ve got every right to their opinion, but they don’t live where the ordinance applies.  Their actions are akin to the out-of-staters who financed the “No on Prop 8″ group in California.  Let the people who are affected by such ordinances be the people to speak out and make the decisions.