Australian gay activist and Gore Vidal pal Dennis Altman got tongues wagging this week when he offered his opinion on gay marriage: it’s “crap”. Said the outspoken politico:
I think it’s [gay marriage] a great deal of self-indulgent crap,” he said.
I mean people around the world are being tortured for being homosexual and people here carry on as if not being allowed to marry was a huge abuse of civil rights.
I wish there was a bit more internationalism in the Australian gay world. I mean it’s not too much to ask that we remember, sometimes, we are not the most persecuted and oppressed group in the world.
What?! How will we ever go one without the ever-important, somewhat comforting victimhood we’ve come to enjoy so much. How will we justify our overinflated sense of entitlement? How? How, Altman? How!?
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
This person is proof that not all “poofs are positive.” The war and boomer generation lived most of their productive decades in an oppressive closet. Many that I have known were steeped in lives of closeted debauchery and defined that as the ultimate “gay lifestyle”.
Gore Vidal and Richard Chamberlain and others born a decade or more before me replicate that “anti civil rights of marriage” bullocks. Denied mental health, civil rights, and openness most of their productive adult years, they are angry that some nations provide full healthy citizenship to gay and lesbian couples and FAMILIES.
Yes, the core is that we are now “breeders” – gay men who surrogate or who adopt children. It is no longer an exclusive lesbian reality. There are enough issues from theocon homophobes about our children, that we also must suffer the abuses lopped on us by this Altman’s verbal diarrhea against our children.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Are we the only Queerty couple with children? Are there gay or lesbian couples with children who wish to tell some others here that children are indeed part of the LGB and T community? Well…?
dusty
Why drag Gore Vidal into this post? As if he, or anyone, is responsible for what their friend or acquaintance believes.
Also, stating that Vidal is anti-civil rights is an absurdity.
hells kitchen guy
Omigod, The Rt. Rev Dr. RES returns, after promising he was going to the Greener Pastures! And he’s as full of blarney as ever. Rt. Rev, GO AWAY. Or at least try (if you can) to make sense.
Jon
Wow Rev, I’m not sure what all that had to do with the article. Breeders, children, and poofs oh my!
dusty
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES says “The war and boomer generation lived most of their productive decades in an oppressive closet. Many that I have known were steeped in lives of closeted debauchery and defined that as the ultimate “gay lifestyle—
Neither Vidal or Altman lived their lives “closeted”, let alone oppressed by their sexuality. I feel like a good number of people who comment about Vidal, have never actually read Vidal…or even really know who he is.
lame
Lu
The thing is that HE’s RIGHT! Not being able to marry *is* a violation, but hardly one that compares to that 21 year old boy who was executed for sodomy in Iran AFTER he was pardoned.
What can happen to gay people throughout the world is far worse than not being able to exchange vows. At least you can walk down the street without getting shot (depending on where you live).
This is not to say that there isn’t a lot more work to be done but get some perspective, people. We are hardly the worst -case scenario here.