Unasked for advice
Posted by Maman Poulet on 11 Nov 2008 at 07:54 pm | Tagged as: David Quinn, LGBT, Marriage Equality, Religious Right Dressed up as research institutes, Same Sex Partnerships
…to those campaigning for Civil Partnership legislation/Civil Marriage, be they individuals or groups …
– Stop appearing in audiences of shows like Questions and Answers – especially when the panel is not balanced with representation of someone from the lesbian and gay/equality and human rights sector. RTE need to be taught a lesson and ‘rent any queer for the audience fodder’ should not be part of the curriculum.
– Play the ball and not the player – If you are in the audience and there is no equal representation on the panel, don’t go after the guy on the panel espousing anti civil partnership/equality views – you are only boosting his ego and making his irrational but perfectly pleasantly presented claptrap look reasonable – non elected people who spread fear look like experts when some angry person who actually knows something is shouting them down and not getting heard at all – cf Libertas.
– As well as ringing or texting programmes contact RTE’s/other outlets public information officers and station editors and complain about a lack of balance. These comments go to editorial meetings. Today with Pat Kenny this morning had someone from a European Christian Lobby group and Lucinda Creighton (who is against civil partnership never mind marriage) discussing EU issues and the impact of religion on politics. There were mentions of civil partnerships and rights for same sex couples and how the EU should not be involved. Nobody else took part and although Pat was doing his bit to bring balance there should have been someone from the human rights, federalist side of the house giving their opinion on social affairs in the EU and the importance of the charter of rights and fundamental freedoms.
– Don’t talk about segregation and apartheid – see here. Find your/our own language to use in this situation and stop using the very different experiences of others.
– Stop making two parent families sound like the be all and end all – single parent families have enough enemies without campaigns for same sex partnership giving them oxygen. Parental rights should come second to children’s rights.
– Brief and prepare opposition parties as well as the FF/Green/Others Coalition. The way things are going currently the civil partnerships bill will be more than useless never mind the lack of civil marriage as an option. In fact stop getting everyone confused and make sure whatever law is on the table is the best possible solution.
Feel free to add your advice… someone might indeed listen…won’t guarantee they’ll actually hear it!
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Excellent tips Maman!!
Re: your comment on:
“Don’t talk about segregation and apartheid – see here. Find your/our own language to use in this situation and stop using the very different experiences of others”.
[I know what that's about, it's just lazy thinking from people who should know better!]
… I will post a comment on that from home and it will help us recast our experiences in more appropriate terms.
Oooh – well said Ma! What was that she said about not giving nutjobs the ‘oxygen of publicity’!
Could I add – Stop claiming to speak for the queer ‘community’ without any consultation.
Start organising a proper “community” campaign, empower and educate groups of individual queers to discuss, argue, debate, get the message out, have information and training groups, stop relying on a few self appointed ‘heads’ and grow a campaign from the bottom up. Get the facts, create alliances and stop for gawdsake coming across more straight and more conservative than the right- we are not the same, talk about choices, talk about different types of families and make common cause with those- instead of seeking exclusive privileges with married 2.2 families. Make a movement that is inclusive instead of a corporate business that attempts to get everyone to buy the same product and create a monopoly.
Bang on. Great post.
I posted a comment earlier about one aspect of Maman’s advice, above, that seems to go to the heart of the ‘issue’ that concerns us. Taking up Maman Poulet’s felt umbrage about someone mis/using apartheid, I feel it is both *really* important that we name ‘it’.
We’re really talking about how the sexual choices that we like exclude us as members of society. It is not easy to think of a way of talking about how sexuality impacts on our lives. We are not welcomed when we do so because talking personally seems too self-indulgent. However, as Siobhan rightly indicates, there are other problems if we try to speak for others, because we silence others. Simultaneously, there is a reticence to speak about sexuality, desire and all the naughty stuff that makes us into deviants!
While Civil partnership is foremost in our minds, the issue facing us is ‘bigger’ and terming ‘it’ as inequality does not seem to either do justice to our demands or to highlight the specificity of ‘what’ we are looking for today. So what are we looking for? How can we explain what we want in ways that change hearts and minds of people who may not necessarily agree with us, and how can we bridge our similarities and differences. In other words, can ‘it’ be presented in some way, shape or form that recognises that while we do (in general) want ‘the same’ as everyone else, there are embodied, gendered differences? I have found it extremely useful to ally two elements that feature in our discourses about ‘it’ and to make both elements REALLY visible.
Firstly, we might recognise the range of rights, issues, demands, dilemmas stem from our lack of sexual rights. Some years ago, the late US political activist, Eric Rofes, argued that the GLBTQ (etc.) community is a broad tent and so in thinking how we could ‘it’ should be as flexible as possible. I also hold the view that the way sexology categorised us as homosexuals took away a necessary emphasis on ‘us’ as living, breathing humans (agency as sociologists put it). We need to assert that our trouble with society is about sex, or more exactly, how heterosexuality is privileged.
Heterosexuality is privileged by the massive assumption in social life that everyone is assumed to be heterosexual and we all fit into some imagined box. Rather than get lost in queer theory, my take is that underpinning these sexual norms is the idea that these norms are made real in terms of citizenship rights (particularly in terms of the Family). So my (working) solution, for what it is worth, is begin by thinking closely about the way heterosexuals frame their identities (in both law and policy) and how we need to profess the ways we are excluded as citizens in Irish society because of our non-heterosexuality.
Under the 1937 Constitution, the children, who are supposed to be equally cherished, are citizens of this State. If you go back to Mill, and even to T.H. Marshall, the citizen was largely conceived as being male, white and landowning, etc. However, iIn more recent years, several critiques have been made of how ‘citizenship’ did not encompass various issues, demands, etc. and one fruitful extension of this viewpoint is to talk about sexual citizenship or – more usefully – intimate citizenship. For these writers, such as Ken Plummer and Jeffrey Weeks, our concerns are a complex bundle of dilemmas about the ways we are excluded from being equal citizens because of our non-heterosexuality (cf. Infra.) For Plummer, sexual or intimate citizenship is a political arena of concerns about:
“the control (or not) over one’s body, feelings, relationships; access (or not) to representations, relationships, public spaces, etc., and socially grounded choices (or not) about identities, gender experiences, erotic experiences”.
By drawing on how we are both part of society but not fully citizens, we intelligently seek to highlight our dilemmas from the perspective of not being full citizens because of our sexualities. Many people will be readily able to identify our dilemmas as citizens; it is also a less threatening term than relying on ‘apartheid’, etc. Even if people, as you imagine, are not in agreement with our sexual orientations, but I would advocate that it is difficult for opponents to deny our rights as sexual or intimate citizens. Simultaneously, what many of us enjoy through blogs and internet bulletins boards, etc., is hearing other GLBT people’s stories about their experiences of discrimination.
In short, people need to speak out about their dilemmas of inequality that stem from their sexual orientation, and tell their sexual stories. Make people really listen and make them empathise with our outsider status. Public occasions, such as Q&A, are public forums where people can seek, in modest ways, to change hearts and minds. However, I would advocate that placing a focus on telling our stories would be more powerful that inappropriately seeking easy analogies of other people’s political struggles.
My take: sexual citizenship as a cosmopolitan solution. Keep sex in the frame, tell people our stories of exclusion, discrimination, homophobia, etc. Take the discourse to them but don’t treat them like enemies, they’re our fellow citizens even if they don’t agree with us.
[...] it’s advice for those interested in Civil Partnership rights, Suzy’s excellent advice should be used by all [...]
Glad to see I was not the only person cringing as I watched the television on Monday night.
The wheels are coming off the bus it would seem. Great clear advice Suzy – will spread the link around and it might help get the vehicle back on the road!
This is one of the many times where I must applaud you for dipping into my head, and putting my thoughts into a blog post more eloquently than I could ever manage….
Why not contact RTE and ask them why as a state broadcaster they are failing in their mission by only allowing someone with an anti-gay agenda air his opinion? Their job is to provide balanced broadcasting giving both sides an opportunity to get their point of view across.
Complain to RTE by phoning 01-2083111 (No name necessary) or emailing- complaints@rte.ie.
By the way I think the difficulty that the gayfolk in Ireland are going to experience in getting this Civil Partnership laws enacted is because the gay ‘community’ does not exist in any real form. The christian community are very focussed in their efforts and are all working for the same goal.
The gay population are not. For example we cannot even agree on what we are looking for. GLEN wants civil partnership laws introduced. They do not represent me. LGBT Noise want full marriage introduced. They do represent me. The mixed messages being sent out is giving the ‘phobes an easy time.
And RTE by only giving the ‘phobes a voice is helping them
On the ball as ever Maman, and I liked Sean’s commentary also. He’s right about online commentary filling the gaping void that is reflection in lgbt politics presently.
Simon – those groups you mention represent noone – they don’t consult people, LGBT noise involve people but they were elected/appointed by nobody and are full of good intention but don’t think before they act. Those of us who are seeking recognition of our families and relationships and live in the real world are prevented from voicing our opinion by these groups who claim to represent our community when it suits them.
For some of the community groups mentioned and unmentioned, well they are as bad as the other side with the cloak and dagger antics, big wages and lack of real world experience that they have.
But the trouble is that the government speaks to groups like GLEN as if they have some representative mandate for the gay population when they have nothing of the sort. At least LGBT Noise are seeking full equality and not willing to settle for some insulting half measure like civil partnerships. Anyone with a knowledge or interest in human rights knows that equality is a right not a privilege. Therefore unlike GLEN, LGBT Noise are not settling for a discriminatory measure.
Personally I would rather see the civil partnership legislation shelved for a few years and gay people to campaign for proper equality. This civil partnership legislation will kill the campaign for equality of gay relationships like it has done in the UK (now that they have some legal recognition of their relationships gay people have stopped campaigning for equality.)
The government’s excuse for not legislating for full equality is that it was unconstitutional and would be opposed by the religious and conservative groups. Well it won’t surprise anyone that these groups are also opposed to civil partnerships. Civil partnerships will satisfy nobody.
Simon
It is hugely disigenuous of you to say that Civil Partnerships will satisfy nobody. There are lots of lesbians and gay men who are not looking for the option of marriage but would want civil partnership. There are gay couples who NEED legal recognition NOW and do not care whether it is marriage, pink elephants or civil partnership. To be honest – those who seek to delay civil partnerships because they want marriage are being extremely selfish and unconsiderate of such couples.
The thing is as well Simon – most of the groups in this campaign do not have any representative mandate because they have never consulted with anyone on the issues and they are representing their own viewpoint. LGBT Noise are equally as culpable in this regard as GLEN.
I attended the funeral of a friend and old work colleague who died suddenly last week. His partner of 12 years could certainly do with civil partnership rights. The choice to delay is one which has serious consequences for those who need rights now. There is no mandate for that decision and frankly those who are spearheading this stance have not attempted to get one. Civil partnerships now, does not impede the fight for more extensive rights as an ongoing campaign, I would argue that it strengthens that demand.
Civil partnerships in my view do impede the fight for equality. Just look at the UK; France and Germany. The campaign for equality for gay relationships in those countries has been dealt a very serious blow by civil partnership legislation. People are simply not motivated to get equality (and in all those countries civil partnerships are not equal to marriage) That may be satisfactory for some people but personally I find it offensive.
And Ian – your statement that those who wish to cancel the civil partnership laws in order to wait a few more years for equality are being selfish confuses me? Is it more selfish for example than those people who want civil partnership today thereby preventing those gay people who want equality being able to access it? There has never been legal recognition of gay relationships in modern Ireland. Waiting a while longer will of course be difficult for some people. However the damage that will be done to the equality campaign by intoducing a 2 tier legal system for relationships will be far more damaging in the long run. And in the longrun I don’t think that the next generation of gay people will thank anyone for accepting 2nd class status.
Why does that statement confuse you Simon? – Had you not considered that there are couples who need legal recognition NOW? The first ever couple in the UK who registered a civil partnership were such a couple where one one of them died a few days afterwards – I for one would bring in civil partnerships tomorrow to alleviate a similar situation rather than spending another 2 maybe 5 years posturing and debating that we must only have marriage.
Simon some people want rights, they are not looking for what you call equality and I call marriage… perhaps the “marriage” campaign in the Uk has stalled because there is no desire at this time for anything else. Why would according essential rights now diminish a push for further rights later if thats truly what a significant group of people want? Or is it that those who want marriage are willing to sacrifice those who need rights now in pursuance of their own cause?
Great post.