[lbo-talk] Prop 8, James Baldwin

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Mon Nov 17 14:09:39 PST 2008


A lot of same-sexers want into the "regular life of work and family," which is why they want to get married. And 48% of Californians agreed. Doug

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Yes, I know. I was trying to imagine the other side, the yes Prop 8 side. Especially, as seen within various minority group's family lives. I had a long list of families and homes I've visited and dealt with in the back of my mind.

I was trying to recall what homosexuality congers up in a lot of parent's minds who are not particularly religious or political, not rightwingers, etc. So called `normal' people. I think for a lot of people in that group, gay marriage does sound like Another Country. Well, the way words like San Francisco or Berkeley sound to the rest of the country.

Anyway. Now to another complexity. My former supervisior was white lesbian, with two kids. The oldest daughter was white, the younger black. She and her (white) partner who was a public school teacher owned a house. She would occasionally let down her commanding supervisior guard and talk about her oldest daugther who was in middle school where her partner taught. The daughter stories mostly dealt with the oldest, who was getting a little too rowdy for S. She was fighting with her daugther all the time over something or other to do with the (mostly black) teen-girl social scene. I was thinking during these conversations, her daughter sounded like she was headed for the rebel without a cause road.

S. was worried about deliquency. So, I tried to talk about pushing the arts, maybe dance classes to fill up after school and that sort of thing. That idea brightened her up.

I thought that was pretty amusing. S was socially conservative in her views about child rearing and what girls should and shouldn't be doing. S was most definitely into regular life of work and family, along with the work hard get ahead ethic, small business is the life blood of the economy, etc.

We never talked politics. I suspect she might have grown up Republican, then turned apolitical at some point.

S. knew I was a commie type of some sort. She made a special supervisior point of keeping an eye on me, making sure I wasn't giving all the business away, as she put it. I sure as hell was, under the table. S knew it but could rarely prove it.

Well, the point is there are a lot cross-currents going on in the local gay scene (as in all other's I've seen). The clean cut all american professional types try to stay in front of the tv cameras.

Nobody seems to wonder what happens under a `normalizing' regime, when their kids start to grow up `normal' and revolt. It's pretty funny to think about...

CG



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