Students giving reasons why they're voting against gay marriage

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Get ready to slam your head down on your keyboard in frustration.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tommywes/14-students-voting-against-marriage-equality

I could go on about it, but you guys will say everything I'm thinking.

[Robespierres Neck]

http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/1/0/6/6/1/traditional-marriage-58355476463.jpeg

[TheRedAnarchist23]

Honestly, how can some americans be so reactionary. I know some prety fanatic religious people in my country, but even they are not against gay mariage.

[Ostrinski]

Honestly, how can some americans be so reactionary. I know some prety fanatic religious people in my country, but even they are not against gay mariage.That's just the way it is man. Conservative culture in the United States has always been among the most reactionary in the trans Atlantic world.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

That's just the way it is man. Conservative culture in the United States has always been among the most reactionary in the trans Atlantic world.

If I saw someone in my school with something like that I would get so angry. Perhaps to the point of attacking the person.

[ВАЛТЕР]

I think their stupid smiles make them look 2x as idiotic. They act like they gave some logical reason and are smiling about how bulletproof their argument is. When in reality it's fucking stupid as shit.

[B.K.]

Honestly, how can some americans be so reactionary. I know some prety fanatic religious people in my country, but even they are not against gay mariage.

I live in a pretty non-religious country, yet a very sizable amount of people here (up to 1/3 of population, according to some polls) even support death penalty for homosexuals.

[The Douche]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I live in a pretty non-religious country, yet a very sizable amount of people here (up to 1/3 of population, according to some polls) even support death penalty for homosexuals.

It is like bigger countries have more reactionary population.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.

Coincidence: I am writing an article which might show up on Kasama which involves this issue. Gonna be a fun debate. In a few days I will post it up.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/1/0/6/6/1/traditional-marriage-58355476463.jpeg

My brother put this on Facebook a while back. Pretty great, too bad fundies are so fucking stupid.

[cynicles]

Only the guy in picture 11 gave a non-religious reason as to why he opposed same-sex marriage(to get laid with that girl next to him), the rest is religious lunacy and general ignorance.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Only the guy in picture 11 gave a non-religious reason as to why he opposed same-sex marriage(to get laid with that girl next to him), the rest is religious lunacy and general ignorance.

Which is still pretty much lunacy.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.

This!
As a queer person I do not give one fuck about gay marriage.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.

I've been wondering about this. Why exactly is the family so bad?

[Rafiq]

I've been wondering about this. Why exactly is the family so bad?

The family structure has existed, according to certain anthropologists, only since the development of class society. And all accept it was a means of expressing male dominance (and still is). The family structure in most mode(s) of production exists to reinforce said social relations to the mode of production. But when we speak of the family, we tend to refer to the Bourgeois family structure, which is quite exclusive to capitalism. The reason as to why we oppose it is self explanatory, it is bourgeois in nature and exists to reinforce capitalist social relations. This family structure, in which wife and child are both the property of the father, the man, is not limited to simply a classical communist criticism. Indeed sexual liberationists will argue that marriage is a means of alienating and containing our sexual impulses toward each other, rendering women as the property of their husbands, whether this is expressed in a "less oppressive" form or not. It takes not an idiot to realize it is harder for a man to forgive his female mate for cheating than the other way around.

A bit off topic but, one of the reasons we can see the Soviet Union and other Communist states did not completely do away with capitalist social relations resided with the fact that the bourgeois family structure continued to exist.

[The Douche]

This issue is very similar to the repeal of "Don't ask don't tell", I don't consider it to be a victory that queers can serve imperialism, and I don't consider it to be a victory that queers can reinforce the nuclear family.

[Yuppie Grinder]

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell were still around I could get out of the draft by telling them I'm queer. For that reason I miss it.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.
Same sex marriage is a victory for secularism over theocracy. Or do "communists" prefer a situation where religious reactionaries get to control what everyone else is allowed to do?

Full sexual and gender liberation for all people can only happen if existing social institutions are abolished and the archaic values they represent are swept aside with them.

Right now? Standing against theocrats and with LGBT people should be what communists do.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.By this reasoning we should oppose school intergration and voting rights for women and multi-racial marriage rights - fight for women to participate in bourgoise elections! How counter-revolutionary of us!

A hereosexual arrangment is pretty basic to the capitalist nuclear family and the whole concept of homosexuality as a type of person rather than a kind of behavior or attraction was created at the same time that the concepts of the nuclear family and the role of working class women in it were solidified.

Nuclear families aren't as useful for capitalists if they can't make people expect that women will pick up all the household maintainance. Same-sex couples begin to challenge the idea that children "need one father" or that if both parents are working, the one woman should still be the one to take care of the kids.

But more immediately, it's a larger question of what kinds of relationships are deemed "legitimate" and on that basis alone we should support it. If, on the other hand there had been a movement of workers and feminists and LGBT folks demanding an end to any special marriage treatment for anyone - then yeah it wouldn't make sense to support gay marriage. But in the context now, it's more about fighting inequalities in marriage, rather than the abstract promotion of marriage out of the blue for the sake of the institution.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I think their stupid smiles make them look 2x as idiotic. They act like they gave some logical reason and are smiling about how bulletproof their argument is. When in reality it's fucking stupid as shit.

Well, i am not sure about #4. It seems to me like she has a genuine reason to say "our future depends on IT" because it looks like she has something up her ass with that stupid grimace.

[campesino]

The family structure has existed, according to certain anthropologists, only since the development of class society. And all accept it was a means of expressing male dominance (and still is). The family structure in most mode(s) of production exists to reinforce said social relations to the mode of production. But when we speak of the family, we tend to refer to the Bourgeois family structure, which is quite exclusive to capitalism. The reason as to why we oppose it is self explanatory, it is bourgeois in nature and exists to reinforce capitalist social relations. This family structure, in which wife and child are both the property of the father, the man, is not limited to simply a classical communist criticism. Indeed sexual liberationists will argue that marriage is a means of alienating and containing our sexual impulses toward each other, rendering women as the property of their husbands, whether this is expressed in a "less oppressive" form or not. It takes not an idiot to realize it is harder for a man to forgive his female mate for cheating than the other way around.

A bit off topic but, one of the reasons we can see the Soviet Union and other Communist states did not completely do away with capitalist social relations resided with the fact that the bourgeois family structure continued to exist.

what a ridiculous statement. tell me what will the new socialist family structure be? neglected kids raised by single mothers with jobs? People just dropping off their newborns, at the collectivised daycare/schools?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

what a ridiculous statement. tell me what will the new socialist family structure be? neglected kids raised by single mothers with jobs? People just dropping off their newborns, at the collectivised daycare/schools?
You're still thinking within the traditional family setting, though. We're talking about community, not redundant coagulations with blatantly sexist origins.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Let's first achieve communism. Then we can worry about what forms human relationships and families will take under it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

what a ridiculous statement. tell me what will the new socialist family structure be? neglected kids raised by single mothers with jobs? People just dropping off their newborns, at the collectivised daycare/schools?The nuclear family as a structure of capitalism isn't simply a couple of biological parents and a kid: it's an economic structure for organizing the lives of people in the society. Marriage as a way to pass on property existed before capitalism, but this is also part of the nuclear family - but for workers it's much more about a kind of social organization where the family unit itself takes care of all the shit that needs to be done in order for workers to be able to show up at work the next shift - as well as raise the next generation of workers.

So yes, I'd assume that without privite control of wealth, without exploitation, workers would probably organize family life and child-care with a lot more collective support. So some examples might be that there would be free day-care anytime so that caretakers of children are not chained to that child and can go off to work (or whatever they want) and know there is a supervised space to drop off their kid for a few hours or an evening. Other things would be like communal or collective kitchesn/resturants - this would save food prep. time for each household and would be more efficient and labor-saving to provide meals to have or take for 200 people than to have 50 housewives/husbands all autonomously making meals for 4 people each night.

I think it would also mean that families are not inorganically forced together out of economic necissity. Why is there abuse of wives, children, elderly, and the infirmed in modern nuclear families? Often it's because people are stuck in that situation - resentful spouces might take this out on eachother, resentful parents or caretakers might resent their role and abuse children or elderly relatives, or the person without their own economic means or wages (the child, elderly or sick parent, or non-working spouce) might feel traped and resentful and have no way out.

Most of the time when people do get out of these situations, they tend to go to more distant relatives, friends houses, or even to the streets. I think workers would probably want to live in some kind of family group - at least immediately after a revolution - but I think they would place importance on those groups being mutual and organic arrangements.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Tech Inc.'s guide to a future family-system.

The children (juveniles of the species before the end of the puberty cycle) will be slaves in construction of reproductive holons. I will be the head of the reproductive holon, and the fifth cousins will come to breed every season. Failure to achieve mass reproduction will result in the holon being purged and the residents' now residual leftovers spread throughout the Vertical Farming implements to help with the exhaust of oxygen, which can then be used as life-fuel (water, aerobic-biotics) for interplanetary travel.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"I'm voting Yes... because marriage is a picture of christ and the church"

First what the hell does that mean? Second, don't most christians believe Christ never married - and weren't church officials barred from marriage from like the 1200s until the reformation?

Anyway, as Patton Oswalt said, "the anti-gay bigots would be much more honest and have a much more coherent rationale for their shit if rather than using Jesus as the reason, they could just say the idea of two guys kissing gives them the willies".

It's just so paper-thin - I mean have these folks read the bible - if this the is dictate and lesson they take from that book, they must have seen Star Wars and told their friends that it's a really great movie all about why you shouldn't beat Wookies at board-games while in space.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

America, where arrows pointing to your girlfriend is a reason for opposing gays.

[Jimmie Higgins]

America, where arrows pointing to your girlfriend is a reason for opposing gays.
Yeah that was a strange one. It seem like he was saying, "I'm voting this way... because my girlfriend is a bigot and demands that I vote with her".

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Tech Inc.'s guide to a future family-system.

The children (juveniles of the species before the end of the puberty cycle) will be slaves in construction of reproductive holons. I will be the head of the reproductive holon, and the fifth cousins will come to breed every season. Failure to achieve mass reproduction will result in the holon being purged and the residents' now residual leftovers spread throughout the Vertical Farming implements to help with the exhaust of oxygen, which can then be used as life-fuel (water, aerobic-biotics) for interplanetary travel.

What the fuck? Got a cite for that? Because I've nothing I've read from Tech Inc suggests fucking around with people's familial arrangements.

[The Douche]

Let's first achieve communism. Then we can worry about what forms human relationships and families will take under it.


And its this kind of thing that leaves us stuck where we currently are. I don't know how you think we are going to "achieve communism" if we keep reinforcing and integrating people into empire.


By this reasoning we should oppose school intergration and voting rights for women and multi-racial marriage rights - fight for women to participate in bourgoise elections! How counter-revolutionary of us!

The school integration comparison is way off base. Students aren't integrated into the fucked up functions of the school system under capital. As for multi-racial marriages, yes, my position is much the same, I support the abolition of marriage as a legal category. And women's suffrage? You know god-damn well that anarchists historically opposed it (in the same way I oppose gay marriage ammendments), anarchists like Emma Goldman.


Nuclear families aren't as useful for capitalists if they can't make people expect that women will pick up all the household maintainance. Same-sex couples begin to challenge the idea that children "need one father" or that if both parents are working, the one woman should still be the one to take care of the kids.

No, it just modernizes the nuclear family and makes it seem like an neutral institution. You seem to think that the ability of gay people to participate in nuclear families destroys the nuclear family. I don't care if a man or a woman stays home to do the housework, thats still the nuclear family, and we're still supposed to struggle against, not cheer it because it is comprised of two women.


But in the context now, it's more about fighting inequalities in marriage, rather than the abstract promotion of marriage out of the blue for the sake of the institution.

Ok, Obama voter...:rolleyes: (not that I think you're actually an Obama voter, just pointing out that your position there is the same as lots of left-liberals who vote for Obama because of the "context now")

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The school integration comparison is way off base. Students aren't integrated into the fucked up functions of the school system under capital.

Yes they are, it's called compulsory education.


As for multi-racial marriages, yes, my position is much the same, I support the abolition of marriage as a legal category.

And until then?


And women's suffrage? You know god-damn well that anarchists historically opposed it (in the same way I oppose gay marriage ammendments), anarchists like Emma Goldman.

Because a sure-fire way of encouraging people to think of women as fully human is to support their continued disenfranchisement. Right. Sorry, but name-dropping fails to convince me in this instance.


No, it just modernizes the nuclear family and makes it seem like an neutral institution. You seem to think that the ability of gay people to participate in nuclear families destroys the nuclear family. I don't care if a man or a woman stays home to do the housework, thats still the nuclear family, and we're still supposed to struggle against, not cheer it because it is comprised of two women.

What's wrong with the nuclear family? What makes it any less valid than any other arrangement?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

And its this kind of thing that leaves us stuck where we currently are. I don't know how you think we are going to "achieve communism" if we keep reinforcing and integrating people into empire.
How are we going to achieve communism if we keep reinforcing theocracy and other reactionary ideas? Same sex marriage = holding us back from communism? Catch yourself on.

[The Douche]

You're the kind of people who want to vote for Obama because they think Romney is a so much scarier alternative. Cool got it.

I'll just keep disdaining to hide my views (you know, what communists are supposed to do), and you keep promoting liberalism.

We got a mother fucker here who doesn't even see a problem with the nuclear family, I'm not gonna have that discussion, don't nobody got time for that.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'll just keep disdaining to hide my views (you know, what communists are supposed to do), and you keep promoting liberalism.
Right, nothing says communism like refusing to challenge reactionaries in the here and now. :rolleyes:

"Full sexual and gender liberation for all people can only happen if existing social institutions are abolished and the archaic values they represent are swept aside with them." Those are my words. Clearly, I'm promoting liberalism.

[The Douche]

"Full sexual and gender liberation for all people can only happen if existing social institutions are abolished and the archaic values they represent are swept aside with them." Those are my words. Clearly, I'm promoting liberalism.

Yeah, I know that you said this, but it is invalidated by your actual position. I don't understand how you can say you want marriage abolished and then say you want people to get married.

I am opposing reaction in the here and now, by opposing the reactionary institution of marriage and the nuclear family.

[campesino]

I don't care if a man or a woman stays home to do the housework, thats still the nuclear family, and we're still supposed to struggle against, not cheer it because it is comprised of two women.
Why?

[Jimmie Higgins]

You're the kind of people who want to vote for Obama because they think Romney is a so much scarier alternative. Cool got it.

I'll just keep disdaining to hide my views (you know, what communists are supposed to do), and you keep promoting liberalism.

We got a mother fucker here who doesn't even see a problem with the nuclear family, I'm not gonna have that discussion, don't nobody got time for that.

Nah, you're mistaking abstract dogma for political strategy. (And liberals often use abstract priciples to cover for their refusal to support actual struggles:cool:) I don't believe in money in the abstract - yet I gotta pay rent in about 20 days. Shit, I mean we want the abolition of money, so why do we complain about austerity or support movements against it? Shouldn't we just be glad that the recssion and cuts are eliminating money for workers by itself?

There is no marriage abolition movement - that's the "context now" not Obama, who is not in favor of gay marriage anyway (or at least wasn't until he realized no one was putting Obama 2012 stickers on their cars and then he paid his twice a decade lip-service to equality). So the whole thing isn't about "marriage" as an institution but do LGBT have the same recognition and treatment as others? It's not a struggle for the instirution of marriage, it's a struggle for equality against oppression.

And the fact that the whole resistance to LGBT marrige is the idea that it will errode the nuclear family, makes the argument that if folks fight for this they are re-inforcing that same nuclear family a little odd. If the right doesn't think that LGBT marriage is a threat to the institution, what is their underlying motivation - because of scripure..? Pleeeease.

And also, marriage parity is even more important to working class people than elietes who can get all the health insurance they or their partners need, can avoid hostile situations with bigots, don't have to worry that their job is in danger if they are business owners, have an easier time adopting kids etc.

[The Douche]

I don't believe in money in the abstract - yet I gotta pay rent in about 20 days.

Yeah, do you have to get married? Come on dude, I can't believe this is the path we're going down. People live together their whole lives without getting married (I've been with my girlfriend for like 8 years), damn near impossible to say the same about rent.


Shit, I mean we want the abolition of money, so why do we complain about austerity or support movements against it? Shouldn't we just be glad that the recssion and cuts are eliminating money for workers by itself?

I don't really know how much I support "movements against austerity", unless its in the context of extra-parliamentary, confrontational situations where the communist position can be put into action, and escalation can potentially follow. For instance, I didn't give a fuck if Scott Walker got recalled, and that is what I think of when I think of "anti-austerity movement", now if we were talking about something like a wildcat general strike, yeah, that is something I might participate in. But gay marriage is hardly a wildcat strike...


So the whole thing isn't about "marriage" as an institution but do LGBT have the same recognition and treatment as others? It's not a struggle for the instirution of marriage, it's a struggle for equality against oppression.

Marriage and the nuclear family are directly linked to "oppression", any movements which reinforce those structures reinforce that "oppression".


And the fact that the whole resistance to LGBT marrige is the idea that it will errode the nuclear family, makes the argument that if folks fight for this they are re-inforcing that same nuclear family a little odd. If the right doesn't think that LGBT marriage is a threat to the institution, what is their underlying motivation - because of scripure..? Pleeeease.

Why should we base our politics on what "the right" "thinks"? My position is rooted in an analysis of systemic exploitation, your position revolved around what, exactly? Trolling the right? I mean, I'm glad to see the right upset and in a tizzy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be dealing with the real issues.


And also, marriage parity is even more important to working class people than elietes who can get all the health insurance they or their partners need, can avoid hostile situations with bigots, don't have to worry that their job is in danger if they are business owners, have an easier time adopting kids etc.

Yeah, marriage really should be a non-legal status, huh...

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

We got a mother fucker here who doesn't even see a problem with the nuclear family, I'm not gonna have that discussion, don't nobody got time for that.

Then in that case I haven't got time for your arguments, since you're unwilling to support them. I suppose it's easier than actually defending one's positions.

:rolleyes:

[Sasha]

Nah, you're mistaking abstract dogma for political strategy. (And liberals often use abstract priciples to cover for their refusal to support actual struggles:cool:) I don't believe in money in the abstract - yet I gotta pay rent in about 20 days. Shit, I mean we want the abolition of money, so why do we complain about austerity or support movements against it? Shouldn't we just be glad that the recssion and cuts are eliminating money for workers by itself?

There is no marriage abolition movement - that's the "context now" not Obama, who is not in favor of gay marriage anyway (or at least wasn't until he realized no one was putting Obama 2012 stickers on their cars and then he paid his twice a decade lip-service to equality). So the whole thing isn't about "marriage" as an institution but do LGBT have the same recognition and treatment as others? It's not a struggle for the instirution of marriage, it's a struggle for equality against oppression.

And the fact that the whole resistance to LGBT marrige is the idea that it will errode the nuclear family, makes the argument that if folks fight for this they are re-inforcing that same nuclear family a little odd. If the right doesn't think that LGBT marriage is a threat to the institution, what is their underlying motivation - because of scripure..? Pleeeease.

And also, marriage parity is even more important to working class people than elietes who can get all the health insurance they or their partners need, can avoid hostile situations with bigots, don't have to worry that their job is in danger if they are business owners, have an easier time adopting kids etc.

^ this

also "if you dont want marriage, dont have one"

while we should make our case against the institution of marriage, against the unfair benefits its gives to those who have it and against monogamous-hetero-normative society its not our fucking place to tell others they cant have equal rights if they want them.
we need to get rid of DADT before we can get rid of the military, arguing against full gay-rights under liberal capitalist democracy is like arguing against voting rights for women or blacks because we oppose parliamentary "democracy".

[Sasha]

related to the OP i though this article was an interesting article; http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/05/i-called-the-top-individual-donors-to-reject-gay-marriage-to-let-them-explain-their-opposition

[Rugged Collectivist]

Ignorance. Ignorance about the workings of the universe and ignorance about the origin of the institution of marriage.

The one guy was hilarious. "I'm with a woman and so should you!"

[The Douche]

^ this

also "if you dont want marriage, dont have one"

while we should make our case against the institution of marriage, against the unfair benefits its gives to those who have it and against monogamous-hetero-normative society its not our fucking place to tell others they cant have equal rights if they want them.
we need to get rid of DADT before we can get rid of the military, arguing against full gay-rights under liberal capitalist democracy is like arguing against voting rights for women or blacks because we oppose parliamentary "democracy".

Except that marriage and the nuclear family are part of base, not superstructure. So its not as simple as "don't like it, don't do it", because it effects all of us, even those who are not married.

I'm not stopping anybody from getting either straight or gay married (obviously), but it is totally my place, as a communist, to put forward the communist position.

And again, with the women's suffrage thing, I would have stood with other revolutionaries of the time, and I would not have participated in that struggle.


Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians. (Goldman on suffrage)

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_eg_an9_woman_suffrage.htm some of the critique can be applied to other struggles to assimilate more people on the fringes into fully functioning citizens of empire.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yeah, do you have to get married? Come on dude, I can't believe this is the path we're going down. People live together their whole lives without getting married (I've been with my girlfriend for like 8 years), damn near impossible to say the same about rent.No and gay marriage doesn't mean that couples have to get married either just as supporting the right of people to have divorce or abortions doesn't mean we want everyone to get divorced and abort pregnancies.


I don't really know how much I support "movements against austerity", unless its in the context of extra-parliamentary, confrontational situations where the communist position can be put into action, and escalation can potentially follow. For instance, I didn't give a fuck if Scott Walker got recalled, and that is what I think of when I think of "anti-austerity movement", now if we were talking about something like a wildcat general strike, yeah, that is something I might participate in. But gay marriage is hardly a wildcat strike...Scott Walker's recall is a bad example because even if the Democrats did achieve that, they showed no real interest in repealing the laws that made the Gov. so hated and mobilized people in the first place. The recall was a diversion of a spontanious uprising.


Marriage and the nuclear family are directly linked to "oppression", any movements which reinforce those structures reinforce that "oppression". Define how it is oppressive, because in my understanding, part of the way bourgoise marriage is so oppressive has to do with gender-roles - LGBT marriage inherently subverts that which is why the right is all up in arms... how can we say it's a woman's "natural place" if there are two women raising kids or two men?

And to expand your argument logically we'd also have to oppose various reforms to the instition due to women's struggles - such as the right to divorce or the right not to be raped by the husband in a marriage. Don't these things "normalize" the institution?


Why should we base our politics on what "the right" "thinks"? My position is rooted in an analysis of systemic exploitation, your position revolved around what, exactly? Trolling the right? I mean, I'm glad to see the right upset and in a tizzy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be dealing with the real issues.Abolishing marriage is not a live issue currently, but millions of oppressed people do want and hundreds are currently prepared and seeking effective ways to fight for equal treatment.


Yeah, marriage really should be a non-legal status, huh...
Ultimately, but how do we get there - by ignoring the 2nd-classing of a group of workers?

Immigrantion stautus should be a non-issue... so do we refuse to support struggles or immigrant workers against their 2nd-class labor position on the basis that borders are bourgois illusions and why the hell would any worker want to join the empire as a subject anyway?

[hetz]

You can't abolish marriage just like you can't abolish religion.
Engels actually talked about that when he spoke of those who want to "out-Bismarck Bismarck" in regards to religion.

[campesino]

You can't abolish marriage just like you can't abolish religion.
Engels actually talked about that when he spoke of those who want to "out-Bismarck Bismarck" in regards to religion.

can you name or link the works of Engels on the subject I would love to read them.

[hetz]

Anti-Duhring by F. Engels, chapter State, Family, Education


The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Manifesto

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Yeah, I know that you said this, but it is invalidated by your actual position. I don't understand how you can say you want marriage abolished and then say you want people to get married.
Marriage can't be abolished until existing social relations are abolished. You're putting the cart before the horse.

Also, nowhere have I said I want people to get married or not get married. What I want is to keep religious reactionaries from controlling access to existing social institutions and using that to discriminate against LGBT people. If LGBT people getting married isn't a threat to marriage as it exists, why are reactionaries opposed to it?

And you're putting on a ridiculous little "more communist than thou" stage show. Wow, we're so impressed at how Left you are. Even Marx and Lenin would bow before you! :rolleyes:

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Gay marriage will bring about the end of the hypocritical and dieing notion that the U.S lives under Judeo- Christian values and frankly i don't see why it can't also cause the legalization of polygamy.

[zoot_allures]

It doesn't frustrate me. Rather, it amuses me. In fact, if I'd seen that out of context, my first assumption would've been that they're engaging in fairly unsubtle satire.

I guess I should take this kind of thing more seriously, but it's just so damn hard since they're obviously idiots. They must be literally retarded. I'm using the word "retarded" descriptively there, not as some sort of ableist insult. The people in those photos must have severe cognitive problems, right?

This reminds me a of a video somebody posted here (I think it was here) a few days ago. Mitt Romney was speaking to a crowd, and a heckler interrupted him and challenged him on climate change. Mitt Romney just stood there and smiled as the rest of the crowd started chanting "USA! USA! USA!"

It should be sad and terrifying but it's difficult to do anything other than laugh.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

The family structure has existed, according to certain anthropologists, only since the development of class society. And all accept it was a means of expressing male dominance (and still is). The family structure in most mode(s) of production exists to reinforce said social relations to the mode of production. But when we speak of the family, we tend to refer to the Bourgeois family structure, which is quite exclusive to capitalism. The reason as to why we oppose it is self explanatory, it is bourgeois in nature and exists to reinforce capitalist social relations. This family structure, in which wife and child are both the property of the father, the man, is not limited to simply a classical communist criticism. Indeed sexual liberationists will argue that marriage is a means of alienating and containing our sexual impulses toward each other, rendering women as the property of their husbands, whether this is expressed in a "less oppressive" form or not. It takes not an idiot to realize it is harder for a man to forgive his female mate for cheating than the other way around.

A bit off topic but, one of the reasons we can see the Soviet Union and other Communist states did not completely do away with capitalist social relations resided with the fact that the bourgeois family structure continued to exist.

So it would change to be a new view on marriage? One where there was less patriarchy?

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

What the fuck? Got a cite for that? Because I've nothing I've read from Tech Inc suggests fucking around with people's familial arrangements.

I assumed it was a joke.

[Rafiq]

what a ridiculous statement. tell me what will the new socialist family structure be? neglected kids raised by single mothers with jobs? People just dropping off their newborns, at the collectivised daycare/schools?

As a Marxist I'm not responsible for offering an exact replacement to the bourgeois family structure, I am merely analyzing already existing phenomena. But don't be ridiculous, the family structure wasn't and can not be something that is formed as an expression of the ideas of "creative forefathers". The bourgeois family structure developed in correlation with the development of the capitalist productive forces, not because someone thought it was a solution to the existing feudal family structure. I really don't know why socialism (an ideology) is now something of an exception, that the development of what you call a "socialist family" is not going to be something that will exist in correlation with radical changes in social relations, something we cannot predict, but something that would be the expression our ideas (which are constrained by capitalist social relations) and therefore some kind of "totalitarian" nightmare. That is Ideology at it's purest, not science. If you're really that short sighted that you think the current family structure is the highest manifestation of human social evolution (in terms of the reproduction and production of life) and not something exclusive to capitalist social relations, you still ideologically pressupose bourgeois ideology.

[Rafiq]

So it would change to be a new view on marriage? One where there was less patriarchy?

marriage today in itself is inherently a weapon of bourgeois-class rule. I suspect it would be abolished.

I don't think I'll ever get married. But to those that will, there is nothing inherently counter revolutionary about doing so. Saying otherwise implies that our "collective choices" as citizens can "change things" in the same way buying Starbucks or boycotting walmart will. Sounds like the moral consumer.

[campesino]

I don't see anything bourgeois about the family structure as it is. If this is about one person dominating another in a relationship. Domination of one person by another is common in all areas. domination is institutionalized in in all structures. Factories, universities, military, nomadic hunting/raiding bands. family is a partnership between parents, who are the dominant ones over their children, and this relationship will never change even if you give children to the collective day care, children will be under the authority of the daycare. In capitalism, power is decided by one's relationship to the means of production. in socialism it will be decided by one's relationship to society. In the family it is biologically decided, I agree that one's relationship to the society should also determine if one is to have children i.e if society deems you worthy to create and raise another human being. having and being parents is not bourgeoise.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I don't see anything bourgeois about the family structure as it is. If this is about one person dominating another in a relationship. Domination of one person by another is common in all areas. domination is institutionalized in in all structures. Factories, universities, military, nomadic hunting/raiding bands. family is a partnership between parents, who are the dominant ones over their children, and this relationship will never change even if you give children to the collective day care, children will be under the authority of the daycare. In capitalism, power is decided by one's relationship to the means of production. in socialism it will be decided by one's relationship to society. In the family it is biologically decided, I agree that one's relationship to the society should also determine if one is to have children i.e if society deems you worthy to create and raise another human being. having and being parents is not bourgeoise.

What did I just read? Seriously?

[Ostrinski]

Man, this really is a considerably reactionary country.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I agree that one's relationship to the society should also determine if one is to have children i.e if society deems you worthy to create and raise another human being.

fuck off

[campesino]

I'm not saying gay people can't adopt, i''m saying it is biologically made that adults will always raise children, no matter what the situation, collectivised daycare or families. The statement I made about society deeming if people are worthy enough to have children, is a way the social maintains control over the family unit. I doubt we would all collectively let drug addicts and violent people have children. I think some of you are viruently anti-authority and follow the path of freedom and liberalism. Socialism is about social control over the means of production, not destroying all authority. some of you are charicatures of the left.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Socialism is about eliminating capitalism and the false structures it creates and reinforces within human society. I doubt anyone is interested in dangerous people having control over children, but having some faceless bureaucracy decide whether individuals are fit for reproduction or not sounds an awful lot like systems no one should be interested in returning to.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I'm not saying gay people can't adopt, i''m saying it is biologically made that adults will always raise children, no matter what the situation, collectivised daycare or families. The statement I made about society deeming if people are worthy enough to have children, is a way the social maintains control over the family unit. I doubt we would all collectively let drug addicts and violent people have children. I think some of you are viruently anti-authority and follow the path of freedom and liberalism. Socialism is about social control over the means of production, not destroying all authority. some of you are charicatures of the left.

We're charicatures for being for sexual equality? Its you who's the cartoon character, buddy. You exemplify the "When I'm in charge everything will be different" leftist. Socialiism for you means reorganizing society along lines you feel are appropiate. Thankfully, thats not the way the real world works.
Please reserve a spot for me in one of your gulags.

[thriller]

I'm voting yes because...
I'm homophobic and a total piece of shit.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I'm not saying gay people can't adopt, i''m saying it is biologically made that adults will always raise children, no matter what the situation, collectivised daycare or families. The statement I made about society deeming if people are worthy enough to have children, is a way the social maintains control over the family unit. I doubt we would all collectively let drug addicts and violent people have children. I think some of you are viruently anti-authority and follow the path of freedom and liberalism. Socialism is about social control over the means of production, not destroying all authority. some of you are charicatures of the left.
This is the kind of bollocks that puts genuinely interested individuals off socialism for the rest of their lives.

Authority is useful as a means of organisation, not as a fucking sect of old men in suits we have to worship because they somehow harbour respect for being figures of management.

If socialism is about social-control over the means of production, then why the fuck are you against freedom? If you're for provisional dictator shit, then I'm sorry to break it to you but that is not common ownership over the means of production; it is a class system and an enemy of the left.

The reactionary, apologist, reductionist, rightist shit I see from members of the left makes me sometimes wonder whether they're actual communists in the first place..

[campesino]

@ GourmetPez
hilarious, I'm the social engineer, though it is all of you who want to do away with parents.
@ Choler
it is this definition of socialism that gets all the edgy teenagers involved in the socialist movement and end up creating a mish-mash of idealism and call it socialism. you seem to hold the ideals of spontanaity, and that freedom of all individuals can exist under socialism, that socialism is not organized and directed.

[Yuppie Grinder]

@ GourmetPez
hilarious, I'm the social engineer, though it is all of you who want to do away with parents.
@ Choler
it is this definition of socialism that gets all the edgy teenagers involved in the socialist movement and end up creating a mish-mash of idealism and call it socialism. you seem to hold the ideals of spontanaity, and that freedom of all individuals can exist under socialism, that socialism is not organized and directed.
You know you're losing an argument when you start putting words in people's mouths. Get out of my internet now, please.

[Yuppie Grinder]

@ GourmetPez
hilarious, I'm the social engineer, though it is all of you who want to do away with parents.
@ Choler
it is this definition of socialism that gets all the edgy teenagers involved in the socialist movement and end up creating a mish-mash of idealism and call it socialism. you seem to hold the ideals of spontanaity, and that freedom of all individuals can exist under socialism, that socialism is not organized and directed.
Rather than Choler dogmatically holding on to the ideal of spotaneity, you dogmatically hold on to the ideal of centralized, unitary leadership to the point that it's all socialism means to you.
Also, the nuclear family is not something written in our DNA. Communal families are very much a possible thing.

[campesino]

I dogmatically say the truth, the truth is. authority is inherent in all structures and organizations. to go against it is to create an organization or structure that will fall. You seem to have a hangup with this.
I won't let your daddy issues spoil socialism

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I dogmatically say the truth, the truth is. authority is inherent in all structures and organizations. to go against it is to create an organization or structure that will fall. You seem to have a hangup with this.
I won't let your daddy issues spoil socialism

You're a fucking disgrace, you're worse than sectarian bickering amongst Trotskyists; you're dumber than a Maoist. You have the intellectual capacity of a virus.

Fuck off you sodding prick, and take your human nature with you up that cave and cover behind the deer skin blankets.

[campesino]

You're a fucking disgrace, you're worse than sectarian bickering amongst Trotskyists; you're dumber than a Maoist. You have the intellectual capacity of a virus.

Fuck off you sodding prick, and take your human nature with you up that cave and cover behind the deer skin blankets.

in all seriousness, socialism is about the means of production. not left-wing social engineering. If you think socialism can't exist while a child lives with his parents. Then you need to stop inserting all you resentful feelings into politics and everything you do or think, let go of it already.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Frankly we need to preserve the parental unit in at least some capacities. When the subjectively evil space Reich devastates the planets surface leading all survivors into exile beneath the subterranean labyrinths of the Vril, humanity will need its instinctual tendencies towards organization intact in order to survive its descent into barbarity. Nobody likes an Eloi.

The above scenario has the same likelihood as 19th century communist doctrinaires leading us into a endlessly tranquil and parent free utopia.

[Yuppie Grinder]

in all seriousness, socialism is about the means of production. not left-wing social engineering. If you think socialism can't exist while a child lives with his parents. Then you need to stop inserting all you resentful feelings into politics and everything you do or think, let go of it already.

That's not what anybody has a problem with. Stop putting words in our mouths. It's the "Society should determine if people are allowed to reproduce" and "The nuclear family is written into human nature" shit.

[Jimmie Higgins]

in all seriousness, socialism is about the means of production. not left-wing social engineering. If you think socialism can't exist while a child lives with his parents. Then you need to stop inserting all you resentful feelings into politics and everything you do or think, let go of it already.
And the dimensions of the nuclear family most of us here are talking about are economic in nature. No one is against biological parents hanging out or even happening to like their biological children :D - I think what we want to abolish is marriage and families as an economic unit of organization: autonomous units induvidually responcible for taking care of those not (yet) able to make their own wage.

This would, IMO, liberate the family and romantic parings from economic pressures and a lot of the stresses that cause many kinds of emotional abuse and depression - both as induvidual laborers and as a unit of society. It would make any kind of family a mutual arrangement and thus undercut some of the fundamental reasons that marriages and families sometimes turn into claustrophobic or abusive nightmares. Spouces would not have to worry about becoming homeless if they leave an abusive partner; all those street-kids out there today could just move out into their own appartment or some kind of un-stigmatized youth center; mentally ill people wouldn't be the sole burdon and responcibility of their family alone, but could get full help in order to lead as much of an independant life as possible which means there would be less likelyhood of families shunning children or relatives with problems like this for fear or inability to deal with of the level of responcibility.

Right now, although there is sometimes help for the rich, for the most part all this is put onto the family to deal with. Infirmed parent, unemploed youth, raising children all goes to the family and if that family is economically or otherwise unable to handle it - then it's a "moral failing" of that family.

All that is what should be destroyed, it's the basis of a lot of misary and is not about "love". Destroying the economic character of families would free people to have mutual love.

[#FF0000]

in all seriousness, socialism is about the means of production. not left-wing social engineering. If you think socialism can't exist while a child lives with his parents. Then you need to stop inserting all you resentful feelings into politics and everything you do or think, let go of it already.

haha shit you are stupid, dude.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Honestly, how can some americans be so reactionary. I know some prety fanatic religious people in my country, but even they are not against gay mariage.

America has the last bastions of rural peasantry in the western world, in many ways it's comparable to a "democratic" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) version of modern China or India

(Edited non-factual remark out)

[The Douche]

America has the last bastions of rural peasantry in the western world, in many ways it's comparable to a "democratic" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) version of modern China or India except that the gab between the middle class and the peasantry is even wider.

Dude, what?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I am against gay marriage. And straight marriage. Communists are supposed to be opposed to the family, not trying to reinforce it.

And what do you propose, mister communist, should replace marriage?

[Ravachol]

And what do you propose, mister communist, should replace marriage?

Nothing. Marriage is an institution which has nothing to do with love or the union between two (or more) people.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Nothing. Marriage is an institution which has nothing to do with love or the union between two (or more) people.
I think that's an oversimplification.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think that's an oversimplification.Well I mean in actual practice today, it's not like people are getting married just for doweries and shit, I'm sure their emotions as well as the desire of some LGBTs for marriage is totally legitimate. But as an institution, without capitalism and privite propery and concentrations of wealth, there is really no basis for it. Like for most of human history, people would pair up as long as it made sense on its own terms. If people want to celebrate their pairing, then I'm sure they'll do it, but outside of marriage and family as an institution of class society, what is it? Just a word, a specific name for a relationship? What would be the difference between "marriage" and other commited romantic relationships?

Personally I don't think the end of marriage will be on the table while capitalism still exists - but I do think it will wither away as a concept, first into just social custom with no social real weight and significance, just a pivite celebration, and then probably just begin to disappear as a concept.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Personally I don't think the end of marriage will be on the table while capitalism still exists - but I do think it will wither away as a concept, first into just social custom with no social real weight and significance, just a pivite celebration, and then probably just begin to disappear as a concept.
I quite agree. To my mind, the process has already begun. Though it's not so far advanced that it renders marriage equality unnecessary. It's ironic that social conservatives see marriage equality as a threat.