Marriage Inequality Hurts Real People (paradise, virgin, church, LDS)

[Green Gaia]

Originally Posted by maggie2

Gee, maybe I can't read or I'm missing something, but I don't see where the LDS church is mentioned at all.

If you go to the entire article: Paradise Lost the LDS church is mentioned because Tibby used to be a member.

[Green Gaia]

Originally Posted by beckysoup61

There you go.

Which were all stating her experiences and fears.

[Bishka]

Originally Posted by Maize

Which were all stating her experiences and fears.

I know, I was showing Maggie the places where it mentioned the LDS Church. Althought they keep referring it to it as the "Mormon Church", which is a bit irritating, but I can let that go.

[Green Gaia]

More from the article:

In the spring of 2001, Barbara noticed a heartbeat in her ear. Worried that she had inherited her mother's deafness, she went to a doctor. Dye shot into the arteries around her brain showed that her problem wasn't in her ear, it was a 6mm aneurysm deep in her brain that could rupture at any time.

Tibby was in the kitchen when Barbara's doctor called one day. "I'm very sorry," he told Tibby, a condolence that shook her into the realization that Barbara could die of a stroke. Neurosurgeons in Richmond and Baltimore recommended surgery, which would involve removing a part of Barbara's skull, cutting into her brain to reach the aneurysm and putting a clip on it to seal it off. Such surgeries carry risks, including paralysis, memory problems and confusion. Barbara was afraid of the possibility of brain damage and decided not to have the surgery. For a while afterward, she felt panicky. Will I die tonight? What will Tib do if she finds me? But eventually different thoughts took hold. I better live every minute, she decided. She had played guitar before -- bluegrass and gospel, mostly -- but now she played every night. She brought more color into her art, her clothes. And because stress can cause an aneurysm to break, Barbara realized that it was medically necessary not to let her blood boil over things like people "tolerating me" (one of her pet peeves: the word "tolerance").

She and Tibby started to lose patience with discrimination, with paying two sets of health care bills, with being denied spousal discounts when they rented a car. But they said and did nothing. They are uncomfortable with being singled out as "a minority" or being associated with in-your-face groups such as Dykes on Bikes or ACT UP. The gay rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s mostly passed them by. It took the AIDS epidemic to get them to their first public gay rights event, the huge 1993 gay pride march in Washington. Walking through streets filled with thousands of gays and lesbians, they felt moved but very afraid: of being attacked, of being cursed at, of winding up in a television frame that could affect their jobs and friendships. That was the last gay pride event they went to.

A decade later, when images of gay couples getting married in California and Massachusetts started appearing on television, Barbara and Tibby say they felt pride but not envy; they had no desire to get married. When other gay people in Fredericksburg started applying for marriage licenses on Valentine's Day as a protest, Barbara and Tibby didn't join them. They view marriage as primarily a religiously sanctioned institution and harbor painful memories about their experiences with what they call a theocracy in Utah. It's unlikely they would have paid much attention to Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act if they hadn't been so worried that it could keep them apart during a medical emergency. The law infuriated them. "The way Virginia is treating us, what they are saying to us, I feel like it's being in an abusive house," Tibby says.

"I'm saying, let's get out of this house."

[maggie2]

My apologies. I didn't read the full article, only what had been posted on this thread. I truly am sorry that I seem to have spoken out of turn.

[pdoel]

Funny. I've read a few posts from LDS members asking to please keep all threads from turning into comments about homosexuality.

The same may apply here. This is a thread discussing the rights (or lack thereof) of homosexual couples. Not the LDS Church.

[Sunstone]

There is something very distasteful about ideologies that are anti-people, any people, without reasonable justification. This very much includes ideologies that are anti-homosexual. I believe our ideologies ought to be both humane and sane (which might be the same thing). If an ideology opposes a group of people, the burden of proof should be on it, and should be a heavy burden. After all, in the end, people are more important than any ideology.

[michel]

Originally Posted by beckysoup61

Yes, but I still think the article had biased to it. I lived in Utah for seven years, and as a not so good girl in the LDS Church I felt none of that. Yes, it's changed but I still felt the labeled the LDS Church as this big bad monster.

Becky, someone has to be a big bad monster....that't the way of the world. Had it been a Roman Catholic Church, or most other churches for that matter, the scenario would just have been the same.

Please don't take this as "another attack on LDS"; in my time on this forum, I have noted a distinct defensiveness on the part of some LDS members, and I can understand it, having seen how your faith is clouted at for being 'slightly different' from the 'norm'.

This is, in a way, sadly reflective of the bigotry and shallowness of us all in general. here is a case of one group who are being permanently being beaten up, shown up for having beaten up another group. Like I said, you can change the names, you can change the places, and the story would still be the same.


Oh heck, this has prompted me to go and start an absurd thread........oh well, I am used to making a fool of myself!