Posted on 04/09/2004 7:50:17 PM PDT by madprof98
Georgians don't much like being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. As if we needed more evidence of this willful backwardness, please refer to the March 31 vote by the General Assembly that will sully the November ballot with a statewide referendum to ban gay marriage.
This little piece of cultural apartheid may have been hatched in the dankest corner of the Christian Coalition's basement, but make no mistake: It took an unholy alliance of lawmakers -- Republican and Democrat, white and black, male and female, old and young -- to finally pull it off.
Far from being politics as usual, the controversy that raged over Senate Resolution 595 was a debate about hate that many gay Georgians couldn't help but take personally.
"It's very demoralizing to turn on the TV every day and be told that you're not worth anything, that your feelings don't matter," says Jack Pelham, a 42-year-old grade-school teacher in DeKalb County. "I've never thought of leaving Georgia before, but if the constitutional amendment passes, I don't want to live here."
Why is it that every time Georgia looks as if it's ready to shed its grits-and-Deliverance image, it starts to slide back into the primordial ooze that runs between such Deep South cultural backwaters as Alabama and (shudder) Mississippi?
No, make that scramble back. Fact is, Georgia's frequent status as a national embarrassment is a problem of our own making. While Georgians complain about their children's rank at the bottom of the SAT heap, they have no one but themselves to blame for electing a state school chief who believes it's her sacred duty to strike all mention of evolution from science classes.
It's our own state representatives who voted to prohibit adult women from getting their privates pierced. It was our popular, duly elected state attorney general who vigorously and successfully defended Georgia's notoriously outdated sodomy law for years.
And, of course, who can forget the excruciating flag flap?
Although Gov. Roy Barnes made enemies among various voter groups, it's accepted wisdom that the single transgression most responsible for getting Barnes bounced from office was his snatching away Georgia's totem of intolerance, the Confederate battle flag.
Barnes wasn't about to put such a nasty, divisive issue up for a popular referendum. Why was it that no halfway reasonable politician wanted to let rank-and-file Georgians decide whether their state flag should continue to advertise bigotry? Because they'd vote to keep it, that's why, and where would that leave us?
Basically, it would leave us close to where we are now: a disgrace to the South, a laughingstock to the nation, a cautionary example to the Democratic Party, a pariah to industry. We're a state bitterly divided between rural and urban, fundamentalist and rationalist. In other words, we're seriously f*cked.
Did we expect better?
In his momentary best seller, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, U.S. Sen. Zell Miller argues that Northern liberals don't understand the Southern mindset. Moreover, they shouldn't try.
These highfalutin Yankees, they come down here with their talk of environmental protection, gun control, a woman's right to choose -- they just don't get that we Southerners ain't having none of it, Miller contends.
"Howard Dean knows as much about the South as a hog knows about Sunday," the congressman announced on "Meet the Press" in a typical trashing of the then-Democratic front-runner.
It's discomfiting to think that Miller may be right -- that the South remains happily stuck in its own 19th-century time warp of gun-totin', God-fearing bigots -- and woe be to he who tries to lead it into the light of the modern day.
Of course, the pundits among us can point out that the whole sordid political tussle over gay marriage is part of a carefully plotted, national GOP smoke screen, a cynical ploy whose primary goal is to goose Republican voters to the polls. That, since gay marriage already is prohibited by Georgia law, it really won't result in any big changes.
True to an extent, but that analysis overlooks the psychological damage that has already been done -- and will be done to all of us before this debacle is over. And we're not just talking about being made the butt of hillbilly jokes by Jay Leno.
The Christian Coalition's contention that we're in the midst of a culture war may be more true for Georgia than it is in other regions. Because Georgia, like the wider South, has a deeply ingrained culture of discrimination that lies just beneath the surface.
It's also true that in wars, even cultural ones, people get hurt. The battle over gay marriage is no exception.
"This wasn't about party; it was about denying people a right," says Mike Horton, outreach director for the Georgia chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, the country's largest gay and lesbian GOP organization. "I've tried to understand the vote from a political point of view, but it still amounts to someone f*cking with my life."
To Jeff Graham, executive director of the Atlanta-based AIDS Survival Project, last week's vote -- beyond merely pandering to right-wing Christian constituents -- bore the sting of a hate crime.
"We really feel like we've been kicked in the stomach," he says. "It was like coming out all over again and having people say, 'You disgust me and I want nothing to do with you.'"
Graham, 39, explains that he and his partner of 15 years first thought seriously about marriage a decade ago when the Hawaii Legislature was debating the issue. Marriage suddenly seemed a realistic goal, something to be wished for. In recent years, they had been encouraged by what looked like progress.
"We think we've made such strides in Georgia -- we've got gay politicians, gay business leaders, gay church leaders," Graham says. "Then we see a vote like last week's and we realize, 'People really hate us.'"
Perhaps it was foolish to expect more.
Perhaps that's not a good path to success in politics.
They do disgust me and I do want nothing to do with them. This is how the predominant culture in a society influences and determines what is accepted and not accepted within the social group. Get over it - it's life. And yes, thinking about what you do disgusts me - but not as much as the thought that gays define themselves as humans by what they do behind closed doors in a bedroom.
Sick and sad.
Dead lie.
Less than 10% say their vote (against him) was over the flag.
The liberals don't want to admit it, but THAT is the truth.
Yes, I have. Read one of her articles.
Well, it became the 21st century 1/01/01. That was awhile ago.
please refer to the March 31 vote by the General Assembly that will sully the November ballot with a statewide referendum to ban gay marriage.
Even BILL KLINTON of all people signed a defense of marriage act.
"It's very demoralizing to turn on the TV every day and be told that you're not worth anything, that your feelings don't matter,"
Feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings????
such Deep South cultural backwaters as Alabama and (shudder) Mississippi?
What's wrong with Alabama and Mississippi? From what I've heard lately, a lot of people are moving there, particularly on the gulf coast which is supposed to be a real nice area. While Georgians complain about their children's rank at the bottom of the SAT heap, they have no one but themselves to blame for electing a state school chief who believes it's her sacred duty to strike all mention of evolution from science classes.
I took the ACT, but I don't remember any evolution questions on it. Go figure.
Georgia's totem of intolerance, the Confederate battle flag.
If that's the biggest form of 'intolerance', you all are in very good shape actually.
Because they'd vote to keep it, that's why, and where would that leave us?
And that's their choice. So what.
a laughingstock to the nation,
We got our own problems here.
a cautionary example to the Democratic Party
@#!^ the dems.
a pariah to industry.
Huh? Then why is Georgia so fastly growing?
U.S. Sen. Zell Miller argues that Northern liberals don't understand the Southern mindset. Moreover, they shouldn't try.
As a Midwestern Yankee conservative, he's right. Hell, I don't claim to understand it since I never lived there. And the South isn't the only area the Coastal liberals don't get.
These highfalutin Yankees, they come down here with their talk of environmental protection, gun control, a woman's right to choose -- they just don't get that we Southerners ain't having none of it, Miller contends.
Son, it ain't just the Southerners that don't like that crap. Gun grabbers aren't popular here either. The wrong type of environmental stuff puts us out of work, and this is a pro-life state for the most part.
It's discomfiting to think that Miller may be right -- that the South remains happily stuck in its own 19th-century time warp of gun-totin', God-fearing bigots
What in the blue hell does pro-life, pro-2a and pro-jobs have to do with being a bigot? NOTHING! What's that term Southerners have for people like this? Scalawags?.
'People really hate us.'"
I don't hate gays. Personally I think govt should get out of marriage altogether, as it is a religious institution(and Catholics actually don't recognize 'civil marriage' among its parishioners to begin with). I do believe in minding one's own business. The term 'get a room' is used for a reason. What you do in your house is none of my damn business. I don't want it to be 'my business' by it getting in my face either.
What an idiot. Gay marriage has never been legal in Georgia, so what's his point?
Thank you for saying that.
I'm a native Georgian, born and bred, so let me "address this issue"--
For the last 17 years, my wife & I have lived next door to a "woman who prefers other women."
( I am not attempting to be cute or coy- she has never described herself as gay or homosexual, or lesbian, so I do not use those terms to define her-- nonetheless, having known her for years prior to moving here, I am well aware of her proclivities )
She is nothing like the weird creatures you see on TV who are claimed to represent the Gay Community-- just a somewhat frumpy, middle-aged and middle-class businesswoman whose "partners" over the years have been other adult women.
She's a good neighbor, quiet, minds her own business, but always willing to lend a hand if you need it.
Frankly and bluntly, neither I or my wife care what she and another adult do in private- it is not any of our business, nor should it be.
I have lived all my life with the bigotry directed against Southerners by people who know nothing about the South other than what they think they learned from TV or the movies, and it gets really tiresome.
The family who lives across the street from us is black... and they are nice folks.
I grew up on an island where about a third of the population were black folks who were descendants of slaves from the great plantations once common here- and I will tell you this-- you do yourself no favors hating your neighbors for no good reason, like the color of their skin. When you grow up in a mixed community like I did, you learn to ignore superficial differences, and try to get along with your neighbors.
What I really care about is how people treat me and those dear to me- not what they look like, or do away from the public eye.
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