{"id":1204,"date":"2005-06-20T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2005-06-20T13:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/06\/20\/gay-marriage-virus\/"},"modified":"2005-06-20T09:36:11","modified_gmt":"2005-06-20T13:36:11","slug":"gay-marriage-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/06\/20\/gay-marriage-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay marriage virus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Interesting article in the Times Magazine<\/a>,
\nabout the Christianist “real problem” with gay marriage. 
\nUnsurprisingly, they believe homosexuality to be a chosen, infectious
\nbehavior that, like a disease, has to be eradicated.  <\/p>\n

(Interestingly, Mark Jordan, a religious historian at Emory University, has written a history<\/a> that shows , among other things, that this belief in the viral nature of homosexuality has existed for nearly 1000 years.)<\/p>\n

What I found more interesting was the concluding bit of the
\narticle.  If love is seen as hate, and hate is seen as love, then we’ve all lost already.<\/p>\n

\n

\nThat means changing hearts. How difficult that will be was illustrated
\nby a single vignette. When I met Polyak, she told me how, when she
\nfirst testified before a legislative committee, an anti-gay-marriage
\nactivist, a woman, confronted her with bitter language, asking her why
\nshe was ”doing this” to the woman’s children and grandchildren.
\nPolyak said the encounter left her shaken. A few days later, as I sat
\nin Evalena Gray’s Christmas-lighted basement office, she told me a
\nstory of how during the same testimony she approached a blond lesbian
\nand talked to her about the effect that gay marriage would have on her
\ngrandchildren. ”Then I hugged her neck,” she said, ”and I said, ‘We
\nlove you.’ I was kind of consoling her to some extent, out of
\ncompassion.” <\/p>\n

I realized I was hearing about the same encounter from both sides. What
\nwas expressed as love was received as something close to hate. That’s a
\nhard gap to bridge. \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article in the Times Magazine, about the Christianist “real problem” with gay marriage.  Unsurprisingly, they believe homosexuality to be a chosen, infectious behavior that, like a disease, has to be eradicated.  (Interestingly, Mark Jordan, a religious historian at Emory University, has written a history that shows , among other things, that this belief in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}