Yeet_far
17d ago
You said "Nor do I ever remember hearing anything like that until gay activism started becoming a thing". The 1950s ones are the incidents that happened before gay activism started becoming a thing.
The 1950 to 1970s incidents are why gay activism started becoming a thing.
The wikipedia page has incidents up through 2025, which you would know if you had taken a look at it?
Yeet_far
17d ago
Re: violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBTQ_people_in_the_United_States (see incidents section)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_Scare
https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/alan-turing-the-medical-abuse-of-gay-men/
Just because you weren't aware of it doesn't mean it didn't happen. While straight-up murder was not super common, being cancelled for the crime of existing-while-gay was quite common. Or, in Turing's case, being sentenced by the state to chemical castration.
Just because you didn't see the supression (and why would you?) doesn't mean it wasn't there. If you do any basic research instead of relying on remembered vibes from 50 years ago, it's very well documented.
The hospitals thing isn't gay-exclusive, it's basic HIPPA -- if someone is incapacitated in a hospital, if someone with no paper-trail relationship with them wants to visit them, they can't by default. They particulalry can't if the person's relatives don't want them to, and since gay relationships were either secret (relatives wouldn't know who this person is) or were unapproved by relatives... there were a lot of (fully adult, btw) instances of spouses dying alone. Marriage adds the spouse to the list of allowed visitors by default. Less glamerous, but very important.
Yeet_far
17d ago
Gay marriage, specifically, was about equal rights -- gay couples wanted to be able to, say, hold hands in the street without getting beaten up. Or visit each other in the hospital. Or file taxes jointly. Etc.
The whole point of gay rights was that they didn't want to have to keep in behind closed doors, the same way straight couples don't have to keep it behind closed doors.
They didn't want to have to keep a large chunk of their lives secret.
Pressuring churches to fly rainbow flags isn't really the same thing and I largely agree is overreach. On the other hand, a lot of chuches fly rainbow flags because their congragants actually think that gay rights are good, and that's their right as well.
So, domestic partnerships really aren't the same thing; they're not recognized by the Federal Government, so they don't give a lot of rights. I've had a domestic partnership as a straight couple, and it's not really anything like marriage. You do get some rights! But hardly 'equal'. You only get health insurance from your spouse if their company is nice and allows it, for instance. It's not required.
Theoretically Civil Unions should have actually been "marriage minus the religious aspect". However, that was never really the case in practice: Civil Unions were never recognized by the Federal Government either. This meant that (for example) you can't get a spouse visa with a Civil Union. And still can't file taxes jointly. And if you ended up hospitalized in a state that didn't honor your civil union, you were just as boned as if you didn't have one.
Theoretically if there had been federally recognized Civil Unions that actually had all of the same benefits as marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges would probably have gone very differently. If the anti-gay-marriage people really wanted to preserve marriage for straight couples only, they really ought to have pushed for this, but clearly they didn't.
I strongly suspect if proper, recognized-by-the-federal-government-and-all-states Civil Unions had existed in the 90s (to be clear: Civil Unions have never been recognized by the Federal Government or all states. Not then and not now), we wouldn't have gay marriage today.
As for the religious aspect, there's the simple matter of religious freedom. I am fully on board saying that churches that don't want to marry gay couples shouldn't have to. However, that goes both ways -- churches that do want to marry gay couples should have the right to do so.
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