Hey there CoraCora, welcome to the group! I shall add your name to the list now :). Generally though, in Other Clubs you're not meant to just post "I'd like to join" without saying something that contributes to the discussion - even if that just means telling us a little about yourself.
So, please, tell us about yourself! Are you gay, bi, trans, something else? or are you questioning what you are? Or maybe you know someone who is in the LGBT community and want to show your support? Give us a bit of an insight into yourself :D
voltianqueen said:
Earlier my mom was talking about how there should be different words for same-sex spouses rather than husband and wife, so there's no confusion. I told her when a girl says she has a wife, it should be pretty clear, but she thought it wasn't because she once met a girl who referred to her partner as "husband," and then my mom felt embarrassed when she met the husband that she had asked so many questions about her assuming she was a man. I can understand that being an awkward situation, but yeah.. I dunno. It seems that most people just say husband or wife or partner or something, and personally I don't think that there's a need for new words, but Mom seems to think so, so .... lol. What do you think about that? :P
We don't need to go inventing new words. 'Husband' and 'wife' are what we should be called, because when you get married that's what you become. It's as simple as that. The reason we can't have different words is because that implies a separation between homosexual and heterosexual couples - and separate is not equal. Different words come with different connotations. If we allow society to believe that we are different in any way from just any regular hetero couple, then we might as well just call the whole thing off, because what was it all for? We are fighting for marriage, not a separate quarantined version for marriage.
Not to mention the confusion that would cause on official forms. When you're filling out details for something like your emergency contact and you have to tick a box indicating their relation to you, the option will say "Husband/Wife" - so what would we tick? 'Friend'? 'Partner'? It's insulting. When I get married, I'm going to refer to my husband as exactly that - regardless of what the official term might be.
@Scarf/Swiftsign - here's the way I see it. There are two ways people fight for equal rights: there is the way SwiftSign fights, which is essentially a results-based strategy where we do what needs to be done to get the rights for everybody as quickly as we can. This is my attitude as well; I can see that society is only just becoming OK with gay people and I can see things happening which will in the end result in everybody getting equal rights (including trans people, since the rights gay people get could only logically be extrapolated to them). The good part about this type of fighting is that it's safe. We're not rocking the boat; we're doing what we have to do and it's fairly likely that one way or the other, in the end it's going to run smoothly. The bad part about it is that it could be seen as 'settling' for less than the community as a whole deserves because while everybody shares in the equal rights, it's only the gay people that get to experience the shift in public attitude that comes along with it.
Then there's Scarf's way, which basically refuses to settle. It's a more indignant and aggressive approach which refuses to take anybody's crap and doesn't leave anybody behind. It's arguably the better and more noble way to think because after all, we
all deserve equality and why should we have to follow what society thinks is right in order to achieve what is actually right? But the downside to it is that it is way more risky because if we come on too strong to the general public then we run the risk of alienating them, because trying to change their attitudes toward everything at once is more likely to spook them and get them off our side. In the end it's a choice between reality and idealism. Not everybody is willing to be enough of a risk-taker to adopt the ideal.