I came across some interesting thoughts about gay marriage from two straight bloggers today.

First, Ian Ayres from Freakonomics compares marriage discrimination to racial segregation:

I view the legal exclusion of gay people from marriage as morally wrong; a form of invidious discrimination. Many people hold different substantive views about marriage equality.

But in this post, I want to focus on a different question: How should people respond to the legal option of taking a benefit that is invidiously denied others? It’s a question that transcends the specific issue of same-sex marriage. You can also ask, for example, whether it would ever have been appropriate for whites to drink from a “whites only” water fountain.

When I ask my students the water fountain question, very few whites say they would drink. But at the same time, heterosexual students who strongly oppose the marriage exclusion nonetheless, like me, choose to take the benefits of marriage that are, to our minds, denied others.

If I were straight and wanted to get married, I don’t think I’d hold out for marriage equality. But that’s just me. I’ve never been much of an activist.

Meanwhile, Clever Dude wonders if government should be involved in marriage at all:

Should the government provide ANY benefits to married couples, regardless of sexual orientation?

I’m questioning the whole foundation of government involvement in the institution of marriage. You see, since marriage just boils down to a contract, much like a business agreement, does government involvement in marriage go against our capitalistic foundation? In a capitalistic society, free enterprise and the market should determine the success or failure of ventures and contractual agreements. Marriages are certainly ventures between two parties, and marriages are contracts. Would you agree?

Personally, I’m fine with any sort of marriage, as long as it’s the same for everyone.

From the Guppie Life

Straight People Think About Gay Marriage, Too

Stephen J. Dubner over at the Freakonomics blog asked a bunch of “smart people,” What Is the Future of Suburbia?

One of those smart people is Gary Gates, PhD. He thinks the suburbs are going to become very, very gay.

Suburbs, home ownership, and marriage — what’s left but the kids? In 1990, fewer than one in ten same-sex couples had children. Today, it’s more like one in five. In states like Mississippi, South Dakota, Alaska, South Carolina, and Louisiana, it’s one in three. The gay-by boom is alive and well in small town and suburban America. And these new parents are largely non-white. African-American and Latino/a lesbians and gay men are two to three times more likely than their white counterparts to be raising kids.

So back to the question at hand — my vision of suburbia circa 2050. Lesbian and gay families will be a much more visible community fixture. They’ll probably be married, own their homes, be raising a few kids, and will very likely not be white.

Cool.

From the Guppie Life

What’s the Future of Suburbia? Gay Families.

The blogosphere is flush with discussion of Katy Perry’s hit single, “I Kissed a Girl.”

Here’s the vid, in case you’ve been living under a rock, or I dunno, listening to actual grown-up music:

As soon as the song hit the airwaves, politically correct homos everywhere cried “Homophobia!”

The offending lyrics seem to suggest that girl-on-girl kissing is “not what good girls do.”

I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight

…

It’s not what
Good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets
So confused
Hard to obey

Silly me, at first I thought the whole cheating-on-your-boyfriend bit was what Katy meant by “not how they should behave.” I didn’t think she was commenting on homosexuality itself.

But one of her other songs is called “Ur So Gay,” about her hated ex-boyfriend. The case against Ms. Perry doesn’t look very good.

I’ve seen different reactions from other gay bloggers.

The New Gay interviewed Ms. Perry about her songs “I Kissed a Girl” and “Ur So Gay.” Turns out she hasn’t kissed a girl. She just sings about it. She’s flirting with the idea of flirting with lesbianism:

The New Gay: Have you ever actually kissed a girl?

Katy Perry: I think I will, I’m holding out for Megan Fox.

The New Gay: So you haven’t actually kissed a girl. Then the whole song is a fantasy?

Katy Perry: Yeah, it’s fantasy, it’s a song about curiosity.

MSNBC then commented on the New Gay interview in article about Katy Perry’s homophobic hits:

The New Gay conducted a confrontational interview that had a rattled Perry actually say, “My closest friends happen to be gay.” She wasn’t being ironic. Celebrity blogger Mollygood pointed out Perry comes from a religious upbringing (she used to record Christian music as Katy Hudson) and in her New Gay interview, Perry talks about how in her “strict, suppressed household,” homosexuality was considered “wrong.” But as Mollygood also says, that’s not so far removed from the message she’s sending with her hit songs, whether she realizes it or not.

But others aren’t so quick to hate on Katy. Fannie of “Ask Fannie” and Below the Belt fame thinks maybe the fact that a song about girls kissing girls hit #1 in the U.S. signifies how we’ve come:

Now, I will be the first to be critical of Perry’s brazen capitalization of queer women’s identities and lives for her own personal gain, and without getting truly lumped with any of those pesky social disadvantages to actually being queer, like homophobia and discrimination. Perry carefully navigates the subtle line between queer transgression and pandering to heterosexual male voyeurism which I have always found oddly aroused by gratuitous displays of lesbianism. However, for all her vices, could Perry’s one-hit-lesbo-wonder be a benchmark in queer inclusion in popular culture?

I’m torn. I want to believe that Katy Perry was just ignorant, not purposefully homophobic. But she’s got the backing of a major music label… Surely their P.R. department sent her a memo… “Hey Katy, Your songs are full of hate. LYLAS! XOXO!”

What do you think? Katy Perry—neo-conservative undercover operative on mission to spread hate—or pretty white girl who doesn’t know any better and wants to make a lot of money?

From the Guppie Life

Is Katy Perry Homophobic?