Dan Savage ticked me off this week. Again. Rather than assume he's wrong, I'm going to put it out there to this progressive community: How many of you have been willing to take the pledge?
The pledge I'm talking about is this: I am not married (I'm a divorced heterosexual woman). I've decided, however, that I will not marry until my gay friends can legally wed. Friends of mine are currently suing the state of New York for the right to wed, and my hope is that I'll be dancing at their wedding(s) sometime in the near future. But I feel strongly enough about this that I'm willing to give up my legal right to marry until it's guaranteed to all.
There is no need to go over this heavily trodden ground again: privacy rights in this country are under attack--daily. If the theocon/rightwing nutjobs have their way, Big Brother will be sitting in our bedrooms taking notes. No vibrators, no sodomy, no Plan B contraception, no stroke books, nothing that doesn't look like reproductive sex. (And don't even get me started on the myriad other ways that the busy bodies want to stick their noses in my vagina or any of my other orifices.)
But I want to send Dan Savage a letter, pointing out to him that while he may feel that gay people are fighting these fights alone, a lot of us (Hello, Dan? Women--You know, the ones with uteruses? Some of us are more than aware of the issues at hand.) are doing whatever we can to fight the erosion of privacy in this country.
I know damn well that if gays continue to lose rights in this country, that I'll be going down with the same fucking ship.
So, an informal poll for the heterosexual members of DailyKos. How many of you have taken the pledge? And, if you're already married, what are you doing to fight the erosion of privacy rights in this country?
As a more general discussion open to everybody, I'd love to hear your ideas for how to continue to fight for these issues. I'm about ready to stand on the street corners and scream, and some days, I wonder if that would be productive. What do you think?