While we're here and talking about gender...

[highlyeccentric]

You should all go read penknife's well-thought out post about why intelligent normal people still wind up voting for Prop 8. Even if you don't care much about California, it's a sensible breakdown of some of the reasons why people who aren't completely rabid fundies still won't come to the party on gay marriage. Penknife's suggested reasons are three:

1. Religious culture, and particularly a lack of understanding of how non-religious marriage works.
2. Gay adoption rights getting messed in with people's experience of divorce and so on. Of course kids need a mum and a dad, I needed *mine* and one or other of them left me.
3. (This is the one which really stands out, so allow me to quote:)

3) The related issue is that same-sex marriage challenges a lot of Americans' ideas about gender. One of the most common questions artaxastra got asked a lot when talking to straight voters about same-sex marriage is "but how would you know who's supposed to do what?" We're not talking about sex, here: we're talking about who does the dishes and mows the lawn and changes flat tires and puts children to bed and cooks and pays taxes and fixes plumbing and kills spiders and gives Valentine's Day gifts and remembers anniversaries.

Yes, lots of men do all of these things and lots of women do all of these things, but there are still gendered expectations in marriage, and I think it goes profoundly against many people's understanding of what marriage is supposed to be for there to be two wives or two husbands, because for many people these are not even remotely similar roles -- they are complementary but very different roles. You have to have one of each. And the more equal men and women are in the workplace, the more the family becomes the only place where people can play out strongly gendered roles and feel that they can be proud, not just of being a good person, but of being a good woman or a good man.

We're not telling people not to play those roles. The fact that a marriage with traditional gender roles isn't the only option doesn't make it not an option. But accepting that means accepting that there are multiple ways of doing marriage right, and I think that's really hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.

Go on, shoo. Read it.