Same-sex marriage a distraction: Pilger
Australian expatriate journalist and author John Pilger has dismissed US president Barack Obama’s declaration of support for marriage equality as a ploy to distract the public from his administration’s overseas human rights record.
“When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits … the mass murder was barely news,” Pilger wrote in the New Statesman earlier this month.
“Same-sex marriage is [a] distraction. No ‘issue’ diverts attention as successfully as this … Legal obstacles should not prevent people marrying each other, regardless of gender. But … bourgeois acceptability is not yet a human right.”
Pilger wrote that the rights historically associated with marriage were property rights, making marriage a capitalist institution.
“Elevating the ‘right’ of marriage above the right to life and real justice is as profane as seeking allies among those who deny life and justice to so many, from Afghanistan to Palestine,” Pilger wrote.
Pilger wrote that it was hypocritical of Obama to support marriage equality while holding accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning in custody, “terrorising a gay man whose courage should be an inspiration to all,” and accused the Obama administration of smearing Manning over his sexuality.
Australian Marriage Equality campaign director Rodney Croome said Pilger’s views on marriage were outdated.
“I’m deeply disappointed that someone like John Pilger, who has shown so much concern for the oppressed and disadvantaged, doesn’t understand the importance of marriage equality for recognising the full humanity of LGBTI people,” Croome said.
“If, as Pilger claims, same-sex marriage is a way for the Obama administration to divert attention from America’s wars and economic problems then why has it taken Obama so long to ‘evolve’?
“Indeed, if we apply Pilger’s logic, support for black civil rights from US presidents Kennedy and Johnson was a bad thing because it distracted from American involvement in Vietnam — and that is patently absurd.
“Like some other left-wing commentators his age, Pilger retains an outdated, negative view of marriage which blinkers him to the importance of marriage equality, not just for LGBTI people, but for establishing clear boundaries between church and state.”
You May Also Like
Even if Obama ‘used’ it as a distraction, it doesn’t change the fact that same sex marriage is an important issue. No logic I can see precludes intelligent people thinking about two different issues at once.. and if there was no media coverage about the bombings – blame the media!
It is also the right-wing opponents of marriage equality jumping up and down banging their bibles that make this a big deal – once marriage equality is realised it will cease to be news! So I’m not really sure of his point.. of course it is tragic that atrocities in other countries go unnoticed, but it’s not a zero sum game and it’s not as simple as swapping one focus for another. The nature of human beings is they tend to care more about things happening close to them or directly affecting them, so even if Obama hadn’t ‘evolved’ you would probably find that some other issue directly affecting Americans would be more prominent in American news. Sad as that is.
Excellent point about feminist ideology Geoffrey. As perverse as it is, it might explain why those begging to be married are predominately male.
Again, we play the person rather than the issue. Why is is Pilger’s age an issue as raised by Croome?
Croome would surely remember the feminist ideology in the 70s and 80s that argued marriage was an oppresive institution and I would dare say many,such as myself, would STILL argue that marriage is an oppressive institution tied up with property rights.
Have we become so insular as a community, that anyone expressing a dissenting voice is shut-down before they can argue their point?
Pilger is not proposing to go up to straight couples about to wed and shout “Stop, there are more important things”. No, his insult is spared for loving gay couples.
Pilger and Joe de Bruyn agree – there are other more important issues than same-sex marriage!
That, and I think that Pilger and other fundamentalist leftists tend to focus attention solely on economic inequality and ignore other dimensions of oppression, as if there’s some sort of artificial seperation between civil and human rights and economic and social rights. There isn’t.