Heteronormaholes On the Prowl! Reach out to your congress reps! February 21, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Take action.Tags: being single, benefits of marriage, feral cats, fiction, marriage mythology, national healthy marriage resource center, no friends, Rachel's Musings
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A couple years ago, I fed, spayed, and removed an abcess from the tail of a very scared little tabby kitten whose mama had disappeared. I found a home for Fiction with my neighbors, to whom she is a delight. She also comes by every day for snuggles and I’m sure her purr therapy has had added years on to my life.
So why isn’t there a massive ad campaign to encouraging people to improve their well-being by saving and socializing feral cats? Because this hobby isn’t right or comfortable for everyone! DUH. So why is the federal government funding an ad campaign to promote the hobby of marriage? Because the government is Severely Duh-Impaired, that’s why:
Rachel’s post alerted Onely to the federally funded campaign to encourage marriage, as described in this USA Today article. According to the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, which is spearheading the campaign in response to falling marriage rates, “Young people want ‘happily ever after,’ but lack skills to make marriage work.”
Um, so why not explore some different version of ‘happily ever after’? Because according to NHMRC, apparently none exists. Marriage is not only a panacaea, but the only panacaea (oh man, am I an excellent speller or what?).
Here’s an easy way to find your Congressperson and write them an email directly! Rachel has some good talking points you could include in your note. Here is how I commented on the USA Today piece. Look, I have no friends!
Onely (0 friends, send message) wrote:4m ago
I am astounded that everyone (uh, the government) is automatically assuming that falling marriage rates are a problem. I agree with the article: “Whether or not it constitutes a problem depends on broader, and contested, propositions about marriage in relation to the common good.” Absolutely. And if you read the studies correctly, marriage has no implicit value for the common good, except for the artificial privileges we assign to it. Marisa Martineau is right that the government needs to focus on “the disparities between married and unmarried people” and ask not how we can get more people to marry, but how we can achieve parity and social support for all varieties of family units and single people. Marriage has certainly not proven itself to be the way to accomplish this.
-CC
Onely.Org 
In Minnesota, a county humane society just euthanized 120 cats found living in one home. No one had a chance to help, even though Animal Rights Coalition put out an immediate offer to help. The Humane Society claimed the offer came in “too late.” They stated that the cats were diseased & not litter box trained so they made the decision for safety reasons. A lot of people are up-in-arms. I personally don’t believe that there wasn’t one cat worth rescuing.
My cat (who was a rescue by-the-way), is the most incredibly intuitive, warm, loving being who makes life worth living. She was a feral cat taken in & litter trained at almost 2 years old. As far as marriage, I know gay folks who want it. As far as I’m concerned, they can have it, I just don’t know that it’s right for me.
Still Onely, I definitely don’t see either how all 120 cats were unsaveable. Ridiculous.
Re marriage, I don’t think that gay people should *have* to want marriage in order to get the same rights as heterosexual married couples. The rights and respect should be available to all of us, regardless of pairing preferences (or non-pairing, as the case may be.) Oops, Fiction is here, I have to go! = )
CC
Do they realize that they’re also promoting the hobby of divorce? Sheez!
I love the broader definition of family that I live my life by. Family are the people around you and the people in your life who show you undying support and love. I’d like to see these kinship ties of all kinds recognized in our culture. My secret way of doing this is by calling people Aunt and Uncle and Sister and Cousin because that is what they are to me even if there is no legal or genetic relationship.
Love is love! Lets focus on that!
I’ve been friends with people through their 1st marriage and I’ll most likely still be here through their future marriage(s).
Onely I absolutely love everything you stand for.
Thanks Janelle! We love hearing that because it makes it so much easier to sit down at the computer again to post, after a long day of “real” work. = ) CC
There are so many unbelievable things about this campaign, but one of the more unbelievable things is that it’s not just to promote marriage, but to promote marriage TO 18-30 YEAR-OLDS! Hello??? Does anyone else find this extremely bizarre??? This is the government saying that getting married before you’re 30, and preferably before you’re 20, is better for you (and society) than, oh I don’t know, going to college, going to grad school, establishing your career, joining the Peace Corps, and any of the millions of other things young people do that benefit themselves and their communities that they may be less likely to do if they were married. And also, hello, can you IMAGINE being in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and still liking the guy you liked at 18!?!?! Sure it happens, but dude, I wouldn’t want to find out first hand. At 18, I’d fall for anyone with long hair!
” At 18, I’d fall for anyone with long hair!”
Brilliant!
At 18, I would have fallen for ANYONE!
I didn’t realize this was aimed at young folks. I personally find that not only counter productive but disgusting. What decade are we in? This might have been good advice in the dark ages when people only lived to 40 but in our day and age its just not wise to marry so young!
Uhhhhhggghg. This thing is grooooossssss.
That’s true Singultionary, my first year of college I had a crush on a different guy every day!
Next thing you know, the government will be using our tax dollars to promote purity balls and not kissing until marriage (though I suppose if you get married at 18, it all works out…)
Argh, Lauri, I was forced to go google “purity ball” to find out what you were talking about, and now I wish I could have remained ignorant—ick ick ick ick ick.
-Christina
Purity Balls are the single most horrifying thing going on in America today. Dads making 5 and 6 year old girls sign contracts that they’ll basically turn over all their marriage, sex, and reproductive rights to their fathers. Girls getting married when they are 18 or 19 years old to older men they barely know and have never even been on a date with.
I know this is a little off-topic from the direction of the other comments, but I just wanted to say that I think the government’s pro-marriage stance evolved to encourage reproduction to help guarantee continued economic growth. They’re not in it because it benefits us but because it benefits the corporate bigwigs they serve. To keep the capitalist machine running smoothly, they hand out perks in the form of legal protections to married couples so the populace will feel compelled to marry and have more children. As long as our country is ruled by big business, lawmakers will fight back against our attempts to legitimize singleness.
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Very creativee post