Prop H8 Updh8

Yes, it's been literally days since Fosco talked to you about Prop H8. Don't worry, there is still Prop H8 news and Fosco is digesting it for you (so you don't have to!). Here are two Prop H8 titbits from the last couple of days:

• Tom Ackerman has a great trick to try on your married straight friends. As Ackerman writes:
  

  I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.
  
  Turns out it’s fun.
  
  Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
  
  She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
  “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
  
  The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,
  
  “How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
  “She’s my wife!”
  “Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”
  
  Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

  Feel free to try this at home. Passive aggressive and funny... Fosco likes.
  
  
• In an NYTimes op-ed piece, Charles M. Blow considers how to sell same-sex marriage to Black people. Blow notes that Black women are likely to be the most hostile toward gay marriage (for a number of reasons, most of them unsurprising). Black women are also more likely to vote than are Black me.
  
  Blow argues that the arguments the gay community has adopted to promote marriage equality are not likely to convince Black women. Rather, he suggests we frame the debate in terms of the health of Black women! Here's the logic:
  

  [B]lacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. [...]
  
  So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage.

  While this is worth a try, Fosco isn't convinced that it will make much of a difference. Really, what woman (of any race) is going to listen to the suggestion that she may be having sex with a closeted homosexual (or secret bisexual)? Blow's logic may make sense, but I just can't imagine any woman believing that his logic applies to her.