Contra las sociedades de convivencia (1)

Andrew Sullivan publicó en The New Republic porqué está en contra de arreglos legales de unión que no sean el matrimonio civil, y entre otras cosas cuenta algo que ya me había llamado la atención: es legal que asesinos, delicuentes, presos, enfermos... se casen con quien quieran, pero es revelador que la raya sea puesta con los homosexuales....

Sullivan escribe: "...Marriage, under any interpretation of American constitutional law, is among the most basic civil rights. "Separate but equal" was a failed and pernicious policy with regard to race; it will be a failed and pernicious policy with regard to sexual orientation. The many advances of recent years--the "domestic partnership" laws passed in many cities and states, the generous package of benefits finally granted in Hawaii, the breakthrough last week in Vermont--should not be thrown out. But neither can they be accepted as a solution, as some straight liberals and gay pragmatists seem to want. In fact, these half-measures, far from undermining the case for complete equality, only sharpen it. For there are no arguments for civil union that do not apply equally to marriage. To endorse one but not the other, to concede the substance of the matter while withholding the name and form of the relationship, is to engage in an act of pure stigmatization. It risks not only perpetuating public discrimination against a group of citizens but adding to the cultural balkanization that already plagues American public life. This essay is not intended for those who believe that homosexual love is sinful or immoral, or who hold that homosexuality is a sickness that can be cured, or who claim that homosexual relationships are inherently dysfunctional; these are not the people pushing the civil-union compromise. With at least a veneer of consistency, these groups want no recognition for gay couples at all. No, the people heralding civil unions are generally sympathetic to homosexual rights. They are the allies that the marriage cause cannot afford to lose. They acknowledge the equal humanity of their gay friends and fellow citizens. But they need to see that supporting civil union while opposing marriage is an incoherent position--based more on sentiment than on reason, more on prejudice than principle. Liberals, of all people, should resist it...."

Alternativa y el PRD deberían resistir la tentación del pragmatismo y de la real politik y no rendir sus ideales utopicos. Cuando Eric Fassin, sociólogo francés estudioso del tema, vino a México hace poco comentó en su conferencia que cuando Francois Mittérand cedió el idealismo del socialismo por el pragmatismo, se quedó sin ninguno de los dos. Temo que ahora la izquierda cometa el mismo pecado: hipotecar a las minorías nuevos derechos de risa como espejitos de bisutería por supuestos avances progresistas. No habrá ganancia, y sí muchos costos...