Dominant Culture
Yesterday, the class discussed an interesting subject that opened my eyes and brought new knowledge to my beliefes. We were discussing hemosexuality and why some states and cultures find it obsurd to legalize gay marriage, I use to believe that people who were agenst it were either very religious or just plain ignorant, but the discussion yesterday made me realize theres much more to it. Professor Applewhite said that heterosexual culture has the power in the world, especially heterosexual people who are married.
Being Married in the United Stated you gain miraculous benefits that no body could get if they are single or homosexual. Married people benefits could be:
- lower taxes
- health benefits
- better life insurance
- Educational Benefits and much more.
If gay people are to be married, these benefits would have to be shared with the new married culture and there would be less money and benefits distributed amoung the heterosexual people. Therefore, the hetersexual people who are agenst same sex marriage, arn't focus in the religious point of view of things. At the end of the day we can't mix religion and politics, yet the heterosexual people are holding on to their benefits and the ideas of the "norms" of the United States. And a norm in the United States is being married, man and woman. And because they are dominant they dont want to share the little that they get. The economy is only gettin worst and if benefits are now slowly getting taken away without gay marriage being fully legalized throughout the entireUnited States, its just a matter of time that all the benefits will be taken away, straight or not.
The heterosexual people being agenst this are conservatives and reactionary, and because they are dominant it would be that much easier to rule agenst sharing their goods.
I understand where you are coming from with the different points you wrote about in your blog and I agree with you about the possible benefits of being married. Lower taxes can be a benefit when you are married but that is more likely when children are involved. Heterosexual culture does have the advantage (at this moment) but I think the balance is going to be different now especially as more states are legalizing gay marriage. Many states it will always have heterosexual culture being more powerful but those will be states that see being gay as a sin. You bring up good points about norms and what we have grown up with as being norms in our society. When you wrote about the benefits being taken away completely this made me start to think about that more and problems it would cause if the already limited resources we currently have did not exist.
ReplyDeleteBrillant blog entry, Katherine and excellent discussion with Hayley. I will say that I used that as one example to illustrate dominant culture vs. sub-cultures, using a conflict theory perspective, but I could use any other issue on dominant cultures to make a similar argument.
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