Here's a book I won't read

[Chris James]

Forcing the Spring, I don't even like the title, but if the contents by Jo Becker are what this article suggests we believe then I have no reason to read one single word. History is distorted enough by pundits and fools who try to persuade by denying the truth. This book probably belongs on the fiction shelf of your local bookstore, or maybe it would make a good trashcan liner.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/04/critics-slam-jo-beckers-gay-history-book-187014.html

[Cole Parker]

That's a major cop-out at the end where she tries to whitewash and excuse herself. It like writing a history of the Civil War and leaving Lincoln out, then excusing it by saying, 'I was just writing about people involved who didn't live in Washington, D.C., and so Lincoln, for whom have great respect, didn't enter into the story.' Yeah, right.

C

[The Pecman]

Man, the effort to legalize gay marriage goes back a lot earlier than 2008, which is where this author started her history. It's ludicrous to believe she's told the whole story. I can remember protesters in the Gay Pride Parade in West Hollywood going back to the early 1980s asking for the right to marry.

[DesDownunder]

I thought I could remember some laughable moment in my past when one of my co-workers raised the subject of men marrying each other. I knew it was before the AIDS epidemic began, and if I am right it would have been around 1975-77. The general agreement was, that no way would the Southern States of the U.S. ever even entertain such an idea. Most of my gay friends, many of whom were in very long relationships, also questioned why any of us would want to register our relationships as married. Some of us thought it was too close to our liberation from being criminals (because of our sexuality), whilst others claimed that we had it easy when compared to straight relationships. If we wanted to breakup, we just walked away.

The older generation gays were more vocal about rejecting the idea of same sex marriage. Their lives were very much based on promiscuous pickups, and the idea of a legitimate loving relationship had been drummed out of them by the anti-gay, silent straight majority of the society. In real terms the older gays had been successfully indoctrinated into thinking they were unworthy sex maniacs who should seek psychiatric help. Sad but true; in some respects we were socially ignored...culturally extinct.

However, younger men and women soon began to contemplate the idea of marriage opportunity as not only feasible, but desirable; even as a logical next step in Gay liberation. The ridicule gave way to an earnest attempt to legitimise the option of same sex marriage. That this recognition for equality occurred right on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic is astounding, and fortuitous. It also shows the inadequate research by Jo Becker.

Becker only had to look up the Timeline of Same-Sex Marriage at Wiki, to get an idea of how much her thinking was restricted by her own assumptions.

[Merkin]

The older generation gays were more vocal about rejecting the idea of same sex marriage. Their lives were very much based on promiscuous pickups, and the idea of a legitimate loving relationship had been drummed out of them by the anti-gay, silent straight majority of the society. In real terms the older gays had been successfully indoctrinated into thinking they were unworthy sex maniacs who should seek psychiatric help.

This is a story that very much needs telling again, before memories fail.