The most powerful way to disenfranchise the people who are against gay marriage is to not participate in the state-sanctioned marriage system they are "defending".

Too bad the anarchists suck at writing.

@1 It's all about the rights that are associated with the state-sanctioned marriage system. Always has been.

This isn't about some bullshit need to assimilate... it's the very real threat of not being able to see your dying partner in the hospital, or watching homophobic relatives take away the farm you and your partner built together. Watch "Tying the Knot" for some perspective.

Dipshit anarchists need to understand too that smashing an ATM doesn't do fuck-all to hurt banks but does hurt ordinary people who were planning to use it and the local businesses that they were planning to use its output in.

But then anarchists have never understood anything much beyond "WAAAAAHHHHHH!".

The American Apparel ads are way sexier than those of other clothing lines. Except maybe Calvin Klein/Kate Moss in the 90s.

@1: Disenfranchising yourself leaves you every bit as disenfranchised as if some one else disenfranchised you. Too bad the anarchists suck at thinking.

these are, in the words of derek erdman, pacific northwest entitled assholes.

Yes, I also read that Onion article about marauding gay hordes dragging citizens from their marriages. However, I assumed it was satire and not a call to arms.

Every disenfranchised and oppressed minority has these kinds of groups as and aftery they gain their rights. Too bad they never recognize the narrow-mindedness and self-righteiousness they share with their oppressors.

....WHAT?

I didnt know Homer Simpson was gay, does Marge know?

I didn't read any of the post except that it is anti-American Apparel. YES!

Their founder/owner/president is a SLIMY PIECE OF SHIT
Read all about Dov "American Apparel King" Charney

http://dovcharney.com/

Ugh, seandr. I didn't need to know that about you.

I'm all for direct action to support a cause if it is strategic, but this was just vandalism and misguided flailing. I've been following the dialog over at the CHS blog, and it seems like some Don Quixote like crusade rather than a serious attempt at change.

But the typography is cool...

I had 4 years of college with these douche nozzles. They love them some Queer Theory bullshit and love to quote Foucault.

They claim liberation for all but their desires and methods only apply to a very small, very white, very wealthy minority. Opposite side of the same coin.

In short, they can go fuck themselves with a pointy stick.

Can we stop calling them "anarchists"? The preferred term now is "libertarians".

You know, the original Anarchists were very educated people with a sophisticated, if idealistic, philosophy.

This shit would make them cry.

The point of equality is that we're all free to assimilate or not assimilate as we choose. Anarchists are just idiots that like to break shit.

And the finest and funniest sex advice blog in North American continues its rapid devolution into Americablog: four days since a sex post and counting.

simple typo on "state sanctioned monotony"

...'monsters under YOUR beds', Dan. Not you, your.

Your interns are not very good proofreaders. ;)

I think the State Sanctioned Monogamy Monsters needs to be my new band name.

So what's the goal, then- establish some kind of second society, seperate and in opposition to the first? This is a recipe for success.

Yeah basically what @13 and @15 said. I am sympathetic to a lot of anarchist ideals, but it seems like a lot of self-identified anarchists have this sort of essentialist and superior mindset - like, they believe that their anarchist utopia is always bubbling just under the surface of capitalism, and that by breaking some shopwindows and pissing off some police, they're creating ruptures in the capitalist system which will allow anarchist ideals to flourish. But of course, breaking windows doesn't do fuck-all to challenge capitalism... It's not really any more revolutionary when anarchists do it as it is when drunk frat-guys do it.

I feel like it's a problem that a lot of would-be revolutionaries have - assuming that a violent, cathartic rebellion is the starting-point of change when really, revolutions happen at the end of a long process of deeper, more systemic change.

The funny thing is that if they had any clue what difference really means, they'd recognize that some people in fact find monogamous committed lifestyles suit them. I'd wager that almost everyone in a queer committed relationship has given this a great deal more reflection than any of these so called queers have.
I also suspect that as these children arrive at mental puberty at least some of them will discover that they themselves have changed and that such relationships might in fact suit them as well.

It's sad that there's people who need to destroy other's property. Pedal your ideas, not your fucking violence, assholes.

They're Utopian. They want to establish some sort of magical gay fairyland where people can be free! - free! - from the constraints of bourgeois normalcy... and jealousy... and commitment... and property... and child custody... (you know, I don't think they really want to be human). And apparently, even the EXISTENCE of gay marriage represents some kind of corrupting siren's song.

I would say more power to 'em, but I'm thinking, really, not.

@27: you know, I don't think they really want to be human

Bingo.

The term "anarchist" can be applied to wide variance of people, only some of whom break windows. Many of us are educated, articulate, and doing real social justice organizing.

I agree that this particular group is misguided at best, but can save your hostility for those who are destroying more than windows and ATMs? Like, you know, Monsanto or Shell Oil, to name a couple?

Furthermore, for all you liberals who get so indignant at radicals, let me tell you: You need us. We make your ideas more palatable. MLK needed Malcolm X. You should be happy we exist, no matter how "out there" or "unreasonable" you think we are.

Still waiting for an Anarchist to spray paint "STFU" and smash a few windows at 600 24th Ave. South.

@17 Well, it made this educated anarchist face palm.

Anarchists: NALT.

@29 I'm going to remain hostile to my fellow anarchists who break shit because breaking shit isn't the way to get things done.

They have a point. Some states still have laws on the books making adultery a crime, so under those laws a same-sex married couple would need to be monogamous under threat of criminal prosecution.

(Those laws are rarely enforced, though, and probably unconstitutional under the privacy reasoning in Lawrence v. Texas, although the court didn't spell that out.)

I agree that queer people, as with all people, should not be lining up to join the global death machine that is the military.

32: Fair enough; I'm mostly talking about the inductive reasoning and generalizations I'm reading on this thread.

Funny how certain belief systems people grow out of nine times out of ten.

Gay Anarchists are just like the loons in college who evangelize for Lisp or Smalltalk.

You can't please all the people all the time. And you can't please some of the people any of the time.

@11 I have a hard time convincing myself that the CEO's sleaziness trumps the business policies of the company. It's hard to find clothing that are made in America, and i think that that goal should be respected and commended.

These anarchodouches need to do more than get drunk and break windows to get attention that will benefit them. How about a gigantic orgy in the streets? Completely destroying a gay Christian chapel? Something big and poignant. Then you at least have some balls instead of looking like petulant children.

So are they saying they want fewer rights, or that queer apartheid is a good thing? I'm puzzled about the direction in which they're trying to lead (fully aware that I may be giving them too much credit).

They do have a point about assimilation. The thing is, most gay and lesbian people I know and have known really want to assimilate and be part of the broader community.

I understand this impulse. Hell, I enlisted in the Army in part out of that impulse.

But I understand the mixed feelings about it too. @27, when I came out in Toronto's gay ghetto 20+ years ago, long before most of us had even heard of the gay marriage idea, it really felt like a magical gay fairyland where people could be free.

Now, a lot of that feeling came from the coming out process, but quite a bit also came from belonging to a community with its own rules of conduct that was set apart from everyone else, where you didn't have to—were expected not to—act the way you'd been brought up and the way the rest of society did.

I've had several serious conversations with anarchists and my biggest issue is that the anarchism they dream of is extremely rural and agrarian by its very nature. When I asked them about urban forms of successful anarchism, of course Barcelona 1936-1939 comes up. I point out that it is one isolated example in 150+ years of industrialized cities and they respond that it would have flourished if the rest of the world didn't conspire against the Second Republic of Spain. But... that's the world. That's life. Hobbes Leviathan basically philosphically obliterates the possibility of large scale non-homogenous anarchy. Additionally, anarchism at least in its more dignified intellectual tradition, is predicated on horizontal cooperation. Horizontal cooperation is essentially undermined by establishing a hierarchy that horizontal cooperation is an absolutely superior form of community than anything else. Thus, a majority disagreement with anarchism leads to, by it's own logical syllogism, either representative government or hierarchical coercion. Ie, anarchism cannot exist in its pure ideological form unless all people are on the same page. That's hard enough for a coop of 20 people. Try a city of million, or a country of 100s of millions.

If you smash windows and ATMs, you've just made the window makers a tad richer, got the bank to pay a bit more for its insurance - hurting the bank a wee bit, helping the insurance company a lot more coz then the premiums for the whole area generally go up, residents' included - and the only ones you've inconvenienced are the people who your avowed intention is to liberate from the shackles of capitalism, including the ones who have to clean up your mess.

You've also made sure that their will be more policing of the zone and stricter controls for anyone who doesn't wear a business suit or dress and might "look like an anarchist", thus reducing everyone's freedom.

The capitalists are the only ones actually benefitting from all this.

Anarchists? Morons, more like.

Dear lord I hate anarchists. Anarchy is not a political system!

I think they just enjoy breaking things.

@ 44 - By definition. It's an absence of political systems.

Whatever else you say about anarchists, you have to admit they do have the moral high ground: none of us agreed or consented to give a government power and authority over us.

@35 The ones that go out and break shit are the cause of the generalizations in this thread. That and the fact that the loud violent assholes get enough press that just calling yourself an anarchist causes people to assume you're a loud violent asshole.

29: There's a difference between "radical" and "ineffectual." Malcolm X was radical. Bayard Rustin was radical. The suburbanite morons who dress up in costumes to play "anarchist" for the afternoon as an excuse to smash some glass are ineffectual shits. Anarchism is a political philosophy, and none of it has anything to do with denting the occasional cop car.

If these people were real "radicals," they would have thought their views through enough to see the very big difference between choosing to opt out of "heteronormative bullshit" like marriage vs. allowing homophobic right-wingers force that choice upon you based on your sexuality. Someone who sincerely held the radical views that these people pretend to hold wouldn't be wasting their time focusing on the squareness of gays who want marriage rights. They would be busying themselves with attempts to do away with all marital law, arguing that marriage shouldn't be a requirement at all for the kinds of rights that married people have. Hell; if they were really Anarchists, they'd have even bigger fish to fry than that: they'd be concerned with ridding the globe of hierarchical government, and they'd consider a couple smashed store windows over such a narrow issue as "marital law" to be a laughable waste of time.

These phonies aren't acting like people who sincerely hold radical beliefs. They're acting like people who wish to be labeled "radical" because it sounds cool. Notice that their rants contain nothing of real philosophical substance: nothing on how a government should (or shouldn't) be run, or on the role that it should (or shouldn't) take to ease the affairs between two (or more) people who are romantically, domestically, and financially involved. They simply declare that marriage is conformist breeder bullshit and they're just too cool for it, and they stop there. Radical, my ass.

You can believe that marriage is a dated institution and still believe in a person's right to partake in it. Abandoning the fight for marriage equality is not going to translate to breaking down heterocentrist, patriarchal, consumerist institutions like marriage. It's going to translate to straights continuing along their merry way with their marriages while gays are denied any sort of official role in their partners' lives. Nothing about this is radical. So as long as these people remain narrowly focused on chiding gays who want marriage, I won't believe a word of their talk about being radicals.

@42, 44: See http://mises.org/daily/1874 for some interesting ideas on how an anarchist society could be organized, based on private contracts between consenting individuals.

@51, really, really stupid article. Really, arbitration and referees are examples of anarchy in action? That's what you got? Arbitration would be meaningless without the threat of legal sanction for noncompliance. Any private contract needs some organization to sanction non-compliance otherwise private contracts have no authority beyond someone's word and reputation (which again can work on very small scales not large ones). Refs are part of a higly regulated and hierarchal system to package an arbitrary game as a commodity. That's the best example you can come up with?

@29: I wasn't defending this particular action. I was defending the word "anarchist" from the broad generalizations, over simplifications, and inductions happening here. Otherwise, you might be right.

@52 - Engaging with anyone who links to mises.org is a waste of your time and energy.

Shit. Damn autolinking! :P

Oops, that was @50.

As a window, I am tired of the oppression and shatteredness that is imposed on me by society. I call for all windows, regardless of height, width, or thickness, to rise up and join me in the fight for Seattle Window Liberation!

Why is it that the black-hoodie kids always smash chain bank locations, but don't ever harrass bank HQs, the Federal Reserve or usurious Payday Lenders?

The lenders target and harm the underclass far more directly and on a regular basis than Chase, etc. Get THOSE fuckers out of Seattle, if you want.

As for attacking American Apparel, you might as well be a Jezebel poster for how much "raising awareness" this is accomplishing.

Hmmm...wonder why we don't have "anarchists" in North Idaho. Oh, yeah, that's right. Our cops and citizens made them feel unwelcome, so they sashay off to Seattle (or Portland) where their behavior is still accepted for some reason.

For some reason, the word homonationalism makes me think of margarine.

@60: I don't know why anybody assumes Seattle is some sort of tie-dye freakshow. As with much of California, it's not really THAT outlandish here, and the Suburbs are plenty conservative.

@60, Hmm... why are all the neo-nazis, white supremacists and sovereign citizen militias hangin' out in North Idaho? I guess your cops and citizens just make them feel oh so welcome. We don't have them in Seattle or Portland, they just sashay off to North Idaho where their behavior is still accepted for some reason.

@37 I think I'm the only other one here who'd understand your comment. BTW: Lisp is cool.

I'm married. My wife and I are not monogamous - I think being non-monogamous is a personal choice that is based on how you were raised and success is determined by how well you communicate and I think by your desire to reproduce..

In general I find couples that are more focused on 'having/raising kids' in general much more successful at monogamy (or fail at non-monogamy :P) than couples who are not interested in having children.

I honestly think it can be linked back to more baser instincts of females wanting a provider for their children, and men wanting to pass on their genes and ensuring that their genes are the only ones that are passed on with that female.

I don't say that to be sexist - I think the desire to reproduce is more deeply ingrained in some than others, and those that it's deeply ingrained in generally tend to be more violently monogamous.

I don't want kids. My wife doesn't want kids. Sex is a lot of fun. New partners are exciting.

We find everything we need regarding emotional support, love, that 'need to be part of a couple' in each other. But we just fuck other people too.

Best of both worlds.

Regardless - figure out what makes you happy, and seek it ;)

@55, 56: Gotta break it up by opening and closing some tags in between. Like this: mises.org

"The original Anarchists were very educated people with a sophisticated, if idealistic, philosophy."

Or so the stereotype would have you think. In fact they were a bunch of drunken sots who were just here to fart around. Like Burroughs and Bukowski and Blagojavich, for example.

That first paragraph has a glaring orphan, which I find really distracts from the screed.

@67 - Assist appreciated, even if--by my own definition--it was a waste of your time ;)

@68: Statements like that show how little you know what you are talking about. Burroughs and Bukowski? You embarrass yourself.

@68: I think you meant "Bakunin" or "Berkman".

@65: (love i lisp)

@55: Christ, I said it had an interesting perspective on anarchy, not that I was a wingnut who thinks the gold standard is a good idea.

@52: Agree with you on the need for society to be organized in some way. As I understood it, the point was to think of ways that organization might be achieved without legal coercion from an official governing body, such as social sanctions, smaller associations formed by voluntary agreement, and reputation. (Non-binding arbitration does exist, by the way, and often works, because it helps maintain business relationships and avoids the cost of litigation.)

"I'd be so proud if you was a fag and had a nice beautician boyfriend. I'd never have to worry. I worry you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of a heterosexual is a sick and boring life!"

This is more about our tax system and the incentives than it is about anarchy. Our tax laws give incentive to groups of 2 humans, and discourage every other kind of family life. They created this box they expect us all to fix it, and it's about damn time we stop rewarding people just because they found someone they want to tell the world publicly they love and share tax information with till they die (Penn and Teller had an awesome bullshit episode about this, and while stupid and kinda silly it helps with critical thinking). It's archaic. What about the people who will never marry? What's in this system for them? They pay higher taxes because they haven't found "that one person" because "that one person forever" is just an illusion anyway. It's unjust. WHEN INJUSTICE BECOMES LAW REBELLION BECOMES DUTY. So please, don't lecture me about "state-sanctioned monogamy" being fake, because it's a very clear reality that within our tax code we give huge incentives for people to couple up. If you're rewarded by doing something with money from the government, it's a state sanctioned event.

Fake edit - that's not only to discount what gay marriage means, it's a huge step in equality but, if you want to look at the whole picture the idea that we should be doing this behavior in the first place seems silly. That's not to say I don't fully support gay marriage, as, if strait people get to do it we shouldn't discriminate based on gender, but if I got to write the rules of our society, the government would not encourage or discourage any kind of family arrangement (maybe still kid tax credits for poor people, kids are expensive) and let the culture decide what we should and shouldn't do with ourselves.

“Anarchism, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.” - Emma Goldman

Anarchy IS A STATE OF MIND. It is not a group, it is not a political order, it is not what the vast majority of the people writing comments here think it is. There isn't some underground council of the order making anarchist decisions and what we should and shouldn't do, anarchist is something LAZY JOURNALISTS call humanists. Only because some of their black clothing and misunderstood message do you call them anarchists. It's a label you throw on unknown things to make them sound scary. OH MAH GAWD PEOPLE THERE IS A GROUP THAT EXISTS THAT ISN'T OK WITH GAY MARRIAGE THAT ISN'T RELIGIOUS THEY MUST LOVE THAT ANARCHY SHIT HAR HAR. If the only choice in the world is between getting rid of incentives for couples to pair up till death do they part and COMPLETE AND UTTER ANARCHY please consider myself part of the anarchist crowd. However I'm one to believe there can be some compromises in this process, and we don't have to "run the show", but you have to understand our context, and not just label unknown things with something you already kinda know in order to discredit them. You could really be a lot more critical, I'm truly ashamed with this thread.

@77: "Anarchy IS A STATE OF MIND"

I suppose to someone too dumb to digest the philosophical/fiscal/political thought that came before.

I guess this originally wasn't a post about anarchy but it seems to have turned in to that...so I'm just going to say that I second @17. And @68 (and many many others), I think may be confused about the origins of anarchism. How about trying Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bakunin

If someone wrote an article about the same incident along the lines of "look what these homosexual activists have done now!" I'm sure Dan would recognise and point out the logical fallacy.