It all started here

Paradise Garage, The Soho, the 70´s & 80´s in the streets of NYC, the great Larry Levan, Grace Jones, Ru Paul, Xtravaganza, transvestites, dancing all night long, until the last client leaves the place, the last days of disco, The Loft, Chicago, Frankie Knuckles, Detroit house, underground clubs, François Kevorkian, Vinyl, Curtys Mayfield, Masters at Work, latin beats from The Bronx, for the love of music, Walter Gibbons, David Mancuso, Body and Soul, The Warehouse, Soho Club, Marshall Jefferson, Danny Krivit, Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia, Linda Clifford, 84 King Street, Salsoul, Instant Funk, crowded dancefloors, sweety patrons, make-up, glamour, the clubbing culture taking off…

Those were the days. These were the places where house music was born. These were the men and women who made it possible. Thank you all, wherever you are…

Tracklist:

01 Linda Clifford · Changin’
02 Stacey Kidd · Music for you
03 Carl Bean · I was born this way (Gomi´s vocal mix)
04 Unique ft Angie Brown · Reach
05 Deep Sensation · There´s a soul heaven (Cleptomaniacs soul mix)
06 Jamie Lewis ft Michelle Weeks · Be thankful
07 Circuit Boy ft Alan T · Door (Danny Tenaglia mix)
08 Kings of Tomorrow ft Julie McKnight · Finally (Danny Tenaglia mix)

Download
[59:16, 68Mb]

Photo: Disco Ball Lady © Katharine Leah

On marriage and homosexuals

My fellow bloggist Dhavar has published a post claiming homosexuals have no right to marry. His main arguments are: (1) marriage is a social institution whose goal is reproduction; (2) homosexual unions are not reproductive; (3) the reason some entitlements, such as inheritances and widow pensions, are legally linked to marriage only lays in them being created to allow for the provision of children (nourishment and education); and (4) homosexuals want to be able to marry to missappropriate those funds, towards which they have no rights.

Since I totally disagree with him on this subject, here are my two cents to the discussion.

Firstly, marriage is nowadays not based on reproduction (moreover, it never was, but proving this would lead us to a complex antropological discussion). According to Eurostat, in 2006 there were nine countries in the EU in which the number of children born out of wedlock reached a proportion of 40 per cent or higher (Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Latvia, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom), and in four of these the proportion was 50 per cent or higher (Bulgaria, Estonia, France and Sweden). In Norway and Iceland, two countries of the region, the figures are 53 and 65,72 per cent, respectively (2006 in the Norwegian case and 2005 in the Icelandic one). In the U.S., roughly 40 per cent of children were born outside marriage in 2005. The Spanish figure for 2006 is wrong in the Eurostat table. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, unwed mothers gave birth to a 26,57 per cent of the children born in Spain in 2005, though given the trend, the figure for 2007 should be around 30 per cent. In all cases the figures show an increasing drift without any exception.

In most countries, and certainly in all of the above mentioned, children of single parents enjoy the very same rights those of married parents do.

Secondly, marriages without children are considered everywhere as fully legitimate ones, and they enjoy the same legal status everywhere as well. If procreation was their essential aim, they should be considered defectived or failed marriages, but we do not deem them so, do we?

Therefore, marriage nowadays is not about granting reproduction.

On the other hand, reproduction does not only imply giving birth, but also caring, loving and providing, and both heterosexual and homosexual couples or individuals are equally fit for these tasks. Homosexual couples cannot procreate, but they may bring up as parents a child born of one of the members, or adopted, thus qualifiying as parents. Heterosexual couples may do the same, by the way.

I also want to avoid a long historical account on the development of inheritance as an institution (a ‘pension’ is not even an institution in the proper sense of the word but a public policy choice), so it suffices to say nowadays it serves no such goal as provision for children in the absence of their parents, since in that case, or when family income is below a treshold, welfare state policies may apply.

Nearly everywhere, only spouses, children, parents or some other members of a deceased person´s family (in this order) are entitled to inherit her property, but not her partners or lovers. That is, the family may inherit property paying no taxes, or very few ones, whereas non-family members have to pay much more. Homosexuals who want to marry do not want to do so because they aim to embezzle the rights those people are entitled to by “artificially” becoming spouses, as Dhavar´s convoluted argument goes. They want to be able to marry to publicly and simbolically show mutual love (this reason seems quite strange to me, but it applies just the same to heterosexual marriage) and enjoy the same rights heterosexuals do. Period.

My suggestion here is that fiscal policy should be neutral regarding civil status, that is, individuals, other things being equal, should pay the same taxes whether married, single or in a civil union. Moreover, rights should be granted to individuals per se, not as bearers of a particular civil status.

There are also important simbolic aspects in the right of homosexuals to marry. By legalizing homosexual marriage, society eliminates yet another discrimination form, sending a message out that homosexuals should enjoy the very same rights their fellow citizens do, thus reasserting them as full members of their polity.

I hope to have shown this discrimination is only based in prejudices against a particular sexual orientation and also on atavistic fears, i.e., that society as we know it will just disappear if some supposedly essential institutions do not remain immutable.

The recent amendment to the Spanish civil code, allowing for marriage between individuals of the same sex and adoption by homosexual married couples, only redresses the lengthy legal discrimination suffered by Spanish homosexuals. It was high time.

My comments in the third part above are general and do not necessarily refer to Dhavar, whose post does not seem to contain prejudices against homosexuality per se.

Photo: Pink ad in a street of Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2007 © Loudsoul

Gay rights concern us all

Madrid has become a vibrant city this weekend, as it celebrates its annual Gay Pride. Millions of varied sexual orientation mix in the streets and party together in an atmosphere of hedonism and mutual respect. It is nice living in such a civilized society. However, it is worth noting many countries consider homosexuality an ignominious act which try to tackle by way of repression. As usual, the vast majority of Western liberal democracies are free of this barbaric approach, and death penalty as a punishment for engaging in homosexual acts is restricted to just eight countries -Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and Northen Nigeria-. What do these countries have in common? Well, it comes as no surprise they all are islamic States, which is significative enough. Another aspect worth mentioning in this regard is the readiness to consider gay rights a ‘problem’ of the gay community. As I see things, so called ‘gay rights’ deal with the essential freedom of individuals to live their live as they see fit, and everyone -gay or straight- should be interested in defending the basic freedoms of fellow human beings. Therefore, ‘gay rights’ -which we should not deem group rights but individual ones-, inasmuch as they deal with core human liberties, concern every single one of us.

Read more: ’Homosexuality is still a crime in more than 70 countries and may result in death penalty in eight of them’, in the Spanish section of Amnesty International.

Photo: Rainbow fairy, 2007 © Ricof3