Spoilery comment on spoilery comments

[lizbee]

I've seen a lot of people saying it is anachronistic for Canton to want to marry another man in 1969. About thirty seconds of Googling brought me this:

Reverend Troy D. Perry performed America's first same-sex wedding in 1969, and in 1970 he filed a lawsuit seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Comments

[lizzieladie]

Not only is it right on target, but in 1969 there were a whole rash of gays and lesbians applying for marriage licenses specifically in response the Stonewall riot. 1969 was the moment when the lgbt rights movement took that aspiration to the public. The public didn't really understand it or pay it a lot of attention, but that doesn't mean that Canton wouldn't have been thinking about getting married or that Nixon wouldn't have been aware of the issue.

Canton was maybe a bit cavalier about the whole thing for the times, but it's not like Nixon was spectacularly in character, or like the silence were legitimately the only reason for the space race, or like Doctor Who is always 110% historically accurate and that's why we watch it either.

[skywaterblue]

And all the out gay black men in the SCLC didn't exist either, right? I have this fantasy that Canton's lover is a civil rights movement leader, and he met him on a sting operation and...

[lizbee]

I hope you're going to write that fic!

[skywaterblue]

Ugh. It would require SO. MUCH. RESEARCH. So: doubtful, I have too much on my plate.

But that's my headcanon and I stick to it.

[ageorwizardry]

Thank you for pointing this out! Because the more I saw people calling it anachronistic, the more I thought, "But is it really? Or is it like The Tiffany Problem* of historical fiction and people assume it is even though it isn't?" I appreciate your bringing actual evidence to the discussion!



*In case you're not familiar with it: The Tiffany Problem is that if you name your medieval-era character Tiffany readers will roll their eyes and assume it's anachronistic, even though Tiffany was a real medieval name. Described here, among other places.

[idlerat]

Good post, L, & thank you.

I do want to add, though, that while I don't think the desire is anachronistic, I did think "Nixon"'s way of talking about it was (as was the presence of African American Secret Service agents in the Oval Office, I suspect - though I don't know for a fact). Nixon was soft-balled in a way I didn't care for, and I felt like that line just pushed it over the edge. Even though he wasn't exactly supportive, he was cool with the concept, relaxed, not taken aback - it misrepresented the historical status of the discourse, and in doing so shortchanged the long struggle to get where we are now.

[onomatopoetry]

If I may butt in, I didn't necessarily see it as his (Nixon's) "normal day" reaction to it, more along the line of "Well, we went to the moon, and there was something extraordinarily dangerous going on that I can't remember, and this weird British person has a box that travel in time and my brain is really overloading and Mr Delaware wants to marry a man, and there's really no end to the crazy today, is there? Ok, putting my foot down exactly here."

But hey, that's just me. And I do agree it misrepresents the political situation more generally.