When I grew up, the rap on gay people was that they were promiscuous, emotionally stunted and immature, fixated somewhere back in adolescence and had never grown up. Which meant that they were totally incapable of adult relationships -- i.e. marriage. "Homosexuals" were therefore unworthy of respect and deserving of contempt.
But what was so great about marriage anyway?
Sure, it was how romantic comedies ended, but I grew up with a very sour image of marriage, determined never to let the same fate pull me under.
My Holocaust survivor parents could argue like fiends, my father passive aggressively getting my mother to ignite. And boy could that Gemini explode! It didn't have to be about money or us kids or anything major at all. They once had a row over which dish to serve the green beans in when my brother's girlfriend was over for dinner. World War III was raging (in Yiddish) in the kitchen while the rest of us sat at the dining room table. My brother and I were unfazed, but his girlfriend was astonished when we told her what exactly was going on. "Have some more wine," I said. "It helps."
Reading American and world literature didn't improve my perspective on marriage. Everywhere you looked there was dissatisfaction and adultery in one classic novel after another: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Effi Briest, Sister Carrie, The Great Gatsby and many, many more.
My all-time favorite novel, The Portrait of a Lady, was no exception to the rule that marriage was definitely a grim fate. The elderly Touchetts in that novel can't live together for more than a few days at a time, and the heroine, Isabel Archer, makes a completely disastrous marriage. She expects openness and understanding from Gilbert Osmond but instead finds dumbness, deafness, and suffocation. And that's on a good day.
D. H. Lawrence put it bluntly in Women in Love where Birkin grouses about "the world all in couples, each in its own little house, watching its own little interests, and stewing in its own little privacy--it's the most repulsive thing on earth." I can't recall a single good novel I've read -- classic, modern or contemporary -- that paints marriage as even mildly happy.
And yet here I am watching the world change via court rulings and legislative decisions, eagerly waiting with my partner of 26 years to see what happens next in the Prop 8 case, and what it means.
Chris Rock raised gay marriage in one of his routines a few years ago: "Why the fuck shouldn't gay people be as miserable as the rest of us?"
Why indeed? Give us the chance, let us feel your pain. It's not a bad price to pay if we get full citizenship and equal treatment under the law.
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When anyone decides to live outside the pack norm you have to protect yourself from attack that is seemingly knee jerk in how the attacts come. Bearing in mind always that real marriage takes commitment and acceptance a willingness to allow your partner to be themselves and let the who you are together grow..
I think it's best to hammer out the particulars before the step is ever taken though. I mean this is a grown up thing after all. Otherwise it's just playing house. Seems to me a great subject to explore in books across the board of genre, why not give out as much informnation as possible about the vagaries of sharing life and house. Just my little opinion about what can make life better and more secure, safe at home you know? I would love an Aud with Kick sequel for instance.
Funny timing on my part, for reading this. I just watched Bruno last night :-)
Also, when you are married it can be very frustrating when the other person does not agree or the like. One can just brush off a friend, but it seems all so much more important when this is a spouse. Some people have worked out patterns to deal with this, or ignore it...or divorce!
All the best,
I've read quite a few interesting stories where the gay or straight protagonists were in happy relationships. It's the writer who has to tell good stories and stick to it. I mean you don't have to include the vacuming or the other stuff people do but if it drives a part of the story then hell yes include the mundane. Which by the way a lot of people consider a kind of fun.
As in any other stories let the story and the writing carry it. I've put down books from all sorts of authors simply because they weren't telling the story they chose with authenticity.
But I'm not an author, I don't have to deal with publishers and agents, publicists or anyone else who decides what is marketable. I'm actually retired and not having to deal with sustaining a career any longer.
I want an open market with a little less bloodshed. Maybe I'm naive but I want peace, I want people to be happy with who they are and quit trying to meddle in other people' lives!
Sylvia in Anchorage
case, my partner and I--33 years together this fall--didn't get engaged until our 25th anniversary. We
put it down to Norwegian-American reticence. It's not good to jump in too quickly. We laughed and
said that maybe we'd get married on our 50th, assuming the country would allow us. And yet, we
still look with a rather jaundiced eye at marriage. Sure, we want the right, but even if we had it, we're not sure we want to exercise it. We don't need a legal piece of paper to keep us together,
apparently, because we seem to be doing fine without it.
BTW, it often is the SAME people driving all of these anti movements.
I really enjoyed your talk at the book store in Germany. I was moved by how you must have felt on that trip to your ancestral home. Everything it meant knowing what your family and their friends went through.
It still amazes me that Americans didn't know what was happening in Germany in the 30s and 40s. How going into the 50s we were chanting the good life here, every person supposedly with a say and light hearted living, though it was tough for many still. Then to find out what was going on there my god it just didn't penetrate the joys of winning a war. I'm sorry for that, I can't aplogize for an entire country but I can tell you that there were and still are many people in America who wanted an end to the treatement of Jews by Germans and who all else they dragged into the fray.
I read all of your posts on DL and Facebook but I don't always make a comment. I bought your book My Germany when it first came out. I'm so glad that you have a good life in (the name of the state, I know it but not sure if you wanted it said aloud), and have a partner and a job that you like.
Sylvia in Anchorage
not a good reason not to add more maturity in stories.
I'm not talking sex scenes but rather the actual living people go through every day. Like the Paul Turner siries by Mark Zubro, His writes one series that covers a lot of territory thrown into a new relationship by having a kid with a bad disease, Spinabifida IRC. I think that the road to acceptance is trodden with regularity by being a person who obviously lives in any given community just like everyone else is living there. That gets noticed then forgotten with acceptance. That being the end goal in my opinion for all of this.