I'm a gay man who supports the right of consenting adults to enter into whatever relationship they'd like, including marriage. I have several married friends who took advantage of the pre-Prop 8 window. I love these men and respect their relationships. I volunteered in the campaign against Prop 8 and was disappointed by the results in Maine. But just because I believe gays should be able to marry if straights should doesn't mean I think marriage is a very good idea.
One advantage of same-sex love is that we are relatively unshackled by the expectations most heterosexuals are hard put to avoid. This doesn't necessarily mean we have better or longer relationships, just ones more likely to color outside the lines of societal expectations. The end result is that we have a lot to show the world in this department -- including (horrors!) arrangements that don't necessarily hew to models of monogamy, particularly among gay men. (We're not supposed to talk about it anymore, of course, but the nature of male sexuality does not change when you sign a marriage certificate. If you were a one-partner-man before you got hitched, you still are. If you weren't, you still aren't. We're just like straight men that way, except few heterosexuals since Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir even allow themselves to contemplate separating commitment and fidelity.)
But what have gay people done with this singular, "outside-the-box" legacy? Have we trail-blazed new legal frameworks recognizing non-traditional families and relationships? Have we led instead of followed? In a prodigious failure of imagination, we have instead decided to pursue for ourselves an institution with a success rate of a mere 50%. (And I use "success" advisedly. I bet you can count the couples married more than a decade that you think of as "happy" on a few fingers, if that.)
Despite this lousy track record, the state of being married is still held up as the ideal, and society confers status on those who conform to it. It's as if getting married is some kind of accomplishment, like getting a degree after years of school. No one even questions the premise that married people should have more rights or status than unmarried people in the first place. And they do. Ask any single mother or divorcee, particularly over 40. Within the gay community I'm noticing the same subtle fissure growing between the wed and unwed, as the words "my husband" are stamped with a legitimacy absent from "my boyfriend."
The divide will grow deeper when we get full marriage rights. This, by the way, is inevitable without the expenditure of millions of more dollars. It is simply a matter of demographic patience, as the young entering the voting pool replace the old leaving it.
Since time will win the marriage war, we don't have to keep losing the battles on the way. Our money and energy should be expended in the fights we can presently win, like the one we just did in Washington State. Our campaign there wasn't savvier than in Maine or California, but it didn't involve the word "marriage," except preceded by "Everything but." The haters and the ignorant spread the same nonsense on the airwaves, but the arguments seem to lack traction for that crucial 10% swing vote when the "M-word" is unattached from the idea of equal rights.
Every time I embark on this dissent I get accusing of defending the principle of "separate but equal." This was the legal theory advanced to justify segregation; the reason it was preposterous was that the economic resources accorded to blacks were so egregiously inferior to those accorded whites that separate could never be anything but unequal.
If "separate" was inherently "unequal" for civil unions, wouldn't we have seen gays in France and England up in arms over their supposed second class citizenship? By all accounts they seem perfectly content with their legal status. (Full Disclosure: my mother is French, and has always been slightly appalled by American weddings. "In France, we walk down to city hall and then go to a nice restaurant.")
What makes civil unions at present unequal is not their separateness, but the host of federal benefits conferred by marriage that even the best state domestic partnerships can't accord. So let's change that by calling Barack Obama's bluff on his stated support of civil unions. Let's also call the bluff of our electoral foes who proclaim they are not anti-gay, just pro-marriage. Deprive them of their most potent electoral argument.
Let them have their word and their failing institution. We can do much better.
Follow Mark Olmsted on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarquisMarq
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That's what I'm talking about!
So that if I live with a friend, or my sister, or my lover...my relationsh
I like what it does, but I have an honest question about how it operates: what is the legal responsibi
On the one hand, its' a benefits contract between the employee and the employer. It extends benefits to a third person. So that seems like what is already done for married couples.
On the other hand, when it is extended to married couples both parties of the couple are already in a contractua
And while I agree the ideal would be for there to be no need for gay high schools at all, how are they not "separate but equal?" Last I checked we were lobbying for more of them, not denouncing them as discrimina
Howabout gay bars? How are they not "separate but equal?" The truth is we have no issue with the idea when it suit our own desires, like living in the Castro or going out for a night of cruising. I don't see why Civil Unions need to be any different.
If some people want to claim this is just about a 'word' and we should 'settle' for civil unions, then the time to make that argument is *after they pony up with the civil unions,* not while they use the notion to justify denying us everything
Another point I didn't make was that the majority of gays have little interest in getting married All that money to pursue a right most of us won't even use. In a society in which all of us could seriously benefit from something like universal healthcare
First, as you mention, is equality of social support. Straight marriages-
I would like social support for my long-time relationsh
Second, there is equality of legislatio
The point to me is, we were put in a dishonest position. We were married for 30 years, and could never say we were or be treated like we were. The benefits could be "fixed" with Domestic Partnershi
Provide legalized civil unions, not called marriage, for all those who want to bestow legal benefits and responsibi
Remember how foreign and unromantic "pre-nups" used to be? Now they're routine. There's no reason the door cannot open to all sorts of different legal arrangemen
I don't agree about "separate but equal". Civil unions mark people as the "other". Do "civil-uni
In fact, the anti-gay crowd are attacking the rights of *anyone* to enter into 'marriage-
A couple, or a group, isn't just a bunch of individual
Now, popular support for civil unions is there, and that's a good goal from the *political
But when the Right claims that it's just about the 'definitio
Guess what. They aren't telling the truth.
The funny thing is, of course, what actually gets *called* a marriage out there in society is one thing the law can't contrl to begin with. On the political end, pushing for civil unions laws certainly makes sense, but there's a whole other venue about this in the courts. There, the law demands full equality.
As Mark said, married people - as a whole, let's be honest - aren't a happy group. The divorce rates back me up here, and of those that stay married, there are *a lot* that are miserable and dream of an out.
I grew up around unhappy marriages; it was my normal. I suppose that's why I never had the desire to enter into one (in fact, I was flat-out refusing the idea when we started dating years ago, which is why he didn't propose then - I told him if he wanted a wife, he best find a new girlfriend - I wanted to enjoy our "now"....n
I understand the idea that it's somehow less to create civil unions instead of letting gays have marriage, too. I'm sure my best friend and his husband (who slipped in, too, pre-Prop 8) might disagree, too, but there is a lot of merit to what Mark is saying here. Marriage sucks anyway - think about it, do you really want all the negativity associated with that word, my gay friends?
And it would be delish, would it not?, to see those "I'm not anti-gay just pro-marria
I think it would be much better to spend the time, effort, and money on anti-bully
My understand
Yes, all manner of other things are needed, particular
They've been trying to take away our 'Someday.'
It did have the benefit of completely undercutti
Sorry to disappoint you, but it looks like all we've got is your Je$u$-frea