THE PROBLEM OF GAY MARRIAGE

Tomorrow, January 3rd, is my 37th birthday, which also happens to make eight years since I met the woman who would eventually become my wife. Since neither of us is gay, you might be asking what this has to do with the issue of queer matrimony. Turns out, our heterosexual marriage has everything to do with gay marriage.

From Z Magazine courtesy of ZNet:

Queer Marriage: A New Oxymoron

On the other hand, the institution of marriage is in disrepair. Its history is tied to property and male lineage and initially had as its main role a means of ensuring that a man’s wealth passed to his “legitimate” son. Maternity was obvious, but paternity was more a matter of trust and wishful thinking (DNA testing now replaces this obsolete means of sanctioning the biological “validity” of the heir).

And

Lesbians and gays are not likely, however, to save this institution. Even the pro-family group Concerned Women for America sees marriage as a weak and insecure structure. They note unhappily that by 1999 the percentage of adults living in marriage had “declined steadily to 56 percent.” Divorce- mag.com gives us even more telling stats. They point out that the “median duration of marriage” (1997) is only 7.2 years. Moreover, as of 1997, 50 percent of first marriages and 60 percent of remarriages ended in divorce. As the entertainer Will Rogers said at the turn of the century, “I guess the only way to stop divorce is to stop marriage.”

Marriage is propped up by over 1,100 automatic federal benefits—financial, social, pension, immigration, judicial, medical, parental—in addition to being surrounded by a plethora of symbolisms. When blessed by a religious institution, the bond is given a patina of righteousness: the union is God’s will. But if the government or the divine have been joining these couples, why are their marriages falling apart?

Click here for the rest.

It makes perfect sense to me that the excluded among us would seek the same rights and privileges that our society affords to most everyone else, and I agree that homosexuals should be treated equally, but I wonder why the gay rights movement, which I believe has acted as something of a cultural visionary for these last thirty years, would seek to embrace what is historically a sexist, hypocritical, and broken social institution, rather than seek to radically redefine it or create a new and better institution altogether.

Again from Z Magazine:

Why Do Gays Want to Say "I Do?"

From the new feminist movement, we learned that patriarchy—especially when it mandated compulsory heterosexuality—was as bad for queers as it was for women. We also believed, like many feminists, that marriage was, at its best, an imperfect institution, and, at its worst, a dangerous one.

With such history feeding my politics, I am amazed that the feminist critique has been completely lost in the current debate over marriage. Especially since many of the lesbians now working to secure the right to marry came out and came of age in the early 1970s. Today, there is a complete misconception about what feminists saw as the problem with marriage. It wasn’t just that prevailing state laws meant that men had the legal right to rape their wives; or that the issue of domestic violence wasn’t taken seriously; or that most jurisdictions forbade women from signing legal contracts without the consent of their husbands. It was that marriage privatized intimate relationships, hindered community interaction, and regulated sexuality. The feminist critique of marriage sought to promote personal freedom and sexual liberation. It chafed against the notion that the only valid relationships were those that had been endorsed—and financially supported—by the state. The feminist critique of marriage, signed onto fully by the Gay Liberation Front, made clear that the state had no business telling us what we could do with our bodies (especially with regard to reproduction), what we could do in bed, or with whom we could do it. We understood that what the state allowed, or sanctioned, was in the state’s interests, and not ours.

And

All this, obviously, has changed. The gay movement today has gone out of the radical-social-change business and taken up a franchise in the let’s-just-fight-for-equality business. Not that there is anything wrong with equality, it’s just that it doesn’t move the world forward at a very fast rate.

The problem with the current obsession among gay rights groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is that marriage still poses the same problems it did in the late 1960s. Is this the best way for most people to organize their most intimate relationships and does marriage ultimately make people as happy and productive as they might otherwise be? Well, given the 50 percent divorce rate, the ongoing epidemic of domestic violence among straight and gay couples, and the number of people who seek marital counsel from the likes of Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and Dr. Ruth—not to mention the vital role fantasies of conjugal cheating play on television and in Hollywood, I would have to conclude that marriage falls far short of its exalted reputation.

Click here for the rest.

The bottom line is that marriage itself, not simply the prospect of throwing gays into the mix, is problematic. Homosexuals ask a very fair question: why shouldn't the government and the church formalize and make official their committed life-long relationships? This has made me ask another very fair question: why should the goverment and the church have anything to do with my committed life-long relationship at all? Of course, I'm pleased with the legal and social benefits that came with my marriage--people take married men more seriously, and I would be absolutely devastated if I were not allowed to be at my wife's side if (god forbid) she were hospitalized. But shouldn't everyone have these benefits? Why should I be taken more seriously than a confirmed bachelor? Why shouldn't I be able to be at the side of anyone I love should they be hospitalized? The problem of gay marriage, then, is in reality the problem of marriage.

Why the hell should the government and the church have any authority over my relationship at all? My life, my relationships, my body, are all my own personal business, and the hell with anyone who says otherwise.

With these thoughts in mind, my wife and I, when we got married, tried to design a ceremony that reflected such opinions. First and foremost, we decided to do away with church and state as much as possible: no clergy, no judge, no license, we are what they call in the newspapers "common law" married. Of course, the state is also involved in common law marriages, because after a period of time that varies from state to state of living together and presenting themselves as husband and wife, such couples are legally married for all intents and purposes. But we did do our best to keep the man at bay.

To mock the concept of officializing our relationship, we asked a talented friend to officiate. Of course this wasn't just any friend: our buddy Dave knows ventriloquism, and we asked him to marry us through his dummy. He upped the ante by telling us that his dummy looks like Richard Nixon--all the better I thought; Nixon is the ultimate symbol of government corruption, how fitting. The groomsmen wore shorts; the maid of honor was a man, one of my wife's best friends, dressed in a gorilla suit. Indeed, much of the ceremony was commentary on wedding ceremonies in and of themselves.

Our vows also constituted commentary on marriage:

DAVE: Dear Friends, we are gathered together here to join this man and this woman as husband and wife. Their commitment to each other is based upon friendship, mutual respect, love, and their desire to be together as partners in life.

Becky and Ron, please join hands.

Ron, do you take Becky to be your wedded wife, to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love her, respect her, comfort her, and honor her? For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live?

RON: I do.

Becky, do you take Ron to be your wedded husband, to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love him, respect him, comfort him, and honor him? For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live?

BECKY: I do.

DAVE: Ron, please repeat after me, “Becky, I give you this ring as a symbol of my friendship, love, respect and commitment to you, and that I choose you as my wife”

(Ron puts the ring on Becky’s finger)

Becky, please repeat after me, “Ron, I give you this ring as a symbol of my friendship, love, respect and commitment to you, and that I choose you as my husband”

(Becky puts the ring on Ron’s finger)

RON: As Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France to show that there was no authority greater than his own…

BECKY: …so do we now pronounce ourselves husband and wife to show for ourselves that in matters of love and association, there is no authority greater than our own …"Beloved Husband..."

RON: “...Beloved Wife.”

DAVE: I now offer this Blessing of the Apaches.

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you. May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead and through all the years, May happiness be your companion and your days together be good and long upon the earth.

BECKY: “Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”

RON: “Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
When our time has come
We will be as one
Grow old along with me
Two branches of one tree
Face the setting sun
When the day is done
Spending our lives together
Man and wife together
Grow old along with me
Whatever fate decrees
We will see it through
For our love is true”

And just like that we were married, but it was, and still is, our marriage. Not our families', not the government's, not the church's. It's ours.

On the other hand, I have to admit, we're still happy to enjoy the benefits that couples married more traditionally have, but that gay people and singles don't have, so marriage, as an institution, is still problematic on the whole. (I'd also like to say that the sexist issues historically embedded in marriage are not a problem with me and my wife, but...I'm a man, so...maybe you should go ask Becky how we're doing on that front.) Anyway, the point to all this is that while I thoroughly support the right for gay people to marry, I fault the gay rights movement overall for abandoning its radical tradition in order to embrace such a flawed and conservative institution. I also acknowledge the irony or hypocricy that my own marriage makes of such a statement: however, my wife and I have done everything we can think of to address the problems of marriage in a way that is mutually satisfactory to the both of us.

One thing's for sure. As the rambling nature of this post reveals, the problem of gay marriage, and marriage in general, is quite confusing and complicated.

Happy birthday to me.

(Quotes from the ceremony: "Beloved Husband/Beloved Wife" is from the film Logan's Run; Becky's extended quote is from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116," and my extended quote is from the John Lennon song "Grow Old with Me.")

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$