It will be interesting to see what the legalization of gay marriage does for divorce statistics. Given that many lining up to get married have already been together for years (some for decades), there's a chance the rate of divorce will drop significantly in the future.
Marriage between man and woman has long been a punchline in this country. The decision to love, the act of commitment, and the longevity and perseverance of caring for another have not been taken seriously by upwards of half of those who entered into the institution - and all of them have been straight.
This doesn’t tell me why gay marriage would be a bad thing. We’ll get to that later. This tells me why straight marriage is in trouble.
Many of us have been there: watching other couples who seem so happy when we are not – or once were, but are no longer. It rarely occurs to us that, sometimes, when we enter the house of those we see as hopelessly in love, the squeaking we hear is not coming from their charming screen door or their marital bed. It is coming from the rats in the walls.
When our own marriage is in trouble, catching sight of what we think is a happy couple provokes our envy. We remember what we lack and how painful it is. For some, seeing a happy homosexual couple provokes disgust. While envy and disgust are two very different responses, the origin of both feelings is the same: they are happy and we are not.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of gay marriage, the energy you invest in that stand is energy you’re not investing in your spouse.
I know what it feels like to be in a marriage where friendship has waned, indifference has displaced love, insult has overridden affirmation, and loss has outweighed gain until all that’s left is a gaping wound. I also know the rebirth of love as a decision rather than a feeling one has little control over. I know the refocused effort and strength needed to keep us afloat when it seemed like no one else in the world cared whether the two of us stayed together or not.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jon Sobel
Thanks for saying so well what I've thought for a long time. Anti-gay marriage crusaders make me angry. It angers me that my gay friends can't get the benefits (and tribulations) that I can get. I'm convinced that once gay marriage in this country spreads around enough that it's a fait accompli, everyone will look back on it the way we look back on the restaurant and bar and workplace smoking bans that people were all up in arms about when they happened. Who now would ever want to go back to smoke-choked offices and restaurants? Ten or twenty years from now, we'll say, who were those weirdos who thought there was something wrong with gays getting married?
2 - Michael J. West
It's so true. The only conceivable, only possible threat to a marriage is the two people within it. No "homewrecker" can do it, only spouses with a wandering eye. No finances can do it, only spouses who are unable to adjust their lifestyle and expectations to suit their means. And no gay marriage can to it--only spouses who use it as a scapegoat to keep from recognizing their own complicity in their marital problems.
3 - Ruvy
I read this article to my wife, Adina, and she could not see the reason that gay and straight marriages were being compared. Frankly, I couldn't either.
Diane, what you are really talking about is displacement of attention and energy from a spouse from his "beloved" to some outside issue to hide his change of attitude towards his "beloved". Opposition to gay marriage is only one of many such displacements. One also sees the "golf" widow, the "fishing widow, the "computer" widow (to bring this all a bit closer to home), not to mention the "booze" widow, which are all equally displacements of attention and energy from one's beloved, and all equally capable of destroying a weak marriage.
Gay marriage, or the opposition to it, is really a red herring here.
On the other hand, you write:
I need the support and camaraderie of those who are willing to get up and fight for marriage as a value rather than some unattainable or elite ideal. I need the model and the company of those who know the struggle and who are strong enough in character to persevere despite all odds. I need those who take the vows of marriage as seriously as I do.
Given that we are in a boat similar to yours, we can offer that camaraderie.
Ruvy and Adina
4 - Jet in Columbus
Diana, an interesting angle you've brought up, that we gays may make the straights look bad because our divorce rate might be so much lower.
There's no way to not make this preducial, but I agree, when two gays decide to marry, it's takes as so much more of a carefully considered committment, knowing that so many people are against you, and that your marriage is illegal (for now) in 48 states, and that in some southern states could even land you in jail.
Just as a black man marrying a white woman 80 years ago in the south was legal, they could still earn them bricks through windows, burning crosses on the lawn and/or harrassment to the point of having to leave town.
In today's society, many would consider that last paragraph "bull", but I watched my Grandfather and grandmother live through it. They were put in jail on their wedding day, and when they got out they moved to St. Clairsville OH, where my father could "pass" for white and go through highschool with no one knowing.
That's another irony, because 95 percent of gays can pass for straight, therefore many straights consider us an invisible threat to them, because they can't detect their "bogeymen". I saw George (Sulu) Takeai on CNN yesterday beaming like a new groom with his lover (soon to be husband) of twenty years at his side.
Someday I hope to see today's reaction to interracial marriage, applied to gays.
A very good read and well written Diana....
Jet
5 - Joanne Huspek
When I hear of people being "threatened" by gay marriage, I have to wonder. Do they think if gay people are legally married, it will cause one or both partners to "turn" gay? I have to believe that the people who squawk the loudest are the married people who aren't secure in their own hetero marriages.
6 - Baronius
This is an ugly article, in a subtle way. I'd bet that the author doesn't even realize it.
It doesn't defend gay marriage. It doesn't address criticisms of gay marriage. All it does is smear those who oppose gay marriage. They must be projecting their own disappointment with their marriages onto others. But what about us single people who oppose gay marriage? Or widows? Or those in happy marriages? What about priests? Apparently, we're all committed to bitter projection of all our failures onto gays who want to get married. Oddly specific, that projection. And apparently all the people who support gay marriage are perfectly happy.
It seems more probable that the author of the article is projecting something.
7 - Diana Hartman
here's what i'm projecting: those who are opposed to gay marriage on the grounds that it somehow adversely affects straight marriage are using the gay marriage issue to hide problems in their own marriages...
i wouldn't presume to know why those priests, single people and widows who oppose gay marriage do so...
8 - Baronius
You could ask. You might find out that they have sound reasons. Maybe even the married people who oppose gay marriage have sound reasons.
9 - Jordan Richardson
I haven't heard one sound reason yet that wasn't rooted in prejudice, a misread interpretation of "scripture," or fear.
Perhaps someone can provide a reason to object to homosexual marriage that is not based on one or all of those notions.
10 - Jet in Columbus
I'll give you one Jordan, when we split up we don't have to deal with alimony and lawyers. That's all different now.
11 - Michelle
Well, if we want to look at some actual statistics involving gay marriage and straight marriage, how about the divorce rates amongst straights in the places where gay marriages/civil unions are allowed?
As of 2005, Massachusetts was the only state in the country to allow gay couples to wed, and Vermont was the only state that allowed Civil unions. Massachusetts had the LOWEST divorce rate in the country. Vermont had the second-lowest.
Oh yeah, the gays are REALLY hurting straight marriage.
12 - El Bicho
"You might find out that they have sound reasons."
And yet you stopped by twice and offered none. Coincidence?
13 - Baronius
Not coincidence. Just boredom. I've been in BC debates about gay marriage, and they don't go anywhere. I only wanted to comment on Diana's self-righteous quasi-psychological stereotyping.
14 - Baronius
El Bicho, if you're interested, there's a nice article by an economist at Free Republic (see link). It lays out a straightforward secular argument against gay marriage. I also made a conservative (non-religious) argument on the BC Politics thread for "A License to Marry?".
There are plenty of religious arguments to be made against gay marriage, but they require some asssumptions that I don't know if we share.
15 - Jordan Richardson
The article lays out a secular argument against all kinds of marriages, actually.
It assumes that marriages exist for the sole purpose of procreation and that relationships must exist to meet "state purposes" in order to gather basic human rights benefits. To go one step further, I'd argue that with obvious overcrowding at a global level, propagation should no longer be a "state interest."
The whole "state interest" nonsense just doesn't wash, especially when the American government is barely (or just flat out aren't) providing adequate child care or health care for children in families as it is. If the idea is to encourage procreation (which again is just a bad idea at this point), the government could be doing a whole lot more than just denying homosexuals the right to marry.
Plus, the whole issue with the author of the article comes down to this ridiculous idea that homosexuals don't need benefits.
Although, I do have to applaud his balls for closing with the audacious pair of lines:
When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.
Ah, marital chaos...I wonder what that's like?
16 - Clavos
By all means gays should marry.
Why should they be happier than the rest of us?
17 - Dr Dreadful
Clav, after upsetting you earlier, I must just say: that is so perfect I think I'm going to run out and have it printed up as a bumper sticker.
I'll credit you, of course...
18 - El Bicho
By "nice" you must mean "poorly thought out." I have little patience for elitist snobs like Adam who would exclude me from marrying my wife if he knew ahead of time that we weren't planning on having children. He masks his idiocy by writing a lot and using big words, but he doesn't say much of value.
It's too bad he wasn't part of the plummeting birthrate as he doesn't appear to be adding to the precious gene pool he is so worried about. He should stick to his studies in financial economics because he doesn't know squat about science, philosophy or society.
19 - Jet in Columbus
My younger brother's name is Elvis (poor guy); come to think of it I haven't seen him leave a building in a long tome...
20 - Jet in Columbus
I think you're right El, I've never heard of a prominant well educated scientist that was "born-again"
...hmmmmmm
21 - Christopher Rose
The only honest reason for trying to ban gay marriage would be: "I'm an interfering busybody and want to make everybody live by my rules"...
22 - Ruvy
Chris,
I realize that in Europe, anything goes (when are they going to legalize child sacrifice there? the satanists and the Scandos who believe in tossing crippled kids over a cliff are a discriminated minority!), but the issue that Diana was raising was married folk using the legalization of gay marriage as an excuse to hide from the deficiencies in their own marriages.
23 - Jet in Columbus
Ruvy, am i missing a joke, or did your sarcasm just go right over my head? You keep using preducial statements, lumping a people like "all Europeans" or "All us jews", seemingly with wild abandon, yet when someone else does you rail against them.
What gives?
24 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, you actually realize very little as your mind is in the grip of an excessively persistent and blinding belief system.
I wasn't responding to Diana's article but to certain remarks as to which interfering busybodies might want to ban gay marriage.
Personally I've not heard of any suggestions to throw crippled kids off cliffs and seriously doubt that any but a few loons would ever take such an idea seriously. Presumably as you are so keen to protect children, you are opposed to their indiscriminate killing wherever it may happen?
As marriage has legal consequences, it can only ever be a type of legal contract between the participating parties. As such, any attempt to restrict such an arrangement on the basis of gender would seem wrong.
It is religion that is clouding the issue but, as always, religion and law make uncomfortable bed fellows.
25 - Jordan Richardson
I think you're right El, I've never heard of a prominant well educated scientist that was "born-again"
Francis Collins, current head of the Human Genome Project and well noted for his research in the field of genetic diseases is a "born again Christian." I'm pretty sure he's well-educated AND prominent.
There's a lot more examples, of course, but I'm going to take your point as a simplistic generalization and move along.