Having been married myself, I am somewhat bewildered by the battle over gay marriage. I understand why the "anti" crowd wants to exclude gays. Like cliques in high school, the duller you are, the more you need to keep someone out in order add a little luster. It’s an age-old trick perpetrated by the mainstream on the marginalized, when the full mediocrity and boredom of being the mainstream finally registers.
What I have more difficulty understanding is the gay position. After all the hard times you’ve been through, all the confrontation and altercations, the struggle to be heard and to be received, the battle to maintain your authentic identity in the face of disapproval and rigid control - why do you want to get married, seeing as you already know what it’s like?
Take the civil rights, by all means, but skip the rituals and symbolism and the centuries of emotional baggage that come with it. You’re getting off easy, which is what deviating from the norm should be all about. When the “in crowd” is this dysfunctional, it’s imminently healthier and happier not to participate.
To borrow a phrase now popular in the waning days of Bush II, marriage is a failed policy. It fails to keep people together; it fails to nurture intimacy; it fails to curtail loneliness. Those so inclined will defend marriage to the end. They will say marriage isn’t the problem; it’s the people that make it work or make it fail. I say if it’s the people, then let’s give them the credit and leave the institution out of it.
I know what you’re thinking. You are going to change marriage; you’re going to make it fabulous! But marriage is strong magic, and not in a romantic way. It’s a contract with a very long past, the same past that rejected you all these years. What would be fabulous is to fully participate in society without signing up for its various idiotic institutions.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Look at all the women who want to be rabbis, priests, and ministers."
Reminds me of the great Fark headline: "Church of England debating whether to allow female bishops. Critics say move won't help women to move forward, only diagonally"
2 - Dr Dreadful
Matt, I'm glad I finished my coffee before I read that!
3 - jj
Not all gays have rejected marriage! We don't even have the choice to get married in the USA, "land of the free", let alone get some friggin respect in general.
Marriage is not by default failed, and I've seen marriages work, and I want the same rights that we've been denied since forever.
4 - chutney
You must be man without children, or you would see the flawed logic of your argument. If you were the one without rights (like I am), I think you would feel differently. Say, for example, I die. My wife cannot get my social security to help take care of our children financially, and that, in my opinion, is discrimination purely based on the fact that my wife and I are the same gender (which in turn boils down to us having similar genitalia... ridiculous!)
It is always so easy to say how lucky someone else is to not have the rights you have... don't be so naive! Most of us want the same economic protections that you and the rest of the heterosexual world just takes for granted! We are not idiotic romantics... give me a break!