The Irresistible Banality of Same-Sex Marriage

[kweerwolf]

"All tragedies are finished by a death,/All comedies are ended by a marriage." I was glad to come across Lord Byron's lines in Jonathan Rauch's Gay Marriage, because they helped me understand why same-sex marriage has vaulted to the top of the gay-rights agenda. I had wondered for years why we have pursued the right to marry so much more ardently than other, seemingly more attainable rights. For instance, we still lack a federal statute prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And in a Gallup poll conducted last month, 87 percent of the public thought gays should have equal job opportunities, while only 39 percent thought gay marriages should be recognized. So why not start in the hiring hall rather than the banquet hall?

The answer: We want to lift the gay life story into a happier genre. For too long, gay biography has been the tragedy "finished by a death." That death has at times been metaphorical, as in the suffocation of the closet, or the social death some experience in their communities after coming out. But it has also been all too literal. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2004 that over a quarter million people had died of AIDS after acquiring the syndrome through male-to-male sexual contact. And two recent studies suggest that the lifetime risk of suicide attempts for homosexuals is approximately six times that of our heterosexual peers.

As gay liberation proceeded, we would inevitably rewrite that story. How better to do so than to have it end in marriage rather than in death? If we take Byron seriously, we can turn the mask of tragedy into the mask of comedy only by replacing the elegy with the epithalamium. Marriage in this formulation stands for life itself.

http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0525,qyoshino1,65131,24.html

(From the current issue of The Village Voice ... this is the Voice's annual "Queer Issue" and has a number of gay-related articles that can be accessed on its website.)

[sui generis]

1. don't everyone post a reply at once

gee whilickers.

It's also about pushing "all the way". If I do all kinds of legal machinations I can ensure that my partner will get my estate in the event of my death. With a lawyer I can make sure that I am able to visit him in the hospital whenever I desire.

I can even avail myself of the other "benefits" of marriage if both of us marry a stable lesbian couple, and since that's not "gay" marriage in spite of the obvious, it would be difficult to discriminate against us for being "gay", or unmarried.

None of these things are illegal, but all of them are inconvient. Anti same sex constitutional amendments do NOTHING to prevent a smart mo from exercising all the same rights as anyone else. All they do is inconvenience us. They certainly aren't going to make us "choose" to be straight, any more than "allowing" same sex marriage is going to enable straight people to "choose" to be gay.

Changing the constitution to inconvenience us - that's pretty banal, but nobody ever said fundies were smart.

[assclown_bush]

3. Ha, I guess even DUers get a little kb shy over Gay issues?

Sui Generis, I agree with you...except that changing the constitution would do more than inconvenience us. It is meant to demoralize us. Even the threat of it is demoralizing, when you think that an amendment to the constitution is being discussed to curtail rights and not to expand them. How this is NOT outrageous to most Americans is beyond me. If this was talked about as a threat to ANY other group there would be more of an outcry. But, fortunately, I find comfort in Democrat friends and family members and am able to move forward and not let it destroy me.

Death and destruction is what the repubs want to see happen to the GLBT community. But we will not give them that pleasure.

ASSCLOWN BUSH

[sui generis]

5. here's an article I wrote some time ago for DU

on the topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/08/05_case.html

the writing style may be a bit annoying - I was experimenting with "speechifying", but it's still relevant.

[assclown_bush]

17. Superb article, sui generis.

Beautifully written. I agree with everything you expressed so eloquently.
I have just one question: Will we ever see the day when we have the rights guaranteed to us by the founders of our country? The way things are going it is doubtful, but, of course, I am unwilling to give up hope.

ASSCLOWNBUSH

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

6. Such contracts can be voided & nullified by yor partner's immediate family

if they sue, for example, after his/her death for the estate. It has happened before.

Bottom line: sadly, a gay relationship will never be as sacrosanct as a heterosexual one unless that gay relationship is legally recognized by authorities as the same as a heterosexual marriage - no matter how many legal contracts you draw up with your partner, no matter who draws up those contracts, and no matter how iron-clad those contracts are supposed to be. Never.

All just my humble opinion.

[Brian_Expat]

8. Contracts also don't help binational GLBT couples. . .

. . . who cannot get each other a visa to live together.

[sui generis]

12. My family can sue all they want

If my express wishes are that my partner, who is also my business partner, is the legal executor of my will and that any challenges to the will forfeit all monies to a charity of my choice, that's not a contract that approximates marriage.

So what if the CEO of the 501(c)3 is my partner, and the amount I cede is his entire annual salary and bonus plus some mad money to actually do some good deeds, which he would do anyway.

You CAN make it bulletproof, you really can. At any rate, I'm not saying this is "good enough" at all. My point is that for every dirty trick they pull I can pull a dirtier one, which just makes this annoying and inconvenient.

Certainly, appealing to anyone's sense of fairness or playing the pitiful victim doesn't seem to be terribly effective across the line. On their side you have to convince them that nothing they do is really going to affect you anyway, which just makes them look crazy homophobic when they go out of their way to write "nominal" law. They hate being mocked more than anything in the world.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

19. I'm not certain that this is true. Invalidating such documents

>>You CAN make it bulletproof, you really can.<<

I am not a lawyer, and this is all just my own personal opinion, but is it not true that if they can find a court to completely invalidate your will, as has recently happened in Nebraska to one such couple, off the top of my head, then that provision about challenges resulting in some certain outcome would also be invalidated, giving your estate to your immediate family, regardless of your wishes?

So you see, you really do not have an iron-clad plan, sadly. I WISH you could, but you can't.

>>At any rate, I'm not saying this is "good enough" at all. My point is that for every dirty trick they pull I can pull a dirtier one, which just makes this annoying and inconvenient.<<

It's also expensive. I know I certainly can't afford to get all these documents together. I'd have to retain an expensive lawyer, and I can't afford that.

Which, I know, is beside the point we were discussing; I'm just saying for the sake of argument.

But I wish you success. :hi:

[assclown_bush]

2. Meanwhile, Arthur Finkelstein marries his boyfriend of 40 years.

It is imperative for heterosexual society in America to realize that the GLBT community mean them no harm. There will always be a segment of society that dislikes us outright. With little or no room for the possibility of a change in attitude. We must work to win the minds of their friends, co-workers, and family members. As more and more people come to the understanding that they know some of us, personally, the less the likelihood of having them fear us. And loathe us. The best way to win people over is for us to come out.

Unfortunately, not only do we, as gay men and women, have to struggle to find a toehold in heterosexual society, that allows us to make some progress in a currently overtly hostile terrain, we also find ourselves having to combat members of the Log Cabin Republicans and other neo-conservative gays who fight us tooth and nail every step of the way. The gay community is riddled with Jeff Gannons, Mayor Wests of Spokane, Roy Cohns, J. Edgar Hoovers, and Arthur Finkelsteins. Self-loathing gay men who hide in the shadows and recesses and work to combat what they deem to be the "homosexual agenda". Meanwhile, these gay hate-mongers enjoy the fruits (no pun intended) of our labor: witness Arthur Finkelstein's (a top repug political strategist who is great friends with George Pataki and Jesse Helms) marriage to his long term companion Donald Curiale.

Until we in the GLBT can educate these Judases to the error of their ways, we will have an even more difficult time in convincing heterosexual America that our rights as minorities need to be protected from the abuses by the majority.

ASSCLOWN BUSH

[indigo32]

4. Coming OUT is indeed a very important part of fighting discrimination

We have to let people know who we are.


As far as the Judases go... :grr:

[dsc]

7. I admit to having problems with going for marriage before ENDA

I think ENDA is actually more important to the majority of gays and lesbians than is marriage. After all, if I can't come out at work for fear of being fired then I won't be having my spouse on my insurance or listed as a beneficiary.

[Brian_Expat]

9. Not quite. . .

. . . since discrimination based on marital status is illegal in federal and state law. In other words, if you married a man and then were fired because of that, you could sue under existing law.

Although I don't believe it's a question of "either/or." The same people who oppose gay marriage, vocally, oppose ENDA just as vocally. We shouldn't argue that this is a zero-sum game where one right has to be surrendered to get another "more important" one.

[Lexingtonian]

10. exactly

Gay marriage rights constitute a legal and social shield for essentially all other matters of gay equality.

That is the true meaning of gay marriage legalization. Sadly, the homophobes realized this long ago and a lot of gay rights activists don't.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

11. Yup. Though I don't think this escapes the notice of gay rights activists

necessarily. With some of them, sure, but with others, I think the notion of marriage threatens their vested interests in the status quo. You'll always find Uncle Toms who stand to gain more with things remaining unequal. Not that it's a deliberate thing, just that it may be there at a subconcious level, understandably.

[Lexingtonian]

13. very true

The worst aspect of oppression is the way it gets internalized and accommodated (even idealized) as a form of social contract that makes up in reliability for what it lacks in dignity. Beaten wife syndrome.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

20. Yeah - even today you'll hear people say

that they don't want "the white-picket fence, dog named Spot and station wagon."

And it's like, uh, hello? Is there anybody in there? Do you want generous financial incentives to make life easier for you and your partner? You can leave the fence, dog and car behind, as far as I'm concerned. But when push comes to shove, you're going to want those incentives as much as the heterosexuals want them. As things stand today, gays and lesbians are subsidizing heterosexuals, who can be heard to say such things as, "why change things? They work for me as is."

[dsc]

14. I am not advocating surrendering marriage

but I do wonder why passage of ENDA has virtually disappeared as a goal. When is the last time it has been discussed here? When has it been discussed by gay rights groups? It was all but ignored in the latest Presidential race.

I also don't think marital status would save us. First, and most obvious, not all gays would get married or stay married. Second, we just recently had a case down here of a dispatcher for a local Sheriff being fired for shacking up with a guy (it is apparently illegal to live together outside of marriage in NC). Clearly marital status didn't trump that.

[Brian_Expat]

15. How would one go about passing ENDA in this Congress?

It's a pipe dream. Gay marriage is a state-by-state initiative, much as the original ENDAs were. States with gay unions are also either already ENDA states or are considering an ENDA as well.

Federally, there's little that can be done for either marriage or ENDA.

[dsc]

16. In 1999 we were one vote short of passing ENDA in the Senate

and it had passed the House. Get rid of Bush and passing ENDA would be fairly easy. Much easier than passing a similar law in the likes of Virginia and North Carolina.

[Brian_Expat]

18. ENDA would never pass with a GOPresident

And that's what we have for the next 3.5 years.