Gay and Lesbian Partners Not Unlike Straight Married Couples

[kweerwolf]

Most people, whatever their religious and political beliefs, have a preconceived idea of what gays and lesbians are like, whether that’s based on experience or images in the media. But new research shows those in committed relationships are not much different from their straight married counterparts.

A more accurate picture of the gay community in the U.S., urban or cowboy, with children or not, in or out of the closet, is based on research by a professor at the University of Vermont.

Glen Elder’s study of couples who traveled to Vermont from all over the United States the first year civil unions were offered there, beginning July 1, 2000, yielded new and surprising research analyzing the lives of same-sex couples.

Because civil-union certificates, like marriage certificates, are public information, Elder and fellow researchers were able to analyze all couples who got civil unions.

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=11351

I have to admit stories like this one really irritate me. It represents assimilationist thinking at its worst. Sure, same-sex couples are like opposite-sex couples in superficial ways ... but the experiences of gays and lesbians provide a whole different perspective that the average straight person (especially those who have little or no experience around gay people) could never comprehend. It's this "we're just like you" sort of argument that adds to the choice vs. innate debate about sexual orientation and leads unenlightened straights to say things like "well, if you're just like us, then you can surely take the next logical step and choose to be straight."

[William769]

1. What a crock of shit!

I would never compare my relationship that I had with my longtime companion to Hetro's.

[Redstone]

2. People REALLY say

"well, if you're just like us, then you can surely take the next logical step and choose to be straight."

Ah well, I guess it shouldn't surprise me. There is a well of ignorance in America that seems to have an unmeasurable depth.

Redstone

[Warpy]

3. Well, other than the gender roles of homemaker vs. breadwinner

and household drudge vs. car fixer aren't assigned, I've found most gay and lesbian couples I've known over the years to be quite ordinary.

Perhaps that's what the article was referring to, the humanity of the couples.

I just don't see how the "next logical step" could possibly involve choosing to be straight unless straight couples looking at such ordinary families where the adults are a gay or lesbian couples could choose to be gay. It just doesn't work that way unless you're a religious loon, and then good luck to you and the Red Sox.

[Ayesha]

4. I disagree

Straights will think of gay couples AS THEY ARE as normal - and thus, not in need of changing.

I personally don't think that gay couples are necessarily any different from straight couples aside from differences resulting from a homophobic and sexist society. That's a big aside from, of course. We have certain challenges, and we are also free from certain pressures, like gender-based division of labor. But we don't all dress or look a certain way, or follow the same religion, or really have much of anything in common besides being attracted to people of the same sex. For example, my partner and I have a lot more in common with our progressive married hetero couple friends than we do with, say, a couple of leathermen in West Hollywood.

You can't say that we gay people aren't "normal", because first of all, some of us may be in more ways than not, and secondly, "normal" is a myth. It's something that we decide that we are and some other person isn't, or that we're not and want to be, or that we're not and are proud not to be. Personally, I consider myself as normal as anyone else, gay or straight, that is to say not very!

[gator_in_Ontario]

7. great post!

I am married to a great woman, and we are scarily "normal". We go to work, pay the bills (hopefully). We get the mail every day, get our licenses renewed, pay our taxes...blah blah blah.
Where there is a difference is in legal status. We are legally married in Canada (where my sweet wife was lucky enough to be born), but in the US we are nothing...nada...nicht. If one of us gets sick, the other's family is free to take over our lives! Now THAT is scary!

[Liberal Veteran]

5. Assimilationist thinking?

I've never understood the unspoken disdain in the people who bitch about assimilation.

Why should it be surprising we are more like our heterosexual brothers and sisters than we are unalike?

Sure we have a unique perspective of being treated like shit by society, but when it comes to how we live our lives and express our feelings and settle down, how we are treated by society has little to do with it.

We aren't alien beings and we were raised in the same culture.

We have the same wants and needs (companionship, food, shelter, clothing, sex).

So what's so god awful bad about the fact that when looked at objectively, your sexual orientation doesn't really change the day to day lives of couples all that much.

Hell....I've been in my relationship for 15 years now. We do projects together, we go to movies, shop, take vacation, do our housekeeping, work, watch tv, eat, squabble, talk, joke, laugh, take care of each other.

It's pretty sweet growing old with someone who is your lover and closest companion. I'm just not seeing a downside to what me and mine share.

I don't think my sexual orientation would have changed the human desire to share a life with someone special.

For all intents and purposes we ARE just like them because we ARE them.

[NMMNG]

6. I don't agree that straights will expect,

on the basis of a study like this, for gays to convert. Those who would expect us to turn straight would be the same crew who would be making the demand study or not. Research depecting gay couples as living average married lives rather than "hell bent on disrupting the fabric of civilization" (as so many right-wingers claim they are wont to do) may be just the thing we need to change a few undecided minds.

[TaleWgnDg]

8. Well. Well. Well. No surprise. None. Zip. Nada. Zed. Zero.

.

Well. Well. Well. No surprise. None. Zip. Nada. Zed. Zero.

Who the hell ever thought that committed homosexual couples and committed heterosexual couples were any different? Any significant difference, that is, regarding their committed inter-relationships and its values?

Glen Elder (author of this study and researcher) concludes his study by stating:

"It’s surprising on the one hand, but also reassuring . . . gays and lesbians who aspire towards the symbolic and real material benefits of marriage are no different from other people who aspire towards domestic stability and material comfort. They are middle class. They want the stuff of a middle-class lifestyle. These are not people who are ripping the fabric of America."
http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=11351

My question to Elder is: "Surprising? Surprising to whom? To social conservatives, yes; but not to the rest of society, particularly the segment of society that is educated, knowledgeable, open-minded, and doesn't keep its head up its ass!"

[pnwmom]

9. I get the feeling that you're implying superiority on the part of

gay couples. If they are not like heterosexual couples, then what are the differences?