For my gay friends who have made a life together, I wish only happiness, good health, long life, success and happiness.
And for those frothing zealots who devote themselves to speaking out against legalizing gay marriage, all I can say is, "Don't you have better things to do?"
And then there is the "Defense of Marriage Act," aptly named.
Thing is, as much as I hate to admit it, the anti gay marriage people do have a point about what gay marriage means.
My first reaction, of course, was how does a gay couple being married threaten my own heterosexual marriage? And of course, calling two gays "Married," does not threaten anyone's marriage, does not cheapen the word. But what any discussion of any sort of marriage does is to expose to the light of day the whole notion of what marriage is, what it means and this is an institution which, in the bright light of day has quite a lot to fear.
A shudder always courses through me whenever I hear that phrase, "And now, by the powers invested in me by the state of...I pronounce you man and wife." And I think, what state should have the power to sanctify or bless or make legal or socially acceptable the relationship between two people, that most intensely personal relationship?
The fact is, no state has any business interposing itself between two individuals, has any business uniting them or making them stay together. Two people unite themselves. No state can or should try to do that. And if they decide to separate, the state has no business trying to keep them together against their wills.
Yes, if there is property involved in a subsequent break up, or if there are children involved, then laws have to cover that, but the contracts implied or signed do not need to be called a marriage.
So what does that word mean that's so important?
Ministers, priests, rabbis often say God has brought the two together to make one; the joining of the two is planned and desired by God. It is the invocation of magic, as if the priest knows the mind of God. To my mind, this is a gross affront to the Almighty.
People find each other, decide to stay together of their own free will; God has nothing to do with it--beyond the magic of providing all the coincidences which put people on collision courses.
I've heard a minister actually say to the congregation they have a responsibility to keep the wedded couple together, when, as he described, the husband finds himself at a party late at night without his wife but with some attractive young ladies around--the congregation should send him home to his wife. The minister actually spelled out the role other people should play in denying the husband the opportunity to be unfaithful. So there it was baldly--we as a group have a stake in making individuals tow the line.
And I sat there thinking: No, that is nobody's business. Nobody should be making judgments, except the people most intimately involved. Haven't we spent the last five decades trying to escape from the scrutiny of a social network of busy bodies telling the individual what he ought to be thinking and how he ought to construe his obligations for sexual and personal behavior? Was this revolution of the past decades not one of the most profound liberating experiences for how individuals lead their lives?
Which is why young people are not getting married as often, and it's not just the underclasses who don't bother with marriage, even when pregnancy occurs. Marriage is simply not something you ought to want anything to do with.
Pairing in public always struck me as such a show of personal weakness. It was for people who had such low self esteem they found it necessary to cling to someone, to bathe in reflected glory. It was the girl who had to screw the captain of the football team and hang on his arm so everyone knew she must be attractive if the captain chose her. What a pathetic puke. And it doesn't stop in high school--just watch the old gomers who buy their young wives and parade them around, tacitly proclaiming they may be old, bald, stooped but they have eye candy on their arms so they must be really attractive. Oh, spare me.
It's the public nature of marriage which is somehow, psychologically the salient feature of marriage. Personally, I don't get it. Two people meet at a bar, go home together, and nobody notices. They go to bed together and so far it's all very private. They take care not to be observed having sex. But then, they go and present themselves to all their friends, to relatives, to people they knew when they were younger, to co workers. They invite everybody they know and they quote poetry to each other in a performance for their entire social network.
Why? Where does this compulsion to involve other people come from? Where is this exhibitionist impulse welling up from? Wasn't it more exciting and intimate and happier to be just two people alone together finding happiness in each other? Or is that the problem? After a night or two of intensive screwing, the joy bleeds out and you need other people to keep cheering you on?
I just do not get it. Are we really such pathetic losers we need other people to keep telling us how happy we are?
So why would two gay people want to subjugate personal, individual freedom to mob rule?
What is the attraction of this thing called consensual validation? What do you care what other people think of you? It's a man's opinion of himself which determines his fate; thank you Henry David Thoreau.
The only answer I can imagine is when you are a person who has been ostracized, demonized and rejected by other people the acceptance of other people seems more important to you.
The problem is, if the electorate votes in a referendum against allowing you to call yourself "married," then the majority has spoken. You cannot force the lumpy proletariat to accept you. You might get a judge or even a panel of judges to agree with you that you have been unjustly excluded from rights and benefits of marriage, like visitation rights, rights to health insurance, rights to function as a parent, but all those things, any privilege of marriage can be legislated.
The word marriage, however, is something a group uses to describe a relationship it agrees to confer on people it accepts as having certain status. You cannot claim a general acceptance if a vote has rejected it.
Not unless you can show the electorate voted on a misunderstanding.
So if the majority of Californians want to say, "No, you are not married in my eyes. I don't like you," well then, you cannot force them to like you or accept you in social terms. In legal terms, sure you can force equal treatment. But granting status, social acceptance you cannot force, any more than you can force people to invite you to their private parties or clubs.
The big issue is, why would you care?
What group is so important to you you would fight to gain admission?
Who was it? Groucho Marx? Freud? Who said, "I would never join any club which would have me as a member" ?
If you're gay and you have a partner and kids and you are happy as a family, that ought to be enough. Don't waste your time or emotional energy trying to get nincompoops to say, "I love you."
Other people are simply not worth wasting time over. As Sartre once said, "L'enfer c'est les autres," which translates, roughly, "Hell is other people."
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