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cahnSo one of the things that having a fancified wedding did for me was make me think more about why gay marriage is desired.
Before, I suppose I was vaguely sympathetic towards the idea, with a strong dose of general conservatism (in the general sense, not the political: what do we really know about how changing a given cultural institution will affect things?) and a stronger dose of religious conservatism (which is pretty much gone now because of various twists in my religious life, but that's another story), but really my attitude was summed up by the question: Why would gay people care?
I mean, really. Half my friends are in cohabitating relationships with no particular thoughts about getting married. If not for religious and cultural factors, particularly the former, which prevented us from the cohabitation parts, I wouldn't particularly have thought too hard about it either, I suspect. Half the older people I know are divorced or in the process of same. Does anyone take this marriage thing seriously? (Yeah, I know, insurance and visiting rights and yadda yadda. But I'm too young and/or naive to worry about visiting rights, and anyway both husband and I work so we're separately insured, which is also the case for most of our friends.)
And then there was this wedding. People went out of their way to be happy for us. We were surrounded by so much love and-- and, approval. This is the way things are supposed to be. And now that I can refer to D as "my husband," there is a level of societal respect given to that above and beyond when he was just "my boyfriend." (That's not quite fair-- if he had been "my partner," that would also have been better. But not quite as good.) So okay, now it makes perfect sense to me why people want that sort of societal recognition, why people want to be able to have that sort of love and approval of their life's mate.
On the other hand... seems like asking for laws, right here right now, is not the right way to go about it. I know lots of people who aren't against it, really, but might well vote against it if a vote were to happen today. We need just a little time to get used to it. We need a little time to go to a couple of gay weddings of our friends, see that they are trying to take it seriously. We need to get more used to unconventional families that still work. (My friends are mostly just starting to have kids-- except the religious ones, who have of course no overlap with the gay ones.) Win that battle, and legality won't be a problem.
Before, I suppose I was vaguely sympathetic towards the idea, with a strong dose of general conservatism (in the general sense, not the political: what do we really know about how changing a given cultural institution will affect things?) and a stronger dose of religious conservatism (which is pretty much gone now because of various twists in my religious life, but that's another story), but really my attitude was summed up by the question: Why would gay people care?
I mean, really. Half my friends are in cohabitating relationships with no particular thoughts about getting married. If not for religious and cultural factors, particularly the former, which prevented us from the cohabitation parts, I wouldn't particularly have thought too hard about it either, I suspect. Half the older people I know are divorced or in the process of same. Does anyone take this marriage thing seriously? (Yeah, I know, insurance and visiting rights and yadda yadda. But I'm too young and/or naive to worry about visiting rights, and anyway both husband and I work so we're separately insured, which is also the case for most of our friends.)
And then there was this wedding. People went out of their way to be happy for us. We were surrounded by so much love and-- and, approval. This is the way things are supposed to be. And now that I can refer to D as "my husband," there is a level of societal respect given to that above and beyond when he was just "my boyfriend." (That's not quite fair-- if he had been "my partner," that would also have been better. But not quite as good.) So okay, now it makes perfect sense to me why people want that sort of societal recognition, why people want to be able to have that sort of love and approval of their life's mate.
On the other hand... seems like asking for laws, right here right now, is not the right way to go about it. I know lots of people who aren't against it, really, but might well vote against it if a vote were to happen today. We need just a little time to get used to it. We need a little time to go to a couple of gay weddings of our friends, see that they are trying to take it seriously. We need to get more used to unconventional families that still work. (My friends are mostly just starting to have kids-- except the religious ones, who have of course no overlap with the gay ones.) Win that battle, and legality won't be a problem.
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Date: 2006-05-20 04:14 pm (UTC)Oh, sure! ... I should have been more specific about that "of course" -- the vast majority of my religious real-life friends, especially the ones who have been having kids for years and years now, are Mormon. And... if they were queer they certainly wouldn't be telling me, unless we were way closer. (Interestingly enough, all my best friends are atheists :) This probably says something about me that I don't want to think about too much...)
Thanks for the comments about kids. As I said, I'm way too young (maturity-wise, that is, hey, I just started living with a guy for the first time...) to have thought through those practical issues. In particular, haven't given any thought to kids except "wow, they are sure cute, would like to have some someday, but eh what a mess!"
A couple of random things: -We actually mentioned once or twice not getting married legally because of taxes and IRA's and that kind of thing. We do rather worse being married in the eyes of the law. I don't think our pastor would have gone for it, though. -And I see your point about the fine legalities of custody, visitation rights, etc., although anyone who is agitating for marriage because they want proper divorce rights scares me a bit. On the other hand, I suppose it's the ultra-practical way to go...
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Date: 2006-05-20 04:36 pm (UTC)And for a lot of folks, marriage is an ultrapractical thing. If you think you might split up later, it's easier to make sure that you get your half of the house's value if you can get legally divorced. It depresses me too, to think of marriage like that, but well. :)