"Marriage," the minister said, "is a going forth, a bold step into the future; it is risking what we are for the sake of what we can be."
Marriage is a risk.
We forget that, I think.
It seems very mainstream, this marriage thing, it IS mainstream, it's something that has been part of the culture for thousands of years.
It is so ordinary, that there are some gay people who look at the fight for equal marriage and shake their heads. "But what is the REASON you want to get married" they say. It's a patriarchal institution, it's anti-queer, it restricts freedom. It has a mean and sordid history, marked by the memory of women treated like property, of miscegenation, of contracts between families of power. It's more progressive, they say, to not get married. Marriage will ruin the gay community, they say, blur its edges, make us the same as everyone else.
Maybe. It's definitely traditional, marriage. Indeed, many of the things we're fighting for - the right to marry, the right to serve openly in the military, the right to not be harassed at a job - really, all of these things are the same thing. We are fighting for the right to be ordinary.
But being ordinary doesn't mean not being brave. You can be both traditional and risky.
My friends Cid and Glenda got married last weekend. It was my first lesbian wedding - I'd been to civil union ceremonies before, and had a domestic partnership ceremony myself years ago. But this was the first lesbian wedding I went to that was legal, the first one I attended where the minister concluded by saying, "By the power invested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts . . ."
Everyone was crying in the congregation when the Rev. Elea Kemler said that. It moved us, to hear a public acknowledgement of the love of two women - to hear a state acknowledging the love of two women. To hear an entire congregation stand up and say, "We do," when the minister asked "Do you who know Cid and Glenda give them your blessings now as they enter into marriage?" being a witness, that was moving.
The public acknowledgement of our relationships and our lives is important to us as gay people. We crave it, because we have been so long hidden in the dark.
That is part of the risk, of course. Two women who get married are taking a public risk, opening themselves up to the hatred, disgust and criticism from those on the right who do not want to understand.
But even braver than that public risk is the private risk.
We don't think about it much, because marriage is in fact such an ordinary thing. We are at the beginning of wedding season now, and brides are everywhere in their white dresses, posing for pictures in gardens amid the flowers of their bridesmaids.
Marriage is a thing straight couples progress into as a matter of course.
But marriage is so new to us still - official only in Massachusetts and now, joyfully, California- that before we marry, we still think hard about it. Our families are likely not pressing for our marriage. It's not expected. It's certainly not required.
And yet marriage is risky. That's why not everyone does it. It asks for a leap of faith, a commitment to loving and supporting someone you can never fully know. Half of all marriages fail. What other venture to people dare to try with a 50 percent failure rate? Would you go to college if you knew that you were as likely to drop out as stay in? Get a job if you knew that there was an even chance you'd be fired?
Marriage is a risk. It is brave. When we fight for the right to marry, we are asking for a chance to be challenged. We are not taking the easy way out. We are saying that in spite of the odds, despite the large possibility of failure, we are willing to live in hope.
"So it is not to lofty words, or institutions even, that we appeal at this hour of commitment," the minister said. "But rather to the resources which you two draw from deep within yourselves - the deep well of human need, united and loving, forgiven and forgiving, whole and complete before a broken and imperfect world."
Marriage is a risk. Let us celebrate those like Cid and Glenda who take it.
11 Comments for “A Risk, Not Just a Right”
posted by LeBain on
This article should go further. Marriage isn’t just a “risk” because it may or may not end, or a “challenge” because it might get difficult to explain to neighbors or maintain. Marriage is a commitment not to be entered into lightly, or as a protest by radical wannabes. Everyone, gays included, need to fully realize and understand that commitment before marrying.
To the point about what other ventures have a better than 50% failure rate, it has been said that only 1 out of every 10 new businesses succeed, yet people start new businesses every day.
posted by Ashpenaz on
Gay marriage will result in a two-tiered gay community, which is fine with me, since I plan to be on the upper tier. The upper tier will be those gays who risk marriage or who plan to risk marriage. Society will say it’s OK to be gay as long as you plan to get married like the rest of us. The second tier will be those gays who reject marriage as patriarchal and continue the multiple partner/exotic/extreme behavior paradigm. The two tiers will come to hate each other. “Queers” will start throwing eggs at “Normies” Just Married cars. Normies will buy houses, adopt children, and get promotions while Queers meet on Craigslist, man ever-dwindling Pride rallies, and ultimately ghettoize themselves out of existance. Which, again, is fine with me.
posted by tavdy on
That might happen in the USA, but in Europe I doubt it’ll happen. Yes, the increase in straight divorce rates has halted or even slightly reversed in many (if not all) the EU/EFTA states that have civil unions or gay marriage – but there hasn’t been an overwhelming flood back to matrimony.
It’s become socially acceptable for straight people here to follow the so-called “gay lifestyle” – promiscuity, drugs, heavy drinking, etc. – but with straight rather than gay sex. As long as that is viewed as normal for straights, gays who want to follow that kind of lifestyle won’t feel pressured to conform to a “traditional” one. The irony is, of course, that if gay people had been given the right to marry decades ago then straight people might never have started following the “gay lifestyle” – because there wouldn’t be so many gays living it.
posted by Pat on
Ashpenaz, sorry to disappoint you, but I doubt the scenario you describe will happen. It’s hard to say what the short term effect will be as some of the things you mention may happen, but in the long term (after at least a couple of generations of same sex marriage) will mirror straight people. There will be people who marry, people who want to marry, but for one reason or another don’t, and there will be people who don’t want to marry. I suspect that there will be a higher percentage of those gay vs. straight in the latter category, but so what?
There won’t be an “upper” or lower tier, except in peoples’ own minds. There might be some resentment in the beginning, but people will come to like the freedom and choices involved here. I agree the pride parades will dwindle, but more so because there will be less of a need for them.
Same sex marriage, which I do support as just and a benefit to society, is also a (good) symptom of society’s acceptance of homosexuality. It’s not just marriage itself that will result in the changes I mention, since gay persons always were able to have monogamous relationships. But marriage does give that extra push to further legitimize gay relationships, and will help in mainstreaming the gay community.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Pat & Ashpenaz, I have to tell you as a gay father of 2 with a partner who considers (also) that our relationship is a marriage, there is a 2 tiered structure within the gay community already… it isn’t a mental construct… it’s real, visceral and the antagonism toward the “normies” is apparent.
I think it’s often disguised behind a rhetoric claiming those who have “settled down” have turned traitor on their true, inner gay nature… or that we’re somehow defective because, in their shorthand pyscho-babble, we “crave” society’s validation and need to fit in… or, as some right here on this site have alledged, we’re self-loathing gays because we want a stable relationship, family, kids, 2.2 cars, white picket fence suburban lifestyle.
It doesn exist. Already. It’s real as the split within our community of those who think gay defines who they are and what they do and how they vote versus a smaller segment who think gay is but one important aspect of their personhood.
posted by Ashpenaz on
Here’s the difference: John McCain can go on Ellen. Ellen can have her wedding at the Bush ranch. Ellen is, for me, a model of the “normies.” She doesn’t do anything particularly gay, she’s getting married, everybody wants her to be happy. That’s the way I live my gay life.
I don’t think you’ll see John McCain showing up at any Pride rallies. I don’t think ActUp will hold its next convention on the Bush ranch. That tier of the gay community will wither into irrelevance while us normies get married, go to PTA meetings, grow our lawns, somewhere that’s green (OK, we’ll toss in a few showtunes).
posted by Pat on
Michigan-Matt, I don’t disagree with you or Ashpenaz about the two tiers that exist somewhat (or more) today. I personally am not experiencing it (I’m partnered for 4 1/2 years, no children and none planned). In fact, most of the single gay guys I knows, if anything, seem envious. Further, I myself don’t feel myself on an upper tier, or a tier that is that much different. If someone had asked me six years ago (and I was 37 then) if I would ever be partnered, I would have said most likely not. So I’ve had experience from both ends of things. Yes, things are different, but they don’t seem any more different than what my straight friends experienced when they went from being single to married.
But that’s only my experience, and I read here and there about some gay people feeling resentful (for lack of a better word) that they see others coupling up and doing the “straight” world thing. I maintain that given a couple of generations of same sex marriage, and I think we’ll see that whatever tiers exist in the gay community will be similar to what goes on with straight persons. I got the impression (perhaps wrong) that Ashpenaz was saying these two tiers will be in the long term.
Ashpenaz, I get that McCain won’t be going to any pride events any time soon. But I also don’t see McCain will be going to the Mardi Gras or be seen on Girls Go Crazy DVDs any time soon either.
posted by Regan DuCasse on
Ah, the always contrarian Ashpenaz. You’re the guy that likes to sh*t into the dish of ice cream JUST to see what would happen?
The two tiers, so to speak…exist in OTHER cultural minorites, not just gay people.
Haven’t you noticed how much talk and reality there is about out of wedlock births and low marriage rates among black Americans?
Truth is, it’s tough for a black woman in some areas of the country to find a SUITABLE black man, or perhaps ANY man who doesn’t share her ethnicity.
Men are statistically more likely to cheat, or leave their first wives for far more arbitrary reasons.
Which wife is McCain on? And what’s HER age and financial status?
See?
The choice to marry and the success of each individual marriage is up to each individual who enters into it.
The act of marrying, is the easy part. It’s the VOWS of marriage that can be the sticking point and the ROLE of the spouses could change back and forth. In which case, what makes the ROLE of gender and orientation irrelevant in a marriage.
Mixed marriages used to be a novelty and acceptance being common came much later.
There are still a lot less mixed marriages than non mixed, so one might say that married gay couples won’t stampede society.
The important point here is that marriage equality has reaped more benefits than detriments and there is no reason not to allow gay couples the choice to have each other. Period.
What J. Vanasco thinks others feel about it, whether it’s a risk, leap of faith or all that isn’t the point.
At least marriage equality will make the ignorant understand that being GAY isn’t something people enter into as a choice and given the option of being oneself and open, folks will learn more ABOUT gay people, what it MEANS to be gay and what a gay person WOULD do if given more choices for themselves.
The straight folks out there take a LOT for granted and assume even more. Hopefully this is one way they won’t do that anymore.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Pat notes: “I maintain that given a couple of generations of same sex marriage, and I think we’ll see that whatever tiers exist in the gay community will be similar to what goes on with straight persons”.
I hope you’re right, Pat. It’s a hopeful future if that’s the case.
posted by tavdy on
“Men are statistically more likely to cheat, or leave their first wives for far more arbitrary reasons.” – Regan DuCasse
According to stats from the Netherlands, married gay male couples are less likely to divorce than married lesbian couples. I believe the same is true in other countries with civil unions or gay marriage. What does that say about the importance to them of their relationships, and their willingness to forgive?
posted by YesitDonna on
I couldn’t be happier for Cid and Glenda especially, but for anyone who chooses to share their life with another completely. Cid will always have a place in my heart for the part of my life she was and is in. Keep love strong!