If you have any doubt about the cultural understanding of marriage, and what, exactly we are being excluded from when we are denied fully equal status as spouses, check out the Golden Globes (though any awards show will do). Does any married winner not thank their husband or wife of X years, who is (patient)(understanding)(supportive)(loving)(amazing), not to mention (my inspiration)(the love of my life)(completes me)?
These are only a few of the encomiums that were mentioned just this evening, all of which got approval and/or applause for the spouse at issue. What the audience is acknowledging is not the couple's procreative abilities or even potential, but their relationship to one another. That is what people think of first when they think of a marriage. We think of it, too.
7 Comments for “Golden”
posted by Jorge on
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It’s an old liberal idea that changing the law leads to changing the culture. I don’t agree with it anymore.
posted by CDMatthew on
David, your comment gave voice to thoughts I was having myself last night as I watched the Globes. The cultural concept of marriage is woven so inextricably to our civil/legal construct of marriage, that it’s impossible to tease these out the way the anti-equality folks wish to do.
posted by Debrah on
“…… it’s impossible to tease these out the way the anti-equality folks wish to do.”
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Likewise, it will be impossible to explain the fact that those who are in support of civil unions never entertain the thought of stripping someone from the realm of “equality”.
That’s where the hyperbole and the melodrama always take hold.
It won’t be a matter of “teasing out” anything.
The issue at hand is dealing with what has already surfaced.
Indeed, “winning hearts and minds” is often a valuable tool and true cultural change can only take place when people change the way they look at any given issue.
Not at the ballot box.
However, the patina that the leader (a president) casts over cultural issues can have enormous impact.
Obama certainly has enough on his plate and perhaps he’s running from this issue for purely political reasons for fear of alienating even more voters.
Moreover, the bluest of the blue states also seems to be turning from his policies.
A cynical person might simply blame his current avoidance of the SSM issue as political expediency.
But what to make of his wholly ambiguous dialogue and position taken even during the 2008 campaign in which he garnered almost unanimous support from gay activists?
Did they believe that he was speaking to them from on high…….sotto voce……in the Aesopian mode in which only they and he could understand some knowing wink and nod?
That he would come out full-force in support of this issue after he was president?
One wonders.
And even though I am in agreement with Obama on civil unions, I do think it would be more honorable if he were to come to terms with this issue and clear up the ambiguity.
posted by wister on
I thought that the president made himself entirely clear. He has said more than once that while not in favor of marriage he is in favor of civil unions.
posted by DragonScorpion on
That is a great point, Mr. Link. I don’t typically watch awards ceremonies like this, and so I’m not sure that I had put that together from these sorts of events, but certainly I have had identical realizations from other events.
Of course, anything involving the media, movies, commercials all convey the importance of having a partner, a wife a husband in particular. But they are most often had from the mundane, day-to-day, just going about your life.
There is, regardless what some cynics like to claim, a certain social respect in society that is still afforded to married couples and their relationship. It’s pervasive throughout society…
Of course, in those states that same-sex couples have married, do those couples or homosexual relationships in general get more social respect there than before? Maybe just a tiny bit, but I doubt that it has been significant. There is much more to this than mere legal recognition. But then again, after so-called anti-miscegenation laws were overruled and interracial marriages became a bit more common, did these couples earn more respect? Not overnight they didn’t.
It’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of social maturing before attitudes will really change. But, just as ending anti-miscegenation had the inevitable effect of thawing out prejudices, or perhaps even more so the racial de-segregation of the military, legal recognition of our civil rights will have a definite cultural impact. It will, I think, speed up a process that would have taken much longer without.
Perhaps most important of all, though, is that at least legally, we’ll be pretty damn close to equal, even as prejudice and real-world discrimination continues on for generations to come.
Thanks for bringing up a subject that may seem superficial initially, but is actually quite substantive.
posted by Lori Heine on
Thanks, Dragon. Good insights.
Ordinarily I would see such entertainments as superficial, myself, but I can’t when my own family happens to be a part of it. My brother-in-law, who won one of those Globes, will find — at sixty — that it is a lot easier for him to find work because of his recognition in the industry. Though all three of their kids are grown, it means a more secure old age — perhaps — for my sister.
They’ve been married for thirty-three years (at least that’s what he said in his speech, though it won’t really be thirty-three years until this June). He certainly thanked her for her years of support.
Good to know this website does not regard straight couples as rivals, or begrudge them their happy marriages. My sister has always been very supportive of me.
Some gays and lesbians are beginning to boldly thank their own partners. I think Cherry Jones (who now plays the president on ’24’) did so when she won her Tony for ‘The Heiress.’ It will definitely become a more common thing as time moves on.
And no, it’s not ‘superficial.’ They have ordinary people, for the most part, in their families, and come from the same society we do.
posted by DragonScorpion on
Thanks Lori. No, we should never see these heterosexual couples as rivals. Though I do tend to think of those who are married and vote against our having access to the same as hypocritical and selfish. But I think we should be happy for those who have found someone to share their life and love with and make that official.
I suppose I look at it like I did when I was single for a very long time. I was envious of those who weren’t. But I didn’t hate them nor think of them as rivals. Just very fortunate.