Aim Higher!

October 2006

“Equality” has become a buzzword for many gay and lesbian organizations. Indeed, several have incorporated the term into their very names. The Human Rights Campaign, by far the best funded and highest profile national gay group, has even adopted an equality sign as their corporate logo.

Given that for much of history and in many places homosexual expression has been brutally suppressed, it is seductive to think that social and legal parity with heterosexuals is our ultimate goal.

But while gay people should have the ability to conduct their social and civic lives with the same freedoms and rights as their heterosexual neighbors, surely we can aspire to more than mere “equality” with straight norms. Gay liberation should be about transforming all of society, not winning acceptance for ourselves by conforming to all-too-often constrictive and deadening straight expectations and values.

Nowhere is the need for aspiration to something greater than equality more clear than in the area of marriage and relationships.

Traditional marriage has signaled that each partner is the sexual property of the other; indeed, according to heterosexual marriage norms, the only “legitimate”– and in many cases, legal– sex occurs in the context of marriage. Sadly, it seems many gay “marriage equality” advocates are motivated by the desire to redeem what they perceive to be otherwise tainted homosex by sanctifying it in the institution of marriage. But those truly interested in more just resolution of inheritance rights, hospital visitation privileges, child custody decisions, and so forth, will press for all people’s freedom– not just those who ape straight marriages– to make whatever contractual arrangements they choose. The goal of those seeking justice is to strip marriage of its special privileges, and to allow everyone access to the legal resouraces they need to take care of their households– without having to present themselves as a sexually-related, much less sexually-exclusive, couple.

Consider how much gay people have to teach the straight world about the corrosive effects of sexual possessiveness on relationships. Of course, not all gay people have escaped the burden imposed by the erroneous belief that jealousy signals love’s presence (rather than its absence!). But many more gay than straight individuals and couples seem able to retain and nurture former flings and lovers as positive, contributing parts of their lives. Writer Edmund White has called such family forms the “banyan tree” phenomenon. (A banyan seed usually takes root in the branches of another banyan tree, sending down shoots that eventually take root themselves, creating a lattice of multiple trunks, a “tree” with many supports.) Indeed, such extended families composed of current friends and lovers, of ex-lovers, and of ex-lovers of ex-lovers have frequently been at the heart of our community’s often inspiringly noble response to the horrors of the Plague years.

So many adults still conduct their love and sex lives as though they were in junior high school: petty jealousies are indulged, crippling insecurities are trumpeted as virtues, and claws-in possessiveness masquerades as love. The more mature gay model, wherein caring and commitment are not conflated with the rubbing of genitals, is a gift we have to bring the world. Some might note the irony that though gay men are often labeled as “sex obsessed,” it is precisely our willingness not to have our lives defined by our sexual practices that gives emotional depth and resilience to our relationships. Indeed, it is the monogamistic, heterosexual model that is properly labeled sex obsessed: think of all the fighting and violence that results from real and imagined slights to straight-minded people’s sexual “possessions.”

Instead of debasing ourselves by mimicking such counterproductive values, we should aim higher and offer the world a superior, more enlivening way to think of coupledom, family, and relationships. As gay people, we can aspire to something greater than equality.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=D018F71D-8152-4F77-BB8C2919FDCC7EA0>