Right on Rites

August 2004

Opposition to gay marriage comes from two primary sources. One source for such opposition comes from gay liberationists who’ve fought to create alternatives to heterosexist norms and expectations. They rightly worry that efforts to access heretofore exclusively heterosexual privileges will stifle gay expression and erode hard-won sexual freedoms. Will unmarried gay people be discriminated against? How are the rights of threesomes and other non-traditional households to be accommodated? Will adultery and fornication laws be used to rein in non-monogamous and promiscuous homosexuals as they have heterosexuals? Will domestic partner benefits be denied to those who refuse to get married?

Indeed, to a community that has suffered under rigid societal control of sex, it seems odd to risk more government regulations by demanding access to state-sanctioned marriage. Many gay marriage proponents seem less interested in genuine equity than they are in the respectability they believe marriage confers. They short-sightedly think that signaling that they are sexually exclusive– “married”– they will distance themselves from those queers that give decent gay people a bad reputation.

But the drive for gay marriage need not simply be an exercise in one segment of an oppressed group trying to advance by climbing over the backs of others. Ironically, our comfort comes from that second source of opposition to gay marriage: the religious right.

President Bush, Pat Robertson, Massachusetts Governor Romney (whose state is the only one to allow full marriage rights to same-sex couples), and all other right-wing opponents of gay marriage constantly harp on defending “traditional marriage.”

But what is the tradition they are extolling? Traditionally, marriage has disallowed couples of different religions or races to marry. For some, traditional marriage has meant one man having as many wives as he chooses. For others, traditional marriage has meant turning women into men’s property. Given that such marriage traditions are now politically untenable, what are those trumpeting “traditional” marriage actually defending?

Gender roles.

Two men or two women making a household together cannot, obviously, divide their responsibilities and obligations according to which partner has a penis and which a vagina. Who takes out the garbage, who manages the finances, who is the disciplinarian for the children are all questions that require thoughtful negotiation in a same-sex household. And it is precisely this flexibility that drives social reactionaries nuts. To them, there are appropriate jobs and responsibilities for women that are distinct from the appropriate jobs and responsibilities for men.

In relatively recent battles, religious right-wingers have had to accept, over their then-strenuous objections, inter-racial and inter-faith marriage. And they have had to back down on women being either the property of, or totally subservient to, men. But as gay marriage threatens to expose the reality that rigid gender roles are created by humans, not God, religious right-wingers have dug in their heels. The primary “tradition” they crusade to defend is that of women who act like feminine wives and men who fill the role of masculine husbands.

As gay people, we have seen how much more happy and fulfilled individuals can be when free to realize all of their human potential, unconstrained by narrowly proscribed gender roles. And gay marriage means that gay men and lesbians will become role models for heterosexual couples, too.

Traditional, gender role-bound marriage hasn’t worked well for straight people in recent years. Let us celebrate that gay leadership has the potential to make better relationships for everyone, gay or straight, married or not.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=D4CF391C-6F1A-418A-B9C92CE89BA494D7>