The Washington Post reports on the reluctance of some gay couples to get married, even though it is now legal. On the same day, the Post reports on how the new law recognizing same sex marriage has been costly to others in the District of Columbia, including Catholic Charities, and the people they serve.
So given these costs, and the divisiveness surrounding same sex marriage, don’t you think the gay community, and the Post could have the decency to keep these doubts out of the front and center of the public eye? I mean, we have been given to believe that the self-respect of every gay man and lesbian woman was on the line in the legalization of same sex marriage. We’ve been led to believe that the burdens on same sex couples are simply not to be borne, and beyond the imagining of any heterosexual couple. And now that same sex couples have the right to marry, why aren’t they rushing to the altar?
Here are some of the reasons, in their own words:
Some say that although they committed to their partners long ago in their hearts, they oppose the idea of marriage as an institution — especially because it is one that so often collapses.
“I’m not against gay marriage in any way, shape or form, but having been married before, I think you legitimately have concerns about the failure of marriage in general for the majority of people,” said Nash Blain, 43, a lawyer in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., who was married to a man for eight years before she and Marla Seymour, 57, a bookseller, got together 13 years ago.
Blain said she can think of few happy marriages, and she still chafes at the memory of receiving letters addressed to “Mr. and Mrs.” followed by her husband’s name. “I think it’s very hard not to have some diminishment of each person occur.”
Ms Blain, didn’t you know these potential pitfalls of marriage before the City Council rammed same sex marriage through, over the objections of many in the community? Were you there to tell them it wasn’t really worth that much to you that your neighbors should be forced to conform to the City Council’s new definition of marriage? (BTW: what does a person like MsBlain, who used to straight before she was gay, do to the claim that sexual orientation is a fixed and immutable, legally recognizable and definable trait?)
Other couples in successful long-term relationships might balk at marrying because they don’t want to upset their balance, said Mark Forrest, a licensed social worker in Boston, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2004. “They may have gotten into a routine with each other and never expected this to come up, and it may be too disturbing” to introduce a new dynamic.
So disturbing. So sad. The Archdiocese of Washington had to redefine their spousal health benefits to accomodate the District’s new invented definition of spouse. All for people who can’t handle a “new dynamic.”
As with heterosexual couples, the reasons for one same-sex partner balking are myriad. Some simply aren’t ready to commit; others refuse to consider marrying until the right is extended nationwide and includes federal benefits.
So, after ramming same sex marriage through the DC City Council, the radicals are still not satisfied: nothing but the national same sex marriage and the federal benefits of marriage is sufficient to induce them to take advantage of the institution they have gone to such trouble to gut for everyone else.
“It’s so personally revolting to me,” said Rhodes, 36, who has been in a committed relationship with a man for 13 years.
“I’d rather see marriage abolished than see me married,” he said as he ate lunch in a Columbia Heights cafe with his partner, Bray Creech. “The materialism of it, what I perceive as kind of a narcissism. Like all the money and decoration. . . . I have no interest in having a performance, which to me is what weddings are.”
Interesting comment. Is the abolition of marriage the real goal? Some of us have suspected so for some time.
“There’s a whole segment of the [gay] community for whom the marriage equality bit seems way too heteronormative,” mimicking conventional heterosexual practices, said Suzanne Scott, director of women and gender studies at George Mason University. “Some would even argue that marriage is an outdated norm based on archaic rules.”
Why do they want to participate so badly in an outmoded institution?
Some of the considerations are practical. Creech, an accountant, who shares a home and dogs with Rhodes in Adams Morgan, said that after years of arguing (with his partner), he has largely given up on his dream of a wedding. Still, “my biggest fear is the hospital thing — that he would be in the hospital hurt, and I wouldn’t be able to see him. That terrifies me.”
Of course, in many states, including CA for sure, the hospital visitation problem has been solved for years through the Domestic Partnership laws. If you don’t get married, don’t form a domestic partnership, you can’t very well be mad at society for not taking you seriously when you demand hospital visitation rights, and the right to make medical decisions (which are two different things, I realize.)
Given the unending stream of press declaring the urgent human need for defining gender out of marriage, these are trivial reasons to not get married. These divisions have been present in the gay community all along. Only now that the Sex Radicals have acheived the objective of redefining marriage in the District of Columbia, and imposed costs on other people, will these fissures in the gay community be exposed to the light of day.
It is no wonder that the wider community has lost its stomach for accomodating the gay community.