I remember a time when the typical barb aimed at gay men and lesbians was that they are incorrigibly promiscuous and only care about sex. Now that so many non-straight folks are clamoring for the right to legally recognized marriage, they are accused of trying to steal a precious institution (and word) from the rightful heterosexual owners.
So you are, apparently, damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
And I do mean (apparently) damned.
In few cities in America does the debate over gay marriage mean as much as it does to Long Beach. Our population of gay men, lesbians, transgendered folks and just about every kind of questioner on the beautiful queer spectrum surpasses almost any major metro area on Earth. There are a lot of people here who want to get married, and on November fourth we may find out once and for all whether, legally, they will be able to do so.
Now, I’m not so sure this bandwagon is one the LGBT community really needs to jump on. Lifetime commitment is a beautiful thing, a surrey with the fringe on top; legal marriage in this country is more like a slow motion train wreck (the states with the strongest anti-gay laws are also the states with highest divorce rates. Makes you wonder, eh?). So while I’m not sure that joining the table-cloth-choosing, diamond-ring-buying, romantic-myth-believing, multiple-divorce-lawyers-paying crowd is going to be as wonderfully satisfying as my gay and lesbian friends may hope (though my marriage, I must say, is a happy exception to such cynicism) I am very sure everyone deserves the choice – especially in a society supposedly built on choice, and on secular values and ultimate equality.
But I fear I am in a large minority, and the majority appears very committed to some pervasive (and irrational) taboos and beliefs that stand between many of my friends and their desire to be recognized by the registrar recorder as a union of souls (and bank accounts.)
I keep hearing about a mythical creature called “traditional marriage”. If I understand correctly, this involves one man, one woman, a white picket fence and…that’s all I can figure out. I have tried to discover the details of this tradition, and its source. Who washes the dishes? Can they get divorced if there is violence? How many children do they have, and do those children play with dolls, or with tanks? Advocates of traditional marriage don’t seem to say.
However, they do (sometimes) reveal what their source is. Another mythical creature called “The Bible”.
Let’s leave aside for a moment that the content of this very popular “book” is not clear; Jews and Christians differ on its definition, as do the various Christian sects; certain portions included by one group are rejected by another; translations vary wildly; entire volumes have been excluded that are apparently relevant. There really is no one “Bible” – rather there are reams of Judeo-Christian scriptures, some well-known, others more obscure. But never mind. Let’s assume we know what “The Bible” really is.
And let’s also leave aside that founding legislation in baldly religious dogma is plainly unconstitutional, ie: un-American. Let’s pretend (just for a few paragraphs) that we live in the theocracy our Republican fellows seem to dream of.
Even if we accept Biblical proscription as the source of traditional marriage, and accept that we should proceed from that premise in crafting legislation, we are still in the dark, because there is no clear definition of this supposedly sacred institution. The Bible, such as it is, does not offer a reasonable guide to modern (or even to traditional), licit, sexual partnership.
After all, Jacob himself – who took the name Israel and fathered the thirteen tribes – had two wives. David, one of Israel’s greatest kings, had 18 (and probably a male lover). Yet advocates of “traditional marriage” never verbalize support for polygamy. Why not?
Maybe for the same reason they don’t speak out in favor of the tyrannical and quasi-ownership role a husband had over his wife in the ancient Levant, in most Western nations until the latter third of the 20th century, and, to this day, in the zealously patriarchal theocracies of the Middle East, including our supposed ally, Saudi Arabia, where just leaving the house unaccompanied can mean a severe beating or worse for women. Worldwide, women “traditionally” have had no choice about whom to marry, nor could they seek divorce. Biblically, wife-beating was not only tolerated, it was obligatory in certain cases (such as adultery, or plain disobedience). Rabbinical courts and, later, secular ones afforded women the same status as chattel – like a chair, or a goat.
This tradition lasted into modern times; in North Carolina, to take just one example, up until the early 1990’s a marriage certificate was prima facie defense against charges of rape. That is, a wife was obliged to sexually service her husband whether she wanted to or not, and he enjoyed the right to force her (she did not have the right to force him, however). Accused of rape, he needed only to prove his accuser was his wife at the time. How’s that for tradition?
Of course, in our democratic republic, more than one tradition exists. People whose ancestry is not Judeo-Christian bring different taboos and practices to the conversation. Polyandry is a revered tradition in certain parts of Africa and Asia. Communal marriages, a popular but probably failed experiment of the 1960’s, were not unheard of in ancient and classical Europe. In “The History of Human Marriage,” published in 1921, Edward Westermarck (a founder of British sociology and a professor at the London School of Economics) documented the proliferation of nearly every imaginable marriage arrangement on nearly every continent: Brother-sister marriages, mother-son marriages, group marriages, and so on. They all have tradition behind them.
No, I’m not recommending these arrangements, or implying that they are morally equivalent to gay marriage; I’m simply pointing out that “tradition” is no guide to the good or the practical.
Even in the United States, arrangements that would seem to us rather taboo have been common at times. Marrying the widow of a brother or cousin has often been considered an obligation for an honorable unmarried man. Forcing girls to marry a rapist – a practice with Levitical backing – was for a time the typical response of American families to the “dishonor” of an unbetrothed girl losing her virginity. Are these the traditional family values the right-wing wishes to uphold?
One would hope not. Tradition alone is one of the silliest reasons to do anything. Slavery was an American tradition, as its proponents pointed out constantly during the 18th and 19th centuries. “It’s always been this way,” is simply not a logical argument; in fact, it’s not an argument at all, but a distraction.
Worse, in this case, as it refers solely to monogamous, consensual partnership between one man and one woman who want to make babies, it isn’t even true. Marriage has meant many things to many people and cultures throughout the centuries, and even the Western tradition has included myriad forms. When you say “traditional marriage,” you’d better know which tradition you mean, and you’d better be ready to explain why your tradition is the one we ought to follow today. After all, in the 21st century, women choose whom to marry. They work outside the home. They get divorced if they want to – although divorce is more roundly condemned by Biblical sources than homosexuality, by a long shot. Would the homophobes have us return to traditional marriage in these senses?
Further (and this really should be in bold, capital letters, billboard size), procreation intention is not and never has been a condition of marriage. Infertile couples marry, and no one in their right minds would deny them that right, right? Menopausal women marry. Couples with no desire to make babies still marry. Is the right-wing insisting they stop? Why not?
In considering Proposition 8 – which would amend the California Constitution to prevent marriage by same-sex couples – I hope all of us will reject the theocratic, glib, and simply incorrect “argument” that monogamous, heterosexual, consensual, procreative marriage is the only “traditional” marriage arrangement. It isn’t true, it isn’t that simple, and in the end, in America, it really doesn’t matter.
What matters is freedom.
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