Sticky Rice - Gay Guide for Asia
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT “GAY MARRIAGE”
By Victor
I have said it for many years (including in this site) and I say it again in view of what’s happening now in California: The insistence of our gay brothers and sisters in the USA on using the expression “marriage” is not wise and will be proven to be detrimental in the end.
What matters, are the legal goals (especially inheritance laws), which could be (and in some countries have been) accomplished much more easily without insisting on using the culturally loaded word “marriage”.
Why do we cling to a label for an institution that does not work in almost 50 % of its applications? Is it, because we want to be “like mom and dad”, including the kiss in front of city hall, the dance of honor in front of all our friends and family, the kitschy wedding cake and all?
Why are we not creative in tailoring our own traditions, festivities, life-style(s)? Isn’t that slavish imitation of bourgeois institutions and traditions proof enough of our feeling inferior as we are, of a desperate wish “to be accepted”?
We will accomplish just the opposite! Imagine two crocodiles proclaiming, they want to get “married” and to be accepted as a “normal couple”! What lower-middle-class straights feel, when they are confronted with that tactless imitation of their most romantic notion, is very similar. They are repulsed. Is it surprising, that religious Mid-Westerners, who see marriage as a religious institution, will cringe at the idea of “gay” marriage
I am a 73 years old university professor and have openly lived in a happy relationship for exactly 36 years. All of my colleagues and students, if they were interested in my private life at all, knew about it. WE gave parties at least twice a year, were usually invited together, and if we were not seen together, our friends asked about the other. Never did I have any professional problems on account of my open gayness and relationship. This might be so partly, because university folks, and especially young ones, would consider it to be beneath their dignity to raise an eyebrow. But I am convinced, this is also so, precisely because we did NOT try to intrude into the lives of our straight friends by forcing them to “accept” anything, they did not feel comfortable with. Neither were we guilt-ridden about our private life nor did we impose it on others.
Again: Whether we call our relationships “marriage”, “civil union”, “domestic partnerships” or whatever DOES NOT MATTER! What matters, is our legal situation and that will improve faster, if we apply some tactful consideration to the sensitivity of our straight contemporaries (especially of the conservative lower middle-class).
There is also a political disadvantage to insisting on the term “Marriage”: We make it difficult (or sometimes impossible!) for basically liberal politicians like California governor Schwarzenegger or Barack Obama, who either secretly sympathize with our predicament or don’t care, but would like our votes, to support our cause, if we force them to alienate their conservative voters by supporting the notion of gay “marriage”.
The same considerations, by the way, apply to “gay parades” and similar public demonstrations. But this is another topic, which I will tackle only, if you ask me to -)
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