Why We Need Gay Marriage

Why we need gay marriage

As of November, 2006, New Jersey was the third state in the US to recognize civil unions for same-sex couples. Just short of full-fledged marriage, we will gain benefits such as adoption privileges, inheritance rights, medical decision rights, and the ability to take a partner’s surname without having to go to court. As progressive as this may be, it falls extremely short of full inclusion, full acceptance (these are only state sanctioned benefits and therefore does not have to be nor will it mostly likely be recognized in any of the other 49 states, and federal benefits, of course, still elude us). But it is a step.Up until about a year ago, I was never a proponent of gay marriage; could never quite understand the need to be "like the straights," as I’ve heard it labeled. I thought the beauty of being a gay male was freedom: sex, drugs and the latest Madonna mega-mix. Why would we ever want to be our parents? Why would we ever want to relegate ourselves to the living room in front of the TV on Saturday nights? I just never got it.So recently I began wondering what the push for marriage from the gay community was all about. On the surface, I figured it was just a political ploy for legal equality in the eyes of society; and I still believe this to be true but then something struck me. Psychologically we, as a society, are instructed into marriage from the day we begin observing and absorbing life. From infancy we view marriage, the coupling of our parents, of our grandparents, of other family members, friends of the family, neighbors, just about every couple we see on the streets, in the movies and on television. The inevitability of marriage is ingrained in us from the get-go. It is one of the unconscious goals of life: grow-up, met someone, fall in love, get married, have children, die. The ideal seeps into us from day one and it is understood (whether spoken or not) that this too should and will be our lot. But when a person realizes that they are homosexual, what becomes of the goal, the ideal, the lot?Marriage is just one of the many structures of life and behavior. And as humans, we crave structure. From infancy we test boundaries on a daily basis. If I do this what happens? Oh, this. And if I do this what happens? Oh, nothing happens so I can do that again. That is how the learning process occurs and progresses. This is how we are trained to act and behave and present ourselves. This is how we are taught our roles in the family, the neighborhood, the world. And it is a never ending lesson. We are constantly approaching new bounded situations that must be tested: school (elementary, high school, college); church; work; travel; and etc, as the scenarios are endless. We learn boundaries as children, new boundaries as adolescents, and still more at every stage of our lives throughout adulthood. Structures and boundaries are of what our societies, especially in the US, are made. We are a country of compartments. We like, né need, our people to be in their representative boxes: labeled and sealed for easy storage and retrieval from our mental storage units.

All this said homosexuals have been boundless from the moment they chose to live a life dictated by their genetic make-up rather than by society’s rules. They have to discard all the lessons that have been imprinted upon them and in doing so they discard all regard for society's rules of behavior. If I can not live as I've been instructed then I shall live as I please. And anyone knows that a man unchecked is a dangerous man. Dangerous in respect to his boundaries, which no longer exist. He is free to act upon any and all impulses and fantasies. And since homosexuality is most often defined by its sexual desires (whereas heterosexuality usually is not--and I speak mainly from a lay-societies point of view rather than a psychological or any other medical point of view), these have seemed to be the prevailing impulses that have been acted upon. We have been free, unrestrained, unmonitored to truly act like animals: impulsively, coming to a head after the sexual revolution laxed (untethered) society from personal action, and after Stonewall when we as a community finally stood up against the tyranny of society. It was because of these two occurrences that brought the AIDS epidemic to our beds. Yes, I believe we brought it on ourselves but only due to society's and religion's refusal to accept us as equal. Without the structure that every human being requires in order to live the so-called “correct lifestyle”, we create dangerous worlds, lawless worlds, worlds where disease is just as un-corralled.

And this is the catalyst behind the push for gay marriage. Whether recognized as such or not, we are desperately trying to reclaim our rightful structures. We are saying we are "like the straights" because we need and want exactly what they have: boundaries for a productive and respectable life (no, I personally do not find anonymous sex very respectable even, though I've had more than my share). We are saying that we don't want to go unmonitored, unchecked, unrestrained. We need our goals back so that we don't have to spend the bulk of our lives trying to get back on the track off which we were derailed.

If society recognizes "gay marriage" then the idea, the choice, will enter into the ideal, the lexicon and the visualization of our ingrained learning. The generations to come (because this will take time, do not think otherwise no matter if all countries legalized gay marriages tomorrow we will not see the repercussions, positive and/or negative, for years to come) will be shown every kind of marriage possible: heterosexual and homosexual. Our movies and books and television shows will reflect this new world. Our parents, our siblings, our neighbors and family friends will reflect this new world. And when the time comes the choice will not be a choice: this or that, it will just be: I love this person and we will marry.

Utopia is a wonderful idea.

But in this realization behind the push for gay marriage is also the realization behind the resistance and the fight against it. Just as desperately as the gay community is fighting to reclaim their stolen boundaries, the religious right, the republicans, all the other groups or individuals who fight against us, are just trying to secure their own boundaries. With our every push, they believe their boundaries, their structures, blur or weaken. In their views we are trying to destroy their structures in order to reconstruct ours. And even though we (the gay community) know this to not be true, it is, understandably, difficult for the other side to see this. Ever since the sexual revolution and the disintegration of the ideals of the 1950s, the conservative community has been trying to mend the fences that have been broken down repeatedly by racism, feminism, gay rights, religious rights, and so on and so on. The world was fine back then: the husband worked; the wife tended home and hearth; the children obeyed, said "thank you" and "please", made good grades and wanted to be just like their parents. It was an idyllic world reinforced by Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best. It's understandable that anyone would want to fight for those worlds to survive. But it's too late for them. It's too late because none of it can be undone: Kennedy's assassination; Roe vs. Wade; anti-discrimination laws based on race, religion, sexual-orientation; MTV; once it's seen the light and the light has seen it there is no going back no matter how many laws or constitutional amendments banning it are passed.

And I'm surprised at how sad I am at this realization. It seems that there will be no true winners in this fight, at least not for a long time, but it’s a fight that must be waged and won by the gay community if any sort of all-inclusive societal structure is to be reformed.

Welcome to The View from a Gay

As anyone else in this day and age of constant media reception, I too have my thoughts about what's going on in the world. Even though I've titled this blog "The View from a Gay", I won't just concentrate on the gay community; it's just that being gay has given me (and just about every other homosexual) a different angle from which to view this world. In addition to the gay-view, I'm also a writer, so I tend to see situations from that perspective as well (possibly poetic or literary, but also psychologically - writers become psychologist to an extent when creating characters, events, and actions for their stories).

Above all this is an experiment for me to get my voice out there in a more timely manner. Often writers who want to offer their obsevations of the world don't have an immediate outlet to discuss what is happening in the "now" unless they are employed at a news magazine/paper/website, so the blog becomes the perfect outlet for us. (Hopefully I'll be able to keep my preaching down to a minimum, but I'm not making any promises, just asking that you call me on it if it gets out of hand.)

And that's the final point I want to make: interaction with the reader. Again, too often the reader doesn't have an immediate outlet for response, which is something else I like about blogs. I encourage your responses to my observations/ideas/thoughts. I encourage your participation in this experiment because it gets your voice out there as well. So jump in with me and let's see where this takes us.

Thanks,

J Richards