WHAT'S SEX GOT TO DO WITH IT?: Paul Nathanson

I agree that straight folks already gravitate to relationships favored by gay people (who aren't allowed, after all, to marry other gay people). But this has been going on for a long time, beginning long before anyone had ever heard of "gay relationships." Even straight people who do marry often resort to serial marriage. This situation will remain unless we take steps to reinforce the status of marriage: discouraging divorce and granting privileges to balance the responsibilities of marriage. And those steps will never be taken unless enough people regain the idea that marriage is communal institution, not merely a personal and private one.

Actually, there are people who ask what makes a marriage different from an emotional friendship or even a business partnership. So far, though, their question is mainly rhetorical, a strategy intended to confuse advocates of gay marriage. (As in: Do you really want everyone to marry?) It might be a good idea for some of these relationships to be given legal status--but not, of course, as marriage. It's the all-or-nothing premise that troubles gay people: you're either married or you're nothing. That's why they demand inclusion. If many of these relationships had legal status according to function--not necessarily sexual--gay people might find it easier to accept something other than marriage. Of course, the whole notion that marriage has high status is anachronistic, to say the least. All that remains of that status is the (often tawdry) glamour of a wedding.

I had to laugh when I read Guerrerro's definition of marriage. Why? Because who knows what "love" means these days? Sentiment, I suppose. If so, it's no wonder that these vaunted "lifelong committed relationship" often amount to nothing more than "starter marriages" or steps on the road to "personal growth." Frankly, I don't believe that sentiment (no matter how dolled up in psychological or even theological jargon) is enough to sustain any important relationship: marriage or friendship, straight or gay.

I'm in profound agreement with Eve about the "unwarranted American pursuit of 'the authentic self'--what I am rather than what I should do." And while I’m on the topic of identity and identity politics, I should just add that "gay identity”"is a very recent innovation. Until the day before yesterday, no one had ever heard of either that or "sexual orientation." Most of those now called "gay" considered themselves ordinary folks, not innately different, who occasionally had sex with other men or other women; most of them married and had children, therefore, without deceiving anyone. (A few of them, however, really cannot function heterosexually; these folks were either unhappily married or single.) Katherine Young and I have modified our paper, yet again, with this in mind. And it's important.

Eve mentions the "desire for gender," another topic that should be discussed. Academics are so used to thinking of gender as the result of a patriarchal conspiracy that few bother to ask if it serves (or has served) a useful purpose. Even though gender systems vary considerably from one culture to another, gender (like marriage) is a universal feature of human existence both historically and cross-culturally; every society has had a gender system, though some are rigid and others flexible, some complex and others nominal. And one reason for this, in our opinion, is the need of men to make some distinctive, necessary, and publicly valued contribution to society (and thus to invest in its stability and continuity). In addition, there's something to be said for the idea of "reconciling" opposite sexes. Even though men and women aren't nearly as different as some feminists and anti-feminists want to believe, they're different enough to need cultural support for bonding.
posted by maggie at 4:54 PM | link

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