WHEN GAY AMERICANS MARRY: Dan Savage

[More McGreeveyness. Everyone has an angle, apparently. This piece is better than others, though I am even more out of sympathy with the entire quasi-journalistic, quasi-science fiction enterprise than I was when this story (aka someone's life) began. Here's to speculative journalism. --Eve]

...If it does nothing else, the McGreevey marriage highlights the chief absurdity of the anti-gay-marriage argument: Gay men can, in point of fact, get married -- provided we marry women, duped or otherwise. The porousness of the sacred institution is remarkable: Gay people are a threat to marriage, but gay people are encouraged to marry -- indeed, we have married, under duress, for centuries, and the religious right would like us to continue to do so today -- as long as our marriages are a sham. As long as we're willing to lie to ourselves, our wives, our communities, our children, and for someone like McGreevey, our constituents. A closeted gay man like McGreevey can even marry twice and have both his marriages regarded as legitimate. Even as an openly gay man, McGreevey can remain married to his wife and smoke all the pole he likes on the side. There ain't no law agin' it, Sen. Santorum. But how does this state of affairs protect marriage from the homos, I wonder? If an openly gay man can get married as long as his marriage makes a mockery of what is the defining characteristic of modern marriage -- romantic love -- or if he marries simply because he despairs of finding a same-sex partner, what harm could possibly be done by opening marriage to the gay men who don't want to make a mockery of marriage or who can find a same-sex partner?

Gay Americans -- the out variety -- no doubt expect the newly out McGreevey to follow the standard high-profile/celebrity coming out story arc: Write a book, get a boy/girlfriend, go on "Oprah," make ass of self. (See: Greg Louganis, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, et al.) Not me. I'm hoping for a different outcome this time. In my perverse heart of hearts, I hope Mr. and Mrs. McGreevey remain married. It might help Americans realize that people marry for lots of different reasons, and that romantic love need not be the only reason -- or even a reason -- that two people decide to spend their lives together.

And if the idea of a gay man married to a woman makes America uncomfortable, well, perhaps they should let us marry each other.

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posted by Eve at 5:46 AM | link

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