Robin Reardon's Blog: Robin Reardon: Speaking of writing... - Posts Tagged "real-marriage"

True confession time. Many years ago, although I considered myself extremely accepting of LGBT individuals (as they say, straight but not narrow), I asked a wonderful lesbian a terrible question. Okay, yes, it was 2004, while my home state of Massachusetts was still trying to decide whether marriage was a right open to all citizens (and not just the straight ones), but still. This 45-year-old woman wore a gold band on her left ring finger that I knew matched the one on her female partner’s left hand, and one of us brought up the subject of the marriage equality debate. At one point in the discussion I asked, “So, have you ever been married?” There was a long pause, and then she replied, “Just the once.” I nearly melted in shame, and so I should have.

Back then, in the early days of broad-based discussion about marriage equality, I’m glad no LGBT person asked me for my opinion about the likelihood that “gay” marriages would be as stable as “straight” ones, because I would probably have embarrassed myself further. After all, I was aware that men were more likely than women to be commitment-averse, and for sure most of society made it harder rather than easier for a gay or lesbian couple to make a go of their relationship. So despite my self-proclaimed progressive attitude, I would have expected straight marriages would be more stable over the long run.

Wrong again.

If I had met the same standard I expect from others—that is, thoughtful analysis before drawing conclusions about complex issues—I would have know better. And I would have been better able to rebuff the insistence from homophobic bigots that “gay” marriage would undermine “real” marriage by redefining the nature of families. But, even though I saw this argument as specious and idiotic, it wasn’t until I had data in hand that I could construct a worldview that supported reality: Comparing the marriages of straight, lesbian, and gay male couples, the most stable of the three might just turn out to be gay men.

If this is, in fact, true, here are some of the reasons that might support it.

1. Homosexual couples don’t enter their relationships with pre-determined ideas about what their partners will do based on gender roles. There could easily be disagreements about who does what, but negotiating through the conflicts is more likely to be based on egalitarian rather than presumed positions.

2. When it comes to day-to-day activities and communication, women understand women better than men do, and men understand men better (a la Henry Higgins in Pygmalian/My Fair Lady: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”)

3. Most women know better than to expect from most men the same kind of consideration and sympathy they can get from their close female friends, so their expectations of other women are higher than they are of men. This could make lesbian relationships more challenging than gay male ones, because the women will expect a lot from each other—more than most women expect of husbands—while most men don’t have corresponding high expectations of other men.

4. Historically, men are more likely to find monogamy challenging than women, and it seems gay men are likely to give it even less importance than their straight counterparts; therefore, extra-marital sex is less likely to be something gay men would break up over. A 2009 Scientific American article (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/n...) cites some interesting comparisons.
• Extra-partnership sex: 59% for gay men, 14.7% for straight men, 13.5 for straight women, 8.25 for lesbians
• Agreement about having extra sex: 43.7% for gay men, 5% for lesbians, 3.5% for straight couples

5. We all grew up in a culture that expects us to marry—unless we’re gay. So most LGBT adults probably grew up with the expectation that they would not, in fact, marry, not only because there was no legal basis for them to do so, but also because until fairly recently few people believed it should be an option. So it’s unlikely that today’s LGBT married folk got married because it was something they or anyone else expected of them. Too many straight marriages take place for exactly this misguided reason, and this basis doesn’t lend itself to stability.

6. As noted above, men tend to be more commitment-averse than women. For gay men, this very likely means that by the time they decide to marry, they’ve been together long enough, or have been together and then apart and then together again often enough, or both, to feel as though the union is something they don’t want to be without.

If you’d like to read more about the studies and draw your own conclusions, here are a few resources to start with:
• The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss (The Atlantic) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...
• What Straight Couples Can Learn From Gay Couples About Relationships (Huffington Post) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-g...
• Are Gay Marriages Healthier Than Straight Marriages? (Politico) http://www.politico.com/magazine/stor...
• Monogamy Is All the Rage These Days (Scientific American) http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/n...
• Same-Sex Parents Are Found to Be More Attentive than Heterosexuals (Queerty) http://www.queerty.com/same-sex-paren...

With the stated intent to preserve the religious freedom of government officials (and, presumably, to avoid legal hot water regarding the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling), Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has issued an executive order that a new marriage license be created for that state, one that does not mention the name of the clerk executing the document. The question arises: Is this a good way to cast a little oil upon the roiling waters set to boiling by Kim Davis and give everyone a little breathing space, or is this a way for cultural and religious dinosaurs to drag their feet and at least slow the progress of LGBT rights?

Once upon a time in the United States, there was no legal recognition of a union between two women or two men. LGBT couples who wanted to call themselves married did so without the support of—or, in fact, any kind of acknowledgement by—government. Then in the year 2000, Vermont created an instrument called a civil union that could be entered into by gay couples. Other states followed, putting into place civil union and domestic partnership laws.

To some in the LGBT community, this seemed like a good thing. Maybe it wasn’t “real” marriage, but it was a step in the right direction. And now that the unions were legally recognized, gay people would have an opportunity to demonstrate that they were just as capable as straight couples (and, as it has turned out, possibly even more capable) of maintaining the married state. After all, wasn’t tolerance better than hatred?

To others, this separate-and-unequal treatment felt like a slap in the face, or worse. They weren’t interested in being tolerated. They insisted on full acceptance and labeled as cowardly anyone who said they were pushing for too much too soon. They demanded to be recognized as full citizens with all associated rights and privileges, and—while they were at it—as real human beings alive on the face of the planet.

In 2004, this second group—those not willing to be tolerated—began to see light at the end of the tunnel when the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled that denying any citizen full marriage rights was inconsistent with the state Constitution. In the ensuing years, state after state went in one direction or the other, with some following the lead of Massachusetts and some amending state constitutions to ban “gay marriage.” The gap between these two directions was bridged legally by Obergefell v. Hodges. The cultural/religious gap remains and even seems to be widening.

Smack in the middle of this gap is Kim Davis, the Kentucky Rowan County clerk who has been refusing to issue licenses to LGBT couples and/or altering the licenses themselves to omit the name of the county and the name of any clerk. And it seems Governor Bevin, with the executive order, is following her lead.

So is Bevin throwing oil on the waters, as he claims? Is he allowing LGBT couples in Kentucky a separate-but-unequal counterpart to a marriage license that will protect them from the fury of Kim Davis and her ilk, or is he denying them, yet again, full citizens’ rights?

What are the ramifications of a marriage license that lacks the names of those in authority to issue it? Will it be valid in other states? Would it withstand a legal challenge? Does it leave a crack through which someone—or some government—could refuse the rights due to a legally married couple because the document lacks authority?

And here’s an interesting question: Whom is Bevin trying to placate with this executive order? With this executive order in place, who is it who’s being tolerated? Is it LGBT couples who are being singled out yet again for separate treatment, or is it the Kim Davises of the world—those who insist on living in a separate reality from what’s just outside their doors?

I say let’s reject tolerance. All citizens deserve full acceptance and full rights, and all who would deny those rights should be openly declared to be the bigots that they are. For they meet the very definition of bigotry: the reserving of a right or privilege for one group of people to the exclusion of another for no reason other than the opinion of the first group. Bigotry it is, and Governor Bevins is not just encouraging it. He’s codifying it.