First, let me clear my throat:
These thoughts are the outgrowths of a discussion I was having with a friend (I’ll call her Gigi). I am not sure that it is germane but let’s note that I am a straight, married man and that my friend identifies as queer and cannot, as of yet, legally marry her partner in New York State.
That is, if she wanted to. As it is, she is against marriage. For both straight and gays. Period.
Anything insightful, original, or radical in this post, I would have to attribute to her.
That isn’t without caveat. The first point that she and I agree on is that, and this is a direct quote from her:
relationships free of commitment can lead to a lot of exploitation and can wreak havoc on women and children who only gain protection through formalized relationships.
The other point we agree on is that marriage, if it exists at all (this last clause would be revelatory to my wife), should be available to all. It is in that vein that we celebrate the truly groundbreaking, epochal California marriage decision.
I know now that those on the right – religious or otherwise – and the other know nothings will take this decision as their battle cry to not only reverse it, but to also erase gains that gays, lesbians and the transgendered have made in our society. We must stop them from doing this.
But we cannot just play defense.
Another direct quote from Gigi:
Giving rights to married people and using those rights to exclude others for me makes the state a moral judge, an enforcer of cultural norms, and does injustice to the complexity of our lives and does violence to a wider, larger concept of love.
How about, instead of extending such protections only to people who have sex with one another, that the protections that “marriage” contain be extended to all the myriad ways that family and commitment manifest in our lives.
Gigi:
People should be able to contract their relationships. For instance, two sisters who live together and share finances should be able to draw up a contract for a 5, 10, 20 yr agreement which dictates they share rights of inheritance or end-of-life decision power for one another.
Or two people who are sleeping together draw up a contract that says they share x, y, and z — but want their property to revert to their children if they should pass.
The point would be not to limit those options and not to give any relationship a privileged status.
So, let the battle be joined. We should draw up our own manifesto on where we should be as a society and put that up against the people who, against all reason, would plunge society into the dark ages.
Leave a Reply