Best marriage-essay placement yet
CommentsMy column on “Monogamous same-sex adultery” is in today’s (Thursday’s) San Francisco Chronicle. The piece is, in my opinion, both the most important thing I’ve ever written on marriage, and the most prominent placement of any of my marriage essays so far. The ideas were developed right here at GaysDefendMarriage.com, and I owe gratitude to everyone who participated in our debate about monogamy, especially John D, Mark Barton, Dan Dirksen, LAwaters27, Fannie, Andrea J. Essecks, Mary Magdalene, Tom Chatt, and Patrick. My ideas would have been far less polished (and worthy of such major national attention) without your help.
Most of the column’s points have already been covered at our blog, but I’ll nonetheless quote enough to give the flavor of an essay I’m really proud of:
My concern is not about the extent of extramarital sex in each community. It’s about the vast gulf in attitudes between gays and straights on whether a promise to be sexually exclusive is an essential component of a proper marriage.
A gay friend of mine, Los Angeles blogger Daniel Blatt, who believes in monogamy and sees the advantages to same-sex marriage, was taken aback when he searched “marriage equality” Web sites and found very few positive mentions of monogamy. When I helped Blatt with his research, I stumbled upon a Web site hostile to monogamy that is promoted as a marriage resource by several major gay Web sites.
If a straight organization such as the NAACP, the Union for Reform Judaism, or the League of Women Voters linked to a Web site hostile to sexual fidelity that argued that adultery was consistent with monogamy, their members would be in an uproar because those ideas do not represent their values. But those ideas actually do represent mainstream gay and lesbian values, which is why there has been no uproar. The way to assess gay people’s ideas is not through how they are portrayed in the mainstream media, where gays try to conform and be accepted. It is through the gay media, where they forget that anyone could be listening.
If you hear gay people objecting to the argument that same-sex marriage is fundamentally different from marriage, ask them if they consider sexual exclusivity (don’t say monogamy because they might answer using the gay definition) an essential part of a proper marriage. Feel free to ask straight people the same question. Then you decide based on what you hear.
“If a straight organization such as the NAACP, the Union for Reform Judaism, or the League of Women Voters linked to a Web site hostile to sexual fidelity that argued that adultery was consistent with monogamy, their members would be in an uproar because those ideas do not represent their values. But those ideas actually do represent mainstream gay and lesbian values, which is why there has been no uproar.”
Evidentally, the only thing that we have in common is that we are gay. Your statement that mainstream gay and lesbian values endorse having multiple partners within the parameter of a same-sex marriage is completely false and dangerously irresponsible. Even if you can’t endorse same-sex marriage, even though you are gay (and how in the world can you not?), why can’t you see the bigger picture here? All gay people deserve all the rights and opportunities as straight people, including whatever “more pressing issues” your blogophere endorses. All gay people should have the opportunity to get married. Whether they choose to is their own perogative. If you yourself want to be single and sleep with whomever you choose whenever you choose, you have that right. I fortunately now have the right to get married to the same woman that I have been with for the past 27 years. Why can’t you support that?
“I fortunately now have the right to get married to the same woman that I have been with for the past 27 years. Why can’t you support that?”
I could support it, if I knew you gals, but I could never call it “equal”. Separate never is.
Patti-
You say my “statement that mainstream gay and lesbian values endorse having multiple partners within the parameter of a same-sex marriage is completely false and dangerously irresponsible.” If it were completely false, why did most of my letters in response to my Chronicle piece say not “But gay people do value monogamy” but instead “what’s the big deal about monogamy?” And these people signed their own names (you can contact them if you don’t believe me).
All gay people can get married, and the government has never stopped them. I know several gays and lesbians in succesful marriages. I plan to marry some day. What gay people cannot do is demand that the government redefine marriage in a way consistent with their minority values on what marriage is.