GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

My article in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined “Monogamous same-sex adultery” received more E-mail reactions than anything else I’ve ever written. As I hoped, a few letter-writers insisted that gays and lesbians really do understand and value monogamy, which I’m happy about.

But what surprised me was the volume of mail from readers who confirmed that understanding the tight connection between marriage and fidelity is pretty rare in the gay community. These correspondents seemed proud to defend the right for open relationships be treated as legitimate marriages, and were deeply insulted that I would refuse to respect marriages that are sexually open as equal to those that are sexually exclusive.

For example, Richard Dupler from Oakland, California, wrote:

I’ve been with my partner 10.5 years. We just bought a house in Oakland, moving across the Bay from San Francisco. We have not been sexually exclusive, ever. The relationship has been open, and honest, from the start.

We are getting married August 17, and I doubt seriously that the sexual part of our relationship will change. Just because we’re calling it marriage, doesn’t mean we have to conform to widespread ideals and beliefs about marriage, we only have to follow the law. What works for some likely doesn’t work for others.

This freedom to marry, which we take very seriously, should also mean we are free to define that marriage the way we see fit.

Richard’s honesty is refreshing. As I predicted, some gay people are explicitly planning to refashion marriage in their own image instead of conforming their partnerships to the norms of the institution. What’s nice about Richard is he’s willing to tell you about it. How many other gays and lesbians are keeping their attitudes a secret out of fear of losing this debate? The last line in Richard’s E-mail, while chilling, only reinforces the need for people who care about the values and stability provided by marriage to vote for the California Marriage Protection Act.

Then there’s Rinaldo Massimo, who writes:

Marriage and the ways in which people live it is, to my opinion, purely dictated by personal experiences. Therefore I can say that I can live my “marriage” based on how I define that in relation to my needs and that of my partner. This is a choice and should be respected. We all know that marriage has been created for social construction and therefore monogamy is not something attached to marriage.

Many people have said it was ludicrous that I claimed that gay people sometimes use monogamy to refer to having only one spouse instead of only one sex partner. Well, I also got E-mails like this one from Joanne Firth (yes, some women have these attitudes too):

Look up monogamy in any dictionary, if you have one. I bet you’ll find the same definition. Nor is it a ‘gay’ definition. It’s the standard dictionary definition. It’s true that in the United States, many people tend to use the word to mean one sexual partner at a time, married or not, but that’s not what it means…. If you think those are “gay definitions” you are doing nothing but betraying your own ignorance of the English language and unfamiliarity with dictionaries.

She also told me:

To even use the term “proper marriage” grates on one. Everybody gets to decide for himself or herself, Mr. Benkof, what a proper marriage is. Whether or not you “philander,” as you so quaintly put it, is nobody’s business but yours. And, equivalently, whether or not any other married person in this world “philanders” is none of yours. I do not find “philandering” offensive.

And she wants us to let her redefine marriage?

I have lots more but this blog post is already getting long. As a nightcap, how about Milam Freitag, who wrote:

So what if a promise to be sexually exclusive is not an essential component of a someone’s marriage? The word “proper” you use smells of internalized judgment and cultural baggage about gay people not being normal and that someone smart like you holds the key to what is and isn’t “proper.” I don’t think it’s proper for you to add to the gay hate that’s out there, so maybe our ideas of proper vary. Whose idea of proper is the proper one?

Please note that all four people I quoted used their own names. When I say marriage will change when same-sex couples are admitted to the institution, I’m not only talking about secret arrangements where two lesbian couples wife-swap or a gay guy goes to the bathhouse with his husband once a month. The “marriage equality” advocates I quoted above are so open about their own non-exclusive relationships, or alternatively their attitude that such things are compatible with marriage, that they wrote me (and in some cases the Chronicle) using their own names. That cannot be a good sign.

If anyone still doesn’t understand what I mean when I say most lesbians and gay men have no idea what marriage is, I guess I can go over it again, but I’d rather just show people the four E-mails above and say Q. E. D.