I fully support gay rights and wrote a letter to the prime minister–I’m up in Canada–supporting gay marriage. But whenever I get into debates about the issue with right-wing acquaintances, they bring up the “thin edge of the wedge” and insist that gay marriage will lead to polygamy. This leaves me stymied.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Her interlocutors are wrong, wrong, wrong,” says E.J. Graff, author of What Is Marriage For?, a terrific, informative, and entertaining book about gay marriage. “They’re assuming that we homos are making a claim to marriage under the libertarian argument that everyone should be free to do as s/he wishes. Wrong. We are arguing that we already belong to the West’s contemporary marriage philosophy–for capitalist and for feminist reasons.”
Get ready, SIC, because Graff is going to jam some steel into your shuddering feminist spine: “Once upon a time, the West had a traditional marriage philosophy.” The husband owned his wife, whatever children she bore him–you know the drill. But capitalism eventually came along–thank God!–and freed us from those confining sex roles. “Each of us now has to make a living independently, based on individual talents and efforts rather than traditional roles. Over time this led to gender equality in both the job market and the marriage market. Between 1850 and 1970, every developed country struck down its sex-based rules, both in labor (i.e., women can be plumbers and legislators) and in marriage (i.e., married women can own property, hold jobs without hubby’s permission, have custody of children, and even–gasp!–say no in bed). The result: gender equality is today’s governing public philosophy, in marriage and in much else. For 150 years courts and legislatures have changed marriage law to fit this philosophy, under which same-sex couples fit just fine.” In other words, heterosexual marriage is not one man taking ownership over one woman, but two individuals, as equals, committing to each other. “The only sex-based restriction left in marriage law,” Graff says, “lies in the entrance rules, where it no longer belongs.”
First, WTL: Each and every one of us embarrasses himself in some way when he loses his virginity. Mortification can’t be avoided. Sorry.
