I just met two women who were recently married, a new option that the LesBiGay community is fighting for. Even a good straight liberal can agree with the gay agenda on this one, equal rights to such benefits as tax breaks, medical insurance, pensions, hospital visitation, medical power of attorney, immunity from testifying against a spouse in a court of law, automatic transfers of housing leases, right to sue for wrongful death, and the billion other things that heterosexual married couples are entitled to.
The landmark 1996 case Baeher v. Mike in Hawaii opened the door, so to speak, to legal civil registration of marriage between same-sex couples. This marks the beginning of the end to sex discrimination in civil marriage in America, setting many states into motion trying to justify the discrimination they have perpetrated.
Of course gay marriage should exist as a choice. The open closet door couples could put their nuptials in the local newspapers and have very public weddings if they chose. These weddings could take the same range of possibilities as heterosexual weddings, anywhere from the religious to secular, elaborate to simple. Couples who remain in the closet could still benefit from a legal union and keep their marital status secret if they felt the need to protect their privacy. Of course, some couples would still choose not to enter into a legal civil marriage, just like their heterosexual counterparts who prefer to live together without the legal sanctions and benefits of marriage.
But is this normalization of the gay community something we really want? Doesn’t it make perfect sense that we all, regardless of our marital status, deserve medical insurance? Shouldn’t everyone be able to decide who they count as family? Shouldn’t we all bevalued as individuals, rather than as part of a couple–regardless of our sexuality? What will become of the lesbian and gay communities that we have worked so hard to develop once we are married off, living isolated lives in suburbia?
At this point in time, we have a real opportunity to escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage and the state that enforces it. But this requires that we create and maintain communities supportive of a wide variety of relationships–relationships that are not based on ownership and domination. Is our future as bleak as the heterosexual world’s, in which possessive marriages and the subsequent alienation of divorce is the norm? There’s a postcard going around now – Gay Marriage? May as well be straight! All I ask is that after you finish opening the new toaster ovens and silverware, please come back out and continue helping us change the world.