The same sex?

Considering some of my previous posts, I never thought I'd see the day when I would state a case for gay marriage. But there are a couple of ideas I have wanted to explore for some time now, and I guess this blog is as good a place as any.

It is true that there is a line separating the sexes. They are different, and the biological aspects of that difference are not going to change in the foreseeable future. Legally, the difference between the sexes has more to do with the existence or nonexistence of a penis and/or testicles than anything else. Thus, if a man goes to a doctor and has himself castrated, his penis amputated, flayed, and then rearranged in such a way as to construct a faux vagina, the courts will deem him sufficiently "female" to allow his official documents to be changed. He is no longer a "man," but now a "woman."

Hey, people care about these things, OK? This stuff is considered by many people to be the glue holding all society together. You've gotta be a man or a woman, get that? No in-betweens; at least, not legally.

So, before we get to the question of "gay" marriage, we must address this need to define and separate the sexes. Is it a good thing? That is a moral question, and moral questions are not supposed to be relevant to legal questions, and I had more training as a lawyer than as a moralist so as you can see I am already quite confused. (This philosophical confusion, I might add, has caused me problems in my rather misspent life.)

I did say "philosophical" because I have never been entirely convinced that the sex of a person (many of you define it by the word "gender"), much less his sexuality, is the legitimate concern of anyone. Statisticians, I suppose, have as much right to keep track of it as they do things like age, race, or income status, but should they really have a legal right to insist that you fit definitions?

Let me tell you a true story about a legal gay marriage which degenerated into an illegal gay marriage. (I swear before God, gods, goddess, goddesses, Nature, and even Nature's God that this is true.)

My college lover (whose U.S. citizenship was legally complex) considered himself an illegal alien, even though it turned out that he was not. To expedite imminent problems at the time, he decided to marry a U.S. citizen, a lesbian. The marriage would have been a legal gay marriage but for the fact that the woman could not prove her previous husband was deceased as she claimed. So, my lover abandoned his wife -- without (I hasten to add) ever having consummated the marriage.

Either bigamy or a failure of consummation is grounds for annulment of marriage in California, but years went by, and my lover (who evolved into being "merely" my best friend) never pursued it.

Legal note: Consummation of marriage is a legal requirement for a valid marriage only in a minority of states, but its absence may furnish grounds for annulment. (And the failure of consummation may also be grounds for rejection of a marriage considered suspect by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.)

More than a decade later I looked into cleaning up the lingering issue, and after a little checking, discovered that my friend's "wife" had undergone a sex change! She was now legally a man. I excitedly called my friend to tell him that he might very well be a husband in one of America's first same-sex marriages, and his reply was a very sour, "This would only happen to me."

Assuming that the marriage had otherwise been legal in all respects, can a marriage be nullified by operation of scalpel? Or does there also have to be a clear intent by the sex change patient to change the sex? Otherwise, a perfectly good marriage might be nullified by an unfortunate industrial or farm accident…

What are the attributes of marriage, anyway? Man and woman, no unresolved prior marriages, consummation?

How about love? Friendship?

It often strikes me that the successful marriages are those between friends who love each other. Sexual attraction gets all the focus, but the real glue is the development of lasting friendship.

It has been argued that heterosexual men and women are so different from each other as to be incompatible. Mutual contempt ruins many a marriage, and I'd be willing to bet that most of these marriages began with sexual attraction. When that wore off, and when the couple discovered that friendship was impossible, the marriage was doomed. This is further compounded by the confusion of sexual attraction with love. Doubtless loneliness and self-esteem issues play a role, which of course they should not.

Not that it is a good thing to be lonely, or to have low self-esteem. But the mere fixing of loneliness is not love in the true sense of that word. It is merely an addictive process, because no one wants to be lonely, and (as any prisoner or captive will attest) even a horrible companion is better than no companion at all. Losing a husband or wife is often terrifying because it means loneliness. But the need not to be alone is not love, and it can never be the basis of an honest relationship.

Ditto for self-esteem. If you need someone to fix you -- to make you feel good about yourself -- then you are in real trouble when that person cannot fix you, and no one can deliver good self-esteem consistently to someone who lacks it. This is another good way to guarantee a failed marriage, or failed relationship.

Still, many people confuse these things -- real needs though they may be -- with love, which they definitely are not.

Suppose for the sake of this argument that people conducted an experiment in marrying friends. If friendship is the glue that ultimately holds together marriage, then it would seem that such marriages might have a form of built-in protection. And if LOVE were to develop, then it might get better and better.

Sex? Better yet?

How would one go about finding such friends?

What about gay men marrying lesbians? That would appear to be legal in every state. I am not sure whether it's a loophole in the law, but if it is, it hasn't been closed yet, and the only way to close it would be to test the sexual preferences of marriage applicants (something I don't think would fly in most states).

If there was a solid basis for friendship, then could love develop? Might sex even develop in appropriate cases?

If, in the conventional course of marriages, sex is supposed to precede friendship, does this put the cart before the horse? Or could it be a more logical (and possibly higher) idea for civilization? (After all, there is no reason why the idea of marrying a friend should be restricted to lesbians and gay men.)

Who gets to decide whether this is a good idea?

Whoa, hold on.

This is not a new idea. I just found a website. (Hey, am I allowed to say "No, seriously.®"?)

http://www.yvonnesplace.net/news/differentkindofqueer.htm -- a place which, among other observations, offers this gem:

"Until a leather dyke and effeminate queen are delivering the nightly news, labels ought to be ubiquitous,".... "And queers should claim them, embrace them, and revel in the differences they signal."

Whew. That was a relief! I mean, if people have actually started doing this (which it's clear they have) at least no one's going to blame me for my uncontrolled and politically irresponsible blogging. (And I must confess, I do love being politically irresponsible. Heh.)

Once again, though, I see no reason why these things shouldn't be capable of logical discussion -- certainly at least in theory. (Between lesbian and gay friends, marriage offers the social satire angle -- which I find genuinely intriguing….) And why can't this be discussed? Aren't we in the middle of a society-wide debate on same sex marriage? Aren't we in a rather serious Culture War? One would think someone, somewhere along the line, would have thought of this rather obvious idea. Do I have to be the only blogger?

Who will object? For starters, I can tell you who: religious fundamentalist and gay activists -- the strangest bedfellows of all. I don't think that they of all people have earned any particular right to complain.

Whose sex is whose, anyway?

UPDATE: I received the following comment via email:

Just started reading your blog, and wanted to tell you that I know a dyke here in LA who married a gay male friend, and they became PASSIONATE lovers. He has since died, but she still considers him to be the love of her life!
Fascinating; what would this sort of love be called?

Anybody else out there?

posted by Eric on 09.07.03 at 03:02 PM





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