Rob Wade
2005-11-08 22:57:50 UTC
Marriage belongs to the straight world and gays should not change it
Lee Harris
Gay marriage is rapidly becoming our national tar baby - something
that you cannot touch without getting tar all over you. Once you touch
the tar baby, you can never quite get rid of it again.
Frankly, the gay-marriage tar baby perplexes me. I do not understand
it. All I know is that I want to keep my distance from it.
The source of my confusion is this. For 18 years, I have shared my life
with a member of my own sex, and I have been entirely satisfied with
our domestic arrangements. Never once did it occur to me that there was
something missing from our lives or that we were the oppressed victims
of the heterosexual majority. Never once did I think our lives would be
more complete, or more honorable, or more worthy, if only we had been
able to get married.
My thought was not that marriage should be only between a man and a
woman but, simply and matter-of-factly, that marriage was and had
always been between a man and a woman. Marriage as an institution was
theirs; it wasn't ours.
Once upon a not-so-distant time, all gay men and women instinctively
made this distinction between "theirs" and "ours." Indeed, the gay
revolution in this country began when a group of drag queens at a bar
in the Greenwich Village decided to claim the territory within the
walls of that bar as "ours" and proceeded to evict the police who had
been accustomed to raiding the bar at will.
The Stonewall rebellion was a momentous challenge to the status quo.
Never before had homosexuals claimed the right to order our own
communities - or to disorder them, for that matter. And, even more
astonishingly, never before had the larger community permitted us to
create such communities. This benign response on the part of most
straight Americans, even if it was nothing more than "benign neglect,"
was just as unprecedented as the decision of gay men and women to live
openly among them. And yet, the response of straight America was not
wholly out of keeping with what is perhaps the finest quality in the
American character: our willingness to let others make a life for
themselves according to their own terms and not ours, provided, of
course, that they are willing to let us also make a life for ourselves,
according to our own terms and not theirs. The distinction between
"ours" and "theirs" must not be confused with the distinction between
"us" and "them." The first distinction is the source of tolerance; the
latter is the source of conflict.
Normally when we think of "ours" and "theirs," we are apt to suppose
that we are talking about physical things - our turf, your turf -
all things that we can seize and that you can try to wrestle from us.
But this is quite misleading - something that was taught to me 16
years ago, shortly after my partner and I acquired our small
window-tinting business in Norcross, Ga.
Back then, as now, there was a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution,
and my partner, Andy, and the other guys in our shop asked me for my
opinion.
The amendment would have outlawed burning the American flag, and for
me, at the time, the question was a no-brainer. Obviously you don't
amend the Constitution for something as trivial as that. After all,
what is a flag but a piece of cloth that had been conventionally
designated as a symbol of America?
My views did not go over very well at the shop, and the discussion soon
became warm - so warm that it suddenly dawned on me that we were no
longer talking about the same thing. I wanted to treat the issue purely
in terms of the legal right of the individual to express himself, since
that was how I thought of the question.
But my crew didn't see it like this at all. For them, the issue had
nothing to do with legal rights but turned entirely on the sacred
status of the American flag. It was their flag, and they were not about
to allow anyone to desecrate it.
My first response was simply to dismiss my blue-collar crew's "opinion"
as lacking in intellectual substance, and so not to be taken seriously.
But, because these were the people I worked and lived with, this
solution could not satisfy me long, and, before I knew it, I began to
question my own cocksureness.
My first epiphany was the realization that my crew members had not
merely been expressing their "opinion" on the constitutionality of the
flag-burning amendment; they had been voicing something that didn't
come off the top of their heads, but from the bottom of their hearts.
They didn't want to discuss the merits of flag-burning - they wanted
it stopped.
And this led to my second epiphany: The flag, for people who are
willing to die in its defense, is not merely a conventional symbol; it
is something that they have a personal stake in.
In the eyes of my crew members, flag burners and their defenders were
both trying to take from them something that was theirs, and that is
all that mattered.
Today it is no different. Replace the American flag with traditional
marriage, and you will at once see what I mean.
On the one side are those for whom marriage is simply a legal
convention, which, like any other convention, can be altered at will.
But looked at in this way, the American flag is also an arbitrary
confection, an assortment of red and white stripes with white stars on
a blue background. In which case, what is to keep us from replacing our
traditional flag with some other attractive arrangement of colors and
shapes? Surely no one could possibly complain about such a purely
aesthetic change, since the new flag would be just as much the flag of
the United States as the old one.
On the other side are those for whom marriage, like the flag, is
something that bears the true mark of the sacred: It is inviolable and
not to be tampered with.
Does this mean that the flag or marriage has never changed before? Of
course not; but it means that any change in either of these sacred
institutions must be made and approved by those to whom these
institutions belong.
In the early and creative phase of the gay liberation movement, gays
recognized that we were different from them; they recognized that they
were different from us. We said, "Listen, we want to have our own turf,
our own communities"; and they said back to us, "OK. You can have your
own turf and your own communities. But, please, make sure you stay on
your side of the line."
This sensible concordat was responsible for the immense progress that
gay men and women made in the post-Stonewall era. But it was abruptly
shattered with the proclamation of a radically new political agenda
that was launched with the publication of Andrew Sullivan's 1996 book,
Virtually Normal.
At the center of Mr. Sullivan's thesis was the notion that the
distinction between "ours" and "theirs" was illegitimate. To me, this
claim made no sense philosophically, psychologically or politically.
Gay men are different from straight men; gay women are different from
straight women. Nor is there anything demeaning or morally
objectionable in our being different.
I see the world differently because I am gay, and I am heartily glad of
this fact - not because I see it clearer or better, but because it
allows me to see it from a different perspective and to discover things
in that perspective that no straight man could be expected to notice.
No matter how I came to be the way I am, I am grateful that I have
ended up as I have. I need no one else's confirmation or blessing to be
equal to myself. I deeply love my partner, and I hope to die with him;
but there is nothing in my fidelity that requires me to borrow the
concept of marriage.
Is friendship a less sacred ideal than marriage? Perhaps it is for
them, but it is not - or should not be - for us.
This is why I look with such great sadness at the national tar baby
with which all of us will soon be smeared. It will needlessly divide
straight from gay, gay from gay, straight from straight; it will sully
everything that it comes into contact with it. We are no longer
practicing the politics of compromise; we are now practicing the
politics of Push comes to Shove. Only now we are no longer trying to
shove them out of our communities; we are trying to shove our way into
theirs.
Of course, to proponents of gay marriage, the issue is defined purely
in terms of the language of virtual equality: moral rights, natural
rights, legal rights. They see the matter exactly as I originally saw
the question of flag-burning and, therefore, are utterly unable to
grasp how the other side really feels about the question - or, when
they do notice these feelings, they tend, as I did, to dismiss them as
irrelevant to the issue.
But such a superior attitude ignores the heart of the problem: Who gets
to define what the gay marriage controversy is really about? If the
proponents do, then it is all about legal rights, but if, on the other
hand, the opponents get to define it, then it is all about defending an
ethical institution that they believe is theirs alone.
When men and women cannot even agree on what they are arguing about,
argument is of no avail, and sheer force of will becomes the final
arbiter of the controversy - if we are lucky.
This is not how the American gay community got where we are today, and
it is almost a sure guarantee that we will not be where we are
tomorrow.
Lee Harris
Gay marriage is rapidly becoming our national tar baby - something
that you cannot touch without getting tar all over you. Once you touch
the tar baby, you can never quite get rid of it again.
Frankly, the gay-marriage tar baby perplexes me. I do not understand
it. All I know is that I want to keep my distance from it.
The source of my confusion is this. For 18 years, I have shared my life
with a member of my own sex, and I have been entirely satisfied with
our domestic arrangements. Never once did it occur to me that there was
something missing from our lives or that we were the oppressed victims
of the heterosexual majority. Never once did I think our lives would be
more complete, or more honorable, or more worthy, if only we had been
able to get married.
My thought was not that marriage should be only between a man and a
woman but, simply and matter-of-factly, that marriage was and had
always been between a man and a woman. Marriage as an institution was
theirs; it wasn't ours.
Once upon a not-so-distant time, all gay men and women instinctively
made this distinction between "theirs" and "ours." Indeed, the gay
revolution in this country began when a group of drag queens at a bar
in the Greenwich Village decided to claim the territory within the
walls of that bar as "ours" and proceeded to evict the police who had
been accustomed to raiding the bar at will.
The Stonewall rebellion was a momentous challenge to the status quo.
Never before had homosexuals claimed the right to order our own
communities - or to disorder them, for that matter. And, even more
astonishingly, never before had the larger community permitted us to
create such communities. This benign response on the part of most
straight Americans, even if it was nothing more than "benign neglect,"
was just as unprecedented as the decision of gay men and women to live
openly among them. And yet, the response of straight America was not
wholly out of keeping with what is perhaps the finest quality in the
American character: our willingness to let others make a life for
themselves according to their own terms and not ours, provided, of
course, that they are willing to let us also make a life for ourselves,
according to our own terms and not theirs. The distinction between
"ours" and "theirs" must not be confused with the distinction between
"us" and "them." The first distinction is the source of tolerance; the
latter is the source of conflict.
Normally when we think of "ours" and "theirs," we are apt to suppose
that we are talking about physical things - our turf, your turf -
all things that we can seize and that you can try to wrestle from us.
But this is quite misleading - something that was taught to me 16
years ago, shortly after my partner and I acquired our small
window-tinting business in Norcross, Ga.
Back then, as now, there was a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution,
and my partner, Andy, and the other guys in our shop asked me for my
opinion.
The amendment would have outlawed burning the American flag, and for
me, at the time, the question was a no-brainer. Obviously you don't
amend the Constitution for something as trivial as that. After all,
what is a flag but a piece of cloth that had been conventionally
designated as a symbol of America?
My views did not go over very well at the shop, and the discussion soon
became warm - so warm that it suddenly dawned on me that we were no
longer talking about the same thing. I wanted to treat the issue purely
in terms of the legal right of the individual to express himself, since
that was how I thought of the question.
But my crew didn't see it like this at all. For them, the issue had
nothing to do with legal rights but turned entirely on the sacred
status of the American flag. It was their flag, and they were not about
to allow anyone to desecrate it.
My first response was simply to dismiss my blue-collar crew's "opinion"
as lacking in intellectual substance, and so not to be taken seriously.
But, because these were the people I worked and lived with, this
solution could not satisfy me long, and, before I knew it, I began to
question my own cocksureness.
My first epiphany was the realization that my crew members had not
merely been expressing their "opinion" on the constitutionality of the
flag-burning amendment; they had been voicing something that didn't
come off the top of their heads, but from the bottom of their hearts.
They didn't want to discuss the merits of flag-burning - they wanted
it stopped.
And this led to my second epiphany: The flag, for people who are
willing to die in its defense, is not merely a conventional symbol; it
is something that they have a personal stake in.
In the eyes of my crew members, flag burners and their defenders were
both trying to take from them something that was theirs, and that is
all that mattered.
Today it is no different. Replace the American flag with traditional
marriage, and you will at once see what I mean.
On the one side are those for whom marriage is simply a legal
convention, which, like any other convention, can be altered at will.
But looked at in this way, the American flag is also an arbitrary
confection, an assortment of red and white stripes with white stars on
a blue background. In which case, what is to keep us from replacing our
traditional flag with some other attractive arrangement of colors and
shapes? Surely no one could possibly complain about such a purely
aesthetic change, since the new flag would be just as much the flag of
the United States as the old one.
On the other side are those for whom marriage, like the flag, is
something that bears the true mark of the sacred: It is inviolable and
not to be tampered with.
Does this mean that the flag or marriage has never changed before? Of
course not; but it means that any change in either of these sacred
institutions must be made and approved by those to whom these
institutions belong.
In the early and creative phase of the gay liberation movement, gays
recognized that we were different from them; they recognized that they
were different from us. We said, "Listen, we want to have our own turf,
our own communities"; and they said back to us, "OK. You can have your
own turf and your own communities. But, please, make sure you stay on
your side of the line."
This sensible concordat was responsible for the immense progress that
gay men and women made in the post-Stonewall era. But it was abruptly
shattered with the proclamation of a radically new political agenda
that was launched with the publication of Andrew Sullivan's 1996 book,
Virtually Normal.
At the center of Mr. Sullivan's thesis was the notion that the
distinction between "ours" and "theirs" was illegitimate. To me, this
claim made no sense philosophically, psychologically or politically.
Gay men are different from straight men; gay women are different from
straight women. Nor is there anything demeaning or morally
objectionable in our being different.
I see the world differently because I am gay, and I am heartily glad of
this fact - not because I see it clearer or better, but because it
allows me to see it from a different perspective and to discover things
in that perspective that no straight man could be expected to notice.
No matter how I came to be the way I am, I am grateful that I have
ended up as I have. I need no one else's confirmation or blessing to be
equal to myself. I deeply love my partner, and I hope to die with him;
but there is nothing in my fidelity that requires me to borrow the
concept of marriage.
Is friendship a less sacred ideal than marriage? Perhaps it is for
them, but it is not - or should not be - for us.
This is why I look with such great sadness at the national tar baby
with which all of us will soon be smeared. It will needlessly divide
straight from gay, gay from gay, straight from straight; it will sully
everything that it comes into contact with it. We are no longer
practicing the politics of compromise; we are now practicing the
politics of Push comes to Shove. Only now we are no longer trying to
shove them out of our communities; we are trying to shove our way into
theirs.
Of course, to proponents of gay marriage, the issue is defined purely
in terms of the language of virtual equality: moral rights, natural
rights, legal rights. They see the matter exactly as I originally saw
the question of flag-burning and, therefore, are utterly unable to
grasp how the other side really feels about the question - or, when
they do notice these feelings, they tend, as I did, to dismiss them as
irrelevant to the issue.
But such a superior attitude ignores the heart of the problem: Who gets
to define what the gay marriage controversy is really about? If the
proponents do, then it is all about legal rights, but if, on the other
hand, the opponents get to define it, then it is all about defending an
ethical institution that they believe is theirs alone.
When men and women cannot even agree on what they are arguing about,
argument is of no avail, and sheer force of will becomes the final
arbiter of the controversy - if we are lucky.
This is not how the American gay community got where we are today, and
it is almost a sure guarantee that we will not be where we are
tomorrow.